Swords…clashing. Sparks…flying. Reflexes exhausted…straight thrust, countered by a dodge, block, parry…a swoosh upward, grazing the side of the opposite katana…both swordsmen reflexively pirouette…one blade aims for the head the other for the arms, but both twist inches away from their targets to block one another…
…Cling, clang…
Both men flicker their wrists…the swordsman in black and blue pushes his fist down, quickly sinking his blade at the level of his opponent’s belly…his opponent, the swordsman in black and red does the same, but at an angle…the katanas collide again, bounce off one another…undulate over and under and around their wielders’ heads, arms, torsos…
A spark…the blades bleed, exhausted…lightning blades slash at each other…angry thrusts from the black and red, 45-degree swooshes across the chest—blocked—bounces off, countered by a chop towards the middle of the head, which is in turn countered by a side-thrust at the neck—a parry, a swing down to the waist—a strained twist of the blade, the hilt almost slipping—blocking again…
Cling, clang,
The blades bleed fire…

Doron Lander sat in the rectangular executive office of his present employers in the glistening Akani Corporation building, his usual stiff position in the chair—the stick-up-the-ass kind of position that looked like a military man about-face trying to act like a businessman. Lander was neither, and was fooling no one, but it was obvious enough he wasn’t nervous.
“All you want me to do is kill him?” he asked the ten well-dressed stoic men, and one woman, sitting across—and up—from him.
The well-dressed, stoic man in the center of them all replied, “No information, no interrogations, no thefts, no espionage. Just dispatch Mr. Kilgore and your work is finished.”
Lander looked at the bluish crystalline screen in the small desk in front of his chair. After a short fizzing and a quick streaming of little blue digits up and down, the screen produced a clear photograph of a Caucasoid male, about late twenties, early thirties, with short, crimson-dyed hair, spiked up to look like crew cut; along with deep red contact lenses that made the fellow’s eyes look effectively dragonlike.
“Dimidius Kilgore…”
It showed his approximate date of birth (since all documents found on him were proved to be fraudulent), physical stats and psychological profile.
“Type B personality…sociopathic personality…sadistic tendencies…”
“We trust your difficulty will be relatively minimal, Mr. Lander…”
“Says here his observed skill level is around the same as mine.” The stoic man gave the obligatory humoring, yet humorless, grin:
“General combat skill level, Mr. Lander, but we’re quite sure you exceed him in stealth and espionage skill. Mr. Kilgore is not a very subtle man. If you find him and he doesn’t know it, dispatching him should be easy.”
Lander grimaced, gave a vindicating sigh, and squirmed back into his mock-military/businessman position. “By all means strategically yes, sir, but the field is strange that way.”
“We understand, Mr. Lander,” said the one woman—mockingly humorless business grin intact—“why assassins are generally afraid of nothing but other assassins. We are not saying this is a routine assignment by any means, but we wouldn’t have chosen you if we did not believe—”
“I know I can do it—I will complete the assignment; I was just making a difficulty assessment.”
“Of course, Mr. Lander. You will be more than well compensated, we assure you.”
Lander gave his own version of the humoring, humorless business grin—of course it looked more fake when he did it.
Artificial business mannerisms aside, Lander gave his inevitable acceptance. Assignment #7722516, Case No. 1425, Dimidius Kilgore, free-lance professional assassin and data thief, cybernarcotics smuggler, arms dealer; responsible for seventeen legally untraceable data-thefts, including the digitally-recorded memories of four directors of the local Akani Corporation branch; also responsible for the murders of the same four directors, two executive officers, eight enforcers, and one Akani information specialist. All were underground acts, legally untraceable, involving illicit activities by Akani. The assignment: find, apprehend, and immediately dispatch and dispose of Kilgore, record memory of it, and report back to the covert underworld office of Akani Corp.

* * *

“I think you’re too loyal even for them to fuck you over, Lander,” said Sims, “Christ, you’re so damned compliant it’s worse than actually kissing ass.” The slightly portly but overall muscular, bald old man tugged at his navy blue shades and tickled the keys on the pad on the wall. I forced a shrug out of myself and replied, “If I’m gonna take a job I might as well be compliant. I try to avoid a hassle.”
Sims laughed as the door to the password-protected gun safe began to slide open.
“Defend it to the end, don’t you, Lander? Stone-cold sonofabitch like you still caters to the friggin’ ‘System.’ ”
We walked into the green-lit safe, wall-to-wall laden with every illegal weapon imaginable. I strode in and scanned for what I wanted as I replied again, “The friggin’ ‘System’ pays me to do what I’m good at, so I’ll be as loyal as they need me to be—” I pointed at a Colt automatic .600 Flasher displayed in the small arms section of the wall, “—two of those Flashers with silencers and double-magazines, man.”
Sims chuckled again, waddled over to the guns and said, “Horseshit, mate; the System gives us all one up the ass using cash they wouldn’t so much as piss on—” tapped his fingers on flat green keys on the wall to unlock the guns from their display; “—but aye, I’m no bloody revolutionist. I ain’t here to preach. Cash is cash, mate.”
I gave him a satisfied grin rather than a “Thank you,” and took the guns off their display. I stroked the muzzle, stared, liked what I saw, and began collecting the magazines.
“You know much about this fellow you’re s’posed to be after, mate?”
“Not at liberty to say, Sims. Hear he’s a dangerous fucker, though.”
“Here’s to hopin’ so, mate. A real challenge might get you to yer bloody senses.”
I chuckled, packed up the guns, paid the man and left.

“And that’s why we need you to do the job quietly as you can, Kilgore.” Dimidius Kilgore took his red-gloved right hand and slicked back his crimson-dyed hair, took a nice long drag on his cigarette, and gave a dangerously loud grin. “Hiring you was a last resort, you know that, right?”
After one more puff, Kilgore responded, “ ‘Fraid I might make too much ruckus again? Just ‘cause I like my work doesn’t mean I don’t know better than to do it right…”
All the time, that damn loud grin of his. The shadow-cloaked but nonetheless timid looking little figure standing in front of Kilgore seemed to show, in what little bit of its face that was visible, a concerned chill. It cleared its throat, grunting, trying to offset Kilgore’s raspy, rugged, obviously intimidating thick British accent. Kilgore took another puff, stroked his stubbly chin and widened his grin as if to say “It’s not working.”
The timid little figure ignored the black cold of the alley, shrugged hard, sighed harder, took a step toward the moonlight. “Must you be such a showman?” it said.
“Give the people a good performance,” Kilgore replied. “Half this job is image, don’tcha know?”
“A bigger half of this job is stealth,”
“If you want me to do the job, stop lecturing me on me methods, Kaser.”
Kaser sighed, swallowing hard to make up for it. “’Sides,” Kilgore continued, “I’m offing a f’cking ‘offer.’ Who the hell’s gonna hear another killer cry wolf?”
“Lander’s a serious one, Kilgore. Silence might be your best weapon,”
“Or extreme loudness, depending,”
“He killed eight of our top enforcers and two executives, Kilgore, and walked out with enough information to cost us…well, a hell of a lot. He’s a problem. So much of a problem that if he were taken care of too loudly it would create another problem,”
“Bullocks, Kaser, calm hell down. I read the file, I know his type. You told me the fucking job, I accepted, what else you want me for?”
“That’s all, Kilgore.” Kaser swallowed hard again. In what of his face that wasn’t masked by the shadows of the alley looked like a mutated cross between exasperation and fear. Kilgore laughed because he could see both.

* * *
“…Christ…God, man, Jesus, please!” Just hearing it made me feel pious. I did the Sign of the Cross and gave the trembling fellow on his knees what I hoped appeared to be an assuring smile. The manager of the Akani-owned Bathsheba nightclub trembled at my knees. If he looked any more pathetic I’d have just shot him to put him out of his misery. I leveled my Flasher away from his face; “Calm hell down, Mark…I’ve not even shot you, yet, mate,” Mark Takashi let out little breaths of, I suppose, relief. “The bloody hell are you scared of, Mark? I just asked a question…” I took it Mr. Takashi wasn’t the type of fellow who was used to firearms, so I offered to put mine away… “Mark, I just asked a question…do you know Doron Lander?”
“Why…Christ…who?”
“Underworlder. Akani-employed. Birds of a feather flock together mate; don’t think I don’t know all you fellows know each other.”
“What do you want, Jesus…the fuck do you want, Kilgore?” he kept replying in so many words, wiping the blood from his nose, still trembling. I also took it Mr. Takashi had a hearing impediment.
“Do stop acting like this, Mark. Not really necessary,”
“You shot my fucking bouncers!”
“Christ, Mark, can you answer my question first and then we can—”
“The fuck are you doing here?” is probably what we would’ve said had he not been interrupted with a Flasher bullet in his right kneecap. This was followed by several other colorful pious sentiments—“Christ! Jesus! Mother of God…damn!!!” I never fashioned Mark a religious fellow.
“Lander, Mark, Doron Lander. He works with you. Do you know him?”
“I don’t know any fucking Doron Lander!!! Jesus…” It’s quite obvious this was going nowhere. My information kept leading me to Akani-owned places where Lander’s ilk would congregate. No Lander. Sly bugger, this was. In any event…
“I suppose I’ll take your word for it, Mark…sorry for the mess,” I walked out the club, over the bouncers, not without tipping the waitress that did as she was told when I first opened fire in the place.
Kaser should know better than to ask me why I’m such a showman. ‘Cause I frigging like attention; it’s that simple. And if he wants me to be quiet, then I’m afraid that a job like this Lander fellow is likely to arouse a few temptations in that area. As soon as he gave me the job, I left the alley—(these company folks and their goddamn cliché dark alleys. Do they get off on being obvious?)—and went straight to the nearest friendly neighborhood neuride dealer. I wanted this hit to be as fun as possible—cyberchemically-induced hallucination would certainly do that…

Flashing…fire with wings…
Miniature explosions, charged sparks leaving strafe marks…bullets…high-pitched rattles…the guns don’t stop breathing, don’t stop yelling…and when they do it’s simultaneous. Marksman Blue/Black…click-click, reload. Program magazine. On goes the sight. Aim. Marksman Red/Black already shot back. Twelve shots fired, twelve shots ahead…
Flicker of wrists, spasmodic trigger-fingers, stretched arms…Guns in each hand. The thrust—one bullet—parry—two—dodge—eight bullets—parry again, block—a clip is spent. Unlock, unload. Relock, reload. Click-click. Both Marksmen squeeze both sets of triggers…
From behind the corner, from around the wall, in between the metal poles—touché, pirouette, blocking bullets with bullets…electrically charged but empty shells regurgitated...Screaming lines of charged bullets, only shells shed, not blood.
Streams of metal flames, ricochet rattling, guided by neon laserlines, punctuated by promises of defeat over the opposing gunman. Blades of flowing fire…bang, bang…Marksman-Red/Black, clutches the air with his guns in each hand, climbs upon the wind, glides across, sending another unending stream…misses his target…and his target misses him. Both leave streaks that nearly grazed the sides of their heads. They cut off the guns. Unlock, unload, and drop clips. Reload. Click-click. On goes the sight. Aim…

I stood over the body and sighed. I bent down and lifted up the greasy, round, balding head, checked the pulse to make extra sure the man was dead, swore, sighed, swore again and sighed again. That’d make six bodies now and none of them were Kilgore’s.
I called up Sims. I hadn’t contacted Akani in eight days and I wasn’t about to now… “Chalk up another one. I’ve had nothing but shit leads and bodies since I started this assignment,”
“And the loyal soldier is still defending his position—making sure the job is done,” Sims replied.
“This isn’t funny, Sims . I’ve been looking for Kilgore for two weeks now and every lead I’ve gotten’s ended in a bloodbath. I don’t like this,”
“It is funny, mate, and if you smell somethin’ fishy you ought back the hell out. Akani needs you, you don’t need them,”
“It’s not that easy, Sims—”
“Horeshit it’s not that easy! It’s part of your profession. You’re a corporate power-broker, Lander. You’re what make those stiff-asses at Akani powerful. You do their dirty work. All you have to do is say no. Hell, you don’t even have to do that…”
I said nothing at all. I kept observing the bodies hoping I’d find a clue somewhere, knowing I wouldn’t. “Only way it’d be hard to say ‘no,’” Sims continued, “is if you liked your job just that much.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Sims?”
“You’re a killer, mate. You’re paid in blood money. You’re foolin’ yourself if you deem otherwise.”
“I’m trying to avoid killing anyone other than the target, Sims—”
“Don’t hand me that shit, mate. You’re a murderer, you know it, and you like it. It’s what you’re made for. All a soldier like you is good for when there’s no real wars. Nothin’ to be ashamed of, mate. Admirable, if you ask me…”
“I didn’t ask you.”
“I’m tellin’ you nonetheless...”
I was getting frustrated…I let it go, let out one of my self-restraining sighs and said, “You’re not helping, Sims.”
“Neither are you, mate.”
“Tell me something out of this that makes sense, Sims,”
“Some master of espionage you are, Lander…”

* * *

The first scope…then the second…both aimed…both shot...one charged shell falls, two shots follow…no kill yet…The Red Hunter swings the rifle, swims across the shadows, glides past his target…above, behind, sits back in the darkness—Blue Hunter leaves his place in the shadows—relock, reload, charge, aim, the neon laser, the scope—the trigger, click-click—Five minutes, three blazing rays, three missed shots, zero kills.
The target glides, the eye sees, Red Hunter’s head dead center—Blue Hunter aims, keeps still. On goes the sight.
A silent bang, another blazed shot.
A bullet misses grazing Blue Hunter’s head…the firing staff swirls, relock, reload, on goes the scope, on goes the sight, aim—a stream of charged .223 calibers—then the second stream…
The Hunters lean in for the kill…The Hunters are the kill…

I swear to Christ there is no Doron Lander. I’ve hunted the man for a month and found nothing, and all of my neuride dealers turning up croaked. I’m tired of looking for this bloke, and the tedium of his elusiveness has outlived even my appetite for blood. The hell with silent kill—I find this bloke and I’m gonna bludgeon him.

The hell with finding Dimidius Kilgore. The man does not exist, and after a month of extensive searching, neither do any of his alleged contacts. I quit counting how many dealers, how many informants, how many associates of Mr. Kilgore I’ve dispatched since this all began. That’s more bloodshed than half a year’s worth of this kind of assignment. I’m tired of seeing red…

* * *

On went the sight…Doron Lander took out both Flasher .900’s and aimed in front of him while Kilgore laughed cigarette smoke through his mouth.
A week went by…
Kilgore laughed again as he held his katana over Lander’s throat…Lander sighed, swore, and grabbed the hilt of his own blade…
The blades bled fire, and another two weeks passed…
Bullet holes filled the warehouse, and there was a sea of smoking, charged shells. Blazing streams of .223 caliber bullets followed.
And a month was gone.

* * *

“Kinell’, mate,” said Kilgore to the dark-haired bloke in the mirror. Lander let the empty clip fall out of his Flasher as he observed and curiously stroked the tattoos blanketing Kilgore’s arms…
Kilgore ran his fingers through Lander’s hair—as if trying to find something—and blew another puff of cigarette smoke in his face.
“How…?” one asked the other…
“I don’t know,” the other answered. Lander took his own face in his hands and rubbed his brow exasperatedly…
Kilgore dragged his cig once more and looked into Lander’s eyes. Lander took a step back from the mirror.
“Who…who’s the real one?”
“I don’t think it matters anymore…”
“Who did this to us?”
“Who did this to me?”
“I don’t know…”
Lander and Kilgore both snarled. They shook hands. A black-and-blue-and-red-gloved hand sunk hard and fast into the mirror, shattering it to the concrete floor. A dark blue and a dragonlike eye both speckled about in the mirrorshades.

Relock. Reload.

* * *
Sims opened the slide-door without a second thought when he saw Lander’s dark blue eye through the peephole. “So you found the bugger?”
“Yeah, I found him.”
“Knew you were a killer, mate…” As Sims punched in the code and the door slid open, a silenced .22 Zanthergeist appeared inches from his forehead. Kilgore smiled and laughed.
“Thanks for the help, Sims…It’s been a pleasure, mate…” Sims clutched his heart before the shot reached his skull.

* * *

At the Synkazi, Inc. building across town, Doron Lander walked in through sliding glass door, pulled out his Flasher .900 and shot the two attending security guards in the head, and proceeded to the forty-second floor. With two chromed automatic machine pistols in each hand, he downed sixteen executives and a computer programmer before throwing a knife into the heart of two other security guards, and again putting a bullet in the head of a security enforcer. After this, he walked into an office and held a man in a suit and tie by his legs out of the then-shattered forty-second story window and said, “Half this job is image, Kaser. What you appear to be is much more important than what you are…”
Kilgore lit a cigarette a few feet behind him, loading his gun, clicking in the shells in rhythm with the falling scream…

Running and gunning…. a trail of burning shells and empty clips flood the hall of the forty-second floor…The Man in Blue-and-Red flies in between the walls of bullets, and flips over the writhing hedge of black-clad soldiers in suit and ties…he extends a flaming blade of bullets, and slices a third of the soldiers down…he extends yet another blade, and a katana opens the throats of another fourth of the soldiers…
The storm continues…a thin man stands in the midst, unscathed, wide-grinned then laughing, his freckles gleaming and his eyes tuned into the two eyes in the heart of the walking maelstrom…
Two eyes in the heart of the walking maelstrom…a dark blue eye and the eye of a dragon…two eyes that flicker in the lightning flashes of silenced shots and swirling katana slashes…two eyes that float wistfully above a crooked, furtive smile…two eyes behind which a sentient storm rages…
Everyone on the forty-second floor is dead, armed and unarmed. Another swarm of enforcers follow to doom…
An open shaft…the Man in Blue and Red flies down… .the two eyes descend into the wide, square, chrome darkness…
There’s no elevator…
The Man twists in his fall, looks up—on goes the sight, click-click—stream of bullets upward…two pulses upward…two grenades shot upward…
Click.
Boom.
The Man flies down the elevator shaft beneath the fiery angel of vengeance he detonated…his two eyes awake with glee.

Then comes laughter that does not belong to the man. He is untouched by the wall of flame, or the streams of bullets, or the katana’s blade. The thin man laughs…

* * *

Lander and Kilgore sifted through the sea of bodies in their wake and coaxed the one guard they left alive up to the executive offices in the Akani building.
Fire with wings…

The stoic woman from the office gave one last gasp, most of her energy being spent trying to retain all the blood loudly spurting from her throat…
“You were right…it wasn’t that difficult,” Kilgore said to her…
A dream. An ooze secretes from a festering memory…blood drenched and smoldering…a chip impales the diencephalon—and the foremost part of the brain. The jack engine connects to neurons on both sides, a long, thin needle tying together yet ripping apart. A mind breaks, falls, crumbles…The thin freckled man and his undying laughter seep up out of the ooze. “You were supposed to be mine,” he says, smiling… “This was supposed to be my body, and you were supposed to have no membrance of me…”
And another sea of forgotten words bleed into the charged silicon maze, entangled in tortured neurons…
“Foluke is not dead…” “We made him addicted to neuride…” “He won’t remember…” “He gets his guns from Sims…” “He gets his whores from Takashi…”

Doron Lander woke up bleeding from the head. Across from him laid Dimidius Kilgore, also bleeding from the head. Their eyes caught each other…
Lander sighed. Kilgore smiled. The thin, freckled man laughed at them both.
“So, you finally found each other,” Foluke said. “I’m glad you two were able to finally meet.” The two men/man stared back at the thin man, their devil, and asked him, “Why?”
“Business,” he said… “We needed you to help us with something—a project of ours. First you had to kill me—before that, I had to build myself a construct…”
William Foluke
Age: 34
Ht: 5, 11
Wt: 181
Type A Personality…Blood Type O…
Fingerprints:
Medical History:
Psych. Evaluation…
“…had to have myself ‘cloned’…Then we needed a donor body—that’s where you came in my friend…
“But we couldn’t keep you under control for long, I suppose. The neuride, the criminal connections—your good friend Sims….It wouldn’t be long before it fell apart.”
Foluke tended to his own head wound…
“So you lost” said the two men/man.
“Maybe,” said Foluke.

Click-click. And the hunt begins again…