Noir Fan Fiction ❯ Black Market ❯ Chapter 2

Three days later, Kirika pushed the apartment door shut with a quiet click. As she slipped out of her shoes she heard Mireille's voice from further in.

 

“Is that you?”

 

“Yes,” Kirika replied, dropping her purse onto a sofa and heading for where Mireille was.

 

Kirika found her at her computer, leaning back in her chair with a resigned look on her face. “Another one?” Kirika asked, frowning slightly as she peered into the fridge - more precisely, at the gap in the door rack where her bottle of orange juice was meant to be.

 

“Want some juice?” Mireille asked from behind her, avoiding the question, “It's nice stuff.”

 

Shutting the fridge door, Kirika took the bottle from Mireille's hand and swirled what was left of its contents slightly. She peered over Mireille's shoulder at the screen. “Another job offer.”

 

“Yeah,” Mireille sighed.

 

“You're afraid to reject this one aren't you?” Kirika asked with a smile, her mind going back to the result of Mireille rejecting her last job offer.

 

“When did you sprout a sense of humour?” Mireille cast the Japanese girl a sidelong look.

 

Kirika finished what little remained of her juice and shrugged. Hunting around for the cap, she became aware that Mireille had taken something from the drawer of the desk and placed it next to the laptop. Kirika dropped the capped bottle into the bin, before taking a seat opposite to the blonde Frenchwoman. She watched as Mireille unwrapped the black object from the red silk cloth.

 

Mireille stared at her gun blankly, reading the stampings and tracing the finger grooves of the grip with her eyes.

 

“Who's the target?” Kirika asked softly.

 

After another few moments of silence, Mireille looked up, “Gabriel Cavus. He's a…what?”

 

Kirika had paled a few shades. “He runs a coffee shop near the middle of Paris. He's…my manager.”

 

Mireille laughed but there was no humour in it. She sat back in her chair with a sigh. “He's a major player in the underworld, an arms distributor.”

 

“So he works with Ritsuko?” Kirika leaned forward, for the moment pushing aside the thought that their next target was her employer.

 

“On occasion, maybe. You're thinking of getting more info from her?”

 

Kirika nodded slightly. “But the offer should have enough, shouldn't it?”

 

“It does.” Mireille sighed. “They've given us a couple of days to reply. Hmmph, they even apologised for bringing us back into business.”

 

Kirika sat up again, “What?”

 

“They apologised for bringing…us…” Mireille stopped herself mid sentence.

 

“How could they have known we were inactive? Alphonse's offer was the first we'd had since last year and the last we've had for the last three weeks,” Kirika said, speaking the question that had just entered Mireille's mind.

 

The two of them sat in silence for a few tense moments.

 

“We'll leave the matter for now,” Mireille said finally. “Give it a few days, I'll see what I can dig up.”

 

“I'll see what I can do as well,” Kirika agreed, although Mireille sensed that the girl was hesitant about accepting this job.

 

With good reason, Mireille thought. “We'll give it a few days,” she repeated, staring at her gun reflexively. “We'll decide then…”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Mireille groaned wearily, running her fingers through her hair and walking over to the small kitchen. Four hours of trawling through information on the computer had drained much of her energy, energy she hoped that coffee would restore. Setting some water to boil and reaching into an overhead cupboard, Mireille glanced out the window, before doing a quick double take, frozen to the spot. She cursed softly. She could have sworn there was someone watching through the window from the balcony across the street, but now it was empty. Still, her years as an assassin made the thought linger in her mind. Rattling the near empty coffee jar, Mireille sighed.

 

“Barely enough for little old me,” she murmured, shaking what was left into a cup before dropping the jar into the bin. Again, something outside the window caught the edge of her vision, and her head snapped up, eyes scanning the façade of the building opposite. The screaming kettle broke her concentration, and Mireille looked away with a frown.

 

She sat with her back to the window, sipping her coffee slowly. She had placed the chrome kettle on the table to her left, and glanced at it occasionally in an effort to spot anything behind her. Mireille smiled at the memory of Kirika suggesting they buy a chrome kettle for this exact reason.

 

“Come on,” Mireille whispered, “Appear by the window…”

 

She finished her coffee, the mysterious figure having not appeared at all.

 

“Knew it,” she murmured as she put the empty cup in the sink and returned to her computer. The coffee had helped, but for how long she didn't know.

 

Sitting back down, Mireille groaned wearily at the thought of another multiple and probably fruitless hours of information trawling. Just as she reached for the keyboard, Mireille felt two sharp pins in the side of her neck before a large and painful electrical shock coursed through her body. She convulsed, falling sideways out of the chair, unconscious before she hit the floor…

 

With a shrug, the figure put the stun gun back into concealment under the dull blue cover-all cape, giving the blonde woman a foot poke to be sure. Breaking in had been pathetically easy, especially given that one half of Noir was inside.

 

“Only human,” the figure smiled, before stooping slightly to inspect the laptop sitting on the table. An elegant hand emerged from the folds of the cape, scrolling down and skim reading the text on the screen. “She's still way off. But, just to be certain…”

 

Shutting down the computer, the intruder flipped over the computer, sighing happily as she realised that the hard drive was easily removable, before ejecting it from the computer and putting into another of her larger pockets.

 

The door shut with a quiet click as she left…

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Mireille.”

 

Opening her eyes at the voice, Mireille sat up slowly, nursing the side of her neck. The spot throbbed. She looked to her left, realising that Kirika - kneeling down next to her - had been the voice that had woken her up. Kirika breathed a deep sigh of relief as she sat back on her heels, concern for her friend still written across her face.

 

“What happened, Mireille?”

 

Mireille thought for a moment, struggling to remember through her sleep fogged state what had happened. She suddenly recalled the nature of the throbbing ache in her neck and groaned.

 

“Stun gun,” she said, getting her feet shakily, “Someone must have broken in. Damn it.”

 

The first thing she noticed was her laptop flipped over so the bottom was showing, its hard drive gone. Mireille swore, dropping into a chair.

 

“What do we do now?” Kirika asked carefully, sitting opposite Mireille.

 

“I don't know,” Mireille moaned wearily, holding her head in her hands, “I didn't have any leads to start with so either way we're still on square one.” She looked up, “How about your side of things?”

 

“Gabriel? Nothing unusual,” Kirika shrugged, “He didn't show up at work today but that's normal.”

 

“And that girl who was shot?”

 

“Monique? You don't think she has anything to do with it do you?”

 

Mireille sighed for what felt like the thousandth time in the last few days, cupping her face in her palms, “Anything can happen.”

 

There was a slight pause. “She's due back at work next week. Her recovery has been fast, to say the least.”

 

“Expected to work so soon after being shot? Your boss is pretty ruthless.”

 

Kirika said nothing, instead taking a paper bag from her jacket pocket and putting it on the table.

 

“Are you still carrying that thing?” Mireille was incredulous.

 

Still Kirika said nothing and Mireille sat back wit ha look of resignation. She knew what this was - Kirika was deep in thought about something or other, and it was best not to intrude…

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Snapping awake, Mireille slid out from under her blanket and crossed the room silently. She opened the door just wide enough for her to slip through, closing it again with a tiny click. Mireille looked to her right in the moonlight gloom, nodding at Kirika as she emerged cautiously from her own room.

 

She noticed too, Mireille thought, Good.

 

Still wearing nothing but the white silk chemise she had been sleeping in, Mireille slinked forwards to where her gun was sitting on the table. Kirika, wearing a pale blue tank top and grey shorts, already had her Beretta in hand, and was covering the archway that led to the kitchen.

 

Mireille motioned with the muzzle of her Walther for Kirika to move forward, before moving to enter the kitchen from the other side. She blinked as her bare feet made the sudden transition from carpet to hard, cold tile, and gripped her gun a little tighter. Counting the steps to the corner, Mireille snapped out, her aim swinging up and panning around the kitchen. Kirika appeared a heartbeat later, her eyes scanning the kitchen, her aim blind-covering the corridor. She only looked for a moment before returning her stare to where her gun was pointing. Flicking Mireille a glance, she stalked forward again. Mireille nodded, creeping out of the kitchen doorway and heading to the other end of the apartment. Both of them had noticed the open window, and Mireille still felt the cool autumn breeze on her legs.

 

There was nothing at the back of the apartment save for a small storeroom, but Mireille was wary of anything. Kirika had a slightly more difficult job at the apartment's front, with the main room and front door, but she'd picked it.

 

Like she doesn't trust me to do a good enough job, Mireille thought cynically as she approached the locked storeroom door.

 

At least, it was supposed to be locked. The door had been forced open and half closed again. In hindsight, the noise from the door breaking had probably been what had awoken both Mireille and Kirika. A dull, swaying yellow light - the light bulb hanging from the ceiling of the room - glowed from the inside, and Mireille braced herself. Edging forwards, she was just about to nudge open the door with the muzzle of her gun before she realised that there were no signs of movement inside.

 

A sudden noise behind her prompted Mireille to whirl around on the spot, but before the muscles in her arm could tense a hand wrapped itself around her gun hand's wrist and slammed it into the wall with enough force to slacken the grip. Mireille was jerked forward, catching a fleeting glimpse of her attacker before a fast moving foot connected with the side of her head. Mireille grunted involuntarily as she rebounded hard off the wall, landing in a heap on the floor. Her vision swirled, her brain still reeling from the spontaneity of the attack. There was a whisper of a breeze as the figure slipped away, and Kirika was crouched down next to Mireille a moment later, covering the corridor the wraith had fled into.

 

“This is insane,” Mireille hissed, “We live here and yet this person seems to know the place better than we do!”

 

“Stay here,” Kirika whispered, making off at a fast but stealthy pace down the unlit corridor - this one linked back to where the bedroom doors were. Mireille reached out to grab her friend but she had disappeared already.

 

“Damn it Kirika!” Mireille grabbed her gun, and followed, although she noted with some irritation that she wasn't walking in an entirely straight line.

 

Kirika came to the end, and pressed her body against the wall, holding her gun to her face and taking a deep breath. If she were to fire, the entire floor of the building would be woken up, and keeping things quiet was high on Kirika's list of priorities. It was not a wide corridor, so Kirika mused with the thought that someone could hold themselves off the floor by bracing their limbs on either wall.

 

She turned around, dropping her aim to head height as something distinctly human sounding dropped to the floor. Kirika's eyes widened as she recognised the person's face, and opened her mouth to say something, but all that came out was a gagging wheeze. She sank to her knees, dropping her gun in favour of trying to force her diaphragm to move again.

 

The figure bent down and picked up the Beretta, toying with it for a moment before something hard pressed into the small of her back.

 

“Drop it,” Mireille growled. “Now.”

 

“Mireille…” Kirika gasped.

 

Mireille looked at her friend for a moment, and immediately regretted it. With her attention turned away and her brain already foggy, there was no way for her to react when the cape garbed figure turned and struck out in the one movement. The heavy backhand again knocked Mireille's gun from her grip, and a rising kick to the chin snapped her head back. Her legs flew out from under her, such was the force of the blow, and as she landed on her back, winded, she wondered if her neck was broken. Mireille heard a voice as she lolled around helplessly.

 

“A slight disappointment,” the voice, young, female and French was saying, “But, perhaps enough to take down Gabriel.”

 

“You…” Mireille tried to say. It sounded like `glue'. She tried again, “Client,” she managed to say before her head swam again. Did a kick to the head really do that much to cognitive function?

 

The voice giggled, “There are more important things to be concerned with.”

 

“Why are you doing this,” Kirika said.

 

The figure turned with a grim smile. “You talk too much.” She kneeled down.

 

“But…” Kirika's next sentence was cut short, as a wad of cloth was jammed into her mouth. A long piece of duct tape sealed the cloth in. She mewled through the gag.

 

“Better,” the figure nodded.

 

Kirika reached up to rip away the tape, but found her wrists in the intruder's grip. “You don't learn, do you?” Kirika grunted as she tried to pull free. “Isabella?”

 

Craning her head around to look behind her, Kirika watched as another shadowy figure stepped from around the corner. She kicked out weakly as the figure knelt down, but the futile gesture only resulted in both her ankles seized in the newcomer's steely grasp. Pulling a rope from under her cloak, the second intruder deftly bound Kirika's feet while the first worked on her hands. Kirika bucked violently, but both intruders were leaning their weight onto her.

 

Mireille struggled to her feet, “Bastards.” She'd recovered her gun, and now fought to find the strength to lift it. Why isn't my body moving?

 

“The ether seems to finally be working,” the first intruder said to the second, Isabella.

 

Ether dust? Mireille thought, What ether?

 

“Your room was too easy to get into,” Isabella giggled, “And you didn't even notice the little silver incense pot at the foot of your bed.” The pulled another item from under the cloak. Mireille noted that it was small and silver, but all other details were lost as she sank back to her knees.

 

“As I said,” the first intruder continued, kneeling in front of Mireille, “Your skills will be enough to kill Gabriel by yourself. However, I'll be needing Kirika.” She giggled again, and Mireille felt the overwhelming urge to reach out and throttle her, “As encouragement.”

 

Isabella lifted Kirika into her arms with far too much ease for a woman to have managed, and began walking towards the door of the apartment. Her companion cast Mireille a final grin before following her out.

 

With a heave, Mireille managed to bring her gun to bear at the retreating girl's back. “Fire,” she hissed angrily at her failing body, “Fire, god damn it!”

 

The gun made a dull thump as it fell from her hand, and Mireille swore softly before her eyes drooped shut and her world spiralled into darkness.