It had not been one of her proudest moments.

Kellesk was an assassin, a good one she thought. She certainly had bagged a respectable amount of marks in her career. This job, however, was a first in that the hit was ordered through a broker. The broker had explained that the client insisted on anonymity because he didn't want the target to track him down if something had gone. She had first thought she should decline, but when she discovered that it would pay a whopping three million on termination, she simply couldn't refuse. She could retire on that kind of a contract.

The target was a woman named Lucia Traveyne. According to the dossier provided, Ms. Traveyne had been the commander of a paramilitary group that may or may not have been linked to the US government (no one could actually say for sure,) and she and her men had been a thorn in the side of many drug lords, tinpot dictators, and black market moguls the world over, but now she was retired and was rusticating quietly. However, her client's thirst for revenge was not diminished, and could not suffer the knowledge that he still shared a planet with the "agitating harpy" (his words.)

As she had staked out her target, Kellesk had been unimpressed with the so-called "harpy." Ms. Treveyne had apparently adapted well to civilian life, even though she apparently didn't leave the house very much outside of work, of which there wasn't that much. She sometimes worked as a security consultant, and as a professional wrestler at least once a month. She did get a wide variety of visitors, but any of them were really infrequent, and they always seemed to leave her place exhausted yet satisfied. Her only regular companion was a scruffy, scrawny joey that couldn't have been a hundred pounds wet. Certainly no threat to her.

As the surveillance grew longer, Kellesk couldn't help but feel contempt. However fearsome Traveyne might have been, she had obviously gotten old and soft, doing nothing but sit around at home, apparently have a bunch of casual sex, and hang around with a snout-nosed brat the rest of the time. The only fighting she did anymore was faked! Fake as those breasts had to be. Kellesh believed that she could have simply kicked in the front door, placed a couple bullets between Traveyne's sweater-puppies, and made the world's easiest 3 mil. Looking back, she was glad she didn't try that.

One day, Traveyne broke her routine. Before she had driven her joey to school, but one morning they had appeared from their front door and continued down the sidewalk, apparently to walk instead. This was Kellesk's chance: the target was out in the open, and her only company was a kid that Kellesk easily outweighed. Taking one of her trusty Desert Eagles and quickly screwing in the surpressor, Kellesk stalked her prey. The killing part of contract killing was the smallest fraction of her job, but it was the most thrilling. She had to walk; running would attract too much attention. It was agonizingly slow trying to catch up to her target, because the boy, despite his meager size, could keep a good pace, and Traveyne herself had no trouble keeping up. Still, she managed to close the distance between herself and her quarry, resisting the urge to draw her weapon until the last possible moment. She had the weakest twinge of guilt when, as she was almost ready to for the kill, Traveyne had drawn the joey to her side and ruffled his hair, but as cold as it was, three mil was much more important to her than some strange kid's feelings. Hehe...three million. She was getting visions of what she could do with that kind of money. It caused her finger to quiver as she clasped the handle of her handcannon.

The moment had come. The pistol was out, and the extended muzzle was practically touching the small of Traveyne's back. A second before the trigger was squeezed, Kellesk couldn't help but observe how tall and buff Traveyne was for a woman, but her gun had taken down bigger. The barrel erupted, the kid screamed in fright...and Kellesk felt the need to fish her heart out of her pants. Instead of laying on the sidewalk, dying in a pool of her blood, Traveyne had suddenly spun around and seized the weapon, causing Kellesk to fire harmlessly into the air. For an instant, she was in eye-contact with her would-be victim, and recognized the look in Traveyne's eyes. It was not fear, it was not fury, but it was a look that Kellesk was very familiar with, a look she had always given herself in the mirror the night after a successful hit: satisfaction. In the space between Kellesk had fired her gun and Traveyne's fist had crashed into her throat, Kellesk realized that this was a trap.

In the space between the punch to the throat and waking up groggy and agonized in a small windowless room in Lucia's basement, Kellesk could never remember much. Except pain. She could remember lots of pain.

Special appearance by fa!kellesk. Used with permission.