Someone compromised the hit.

That was the only explanation, the only way I could reconcile my perfectly planned execution with tonight’s fiasco. I’d spent weeks scouting the territory, learning the mark’s patterns, and establishing a cover ID. The mark was a creature of habit. He loved his petty pleasures, and those included visiting a specific nightclub every Wednesday night, without fail. There was a lady there, a dancer that enthralled him and brought him back week after week. He never spoke to her, never brought her over for a table dance or met her in a private room. He just sat and watched, drinking the same whisky neat he always drank, sending her tips through his bodyguards and lieutenants.

It was a simple matter to poison his whisky. All I had to do was lace his table with one toxin and the spirit with another. No one else in that club who drank whisky that night suffered in the slightest; no one else who sat at that table had any ill effects. Each toxin alone was harmless, but the two substances came together to form a deadly binary poison. It worked, of course, and when the mark began choking on his own tongue, suspicion naturally fell on the bartender. They hustled the young man to the back, where they undoubtedly questioned him intently. They may have beaten him a bit, too. While that went on, no one noticed the dishwasher sneaking out the back door.

At least, so I thought, until the first shouts echoed through the alleyway and the first bullet smacked into the bricks beside my head. They’d waited for me in the alley. They knew who I was, what I’d done, and my exit strategy. And damn, they were pissed about it.

There were a lot of stories about me floating around out there. Most of them were wrong. I’d never killed an entire bar’s worth of people in Moscow. I’d never slit a man’s throat with a dollar bill. Most important, at least at that moment, I wasn’t bulletproof. Bullets didn’t pass through me like smoke or bounce off my skin like I was Superman. Sure, I sometimes used body armor, and I was faster and nimbler than most, but I still bled. That was clear from the ragged hole in my side that pumped copious amounts of crimson liquid out, staining my shirt and radiating pain into my whole body.

A figure jumped out at me from a doorway, a gleam of metal flashing in their hand as they bumped into me. The knife stabbed out, but I was already moving. My left hand slammed into the man’s wrist, knocking it away from me, while my right lashed up. My stiffened fingers jabbed into his windpipe, and as he gagged and grabbed his throat out of reflex, my left hand grabbed his loosened thumb and twisted. The knife clattered to the asphalt beneath our feet as I smashed my right elbow into his face, stunning him, then grabbed his jacket lapel and flipped him over my shoulder. He had a gun under his jacket, and I slipped it out, flipped the safety, and put two bullets in his forehead. I stuck the gun in my waistband and scooped up the fixed-blade knife, turning to run out of the alley.

Unfortunately, my ambusher had delayed me just long enough for the closest of my pursuers to catch up.

I dove for the doorway the man had hidden in as bullets spanged against the surrounding walls. I whipped the pistol out and sighted on the closest figure, pulling the trigger twice. I know that in movies, the hero can snatch someone else’s weapon and instantly be a crack shot with it. In reality, it rarely works like that. Individual firearms aren’t perfect replicas of each other, and their owners have probably adjusted the sights to match their shooting technique. The gun jerked in my hand, and the first bullet caught the man an inch below his heart. I adjusted to the low sights, and the second bullet punched through his chest, dropping him to the asphalt. That’s a solid piece of advice for any would-be assassin: never try for head shots unless you have no other choice. Heads move around a lot, and it’s easy to miss them. Aim for center mass; even if you miss, you’re likely to hit something important. A person with blood filling their lung is going to find chasing you a lot less interesting.

The other four figures reacted instantly when the first guy collapsed, dropping to the ground or diving for cover where they could find it. As they did, I holstered the pistol and rushed toward them, leaping over the first man’s body. My cover wasn’t great in the doorway, and if they worked together, they would have been able to expose me in a heartbeat. Like I said, I’m good, but I’m not bulletproof. In close, though, they’d have to worry about hitting each other, and in the darkness, they’d have trouble telling which flailing body was mine.

I reached the closest guy just as he rose from cover to fire at me. I grabbed his gun hand and lifted it up, twisting his wrist so that his arm bent backwards. The knife almost flew into my right hand and buried itself in the guy’s throat. I left it there for him to choke and gag on, mostly because pulling it out would spray me with blood, and that’s never fun. I snatched his gun from his weakened grasp and leveled it at the next closest guy, aiming for center mass and pulling the trigger twice.

Scratch that, the next closest person was a girl, not a guy, judging from her scream as she dropped. It didn’t matter, of course. A woman with a gun was just as deadly as a man with one. I remembered reading a book like that, once, where the world ended, and the survivors had super powers. There was a girl with a gun in that one, too, and she was kind of badass. Guns don’t care if you’ve got a Y chromosome or not. They’ll kill someone just as dead for you.

I fired at the next person, and they ducked down behind a dumpster. My bullets struck sparks against the blue metal, and when the head vanished, I rushed over to the other side of the dumpster and dropped to my unwounded side on the street. I fired at the knee I saw on the opposite side of the receptacle, and the person there screamed and fell to the pavement, clutching their shattered leg. That brought their face into my sights, and while I didn’t like to go for head shots, this one was only four feet away or so. Two bullets plunged into the man’s skull, and he fell still at once.

Bullets struck the side of the dumpster, and I scrambled to my feet and worked my way around behind it. More bullets sparked against the metal as I slid between the garbage can and the wall. I set my foot against the wall and shoved. The dumpster was one of those wheeled types, and it rolled easily enough. I got it moving at a jogging speed, then grabbed the top edge, jumped, and hauled myself up to stand on the hard plastic cover. I caught a quick glimpse of a man’s stunned face as the dumpster rolled toward him. The gun in my hand cracked twice, and he crumpled, clutching his chest. The dumpster smacked into him, knocking him over, and I jumped down to the street next to him. Two more bullets into his head at close range finished him, and I stopped to take inventory.

I was bleeding, and from the shouting I still heard, more people were coming my way. The adrenaline of combat had carried me for a bit, but it wouldn’t last. I needed to hole up somewhere, let the pursuit pass me, and backtrack the way I’d come. At the same time, if the pursuit did find me, I needed to be armed. I slipped the magazine out of my pistol and checked it; three bullets left, with one in the chamber. That wasn’t going to be enough. The guy in front of me had a pistol, as well, but not a 9mm like the one I held. What he did have was spare magazines for his gun, so I tossed the one I was holding, hefted his larger .45, and grabbed the two spare mags. He had a knife, as well, so I took it, seeing as how mine was still embedded in some guy’s throat.

Part of me felt bad for the men and woman I’d just killed. Not because they were innocents or had families, of course; I’d gotten over any trace of sentimentality I had years ago. Killing for a living will do that to you. I felt bad for them because they hadn’t had to die, and I didn’t like to kill people when it wasn’t necessary. Again, not for some ridiculous sentimental reasons. It was professional pride. I was an assassin, not a soldier. When I did the job well, the only person who died was the mark. When I did it very well, it looked like an accident or natural causes, not an assassination. Killing other people meant things went wrong, like they had tonight. I didn’t have anything against the bodyguards chasing me. They were doing their jobs, just like I was doing mine.

Now, the person that had blown the job – that person, I’d take my time killing. If you let that sort of thing go, people would start thinking you’re soft, and then you’d have to do even worse to change their minds. A bit of ruthlessness in the short term could stave off a bloodbath in the long run.

It wasn’t the time for philosophy, though. I was still being pursued, and they’d be coming down this alley soon enough. I was still losing blood, and I needed to get out of sight. I ran down the alley into the darkness, trying to get back to one of my escape routes. Two turns later, and I was standing facing a dead-end. Somehow, I’d gotten turned around. I didn’t know how that could happen, but it felt like my pursuers had herded me this way. They’d forced me away from the routes I’d painstakingly mapped out and pushed me into this kill box.

Or so I thought for a brief moment before my gaze fell on the fire escape ladder hanging just two feet above my reach. I wasn’t the biggest guy, but I was agile, and I leaped up to grab the ladder without hesitation, despite how much my side screamed at me when I did. I checked windows as I went up, but they were all locked. That made sense. This wasn’t the best neighborhood, and only an idiot would leave their apartment open to burglars, or worse. I scampered up the metal stairs and finally came out on the roof. I rolled over the edge and dropped to the roof below, ducking behind the raised wall that kept people from walking off to their deaths. I crouched down, listening to voices calling out in the alleys below me. From the sound of it, I had at least twenty pursuers hunting for me, and eventually, one of them would get the bright idea to check the rooftops. I needed to be gone. There would be a roof entrance, here, and I could slip down it, hide out inside the building, maybe break into a supply closet and steal a towel or two. My wound needed bandaging until I could get in touch with one of the doctors I kept on retainer for just such an emergency.

“Well, that’s not something you see every day,” a voice spoke. I admit, the sound startled me, and I don’t react well to being startled. I rolled backward and landed in a crouch, ignoring the pain in my side as I whipped the big .45 up into shooting position. My sight held steady despite my growing weakness, centered on the chest of a woman dressed in a white pantsuit with a gold shirt underneath.

“Are you going to shoot me?” the woman asked, not seeming too upset by the concept. I looked her over carefully, my trained eye picking her apart. She was an older woman, old enough that her hair had gone white. She’d cut it short, in a style I knew was called a bob. I couldn’t see enough of her face to tell what color her eyes were or how much makeup she wore, but based on how well tailored her clothes were, I was guessing she’d be one of those ladies who wore just enough makeup to look nice without making it obvious she wore any. In the darkness, I couldn’t really tell if she had a bulge under her jacket, but I had to assume that she did, which was why my gunsight never wavered. Someone had sold me out, and something told me this woman was involved somehow.

“That remains to be seen,” I answered. “Who are you, and why are you up here so late?”

“It seems like I should be asking you that,” she said easily. “I’m not the one who just climbed up a fire escape, is obviously hiding from someone, and is bleeding from a gunshot wound. I think you owe me the explanation, not the other way around.” As she spoke, she walked closer to the edge of the building, passing through a patch of light as she did, and I got a better look at her. Lined face, clear blue eyes, minimal makeup as I’d guessed. This was a woman of taste and means. A woman like that, in a place like this, on the night where my hit had gone sour…that didn’t bode well at all.

“No, you’re not, but you’re the one who deliberately herded me to this meeting,” I replied, shaking my head. “Isn’t that right?”

She looked over at me. “What meeting?”

“This one. You don’t live here, lady. That’s a Michael Kors suit you’re wearing, with Prada shoes and a Rolex on your wrist. You could pay the rent for everyone in this building for a month with what your wardrobe must have cost. Plus, you’re looking around like you haven’t seen the view before. I was pushed into that alley with only one escape, and you were waiting for me at the top of that escape route. It doesn’t take a genius to put it together.”

“You have an eye for details,” the woman nodded. “Although I suppose that’s to be expected from the Faceless Man.”

I tensed as she said that name, the name I was known by in professional circles. “Are you the one who blew my hit?”

The woman didn’t respond. Instead, she lifted what looked like a tablet computer up before her face, her fingers swiping across it. I almost pulled the trigger at her movement. It’s never smart to make sudden motions when someone’s holding a gun on you. I stopped at the last second, though, masking my surprise with some difficulty. That tablet hadn’t been in her hand a moment ago, and I had no idea where she produced it from.

“Drop the computer, lady,” I ordered, rising to my feet and taking a half-step toward her. Tablets were as good as phones for communicating, and I assumed this woman had backup waiting in the building. “Drop it. Now!”

“Or you’ll shoot me?” she asked calmly, not looking up from the screen. “That pistol isn’t silenced, and the moment you fire it, your pursuers will know exactly where you are.” She glanced around her at the nearby buildings. “This area isn’t the best, but gunshots aren’t all that common, here.”

She was right, but it didn’t matter. “I’ll be just as dead if you message your team to come up here. Now, put it down!”

“Team?” she asked innocently. “There’s no team, John. There’s just me.” I froze as she said that name, and my surprise finally broke through my mask of disinterest. “That got your attention, didn’t it?”

She looked back down at her tablet. “John Gilliam, aka the Chameleon, aka the Faceless Man. None of those are your real name, of course, which is…” She winced. “Ooh. I understand the pseudonym, now. That must have been tough as a kid.”

I stared at the woman, too shocked to reply. Did she know my real name? It sounded like she did, and yeah, it had been a pain in the ass growing up with it. I’d had it legally changed the moment I turned 18, after I left home but before I joined the Army. I hated that name, and to the best of my knowledge, only three people living knew it. None of them would talk. Everyone else thought the kid with that name was dead, splattered by an IED outside of Kabul.

“How – how do you know that?” I stammered.

She held up the tablet. “It’s all right here, John. Top 10% of your class in high school, black belts in jiu jitsu and Krav Maga by the time you were 18. Joined the Army, got routed into sniper school, then into the Rangers. Missing and presumed dead after an ambush outside Kabul when you’d actually been captured. You escaped after three months, made your way back to the States, and found that everyone thought you were dead.”

She shook her head. “What made you do it, John?” she asked. “Why didn’t you find your family, tell them you were alive, and take the medical discharge? You could have gone to college on the GI Bill, had a career, a family…so, why choose to become a professional killer instead?”

I stood there, stuck in mental paralysis. This woman had my dossier, somehow. She knew who I was, everything about me. That meant she knew who my parents were, about my little brother, his wife and kids. I’d kept up with the news on everyone, even though none of them knew I was alive. The fact that she had that information terrified me, and with the fear came anger. I’d worked hard to protect my family from my life, and I wasn’t about to let my choices blow back on them.

I took a step forward, the pistol rock-steady on the center of her chest. “My family stays out of this,” I said quietly, the way I always spoke when I was furious. “If I even think that someone’s going after them, I will kill you and everyone you’ve ever cared about. I’ll find whoever’s behind you and do the same to them. Your entire organization will drown in a sea of blood.”

“Well, that’s both graphic and unnecessary,” she said calmly, seemingly unfazed by my anger. “I’m not here to threaten you, John. I’m here to save you.”

“Save me?” I repeated, barking a laugh. “Lady, I’m not really in need of saving.”

“The hole in your side says otherwise.” She smiled at me. “However, that’s not the kind of saving I’m talking about. There are worse things waiting for you than those men down in the street. I’m here to save you from them – or, I suppose, to give you the chance to save yourself.”

I stared at her, shock and disbelief warring inside of me. Was this lady for real? “Lady, are you with some kind of religious organization?” I asked. “I mean, I’ve heard stories about the Vatican having its own execution team, but I thought they were bullshit.”

“I suppose you could say that I am, but it’s not entirely accurate.”

I shook my head. I wanted to leave, now, but I couldn’t. She knew all about me. I had to find out how she knew all that, who had talked when I’d trusted my secrets – my life, really – to them. “So, what do you want?” I asked.

“I want to offer you a job,” she replied. “More of a career change, to be honest. I’m here to offer you one, last chance.”

“Tell me how you got that information, and we’ll talk,” I replied.

“Now, why would I do that?” she laughed. “Besides, it has nothing to do with what I’m offering.”

“It does to me,” I said flatly. “And you’ll tell me, because if you don’t, I’m going to have to make you. Neither one of us wants that.”

“Make me?” she asked with disbelief. “Oh, yes, please make me. Shoot me, John. Right now.”

“Too noisy,” I shook my head, sticking the gun into my waistband. I’d moved to within a few steps of the woman, and I took those steps in a rush. The knife appeared in my right hand as I grabbed the woman’s short hair in my left hand and yanked backward, pulling her head back. My left foot kicked against the back of her right heel, and I pulled down hard, bringing the knife up to her throat in the same motion. The laws of physics were immutable; as her head went back and leg went up, her weight would shift back sharply. She’d crash onto her back, and I’d follow her down, keeping the knife to her throat…

At least, that’s what should have happened. Instead, someone slammed what felt like a baseball bat into my chest to the sound of ribs cracking. I flew backward and crashed hard into the roof, rolling with the impact but still stunned. I coughed as I struggled to catch my breath, pain flaring in my chest to match the growing burn in my side. I staggered to my feet and looked around for who’d hit me, but the old woman and I were the only people on the roof.

“Too slow, John,” she shook her head, walking across the roof. “Almost pathetically slow, really.”

“What…,” I gasped, clutching my ribs, my gun still pointed at her chest. “What just happened?”

“What happened is that you attacked me, and I defended myself, John. Not that I was in any danger from your pitiful, little knife, of course, but I needed to prove a point.”

“A point?” I repeated, fear rising inside me. The woman had just knocked me sprawling…and I hadn’t seen her move! What the hell was happening? “What point?”

“That however deadly you think you are, here in the Earth Realm, beyond the Doors, you’re nothing.” I blinked, and suddenly she was standing in front of me, her hand gripping my throat. I slammed a knee into her chest and smashed my forearm down on the elbow gripping me, then hissed in pain. Hitting her felt like hitting steel plate and had about as much effect. My arm and knee both throbbed from the impact, and she didn’t even flinch.

As much as I needed the information she had, I needed to be alive to use it even more. I jammed the muzzle of my pistol against her chest and pulled the trigger, three times in rapid succession. The roar of gunfire echoed through the night, and I heard shouts from the streets below; my pursuers knew where I was, now, but at least I’d escape from this woman. Immediate survival came first; long-term survival was second to that.

The woman looked down at her chest, and I followed her gaze. My fear turned to terror as I saw the three bullets flattened against the pristine fabric of her suit. Somehow, that suit was body armor, better armor than I’d ever seen or heard of. The material wasn’t even blackened by the powder residue. She shook her head, her face a little sad as she did.

“I see the point’s not made, yet,” she sighed. “Very well.”

I didn’t see her move or even feel the motion, but suddenly, I was dangling from the edge of the building, held up only by the woman’s grip on my clothing. She stood atop the pony wall circling the roof, holding me at arm’s length without seeming effort. My mind reeled; what she was doing wasn’t possible! Even if somehow she were strong enough to hold me like that, with her arm out straight, my weight should be dragging her over the roof with me. It was simple mechanics; I weighed more than she did, and her arm should act like a lever to pull us both to our deaths. At that point, taking her with me seemed like a fine goal.

“How?” I croaked around the tightening noose of the leather jacket and shirt I was wearing. “Not…possible!”

“To paraphrase the Bard, there is more in Heaven and Earth than you have ever imagined, John,” she smiled at me. “As I said, here in the Earth Realm…”

Her words cut off as I raised my pistol and fired directly into her face. She would drop me, sure, but like I said, at that point, taking her with me seemed like the best I was going to do. I unloaded the weapon until the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, wondering why I hadn’t fallen already. A single bullet to the forehead will rarely be instantly fatal, but it will render pretty much anyone unconscious. The brain had mechanisms to protect itself from injury, and unconsciousness was one of those. Her grip should have gone slack after the first bullet.

“There he is!” someone shouted from the street below, and I heard the zip of a bullet flying past me. I barely noticed as I watched the flattened lead of my bullets tumble from the woman’s face, leaving not even the tiniest mark behind.

“You’ve done it now, John,” she shook her head as she smiled at me. “They’ve found you. How long do you think it will take them to get through the door downstairs and make their way up here?”

Again, I didn’t so much as sense her moving, but I felt myself flying through the air. I crashed into the roof and rolled, slamming against the wall on the opposite side. My entire body ached, but somehow, I struggled to my feet. I had accepted the fact that I couldn’t kill this woman, and that was fine with me. I’d been living on borrowed time for years, so the fact that it was going to be cashed in didn’t bother me too much. If I was going to die, though, I would die on my feet.

“What the fuck are you?” I gasped, still clutching my broken ribs. Every movement was pain, and standing was agony, but damned if I was going to die on my knees like a mark. “No human could do what you just did!”

“You’re right, John. I’m technically not human. And here in the Earth Realm, no human could do that. However, there are plenty of Doorworlds where humans are just as strong and invulnerable as I just demonstrated. In fact, you could be that strong one day, if you take my offer.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Earth Realm? Doorworlds? You’re not making sense!”

“No, you just don’t know enough to understand my words,” she corrected. “This is my offer, John. Come with me, and you won’t die this night. You’ll still die, eventually, but it won’t be here, gunned down by the thugs of some drug lord who are angry that you killed their meal ticket. Maybe your death will even mean something, who knows?”

“Come with you?” I asked. “We’re trapped on this roof, lady – unless you’re going to take out the people chasing me.”

“There’s no need,” she shrugged, walking over to the door leading into the building. “All you have to do is open this door and walk through, and you’ll be safe.” She laughed. “Well, safer than you are now, at least.”

“Lady, if I open that door, I’m going to find a stairwell full of angry, armed people who want to shoot me,” I pointed out.

She shrugged. “It’s up to you. I can’t make you walk through the door. That’s against the Pact. You have to do it yourself. The choice is yours. Open the door and come with me, or die, here on this roof.”

I glanced over at the edge of the building. The fire escape was still there, and I staggered over to it. When I slipped my head over to take a look, though, I saw the dark forms rushing up the stairs, heading for me. I was trapped. There was no way out. I could probably kill a few of them, but there wasn’t any cover on this roof, and they were coming from two directions. Eventually, they’d get me. I looked back at the woman, standing beside the door.

“Tick tock, John,” she said warningly. “Once they reach the roof, the offer is off the table. You have maybe ten seconds to decide.”

It wasn’t much of a decision. As I said, there was no cover here on the roof, and at least in the stairwell there was a chance that I could fight my way out. It was a slim chance, but it was a chance. If I stayed on the roof, I was dead. I pulled a mag from my pocket and switched the empty for a full one, yanking back the slide to chamber a round. I limped over to the door and grabbed the handle, hesitating. Something in me screamed not to open that door. Some deep instinct told me that it would be better to die there on the rooftop.

I wish that I’d listened.

Instead, I yanked open the door, stepped through…and stopped, staring in amazement. There was no dark, yawning stairwell before me, no hallway full of armed men hunting for my blood. I stood on a dark, cobblestone street, slick with rainwater and lit with flickering, glass-enclosed lamps overhead. Simple, two-story houses made of dark wood lined both sides of the street, their sides built together and creating a long corridor without any alleys or paths to either side. A gentle rain misted across my face, and when I glanced up, I saw the full moon glowing pale silver overhead through a layer of clouds.

I also saw the second, smaller moon, this one a sullen purple color, hanging beside it.

“Where the hell am I?”