Nothing. I get up in the morning and meet with Scarlet.

The night before was spent getting ready for the moment you stepped outside the next morning. After breakfast and a brief meeting, you departed with Scarlet to hit the first contract, which took you about an hour outside of town. You couldn’t help but notice she was different. Something in her eyes was missing. When you ran into her, she was smoking and staring blankly into the snow.

“You ready?” You asked her, careful not to be intrusive when you introduced yourself to her bubble. Without looking back, she flicks her cigarette away in the snow and nods.

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

The walk was done in silence. It gave you time to consider your options and the events that took place to put you exactly where you are now. It was off-putting, in some ways, to know that your entire life had changed because you decided to stop and stay at Tiny’s Tavern.

You huddled behind Scarlet as she peered down at a building that looked nearly abandoned. Her (now) red hair was tucked into her beanie. It would have stuck out like a red target against the snow, even as it melted.

Seasonally speaking, it was too thick in winter to listen to birds or active wildlife around you. Instead, the silence of the snow surrounded you as it fell from the trees and dripped off in melt. There wasn’t anything else making noise, so it’s easy to drift into the mindset of a contractor once you put aside the personal feelings of life on the back burner.

Your eye bounced to Scarlet as she took a few steps back and regrouped with you. Her eyes bore into yours before she pulled down on her scarf. “No one is home,” she tells you. “Or they’re very good at making neither noise nor movement in a place where they think no one knows where they are.”

“So,” you inquire. “What’s your plan?”

“We could pull a slick government trick and set the place on fire with tear gas, regardless of who’s inside,” Scarlet waits for you to comment, but when you don’t, so chases herself. “Let’s pop inside and see what the hold-up is. These guys might just be off doing their own thing for all we know.”

“Perhaps we should wait longer and see if they return. Even if it’s just one guy who’s gone out, we’ll see him before he gets inside.”

“No,” she says. “If anyone is inside, we’ll kill them and wait for their buddies to come back instead. They’ll be walking right into an ambush.”

“I won’t argue,” you tell Scarlet. “I’m here to follow you and to complete your orders.”

Scarlet stares deep at you. “Do you have anything else to offer?”

“I gave you my suggestion already,” you remind her.

“And it sucked,” she counters. “I was wondering if you had another idea.”

“At the moment,” you considered. “No.”

You slide down a few hills and dive into a few snow-filled ditches. You strained your ears to listen for any activity outside of your tight circle of creeping, but there’s nothing new to admire. You also peel your eyes at everything that moves, but much like before, all you see is the forest.

“This is too easy,” you comment quietly. “Something is wrong, Scarlet.”

“You’re rusty,” Scarlets says, too relaxed considering the situation. Something WAS wrong, and every experienced bone in your body was telling you to turn around and scout the area more thoroughly. You were keyholed on the building, and it was impossible to stray from it. “No reason for us to be suspected.”

You got closer to the building. You saw the imprints of shoes from the treeline in which you were spying before, but now that you were closer, you could see that they were generally fresh. Depending on how you viewed this discovery, this was good.

Scarlet tells you to loop around the building and to meet her on the other side. So you do just that.

On the other end, Scarlet seems indifferent. “Nothing,” you say in a whisper.

“It would seem so,” she whispers back, glancing at the structure you’ve been stalking for a better half of 20 minutes now.

There was no more beating around the bush. You weren’t exactly avoiding going inside, but you still had that buzzing in the back of your head that told you going inside wasn’t going to be as smooth as Scarlet was indirectly suggesting it was going to be. You shifted your weight and tried to peer inside one of the boarded windows. Of course, this task wouldn’t be easy if you could simply look inside. “I can’t see shit.”

“I figured you wouldn’t,” Scarlet grumbles.

“Any ideas on how to get inside without getting caught?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think you’re going to like any of them,” Scarlet says knowingly. “I was just going to bust down the front door and shoot whoever yells. How do you like that?”

“You’re kidding.”

“No,” she confirms with you. “There’s no easy way around it, and I’d like to have enough daylight on our shoulders to not just go through this entire place but to also make it back to town before nightfall, maybe have a drink or two to celebrate our first official contract together as coworkers.”

There was nothing to consider here with Scarlet. You nodded at her and then followed her to the front door, where you strongly hoped no one would be returning and that whoever was inside wasn’t ready for any trouble. Scarlet had you bring a few of the ARS’s weapons as your primary firearms. Long rifles, really, and you felt uncomfortable going inside with the 1970-era M16-type rifles.

Scarlet feels the door with her gloved hand, but she quickly discards her gloves and feels the door again. She twists the handle, finding it unlocked. Again, that buzz in the back of your head rings. This wasn’t right. You are amazed that Scarlet isn’t having these same feelings.

“Well,” Scarlet steps back from the door and shoulders the rifle. “The door feels like it’s unlocked.”

You eye the door and then Scarlet. Her eyes are at the entrance, but she does shoot an occasional glance at the treeline, probably suspecting someone is returning or watching at this point. You shoulder your rifle, too, and lick your lips. “This is weird, Scarlet.” You say it; you feel your stomach churn. You look at the tree line and start to feel the sensation of being watched.

Scarlet disregards your comment, however. She reaches for the door and twists the knob again, this time enough to nearly open the door. She looks at you and sighs. “I’ll open the door, and we’ll peek in. Mind the brightness. It’ll be dark for us, and we’ll be against the sun.”

“Shoot first. Question later?” You ask, but Scarlet shakes her head at you. Shoot first. Questions never. No one on the other side of this door is suspected to be left alive. Scarlet takes one deep breath and twists the door knob before pushing the door all the way open.

You press the barrel of your rifle on the doorway and peer in, seeing someone immediately. You squeeze the trigger and unleash a burst of bullets into the figure.

Scarlet does the same on her end, but she’s much more aggressive with her shooting and expands her entire magazine.

She retracts a few steps back, dumping her spent magazine while reaching for another. There’s no return fire, and more shockingly, there’s no one else inside shouting. You move, arching around the door as you clear everything you can see.

Scarlet grabs you with her left arm and exhales. “I shot three guys; how many did you get?”

“Just one. I couldn’t see anyone else.”

“That’s 4,” Scarlet says. “It’s quiet in there. I don’t suppose you saw anything while moving over here, did you?”

“No,” you say. “I don’t hear anyone moving in there either. I think we got all of them.”

“I’m sure the rest are outside with us then.”

“Comforting,” you say, now wanting to move inside.

“You should reload,” she says, pulling you back. “I’ll go in first.”

“Why?”

Scarlet carefully swaps places with you, and you get behind her, reloading as she does so. “I’m smaller than you,” she says.

Scarlet arches around, giving the responsibility of her side. She confirms your clearing, and you clear your muzzle away from the door as she moves in. You follow her shortly after, spotting a cluster of corpses on the floor. “That’s that, then.”

You step in. You don’t smell it at first, but as you are entire, there is the presence of weed and alcohol. “Don’t drink and guard, I guess.”

“Always stay sharp,” Scarlet says, slinging her rifle around her shoulder. She wastes no time going through everything. You hadn’t run drills or practiced much with Scarlet, but you’re glad to see that you’ve both worked with teams before and that you can actually manage such tasks without hiccups. At least when dealing with dirt-heads.

“Good job, Scarlet,” You smile at her. She waves you off.

“No better than you,” Scarlet says but then pauses for a moment, remembering the current kill count. “I’m sure you would have done just as good as me if we changed places.”

You have no doubt in your mind that you would have. In fact, since you’re more familiar with using long rifles, you might have done the same amount of work with less expended ammo.

Scarlet begins digging through the body’s in an attempt to find papers or receipts of sales– notes on tasks or further evidence of them tampering with the ARS activity in the area, but finds nothing of the sort.

Her smile, which was at a point visible, quickly faded from her face. “Hope we dusted the right guys.”

“You’re not finding anything?” You ask, going over to a table. You see needles, baggies of powder, and then pictures of women. You pick up one picture and look at it. It’s a blonde girl with her mouth full of cock.

Scarlet says something in the background, but you disregard it as something that isn’t sensible to the contract. Scarlet materializes from behind you and plucks the picture of your hand. She goes over the photo a few times, examining it with an uncomfortable expression. “Ugh. Imagine having to use images like this to get off on. This is absolutely disgraceful.”

“Which part of that offends you so much?” You take back the Polaroid and take a closer look at it. You bring it closer to your eyes. For a brief moment, you think you’ve seen this girl at some point, then you remember Scarlet is with you and give it back to her.

She tears the picture in half and throws it to the floor. “Nothing about it offends me, I just couldn’t imagine selling my body for profit like that. How could you be so much of a whore that you’d willingly sell naked pictures of yourself to strangers and sickos?” Scarlet searches the table for similar items but doesn’t find anything else.

“Well, in the girl’s defense, it didn’t exactly look like she was enjoying it. Perhaps that was blackmail or forced intercourse,” your eyes find the picture on the floor; even as it’s torn in half, you spot the price tag listed in a marker on the dirty white backing. You then look up at Scarlet and spit, her eyebrows raised. Her lips curved in a “knowing” smile. You sigh. “No matter, I still stand behind what I said. The price tag doesn’t change anything. I meant overall, you know?”

Scarlet shrugs on the matter. “Girls shouldn’t do stupid things that would allow them to be blackmailed. The same goes for guys, too. Just so we’re clear.”

“I think girls, or guys you prefer, are free to take advantage of whatever market there is as long as they’re willing enough to spend money on it.”

Scarlet shifts her hips, looking at you disapprovingly. “Really? Do you really think that’s a right of humankind? That endorses a rather crude business, a business that sells sex like it’s nothing to think about or to regard as something special.”

She tries to shrug you off dismissively, but then she nods. You can see the gears in her head turning as she considers what to tell you, but ultimately, she gives up her point. “We’ll talk about it later. Until then, we should just focus on what matters.”

You know she’s right, but wish you could have lingered more on the subject to dissect more of Scarlet’s mind. She cranes her neck, sighing loudly as she scans the table, feathering through all the contents on the table, probably idly and without any reason. “What should we do next?”

Scarlet sniffs before she rubs her nose with the back of her hand. Her breath comes out in a transparent mist. Her eyes drone over to the corpses and then the doorway where all the sunlight is spilling in. The slits from the boards were the other light source allowing the room to be ignited. Suddenly, she wrinkles her nose and blows all the oxygen from her lungs like she has been holding her breath. “Actually, let's drag the bodies out and torch the place.”

“That’ll certainly send a message to whomever these guys are with,” you reach for the legs of one of the dead and start tugging him out, legs-first. “You can start the fire, I’ll take care of our friends.”

“That’s too kind of you,” Scarlet smirks. “But, I’ll have this place looking like a bonfire in less than 3 minutes.”

“No complaints from me,” you tell Scarlet.

Within 5 minutes, you have the bodies displayed outside and the den on fire. It was, as Scarlet promised. A bonfire of sorts.

Scarlet nods in approval. Her mouth is curved in a smile that speaks pride. She adjusts the straps of her pack and then steps back. “And look at that. We’re leaving before dark, too. How much better could it get after this? Maybe a drink or two to celebrate? How does that sound to you?”