Chapter-01: Infiltration

Date: April 14, 2046
Time: 12:00:00
Location: Suburbs of Lith Harbor

She propped her back up against one of the many brick chimneys of the pearly white mansion on the outskirts of Lith Harbor. In the distance, the seagulls called ecstatically over the pounding waves as they dove into the sea for a mouthful of Gobies. A quiet breeze ruffled her blonde bangs right as her wrist watch hit the noon mark. A smile crept over her pure white teeth, the grin of death. She straightened herself up and flipped a silencer up to her Desert Phoenix pistol.

Mariah McKenna peered around the edge of the bricks just in time to see about ten black figures stow around the mansion. She smiled to herself and deftly made her way around to the back end of the house. Making sure the others haven’t seen her, she then lower herself onto the top most balcony leading to the attic. The doors swung open, blasting her face with musty, hot air. She was in.

There were no footsteps, just brisk disturbances in the thick layer of dust that revealed Mariah’s presence. After closing the doors, concealing her entry completely, she made her way over to a bright skylight that revealed the second floor underneath. As hands skillfully unhitched the lock and lifted a window pane up, her ears pricked up at the sound of a newcomer’s voice.

“Well looks like you made it in without a trace,” he said.

Mariah pressed her earpiece closer to her eardrums and replied mutedly as she scanned the area immediately underneath her with her pistol, “Screw you, Renault.”

Renault laughed huskily and then began with a more serious tone, “They’re in the Conference Room, on top of the West Wing. Straight to your left.”

“Affirmative, switching to radio silence. Over and out.” Mariah’s earpiece clicked off and she silently jumped down onto the second floor. Immediately, her ears detected a movement to her left. Moving quickly, she dashed into the shadows in a crevice in the hall just as a man walked out of the restroom. The instant he turned towards the Conference Room, Mariah lunged out. She quickly wrapped her right arm around his neck and twisted his neck sharply with her left. With a quick snap, the man was limp. The water in the toilet had not even finished draining into the pipelines before his body was back in, lifeless.

Suddenly, there was a muffled explosion beneath her followed by two suppressed gunshots. By the pitch of the whiz, she knew it was the MSAF with their newly acquired MK9-SD’s. The stats of the weapon quickly ran through Mariah’s head before she pushed it away as a minimal threat. Besides, the MSAF didn’t know what they were doing. There was some radio chatter below her, but she quickly tuned it out as she crept silently towards the Conference Room.

As Mariah reached the double oaken doors of the destination, she heard another muffled crash. The second team. How thoughtful of them to plan out the flanks. She rolled her eyes as she locked and loaded the cold weapon in her hands. There were fifteen rounds encased in the pistol. Fifteen for ten. Mariah only needed five.

A muffled gunshot resounded dully below as she reached for the handle. Mariah needed to be quick, silent but deadly. Drawing up a deep breath, she swung the doors open, revealing her existence to the ten mobsters inside.

They were all seated around a round table, spaced perfectly evenly just as predicted. Six guns were laying idly on the glossy wooden table, the others presumably resting in their owners’ holsters. Numerous amounts of papers no doubt conveying drug deals and weapon trades littered the area in between the men. However, their attentions were all fixated upon Mariah’s arrival.

The looks on each of their eyes were identical, frozen in fear and confusion. It took a few seconds for them to realize she was there to watch them draw their last breaths. As they reached for their guns, it was already too late.

“To heaven or hell…”

She pulled the trigger once, the weapon pointed directly ahead of her. The .45 round shot straight through the first man’s chest, burst out his back, and lodged itself into the man sitting across from the table. Both their hands were still moving towards their holsters as Mariah’s bullet pierced through their lives.

“Will they never break thy spell…”

She deftly shifted her aim onto the table and pulled the trigger once more. The bullet smashed into one of the mobster’s guns, setting it off and killing the man who’s hands were outstretched towards the table. He fell backwards onto the chair, soaking it with fresh blood from a bullet wound straight to the chest. Three down.

“May thee empower us with thy hands…”

Mariah then raised her Desert Phoenix up a fraction of a degree and another bullet seared through two men at once, sending up a brief mist of blood before their bodies hit the floor. Five down, five to go.

“So we may hastily carry out thy commands…”

With the entire right side of the table gone, Mariah aimed for the elbow of the man closest to her, the leader. He had a pistol in his hands, and was swinging around to bring her into his crosshairs. With another squeeze of the trigger, the forth bullet shattered the mobster’s elbow, making him lose his grasp on his weapon. The momentum of his arm sent his gun careening into the air, directly into Mariah’s outstretched left hand.

“Because all that we do is for thee…”

The final exclamation of Mariah’s Desert Phoenix resounded with a suppressed click, another shot into the chest, another soul in hell. Without a pause, her left index finger fired the foreign pistol into another man’s heart. In the next fraction of a second, two others were down. Nine down, the leader left.

“To guide these souls across the sea…”

He was shaking in agony, holding his limp right arm, seething back and forth. When Mariah approached him, he held up his remaining good hand and whispered in a hoarse voice, “Wait, wait please don’t do this! Don’t kill me please!”

Mariah kneeled down and put her gloved hand on the man’s sweaty cheek. His breath smelled of lingering smoke and years of tobacco abuse, but Mariah leaned closer nonetheless. “Shh… it’ll all be over soon…”she whispered. Then, she kissed the man on the cheek. Mariah could feel him shudder as her lips met his skin.

“Si Deus pro nobis, quis contra nos…” The final words of the prayer slipped flawlessly through her lips into his quivering eardrums. And with that, she returned the gun to its original owner by means of one single bullet. Ten down.

Mariah’s fingers reached towards her ears and clicked the communicator on once more, “Renault, targets neutralized. Extracting now.”

“Get your ass out of there,” Renault chuckled and the earpiece went dead once more. Mariah smiled to herself and finished placing the bodies next to each other with their hands folded across their chests. She gave the leader’s head a final pat and strolled out of the Conference Room back into the second story hallway.

All of a sudden, her peripheral vision caught a movement in the West Wing below. She silently pressed her back against the wall and looked through the railings. A man wearing a pitch black uniform was sweeping the room below, his MK9-SD jolting around, aiming at possible points of ambush.

And then, Mariah found herself looking into the charcoal black barrel of the silencer mounted at the tip of the man’s sub-machinegun. In an instant, her Desert Phoenix made another silenced remark, hitting the man squarely on the shoulder. He whipped around from the force of the bullet tearing through his flesh and stumbled to the ground. Below her, the man’s comrades cursed profusely and rushed to his aid. Mariah swore quietly to herself then, dashed noiselessly away back towards the skylight leading to the attic.

As she shot a grapple up into the attic, her earpiece cackled, “Haha, careful now love, or you’ll end up sleeping with the tangos.”

“Shut up,” Mariah growled and retracted the line, sending her back up into the attic. The dust stirred gently around her feet as she made her way to the back of the mansion, the same door she had entered through only a few minutes ago. Cursing her carelessness, she glided to the windowed door and caught sight of three men in the backyard, hiding behind various shrubs in the garden. Through the dirty, dust-collected panes, Mariah knew nothing would draw their attention up towards her, so she climbed out back up onto the rooftop.

Sprinting across the roof tiles, Mariah was just about to rappel down the east side of the mansion when the sight caught her breath again. Her sapphire eyes glinted stunningly as the azure hue of the distant ocean reflected off of them. The sound of the lapping waves crashing onto the shore, the smell of the brine tingling her nose, all combined with each other into a perfect symphony for the ears. For a fleeting moment, she almost wished she had the time to pause and just take it all in. But as soon as that feeling came, it vanished into the wind. She would not have a repeat of herself staring into the face of the barrel of a gun.

Mariah attached her line a crevice in the chimney and then jumped over the edge, rappelling down the two stories into a bushy garden. As she turned to leave, the black rope dissolved instantly into the wind, leaving no trace of her presence at all. Dashing low with her head hidden under the line of shrubs, she made her way to the side fence and jumped out just as the first news van arrived on site.

And there it was, black and lustrous in the scorching sun, the heat waves distorting the sleek limousine’s shape. Mariah sprinted for the finish and as the door swung open by itself, she jumped in. With a squeal of tires and the roar of a thousand horses, they were off towards the shadows and away from the world.

Mariah sighed as she unzipped her vest and threw it to the ground before her. A blast of cool wind licked her skin as she was now only wearing a black tank top. She unbuckled her Desert Phoenix and unloaded the magazine. Six bullets gone…

“So much for that eh love?” Renault smirked as he sat casually on the other side of the limo, surrounded by all sorts of surveillance equipment. He typed a stream of words on a keyboard suspended in front of him and whispered to himself, “Six shots fired… Such a disappointment, Mariah…”

“Oh f*** you,” Mariah scoffed and threw off her black gloves.

“Go right on ahead,” Renault replied, a smug grin across his face.

“You wish,” Mariah snapped and unbuckled her combat belt. In front of her, Renault had some how attained an apple and was just putting it to his mouth for a bite. Mariah’s eyes darted to her combat knife, and the next instant, the blade was dug deep into Renault’s fruit that was held at his lips. “F*** that… b****…”

Renault lowered his almost skewered apple and laughed, “Love, you never change…”

The limousine slowed to a halt in front of a beat up garage. As the rusty doors lifted up with a hideous screech, Mariah retrieved her knife and sheathed it back in her scabbard. They waited for the metal door to return to its normal dilapidated, unmoving position, before the plain brick walls in front of them impossibly folded outwards, making a passageway straight into a steel, brightly lit tunnel.

One thousand horses were purring now as Mariah stepped out onto the smooth titanium platform. Her sapphire eyes warmed and she smiled at the sight. The assassin’s lair.

“Welcome home,” Renault grinned.