The Man between my crosshairs (girl X assassin)

Chapter 9/The Final Contract

Zoe walked Mother into Zoe's house built out of the hillside. They walked into the front door. Here you could admire the open plan ground floor space. From there you could admire the open entrance hall, open plan dining room, the open plan kitchen, open living room, open plan indoor/outdoor swimming pool, open plan kung fu Dojo and Zoe's favourite open plan indoor rifle range. The building used the same kind super strong graphene developed for orbital elevators. The effect was that the entire second story appeared to float above them including the glass stair case drifting up to heaven. Mother smiled It looked nice and peaceful. When Zoe was Kim the Goth girl, the glass walls had all been painted black.

"You've come over a million miles I guess you would like a drink?" Zoe said.

"Do you have any caffeine free tea? Its a little late and I don't want to be up all night" said Mother.

"Caffeine free tea - says the woman who once marched drunk at night through a jungle swamp for 19 hours to get close to a mark once. Guess your Ranbo days are behind you"

Jeeves lead them into the living room full of white furniture and as they did a large flat screen drifted down from the ceiling.

"What's that for?" Mother said.

"Well, I thought you might need it to tell me about something. Like for example, the next hit" said Zoe flopping on to the sofa.

"Zoe dear has it ever occurred to you I might just have another reason to visit you another sanction?" Said Mother sitting down and folding her skirt beneath her neatly as she sat.

Zoe pulled a face "I did consider its yes. Then I rejected it."

Zoe had been having a relentless number of jobs since Mother completed her training. She had done job after job with out any break all to get the right number of hits to enter the inner circle of Dark Orbits. Zoe had been lucky, there had been a run of jobs appearing on the dark net. Work was plentiful.

Jeeves, Zoe's robot, came round with the tea.

"You should know the council has instructed me to tell you that Saltazar did go slightly over the edge on your last mission" said Mother. 

"'Slightly over the edge? Someones been taking understatement medication again.  He tried to kill me. Look" Said Zoe.

Zoe pulled out the little memory card with a skull and cross bones on it put on the coffee table. The memory card was what Zoe called 'Evil Jeeves', a robot operating system with the first law of robotics expensively removed like a military machine**. The table responded by drawing a circle around the memory chip and uploading it to the screen. The house guesses what Zoe was talking about and replayed the second from Jeeves memory during the sky fall. Good Jeeves looked on wondering who would be dumb enough to jump from orbit.

Mother used her serious face.

"Saltazar..." said Mother

"Calling him self Raven AKA duck face" said Zoe.

"Saltazar" Mother continued grimly " broke rule number one. Assassins don't kill other assassins without orders from the council. It is a principle which we are founded on. Which is why the council very reluctantly ordered the grey Mark on Saltazar's head."

It should be explained that for the Dark Orbit's their primary purpose was to keep peace between assassins. The first rule most sakred rule was 'don't kill another assassin'. Starting as a club with a police of no mutual kill the Dark Orbit's had evolved into a highly profitable, efficient organisation.

A grey mark was the organisation's permission for one assassin to kill another assassin. It wasn't a black mark

At this point it should be explained that Dark Orbits had a number of rule number one's. Including Rule number one , always have an escape and evasion plan. Rule number one the mission is to kill the target, nothing else. Rule number one don't get killed. Rule number one always use a goat. If there was a rule number 2, Zoe's instructors had never told her.

"The grey mark?" said Zoe slightly disappointedly.

"Thought you would be pleased." Said mother "you can kill him or it when ever you like."

"If anyone else had tried to kill an assassin on-the-job they would been given the blackmark" complained Zoe. The black mark would be when someone has broken one of the sacred dark orbit rules. Such as 'we don't kill other assassins'. The mutual no-death-pact was at the root of the Dark Orbit order. Without it they couldn't function as an organisation. They would become just a bunch of scrabbling freelancers. With the black mark every assassin in the dark orbit would be free to kill him and a specific hit would be set up for him. With a grey mark only Zoe was free to kill him when she wanted. She had been given permission to break the no kill assassins rule but only for duck face. The grey mark was used to settle disputes between assassins, it was little more than a slap on the wrist.

Zoe pulled a face. "Duck face's best strategy is to now hunt me down and kill me. That so sucks. That's the suckyest thing since the invention of the hoover".

Mother drank some tea "What can I say dear? Saltazar has supporters on the council and it was an open job."

"Alexa close the screen," said Zoe miserably.

"Why are you doing that dear?" Said Mother.

"Well I only had it down in case you wanted to give me a hit" explained Zoe.

Mother looked at Zoe and tried not to smile. Zoe looked back.

"No!" Said Zoe, her face lighting up. "You got one! Say you got one."

"The council felt sorry for you" said Mother Nodding.

"YES! YES!" Shrieked Zoe jumping up and down on her own so after "Yippee Kill 17!! Kill 17!!"

"Sit down dear" said Mother.

Zoe dropped to the floor like a very well behaved toddler waiting for chocolate. Her face was very attentive.

"For your final hit." began Mother.

"Which will put me in the council" added Zoe 

"You will kill this man."

*****

**Such alternate hacked operating systems were as illegal as they were unstable and dangerous. Don't try hacking your rumba turning it into an evil killing machine as it might just attack you.