“Hey there.”

 

Sooyoung throws her glass back, swallowing the amber liquid in one gulp. She puts the glass down on the counter and wipes with the back of her hand.

 

“You know, it’s polite to respond to someone when they call you out.”

 

Sooyoung looks up and standing over her is a tall guy, staring at her with a cocky grin. She sighs and rises up to her feet. “The hell do you want?”

 

The guy’s grin widens. “Nothing much. Just... you.”

 

Sooyoung smiles back. She glances at the people dancing and partying in the bar around them. There. There, and there. Three other guys in the surrounding crowd who are carefully watching them, but are trying to hide it. They must be this guy’s entourage. Sooyoung takes a provocative step forward. “You know, I can be dangerous…”

 

Slightly surprised he takes a half-step back, but catches himself and steadies. “I can, too.”

 

She takes another step forward and partially swings a side of her jacket open. Naturally his eyes swing directly there, and widen as there is the unmistakeable glint of metal in the light.

 

He takes an uneasy step back. “Um… I’m… er… never mind...” He spins around and slips into the mass of party-goers, disappearing from sight.

 

Sooyoung falls down onto her chair again, signalling at the bartender for another glass. Receiving it, she calls out. “Hey! Soonkyu? Where you at?”

 

For a few seconds, there is no response. Then, a grumpy voice emerges. “What?”

 

“Get over here!”

 

A reluctant and grumbling redhead emerges from whatever hiding place she had stuffed herself in. “...Are they gone?”

 

“Yeah. He probably nearly pissed his pants.” Sooyoung takes a large gulp of her drink. “Aaah, This stuff’s good. Sure you don’t want any?”

 

Sunny shakes her head firmly. “Not in the mood for drinking.”

 

“Aw, c’mon.” Sooyoung leans back into her chair. “Something the matter? You seem tired. And paranoid. Never a good combination.” She pauses. “Why were those guys after you?”

 

“Look, don’t worry about it. It’ll only bring you trouble.”

 

Sooyoung grins at her. “My middle name is trouble, don’tcha know?”

 

“Shut up, Sooyoung.”

 

“Shut up yourself, shorty.”

 

“Just leave me alone, okay?”

 

“Kay, kay, I will.” Sooyoung takes a deep sip and finishes her drink. “Well, I’m done here.” She slides her glass across the counter to the bartender. “But you know, holding and hiding it inside won’t solve anything.” She drops coins on the counter then turns around and leaves, disappearing from sight.

 

Sunny sighs and drops into Sooyoung’s chair. “Bartender! Give me one of those.” He hands over a bottle to her and she chugs from it. Finishing it, she places it on the counter along with a few bills. “Looks like I am in a drinking mood…” She stands up and laboriously pushes her way through the crowd. Reaching the entrance, she opens the door and walks out.

 

Standing at the wall beside her is the very man she was trying her hardest to avoid. He steps up to her and looks her up and down. “Knew she was in there. Come out!” Two more men step out from the shadows, both armed with pistols.

 

“Damn it.” Sunny steps backward. “You’re not actually going to shoot me here, are you? With so many potential witnesses?”

 

The leader grins. “Of course not.”

 

“Then…” The door behind Sunny opens, and she realizes their plan, but too late. There is a loud crack and her head whips forward, then she falls and all turns black.

 

-

 

Sunny wakes up with a start. She is sitting on a chair in a large warehouse, her arms and legs tied up and gagged. She sits and thinks.

 

They don’t keep her waiting too long. A door in front of her slides open and the ringleader of the men at the bar steps in. Sunny glances up at him, then fixes her gaze on the floor.

 

He stands in front of Sunny, his arms crossed. “Well?”

 

Sunny doesn’t move an inch.

 

He pulls out a pistol from his pocket. “Look. We can either do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. You can give us what we want and we’ll leave you alone. Otherwise... this will get rather painful for you.”

 

Sunny finally looks up at him, and spits a sentence at him, so vulgar that I would rather not include it in my telling of this story.

 

His face hardens. “I suppose we’re decided then.” He points the gun at her forehead. Sunny closes her eyes.

 

Suddenly there is an ear shattering explosion, sending Sunny and her captor to the ground. The doors and the walls of the warehouse burst into flames.

 

The man wobbly picks himself up and shakes his head, blood gushing out of his left ear where his eardrum must have shattered. He shakes it again, then gingerly touches his right ear. His head jerks up, assumedly in response to some sound. Sunny cannot tell, because her hearing has completely deserted her.

 

Sunny pulls at the rope binding her arms to the chair. When it was thrown to the floor it must have hit something sharp, as it is already weakened. One more pull releases her arms completely, and she slips out of the ropes. Looking up, she sees what had alerted her captor. Standing at the door, her body awash with red light from the flames behind her, is Choi Sooyoung.

 

Sooyoung says something, which Sunny is unable to pick out. The man shouts a response, lifts his gun and fires. Sooyoung sidesteps. She pulls out her own pistol and shoots the man in the forehead.

 

Cooly, she pockets the gun and strolls toward Sunny. “Well! Fancy meeting you here.”

 

“Shut up, Sooyoung.” Sunny grumbles. Then she passes out.

 

-

 

“...seems to be mostly fine. Just some swelling and bruising at the ankles and wrists, which I’ve taken care of.”

 

Sunny does not open her eyes, but she continues to listen.

 

“Ok then. Thanks.”

 

Sunny leaps up from the hospital bed and blankets that are wound around her tightly. “Sooyoung!” But the door had already closed, blocking Sooyoung from sight. “Damn it!”

 

She throws the rather clingy blanket off of her and dashes towards the door and past a man dressed in a white lab coat. “W-wait! Where are you going?”

 

Sunny yells back without looking. “Thanks doc!” She throws the door open and turns right, hoping that Sooyoung also turned here. She turns around the next corner and her hopes are rewarded. Leaning against the wall, a lollipop, is Sooyoung.

 

Sunny slows down and steadies herself with a hand against the wall. She pants for a few seconds. “Finally.” She takes a step forward. “Thanks.”

 

Sooyoung waves a dismissive hand. “Ah, it was nothing.” She grins. “But now you owe me for two things.”

 

“I’ll find a way to pay you back, don’t worry.”

 

Sooyoung turns around and begins to walk away. “Keep your guard up. They’ll come back, you know.”

 

“I know…”

 

Sooyoung pads forward a few steps before abruptly stopping. “Oh and Sunny…” She spins around and cracks a wide grin. “Your hairline is messed up.” Cackling, she turns around, dashes down the corridor and disappears out the exit.

 

Sunny reaches her hand up to her hair, then decides she doesn’t really care and drops it again. “Seriously, you need to just shut your mouth sometimes, Sooyoung.”

 

—

 

“Russian Police database… Japanese Police and Army database… Mexican Police database… Canadian Army database… Brazilian Army and Police database… American Police, Army, CIA, and secret forces database…” Jessica reads off the list of criminal databases that contain her name. “Seems like the Americans don’t like me very much.” She says, grinning.

 

She slides her chair over to a screen on her right. On it is a series of nine cameras, all showing views of her hideout. As Jessica is studying them, a black shadow suddenly steals across the view of camera #3. “Huh?” Jessica clicks on the screen where she saw the shadow, and it magnifies to cover the whole monitor. She changes the angle of the camera to the left, where the figure went, and sees something running down the entrance hallway.

 

Jessica jumps up and flicks a switch, turning off all of the computers. She grabs the external hard drive that contains all of her data and stashes it into her pocket. She wipes all of the memory on the computers, leaving no information that could be used against her. She grabs a gun off of the desk and dashes to her hiding spot in an emergency. Crouching down, she puts on her night-vision goggles and waits.

 

-

 

Tiffany stealthily creeps along the dark corridors, hoping that she has not been spotted yet. She checks that the magazine on her gun is full and that she has all of her other weapons and gadgets. Then she continues to slide alongside the walls. “This place is like a freakin’ maze…”

 

Suddenly the walls on either side end. Beyond that it is too dark to pick out anything, but Tiffany assumes that this is where her target resides most of the time. She puts on night-vision goggles, and everything becomes much clearer. Scanning the room reveals nobody. “Where is she?”

 

Tiffany stands up and steps into the room.

 

Immediately a gunshot rings out and Tiffany dives back into the hallway. “Damn it! Where is she?!” She barely peeks her head out and looks again. This time, she sees a few strands of hair, the tip of a gun and the edge of a shoe poking out of what just seemed like a section in the wall. “Creative hiding place.” She aims and places her finger on the trigger. “But I know where you are now.” She fires.

 

Jessica startles when a bullet crashes into the wall just beside her head. She regains her composure and yells out. “What do you want from me?”

 

There is a pause before the response comes. “You really don’t know?”

 

Jessica bites her lip. So she’s just here to kill me. No other motives… that’s good. Suddenly Jessica realizes something. “Wait a second! I know your voice!”

 

Tiffany chuckles. “Yes, it’s me! I thought you’d know that right away, Sica.”

 

Jessica sighs. “Sorry Fany, but I’ve got business to attend to. Seeya.” She presses a button on a remote control in her pocket. A flap opens in the wall beside her and she crawls inside. A red button appears on the inside of the shaft, which she presses. “Again, sorry Fany, but this is necessary.” She closes the flap behind her and continues to crawl along the shaft.

 

Tiffany intently watches Jessica’s hiding spot, but doesn’t see anything suspicious. “Where did she go?” She stands up and fires three times in quick succession at the spot. There is no response. Cursing, she dashes up to it and finds no one there. “What?! Where did she go?” Taking a deep breath, she looks around. “A secret exit?” She kicks the wall beside the hiding spot, and nothing happens. She kicks again, and still nothing changes. “Must be reinforced.” Tiffany’s head jerks up as a strange yet familiar smell comes to her nostrils. “This smell…”

 

She gasps as she realizes what it is. Immediately she pulls the gas mask down from her forehead and onto her face. “Gassing her own hideout with mustard gas...” She shakes her head. “Good thing I’m always prepared.” She looks at the wall beside the hiding spot. “You’ve escaped me this time, Sica, I’ll admit that.” She smiles, turns around and dashes back to where she came from. “But you won’t be as lucky next time.”

 

*

 

It’s ironic, how what people say can become true — but not even close to the way that they intended it to.

 

*

 

Jessica climbs out of the shaft and into the darkness of the night, in the Ethiopian Highlands. Looking to her left she sees that the entrance to her hideout is wide open. Either Tiffany has already left, or she is still inside but left the door open. Most likely the former, as a professional assassin would never leave behind obvious evidence like that.

 

She stands up and closes the door to the shaft, which when closed simply looks like a bunch of grass. Strolling back to the entrance, disguised as a rock, she closes the door. She walks around it and stops, looking at the rock face. She presses a button on the remote control in her pocket. The whole rock face shakes and splits into two, sliding open to reveal a Boeing AH-64 Apache. Climbing into the pilot’s seat she takes off, the rotors silently chopping through the crisp night air, taking Jessica farther and farther away into the sky.

A woman with blonde hair sitting on a Harley Davidson watches her go. Once the helicopter disappears into the night sky, Hyoyeon revs the engine and speeds off into the darkness.

 

—

 

Seohyun wipes her wound with an anti-infectant wipe. It has finally sealed, but she doesn’t want it to get infected at the last second. That would be a sick joke. Finishing, she throws the wipe away and climbs the stairs to the top floor of her apartment, to visit her knife collection once again.

 

Opening the series of locks and unrigging the traps, she steps in and walks to the center of the room. She does a sort of pirouette, affectionately viewing her huge collection for what she knows is the last time.

 

She quickly selects and grabs her favourite antique knives, then all of her fighting knives. After placing all of them into their respective pockets, she goes back to the center of the room, and turns to face the opposite side from the door. There sits the largest case of all. In it is nothing but one knife, the knife that carries the mysterious gem. Seohyun opens the case and takes out the knife, reverently placing it in a case directly over her heart.

 

She turns around and exits the room. There is no need to re-lock everything. She climbs down the stairs and out the door, closing it behind her. She descends the stairs and enters into the foyer.

 

The receptionist looks up at her. “Ah, good morning, Minseo.”

 

Seohyun smiles and waves back. “Good morning.” She waves one last time and steps out of the building. Her face turns dark as she walks away. “And...” She flips her hood over her head and makes sure to hold her head down. “Good night.”

The back side of the apartment building suddenly collapses. The balance of the building destroyed, it topples over and crashes into into the road.

 

Seohyun dashes down the streets as a police car comes tearing down the road towards the building. She smiles. The more destruction, the better. She counts off in her head. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Now.

A deafening explosion erupts through the city as her building is torn apart by the bomb Seohyun set off in her room. The sky turns red with flames and black with ashes and smoke, and sirens and screams wail in unison. Seohyun laughs and continues to run to her back-up residence.