•~2~•

The woman positioned herself at the foot of the bed, overlooking Elmer, who had just begun choking. His eyes rode backwards, as he severely coughed and held his neck tight, hoping to get some air into his lungs. But it was no use.

"I just injected highly concentrated amphetamine into you, a drug which once overdosed, causes a heart attack. You probably have about five minutes to live." The woman said.

She walked over to bedside cupboard, picked up the glass, which still had some scotch and coca cola in it, and poured its content on Elmer's crotch, before letting the glass drop to the floor.

"Nobody will find you till tomorrow morning, when you're reservation expires and the hotel needs you to evacuate." She said, as she walked to the television and switched it on. "And when they do, the police will sign it off as a natural death, while drinking alcohol and soda, which sometimes causes heart attacks, and watching TV."

The woman then returned to her position at the foot of the bed. "Since no one saw me coming in with you, and I took care to hide my face from the security cameras, no one will connect me to you. The only person that knows I ever met you is your driver, and I doubt he would want to tell his former boss's wife that he was cheating on her the night before he died."

Elmer was lying on his tummy, with an unbearable pain his chest, and still wondering what the hell was going on. He did understand that the woman was trying to kill him, though. But why? He couldn't figure out a reason. Neither could he speak, so he strained to look into her eyes, searching for an answer, but he saw none there. Her eyes held no emotion. No anger. No joy. Not even coldness. He looked again, this time more closely. He was wrong. Her eyes did hold an emotion, but just a little of it. It seemed like... Pity?

The woman slowly knelt down, to be at the same level as Elmer, and gazed into his eyes.

"It's a shame really." She said. "You have a family, and you're going to put them through so much. That's what you get for messing with the cartel."

He'd been careless. That was the only excuse Elmer could give for his predicament. He'd been very careless. As a black marketeer, running into dangerous people could not be helped. He dealt precisely in illegal goods, and not selling the wrong goods to the the wrong person was an important survival technique. However, just recently, he'd been going against that very survival guide, because the wrong person always offered to pay more. By doing this, he'd wronged many criminal organization that served as his suppliers. Elmer had planned to run away once he'd made enough of a fortune, but he hadn't counted on being discovered so quickly.

Karla watched the man take his last breath, finally leaving the world with his eyes left open. She couldn't imagine that a heart attack would be painless, but at least he got a less painful death than most of the C Cartel's targets. Turning away from him, She faced the window.

"Time to go."

Karla hurriedly wore back her dress, and picked up her handbag. She couldn't risk going out the door, because someone might see her, then it would be a whole different story. Her only other option was the window. The window was four by two feet, so she would have no problem passing through it. However, she was three storeys high.

Kicking off her shoes and dragging up her gown, Karla readied herself to climb down the building. She first of all threw her shoes and handbag down, to lighten the load on her, then stepped out the window.

Karla wasn't a novice at climbing buildings. She'd done it so many times before, she didn't even bother counting. Being an assassin required many abnormal skills, and climbing buildings was one of them. The night was airy, and the breeze blew her hair in her face. Since she couldn't have any distraction on her way down, so she hurriedly tied her hair into a bun.

Karla placed one long leg on the nearest vertically elevated surface she could reach, and the other leg followed suit. She then used her hands on the window seal to balance herself. This pattern repeated itself and soon, she was on the ground, luckily, with no witnesses to the stunt she'd just pulled.

Acting as casually as possible, Karla made her way out of the hotel grounds, to the road. Nobody gave her a second glance, except the men who mistook her for a prostitute, and got turned on by her outfit. One walked up to her, but she hailed a taxi and got in before he could reach her. Karla made the taxi driver stop five blocks away from her home, as an extra measure. She was an assassin whom many bad people had a problem with. There was no way she would leave an information as vital as her home address with a random taxi driver.

As Karla walked to her home, she thought about the man she'd killed. He was just another target, whom she had no personal relations with and didn't know what exactly they did to make the cartel want them dead. She would be given another one in the next two weeks or so. It was best that way. Karla couldn't imagine killing someone she stood on personal grounds with.

The cartel always made her take care of the disgusting and perverted targets -the young men with high libidos and rapists tendencies, and the old men who thought their wealth could get them any woman they wanted. She'd gotten so accustomed to acting as a slut, she no longer was alarmed when a strange man smacked her bottom, or her womanly assets were offensively commented on. That was her life.

It wasn't always like this though.

TEASER: ORIGIN STORY OF KARLA NIGHTINGALE