The building was stuffy. Everyone hid just around the corner from everyone else. Too many hallways, too many corners. It was a maze without a goal, and so everything ended up in the middle, halfway between freedom and escape. Rommel had his circa-1985 shiny black plastic-framed sunglasses pushed to the tip of the nose, and he stared over them at the print hanging on the wall of an impressionist painting he recognized but couldn't identify. He clutched his twin Jericho 941 semi-automatic pistols loosely, trying to keep his senses tuned to the movement of the dozen or so people hidden throughout the labyrinthine enclave. He became less sure that he recognized the painting. Perhaps it was an aspect of impressionism, that minus the finer details any image would conjure up something familiar.

Busker almost missed it. A shift. A slow, deliberate exhalation from somewhere down the hallway. Jericho Left (JL) twitched in giddy anticipation, while Jericho Right (JR) hung limply, rueful but willing. The two weapons had gained distinct personalities, Mel Gibson to Danny Glover, Murdock to B.A. Barracus. JL hummed an innocuous melody, pentatonic with a soft cadence, but it was interrupted by the raucous minimalism of gunfire as someone stepped into the open, unloading an entire clip into the wall. JR flashed out, his previous reluctance replaced by ferocity unrivaled even in the more wrathful parts of the Old Testament, and he fired a single shot through the attacker's sternum, into the heart, shattered bone and bullet ripping the muscle to shreds before Busker's body had even made it around the corner.

The sound of gunfire triggered a chain reaction. Similarly exhaled breaths came one at a time from each side hallway. First the nearest, then the next opponent jumped into the open. It was a simple matter to pick them off one at a time, Jericho Left – Jericho Right, like a messy game of whack-a-mole. Busker almost had a high score, but he ran out of moles. Tickets spat out of the slot on the side of the machine. One more kill and he would have had enough for the plush Super Mario doll, long the unattainable goal of every kid in the arcade. The Galaga high score list flashed onto the screen, revealing ten instances of the initials RB.

A soft whimper came from around the farthest corner. Dammit. There was always that one guy, makes you feel bad about the whole job. Why couldn't the mafia weed out the simpering pansies? He was probably somebody's son.

Stepping over bodies, Busker made his way down the central hallway, stopping for a quick drink at the water fountain. The water was cool, but tasted a little tinny. Adrenaline maybe? No, his pulse was still slow.

The whimpering had stopped, but he knew the guy was still there.

Rommel rounded the corner to find a young man. Couldn't be older than 20. The kid tried to raise his gun, but Rommel kicked out of his hand, and pressed Jericho Right hard into the boy's temple. The world spiraled around the scene, sucked into the barrel of the gun, and for a moment the hallway was the center of the universe. The kid hushed, his breathing evened out. There is no right of passage so efficient as the warm steel of a recently used pistol. He looked at Rommel with sympathetic eyes.

An elevator dinged. A toilet flushed. A phone rang.

Shit. Jericho Left flipped, and clutching the barrel he gave a solid pistol whip to the back of the young man's head. It ripped open a gash, and would leave an unsightly lump, but there was no more death for the day. JL gave a shudder of mild protest at the unorthodox use. JR laughed at his brother.

Rommel strolled out of the building, and bought a soft pretzel from a vendor on Turpentine Avenue. The plush Mario would have to wait for another day.

*****

15 miles from a different location, Busker shimmied through the air conditioning duct of the Ritzy Fancy Nice Hotel, knife clutched in his teeth, t-shirt smudged with dust and rust, black and orange stains like he'd brushed against a tiger and the stripes had rubbed off. Drops of sweat fell from the tip of his nose in perfect samba rhythm, making tiny, tinny thuds on the bottom of the duct. Cool air flowed past him, carrying whiffs of the outside smells. Car exhaust, garbage, piss from the back alley used by bums and drunks alike as a rest stop on their varied journeys home or homeless. Somehow they merged into a not altogether unpleasant odor. This is life; this is what it smells like.

He jumped from of a vent outside room 372, having bypassed many layers of security, all rendered useless by their faith in the distinction between Hollywood and reality, sure in their assumption that no real assassin would do anything so demeaning as crawl. The hallway was silent. Busker kicked in the door. He stabbed. Stab, stab, stab.

Inefficiency in all its gory glory.

His guns sat in tiny chairs opposite a 7-year-old girl at her little tea table, sharing afternoon tea in an abandoned warehouse. Painted-over windowpanes had been busted out, and sent streams of light into the thick particulate air, circulating slowly, stirred by the bit of breeze that snuck in with the light.

The little girl's hair was caked with layers of the dust that floated about, and her face already showed signs of wrinkling. She was sad and tired, but relieved for once to be in the company of new inanimate objects. Joining her for tea on previous occasions had been old shoes, tires, a half empty bottle of Colt 45 (finished by the tire), a length of two-by-four, and a busted ink pen that had to be asked to leave early when it leaked on the chair. These guns, though, were not the orphaned products of progress. They spoke of life as it is, not as it was.

“Would you like sugar,” asked the little girl, a rasp in her throat that made her sound like she was playing prostitute, pretending to be a worn-out, 3 packs a day, one desperate customer a night, aging whore trying to sound sexy but pulling off afflicted instead.

JL answered, “Yeah, sugar's good. You have skim milk or just cream?”

“Just cream,” the rasp had subsided somewhat, the clot of dust in her throat had been expelled back into the air.

“Shit. Just sugar then. Cream is like putting yogurt in your tea.”

She turned to JR, “And you?”

“You got coffee?”

“Sorry, no.”

“I'm fine, then. Maybe a scone if you got it.”

The three sat silently, sipping imaginary tea, and eating imaginary biscuits. A roach scuttled across the table, but nobody noticed. The little girl coughed and spat out a wad of mucous with a last bit of dust trapped inside. Her eyes teared up.

“Are you sad?” asked JL.

“No.”

“You should be,” said JR.

Rommel walked out of the Hotel without incident. Anyone coming from inside couldn't be a threat, the guards assumed. One guard even held the lobby door for him, restoring for a moment Rommel's faith in humanity.

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Next: Toccata 3 - park