Chapter 13

 

New Orleans, Louisiana

The rain came in sheets so thick he felt like he was breathing through a wet rag, as if New Orleans wasn't humid enough this time of year that it needed more water in the air.  He sat in the recesses of an alleyway and waited.  Drenched and miserable, he sat watching the building across from the alley's maw.  He wanted to walk in, finish the job and get somewhere dry, but that simply wasn't how Mindblades did things.  Patience was almost always the right answer, and Alexi was always patient; master artists never rushed their work.

So instead he crouched and watched, huddled under the meager protection of a cardboard box and not quite able to get any deeper than the first foot or so.  He could thank the corpse behind him for that.  He had been forced to kill the old man when he began yelling about Alexi ‘taking his spot.'  He kicked the body one more time, more out of frustration at the rain than anything else, and resigned himself to wait, since he couldn't get any wetter than he already was.  He just hated the rain.  He said it was because it made every step noisy.  He said it was because his darksuit shined in the light when wet, ruining much of its effectiveness.  He didn't want to admit how much it bothered him that the rain kept reminding him of Alise's funeral

It had rained hard that afternoon, as well.  He remembered standing with a couple dozen other operatives-Mindblades didn't get real friends and family at their funerals, since they were already technically dead.  The preacher went on in that way preachers do, babbling on about returning to the earth or something.  Alexi had tuned him out mostly, focusing on the captain, who hadn't stopped staring at him.  

Rusal was a constant, nagging itch that never seemed to get our from under Alexi's skin, but this was different.  There was a sort of fire in his eyes; somewhere between righteous anger and the smugness of one who's about to defeat his arch-nemesis.  Alexi didn't watch him conspicuously, of course, but kept the captain in his sight while he pretended to cry in an appropriate manner.  He wasn't sure what that was, but he tried to appear like someone who had a reputation for being hard and cold, but had lost a friend nonetheless.  A few operatives he barely knew the names of had come and hugged him, offering apologies and the like so it must have worked-though he suspected people did that sort of thing to relieve their own guilt for not really being all that sad about the person's death.  Apparently it was offensive to not weep like family when casual acquaintances died and the best way to apologize was to say you were sorry when you really weren't.  The irony would have amused him at any other time.

At least at the funeral he had been under a pavilion and kept dry, though.  He had been waiting in this alleyway for over an hour and the rain hadn't really let up, nor had any sign of his target shown itself.  Intel put the mark here tonight, but here it was approaching midnight and nothing.  The blaring noise of Mardi Gras perched in the air like bad theme music in a movie.  This street Alexi was on was just far enough away to avoid the masses of people in the streets, while still being close enough that the noise made sure nobody was sleeping.  It made an ideal spot for this job. Alexi could move mostly unseen and if the target made too much noise, most people would just think he was just partying a bit louder than usual.  And this mark liked to party.

Roland Lebeau, a gumbo drug dealer who had his hands in a hundred different cookie jars.  Drugs, prostitution and smuggling were all part of this guy's racket, but none of them were why Alexi was here.  At least that's what he assumed.  He had only been told it wasn't any of those things-the Blades weren't a petty DEA black ops team-but some matter of national security that he didn't need to know about.  He didn't care much.  He was used to being left in the dark about things when they didn't pertain directly to the removal of the target.  If the higher ups decided he was a threat, Alexi was the instrument to remove it.  And he would do so.

His musings were interrupted by a taxi squealing up and stopping. He saw movement inside and then nearly sighed with relief as Lebeau stepped out of the car.  Alexi watched as he pulled an obviously drunk blonde woman out of the cab and then used her to support himself as they stumbled up to his loft.  He saw the lights come on through the glass doors that led to the balcony overlooking the street and nodded to himself, turning and crouching, then leaping.  His mind shoved at the ground and he catapulted 30 feet into the air to land lightly on the rooftop of the building he had been leaning against moment before.  He lowered himself to give a smaller profile on top of the building and skulked over to the edge of the roof to watch Lebeau and the woman he had unwittingly sentenced to death.

The couple half sat, half lay on the couch, kissing each other sloppily in their drunken stupor and nearly falling off of it onto the floor.  Lebeau reached up and fumbled at the light, trying to turn it off and failing in his first three attempts before it clicked off.  Candles sprung to life a moment later and Alexi watched as Lebeau moved backwards into the darkness left by the candles' weak light.  Alexi made a mental gesture and the whirring of his night-vision goggles filled his ears, making everything an electronic green but also revealing the dark corners of places.  Lebeau returned with some glasses and wine-as if they weren't drunk enough-and sat down, pouring the glasses and turning to kiss her again before handing her a glass.

Alexi waited a bit, allowing the couple to become a bit more involved in each other, and decided that now was the time to make his move.  It would have been easier if he had been authorized to simply shoot them both, but this wasn't supposed to appear like a government sponsored assassination, so sniping was out of the question.  Instead he would have to use his mindblade. 

It wasn't a blade at all, really, but a supercharged filament that vibrated thousands of times per second-the evolution of light bulb technology, oddly enough.  When it was powered up, a thin cord made of super-strong alloys shot out of the handle and was immediately charged.  The intense currents and vibrations kept the "blade" rigid and also allowed it to slice through nearly anything as if it were passing through water.  Since the technology was completely unknown outside of a handful of government organizations, the wounds found on corpses were either a complete mystery, or written off as something else entirely-people don't like looking ignorant when they're supposed to be experts.  So it was the perfect weapon for a super secret organization of government trained assassins: quiet, always deadly and completely untraceable. 

And so Alexi would be tonight.  Untraceable.  Quiet.  Deadly.

He moved back to the alleyway, slipping down the side of the old brick wall.  He reached, grasping the lip of the roof with his thoughts as he fell, slowing his descent.  Padding through the narrow, dark space between buildings, he touched his blades to be sure they were at his hips and bolted across the dark street.  He shoved the ground again and made the 20 foot jump to the roof, landing with a whisper.  He hung upside down form the roof, peering into the poorly lit room.  Lebeau had left the sliding glass door open and Alexi could see and hear the couple on the couch, talking and kissing between drinks of wine.  The back of the couch was to the balcony and Alexi watched and waited from only a few feet away; patient.

The couple kissed again and this time slid down onto the couch below the back, blocking the balcony from their view had they been looking.  Alexi gripped the edge of the roof and flipped over the side, hanging from the lip for a moment before dropping silently to the balcony.  Crouching low and turning to the glass doors that hung open like giant windows, he took caution to be quiet as he slipped into the room-though he hardly needed to with all the giggling and slurred words they were trading.  Alexi tried to ignore how much her laughs sounded like Alise's.  He almost succeeded.

He moved to the hallway that led to Lebeau's bedroom, as much to be sure he would leave no witnesses as to escape the girl's familiar sounding laughs.  He took a quick check of a closet hallway and bathroom and then a peek into the bedroom.  It was littered with every imaginable piece of drug paraphernalia known to man, and Alexi became a little bit more eager to kill Lebeau.  Addicts were worthless human beings.  Dealers were less than worthless: they owed society; were indebted to it.

And Alexi had come to collect.

He moved back to the living room, standing just inside the shadows of the dark hallway as he watched.  He could see Lebeau's back as he lay over the girl, kissing her.  At some point Lebeau must have removed his shirt because his skin glowed orange in the candles' meager light.  Alexi examined him analytically.  One quick cut and his blade should go through both of their brains, killing them instantly.  He briefly considered trying to set it up so that it looked as if the girl had killed him, but dismissed the idea.  That wasn't his assignment.  Let those paid to run smokescreens hide why and how Lebeau died.  Alexi was but the tool.

He pulled one of his blades from its holster and held it out on a flat palm, grabbing it with his mind and willing it over the couch.  He spun it slowly, turning it upside down just as the candlelight played along its black matte surface, gleaming off of the droplet of water sliding down and pooling at the bottom lip of the mindblade, forming a droplet.

Right above Lebeau's back.

Alexi tensed and tugged at the blade, moving it a foot back in his direction just as the water slipped off the edge and fell.  It plummeted almost in slow motion and Alexi reached by instinct, catching the water with his mind, holding the bead in midair, inches below his mindblade; inches above Lebeau's back.  It was nearly impossible to keep a mental grip on the droplet, and it kept slipping over and over through his grasp.  Sweat beaded on his forehead and finally he gave up, cursing silently as it fell and slapped onto Lebeau's back.

Alexi moved into a crouch, ready to leap.  He didn't want to make a mess; didn't want to give the appearance of a struggle.  It wouldn't raise questions or give clues as to why or by whom Lebeau had been killed, but Alexi liked clean and quick kills.  Struggles and messes offended his artistic sensibilities.  They were the sign of a lesser killer-a weaker hunter.  It put him on even ground with the target, and Alexi hated that.  But if he had to, he would destroy the entire building rather than allow Lebeau to get away.  A struggle made them equals, an escape made the target superior and no target was superior.  Alexi doubted anyone was.

Lebeau looked up at the ceiling, "Damned roof is leaking again."  He drawled with thick Louisiana inflections, "I paid a pretty penny to get that fixed."  He shook his head then turned back to the girl.  "Don't worry none, cheri, I'll make sure you don't get no water on you."  She giggled and Alexi relaxed as Lebeau moved down to kiss her again.  Had he not been distracted (and had Alexi been a lesser assassin) Lebeau might have prevented his death, or at least seen it coming.  As it was, his preoccupation with the girl who laughed like Alise would be Lebeau's undoing.

Just as Alise could have been Alexi's.

Alexi pushed the thoughts away and pushed the mindblade back over the pair.  He began to lower it when something moved on the balcony in the green haze of his night-vision goggles.  His eyes flicked over to the window and he cursed under his breath, yanking the blade back to his hand just as the front door burst open and men crashed through the sliding glass door.  He spun into the darkness of the hallway and slipped into the hallway closet as he heard the first of the yells.

"Freeze!  Police!"