“Y’know, I wish this would go faster,” Tori comments, crossing her arms as she leans over the side of the cathedral as she listens to the debate over the comms. Her goggles are pulled over her eyes to block out the sun. If she fell now, she would make an absolutely fantastic splatter on the ground but she’s too good to fall. Liz knows that, but she’s still nervous about her standing so close to the edge. “It’s a bit boring just staring at these stupid guards. I wonder if I should spit on one of them…”

“So do I,” Jazmine says with a sigh, referring to the first comment, a few blocks away from the cathedral with a sigh, pulling at her plaid skirt. It’s her old school uniform - dress shirt, tie and all - from a private school in London (oh, how she misses London) that is currently at the cathedral to watch the debate so she has an excuse to be there. But she can wear her combat boots and leather jacket with her uniform instead of those radios Mary Jane shoes and a blazer - she couldn’t do that when she was in school. “I hate this stupid thing. I don’t even look like I’m still in school!”

“Well, you look about… twenty, more like nineteen. And you’re seventeen. So you should be in college, according to looks, and you should be in high school according to your actual age. And school uniforms are mandatory in every school in the world, even universities, so you have to wear it,” Liz explained rather matter of fact-ly.

“Freaking combination of church and state,” Jazmine mutters with a scowl.

“Well, hopefully, Gideon’s argument will go well and we’ll be one step closer to separation of church and state again,” Ellie says cheerfully, much happier than the rest of them, though that wasn’t exactly what they were getting paid for today.

“Do you see our mark anywhere?” Liz asks, trying to steer them back to the task at hand. They all had a very bad habit of getting off topic during missions.

“Eh, no… wait, American with blonde-ish hair and stubble? About, um... twenty five, maybe? Is that it?” she asks, looking up from her phone and slipping off her headphones, frowning at the fact she couldn’t listen to her music anymore.

“How do you know he’s American?” Tori asks, zooming in her goggles like binoculars (God, she hates almost everything about this almost apocalyptic state the world’s in but she absolutely adores the technology these days) and trying to pinpoint the mark.

“Who else wears cowboy boots?” Jazmine muttered as she pushes herself off the side of a coffee shop, walking towards the potential mark. “Henry Williams?” she asks, raising a thin eyebrow at him.

“Who wants to know?” he asks with a slight Southern accent. Yep, definitely American.

“You’re here for the exchange, yes? Now, just point me to Dubois and I’ll be on my way…”

“Wait a second doll-”she sent him a poisonous look at the name “-I was told we both have to take out this Lovins person.”

“Do not call me doll or I will break your nose. And I don’t think you want to tag along, it’ll be a bit messy…”

He gives her a small grin and laughs, which only made her angrier. The messier the funner, doll.”

“It’s ‘more fun’ not ‘funner’. And don’t call me doll,” she adds, grabbing his wrist and storming off in the direction of the cathedral.

“Would you rather me call you Brit instead?” he asks teasingly. “And where are we going?”

“No thanks, Cowboy,” she spits back. “And I hope you have a suit, because we’re going to church.”
-o-
Astrid watches from the back of the cathedral as Gideon claps at his opponent's counter-argument, which was rather good in her opinion. But as Adrian steps up onto the podium, she knows by his confident grin that their argument is going to be better.

They’ve been at it for a good fifteen minutes now, about how the church should be separate from the government or stay how it was, and how WRIG (World Religions and International Government) should be dismantled or funded further. It helps that Adrian is a genuine American citizen who can show patriotism for the Founding Fathers and their beliefs of separation of church and state.

But her eyes have been on the Fifth Chair the entire time. Sister Eva sits with a haughty expression as she watches Adrian and the opponent, a big wig politician, argue back and forth. There are Seven Chairs of WRIG - three for the largest governments (AKA most powerful): America, Russia and China - three for the most common religions: Islam, Christianity and Hindu, and, finally, one chair for the people. The Seven Chairs were located in Washington D.C., Moscow, Beijing, Jerusalem (for Islam), Paris (for Christianity; it would have been Vatican City but it was currently underwater due to the storms) and Varanasi (for Hinduism). There was no official chair, not like the floating Fifth Chair, for the people; they simply casted a vote that was then decided on by two representatives. The fact that there was only a vote and two representatives for the people of the entire world was ridiculous to Astrid, and that was one of the main points of Gideon and Adrian’s argument.

The whole concept of WRIG was a joke, to be honest; she had voiced that nearly a decade and a half ago. That was what had gotten her kicked out of French Parliament. She had apparently voiced it a bit too loudly.

A lot had changed since her time in Parliament, to be honest. Though technology, education, and clean water were more accessible to the rest of the world and technology itself was advancing at a breakneck speed, problems were cropping up to equal the solutions of the world’s previous troubles.

WRIG was getting more and more powerful and gaining more and more influence – the majority of countries were beginning to approve it and even support it (besides the ever stubborn America, of course). The Storms around the coast have picked up and had swallowed entire countries in the Mediterranean, Southern Asia, Scandinavia, and almost all of the island nations whole – and they were losing most of the American states around the Gulf of Mexico and most of South America, North Western Russia, and Southern Australia (oddly enough Africa and the Middle East were practically untouched compared to the rest of the world except for the receding coastline). And the same two or three companies are dominating the stock market and making it a huge monopoly, destroying small businesses and causing major unemployment worldwide. They were a hop, a skip, and a leap away from society’s collapse.

The buzzing of her ear yanks Astrid out of her thoughts like a Charlie Chaplin cane. “I found our mark, going in for the target, do you copy? Over?”

Astrid puts her hand over her mouth, pretending to cough. “I copy,” she mumbles back in one quick breath, and thanks the people who respond with ‘bless you’. She sees Gideon do something similar, and Adrian say “Yes, I hear you loud and clear,” to both his opponent's argument and Jazmine’s statement. The good thing about the new comms is that you didn’t have to speak into a microphone hidden in your ring or sleeve like the old days; the patch stuck on the user’s throat picked up any vocal cord vibrations and translated them into words.

She crosses one leg over the other, being mindful of her pencil skirt, and presses her lips together in a thin line. She hopes they can pull this off successfully, or else it might cause more harm than good if they get caught.

And like Tori always says, it’s only illegal if you get caught.

“Oh my God, what is wrong with you?!” Henry’s voice is more of a panicked shout than the whisper it’s supposed to be. They (they being Henry, and Jazmine, Tori’s still keeping watch on the roof) had just climbed through a window that Jazmine had broken very, very quietly and very, very carefully and nestled into the rafters of the cathedral, crouching between where the majestic looking arches meet the richly designed columns, feet sticking to the walls thanks to some fantastic cling-on pads that Liz whipped up in the lab and were stuck to their shoes with double sided tape. Sure, the tape could un-stick and they could fall from four stories up to their death and potentially get caught and arrested, but what’s life without a little risk?

“Shut up! And don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, we’re in church!” Jazmine hisses in a whisper, and turns back to her binoculars, her gaze locked on Sister Eva.

“What are you, Baptist?” he asks with an eye roll.

“Catholic,” she replies swiftly. It’s only because Astrid took her to mass every Sunday until she was twelve. “And you’re going to make someone look at us, or even worse, Sister Eva.”

“How do these things even work?” Henry asks, lifting his feet up and then putting them back down in awe.

“I wasn’t really listening when Liz told me, something along the lines of interlaying pads charged with static electricity that stick to the surface, they’re based on lizard toes or something like that,” Jazmine says absentmindedly. Ellie’s the one who’s good at science, not her.

“Great,” he huffed. “Going to fall to my death wearing lizard shoes.”

“Hush up Cowboy, and they’re gecko shoes,” she adds almost as an after-thought. “Tori, how are the guards?”

“Boring. Switched shifts six minutes and forty five seconds ago, standard Harrison-West pistols and the Captain has a sword. Or maybe he’s a doctor, they give people swords and hats when you get a doctorate in Finland…”

“Tori, focus,” Ellie chides over the comms. She and Liz had switched places a few minutes ago, since Liz had been driving all day and staring at the computer screens that monitored the comms was giving her a headache.

“Whatever. But- wait what the-” There's static, a loud crack, and shouting.

“Tori, what’s happening? Tori?” Jazmine’s eyes dart around the cathedral, making sure no one had seen her or Henry. But all eyes are on Adrian, who is currently making a counter argument that probably sounded riveting, but Jazmine was too concerned with Tori to pay attention. “Tori?”

Gideon pretends to cough and quickly asks, “What’s going on?”

“I’m good, I’m good. Almost got shot in the head, but I’m good.” Tori sounds a bit out of breath, and Jazmine can still hear shouting in the background. “The Captain shot at me, and they know I’m here.”

“WHAT?!” Oh, look, Liz is back. And now she probably has an even bigger headache than before.

“Yeah, they may or may not be chasing me right now…”

“Someone had to have tipped them off, Tori’s too good to be caught,” Liz says with a hint of despair in her voice.

“Well frick,” Jazmine muttered, running a hand through her hair. “Should I go along with the plan, speed it up, or what?”

“Just go straight to-” The sound of someone pounding on metal interrupts Liz.

“WRIG Special Forces, open up!” a voice shouts and Jazmine freezes.

‘Ellie’s in there,’ she thinks in horror, images of her sister being dragged out of the van and shot running through her head. “Liz, what do I do?”

“Phase two,” Liz responds calmly, the opposite of Jazmine’s panicky voice. “And do it quickly. I’ll handle the guards. Liz out.”

Jazmine sighs and Henry gives her a curious look. “What’s going on?” he asks, watching Jazmine open up her messenger bag and pull out a suitcase.

She takes off a chain around her neck - hanging from is what looks like a silver house key - and slides it into a keyhole between the two latches on the side of the briefcase. “You know how I mentioned how this was going to be a bit mess earlier?” she asks, turning the key in the lock, making it click.

“Yeah, why?” She flicks the two latches up to reveal a scope, and a matte black rifle nestled in a foam mold.

“This is the messy part.”
-o-
 The door of the van slides open to reveal a disheveled Liz and a bored Ellie who is playing on her phone - the computers and listening devices that Liz had set up earlier are thrown haphazardly into cardboard boxes labeled ‘BROKEN’, because if she’s found with unregistered technology, tech from the black market at that, she’ll be in a jail cell in seconds. They’re met by a handful of guards, their guns pointed directly at Liz and Ellie’s heads. Liz isn’t particularly worried though - Harrison West guns are infamous for malfunctioning.

The Captain - or at least who Liz assumes is the Captain due to his decorated uniform - pulls out his sword and points it as her throat. “What are you doing here?”

She raises an eyebrow in response and pushes the blade a few inches away from her with two fingers, being careful not to cut herself on the sharp edge. “Is it illegal to park on the street here? I didn’t see a sign.”

“You have stolen technology!” he exclaims, gesturing to the boxes. “We got an anonymous tip!” 

Ellie rolls her eyes in an ‘oh my god adults are so stupid’ matter that reminds Liz of Jazmine. “Of course it’s not ours. We fix other people’s computers, didn’t you see the sign on the side of the van?”

Liz is more concerned about the ‘anonymous tip’ part. She still doesn’t know who ratted them out...

The Captain squints suspiciously at them. “I’ll still need your names for a report.”

“I’m Eva Du Maurier, and this is my younger sister Beth.” Liz gestured to Ellie, who gives them a small grin. “Our uncle Tim owns the van and the business, we just work for him.”

“Alright,” the Captain grumbles, turning away to go back to the cathedral. Ellie and Liz release a pent up breath, but then the Captain turns around. “It says ‘Tony’s Electronics’ on the van, not Tim’s.”

Both Liz and Ellie’s eyes widen. “Frick,” Ellie swears and slams the van door shut. She hears the Captain pounding on the door as Liz climbs into the driver's seat and locks the doors. “Jazmine, we’ve been compromised,” she says into the comms as sits down in the passenger seat and Liz starts the van.

“Are you kidding me?” she growls. Ellie hears her sigh through her nose, and she imagines that Jazmine is rubbing her temple to prevent an oncoming migraine. “Tori and you guys? What is happening?”

“The guards mentioned something about an anonymous tip. Someone definitely knows what’s going on,” Liz says as she merges into traffic, ignoring the cries of ‘Halt!’ and ‘Police!’ from the guards.

“They’ll be chasing us soon,” Ellie mutters with a sigh. “Could this get any worse?”

“Well, about that…”

Jazmine adjusts the scope on the rifle. It’s a very nice Russian made sniper rifle, complete with a completely silent shot, night vision, and a targeting laser. Of course, she can’t use the laser, which would be a dead giveaway, so she settles on using the scope, which is like standing two inches away from the target.

“You never told me we were going to shoot anybody.” There’s a note of panic in Henry’s voice. Jazmine doesn’t even look away from the scope.

“What did you think I was gonna do? Take them into custody so that they get justice? No, this isn’t the freaking FBI. We’re mercenaries, not Americans,” she says with a scoff.

“I didn’t think we had to kill someone!” His voice is simultaneously getting both louder and higher, so Jazmine slams her foot down on his.

“Shut up. I have no desire to get caught and I will push you off the wall if I have to,” she hisses.

“I didn’t think you were bad enough to kill a nun!” he whisper-shrieks. That makes her turn around and give him an incredulous look.

“Nun? What are you smoking? Do you even know who Dubois is?” she asks.

“Eva Dubois, right?”

She hits her forehead with her palm. “No! Oh my gosh, you didn’t even research the target?! You- you-!”

“What?” he asks incredulously.

“Just watch,” she sighs, crouches down and aims the gun directly at the target’s neck. Her finger curls around the trigger and starts the mental countdown. One, two…

Three. She pulls the trigger and a small needle the size of a thumb nails shoots out of the barrel and straight into the target’s carotid. The opponent - John Dubois - falls to the ground, clutching his chest. Jazmine stands up and begins to put the rifle away; she doesn’t even need to check if he’s dead. She hasn’t missed a shot since she was five.

“That wasn’t a bullet.” It’s not a question - it’s a statement.

“Nope,” Jazmine says, popping the p and flipping open the latches of the suitcase. “Very, very tiny needle, the end’s dipped in a nice little poison my friend Madeline made, less than a drop in your blood and you’re dead within seconds from a ‘heart attack’.” She puts air quotes around the last two words and then carefully takes apart the rifle and sets the pieces in the foam. “Very potent, very quick, and deadly efficient.” She closes the case, locks it and places it into her messenger bag.

“Why Dubois? Why kill him?” Henry asks as they climb out through the small hole in the stain glass roof.

She merely shrugs and glances up at the sky. It’s night time now, and even though the pollution is too thick to see the stars, she can still see the moon shining bright against the midnight blue. “I don’t know. Maybe he ticked someone off. Maybe someone’s ticked off at him. Maybe he knew something he shouldn’t. Maybe he said something he shouldn’t. Maybe he cheated on his wife. Maybe his wife’s cheating on him. But that’s none of my business,” she added in a very Kermit the Frog manner. Minus the sweet tea. “I don’t ask, mostly because I don’t care. I do the job, take the cash, and go. I’m not sure want to know either. Knowledge is power, and I don’t want too much power. The powerful ones always end up dead. I just have known so that they fear me, but not enough that I’m a threat.”

“Interesting.” They both lapse into comfortable silence and stare up at the sky; the smog filled, starless, cloudless sky, with only a single full moon and a few satellites to act as the light.

 “Hey! Get off the roof!” someone shouts in angry French. Both their heads go to the source of the voice - a group of policemen, one of them with a bullhorn.

“Ugh, rude,” Jazmine mutters with an eye roll, then turns to Henry. “Well, see ya later Cowboy.” She kisses his cheek and it leaves a bright red lipstick print. She tries to rub it off with her thumb, but it just ends up as a red smudge, like he’s only blushing on half of his face, and both of them laugh.

“Just leave it,” he says, still laughing.

She just giggles in response. “Okay.” She backs away and turns around, sprints in the other direction and vaults over to the next roof.

“Au revoir darling!” she shouts and throws him a small wink and he salutes her mockingly with two fingers.

Henry stares as she hops from building to building and momentarily ponders when he’ll meet her again, but then lets out a high pitched yelp when a bullet zooms past his head and embeds itself into the side of the cathedral, and remembers that the police are below him and very angry with him. He runs towards the edge of the building - the opposite way Jazmine had went - begins to shimmy down the fire escape and hopes that the police have bad aim.

Little does he know, it’s the end of the first of many meetings.