The Refugee Sentinel Read Free

grinned at her. “Good afternoon and welcome to the Olympic Hotel, Ma’am.”
    “I have a reservation for six weeks,” she said. “The President’s Suite.”
    “Certainly, Ma’am. And what name is the reservation under?”
    “My name is Li-Mei. Li-Mei Gao,” she said and signed the checkin paperwork. She was annoyed by the rate of twenty thousand dollars per night but had no alternative if a room with running water was to be in the books. It was what it was and she chose to think about Vigna’s glorious capture.
    She hadn’t assassinated him all by herself, Taxi’s spirit had guided her even before she arrived to this wretched city. Her telemetry slate had lit up in unison with the plastic voice of the Alaska Airlines stewardess welcoming all Cincinnati passengers to Seattle and warning them to watch out for bags that may have shifted during the flight.
    On the tablet, Vigna’s holographic image had turned orange, an indication he was less than a mile away. The plane had shaken to a final standstill, she had gotten up and elbowed her way along the center aisle, ignoring the looks of frustration from the passengers she stomped past. She kept glancing at the slate’s soothing orange as she squirmed by people and bags. She had turned her phone off at takeoff like the rest of the cattle in the main cabin, but was done following useless flight rules. Not when she sat in the deep plane guts, otherwise known as Seat 21E, with an orange-colored target blinking in her tablet’s crosshairs.
    She had researched Vigna like any other target. The man was average: a taxi driver, but also impressive – a grandfather of the youngest High-Potential in the world. Killing Vigna would be of average difficulty but she welcomed an average target. She had used the last nine months to assassinate fifty military officers across the former countries of Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. They were non-commissioned targets she killed off protocol because of a promise she had given to Taxi.
    Going back to her Vigna target, the sole complication was that Seattle was going to close its airport in a day or two and remove the one reliable spot for her to locate a taxi-driver. After he had appeared as a marker on her tablet, his difficulty had gone down to one out of ten. And she had turned out to be right: Mr. Vigna had died on schedule and as expected.
    She looked up at the receptionist. “I want to order hot spring water for a bath.”
    “I’m afraid, we don’t offer spring water for bathing purposes, Ma’am.”
    “Then what I’ve heard, about the Olympic being Seattle’s best hotel, is a lie.”
    “We pride ourselves on our reputation, but the nature of this request is,” he stammered, “out of scope at the moment.”
    “Out of scope? Both sea-borders are dealing with the same floods.”
    “Ma’am, more than half of Seattle is flooded as I’m cert—”
    “Spare me the drama. If you can’t do this,” she paused for effect, “I won’t set foot in your one-star bungalow again.”
    “Let me check with my manager, please.” He disappeared behind a wall divider and returned after a moment with her card key. She guessed the manager must have calculated her probability to survive Defiance Day and derived her customer lifetime value. “Good news. We can indeed accommodate your request, Ms. Gao. However, this resource comes with an unfortunate extra charge.”
    “Money is not a consideration.”
    “If I may, hot spring water delivery of this volume would cost five hundred thousand dollars.”
    “I’ll give you another fifty thousand if you deliver in the next fifteen minutes.” She headed for her room, done tolerating him.
    Half an hour later, Li-Mei had undressed and slipped her hairless body in the tub. She shuddered with pleasure as the hot water covered her surprised skin. Her head dipped under the surface and the ceiling danced blurry in front of her water-filtered eyes. She exhaled, watching the bubbles race to