Tasìa eyed the surroundings of the small parking lot, wincing at the outdoor glare and feeling naked without a gun on her person.

  Her latest sidearm acquisition was less than ten meters away in Sachmilli's parked van—little comfort until the moment she got her hands on it.

  Have we become paranoid, T? Bright light of morning and a few friendly faces milling about, yet you can't relax without your weapons close by.

  In the time Tasìa nitpicked herself, she had reached the passenger door and swiped the unlocking sensor embedded in the mirror to open the vehicle.

  The El Paso Armory 1902 Sporting .38 was stored in the middle compartment inside a black holster with one clip pinned by a buckled retention strap. She pulled the repeater pistol out and checked the magazine.

  Four rounds were missing, likely from the firefight exchange she had with Fiona. Tasìa replaced the four, then clipped the holster inside her boot.

  The 1902 Sporting was a good fit along the rounded contour of her thumb, where a safety and rate-of-fire adjuster gauge was ensconced. She had never seen one designed around such a small pistol frame.

  Cleverly, El Paso Armory designed the gauge to be near to unmovable in firing position, but squeezing it while tilting the gun downward engaged the switch.

  After breakfast, she would test it.

  Inside the middle compartment, the Katy Lieds's recharger case stood upright with Demona's NeoPalm beside it.

  Tasìa grabbed the PA device and pocketed it.

  Does Demona really expect me to go after my crewmate, one who never betrayed me?

  Correction.

  It wasn’t Demona who chose the candidate but Contingencia, the AI built for such incapacitation events. It compiled a list of ethically expendable targets already known to law enforcement. Once narrowed to one prime candidate who met the criteria to be Demona Helo?ste's body donor, Simone Barre Estèvez in this case, it pursued obtaining a legal writ of execution, and was granted one.

  Which begs the question, why Simone?

  Her concentration was interrupted when Tasìa's stomach rumbled as badly as it did back in the motel room, reminding Tasìa of her priorities:

  Food before all else. Planning a score... No, food! Reflection on my life choices and future with Beauregard... No, food! Saving Demona, and through her, the human race... No, food!

  Okay, given Demona's track record, the latter may be more like condemning humanity.

  But, never mind the bollocks, we need to eat.

  Drawn by a bready smell and something pork-based she could not identify, Tasìa’s head craned, searching for the eatery on the motel floor above her.

  The establishment’s sign was in English: Jerzy & Jesi's Authentic Imitation Coney Island Style Cuisine. Her English wasn't great, but even Tasìa noted the contradiction and wondered what she was getting into.

  But she was famished. She put the Katy Lieds on and scrambled up the stairway.

  Tasìa stared at her plate, her fork hovering over the dish, getting a grip on the menu items the waitress brought her. Two Taylor ham pork rolls cooked inside a bread made of flour, buttermilk, and pork fat.

  The bread gave off a pleasing aroma, but when she poached the biscuit with her knife, the aroma was replaced by the heavy odor of a processed meat.

  Her nose wrinkled in unease. She was a Paraguayan girl through and through and used to meat coming directly from the ranch or farm without factory prep intermediaries.

  The expression on her face drew attention from a mix of customers and staff. Likely, she was spotted as a newcomer adrift the moment she stepped inside the diner.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  With her gaze firmly on the plate, she ignored the stares and made no smile of contrition that would invite interaction. She cut off a piece of bread and ham and took a bite.

  She hated it. It was edible enough, the biscuit, surprisingly fluffed in layers, she would enjoy having on its own. But that piece of meat was a crime against nature.

  Tasìa smothered the side orders of scrambled eggs and hash-browned potatoes in green chili hot sauce to make the ham palatable.

  She once asked Beauregard what Americans eat for breakfast.

  "Cigarettes, coffee, and anger," he answered.

  Well, no wonder. I get it now.

  Everything else was delicious except for that damn ham.

  Getting used to that would make me angry too.

  Tasìa glanced about. Ignoring the stares worked to diffuse the attention of the crowd. They went back to what they were doing, and she finished her breakfast in peace.

  Her coffee cup replenished and the plate taken away, Tasìa sat back in the wire frame chair and opened up Demona's NeoPalm. The file was still open to the dossier on Simone under the title "Vigilante Assassin or Black Widow Killer?

  Right after an incident that Tasìa had long shut down in her day-to-day thoughts, Sachmilli insisted on Simone joining her team to replace the personal guard on her team who betrayed and attacked her.

  What's Sachmilli's connection to Simone? How does he know someone in the assassin profession? How did he talk her into playing bodyguard for me?

  Though they never bonded as close friends, the professional synergy between Tasìa and Simone was first-rate.

  Tasìa browsed through the info on Simone's early years, from late teens to mid-twenties, bouncing around tourist trap cities in Spain where she was frequently nabbed for street hustles, prostitution, and even making book.

  Another matter occurred shortly after Simone turned twenty, she was questioned but never charged for the death of a pimp.

  There rose a pattern; Simone got caught worrisomely frequent from the standpoint of a recruiter like Tasìa for her petty crimes, but she was never so much as charged once for the murders.

  There were eleven separate case files logged where Simone was a suspect in a homicide investigation.

  Tasìa shook her head. Something odd was going on. Something was keeping Simone out of real trouble. That would mean organizational involvement.

  Who does Simone really work for?

  Along with the sixty-four-page dossier were a few terabytes of cached raw data.

  Great. Data mining. Tasìa held her breath and blew her bangs to tousle them up. She wasn't in the mood to exercise any brainpower.

  Embrace the suck, T. You are going to have to think things through, interface and configure with an editor macro, and interpret those results—all before you finish your second cup of coffee.

  How did life become so complicated?

  As it turned out, it was pure exaggeration on her part. The previous owner of the NeoPalm had already installed an Emacs GUI on a crawler that embedded onto any data dump of significant size. It was ready for any cross-reference Tasìa could throw at it.

  Tasìa asked herself, how do spook shops find and recruit their criminal talent for B&E, money laundering, extortion rackets, and assassination schemes? They found them in prisons, but a lot of chaf—useless dumbasses—get caught up in the prison industrial complex. The wheat was a rarity.

  She typed in, Pull up assessment testing records correlated to the subject's arrests. At seventeen, Simone was charged for running a sports betting numbers racket at the Hipódromo de la Zarzuela racetrack on the outskirts of Madrid.

  Near the beginning of her incarceration for that crime, Simone was made to do a battery of assessment tests whose results were conspicuously missing from the record.

  Scores not shown? In other words, Simone wasn't treated like just another statistical data point to be charted.

  Two months into the six-month sentence, Simone was transferred for further testing related to a rehabilitation program conducted under the name Iniciativa Montcada.

  That's got to be a spook shop.

  After reading through the inquiry responses for several more minutes, Tasìa decided she had enough info to run everything by Annebél for feedback.

  She quaffed down her coffee and wrote a message for Annebél.

  Just finished breakfast. Going to the range. Can't wait to try out the new acquisition. Let me know when Matzi wakes up.

  Ciao!

  Tasìa carried bank notes on her person, and slipped the equivalent of 20 USD under the coffee cup before rising up and leaving.

  Minutes later, at the gunshop by the range, all things hunky dory reversed themselves.

  Tasìa got an odd feeling as she took the five boxes of .38 ACP rounds, newly minted from the proprietor's little reloader shop built into the 18-wheeler's big rig cabin.

  He eyed her gun with an arched eyebrow and grinned at her. He looked like he was about to become conversational, and her senses started to tingle.

  — Careful what you say, Tasìa. This one isn't to be trifled with.

  An elated thrill spread in the pit of her stomach. It was the voice of the Modality. When she spoke to it in dreamland, she could never be too certain of its reality.

  The thrill was muted as the words set in, and she noted the deliberative pace of the proprietor's body motion.

  "Don't see those often," he said with unfeigned self-assurance. "Even out here in the Matorral Viciosa, where a fast and lightweight piece like that absolutely makes sense for deadly small vermin. But you are from the East, aren't you?"

  Tasìa's forehead wrinkled in a frown, but she could not stop herself from affecting a grin.

  "How the hell did you know that?"

  Long and wiry, wearing red leathers and an overcoat, almost de rigueur for a West Country huntsman, the proprietor stretched his back, and it popped loudly.

  He looked Tasìa up and down with a nod.

  "I observe things."