THE YELLOW DOG ASSASSIN

Garth made room for Injiri as the EuroJay Contestant moved to the table. Like Garth, his tray was filled with food, and when he sat down, he nodded briefly. “There has been no sign of your friend.”

“He and I exchanged some words a couple hours ago.” Garth indulged himself by drinking more coffee. The Latelians were many things –psychotic, manipulative, and espionage-freaks- but they made damn fine coffee. Since he wasn’t able to sleep, Garth figured there’d be no harm in having another cup; with the way things were going, the likelihood of him being able to catch any more z’s before leaving Lately were nil. He’d been awake once before for seven months with no appreciable problems other than serious jetlag, but his life really hadn’t been in the same kind of jeopardy then as now. The God soldiers were a threat unlike anything he’d ever encountered; if the Box in the museum proved to be a duplicate, it was safe to assume that the real one was being held elsewhere, and under heavy –literally- guard.

Injiri’s lips quirked up as he tried to imagine Marko trying to string together a sentence. “And how is he?”

Garth cracked his knuckles. “At the end, he saw things my way.”

Injiri, who’d already made a pass through Garth’s area of the Hotel, knew exactly what had happened to Marko, and nodded, grinning. Marko’s blood had been all over the area, so deep in spots that the carpet was going to need replacement. The damage to the wall went beyond the superficial; Injiri had reconstructed the fight and assumed that Garth had slammed Marko against it with enough force to break his back in a number of places. After determining that Garth ended the conflict by tossing the IndoRussian down the laundry chute, he’d placed a call to Hotel management with the news. He hadn’t bothered to answer their questions, because after spending a few days in the Hotel, he’d learned that they didn’t really care what happened to the Offworlders if it didn’t happen inside the Contest. “Good. I am glad.”

“Me too. Last thing I need is some bozo trying to get to me before the Contest.” Garth cut into a slab of meat that looked and tasted like steak, which only got his mouth watering for an old-fashioned barbecue. He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the subtle flavors of mesquite-grilled steak, the smell of the ocean where he’d done most of his cooking, the feel of the sand between his toes…

“You are going native on us?” Injiri asked abruptly, the intrusion jerking Garth out of his reminiscence so hard that for a moment the assassin thought he was going to have to fight for his life right there on the spot.

Garth shook his head, then pinched the bridge of his nose. Proximity to the ship and the chance to open must be the cause of the fragmented memories. Rather than easing his conscience, the memories -which were never complete and increasingly at odds with the world-view of a past that he’d constructed for himself over the last five years- were making him very uncomfortable. “Ah, I’m sorry, what?”

Injiri thrust his chin at Garth’s proteus. “Native?”

“Oh, heh, yeah.” Garth ran his hands over the military proteus. “It’s a neat gadget, is all. Spent a lot of time with machines like this when I was working, couldn’t resist.”

Injiri’s mouth worked for a few seconds as he tried to find the best way to say what was on his mind. “How is it that you are back with us?”

Feigning confusion for a second, Garth handed off the response that the agent had written up. “From before? Those guys in suits? They questioned me about what was his name, Firnkle.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Fucked if I know, man. Wanna know what I think?” Garth leaned in, drawing Injiri closer. As the Contestant leaned forward, Garth caught sight of the body-tattoo Injiri wore underneath his tunic, and paused, suddenly concerned. Familiar with Yellow Dog’s lifestyle through his one-time pilot, Edio Tekmara, Garth understood the modified kanji script language that had developed over the last six hundred years. Injiri wasn’t just a member of Yellow Dog; he was one of the elders. And an Elder wouldn’t come to Hospitalis just for the Contest. He was here for something else, something that only pretending to be a Contestant could accomplish. “I bet someone high up around here had some serious money on Firnkle, and they were pissed that I’d killed him. They took me, asked me a lot of questions, then left. I guess they saw hotel footage or something, because they came back and let me go.”

Injiri leaned back, a thoughtful look on his face. Inwardly, he was troubled; he couldn’t tell if Garth was lying or telling the truth. With the amount of money he’d paid Medellos for top-quality implants, there shouldn’t be a gray area. The Latelians, especially those in government office, were heavy betters when it came to the Contest, so it made all the sense in the world that some official or other had taken exception to their favorite Contestant being killed outside the competition. The only problem with Garth’s story was its execution. Or rather, its lack: the only thing that could have saved Garth from being killed by the alleged irate politician was someone higher up the food chain offering protection. “You are very lucky, my friend.”

“Tell me about it.” Garth ate in silence for awhile, half-heartedly trying to see if he could remember something else about his past; he didn’t throw all of his attention into the task because there was something about Injiri that was making him uncomfortable. Earlier in the day, the EuroJay’d been unwilling to talk to him beyond the terse warning about Marko, and that had been nothing more than one serious competitor looking out for another. A person like Injiri, who was a Yellow Dog elder, spent their entire lives in a very tight-knit community. They had little room in their minds for people who weren’t at the very least EuroJapanese.

But now, the stoic Contestant seemed the tiniest bit too chatty. Coming from anyone but Injiri, a sudden spate of friendliness wouldn’t be so out of place; everyone in the Hotel came from Trinityspace, and it was only natural that after an initial rush of aggression some level of camaraderie should develop. But this was Injiri, a Yellow Dog Elder, a man worth billions of credits and who carried with him the honor of his entire family line. Words like friendliness and camaraderie weren’t in the Yellow Dog Dictionary.

Garth wondered if it was possible he was being overly paranoid; with his Spidey sense locked into permanent overdrive thanks to the God soldiers and OverSec Terrance, it was all too likely that his common sense was being screwed with.

On the other hand, he had spent part of the day going through the formalities of being keelhauled into performing an as yet unspecified but certainly bloody task on a date to be named later. He’d spent the other part of his day being extorted by yet another governmental agent promising everything under the rainbow, which reminded Garth of a saying from his own time:

You’re only paranoid if you’re wrong.

At best, Injiri’s friendliness was sincere, and his death would be a momentary shame.

At worst, the EuroJay’s intentions were anything but sincere and his death would spare Garth difficulties later on.

The decision was made. Garth nodded politely to Injiri, who returned the gesture, and then left the banquet hall, mealy hardly touched.

Up in his room, Garth made himself comfy. He stared at the proteus, trying to imagine what could happen to him if he started mucking around with it before Lady Ha’d had her chance to defuse the bombs and the sentinel programs. Wearing a bomb as an accessory was naturally inhibiting, but being cooped up in a big Hotel with a EuroJapanese assassin in the building who wanted to kill him was a threat he couldn’t ignore.

He was screwed if he did, and screwed if he didn’t.

With a grunt of resolution, Garth booted up a hacking program he’d found in the proteus’ file list before he’d gone down for dinner. With it, he’d be able to access the hotel’s main server and from there, locate the blueprints. The machine’s interface was surprisingly intuitive, and in less than fifteen minutes, Garth was zipping through the different functions like an old pro; he barreled through the laughably simple cryptolocks on the server with a governmental override program that tumbled the security without even pausing. Garth gave himself a fake managerial profile that would allow him to access the building’s main without having to play the hacker. He backed out and logged in under the new password, then began the search for the blueprints.

Rather than dive right into work, Garth perused some of the hotel’s files, hoping to find some blackmail material strong enough to keep that horrible bitch Mijomi off his back. Beyond a number of shockingly anti-Offworld digital flyers, Mijomi was clean as sunshine. As were the finances, maintenance files, and employee records. Unwilling to imagine someone as awful as Mijomi wasn’t dirty, Garth set an avatar off to locate the management files while he reoriented his search for the blueprints.

Garth’s initial encounter with hostile Mijomi had netted him a top floor room at the far end of the Hotel. All the other ‘guests’ were located at the other end, and only halfway up. The intervening space between the last occupied room and Garth’s would be filled up when the rest of the Contestants began filtering in; a press announcement in the afternoon had confirmed that the Latelian transporter sent off to pick the other Offworlders had run into delays, giving him a little more time to himself.

With all that extra space between him and the rest of his comrades, Garth had taken the opportunity to wander through the hallways late at night when his insomnia got particularly unbearable. During those midnight strolls, he’d started noticing minor inconsistencies in the size and shape of various hallways. If he was right, Hotel Hospitalis gone through major renovations before being opened to the Offworld public.

Those inconsistencies could give him a huge advantage over Injiri, especially if there was a way to get into the assassin’s room without anyone being the wiser.

Inspiration struck, forcing Garth to save his progress. He backtracked to the root filing system and started hunting around for anything that might be surveillance programs. The proteus’ operating system, driven by avatars written by people who did illegal things for a living, discerned what he wanted done within a few seconds, located the necessary files and directed the live video feeds directly to the Screen.

Garth was amazed at the level of coverage, and at the Latelian’s sneakiness. All of the main areas of the hotel where the Offworlders congregated were being recorded from an enormous number of vantage points, some of which Garth knew didn’t have any cameras. He delved a little further into the proteus’ own storage banks in search of the type of camera being used, and was astonished again by Latelian ingenuity. The Hotel and its environs were laced with microscopic machines called ‘spEyes’; these were, to put a fine point on, virtually invisible cameras. Remarkably programmable, the cameras could also be ‘told’ to monitor a specific area much the same as any other type of device, but with specific sets of events to watch out for. The spEye would then rove the borders of that area, relaying everything its 360 degree camera lens detected to a main.

A spEye network required an independent primary system to control the highly flexible equipment, and another one to analyze the huge quantities of digital footage, labeling everything recorded with sets and subsets for easy processing by a human element. Someone in the Hotel, most likely Mijomi had hacked into the second and third mains and was beaming the footage in its raw content along heavily encrypted civilian lines; he’d missed the hack because he it wasn’t located in the primary areas of the Hotel’s main system. He tagged the file location, built another avatar from the proteus’ template to look for any spEyes around Injiri’s room, and went back to his own work.

Hotel Hospitalis had indeed gone through major renovations six years ago in preparation for the first Offworld addition, and again shortly after the end of that Contest to bolster up or improve upon areas that the original design team had missed. Rather than tear down the interior and rebuild it from scratch, the Contest promoters had opted to go the cheap route by reducing much of the Hotel’s Latelian-sized features by adding false walls and ceilings; the only areas in the hotel to remain ‘normal’ were the banquet halls on the ground floor and some of the meeting areas. Armed with this knowledge, Garth saved his progress before heading out into the hallway to visually inspect the Marko-shaped hole in the wall. Repair droids had been through to clean up the bloody mess, but hadn’t gotten around to fixing the huge tear in the drywall. Gingerly, he stuck his head into the hole and waited for his eyes to adjust. When they did, he saw exactly what he’d been hoping to find: there was a four foot gap between the first and second walls. Big enough for a skinny dink like him to skulk around in, if a guy was so minded. Hugely pleased with his craftiness, Garth went back into his room and continued poking around the data network.

The Screen showed a number of spEye vantage points down Injiri’s hallway, and the protean avatar he’d set to locate that particular location had already programmed itself to monitor them directly. By using an onboard facial recognition program and the Hotel’s own registration logs, Garth tweaked the semi-intelligent avatar to keep it’s ‘eyes’ peeled for Injiri Katainn. Using the original Hotel blueprints combined with the new ones, Garth designed an incursion avatar to generate different entry/exit points into Injiri’s room, setting the protocols to rate each one for maximum success.

The flexibility and superlative programming of the proteus was obscene. Even after such small exposure to his new toy, Garth couldn’t imagine working without one, and if his plans to marry Huey to a protean network bore fruit, he’d be unstoppable.

As always, Injiri made a cautious sweep through his room before retiring for the night; ostensibly he was here for the Contest, but his true purpose in Latelyspace was such that Injiri could not, would not, close his eyes until he was absolutely certain he was in no danger.

Satisfied that the room was empty of anything life-threatening the assassin changed into his sleep clothes and crawled into bed. As he lay there, Injiri went over the text message he’d received shortly after the riot in the banquet hall.

The other Clan leaders of Yellow Dog had been contacted by a very powerful NorthAMC Conglomerate head. This person’s desire was that Garth N’Chalez stop living. By epic chance, Yellow Dog had an assassin within easy striking distance. He, Injiri Katainn, had been suggested as a solution to this businessman’s difficulties. Other than some very vague wording, the only other thing worth mentioning was that he was expected to complete this second mission first.

Injiri could have easily used his standing as eldest male in the Katainn Clan to request more information about the assassination, but saw no reason; he knew, or thought he knew, Garth N’Chalez’ upper limits in physical combat. Knowing the name of the man who’d approached Yellow Dog for this service would do him no good, other than to possibly put his family at risk; NorthAMC businessmen might lack the honor and civility of Yellow Dog, but they could react with startling violence and mayhem if their secrets were exposed. Injiri found the prospect of losing to Garth unlikely from every angle, and rather looked forward to the battle. Not only would it rid him of a potential threat for his goals of winning the Contest, it would be a nice way to test out some of his new battle-enhanced augments. Casting one final, sweeping glance around the room, his reworked eyes picking out the minutest of details, Injiri settled into a restful sleep.

Injiri woke quickly, but did nothing to betray this to his guest; one of the first things he’d learned as a child was the art of breathing steadily awake or asleep. “You sleep pretty deeply for a guy in hostile territory.” Garth remarked from his chair.

“How is it that are you in my room, friend? I did not hear the door or the windows open.” Injiri remained supine. Moving now would only incense Garth, and until he could get himself into a position less exposed than the one he was in, he would risk his life only if necessary.

Garth rapped the walls. “This whole Hotel is built inside another one. Climbed in through the bathroom mirror. Almost dropped the fucking thing. Surprised you didn’t wake up.”

“Ah.” Injiri accepted Garth’s story immediately. Before coming to Hospitalis, Injiri had memorized the blueprints of the hotel, planning to use this unique feature as an escape route if his meeting went poorly. Of course, during that phase of planning it had never once occurred to him that he would be called upon to assassinate another member of the Offworld Contestants, or that that same person would have similar access to difficult to come by information. “Why is it that you have come here? Surely you knew nothing of my intentions. I was only approached in the early afternoon, while you were away with the government agents.”

Garth rubbed his face with his hands. “’s the funny thing, Injiri-san. I didn’t really know until just this second. Now,” he held up a hand, “that doesn’t mean I didn’t suspect you, ‘cuz I did. I’d of killed you either way.”

“What if I were to delay the attempt until well after the Contest?” Injiri asked calmly. The purchaser’s request, though definite, was nevertheless only a guideline; it was not unheard of for an assassination attempt to be put off several times because of extenuating circumstances. Injiri didn’t ask out of fear for his own life, but for other reasons; his primary goal was to meet with his government contact to ensure the Yellow Dog presence in Lately was guaranteed. His family had leveraged much of their personal holdings to get this far, but those costs would be incidental to the loss of honor amongst the other Yellow Dog Clans if he failed to set up a local franchise. If he could fight with Garth secure in the knowledge that his family honor would remain intact, his death –if, indeed, such a thing was possible- would bring them no losses.

“Worried?”

Injiri rose slowly to a seated position, curling his legs underneath his buttocks. If Garth was worried about the motion, he betrayed nothing. “I must admit to a certain amount of concern, yes. I am not without methods of detection, Garth, and yet you managed to invade my room without my knowledge. I saw your ‘fight’ the other day with Firnkle, and the results of your conflict with Marko, but nothing I saw gave indication of your stealth.”

Garth stood. He’d been battle-ready for over three hours. Sitting in the walls of the bathroom listening to Injiri go through the various phases of sleep had been interminably frustrating. It was only by reminding himself that Injiri was a Yellow Dog elder and therefore in peak condition mentally and physically as well as most definitely wired for sound that he managed to wait until he was certain. “Your tattoos.”

“Eh?” Injiri moved smoothly off the bed. He squinted, trying to discern Garth’s meaning, then nodded. “You knew someone who was in Yellow Dog?”

“He was there only for a short while.” Garth said, moving the chair out of the way. “He taught me the kanji over a week or so. When you and I were talking downstairs, I saw some of them.”

Injiri shoved the bed as far out of the way as he could, ever mindful that Garth could use the motion to his advantage. “That did not give you the information that brought you here, though.”

Garth nodded, agreeing. “No, but it did tell me that you’re a Yellow Dog elder, and the chance of someone of your stature coming here just to fight in this bloody stupid contest is nonexistent. Plus, you were a lot chattier during dinner than you were at breakfast. Since I already don’t trust anyone further than they can throw themselves, I got really, really paranoid.”

Not knowing Garth’s frame of mind before he’d gone to talk to him at dinner time had been a calculated risk. Unfortunately, it hadn’t panned out. “So why,” Injiri asked, adopting a fighting stance, hands held loosely at his sides, legs slightly akimbo, “do you believe that I am here?”

“Didn’t really give it that much thought.” Garth admitted. He didn’t take any special stands, or anything other than stand there. Injiri knew they were going to fight to the death, and so he wanted Injiri to make the first move. “I expect you’re here to meet with some guy or other to talk over some deal or other. Same shit as anything else you guys do.”

Injiri stood there, his ability to process the visual world speeding up as the deeper modifications he’d paid Medellos for started coming online. His body and mind were flooded with powerful chemicals secreted by organs Nature never intended, and miniature machines implanted along his neural pathways and muscles were being brought to life by the handful. His thoughts accelerated while his time-sense decelerated. Responding to the deluge of chemicals assaulting his system, Injiri’s skin began to thicken. The changes took perhaps five seconds to complete, and when they were done, Injiri knew he would have no problems defeating Garth N’Chalez; other than a God soldier, he was now the fastest human being on this or any planet.

The NorthAMC dog would have no idea what hit him.

Injiri moved so quickly that he covered the distance –around three meters- between him and Garth in the blink of an eye. He chopped a knife hand down towards Garth’s unprotected neck; his vastly accelerated consciousness had discarded any options of a long, drawn out fight. He wanted to kill Garth and dispose of the body as quickly as possible.

Garth stepped lithely out of the way of the rigid knife hand, grabbed Injiri’s wrist as it passed by his chest, and pulled Injiri bodily to the right. Intending to slip a sleeper or domination hold on the assassin, Garth found himself automatically blocking a powerfully delivered heel strike to his unprotected groin. Doing so meant letting go of Injiri’s wrist, and as he did, Injiri wheeled to strike an open palm against Garth’s forehead.

Leaping back just in time to avoid a flurry of blows, Garth recovered quickly by planting both his feet solidly on the ground. He held both his hands up, showed Injiri the edges of his fingers, and did not move. His forehead stung, his head was ringing, but other than that, he was unharmed.

Injiri sent a thought just so through his body and waited for the almost immediate sensation of more chemicals flowing through his body. He was aghast that N’Chalez was still alive, let alone able to ask for more punishment; benchmark tests performed back in the clinic after the healing was done had proven he was one of the deadliest men. His initial attack, a maneuver delivered along with the first powerful rush of drugs and chemicals, had been clocked at over fifteen miles an hour. Spitting, Injiri moved in to attack once more, this time with a great deal more caution.

The two men stood in the middle of their impromptu battle ring and exchanged a furious delivery of blows. Every time a blow failed to strike, they pushed their bodies harder, demanding more speed, more strength, more everything. Both Garth and Injiri were masters of Chi Sao, though, which meant that regardless of how quickly they delivered their strikes, the other was already in a position to neatly deflect or avoid the attack. They moved back and forth across the room, neither one giving up anything but the smallest of advantages before regaining what they had lost.

Garth found himself smiling like an idiot as the sweat and blows rained at him. Injiri was the best combatant he’d ever gone up against since he’d been thrown into suspended animation, and the joy he felt at losing most of his conscious thought against the sublimate pleasure of a mind empty of everything except the moment was profound. Ears full of exhaled snorts of air, the flicker and stamp of feint/counter feint, the slap of open or closed fists against the skin, Garth found his eyes closing. He allowed them to seal shut, trusting his inner senses.

Injiri forced himself to push forward, though the drugs in his body were depleting too quickly to be replenished without a large intake of food and an even longer period of recuperation. Even if he managed to survive Garth’s seemingly endless reserves of energy, Injiri found himself doubting that his body would recover from the abuses he was putting it through: the spectrum of implants and drug-secreting glands he’d purchased had been intended for momentary spurts to provide a quick edge, not long-term combat. Using them for longer than recommended periods meant severe tissue damage and other systemic failures.

A flicker of irritation shadowed Injiri’s tired, sweaty face as a beatific pleasure washed across Garth’s. When his opponent’s eyes closed, the elder assassin felt a momentary thrill of exhilaration at the thought that he was going to win. When Garth not only continued to block his efforts to win but actually got faster, Injiri knew instead that he was a dead man.

Garth was in a place of pure and perfect silence. He felt and heard nothing, and sensed Injiri’s attacks not as they came to him but as subtle depressions and cessations of molecules being disturbed seconds before they arrived. Everything beyond the moment melted away into a distant background. He continued to move, though, faster and faster until Injiri’s attacks no longer seemed to exist at all. Garth opened his eyes as he delivered a mortal blow to his opponent, an open-palmed punch similar to the one he’d stopped Firnkle’s heart with.

The reality he’d fallen out of touch with, moved out of phase with by pushing his body to a never imagined level of speed and perfection, crashed in on his mind without remorse, driving him to the ground even as Injiri-san’s midsection was pulped by a titanic deliverance of physical energy. Garth dropped to his knees, willing himself to calm down, to find even the smallest jot of the silence he’d discovered. By fits and starts, he managed to ease his body, straining mightily against unseen tidal forces, to relax, to unknit, to shed the power. Head swimming deliriously, barely able to control the meat that housed his mind, Garth dragged himself over to the bed. He flopped on to it, gasping raggedly.

Somewhere deep in the back of his mind, a voice from out of his past commented with detached scientific interest on the physiological damages of exiting ex-dee without first preparing the body …

A few microseconds after Garth delivered Injiri’s killing blow, the Hotel primary noticed a momentary surge of power great enough to short-circuit the motive commands of the spEyes across four floors. Following its routine commands, the primary adjusted camera coverage in the banquet halls until new spEyes could be ordered; the surge itself was logged as an unidentifiable flux in the Hotel power grid and relegated to a list several thousand items long.

It would be a long time before anyone noticed the specifics, and even longer still before anyone thought to check it out.

Five minutes later, Garth struggled to one elbow, grunting with the effort, seriously exhausted and aching along every joint. But the physical pain was instantly ameliorated by the realization that he was buzzing with a layer of memories from his past life. Garth lay there for a moment, eyes unfocused, reliving a summer spent in what he assumed to be the Ukraine; much of what he saw was chaotic and disjointed, but they were his memories. Sneaking into a dilapidated theater to watch a bootleg copy of an illegal American movie, running down back streets being chased by an angry UK pimp who’d just been conned out of his money, singing bad Karaoke songs poorly in an upscale bar … there was the sense that beneath all of those experiences there was a deadly serious reason for being in that part of the world at that specific moment, but Garth couldn’t find any leads, so he took the memories for what they were: a part of himself he’d never known.

Shelving his past for the moment, Garth worked up the energy to sit upright so he could survey the damage.

Bluntly, the room was a fucking mess. Garth didn’t envy the people who’d have to go through it in an effort to find out what’d happened; going ‘ex-dee’ –whatever that was- had allowed him to channel a fantastic amount of kinetic energy into the final punch, turning Injiri Katainn into a pulped mess of blood, bone and tissue. Closest to the bed were the remains of Injiri’s lower legs and his head; the rest of the Yellow Dog assassin had been transformed into a gory picture of blood, pulverized organs and shattered bones that covered the back of the room from floor to ceiling. Death had come so quickly that the EuroJapanese assassin looked comically outraged at the manner of his own death: Injiri’s eyes were wide open, no doubt shocked by the mysterious transformation his opponent had undergone. Garth found himself wishing he’d had the foresight to bring a spEye into the room so he could see, and understand, just what had happened in those final moments. Even though Garth knew he was the sole cause of the gruesome mess, he could hardly credit himself with the kill because it looked to him like Injiri had swallowed a live grenade.

Crawling gingerly off the bed, he made his way carefully around the edges of what was going to be a crime scene nightmare; no matter their vaunted technical superiority, it was highly unlikely that anyone working the case would ever be able to come up with a definitive explanation about what’d happened to Injiri Katainn because the average Latelian mindset was just too narrow to come up with the right answers. No one would ever imagine so much damage had come from a single punch, delivered by an Offworlder, and that was just fine by Garth. Let them think it was a meteor strike or some other equally implausible but easy to digest lie. Moving slowly so as to not strain his already aching body, Garth worked his way into the bathroom and began his ‘escape’.