Tasìa surveyed the sheared indention above her. The projectile angled between sixty and seventy-five degrees. In terms of geography, its flight path propelled towards the Ward Nueve dorm to the South.

To the North of where she now crouched was the water-tower. The second tallest structure on the complex.

Her plan to disable the radio-tower was now on indefinite hold. We'll just skip it entirely, she thought.

To the West was her goal, the Spore Isolation Unit. A corner of the annex lay under the skywalk that connected the Medical Center and the SIU.

To reach it, she would have to climb eighteen feet up the radio-tower side before she jumped over to the skywalk support column where it buttressed the main building.

A trivial move for her when she was not being shot at.

Tasìa glanced at the indention in the lattice-girder once more. It was no mere .22 that caused it. If she climbed the radio-tower, using the girders for cover, the sharpshooter would try punching holes through the metal supports to get to her.

She glanced further up, and what she saw made Tasìa grimace. Why had not this vulnerability occurred to her earlier?

A set of sliding windows rose above her position, located in the laboratory area on the fifth floor of the medical center. She realized what caught her attention. Something had changed.

The rooms behind the windows were better lit just a few minutes before now. Someone had shut a door in the background to minimize the light.

The shot from the water-tower that hit above her had no chance of wounding her given the angle of the annex walls in the line-of-sight.

It was designed to distract her.

They were planning to shoot through the glass to kill her.

She calculated where the shooter had to stand at an overview angle if he wanted to get a quick drop on her.

Then it felt like ice ran through her veins, as her intuition developed into a necessitated inference.

He stood just outside of her sight range. When he made his move, he would walk up. In one smoothly executed maneuver, raise his gun and shoot her.

Tasìa had to respond now. She ran back to the far wall, leaped up, grabbed the wall cornice with her free hand to push her up in the air as far up as she could go.

She twisted back around.

At nearly eight feet in the air, Tasìa was exposed to the sharpshooter on the water-tower, but she calculated that her action had to have been too unexpected for him to respond with a deft action of his own.

In front of her, just before she reached the apex of her ascent, the shooter behind the window tensed upon sight of her.

Tasìa emptied two bullets into the facemask of his helmet. He lunged into the glass as he lost his balance. His hand grabbed to hold on to the window slider.

It was a futile gesture and it only damaged the window even more.

The rifle fell first. The man followed. Tasìa heard ribs crack as he landed in an ugly belly flop.

She spied something useful on the back of his belt as the shooter squirmed. Tasìa scurried over to him in a crouched-over move worthy of her childhood nickname.

Five gas grenades of the same make as León's lined up on his belt. She pulled one off of it. Primed it, then tossed it into the broken window.

A gargle of radio noise followed suit.

"What kind of goodies do you have for me, shooter man?"

He screamed in agony, but as she went brusquely through his equipment she ignored his incessant noise.

A .357 magnum was holstered to his thigh. Four clips for it lined up in a matching mini-bandolier. On the side of his calve, he wore a sheathed spear-pointed blade of black steel, seven inches in length.

"Look at this, pretty nice," Tasìa said, excitedly. "I bought one just like it for my collection once."

He turned his head to get a good look at her. Fragments of plastic, glass, and metal lodged into the top half of his face.

One eye was damaged. To what extent she could not tell. He squinted it shut, and it bore a milky-white film leaking from it.

Along the length of his cheek a gaping wound appeared almost like a pair of sputtering lips when he breathed out.

His one good eye looked at her as if she were a violate demon in pursuit of his very essence.

"Don't look at me like that, sir," Tasìa insisted. "I didn't get you into this mess. You did when you took your on your despicable profession."

She turned her attention back to taking anything from him that could fit comfortably on her own person.

She decided against the bulletproof vest.

In his wallet, Tasìa found a debit card. She gave it a second of thought, and decided she had time to exploit it.

Helloïste's account was still active. Tasìa took several seconds to get the banking app up and running.

She swiped the card over the pin camera in Heloïste's PA. Tasìa entered the four digits on a piece of tape attached to the card.

It had never been peeled off, and never reset.

6,589 USD entered into Heloïste's account.

Tasìa smiled as she patted the man on his massive shoulders.

She somehow on the first sight of him knew it would be this easy.

She knew his type.

He was a walking, smack-talking, shit-kicking badass who never before in his life felt that he needed to be in the least bit concerned for his personal security and safety.

Her favorite kind of mark of all.

At least his condition was improving, so he had that going for him. His breathing went from the total exasperation of being smacked into concrete from three stories up to an even-paced flow.

He was coming out of a shock where his breath was severely uneven with deep gasps and shortened draws. It was now slow and labored. This was to be expected of a man with broken ribs.

The last thing Tasìa took from him was the two-way radio from his belt. She then carefully backed off of him, just in case he was over his initial shock, and the shooter still had some fight left in him.

Tasìa crouched in a corner where she could keep an eye on him and the windows above.

"I'm looking for the man they call the Chief," she said into the radio. "He came across as a pretty bright guy. I wish to talk to him."

"I'm here."

"Status on your man. Pretty good for somebody who got shot in the face and then crashed thirty-six feet down on the concrete. His breathing is stable. I don't know how broken up he is internally. I heard ribs crack. He hasn't attempted to walk, yet."

"Tell him to give it a try."

Tasìa put the radio to the side of her head as she addressed the injured man.

"Hey, Big Guy. Your boss says get your ass in gear. If you can walk, you are out of here."

"Fuck you."

Tasìa aimed her newly acquired .357, and she shot the cement near his right arm. Dust and granulate shot up, biting into his exposed hand.

"Get your ass up. The next shot is going into your skull if I have to repeat myself."

He complied. His big hands pushed upon the foundation. He fell back down.

"My knee is broken."

"Did you hear that, Chief?"

"Tasìa del Alma-Gris, correct?"

"It sure as hell isn't Béyatta Castro. That bitch is dead."

She mentioned the name to let him know to not even waste her time asking for her to surrender. Even if his crew was not responsible for Castro's murder, it occurred on the yard, so it was impossible that the news of it had not reached him.

"Ms. del Alma-Gris, how do we get our man back? Talk to me."

"Do you know the first thing they do when they send you to the Cistern?"

"Security here is compartmentalized, ma'am. I can only guess."

Tasìa laughed as she gently banged her head against the bricks. She was so hoping he was smarter than that.

Did he really expect her to believe that crap?

"I'll forgive your naïvite this time, Chief. I will tell you then. They force you to strip naked. You'll stay naked for forty-eight hours in a cold, damp, urine and foul mildew smelling cell.

"So, it should not be too much trouble to send two of your big boys stripped down to nada. They walk on to this rooftop with their arms behind their heads and walking backward.

"If anything stupid occurs, your guy here gets another bullet to his face. Nothing but air friction to stop it this time."

"Hang tight, ma'am."

She glanced back up to the window with the glass broken out. She had another way to get off the annex roof.

"They can come pick him up in ten minutes. No sooner. I have to prep him first."

"What are you going to do to Faison?"

"Don't worry about it."

She hung up the walkie-talkie.