An Assassin and Her Genie Take Out the Trash

Lawrence’s body slumped forward and to the left as a bullet passed through the back of his skull and one of the empty cans still sitting upright on the corner of the table, no spatter residue made contact with the laptop.

His limp and lifeless body turned in the swivel chair he was sitting in, then fell out of it, landing face-first into the dark and onto the cold, tiled floor of his kitchen.

Blood began to pool around his assailant's feet as it quickly drained from the corpse.

“Target eliminated.” The woman said softly, her features obscured by the darkness around her.

“Well done.” Came a static-masked voice from the small communication device within her inner ear. “Finish up there, and then report back to the rendezvous location. Zeta and her Master will meet you at the extraction site in exactly twenty-four hours.”

“Zeta, sir?”

“Correct.”

“... Understood.”

As the woman turned Lawrence’s chair and carefully sat down on its worn and dirty cushion, the light from the laptop’s screen revealed her tall slender figure, which was wrapped up in a bodysuit from the neck down that appeared to be made of a cloth-like, dark, and midnight-pink fabric.

Once the woman was settled, she reached down and slid the silenced black handgun into thin holster on her right calf, then brought her attention to the computer running a software with the ability to manipulate reality itself.

As expected, she found herself locked out of Lawrence's account, which would’ve kept a detailed history of everything he’d changed in the short period of time he was in possession of the program.

‘Input User’s Full Name:____________’, was in basic bright green text displayed over a solid black background.

Master PC refused to let the accounts of deceased individuals be accessed by anyone at all, but also removed any password restrictions on alterations that may have been in place by a user who was no longer among the living.

In other words, the logged-out screen told her that the person she assassinated wasn’t some kind of clone of the original that was being used as a possible decoy, he was the genuine user.

Kill confirmed.

Still, she needed to discover and undo whatever Lawrence had done to the world, no matter what the scale of the changes were.

It’s a good thing that she had a bit of help on that end of the situation.

“Alright, Omie. You’re up.”

The woman blinked, and her big green eyes lit up with a bright pink upon reopening, the black pupils in their centers now gone.

The serious and driven expression on her angelic face shifted along with her eye-color, softening up instantly as an eager smile broke out across her matte-black-painted lips.

“Finally!” She giggled, running a hand through the long, now-pink bangs that hung down over her left eye. The rest of her short black hair was practically invisible in the darkness behind her. “It’s about time the boys gave us another field assignment, as easy as this one was. I was actually starting to think we found the program’s last copy when they shipped us off to Berlin three months ago.”

As she spoke, her glowing eyes were actively scanning the keyboard. Her gaze danced around as she examined every key that had ever been pressed, viewing the history in reverse at a staggering pace.

“Aside from that disaster, even you have to admit, the organization has been working overtime on tracking down users. This guy discovered the email containing the program, what, thirty minutes before we showed up?”

“Fair enough.” She shrugged. “We _were _busy last year, I guess it makes sense that there aren’t as many of them as there used to be... All things considering.”

Frowning, she glanced down at where Lawrence’s body lay for only a split-second.

“That, and the remaining users have likely been flying pretty low under the radar ever since the Pillar of Duty stepped up his game.”

“Game...” The woman mumbled to herself. “That word keeps showing up in the patterns of what this creep was typing. I can’t tell if he had some kind of ‘grand plan’ in mind for what he was going to do to the city, or if he was just aiming for pure chaos. Either way, this is astoundingly intricate for a first-time user.”

“So? He’s not the first idiot-savant that we’ve ever-”

“Trix, this isn’t good.” A look of horror swept over the woman’s face. “Holy shit…”

“Calm down. What’s the problem?”

“Problems, plural.”

“I assumed as much. Start with the most urgent.”

*Click...*

“... Well, somehow this guy knew we were coming, for one.” She said, her voice shaky as she watched a poorly-drawn, animated clown run across the bottom display of the monitor. It was laughing in a disturbing and high-pitched cackle, and it was wearing what appeared to be a thick and lumpy gray vest with a glowing number three in the center, and a lit fuse sticking out of its side.

“Omie…”

*Beep…*

“Two, he’s sealed the room with a barrier that I don't think even I can break through.” She chuckled nervously with wide eyes as she firmly placed her hands over her ears in dismay, watching the number three become two.

“Shit! We can only handle versions up to one-point-six! Why did the brass even send us if they had that Cerberus Unit on standby?!”

“We probably weren't the only ones to underestimate this psycho.”

*Beep…*

“What about the explosion’s magnitude?”

“That's the third thing, he wasn’t specific. We’re rolling the dice on this one.” She said as a bright and shimmering pink aura began to appear around every inch of her body.

*Beeee-*