Chapter Three: I Lose My Security Deposit

Years of discipline propelled me forward, betrayed only by the slightest tremor in my right hand. My left arm wrapped around Vera, lifting her as she leaned against me. If no one looked too closely, the illusion of drunkeness held. Luckily, this wasn't the kind of neighborhood where people made a habit of looking closely.

I took us down the stairs, eyes scanning. Her feet thumped against the stained carpet. I set her down by the back door, propped against the peeling paint.

The worn hilts steadied my hands. Cold focus flooded my muscles. I slammed the door open with my shoulder. The woman waiting beside it turned, steel glinting. I blocked her slash with a sharp edge to the wrist. Her severed hand rolled, the knife it still held clattering against the asphalt.

I parried her remaining knife away from my side and sank my blood-soaked blade into her gut, twisting. She slumped over me. Blood dripped onto the pavement, not all of it hers. She'd managed to turn the failed stab into a deep slash down my thigh.

I dropped the knife not in her gut and grabbed her wrist, twisting her arm behind her back and holding her close. She struggled half-heartedly. I tilted the knife in her gut upwards. She coughed, and warm blood soaked my shirt.

I eased her down and off my knife. She shuddered and tried to sit up, impeded by her bisected stomach muscles. I knelt over her, pressing her shoulders down.

"I'm sorry," I told her and parted her throat to end her misery.

I rocked back onto my heels and fell with a strangled cry as my injured leg gave out. Cursing, I pushed up with my good leg and slumped against the rough brick. My breath shuddered as I fought for control.

I looked from one dead body to the other and wished I were one of them. The woman they'd sent was young, couldn't have been with them for more than two years. I wondered why they'd chosen her to die. Her eyes were almost the same green as mine, and her face held a passing similarity. Maybe it was supposed to be a metaphor.

I shook my head and limped inside. Vera felt heavier as I dragged her clumsily across the threshold. I laid her beside the other woman and put my bloody knife by her hand. The other woman I dragged on top of her, wincing as the movement tugged at my thigh wound.

I wrapped the woman's lifeless fingers around Vera's throat. They lined up perfectly with the marks there. I laughed silently, bitterly. How kind of the Apex to deliver me the instrument of Vera's death.

I slunk back inside and struggled up the stairs. My apartment door stood open to display the sad remnants of my apartment. They'd even scattered my dirty dishes across the floor. A pink note on the door read "We have this copy. Deliver yourself and any other copies tomorrow and you will live" in tidy black pen.

One hand holding a knife and the other using the wall as a crutch, I burst into my apartment. When no one stabbed me, I closed and locked door behind me. I checked each room for lingering intruders, but found only my slashed up mattress and more pieces of my oven.

I sank to the floor. I needed to figure out what that damn file said.