It's night

As innocuous as her presence tends to be, you know that you've gotta keep her at an arms length. She is the only person you know without an ego or personal code. She can be bought by anyone and thus is the least trustworthy with any information at all. Staying with her and chatting, would only hurt you in the long run. If it's only five miles, you should be able to get there well before morning. You check the time on her phone. Just past midnight. Yeah, five miles is maybe an hour's walk under these conditions. You ask her if she wants you to help her find her hotel on the map. She agrees and you key it in.

Ten mintues later you're walking in the same direction. Turns out. Her hotel is just outside of your neighborhood. Upscale place just away the airport. You suppress a sigh and try to keep the topic off of you (Selfnote: Never do it again) as much as possible. You can fake it a lot of the time but lying to a pro is still tough. Especially one who knows Grey's Anatomy like the back of her hand and could paralyze you with her pinky.

Somehow you get onto the topic of men. She's talking about how she likes to guess what she'll find on them when they're dead. You're listening and trying not to remember what she said about her explanation of torturing people the most efficient way possible.

This is getting awkward. Like, really, awkward. What do you do?

 

Change the subject.​

 

To what?

 

Grab her face and kiss her forcefully. Freak her out, run away as fast as you can, then keep running.

 

To about how you think you see your house and should head there right away.​

 

You have got to get out of here. If you spend another minute with this girl, they'll be cleaning up the contents of your stomach from these very streets tomorrow. How does she talk about such gruesome things with a big fat grin on her face? You're no stranger to blood and guts yourself and even like the color of the little reddish plume that issues from your targets, but there is most definitely a limit and she crossed that one when she described how she fed a man his own leg muscles for a month before telling him.

You can't really think of a good way to end the conversation. You're looking around as frantically as you can without her noticing and see nothing. No good signage to talk over, no interesting homeless people to poke fun at. NOTHING. (Selfnote: Never talk to her alone.) She's about to start on about the results of a particularly nasty intestinal surgery she managed to do with the lid of a soup can and a ballpoint pen. You look to her and back to your surroundings.

Fuck everything.

You go with what you know best. You lean in, tell her that she looks pretty when she's talking about killing people and go for it. You don't really remember all that much of it, but you do remember that her lips were soft and that she didn't kiss back. (Selfnote: DO NOT TRY AGAIN) When you pull away she's staring at you like you've got leprosy in the middle ages. You simply flip your hair and casually inform her that you think you see your house. Then you're off.

Running. Running. Running. Running. Running. Not stopping. Running. Not slowing down. Running. Not jogging. Running. You keep going at full tilt without looking back for what feels like a full and solid ten minutes. You're not the fastest in the world, but you know that you must have covered some distance. You slow up your pace enough to turn off into a sidestreet and collapse for a moment, your breaths heaving in your lungs and your heart pounding in your ears. You look to see if she followed you. No sign of her. You know the general direction to keep going and after you feel appropriately rested, you starting going again off the main street so as to avoid her catching up.

After another hour and a slight detour off course you're standing in front of your apartment building. Oh yes. There it is. That great bastion of youness and wonder. That perfect place for you to just lie down and be alone with yourself for just a-- where are your keys? What did you do with your keys?

 

You were a fool and left them in your other pants pocket.

 

you forgot you used them to pleasure your anus and left them up there.

 

Thoroughly check your current pants and underwear for them. Check under the welcome mat, if you have one. If they aren't there, you probably left them in another pair of pants. Break in.​

 

You're no stranger to breaking and entering, as a matter of fact, you've done it to get into this very apartment in the past. But you don't much like squeezing things that ought not be squeezed so tightly through a window or ventilation shaft. So you'd much prefer to not have to. You search your pockets again. You shirt. Your bra? Panties? Okay, nothing. You jump up and down a few times to see if you shake anything loose. Nope. Not a thing. You must have dropped them at an earlier part of your trip. So your way in is...

[] Door.
[] Window.

 

Did you check the door to see if you even remembered to lock it? Otherwise, it looks like the window is your true calling. Unless you want to have a go at trying to use your lockpicking skills.​

 

check front door first, then try to pick the locks. If that doesn't work, check out the windows. Failing that, cry lots.

 

Spoiler

You check the front door. It's unlocked. Ummm, well, that's new. You were pretty sure you locked it... those are your keys on the kitchen table. You set the trap at least and it seems to be in order. Bloody hell, you're off your game today/yesterday. No matter, all seems to be in order. No people hiding in your home. None of your personal items gone. Pretty much nothing different. Good at least you have that. You lock the door and strip to naught but your knickers and...

[] Sleep.
[] Get drunk and go bowling.

 

Sleep your cute ass off.​

 

Sleep .

 

You've already done enough sleeping to last you a week. India is a big place and you need to find one person in all this rigmarole. Nothing to it but to do it. You step off the plane about ten minutes after you wake up and spend another hour in customs despite bringing basically nothing. Well, you've gotten used to that part of the job. Waiting for other people. You're basically a really well paid waiter. You have to get the chef (the hostage taker/mark/actual chef) to give you the food (the hostage/services/actual food) so you can take it back to the dining party(hostage's loved ones/employer/actual dining party.) It's really simple. When you say it that way at least. It helps to relieve you of the stresses that certain details bring on when you say it that way.

This time the detail is that you're finding a particularly difficult to find person. In fact, part of her MO is that people don't meet her so much as chat with her online and send money to a certain location then sit tight and watch the news. It's really weird how someone can be so secretive. Weirder that they can be so secretive and still be so frequently hired. Most people want something for proof or some kind of face to face. But not with the girl you're after.

Girl is a bit generous. She looks like a high schooler in the blurred pictures they managed to scrounge up for you, but apparently she's already thirty. Weird. You also know that no one knows exactly how she kills people. Well, no one that hasn't worked with her directly. Regardless, you need her to get this job done. So you make a few calls about her. Nothing. You send a few e-mails. Nothing. You're used to this. Most people would call your next course of action nothing short of retarded. Well, sucks to suck, because you always make it work. You go to a fortune teller on the side of the street and recite the words of the last fortune cookie you opened in question form. The haggard old man looks at you like you're nuts and then tells you to go to the head doctor. Head doctor, huh? Welp, looks like she's in the hospital. You're not one for superstition, but this works about as well as any other form of information gathering when you're at a dead end.

You look up a registry of hospitals in the area and head over to the closest one. You tell them that you fell off a bike and hit your head and think you're about to die. They take you to the ER and run some tests. They get made at you for lying but not before you see her. Bingo. Your luck is the real deal today. You pay them extra to shut them up and walk out. That's when you borrow a shift off a janitor by finishing up his week's wages on the spot and go back in for a look around. The hospital is a relatively upscale place. It's in the nice part of town at least, you could tell before from how they treated you when you said you were dying. only rich hospitals fall for that shit. You look pretty much everywhere you can without being noticed and don't see much of her. But through process of elimination, she must be working in the OR or the labs on the first floor.

That's all you really need to know. The janitor will probably be fine with you covering the whole day if you want to look around some more. But then again, you've got most of what you want. What do you do?

 

Let's try the OR.​

 

OR I guess .

 

You try to get closer to the OR and see if it's open. Nope. Seems some poor sap is getting cut on by a murderer. No hurry though. You can wait her out. You are in no hurry at all.

Two hours later. Anytime now, she has to end her day at some point. You do another round so you don't look suspicious.

Two more hours and you're still waiting for that light to go out about the OR door. You consider getting lunch but decide that you need to see her again at least and confirm that she's the one you're looking for.

Two more hours later. Jesus woman, can it be that hard to decide if you want them dead or alive?

TWO MORE HOURS LATER. Okay, it's been a whole work day. Does it look like you were planning on waiting here all day?

TWO MORE HOURS LATER. Okay, the light's out. You try to look casual, like there's nothing wrong. They walk out with a slab of meat on a stretcher, face is covered at least. There she isn't. Where'd she go? Did you miss a change or something? There was only one other place. Was your intuition wrong this time? So many questions. Well, you're done for the day. You need to...

[] Find a place to sleep tonight.
[] Find a place to drink tonight.

 

Find a place to drink. For some reason, drinking always leads to having somewhere to sleep.