Datalog: 26848.24 SF

The city was bathed in the soft blue glow of a young night, though 'young' is being optomistic. Older time measurements would have submitted the idea of "9PM," just after the hot sun had dipped below the horizon. This is meaningless here, where the planet makes a full rotation every fifteen Earth years. "Terminus" was the official name for the world, but the locals referred to it as "Half-ass," in reference to the planet's lack of mineral natural resources and badly scarred, unfinished-looking surface. The Therians, an ancient race of bipedal, two-and-a-quarter meter tall canines, drained any valuable or useful materials from the planet, millenia before humans had even begun to bang two rocks together, leaving the planet in its current form. Now, few Therians remained on this interstellar shithole. Most of the population were agricultural workers, some in service to one of the many galactic banks, put in debtors cryostasis whenever they were not working until they worked off their debt. The free farmers would simply drift from city to city, planting and harvesting while the sun shone over that area. This city and its surrounding hydro farms were inactive, most of the power offline. Small portions of the city still shone, bars, motels, the spaceport, but the city had less than twelve thousand active residents in it, down from closer to three million in the daytime. For now, only the occasional traveler or bounty hunter passed through, and the half-empty, omnipresently dusk town proved acceptable for illegal activities a-plenty.

...

The street was nearly empty. A drunk staggered out of a bar, the only building open on the darkened street. A cloaked figure passed the drunk, nearly knocking him down. The drunk began to protest, but a brief flash of light from the bar's holosign illuminated the face of the perceived aggressor. Vrede flashed a razor-sharp smile down at the drunk, towering over him by a good foot. She flashed a wolfish smile, and the man's curses died in his throat as he scampered into the gloom, looking back only once.

The Therian stepped into an alley and pulled out a hand-held extranet connection.

“Where is that shipment?” she breathed, tapping the screen.

Suddenly, the screen flashed twice, once red and once green. Vrede sighed as she took a small card from a pocket on the cloak and waved it next to the device. The screen printed out a number and flashed orange. A whirring was heard, followed by a small thump as a torpedo-shaped device embedded itself in the ground a couple of meters ahead. Vrede shoved the card back into the cloak and moved to the torpedo, moving her hands over the warm surface until she found a latch. It opened with a click and an electronic beep and she began to rummage inside of it. The contents were extracted and laid upon the ground, a full-body suit made out of a silky fabric, a small collection of various stimulants and a compound-plastic flask holding a thimbleful of synthesized body data in a fluid form. Vrede unbuttoned the cloak and let it fall to the ground, dark wings unfolding behind her naked body. Her fur was a dark indigo, soft as sin, and covering all of her body. Small, green markings were present around her wrists and ankles, as well as just above her breasts, slightly offset to where the heart should be. A strange eye was present on her hand, as well as on the back of her neck, almost hidden by her long hair. Her face, while slightly cat-like in structure, still bore the characteristics of a more wolfish origin, in teeth and eyes.

Vrede slipped the suit on, and it shrunk and grew until it fit like a second skin. Her wings folded back and then slipped into the suit, it resealing the areas left open to allow the wings to escape. A look of concentration crossed her face, and the wings were absorbed into her skin. Vrede grabbed the stims and held them above her head. A green tongue emerged from her mouth and scooped them out of the air a good twenty centimeters from her face. The taper suggested that it was even longer, probably approaching a meter in length. The tongue retracted, taking the stims with it. Vrede swallowed all of them, licking her lips. Next, she picked up the liquid. Twisting the seal, she brought it to the eye on her hand and it evaporated on contact with the air. The eye twitched, drawing the mist into itself. Vrede inhaled sharply from the sensory details she was bombarded with. All the information she needed about her target was now embedded in her brain, right down to his childhood memories.

Concentrating, she recalled where his current residence was. The foreign memory was pulled into her brain, and she climbed onto a building to get a better view of the city. There, she thought. An apartment block about five kilometers away, nearly across the entire city. Vrede's brow furrowed, and she began to dash in that direction, jumping across streets and the gaps between the rooftops. Ahead, she saw a solitary figure facing in the opposite direction of her approach. A soft red glow moved from his face to his shoulder as he leaned against the safety rail, electronic cigarette in hand. Vrede's smile became a grin, teeth etching her face with malice as she sprinted up to him. She jumped into the air, and flipped vertically, now facing downwards as she arced over the man. Her hand stretched out, catching the top of his head. She curled her legs, momentum pulling her into completing the flip, and brought the man's head down onto the railing with enough force to turn his face into bloody mist. She smirked as she felt his head cave in, then released it as she hit the ground and rolled back into a sprint before the still-lit cigarette hit the ground.

Ten minutes later, she arrived at the apartment block. Recalling the data, she identified the window in the small office of the target's flat, third from the right, top floor. A scan revealed three life forms inside, one confirmed as the primary target. She dashed towards the edge of her current vantage point, and threw herself off the side. Wings burst from her jumpsuit as she glided directly at the window, and at the midpoint of the leap, she rotated until her feet were pointing directly forward. The material in the suit solidified just before impact, but the shockwaves were still enough to make Vrede grimace upon impact. Polyglass shards exploded from the frame, evaporating upon exposure and leaving a silvery dust that hung in the air. Air currents from her motion pulled some of the residue into a trail behind her body, then rose off her as she stopped herself with the friction pads on her suit, leaving a trail of friction-torched pseudo-wood flooring.

Muffled voices came from the next room. With a tap on her wrist, the suit's neural net connected and enabled its sound enhancer just in time for her to hear the venomous click of a pistol being loaded. Moving quickly, she activated the friction pads on her hands and feet, then attached to the ceiling. Two men walked in half a second later, the taller with a field disruptor and the shorter with an energy pistol, both tense and ready to fire. “Oh, fuck,” wisely commented the taller upon seeing the broken window. Polyglass could take an aircar head-on without even cracking.

Vrede dropped down and walked up to the speaker. She grabbed his disruptor and pulled it to his chest, leaving the emitter pressed against his chin, then shoved her hand into his chest cavity between the ribs on his back. She found an organ and twisted, tearing something. The man screamed. The shorter turned and pointed his pistol at Vrede. Vrede gave a malicious, toothy smile and found the trigger on the disruptor, then pulled it. The tall man's head was atomized, leaving no residue other than the severed arteries at the base of the neck and the blood vessels on the back eighth of his skull that had avoided destruction. It would have been a clean cut if it wasn't for the veritable geyser of red that erupted from between the poor man's shoulders, even as his internal organs hemorrhaged from the rummaging Vrede was doing inside the man's torso. There was a snapping noise, and the ribs she had run her hand between snapped and fractured.

“Oh my god, no.” The short man said, disbelieving. His finger wasn't even on the trigger anymore. “Oh my go-”

He would have gone on further, but Vrede interrupted him by grabbing his mouth. He looked down at the hand which now had hold of his jaw, and was so surprised by her next action that he didn't even scream as she ripped the entire bottom of his face from its natural location. It came away messily, blood bloomed like red flowers at the tear. She had missed his jugular, but it didn't matter, he'd be dead soon anyway. She took the disruptor from the tall man's lifeless fingers and unloaded the core, ignoring the shorter man who had just noticed his missing jaw. He began to scream now, tongue flopping pointlessly with no support other than the neck it was barely attached to. He looked at Vrede pleadingly, but she was tinkering with the core. Something sparked, and the blue glow turned an ugly red.

“Well, would you look at you,” Vrede said, smiling, “You're terribly injured. If I were to let you live, it'd take more money than you'd ever earn to fix that jaw there, assuming you don't bleed out here and now. It'd be cruel not to put you down.”

Tears welled in the man's eyes, then broke and ran freely down his face, mixing with the gore from the tall man's wound. Vrede clicked her tongue grabbed the man's neck. She shoved the energy core down the hole in his face once concealed by his mouth, which now lay on the floor two meters away. He choked on it, and snot added itself to the ghastly mixture on his face. She calmly broke his legs at the pelvis and knee, then his arms at the elbow before walking out of the small room. There were two beeps, and the core exploded, strewing viscera throughout the little office.

A shot rang out from somewhere in the new room, and Vrede dived for cover behind a counter in the small kitchen attached to the larger living room. She grabbed a pan from the cabinet set into the counter, and used it as a mirror to see the origin of the round. A familiar face stared back at her from behind cover, or as familiar as a face in an implanted memory can be. The pan sang as another shot slammed into it, distorting the surface. Her suspicions were confirmed, he was using an ancient hammer and powder pistol. Vrede tossed the pan into the living room, and was rewarded by another metallic ring. Using her speed and the knowledge of the length of time it took the hammer to reset on the weapon, she threw herself over the counter and into the room, rolling behind a couch for cover in less than a second. Yet another retort from the shooter sounded. Too slow, thought Vrede.

She grabbed the bottom of the couch and hefted it at the shooter, the three hundred pound furniture serving as both an attack and a method of giving herself cover. Using the distraction, she dashed through a half-open door. She found herself in a bedroom. Vrede scanned the room for a weapon, and saw the distinctive shape of a rifle grip half-hidden under the bed. The touch of cold steel to the back of her neck stopped her from reaching for it, however.

“Don't move,” the gun's holder spat. “Motherfucker.”

Vrede smirked and released the tendrils from her back, grabbing the pistol from the man's hands. She stretched out her right hand and the tendrils dropped the gun into it.

"What in the fuck?" protested the man, voice cracking with surprise and fear.

Vrede turned slowly to face her target.

“Tommy,” Vrede stated calmly, “You are going to die.”

The man had recoiled from her after her tendrils had stolen his gun, but now he looked positively horrified, his jaw moving up and down as he sat down on the floor.

“N-no one calls me T-tommy,” he finally worked out, stuttering.

Vrede thought a moment, implanted memories surfacing. “Your mother did, if I remember correctly. Have you forgotten about your dear old mom, Tommy?” she questioned, mockingly.

He sobbed, and Vrede pulled the hammer back with a solid click.

"You'll have as much time as you could ever want to get to know her again, Tommy. My treat."

Vrede pulled the trigger, the bullet entering through the left eye and embedding itself in the brain. Thomas was dead before he hit the ground, but Vrede didn't care and emptied the clip into him anyway. If he hadn't decided to ego-stroke when he caught her, she would be dead. The Therian was livid at both the dead man and her carelessness.

She took a blood sample for identitiy confrimation and stormed back into the office. Gibs and and tissue splattered the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Blood ran along the seams in the flooring, breaking free of their eerily straight flow upon encountering chunks of gore blocking their path. Vrede stepped on a finger and ground it to mush before hopping out of the window. She glided to the ground and stormed off in the general direction of the spaceport. The night was still young, and would continue to be for another couple of months. Plenty of time to work off a bit of steam.