Chapter Two: Unwanted Gifts
The yelling woke me. I stumbled to the window, cursing. Some idiot had crashed into some other idiot down on the street below. From the sound of it, each was equally certain it was the other's fault.
I collapsed back into bed, but it was no use. It was blue skies, not a cloud in sight. The sun blared into my room, determined to deprive me of any further sleep. With a groan, I rolled back to my feet.
For breakfast, I had something labelled "instant coffee." It took five minutes to dissolve and resembled gutter water more than coffee, both in appearance and taste. I gulped it down nearly boiling. The burning helped mask the flavor. I added the gritty cup to the sink mountain.
The usual morning din replaced the yelling crashers, and my appartment felt strangely peaceful. Even the sun shone less aggressively. I caught myself humming a little as I pulled the thick, battered file from behind the convection baffle. The file's contents I laid out neatly on the floor. Why the Apex needed me dead, encrypted at least once and printed out under the cover of night a week before I left. Unfortunately, I couldn't break the code, so I had no idea how to use it.
Today, it turned out, would not be the day I miraculously discovered secret code-breaking super powers. Surprise, surprise. I found patterns, only to have them break before they yielded any meaning. Back hunched, brow wrinkled, I scribbled away in my on sale for ninety-nine cents composition notebook.
Some time after noon, my empty stomach and aching spine grew annoyingly noticeable. I set down notebook and pencil and slumped back against the cracked wall. I wasn't sure anyone would care if I screamed, but I decided against risking the attention. Better to be the kind of neighbor everyone forgot existed.
After an unfulfilling lunch of canned chicken soup, which claimed to contain vegetables, though it refused to specify what kind, I armed myself for an excursion. Black clothes and seven hidden knives. Easy to go unnoticed in a crowd, but spiky if attacked.
As I neared the door, I noticed the smell of fresh death wafting under it. I peered out my peephole. The corpse lay slumped against the wall opposite my door, directly in my line of sight. There was no obvious injury. Anyone who'd passed it would've assumed it was just someone sleeping. Most people don't recognize the budding smell of new death. Still, I needed deal with it before it grew rank with rot.
I edged the door open, but no one jumped out to stab me. A warning then, not a trap. Keeping a watchful eye on the hall, I rolled the body to face me. I saw her familiar face and my blood boiled. The body they'd left me had once belonged to Vera.