[b]Perm, Russia[/b]

The twisted remains of furniture decorated the side of the hallway, like the corpses of the casted away and the defeated. Pieces of wood, like bones, laid out scattered. From somewhere the acrid burning smell of a fire blew along the cold evening breeze funneled through the hallway. It brought no warm familiarity. Only a sense of being alien. And how long some had fallen.

Jun walked quietly along the long narrow hallway of some mid-level floor of apartments. His hand stroked the broken and twisted legs of discarded chairs. His boots crackled against the carpet, rubbing into the thread-bare rug bottles, or needles. He couldn't tell which, in the dim light they shone the same.

In the distance a sad waltz played on someone's gramophone. Muffled shouting drummed through the walls as distant couples fought. A dark barked. Someone laughed. Not healthily. Sickly and twisted, like a drunk or someone on the edge of their sanity. Compared to the rest of Perm, this was a dim nightmare. The face the city wanted to hide, the cancer it fought. The ills that had wrung Russia dry. How many centuries was it since the nation suffered such disarray?

Still, credit could be given. There was electricity, clear as the setting day-time sun. Fixtures glowed with fresh incandescent oranges and yellows, giving a sickly warm glow to the straight and narrow hall with the towering ceiling. Jun marched down the lighted corridors. Eyeing the doors as he passed. Counting the numbers. The dealer had said the man that produced lived here.

It was a far shot, but it would have to work. Worse came to worse, the man gave him directions to another nobody without any credibility. It was a prospect he hated to get. But the expectant dull anger that ground in him could be suppressed for now.

Jun turned a corner. The building seemed to be getting quieter. The old familiar noises that it had introduced him too growing duller and quieter. He could feel the air thickened as he breathed softer. Fighting harder to tune into those old sounds. A feeling of distant caution followed his footsteps as he walked deeper. The faint note of some distant violin would spring to life, but it was no more than a pin being dropped on the tiles. There was a steady beating, near and far as he strode. All the sudden, he felt as if he were being stalked.

Like an animal.

He turned around, his hand dropping limply to his side as the packed garbage along the side gave way to emptiness. There was no soul behind him. Nothing moved in the sterile emptiness of the gray-paper walls, with the beaten browning carpet.

He aired on the side of caution. Jun could feel his breath rattle as he reached into his coat, gently unlatching the button that strapped his pistol to his breast. He only had so many rounds left, but he only had so much room himself to swing. It would be more sure to fire a gun. His number fingers pinched at the nickel steel, and pulled it, releasing the leather strap with a soft click.

Jun turned, resuming his patrol.

On the distance, the sharp staccato rattle of a bell rung down the hall. A faint flat tone that rang sharp then fell flat. It came to dominate the silence of the apartment. Jun followed the shrill jingling, passed the marching doors to the apartments long the side.

Jun gave pause outside the room that was his marked. Hanging on the scratched darkened wood tarnished brass numbers hung by a rusting nail. 016. It was the room the dealer's producer was said to be in. And it was the room that the telephone ringing was loudest.

He leaned close against the wood of the door. Fingers wrapping around the cold handle. His heart beat slow. His breathing held steady as he took readying breaths. He channeled himself for the job as the handle turned, and the door opened with a dry groan.

Stepping inside the air of the apartment hit him like a heavy musky hammer. The intertwining smells of sweat, blood, and dried semen filled the air with a rank putrid saltiness. But above that Jun noticed was a stomach turning chemical smell. Implacable, but bitter and harsh. Even numb, he could feel his lungs struggling at the bleached, sulfuric stench of the producer's living quarters.

It dripped and wafted through the empty apartment, without a soul but Jun to disturb. He rolled off from the stained green furniture, littered with bottles of beer and vodka, and a dozen too many full cigarette trays. In the far corner sat the phone. It shivered and shook on its receiver as it chimed endlessly. The agent scanned the room, cautious and shocked. And he wondered: how long had the phone been ringing?

He scanned the room, pressing himself against the wall as he moved along the edge of the small studio. Peering into a door to the side he found where the repulsive chemical stench was coming from. At the far end of a yellowing bathroom full of grime a stained white bathtub sat, filled to the brim with a foul liquid, vinyl and plastic tubes ran submerged into the gurgling broth, running out from cans of cleaner and a dozen other chemicals and acids. He was for sure trying to make a cut of the predict, somehow.

Grimmacing, disgusted, he reached over, and closed the door behind him as he crept. But found nothing more than the refuse of a very untidy man. He grew tense and nervous. Had he been lied to? Tricked? He felt angry, boiled. He looked to the still-ringing phone. A damnable curiosity and demand rising in his gut.

Jun spat as he looked over the room once more. Tripping over a grimy mattress buried under a sea of blankets and discarded garbage. He grumbled madly, kicking off a stiff rag that stuck to his foot. With a satisfied spit he kicked off the rag and stood next to the phone. Wondering.

It could be another lead.

He figured he probably shouldn't. But the bell was too much a siren. Reaching for the receiver, he bit his tongue. “Hello?” he said in muddied Russian.

“Do you even know what you're doing?” a voice on the other end crooned.

“Excuse me?” Jun replied.

“Do you know what sort of bees nest you are kicking? What do you think you're doing? Can you fight ghosts, Uzkoglazy?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” said Jun, turning to the window, peering out through the thick ashen film that had accumulated on the glass. He looked over to the building across the road, looking to see if anyone could be watching them.

“Of course you do.” the man said, “You haven't been that well hidden. You come into Perm and guns start firing. But we thought you would have died going into that damnable church. But what did that insane fool tell you? What did you promise that fucker?”

“Of course it does.” the voice on the other end crooned. His voice sounded slick like oil. Sharp as venom, “You don't walk into Perm like this, on the trail for blood and don't expect it to be picked up on. Your job in Yekaterinburg was very messy, and now we know.

“So how do you propose we continue? End it here? You go home? Or we talk?”

“There's nothing to talk about.” Jun snapped, turning back from the window.

“There's a lot.” said the voice, “I'm here in the north of town. 165, Repina street. You can come and try me if you'd like.”

“Try you, what do you mean?”

“You want my life. I know this. But just do something before you arrive.”

“What is this?”

“Not burn.” the phone sneered, clicking silent.

Jun stood aghast, bewildered. He frowned, staring at the dull gray wallpaper with a twisted expression. His blank stare was broken with a tremendous fiery blast. The agent's heart jumped a canyon as he dove. The hot tongue of fire and the biting teeth of shrapnel grazing the air alongside him as a wide explosive cone fanned across the room, spraying into the far war and sending up clouds of powdery drywall and plaster.

Wood board and smoke filled the room as a second thunderous explosion rocked through the room. Shattering the wood of the door as it chunks the size of fists exploded inward, hurling a hot mess of lead and wooden splinters. Jun turned his back to the explosive spray. Splinters and shrapnel flew against his back. He felt the molten warmth of cinders lick through the black leather of his coat, peeling back the tanned leather and flying back against him.

In the reprise between shots he turned, his face beat blank and paper-white as the wooden door swung open on its hinges. In the doorway looming a man of steel, shotgun burning cheery hot in his steel-gloved hands. The vacant tinted lens of a heavy mask stared into the main room of the studio apartment, bearing no emotion or human will.

The man behind the metal cocked the shotgun, ejecting a smoldering shell casing with a metal snap. Jun scrambled to feet as the man rose the gun to his shoulder. The cherry-red glow in its barrel subsiding as he aimed down the sights. Jun dove as the weapon gave another thunderous roar. Hot cinders blew up from behind him as he crashed into the mess that was the mattress bed with a stumbling roll. From behind him tongues of fire licked from the pulverized dry wall and plasterboard. The internal straps of wood within exposed and singed with a thin layer of blackened soot.

Jun moved quick, grabbing wildly out for anything on the floor. His teeth gritted and chewed as his heart raced. Pouring blood through him. His hands found something hard under neath the blankets. It'd have to be a chance, or some sort of distraction at least. Fingers wrapped around it he heaved the object out of the clumped sheets. Hurling through the air a thick rubbery dildo.

He didn't have time to register it, nor was it the moment. In blind desperation the rubber penis was in the air. And in the seconds after the last shot it collided with the mask of the assailant with a loud crashing clang. Jun turned in time to see the pink schlong roll off the bewildered mask of the attacker and to the ground. The shotgun whirling in his hands as he fumbled to push aside the rogue toy. Loose on his fingers, the trigger of the rose-red shotgun collapsed in his hands and fire with one loud thump into the carpet at his feet, exploding the ground before where he stood in a bloom of fire, carpet, insulation, and smoking wood.

Jostling and bouncing the dildo fell at his feet, the man no less shocked about what happened. It was Jun's chance. Jumping to his feet he charged for the door while the man was unaware. Putting his shoulder's first, he hoped to ram past him, and then to loose him in the halls.

He however never made it that far. The sound of his feet broke the man out of his distraction and the vacant welding mask that shielded his face looked up to catch the Chinaman coming for him. Jun slammed shoulder first into the barrel-chested sentinel, pushing into his side as thick heavy arms wrapped around him in a great bear hug. With a heave the might of the Russian pulled Jun off his feet and threw him to the hot ground below. With a crack his body bounced off the floor. His teeth gritted as he landed, if more at the shock than the lack of pain that tore along his back.

It was in less than a blink of an eye that he was staring up at his would-be executioner. He scrambled back to his feet. “Uzkoglazy!” roared the man from behind the mask, his voice sounding more machine that it could be living. Thick arms crashed down against his shoulders, pinning him to the floor as the pillar of steel mounted the agent.

The man in the armor screamed in rage as he rose his head back. Coming down against Jun's own with a crashing hammering blow. For a moment Jun went blank. The world washed out to black as for once a splitting pain and uneasy warmth exploded from his forehead. His eyes opened as the Russian reared back. Bellowing in rage as he readied to bring his head down again.

Jun's chest froze as the chest-breaking swing of the Russian froze to come down. Jun twisted, and through his coat his arms shifted under the grip of the Russia. He threw himself to the side as the Russian's head came down. The flat metal of the mask coming down to where his head had been with a rattling wooden crash against the floor. Its warm steel pressed against Jun's face.

Roaring, the assailant pulled his face from the floor. “Ublyudok!” he boomed. Jun felt him loosen the grip on his arms to readjust. Seizing the moment, he threw his arms out from under the hit-man's hands, and threw his palms up at his face, wrapping his fingers around the steel of the welding mask and throwing him to the side.

The sound he made hitting the rough smoldering carpet was akin to the sound of crashing pans. The armor plates smashed and crashed against him as Jun levered his weight over him, pushing himself on top of the hit-man, wrapping his fingers under the steel mask and prying. It didn't go without fighting as the other grabbed hold of his wrists and fought back. With all his strength Jun pulled back, yanking and levering the metal plate as the Russian underneath grabbed his arms tighter and tighter. An overbearing numbeness welled in his hands. Slowly eking away what feeling he had in his fingers.

The tug of war was quick to go nowhere as the two men fought and threw their weight into each other. Alongside them the fire from his shotgun began to smolder stronger, growing as tongues of sticky flames burst to life in the thick carpet. The Russian's hands hit Jun with the force of a truck, jerking him off into the wall with a sudden crack of his jaw. Jun's head hit the drywall with a papery crash, he tumbled off his foe as he lurched up, grabbing the Asian by his coat.

Jun felt himself soar into the air as he was lifted off the ground and thrown. His arms slipping through the sleeves of his long coat. He flew like a haphazard sack of onions across the room. Landing with a solid thud against the ground. His elbow spearing into his side with a wet crack. Sprawled on the ground he spat and sputtered, choking on wet phlegm building in his throat.

Behind him the thunderous foot steps of the Russian marched towards him with the beat of a drum. He turned to watch the overbearing man looming over him. Smoke filled the air about him. The faint shine of growing fire shone in his mask as he looked down. “This, mine.” he grumbled. Reaching down. Jun kicked himself away, backing himself against the wall.

The harsh gauntleted hands wrapped around the sword at Jun's hip. With one strong tug he broke the harness free, and pulled free the sheathed Mao Dao. He seemed to pause to consider taking Jun's Changu revolver. But turned away instead of taking it. He waded through growing fire as he walked to the door, holding in hand his looted sword, and pulling from a pouch behind a drab-green cylinder.

Jun's breaths trembled, chest heaved as he watched the beast of a man pull from the grenade its pin. Releasing the trigger he dropped it by the door as he turned to leave. Jun shook as he curled against the wall, throwing up his arms to guard himself. With a dull thud the room suddenly became engulfed with a harsh heat. A whopping rush tore in the air with a metallic hiss. Through his clenched eyes a sharp blinding light cut through the air.

When he opened them he found a silver sun blooming by the door. Forming out of its tail a whipping trail of golden fire as the incendiary grenade tore and seizured across the ground. Emitting a bright blinding light. A thick screen of silvery smoke exploded across the room, filling the already chemical-thick air with a new sharp acrid smell. Precious oxygen was sucked up, and the apartment became claustrophobic and unbearable. A hazy sensation was quick to ride onto Jun as he breathed in thick competing chemicals.

Jun staggered to his feet, stumbling along the wall as he headed for the window. Door was blocked off. He had no choice. Something exploded by the door, Jun flinched. His breath caught in his throat.

Shaking hands ran across the charred and chipped walls. Tongues of flame licking up from underneath as smoldering ashes turned to fire. The room was a haze of gray and white smoke. His head felt like it was swimming.

He found the window. His hands brushing against the warm hard glass of his only likely exit. Working frantically about the frame he searched for a lever, a button. Anything to unlatch the window and throw it open. But his numb fingers found nothing. Just the coarse wooden frame of a window, with the paint peeling.

“No, no, no.” Jun stammered. He looked behind him. The source of the white haze obscured by its own smoke. But the roar of a building fire was growing greater. He could feel the welling heat as it built rapidly. Something exploded again. Like a gun shot. Jun ducked. Nothing happened.

He needed to move fast. Searching the frame he continued to find nothing. He panicked. Breath shaking. Cough building in his chest as he breathed in more of the acrid, putrid smoke. There was another loud bang and he dove forward, against the table with the phone. With a dull chime the appliance danced on the table top.

He had no other choice.

Pulling himself back up he grabbed the phone, body and all. Pulling it up off the table he swung it to the side. Throwing it against the glass pane. With a crystalline sheering note it shattered outwards. Large teethes of glass exploding out into the Russian spring outside. Cooler air rushed into the heat of the apartment.

Turning, he grabbed the table the phone had called a home and shoved it through the empty window frame. Clearing out the remaining glass. Following the table, he climbed to the ledge outside.

The footing was tentative. And five stories below loomed the side-walk below. It was a long-fall, and already a crowd was pulling together. A bustling crowd was beginning to gather as the window six-floors above breathed smoke like some elder dragon.

He hugged the cold brick facing of the apartment building. Holding to the stone as he watched the street below from the corner of his eye. He trembled. It had been a long time since he was on a face so sheer, on an edge so thin.

In the distance sirens blared. His heart thundered in his chest. Adrenaline beating through him made him feel weightless. But flighty. He shivered on the six-story ledge, staring into the rough pattern of granite brick and cement mortar.

Jun rested his forehead against the wall, taking deep breaths. The events that had transpired still washing over him. “Fucking damn it.” he swore. He would have kicked himself.

Sighing, he shimmied along the wall. The spectators below called out. Shouted. Cheered. Or jeered. He couldn't tell.

He inched along to the next window on the apartment floor. With a careful hand he reached for his holstered pistol, and using the stock of the weapon broke through the glass. Clearing out the dagger pointed shards before climbing back in.