The young woman zipped up her jacket and leaned on the shop window behind her. The shop had already closed less than an hour before, but most of the other buildings along that road were still lit. The hotel in front of her, for example, had lights on every floor. As late as it was, one of the parties up there could not be over yet. And until it was, she could not leave her spot.

She knew exactly where it was held: on the 40^th floor, thirteen rooms from the right. Since she couldn’t get in, watching from outside was the next option.

Rita!

She gave a start, gasping and then letting out a breath that formed a thin mist. In a second she had realized who’d spoken, and the surprise turned into annoyance. Dammit, Marco! I told you to never do that. Use the phones.

An unsuppressed cackle sounded through her mind, and then continued through her ear-piece.

“Sorry. Bad habit.”

The man on the other end of the line didn’t sound sincere. Rita frowned, keeping her eyes on the hotel and her hands tucked in her sides with her arms crossed. “Alright, what the hell did you do that for?”

Marco continued to laugh, showing no signs of calming down. “Damn, Rita! You should be used to it by now.”

“Is that all you bothered me for?” The line suddenly went silent. She tore her eyes away from the hotel for a moment, lightly pushing her ear-piece. “Marco?”

She heard a loud “Ow!” and a couple seconds of static that made her wince, before another voice spoke through the line.

“Damned idiot…” The voice was rougher, fuller. “Sorry ‘bout that, Rita. Shouldn’t have let the kid play around.”

Rita sucked in air through her teeth. “Yeah.”

“He was supposed to give you a message, though.” He paused for a while. “It looks like the party’s over. Guests are starting to flood out. Looks like he’s not here.”

The Contractor only closed her eyes and sighed. All that waiting for nothing.

“You coming up?” Her ear-piece relayed after a moment.

“In a minute.” Rita slowly pushed herself away from the shop window while still staring up at the hotel. She really didn’t like stakeouts.

She was about to come up to the room they’d rented to set up surveillance—a room in a building right across the street from the hotel—when she heard half a dozen faint gunshots.

“Wait, Rita—”

Her head whipped around, her gaze on the 40^th floor. The window she’d been watching for the last four hours shattered as a figure crashed through it and dropped from it.

“I know.” she told Deuce, running across the road and ignoring the cars that swerved to avoid her. “That him?”

“Most probably.”

She had less than a couple of seconds. Rita brought out her fans, came to a halt in the middle of the road, and prepared to wave them. There wasn’t enough time to get across the road, so she would have to risk it. She had only a moment to save him. And then the barely distinguishable human figure fell into a balcony.

Rita froze, not hearing the screeching tires or the loud cursing around her. The man had fallen from a height of twelve floors.

“Damn.” she heard Deuce curse through the earphones. “Well, that’s one lost.”

In the background, she could hear Marco frantically yelling ‘dead!’ Rita sighed and pocketed her fans. “Start packing up, Deuce.”

It was a waste. And after all the trouble they had gone through all to find him. True, they had Mischa to predict the actions of their kind, but knowing which hotel and which party had been hard work.

“Rita, look up.”

Deuce’s sudden instruction held her in the same spot. There was something in his voice, something like disbelief and urgency.

“He’s alive.”

Indeed, the shape swathed in black was back. It started jumping from one balcony to another, like a flea. Rita watched in shock—and relief—until the person reached the ground. She’d seen her fair share of strange abilities, but for a few seconds his dangerous route down the building held her.

“Rita!”

“I’m on it.” she replied, snapping out of her trance.

She sped across the road, leaping over the center island and dodging cars. The man was headed for the other side of town. He was fast, traveling on the rooftops. All she could do was keep sight of him.

“We’ll catch up.” Deuce told her, and then the line went dead. She wasn’t sure how Deuce could catch up, though. His talents didn’t lie in his speed.

But the old man wasn’t her problem. Her target was heading for South of the commercial district. If he reached the residential areas, the lack of lights would hide him. Forcing even more power to her legs, Rita sprinted through alleyways. For a few seconds of suppressed panic, she lost him. Experience told her to keep looking and moving. Watching the moonlit skies, she never slowed down and wove expertly around the buildings. And then she caught sight of a black blur just above her. Having found him again, the chase continued. Rita would lose sight of him for a few moments, but she had grown confident and would find him a bit afterwards. However, she knew she couldn’t keep chasing him that way. He would disappear sooner or later, and she wouldn’t have a chance like she had then.

“No choice.” she tsked, bringing out her fans once she found her target again. If she couldn’t catch up with him, then she’d have to make him stay put. Even if he had a broken bone or two.

Rita planted her feet firmly on the ground and kept her gaze on the leaping man’s form against the moon. She then positioned her fans beside each other and waved both of her arms in one large arc. With that one simple movement, a strong gust of wind formed around her and rose, shooting towards the rooftops. Towards the man leaping up there, to be exact.

The strong wind caught him in midair, making him lose his balance and knocking him off his trajectory. Rita winced when he fell down on a roof in a scramble of limbs. She worried for a second about his injuries, but then she remembered his fall from the hotel. She could wager that he was alright. But there was no difference if he wasn’t. As long as he was alive, everything was fine. They had Deuce to make sure of that.

Rita ran for the building he fell into. Knowing his ability to recover from falls, she had to move it or she’d lose him again. By taking a route through familiar alleys, she had the building in front of her in just a few seconds.

Just a corner away, a gunshot rang out.

She stumbled backwards but was able to regain her balance and throw herself back around the corner. Her shoulder was stinging. Combine that with the ‘bang’ she had heard and she had to assume he as retaliating. It was, if in part, expected, but that was not a comforting thought.

Pressing her back on the wall as she leaned on it, she opened her mouth to shout out to him, but instead let out a gasp as her wound sent a jolt of pain through her.

“Dammit!” she hissed, pressing a hand to her shoulder. A wound far from her organs shouldn’t be giving her much trouble, and yet it was. She was about to try shouting again when she felt something hard and cold pressed to her head.

“Who are you?” demanded a quiet voice beside her. It was not gruff and low like she expected from someone firmly pressing a gun to her head.

Rita did not answer and slowly—very carefully—turned her head. She wanted to see the eyes of whoever was going to kill her. Not that she was very willing to get killed. Nevertheless, her gaze traveled up the hand gun’s barrel now pointed at her forehead to the face at the other end of the gun.

And then familiarity struck her.

“James…?”

Confirmation of his identity came when he stared, eyes widening, and then lowered his gun and tucked it in his belt. She could not be more sure. Years had passed since she’d last seen her old friend and comrade, but she could recognize those same eyes anywhere. Black holes they were, barely readable even after they’d been more animated with his transformation. And, if anyone was to look more closely, his right eye always seemed glazed and dry. He’d told her once that it was not his eye.

James—if that was indeed he—merely shifted his gaze to her shoulder and the blood spreading on her jacket underneath her hand. He wordlessly took off his coat and draped it over his shoulder, making her wonder what the hell he was doing, and then tore off a sleeve of his shirt. When he gently removed her hand from her shoulder, she understood.

“You are James, aren’t you?” Rita asked again and winced as he wound his sleeve around her injury and tied a tight knot. All the time she stared at his now angular features. He hadn’t fleshed out at all, but he was much taller than she remembered. “James…”

“I’m sorry.”

Rita blinked as he moved away from her, having finished his work on her shoulder. He was still staring down at her wound.

“I thought you were somebody’s bodyguard chasing me.”

“Bah. I guess I deserved it.” Rita replied. She had a lot of questions for him that was it was difficult to select which to ask first. She settled for small talk. “So you’re an assassin now, huh?”

James merely gave a nod. “Were you trying to recruit me?”

“Yeah.” She smirked. “Too rough?”

“Not enough to injure me, but I was threatened.” he answered honestly. His voice had certainly lost the simple, innocent quality she remembered.

“I couldn’t catch up.” she explained. Hearing herself say it made her realize just how much he’d changed. The James she remembered had no physical ability to speak of. His power now, his Contractor ability, was something he had started to acquire before he left her—them.

“You can come back, James.” she began suddenly. Bringing a new member into their group was their purpose in the first place, whoever the prospect turned out to be. “We’re a bigger organization now. A lot more organized. I don’t know why you left, but we can work on it. I mean, why’d you go anyway? You didn’t feel unimportant or mistreated, did you?”

“I did not mean it that way.” Very slightly, his gaze softened. “My reasons for leaving were not improper treatment or lack of recognition. I am sorry if it looked that way.”

Then why? If he really didn’t go because he hated being with them, it didn’t look like he was too happy about coming back either, and for the first time, she didn’t feel like talking anyone into it. Already, it felt stressful—it felt difficult to draw in her breath and ask.

“Rita.”

His calling out her name pushed her thoughts in another direction. Why could his voice still have the same effect on her after so many years? It still made her want to soften her voice, smile at him kindly or put on a concerned face. He’d been like a little brother, a fragile child she had to take care of, but now he could take care of himself. Surely she shouldn’t be feeling protective of him still. Things had changed. For one, he’d just shot at her a little more than twenty minutes before.

James walked up to her and once again she was reminded of how tall he’d become. He stood over her, no longer with the Doll’s gaze she remembered.

“I’m sorry for not making it clear. It must have sounded like I had nothing to thank you for.” he added, meeting her eyes. “My being alive here now, and much more, is all thanks to you.”

Rita was only formulating a dry reply when James leaned in. She was too surprised to pull away. It was James, after all! Even before his star’s light was rekindled in the fake sky, he’d already been an emotionless Doll. The mere idea of him showing normal human emotions was foreign to her. Call it prejudice, but he had never been capable…

But, she corrected herself, he still isn’t showing anything now. She may have felt his lips on hers, but they merely touched. It was a gentle, passionless kiss. In fact, besides their lips, no other part of their bodies touched. In a moment, Rita had gathered enough of her wits to feel…annoyed. Giving a kiss as a ‘thank you’ was not like James at all. Had he really changed that much? So much so that she hardly knew him?

“Again, thank you.” James added as he moved away. He took one last glance at her and turned away without a bit of hesitation and leaped for a balcony.

Rita didn’t watch him leave. She kept her head down, her lips pursed. “You just love leaving without a reason, don’t you?”

James had to work on kissing as a distraction.