Moonbyul was having a hard time focusing on what her partner Wheein was telling her. She was hangover, sleep deprived and working very very early on a Sunday. That was not even near the ideal for her brain to concentrate, but the strong coffee Wheein had bought was slowly bringing life back to her. Slowly being the key word.

"Are you listening?" Wheein asked, looking at the older girl in the ride seat at her car.

Wheein was a small woman with an adorable face that made her look younger than she actually was. With a black shoulder length hair and bangs, Wheein gave the impression of being a helpless girl and Moonbyul enjoyed way too much the look on people faces when she took down men twice her size. Moonbyul learnt years ago Wheein was not someone
to mess with.

"Yes... no." Moonbyul replied fixing the sunglasses on her face and sighing "How are you not dying? You drank so much last night."

"I don't know, I guess I'm excited. Also my liver is amazing at its job."

Wheein and Moonbyul had been partners and friends since Wheein entered the police academy two years ago. They've worked together on countless cases, bonded in late nights at the office and frustrating dead ends that it was impossible to solve.

"Excited?" Moonbyul asked intrigued.

"You really didn't listen to anything I said, right?"

Moonbyul knew only 3 things about why she was awake at 7 a.m. on a Sunday. One: her boss has called her. Two: there has been a murder. Three: someone had to take care of it.

"Sorry, pup. Start again, please?"

Wheein rolled her eyes at the nickname before she started explaining the case again.

“Four men shot dead at a private strip club, two in one of the suites and another two on the alley just outside.”

“Strip club, huh? Do we have identifications?”

"Three of them are assumed to be bodyguards, nothing fancy about 'em."

"And the other one?"

"Brace yourself," Wheein said enthusiastically holding back a smile "Viktor Astankova."

Viktor Astankova was a member of the Russian mafia, not the leader, but he had his influence. He was wanted for crimes all around the world. Moonbyul remember reading something about human trafficking on his files once. The thing was the man was always three steps ahead of the police, never leaving any trace behind. And now he was dead, which meant someone was doing a better job than the police.

"Sure it’s him?"

"We'll see."

10 minutes later they arrive at the Strip Club. From the outside the place looked like any other building in the neighborhood, nothing special about it. As Wheein had explained, the club was a private lounge for influential people to have some fun without being recognized or bothered. None of the men - and yes, only men - used their real names in there and the club kept any register of them, apparently. The club also had its own strict rules, one could only enter with an invitation and a password and they paid really high prizes for the anonymity. Moonbyul wonder what would happen inside a place like that, but decided to not think too hard about it, it was not her department, let the experts deal with it.

Being at a crime scene made Moonbyul feel wide awake, the hangover being just a faint memory now. She and Wheein entered the club passing through a narrow door to a big and luxurious hall. Moonbyul took the sunglasses of her face and hung it on the collar of her button-up shirt. The room was illuminated by red lights mostly and smelled like cigarettes, alcohol and sweat. There were big black cushions distributed around the place and stages with poles. In the right corner was the bar and at the back, behind a thick black curtain - that was wildly open now - were the private rooms, where the men could take the girls and where Viktor was murdered.

To be honest, Moonbyul didn't think much about the place, it wasn't appealing for her, maybe because that wasn't her thing or maybe because the place was filled with police officers and forensics doing their job instead of beautiful women doing pole dance. She couldn't guess.

The pair walked towards the room where the bodies were found and the forensic team was already gathering evidence. The room was also big and fancy, but nothing special or different at the first view. More red lights, like the main hall, but this time it smelled like blood and death. The body sprawled on the floor near the door was obviously one of the bodyguards, the man was just muscles. And the one lying on the bed shirtless must be Viktor.

"Detectives."

Jake, the head of the forensics team, got up from the floor where he was studying something and walked to Moonbyul and Wheein.

"What you got for us, Jake?" Moonbyul asked.

"Clean shots. Bang bang." He makes a gun with his fingers mimicking shooting Viktor and the bodyguard "Whoever did it knew what was doing."

"Only one bullet each?" Wheein asked walking towards the bed to look at Viktor's body.

"Yeah. Both in the head. Perfect aim."

Moonbyul started to look around the room, taking notes, searching for anything unusual.

"And the other two?" Moonbyul asked.

"They were a little bit messier, but still a good job. One was shot in the neck and the other one in the belly. Three times."

"They couldn't risk letting a witness." Moonbyul thought out loud.

"Probably." Jake sighed.

"No CCTV, I'm guessing?" Now it was Wheein's time to ask.

"Not inside, no."

"Maybe outside. Could you check?" Moonbyul asked Wheein.

"On it." Wheein left the room to talk to the officers outside.

"Found anything interesting?" Moonbyul asked Jake.

"Hair and fingerprints, bunch of it. I don't know if anything will be very useful, though."

"Yeah. Let's see."

Moonbyul continued her search at the club. She talked to the police officers there and learned that the bodies were found accidentally by a stripper, the girl told her boss and he called the police. Both of them were already at the precinct and Moonbyul would interrogate them later. She also found out that another stripper was passed out in another of the private rooms when the police arrived. She was taken to the hospital and was being kept under watch. Moonbyul would also have to talk to her later. It was going to be a long day, and probably a long week.

-

After another successful job done, Solar followed her ritual of buying and the biggest meal she could eat - in this case breakfast because the job was done at dawn - and then going home and making herself a bubble bath in her enormous bathtub. It was the time for her to relax after days, sometimes weeks, of stressing out with work. Solar was aware that what she did wasn't conventional; they made sure to tell her that. They made sure to teach her all the ways to get away. They made sure to show her all that could and would happen if she ever got caught. And she learned. And she never wants to go through that again, ever.

After her bath, Solar laid on her king sized bed, loving the feel of the expensive silk sheets on her bare skin. That was the part she liked the most about her job, the money that came with it. Buying things made that emptiness at the core of her body feel a little less painful for a while, at least. The job itself, the killing, it didn't had that effect. Even if she was trained to like it and to find joy in it, Solar never really did.

What she did like, though, was to feel powerful and the adrenaline that flowed in her veins. She liked to feel the weight of the gun on her hand, because that meant no one could hurt her, no one would dare to lay a finger on her, not while she was pointing a gun at their heads. She loved to have the control. That was a feeling she couldn't get enough of. And money, well, money was the synonym of power. So, if killing people it's what gets me money, I'm okay with it. Solar thought. Besides, that was the only thing she knew how to do now, after she was reborn - as Alex, her handler, used to say - Solar couldn't remember much about her previous life, before the training, before becoming an assassin, and everyone said she didn't had to remember, that she was better now. And she believed. She had to believe, because there was nothing and no one else that she could hold on to. Sometimes she was glad she forgot.
And with that in her mind Solar fell into a deep sleep.

-

"I swear, ma'am. I didn't see anything, when I got there everything- everyone was-" the girl buried her head on her hands and sobbed.

Moonbyul sighed heavy, frustrated. "That's okay, Wendy. Someone from witness protection will come talk to you in a bit, alright?"

Moonbyul gave a reassuring squeeze on Wendy's shoulder before leaving the interrogation room. She headed to her office hoping that Wheein had better luck taking information from the club's owner.

Wheein was sitting on Byul's chair, of course, her feet up on the table in front of her, she was chewing her bottom lip while reading a file.

"Hey, I got you a sandwich," Wheein said when she saw Moonbyul coming in "figured you could use some food."

"Thanks, Whee."

Moonbyul sat on the chair across the table, back turned to the door, and removed the wrapping from the sandwich.

"Did the-guy-I-can't-remember-the-name said something useful? Wendy wasn't much of a help." Moonbyul asked with full.

"Richard. And no, I'm afraid not." Wheein placed the file she was reading on her lap and downed her feet to the ground "He doesn't want to say anything about his clients. He knows he's already going to prison for ion, I don't think he mind holding back information."

"Bastard."

As Moonbyul said that Wheein's phone buzzes and the girl smiles as she checks the message.

"I think I have good news." Moonbyul looked up from her sandwich to Wheein and raised her eyebrows "We got footage of the suspect."

As the pair of detectives head towards the evidence room Moonbyul is already vibrating with expectations. Please be a good footage, please. She prays to herself.

The evidence room was the same as ever, and Moonbyul always felt a little bit claustrophobic in there, but Bob's smile when they got there sent a hint of hope to Byul.

"Detectives, I think you will like to see this." Bob, the officer who got the footage for them, said as he rolled his chair towards the screen and pressed play.

The footage wasn't as clear as Byul hoped but she kept watching, quiet. The video was from the other side of the street and showed the back of the club from a weird angle, but the ally where the suspect shooted two victims was visible. There was nothing there until a door opened and someone came into the shot and seconds later the bodyguards came rushing behind and were killed. Then, the suspect turned towards the camera and that's when Moonbyul saw it.

"Oh, my God." Wheein said before Byul could even react. "It's a woman."

But as Moonbyul kept watching the footage she realized it wasn't just any woman. Byul recognized the black mask that covered the bottom half of her face and the long black hair pushed back into a ponytail. Moonbyul recognized the way she held the gun in her right hand and the way the woman walked and moved and just everything about her.
Moonbyul didn't know who that woman was, but she remembered, from years ago, she sat for hours and maybe days at a room just like this one, as she watched the same video over and over again, trying to identify the person on it. But she never did, she could never solve that case and it haunted her for a long long time, because that person, that woman on that screen she was watching right now, was the same woman that killed her father.

", Wheein." Moonbyul said with her eyes fixed on the screen. "It's her."