Moving in the early hours of the dawn is not unfamiliar to the contract killer, especially when innocent lives (e.g., his own) are at stake. Carls are at their most vulnerable just after waking up, before the natural process of caffeine induction can enervate the senses and bring new alacrity to fuzzy neurons. Thus I found myself walking through the corridors of 3rd Nourse at 10:15 on a lazy Saturday morning, with a pair of rubber band pistols in my bathrobe’s pockets.

I knew the girl had it out for me last night; she and her partner, Ross the Toss, had been stalking up and down my hallway all last night, weapons out. Who else on the floor could they be gunning for? Luckily, I’d had some dealings with this shady character before, and knew a few things about her.

Amy. Amy McGrew. Flinger of a Thousand Deadly Blades. Her nigh-inexhaustible supply of edged armaments made her a foe to be reckoned with. I heard she took down a man in Musser once. By the time the fight was over, Campus Security and all of NoPo’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again. She slices and dices so fast, you couldn’t find her equal if you watched late-night infomercials for a month.

Lucky me, bullets are faster than knives.

I had two things going for me that morning: first, that Amy always sleeps with a weapon, meaning I had the right to defend myself and my partner without fear of enforcement, and second, that living in a triple meant more traffic in and out of the room. That was my in; a visitor last night had forgotten to lock the door, and so it was that I creaked the door open and softly padded to her bed. She was on the top bunk, wavy brown hair and unaware features a picture of innocent repose. It’d be a shame to take her life this way, but she knew what she was getting into when she decided to play the game.

I placed my hand on her shoulder, raised my pistol to her heart, and whispered softly “Good morning, Amy.”