The Blonde

Right into a strip of clear electrical tape, running parallel to the front of the third garage.

Walk on it, stomp on it… nothing. You need something with the mass of a motor vehicle to set it off, when charged properly.

Of course, charged or not, there’s something else that will set it off.

A speeding bullet.

Yeah, that’d do it nicely.

So before The Surgeon was even able to crash into the ground, the explosion blew him back and upwards into the air, flipping him head over heels at least twice before he crashed through the very window he’d been looking through a minute ago.

And in that way, one little bit of the Surgeon’s vision came true. For a fraction of a section, burnt flesh was smeared against the glass, along with a little bit of blood.

Then the glass shattered, and through it came the Surgeon.

That guy just blew up,” Vanessa said.

“Drive,” Kowalski said.

“Why did he blow up?”

“Just drive.”

“Michael.”

“What?”

“Why did that guy blow up?”

“Drive!”

“Jaysus.” She sighed.

“Now a left,” Kowalski said.

The blast woke Ana. Her eyes fluttered open, and quickly she realized she was drowning in a sea of pain. Delicious pain. Pain she could use. Just as soon as she stood up.

Oh.

She couldn’t.

One of the two fucktards, either the cripple with the missing teeth or the naked bitch, had smashed in one of her kneecaps. Perhaps the most sensitive part of the human anatomy, aside from the sexual organs or the eyes. Physical trauma applied to the kneecap was immediately crippling, engulfing the pain centers of the brain to the point of overload.

Thus, a source of overwhelming power.

Ana wouldn’t need to walk. She could crawl on her elbows and one remaining knee and smite those who had done this to her. Smite them with their own pain.

She sat up.

Or tried to, at least.

But her arms were pinned above her. Handcuffed around the base of a toilet.

No no no no.

This meant that the pain would have to stay within her, with no chance of release. And that was unacceptable. Because there was one thing Ana could not handle for long, and that was pain. Especially pain of this magnitude.

Ana screamed and cried and begged for release.

Any kind of release.

Oh how it HURT!

Kowalski had to take a piss. But he’d be damned if he let the interrogator know that.

He considered just letting it go, right here, right onto the concrete floor, the body-temperature liquid splattering the interrogator’s shoes.

“Tell me,” Kowalski, “how you found her.”

“She came to us,” the interrogator said.

“What, she had your address?”

“Hang on, now. We’re off track here. I’m supposed to be asking you questions. You know the deal. You don’t answer, I slice pieces off you and put them over there.” He pointed to a metal bucket, which had been placed in the corner. “You continue to be stubborn, I get to feed you those pieces.”

“I’m answering your questions.”

“I know. You suck.”

The interrogator played with the paper cover of his little Pampered Chef knife.

“Well, go on. San Diego.”

“San Diego,” Kowalski repeated.

“San Diego.”

“SAN DIEGO!” Kowalski shouted.

The whole drive down to San Diego, they had no idea. No idea that a third assassin had wiped the garage door handle clean, disabled the explosive tape. Just to fuck with The Surgeon. (Arrogant prick.)

No idea she was tracking them now, with a handheld device, courtesy of CI-6.

She was called many things. Assassin. Killer. Psycho.

But what she really got off on was her CI-6 nickname:

Bonesaw.

It just sounded painful. And she liked that.

Her specialty was the odd, seemingly random killings you hear about on the news every once in a while. Those freaky serial killings. Sure, there was media attention. Once in a while, even a movie option. That was the point. Cops and reporters went hunting for a lone madman. They never thought it was the government.

Bonesaw liked that, too.

Oh, she had a real girly name once—Monica McCue. Ugh. Poke the back of her throat, make her gag. She never felt like a Monica McCue. Since she was a little girl, she’d always felt like a … well, a bone saw.

It was rare they let her do her thing. Which was why she took it upon herself to push The Surgeon out of the way.

She wanted to show them what she could do. She had a whole bunch of new ideas. Sitting around last night, she jotted something like forty-two of them down in her notebook.

Ways to kill people.

That morning Bonesaw got up, stepped into the brilliant California sunshine, and narrowed it down to a half dozen ideas. She sipped some iced coffee, bit her lip hard thinking about those ideas. A little blood got in the coffee. Gave it a little salty kick. She liked that. And that decided it for her.

She’d bring a box of syringes with her. She’d have to stuff the box with cotton, because she didn’t want them rattling around in her backpack. The cotton would come in handy anyway.

They’re not going to stop, are they?”

Kowalski looked at her. The multiple of hers. He definitely had a concussion. Even turning his eyes made him want to vomit. So he turned his whole head. Watched the trees and buildings and clouds and vehicles whiz by the