[center]Collab with [@Sierra][/center]

Gritted teeth muted a guttural scream as Calypso pushed the burning tip of the medigel syringe, a gift from Sloan, against her wound, her eyes closing tight as the scorching, gelatinous substance sealed up the wound. She dropped the single-use syringe on the bathroom tile and steadied herself against the marble countertop as the gray gel shifted to match the pigment of her skin. She felt her heart rate stabilize as the mild sedative in the gel began to kick in, and Calypso finally opened her eyes to look at the damage. She winced at the sight of half of her pinky being gone and shoved her injured hand in her jacket’s pocket with a sigh of frustration. After another second to collect herself, the courier walked out of the bathroom and headed towards the elevator with the pace of someone trying, and failing, to appear calm.
 
She practically punched the call button with her fist, and pretty much collapsed against the wall once the elevator’s door closed. A hundred thoughts were racing through Calypso’s head, one problem after another problem with seemingly no solution for any of it. There was no guarantee that her mother was actually alive, no certainty that Calypso would be let to live after she did this job for Sloan, and not a chance that the job would be an easy one. Calypso imagined that the Nazyashi wouldn’t even kept track of the debt she owed them. Instead, they’d continue to jerk her along like a dog on a chain until she outlived her usefulness and sell her out to the Awakened to curry favor with them as they went up against the Black Brethren. She knew well enough that if she tried to disappear now they’d most certainly come after her and if she tried to retaliate everyone that she had even one friendly conversation with would be at risk of a culling. Her best, and perhaps only option, was to make herself too useful to be killed, but to even attempt to do that she’d have to find someway to sneak into a Quarantine Zone.
 
Easy, right?
 
Calypso flipped out her phone as the elevator hit the lobby floor. She thumbed through her contacts as she walked by the secretary, who gave her a smile that was anything but friendly, and then hurried out the front door. She clicked on Miranda’s name. If anyone knew how to sneak through a lockdown, it’d be that girl. Calypso moved away as quickly as possible from the shadow of the Bachman & Clench tower as she typed out a message, hovered her hand over the send button, and then erased it. Miranda was a smart cat, but she was also a curious one. Calypso rewrote the message, pretending that she was trying to get out of Quarantine Zone for her own safety, and sent the message. She then sent somewhat identical copies of the message to others in the know as she made her way to the rail station, her attention hardly focused on what was in front of her at all.
 
[hr][indent][color=cc99ff]“Ops gimmie nav and traffic control.”[/color]
Kira peeled out of the lower level motor pool in a silver sportster, painting new traffic lines in a smoky black against the pavement.
[color=d6d6d6]“Traffic ahead, cut left for two blocks, then turn right.”[/color]
A couple of the E-War guys were monitoring the streets, flipping traffic signals and finding routes around traffic. There was no point in doing zero to sixty in three seconds if the vehicles in the way were driving maybe half of that. The traction motors whined, bleeding speed before Kira squeezed the e-brake paddle and threw the rear end out, skidding across the pavement. Drive power kicked back in, whipping the vehicle around the corner still faster than any of the commuter traffic.

Most covert ops groups never used vehicles with lights and sirens like corpsec usually did. Even an unmarked patrol vehicle tended to not scream “black ops” if it turned out to be an undercover interceptor. After all, the point of black ops was to remain undetected, not light up like a christmas tree. But today subtlety was not in the cards. She flicked on the car’s flashers, parting the civilian traffic like the red sea.
[color=d6d6d6]“Target is eastbound on 31st.”[/color]
The girl was already out of the plaza then. The odds they could still track her if she went indoors was basically zero. If the target left the building without being reacquired by the drone, that target were gone. The clock was ticking.
 
[color=d6d6d6]“Hard left next light, then two blocks and park.”[/color]
She screeched the tires around the next corner corner, almost taking paint off a delivery van parked in front of the far corner store. Four parallel spots were open against the left curb, just barely enough to use as braking distance if she could thread the needle through oncoming traffic ... or if E-War put a stop to the oncoming traffic with the press of a button. The power of the brainiacs with computers ten blocks away came to the rescue yet again, letting her slam to a halt just centimeters short of plowing into the expensive waste of metal that called itself a luxury car parked half-sideways in front of where she had managed to arrest her own car ... not that she would have felt bad for it. Wrecking the sportster, however, would have been a tragedy.
 
She sprung from the vehicle, running up to the street corner. [color=cc99ff]“I’m here, where’s target?”[/color]
Being in front of a subject to be intercepted was well and good, but all that subject needed to do was turn, and the whole op had to scramble to readjust. Jian field agents universally avoided walking more than a few blocks in a straight line: predictability is the asset of your enemy. [color=d6d6d6]“Block ’n’ a half out, coming straight towards you.”[/color]
Good. That gave her a moment to finally slow down. [color=cc99ff]“Dig up background info yet?”[/color] she mused.
It helped to know a bit about who she was about to try and persuade into dangerous things.
 
[color=d6d6d6]“Callie Graham, age 23, lives alone in Ghajotia outskirts,”[/color] Agent Irwin had made an appearance on the comms channel.
Part of Kira was happy to hear him again. The kid had potential and she liked seeing that turn into real talent. [color=d6d6d6]“Bar that, nothing more to go on yet. We'll keep digging.”[/color]
Unfortunate news to get, but with an upside that made it manageable. E-War would find something eventually, and Kira would have her answers even sooner. She gave a quick acknowledgement as she surveyed the streets, [color=cc99ff]“copy, appreciate it.”[/color]
 
Kira was full blood Japanese ... or at least as full blood as an Arcadian could really be. She looked the part; that was what mattered. She could pass off as ranking Nazyashi to an outsider easily enough. With Callie being squeezed, she would respond to a summoning gesture. Getting close contact would be the easy part. Getting her to not run, however ... that was an entirely different animal.[/indent][hr]
Calypso felt eyes watching her and, for just a moment, pulled her own eyes away from the comfort of her own phone screen. That moment was enough time for her to notice the Asian woman dressed in business attire that, upon eye contact, flagged her down. Calypso felt her throat tighten—she had hardly left the Nazyashi front office and already she was being hounded by one of them. Had Sloan forgotten something? Was she about to lose another finger? Part of her wanted to take off running for the railway, but if the woman was with the Consortium then that would only do herself harm. Besides, perhaps it was going to be something completely innocuous, just an office worker in need of some directions. Whatever she wanted, there was no way for Calypso to avoid her without it looking like she was doing just that.
 
"Did you need something?" asked Calypso as she approached Kira, slowing down drastically but not fully stopping quite yet.
 
Kira gestured ahead, [color=cc99ff]"keep walking."[/color]
 
She crossed behind Calypso instead of staying to her right and matched pace. Being on the left with her good arm behind the woman actually disadvantaged her - drawing her weapon would be harder - but it presented her good side. The older woman seemed to carefully hide the scarring across her face. It also revealed her earpiece tethering her back to Ops Command. Perhaps a regular Bluetooth would have suggested less in that regard than a military grade earpiece. She spoke softly to avoid eavesdropping. [color=cc99ff]"It may be asking a lot but I need you to trust me unconditionally for the next five minutes,"[/color] she urged, her powers of persuasion facing a legitimate test, [color=cc99ff]"I am the one person in this god-forsaken city here to get you out from the rock and the hard place Nazyashi has you between."[/color]
 
She seemed to squirm in her own body, uneased by the cold reality before her that Calypso would likely just run. There would be no point stopping her if she did. If she ran now, Kira would likely not see her again until her body washed up somewhere, another casualty of the massive and dangerous game playing out in the Arcadian streets.
 
However, Calypso did not run. She listened to what the other woman had to say and kept walking as she slid her phone into her jacket pocket, leaving her hand inside. Sloan had put her on edge, and she wasn't about to let yet another person get the jump on her; her fingertips were brushing against the hilt of her concealed weapon. She eyed the woman as she shifted around her, briefly catching the scars that she had originally missed. Between that and the earpiece it was clear to Calypso that Kira wasn't just some business woman, although as to what she actually was still mystified Calypso. Her words made it seem that she wasn't with the Nazyashi, thankfully, although it could've been a loyalty test. It was a bit early in the game for that sort of thing, Calypso felt, but she was still uneasy.
 
She doubted that unease was hidden as she opened her mouth and her voice, crackling with dryness, quietly eked out, "I'm pretty busy, but I can spare five." She found her courage and swallowed, speaking with more certainty while still keeping it low enough so that no eavesdroppers could listen in, "Although trust might come a bit more easily if I knew who I was supposed to be trusting, or why they have any interest in helping me at all."
 
Kira's shoulders visibly relaxed, having at least procured a few minutes before Calypso stopped buying it. But that still wouldn't be lengthy. She seemed irked by the hesitation, and dismissed the inquiry with exactly zero tenderness. [color=cc99ff]"I have neither the time nor the comfort to explain that to you on an open street."[/color]
There would come a time and a place for the answers she was offering. That place would be behind closed doors. For now she seemed interested in getting that privacy, even if it strained Calypso's faith. Given the previous line of inquiry, being persuaded without those answers was an unlikely proposition, but she was at least tentatively interested in the salvation Kira was offering. She tightened the screws on Calypso's decision, forcing out a definitive answer in no uncertain terms. [color=cc99ff]"At this corner turn right to stay with me. Go straight and you never see me again, but you are [i]on. your. own.[/i]"[/color]
 
It was curiosity, naivety, or a dangerous mix of both that made Calypso take the right turn instead of heading straight for the station. She kept her frustration that her questions had been shrugged off to herself and stayed with the stranger, taking some time to memorize her environment and seek out places to bolt to if it turned out that being on her own had been the better idea. The silence was allowing her doubt to creep in, but Calypso wouldn't waste her breath on anymore questions until they have arrived wherever it was that they were going.
 
Though her patience was strained by the ambiguity, the arduous wait would come to an end soon enough. [color=cc99ff]"Silver car, passenger side. I'll give you what you need."[/color]
Getting into a car added a new layer of concern -- certainly not without good reason for that matter -- yet Kira was interested in any venue more private than broad daylight before she divulged the truth Calypso desperately needed to hear.
 
She was surprised the girl stayed with her around the corner. She half expected her to not bite. Were Kira the one being led along, she very probably would have abandoned ship by now as well. But she was running out of credit to work on. A part of Kira would have still felt responsible for Calypso's fate even if she went her own way. While that part was now firmly all of her, she was grateful she could have the chance to actually do something about it. Kira turned her own way and headed around the rear of the vehicle, entering on the other side to wait on Calypso. It was still not too late for her to bail.
 
Calypso seized up with hesitation as she stood outside of the passenger side of the car, her hand hovering just above the handle. There was a good chance that getting inside of this car meant certain death. The stranger seemed to imply that she didn't work for the Nazyashi, which could of been a lie, but even if true there was still a chance she then worked for the Awakened. Maybe there was some completely different criminal organization that wanted Calypso dead for something she wasn't even aware that she had done. Alternatively, she could just run away and follow Sloan's instruction, but even then her life wasn't guaranteed, not to mention the possible realities where even if she did survive her life wouldn't be worth living. She swallowed deeply and stepped into the car, effectively giving her future over to a stranger.
 
"I hope what I need isn't a bullet in the head," said Calypso grimly as she closed the door and sunk into the seat. She turned her head towards Kira and gave her a mild look of annoyance that was unable to completely wipe away the lingering worry on her face. "I did as you asked. Are there any more hoops for me to jump through, or will you tell me what your deal is?"
 
A little gratitude wouldn't have killed her. Kira said upfront she was there to get her out from between the rock and the hard place between which she was wedged. Takeda Kirido, had Calypso known the mythos behind that name, was not one to delay killing someone when that was the intended goal. Now that Calypso was in a private space, something that seemed quite hazardous to her health, Kira was finally interested in leveling with her. She shuffled herself around to face Calypso in the passenger seat. Yet, she still kept her gaze a bit to the left, impulsively averting any stares at her bad side. [color=cc99ff]"Nazyashi might have warned you about me, which would explain why you seem to be expecting me to shoot you. My name is Takeda Kirido; you can call me Kira. I'm with Jian Covert Operations Group. There's some things I need your help with too but I was telling the truth when I said I was here to help you out of your current bind."[/color]
 
The car doors weren't locked. Kira could instinctively sense the techs back in Ops Command overwatching the operation placing bets on whether or not Calypso ran. She didn't even seem optimistic herself. People from the streets were averse to big corps, and not without reasonable cause. Someone with her authority, her skills, and most importantly her freedom from the shackles of the law, was quite literally a living nightmare. But Calypso hadn't run for her life yet. There was hope. Hope was something Kira hadn't had much of for a long time, and it brought out something more gentle in her. The tough shell of the infamous Yakuza hitman cracked slightly. [color=cc99ff]"I've seen Nazyashi ruin the lives of good people up close. Let me stop that this once. Let me help you ... [i]please.[/i]"[/color]
 
"Good people," echoed Calypso with a slight huff as she looked out the passenger window. Calypso felt that being purposefully negligent in hopes of making a quick buck instantly qualified her as "not good people", instead throwing her more in a neutral gray zone, but now was neither the time or place to have an argument about morality with someone so kin on saving her bacon. However, the name of Kira's group gave her some pause. It was one Calypso had only heard of in whispered conversations that she wasn't supposed to be listening in on, although from what she could tell they didn't truly even exist. If so, then that meant Kira was either a liar or a some kind of corporate agent, and either way she was deadly dangerous. Calypso decided then and there that it'd be better to have someone like that watching her back instead of gunning for it.
 
"I...thank you, Miss Kira," said Calypso, turning back towards the woman and giving her a sheepish, apologetic smile. "Clearly all of this has me a bit on edge, but I'm not stupid enough to turned down help when I need it. I'm Calypso, uh, sorry, Callie, although I have a feeling you already know that." She turned to stare back out the window, half expecting a Nazyashi hitman to be staring back at her. "I'll be honest, I'm a bit, I'm a little...overwhelmed, I guess." She looked back at Kira. She didn't wholly trust the woman, but she had no other good options. "So, how do we fix this mess I'm in?"
 
It was a good question really. The invisible hand of a large criminal organization was quite far reaching. Calypso knew that. Squeezing her this hard and this fast was proof enough. [color=cc99ff]"Hey, don't be ashamed of taking free help. God knows I would be a very different woman had I had what you do..."[/color] Kira trailed off.
 
Kira's eyes flicked away when she spoke. Her eyes betrayed more than had Calypso known every word Kira was leaving out. She eagerly followed with the change of subject, only making it more obvious, [color=cc99ff]"The first step of fixing this is you tell me everything that can get you blackmailed. Friends, loved ones, people who want you dead, secret caches of money or valuables, absolutely everything. I know that's a tall ask. I can put protection in place for pretty much anything but I have to know about it to protect it."[/color]
 
That was asking a lot. More than a lot. That was asking Calypso to trust her life to a corpo slimebag. [i]Fat chance of that[/i]. Was she really that afraid of the Consortium? There was no real chance she’d give out every single key to her own destruction.
 
Calypso felt her stomach drop at Kira's request, a look of frustration and disappointment betraying her feelings before she turned away. Kira wasn't just asking for more than a lot. She was asking for any possible way that Calypso could be hurt. These were things that she wouldn't even tell a close friend, let alone a suspicious stranger offering outcomes that were too good to be true. Even if Kira was going to help her now, if things soured later than the agent would have everything she needed to destroy Calypso's life.
 
"I don't think you're an idiot," said Calypso, glancing at the car handle, "so don't think of me as one either. We both know there's no way I'll give you all of that. Especially not upfront."
 
[color=eeddff][i]‘If you don’t want to work with me, the door is right there. Your options suck no matter what you do right now.’[/i][/color] Kira held her tongue, but she was thinking it. She couldn’t blame Callie for her wariness but it was still frustrating and downright problematic that she was holding out after Kira had literally raced through the streets, all the way from the number 35 complex just to save Calypso's skin. [color=cc99ff]"Onshirazuna burajā... [i](ungrateful brat)[/i]"[/color]
 
She reverted back to her native tongue briefly, a product of stress from her annoyance. Kira was willing to let her take her chances at surviving a criminal syndicate running her into the ground after that. Yet, she had to consider what Calypso was thinking in the passenger seat, given the demands placed on her. [color=eeddff][i]‘I would have bit the hand that helped too.’[/i][/color] It wasn’t easy, and Kira was asking for a small fortune’s worth of information right off the bat. She removed her headset connecting her back to the geek squad back at Jian, took a deep breath and looked over at her passenger. [color=cc99ff]"How do you think I got these scars?"[/color]
 
"Getting in a car with a stranger?" said Calypso, her dry attempt at humor failing as her voice faltered.
 
[color=cc99ff]"Hmph, no. Apartment fire."[/color] Her detached stare flicked around the vehicle, never meeting Callie’s face or remaining fixed for long. [color=cc99ff]"I remember my dad cooking, going to light the stove ... one minute nothing, and the next there’s just a fireball. I got caught pretty bad."[/color]
The surface burns on her left hand weren’t as noticeable as her face, but they were still there, next to two metal digits. She flexed the fingers she had left, like it was bothering her, perhaps from nerve damage she hadn't mentioned. [color=cc99ff]"I don’t remember much after. I came to and I was pinned under two tons of smoking concrete and steel. The building had come down on top of me. Two days of digging later they found my mother’s body in the rubble."[/color]
Nerve damage seemed likely now. Between burns and being crushed in the debris, it was a minor miracle she still had a flesh and blood arm left. [color=cc99ff]"I was on the streets within a month once I got out of intensive care. I ended up in the Kyoto Yakuza."[/color]
 
The thought of running came back. She [i]was[/i] part of the Consortium, or at least had been. It wasn't clear just what Kira really was or what angle she was playing at. [color=cc99ff]"Five years a loyal Yakuza hitman. The gang was my family when I had nothing. I thought all the honor, the loyalty, the sacrifice meant something."[/color]
Kira's hand on the console glove box was shaking, though she seemed oblivious to it. [color=cc99ff]"I found out later they bombed the apartment complex. It was originally a hit to kill a rival, but they knew about me from the beginning. They watched me, and they recruited me, and they never told me. They made me into a ruthless killer, and they were the very people who took everything from me."[/color]
 
She seemed barely able to maintain composure. There could be no doubt she didn't tell this story often, given she was barely keeping it together in front of Calypso. Since she began the tragic story, Kira had yet to look her dead in the eye ... until now. [color=cc99ff]"I know where this path leads. I have been to the place they will send you to. The bottomless despair, the unending rage, none of it meaning a damn thing or changing people being dead."[/color]
Kira’s own unending rage was showing hints of itself. It took a moment for her to compose herself enough to conclude, [color=cc99ff]"so when I say that I would give my life to keep you from falling down that black abyss ... you know that I’m telling the truth."[/color]
She turned back away from Calypso, carefully controlling her breathing as the tension in every fiber of her being released itself strand by strand. [color=cc99ff]"I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve told that to,"[/color] she remarked when she reaffixed her earpiece, [color=cc99ff]"it goes without saying that if you breathe a word of that to anyone, I’ll kill you myself."[/color]
If she ran now, that would inevitably take care of itself. There seemed no guarantee Kira would even could help, but she seemed willing to confide that much in Calypso. For a supposed ex-hitman, it was an impossible, and uncharacteristically sentimental, position to be caught in: apparently taking the possible death of a stranger so personally.
 
For a while the only sound in the vehicle was the muffled noises of the outside traffic as Calypso looked down into her lap, her teeth biting down on the inside of her cheek. She hadn't expected Kira to give her such a personal story, and now she was left conflicted—and not just because the ex-hitman had threatened to kill her if she went around spreading tales. The blood was pumping in her head as Calypso closed her eyes and grimaced. If the Consortium thought that Calypso could be turned into some lethal assassin then they had horribly judged her potential; she'd be dead by the second hit, assuming she even made it past the first one. As well, Kira almost seemed desperate to prevent Calypso from going down that path. Was it a means to make amends for the sins of the past, or just simply a way to enact some kind of revenge? Either way, if Kira wanted to play the role of the guardian angel, then Calypso would oblige her.
 
"I won't tell anyone," said Callie, her voice slow and somber. "What they did to you, that's...that's awful. I know it doesn't mean much coming from me, but I'm sorry. Truly." She sighed and leaned her head back against the rest. It was her turn, truth for a truth. It was only fair.
 
"Kira, I don't have any money. I hardly have any friends and the ones I do would probably be better off dead anyway. Most of my time I spend tending the bar in some dinky little dive, and in my off hours I run the occasional package through Capri. You ever heard of them? Not necessarily illegal, but certainly in a gray zone. About a month and a half ago I dropped a package off at a skin shop that turned out to be a bomb. I...I didn't know, obviously. Discretion and deniability are what Capri runs off of; I wouldn't have delivered it if I knew. Things didn't end well, needless to say. Now I got every Awakened in the city looking for me, ready to shoot the messenger."
 
"And to make matters work, that clinic was owned by the Consortium and they want to make up for the financial loss. That's where I come in, now." Calypso swallowed her emotions, and kept on. "They have my mom. Threatened to torture her then turn her over to the Awakened. I don't even know where she is. I don't even know what the fuck I can do." A few tears broke free as Callie turned her head towards Kira. "Her name's Carolina Graham. If you could help me find her then maybe..."
 
The two sat in uneasy silence for a moment. Kira needed the time for her mind to come back to center. She was not all there yet when callie broke the stillness. She heard what she needed, though, but that didn’t mean it was great news. [color=cc99ff]“It was fifteen years ago; it is what it is and .... seems they’ve gotten more aggressive since I was in.”[/color]
 
Assuming the Consortium’s threats weren’t a hollow promise, there remained few options. They had her pinched [i]hard[/i]. The only saving grace was the sheer reach of the corpo resources Kira could call on. Without that there would be effectively nothing anyone could do. [color=cc99ff]“That’s gonna make this difficult. That's a step up from what I knew of their MO. You only have one real option right now and it sucks: hunker down and wait. There’s only a few hours of daylight left so you can either come back to complex with me and rest or head home and turn in for the night.”[/color]
 
She shuffled through her jacket pockets for a card with her personal number on it. [color=cc99ff]“If you’re leaving, take this and call me in the morning, or if you need something from me before then. Whatever the case, all you can do is stall. Buy time with your handler in Bachman & Clench.”[/color]
There was exhaustion showing from Kira. She was running on entirely too little sleep and that was unlikely to change in the immediate future given what she was signing up for. [color=cc99ff]“A small bit of silver lining is that they probably think they have you completely locked down. They wouldn’t expect you to have corporate resources at your back, but now you do. They won’t see me coming at first, and that’s what I’m counting on.”[/color]
 
"Thank you," said Calypso quietly as she wiped her eyes and took the card. She didn't know how she could buy time, but she would. Sloan said she'd get in contact with Calypso the moment she was in Ghajotia, and if she wanted to keep her mother alive while Kira pooled her resources then the best option it seemed was to play along with the Consortium. She'd go through the motions of trying to get past the quarantine and then find someway to contact Sloan and drag things out a bit longer. It might as well be her only hope. Calypso opened the car door and stepped out, but before she closed it she leaned back in to speak to Kira one last time.
 
"Seriously, thank you," said Calypso, the relief showing on her face. There was still a question of whether or not she could truly rely on Kira to keep her word, but even the hope alone helped make her feel better. "There aren't many people left who'd stick their neck out for a stranger these days. Whatever happens, I'm glad we met."
 
And with that, she closed the door.