Zoey was in the middle of a set of pull-ups when her phone buzzed on the bench below her. She ignored it. Her arms burned in a satisfying way. The phone buzzed again. And again. Three tis in a row ant it wasn't a text.
Zoey dropped from the bar and picked it up. Kali's na on the screen.
"Yeah?"
"I found sothing." Kali got straight to it.
"For my mom?"
"Possibly. I have a contact who reached out after hearing I was looking for high-end healing objects. He says he has sothing called a Rebirth Fetus."
Zoey sat down on the bench. "That sounds gross."
"It is. It's a magji tool shaped like a blood-red fetus. Disturbingly realistic. When placed on the injured person, it integrates with their body and essentially restarts their entire system. Organs, blood, mahna pathways, everything. It doesn't just heal the damage, it rebuilds the person from the ground up into a healthier state than they were before the injury."
Zoey's grip tightened on her phone.
"Where is it?"
"Aydaho. Held by a magjistar nad Baxter Rudd. He's a... difficult person, from what my contact tells ."
"Difficult how?"
"The kind of difficult where he has no friends, no allies, and no one willing to associate with him. He's been socially exiled by every magjistar in his local branch. My contact warned
that approaching him would be unpleasant."
"I don't care if he's the worst person on the planet. Does he have it or not?"
"He has it. He's also willing to negotiate."
"Then I'm going." Zoey was already thinking about the flight.
"Zoey." Kali's voice carried the faintest edge of caution. "My contact also ntioned that Baxter's terms for parting with the Rebirth Fetus are not financial. He wants a service perford. I don't have the details, but given his reputation and personality, be prepared for sothing ugly."
"I’ll handle it."
"I know you can.” A pause. "Safe travels."
"Thanks, Kali."
The line went dead. Zoey stared at her phone for a few seconds before pulling up a flight search. Aydaho. She'd never been. Didn't know a single thing about the place besides what she'd heard in passing, which was basically nothing. Just so state that existed sowhere out there in the chunk of Arika she'd never bothered to think about.
There was a flight leaving tonight at 9 PM. Three hours from now. She bought the ticket without thinking twice. Window seat because she liked leaning her head against the wall and zoning out.
Zoey texted Bruce.
Going out of state for a magji thing. Might be gone for a bit. I'll check in. Tell Mom I love her.
The reply ca in under a minute.
Be safe. I'll let her know. Everett says good luck.
Zoey pocketed her phone, grabbed her bag, and left the gym.
The airport was the usual ss it always was. People dragging luggage, kids screaming in the terminal, the sll of overpriced food wafting from every direction. Zoey navigated through it all with her hood up and her head down. Even with her fa, airports were one of those places where people were too focused on their flights to notice anybody else. If she was lucky.
She made it through security, found her gate, and boarded first class. She found her window seat, sat down, buckled in, pulled her hood tighter, and closed her eyes.
"Well, isn't this like totally a crazy coincidence?"
Zoey's eyes opened. Slowly.
Tiffany was sitting in the seat next to her. Purple hair pulled into a loose ponytail, her greatsword nowhere visible but definitely sowhere close. She had a bag of gummy bears in her lap and was smiling at Zoey.
"You're in my seat." Zoey knew for a fact that the seat next to her was empty when she bought her ticket. She checked. Flying next to strangers for hours was not sothing she enjoyed.
"I'm in my seat, actually." Tiffany held up her boarding pass. Seat 14B. Right next to Zoey's 14A.
"I literally just bought my ticket three hours ago."
"Mmhm."
"And you sohow found out which flight, which seat, and bought the one next to
in that window?"
Tiffany popped a gummy bear into her mouth. "I'm a Grade-A Assassin for a reason, Zoey."
Zoey pressed her head against the window and sighed. She didn't tell Tiffany to leave. She didn't ask her why she was here. She didn't even bother with the obvious question of how she'd tracked her this quickly. There was no point. Tiffany operated at her own pace.
"Want a gummy bear?" Tiffany offered the bag.
"No."
"They're the sour kind."
"... Gim so."
Tiffany shook so into Zoey's palm with the satisfaction of soone who'd won a small but important victory. Zoey tossed them into her mouth and chewed while staring out the window at the tarmac. The sourness hit her tongue and she smiled. She stopped making faces at sour candy when she was a little kid. She’s a sour goblin.
"So, where are we going?" Tiffany asked as the plane started taxiing.
"Aydaho."
"Fun! What's in Aydaho?"
"A guy with sothing I need for my mom."
The playfulness in Tiffany's expression dimd slightly. She'd been around Zoey enough to know about Alicia's condition. She'd been there when her mom got her throat slit. She knew what it ant when Zoey ntioned her mom in that particular tone.
"Okay." Tiffany nodded once. "I'm here to help."
Zoey glanced at her.
"I didn't ask you to co."
"You didn't ask
not to co either."
"Because I didn't know you were coming."
"Exactly." Tiffany smiled and made a face as she ate another gummy bear, obviously not liking it.
Zoey turned back to the window as the plane lifted off the ground. The city shrank below her, lights blurring into clusters and then into nothing as clouds swallowed the view.
They landed in Aydaho at midnight local ti. The airport was small compared to what Zoey was used to. One terminal, a handful of gates, the kind of place where the baggage claim was just a single carousel and the rental car counter was staffed by one tired-looking woman watching a show on her phone.
Tiffany stretched her arms over her head and yawned. "I've never been here before. Is it always this... empty?"
"It's midnight."
"Right."
Zoey pulled out her phone and checked the address Kali had sent her. Baxter Rudd lived in a town about forty minutes from the airport. The kind of place that probably had one grocery store and a gas station and not much else.
They rented a car because Zoey needed to work on her driving skills. Tiffany called shotgun despite being the only other person and spent the drive scrolling through her phone, occasionally showing Zoey thirst posts about her that she didn't want to see while she was driving. She was very flattered but now wasn’t the ti.
"Seventeen million views on the fake glove touch clip alone," Tiffany reported. "The comnts are really split. So people think you're the greatest villain in sports history, and so people think you should be arrested."
"I've been arrested before."
"For real?"
"By magjistars."
"That's so cool."
"It wasn't." She lost soone important because of it…
The GPS led them through stretches of dark highway bordered by nothing. Flat land, scattered trees, the occasional set of headlights coming from the opposite direction. Zoey was used to the density and noise of her city. This kind of open emptiness was different.
The GPS announced their arrival, and Zoey pulled the car to the side of a narrow road. There was no house visible from here. Just a dirt path leading off the main road into a cluster of trees. No mailbox, no address marker, no sign that anyone lived back there at all.
"Are we doing this tonight?" Tiffany peered down the dark path.
Zoey checked the ti. 12:47 AM.
"Tomorrow. Let's find a hotel."
"Oh good. I was going to pretend to be fine with walking down that creepy path at one in the morning, but I'm really glad you said that."
"A Grade-A assassin is afraid of the dark?"
"Sotis. When I’m working, I get in like the work mindset. I don’t know how to explain it but like yeah, it's different. Like right now I’m a totally super cute and regular girl."
‘Regular… Is it sad that she could pass for normal better than we can despite her being literally insane?’ Inner Zoey questioned.
‘Don’t think about it. It’s shaful.’
Zoey pulled back onto the road and drove until they found a motel about ten minutes back the way they ca. It was the kind of place with a neon sign that only half worked and a front desk clerk who looked like he'd been sitting in that chair since the building was constructed. He barely glanced at them when they walked in.
They got a room with two beds. Small, clean enough, a television from a decade ago mounted on a dresser. Tiffany imdiately claid the bed closer to the door.
"Assassin habit," she explained. "Always between the target and the exit."
"I'm the target?"
"You're the person I'm preying on. Sa position, different motivation." Tiffany flopped onto the bed face-first and made a sound of satisfaction.
Zoey sat on the edge of hers and pulled out her phone. She opened her ssages and typed one to Kali.
Landed. eting him tomorrow.
Kali's response was imdiate, which ant she was also awake at this hour.
Good. Keep your wits about you. Don’t let yourself get manipulated into doing sothing you wouldn’t just because he has that. We can always find sothing else, even if it might take more ti.
Alright.
Zoey actually listened to her words. She locked her phone, laid back on the bed, and stared at the ceiling.
…
The dirt path in daylight wasn't as ominous as it looked at night, but it wasn't inviting either. Overgrown, narrow, the trees pressing in from both sides like they were trying to reclaim the trail for themselves. Zoey walked with her hands in the pockets of her hoodie while Tiffany happily skipped alongside her.
After about five minutes of walking, the trees opened up into a clearing. A house sat in the middle of it. "House" was a generous word. It was a squat, weathered structure that looked like it had been built by soone who understood the basics of construction but didn't care enough to do any of it well. The roof sagged on one side. The porch had a noticeable lean. Two of the front windows were covered with sothing from the inside. But the place was maintained enough that soone clearly lived here and gave just enough of a shit to keep it from collapsing entirely.
A mahna barrier surrounded the property. Weak but present. Zoey could feel it pressing against her skin like a faint static charge. It was the kind of barrier that would let the person inside know that soone was approaching.
The front door opened before they reached the porch.
Baxter Rudd was not what Zoey expected.
She wasn't sure what she expected. Maybe so haggard old man living in filth and bitterness. Soone whose outside matched the ugly she'd been told lived on the inside. But Baxter was young. Older than her, maybe mid-twenties, but young. Average height, average build, brown hair that needed a cut, and clothes that were clean but worn to the point where they'd clearly been his only set for a while. His face might have been normal looking if it wasn’t twisted with hatred.
"You're my rcenary?" He asked.
"That’s ." Zoey guessed she was.
"Did that woman send you?"
"No, I’m here for myself."
Baxter's eyes slid from Zoey to Tiffany.
"Who's she?"
"A friend."
"I didn't say you could bring anyone."
"I didn't ask."
Baxter stared at her for a long mont. Then he stepped aside and gestured them in with a flick of his head. "Fine. Co in. Don't touch anything."
The inside of the house matched the outside. Not filthy, but stripped down to the absolute minimum a person needed to survive. A kitchen area with a single pot on the stove and two cans of sothing on the counter. A living room that was really just a couch, a table, and a lamp. No decorations, no photos, no personal touches whatsoever. The place didn't look lived in so much as occupied. Like a man camping in a house he happened to find.
Baxter dropped himself into the only chair in the room, a recliner with a tear in the arm that had been patched with duct tape. He didn't offer them a seat, so Zoey leaned against the wall and Tiffany perched on the arm of the couch.
"So," Baxter started, his eyes fixed on Zoey. "You need the Rebirth Fetus."
"Yes."
"Do you know what it does?"
"I got the gist of it."
"Did she explain how rare it is? Because I need you to understand that what you're asking
to part with isn't sothing I can replace. There isn't another one. Not in this state, probably not in this country, probably not on this side of the planet. I got this thing by chance, during a case that went sideways in ways I'm not going to explain to you. It's mine and I don't want to sell it and I don't need money."
"What do you need?" Zoey cut to it.
His face twisted with hatred. A look that reminded her of Hayato before she…
"There are people back in Brimton. The magji city I used to live in before I ended up in this shithole." His voice was steady but Zoey could hear the strain underneath, like a rope pulled tight. "They took everything from . My rank, my reputation, my life in the community. The woman I loved cheated on
with my best friend and then both of them paraded it around like I was the punchline of a joke. When I said sothing about it, they beat
until I couldn't stand. And when I healed up and tried to go back to living my life, I found out that nobody would look at , talk to , work with , or vouch for . I'm a B-Grade magjistar stuck at C-Grade because not a single person in this whole fucking state will sign off on my advancent."
His fingers were digging into the arms of the recliner. The duct tape patch creaked under the pressure.
"So I moved out here. Because what else was I going to do? Start over in a new community and pretend none of it happened? I tried that. Sohow they found out and poisoned the well before I could even settle in. Twice. These people won't be satisfied until I'm dead or gone."
Zoey waited.
"I want them to suffer." The rope in his voice snapped. His eyes were bright and wet but nothing fell. "I don't want them dead. I want them crippled. I want their legs broken, their arms broken, I want them crawling on the ground looking up at
the way I had to look up at them when they were kicking my ribs in. I want them to beg
to stop and I want to tell them no. I want them to live the rest of their lives knowing exactly what they did and exactly what it cost them."
The room was very quiet. Zoey heard the faint creak of the house settling. Tiffany hadn't moved from her spot on the couch arm.
"And I want to be there when it happens. I want to see it. I want to hear it. I'm coming with you."
Baxter leaned back in his recliner and the fury drained out of his face like water down a sink. What was left was hollow and tired.
"That's my price. You do this for , you can have the Rebirth Fetus. All it costs is a little temporary pain for people who deserve a whole lot worse."
Zoey looked at him for a long mont. She thought about Alicia in the clinic. The tube. The IV. The beeping. The way her dark skin had gone ashen against white sheets.
Then she thought about what Baxter was asking. Cripple a group of magjistars. Break their bones. Let this bitter, miserable man watch and feel sothing for the first ti in however long he'd been rotting out here alone.
It wasn't a hard decision.
"How many people?" Zoey asked.
Baxter's eyes flickered with sothing. Not hope. Sothing hungrier.
"Six."
"When do we leave?"
Baxter blinked. He clearly expected more resistance, more questions, more moral hand-wringing. He got none of it.
"Whenever you're ready," he said.
"Then tomorrow." Zoey pushed off the wall. "Get your shit together and et us at the motel on Route 7 by eight in the morning."
She was already walking toward the door when Baxter called out.
"You're not going to ask if they deserve it?"
Zoey stopped with her hand on the door fra. She didn't turn around.
"I don't care if they do."
The door closed behind her and Tiffany as they walked back down the dirt path toward the car. The morning sun was filtering through the trees, casting long shadows across the overgrown trail. Neither of them spoke until they were back on the road.
"He's a funny little kookie guy, huh?" Tiffany said from the passenger seat, picking at a fresh bag of gummy bears she'd pulled from sowhere.
"Yeah."
"The people he's talking about are probably pieces of shit too."
"Probably."
"So we're doing it?"
"’I’m doing it."
Tiffany nodded. She held out the gummy bear bag. Zoey didn’t take any. They weren’t the sour kind. Tiffany noticed this and promised only to buy sour candies in the future. Even if her tongue hated sour candy.
They drove in silence toward the motel.
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