Fiona kept the back doors of the van opened so she could watch Elise chat with the hologram of Sachmilli Cuervo. They stood a few hundred meters away, past the trees from where the bat attacked just minutes previously. She struggled to make sense of the old man's movement and body language.

  He was going to be a problem for her, Rubin, and for Dimitris. And she couldn't stop thinking about his damn bird. It frightened Fiona much more so than even the necrotic bat.

  What did the Nightwing know?

  "She really got to you, huh?" Getrod asked.

  Fiona turned back to him.

  "Huh?"

  He nodded towards her hands. She held a self-sealable gauze.

  "You're jittery like a lanceolate leaf. And you have that dilated, faraway look in your eyes."

  Fiona frowned, biting at her bottom lip.

  "It's not just Elise. That whole ordeal was fucked-up. And... I fucked up."

  She slapped his knee and put the Nightwing out of her mind.

  "Pull that wave of hair back and try to hold still," Fiona asked as she spread out the gauze.

  She just now noticed the gory mess of an ear Gertrod had left, and her hand shook once more.

  Though self-sealable, with her palsy she still managed to get a quarter of the gauze flipped in the wrong direction.

  "?Qué porquería!" Fiona cursed at herself. What a mess! She dug into her purse for a file, and she used it to fold the gauze in place. "I suck at this, but don't be too alarmed, Gertrod. Elise is a nurse with a ton of battlefield experience. She just wants me to clean it out. Shit. I forgot to clean it. Hold on."

  Fiona thought about her fingers touching the damaged flesh and dermal tissue and cringed on the inside.

  There had to be another way. An idea came to her mind.

  Casually maneuvering around Gertrod, Fiona crawled to the front driver seat and pulled out a medkit from the undercarriage. It was a conventional setup of simple medical devices. Elise kept specialist kits in the van as well, but Fiona had no idea what purpose most of the items had.

  Inside the kit, a pressurized tube of peroxide foam caught her notice.

  "Hold still," she requested once again as she administered the foam into the gauze surface and rubbed it in. It seeped into the cloth. It caused Gertrod to seethe in pain as she pressed her thumb down against the gauze.

  "Shouldn't you remove the gauze first?" Gertrod asked.

  She let her breath out in exasperation. "I don't really know the answer to that! My boo-boos have been few and far between. So, I have little practical experience with all of this, to be honest."

  Gertrod glanced uncomfortably back at her before he spoke.

  "Hey. Just sit back and chill if you need a moment. Hand me the kit. I need something to deal with it—the pain, I mean. It’s strange how it feels now."

  His voice cracked, sounding of dry thirst.

  Fiona flopped in the front seat, dug in her little cooler for a 250 ml Toro ámbar energy drink, and handed it to Gertrod.

  "There are local anesthetic treatments in those other bags, but I have no idea how much would be too much to give you. You'll find some painkillers in that kit you have in your hand."

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  He nodded, indicating he had it from there.

  As if an inspiration came to her, Fiona leaned back and grabbed a Toro ámbar for herself. Perhaps, that is what she needed to get over her present anxious feeling---a higher frequency in her brain activity could stabilize her emotionally.

  In a quick self-assessment, Fiona reminded herself that, though a spaz at gory medical matters, she was highly competent at her specialities: database administration and social engineering. She had an odd knack for getting her way.

  It got her noticed; it earned a promotion to Deputy Director Rubin Estes's operations team.

  Fiona tipped the can to toast herself before swallowing the contents whole. She suppressed an unladylike belch that spared Gertrod any unpleasantness.

  You're doing fantastic.

  Shrug it off. Don't let this little fuck-up set the pace for everything else.

  Elise was going to give her shit about that half-ass gauze hanging on Gertrod's ear, but that was irrelevant in the greater scheme.

  What mattered was contacting Rubin as soon as she got the chance and warning him that they still ran a risk of being exposed if Elise joined Sachmilli to sniff around the Los Cazadores operation back in downtown Vida Escondida.

  Behind her, a boot smacked against a plate as it lifted up into the van from the step-rail of the backdoor. Fiona recognized its tap as the cherry wood outsole on Elise's pair of Noras.

  With awkward deliberation, Fiona turned her head around and feigned a lopsided smile that submissively read, 'Please don't judge me too harshly.'

  Elise's eyes narrowed on the gauze on Gertrod's ear as he bowed his head silently, then she glanced at Fiona with a glare.

  Fiona flinched, and it wasn't entirely an act this time.

  "Stay in the van," Fiona mockingly repeated in a low tone.

  She sat in the driver's seat, pretending to be busy at work on her Extenza Personal Assistant as Elise helped Gertrod climb up the ramp that led up an entranceway into the Vida y Esperanza Clinic.

  Stealthily, she texted a message to Deputy Director Rubin Estes.

  Urgent! She wrote. I'm live wiring you in two minutes when everything is clear.

  Elise's cybernetic eye could potentially notice an audio signal going out as it would need to be boosted to full amplitude so it could penetrate through the parking garage.

  Fortunately, that would not be a problem for the text message. She discovered a low-frequency relay service used for EMS dispatch connecting every medical facility in Vida Escondida. With the dispatch constantly busy, her text-based warning would slip through the chatter unnoticed.

  Elise and Gertrod disappeared inside the clinic. Fiona glared at the double doors, dipped into her father's native Guaraní, and cursed, "Joder cula, maldito imbécil!" Fucking asshole, fucking imbecile!

  ùltimos Días used Spanish exclusively. She had grown rusty in the indigenous tongue and now mixed its words together with Spanish reflexively.

  Finally she could relax. Fiona hit the speaker mode on the Extenza PA, and she made the call.

  Rubin picked up and answered, "She dressed you down, huh?"

  It took a second, but Fiona understood. "You saw everything? Do you have a spotter?"

  "Yup. He is up in the open market, up on a rooftop covering those kiosks." Rubin suddenly laughed. He was in an exceptional mood. "I like how you monkey wrench. You threw that bitch a curveball."

  Fiona gulped. He really thinks I accomplished all of that on purpose!

  Now for the art of social hacking. She could get away with spinning bullshit on the spot.

  "No sweat. I was getting bored just standing there listening to her go on and on. There was really no reason to wait around for del Alma-Gris to finish that job, but Luna Claro made sport of it. So smug. It made me feel like shaking things up."

  No immediate response from Rubin meant he was weighing how they would respond to the new threat.

  Fiona continued on. "Montes Gato, I take it you are already aware of our developing situation."

  Fiona had the receiver wired for extraordinary sensitivity, read by an AI sound interpreter. It deduced Rubin was in communication with another party, and he was viewing a video feed.

  The interpreter picked up on someone speaking in English. What the hell? She would have to review the analysis later, but for now Rubin commanded her attention.

  He finally answered.

  "The spotter even got a recording between Luna Claro and Sachmilli Cuervo. I'm going to need you to meet me at our usual rendezvous at 3 AM. Listen carefully: new room number, 2E5."

  Fiona got a bad feeling.

  Why the change-up? The old number held much sentimental value for Fiona.

  "What's wrong with our love nest?" She asked to poke into Rubin's emotional state. Was there something he was not telling her?

  Being kept in the dark did not make her feel safer—quite the opposite.

  "Someone threw a brick in the window. Most likely it is just a jilted lover seeing the cheater's car parked out front. It happens. Hey, talking of lovers..."

  Fiona scowled. "Is this about that bitch? You know I am hating her right now."

  Rubin put an emphatically commanding tone in his delivery, though he tried to play it off as a casual matter.

  "I need you to be extra horny with Luna Claro tonight. Personally, I love what you did to get her twisted up in a knot, but my profiler believes she is putting some emotional distance between the two of you."

  Fiona let out a heavy sigh. "I'll do this for you, Montes Gato. For you, anything."

  He chuckled at the drama she tried to pull off.

  "Patience, my darling. You won't have to suffer the dragon lady much longer."