Execution

Dawn was a luminescent grey, the sky washed wide with a hazy stroke of the faintest pink
After the previous night’s rains, the clouds had cleared, promising one of the gorgeous, brilliantly sunny days that you usually get in Tokyo around this time of the year
In happier times, I'd probably have been up north on Hokkaido; you get a lot of snow there in the winter and we went to Rusutsu a couple of times for the skiing and snowboarding. I was terrible at it; but you know: It was fun anyway

Once I had left Shin and Mei's, I took the subway back downtown to do a bit of shopping; a shiny new terminal, a heavy coat to conceal the weapon and keep me warm in this stupid dress, and an expensive bottle of whisky
The whisky was for Inoue, the fixer, who wasn't at all happy to see "Miss Katherine Swift" as he had called me, carefully enunciating my foreign name, after I had strolled off the street and into his bar with a price on my head
Katherine Swift
It feels strange being called that again... Well, for me it's a fairly novel experience, but you know what it is with my memories. I... Brittany had a number of names as she moved around the world: Monica Wright, Violet Anderson and Katherine Swift to name but a few. Cassandra is the only one I personally have borne, and while I'm not terribly happy with "Jones" (it was a spur of the moment thing), I feel as though I've grown into the name and have made it more my own that my progenitor ever did
In any case, it's better that than having to suffer the damned names my father gave me

It took me a while, but I eventually managed to charm Mister Inoue around, with his sixty a day habit and his greedy eyes that make your skin crawl when he looks at you. The whisky helped, but forty five thousand dollarpounds sealed the deal; I also had to promise not to darken the door of his bar ever again, but I can't see me being back here any time soon, and besides which, you have to earn the privilege of me keeping my promises
I probably paid well over the odds for the address of the lock up being used by the snuff outfit holding my progenitor captive - which I admit is kind of stupid, since I really should remember where they were based; but a combination of blind terror and the drugs I... she had been dosed with, meant that I struggled to remember the exact location with any greater accuracy than: "Somewhere in the back streets of Adachi"
Ultimately, I suppose it doesn't really matter what I paid; I mean: What's money to me?
It was meaningless three million years in the future, and if I'm going to continue working with the STCP with all their resources at my beck and call, even all the riches in the world pale in comparison
Fucking Brittany
I blame her for a good proportion of the woes in my life.
It’s her fault, for example, that I’m out here shivering in the cold
The streets around here are the more traditional narrow, winding affairs that you sometimes get in the more outlying wards. I guess the area either wasn't as badly affected by the Big One when it hit, or the city planners didn't bother so much with the it afterwards, and it just grew back as it was before: A meandering mix of low apartment blocks and light industry, the only open spaces, the occasional patch of brownfield wasteland or one of the rare children’s playgrounds, bordered by the bare winter branches of the ginkgo trees

Last night I violated several of the Geneva conventions on machine intelligence; the results of which are the small cadre of public service mechanoids, currently en-route to my location.
I twisted them to my will using a series of corrupted command and control instructions, that I injected in through a municipality service network which I had compromised some years beforehand.
It was child’s play.
This whole scheme was meant to have been one of my backup contingencies in case it all went to shit. As it was, I was blindsided by my betrayal, hit hard and abducted before I could enact even the most basic of my stratagems; so it’s nice being able to put at least some of my work to use here
Of course, the police and ultimately Interpol are going to go nuts once they figure out what I’ve done, and it seems strange to think that it's I who left the incriminating evivdence to damn me, when I'd always assumed that it was the Yakuza
Life can be funny like that
I had also tracked Yori down; he's pretty predictable and it didn't take much to triangulate him through his range of pseudonyms and his various online activities. I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about having to kill him; I mean, it's not like it was me who he betrayed, and had he not done so, I wouldn't even exist, but...
Oh, I don't know.
It's complicated.
The memories I share with Brittany mean that I still recall the hurt and terror he inflicted on her, but as unpleasant as it was at the time, same as with all the other bad stuff, I’ve picked up the pieces and have moved on
Hell, I even allowed myself to trust again and got involved with another guy; although... Well, that didn't work out so great, did it?
It makes me feel sad when I think about him - Jay, I mean; so I’m trying not to dwell on everything, and how... fragile I feel right now
Oh, whatever
Nobody gives a shit
These are just more pieces that I need to pick up and move on with
I should just get the fuck over myself
I hope he's okay though; knowing Brittany, this “cure” of hers could even be another virus that’s been programmed to activate in a few months, or maybe in another year or two. He might even be dead for all I know, but I don’t think so – You don’t go throwing as useful a resource as Jay Chrysler away; and besides which, Brittany got what she wanted: Me, shivering here in the backstreets of Adachi, waiting to save both my life and hers
Why I should have to do this, I’ve no idea; I can only assume it’s all part of some multifarious scheme of hers
Maybe I don’t need to do it and I really did get lucky with the snuff team being taken out in a gangland hit, but I don’t think so. Brittany abandoning me here at the right time and in the right place is far too coincidental for my liking, and it’s not really in my nature to leave anything to chance – especially something as important as this
So I have to be here, just in case...

Rechecking the terminals chronometer for what must have been the twentieth time these last few minutes, I noted that the converging units were reporting an ETA of between five and seven minutes
There was nothing to do but wait
Pocketing the terminal again, I pulled my coat close against the cold and huddled back into its warm embrace. The weapon I was carrying, concealed inside it, pressed comfortingly up against my ribcage, giving me a sudden and unexpected pang of homesickness, as I gazed out from the silent shop doorway I had been loitering in
All I needed to do was wait
Things would happen soon enough


The subjugated machines turned up right on schedule.
Of them all, the slow, lumbering construction droid was first, with the five police mechanoids arriving not long after that - All of them monstrously strong, heavily armored and phenomenally tough to kill
Of course, they’ll all have to be decommissioned after I’m done - Even police mechanoids are prohibited from using lethal force, and I’ve removed that, and so many other moral constraints that they’re irrevocably damaged
No matter - They’re only machines
Their six inhuman faces gazed impassively down at me, as I fed the details of the planned assault to them via the terminal
“Protect the woman in the cage at all costs” I instructed “Kill everyone else in the building”
They turned, without so much as a word to march off down the street and around the corner towards the lockup, the construction mechanoid thudding on ahead to punch its way through the side door as I had directed it to, before the police swarmed in after it
What?
Did you honestly think I was going to do this myself!?
I may not matter much to anyone, but I value my own hide and what are machines for, if not to make our lives easier?
And besides: Needs must
With a whole planet full of resources and any number of dodgy contacts to utilise, if I hadn’t had to save my... damn it, Brittany’s hide, I’d probably have just nerve gassed the entire building, or better yet: Fucked off somewhere nice and not given a shit; but that’s not what happened, and it’s not how I remember it
What I remember are crushed skulls and mangled corpses. Limbs torn from bodies and blood soused absolutely everywhere.
Those men need to die in exactly the way I’m killing them; and what’s more, having seen their work: They fucking well deserve it!

The sound of gunfire and agonized screams greeted me as I rounded the corner at the top of the street a few minutes later.
Mercifully there wasn’t another soul in sight, so I loitered out of harm’s way, a little further down the street, waiting until the commotion had subsided, before finally pulling my gun out from within my jacket, and creeping stealthily into the building
It was even worse inside than I remember
The lockup looked like a set from one of those zombie apocalypse movies; you know: The ones where there are blood and body parts everywhere.
The place stank of blood and shit
As I moved through the smoky interior, the six mechanoids, now all heavily bullet scarred, eyed me suspiciously while I carefully counted the dead, only finally giving the machines the signal to stand down once I was happy they had killed all twelve of the men
I turned to step lightly over a pool of slowly congealing blood, and made my way towards the holding cages at the back of the lockup as, one by one, the mechanoids began drifting away, each making their way back to their real allotted tasks for the day, and a complete and utter shit storm when their overseers realised what had happened
She was there in one of the cages, drugged into unconsciousness and laid naked amid her own filth and the cooling pool of blood surrounding the ruined corpse on the floor beside the cage, her long black hair strewn messily around her
Katherine Swift
Brittany
Me
In spite of her circumstances and her filthy appearance, she looked at peace and utterly serene
Jay once told me that I look like an angel when I’m asleep
For a moment, the pistol I was holding felt almost unbearably heavy in my hand as I briefly wondered what would happen if I shot and killed her
“That would be a bad idea” Brittany whispered in my ear, making me jump
“You’ve got a fucking nerve” I snapped, wheeling to glower at her “Why couldn’t you sort your own shit out?”
“It suits us not to” Brittany shrugged and turned with a swish of her long blond hair to squat down next to the corpse on the floor, and slip the keys for the cage into one of the man's trouser pockets
“We killed Yori for you already” she continued, standing again and glancing over her shoulder at me “You didn’t need to meet him”
“Oh really?” I sneered, rolling my eyes “Some memories are too precious are they?”
“No” Brittany shook her head and turned to face me “You wouldn’t have been able to do it”
“Fuck’s sake” I muttered sullenly under my breath
“C’mon” she motioned to me with her hand “Let’s go get some breakfast; We know a great little place near here”
I glanced down at the woman laid prone in the cage
“Isn’t there anything else we need to do for her?” I asked
“No” Brittany smiled “We both turned out fine. She’ll wake up in seventeen and a half minutes, escape from here and then bribe her way onto the first shuttle offworld at Narita starport”
“The Blue Dwarf won’t even know what hit it” I murmured, slowly shaking my head
“Neither will the rest of the universe” Brittany smirked and stepped towards me to clap a friendly arm around my shoulders and pull me away “Let’s get breakfast”


<ooc>
And there's my effort for flashback week
Apologies for the length
</ooc>