Equinox sipped at his espresso and carefully smoothed out the paper over the desk. The hotel suite was large - huge even, with more furniture and space than most people would ever use. Even better, the faint scent of fresh lilacs filled the room, courtesy of the fresh cut flowers lounging in the pristine and obscenely expensive vase resting in the middle of the suite. He grimaced as he read the headlines; the Russian situation was still dicey, and he hoped Brandon was faring well. A shadow fell over the newspaper, and he sat back with a smile.

"Hello, Popsicle."

"Hi daddy. Seems you’ve been avoiding me."

"Not really. Just had some business with some old friends is all."

Rowena walked over and settled into the comfortable armchair in the suite’s corner. "Why’d you nickname me Popsicle?"

"You were always cold as ice but sweet - much sweeter than many would give you credit. How’s ‘Tina?"

"Annoyed with you. Most of your friends are, ‘cept for the old man. There are times where I think he genuinely doesn’t care, but then I remember that deep down, he’s a softie."

"That’s just the internal organs, dear. We’re all like that on the inside. I think it’s less that he doesn’t care and more that he’s more willing to accept that I do what I believe to be right, and that I usually am."

"That’s the rub, isn’t it, daddy?" She took out a survival knife and started cleaning her nails with it. Equinox’s eyebrow shot up. "You do what you believe to be right, regardless of the consequences."

"When you find a better method, you just let me know," Equinox said, and he shifted in his chair, laying his cane across his lap. There were few times in her life where Rowena had experienced fear. Certainly, she’d had her fair share of near-death experiences with the requisite adrenaline and the shakes that came afterwards. True fear - the kind of fear that provoked primordial responses and triggered the natural fight or flee reflex? That could be counted on one hand.

This moment was another digit to add to that hand.

In their brief time to talk after they’d left Paris, Leopard had described Equinox as one of the most dangerous men in the world. Rowena had laughed the statement off; certainly, her dad was powerful and tremendously wealthy, but dangerous? She’d been shot at by some of the best in the business and still came out on top. What could one old man with a limp and a trick cane do? Then she looked in his eyes and had her answer: quite a bit.

A frog caught in her throat and she swallowed it down. "You... you killed them all, daddy."

Equinox appeared confused, then calculating as he struggled to follow her train of thought, and then the ice cracked for a split second as genuine remorse and pain flashed through his eyes. The emotion only lasted for so long, as the steely resolve replace it. "You have to understand that when we found the lab the first time, we’d all been caught off guard. We read the reports, barely understanding what we were looking at, and then the firefight started. The Company team was separated, fighting off some monstrosity, and we - the Commonwealth folks - were mainly folks from the Fourth Division: Operation Skia. We were infiltrators, thieves and saboteurs.

"Things went down the toilet pretty quickly, and we had about a 45 second window to put a halt to their production line and get out alive. Sure, we could blow up some tanks, but that would have put their work back a week at the most, so I grabbed a knife from someone and cut a slit into my arm. It didn’t mean much to me, but it would mean everything to them. I made sure they saw me dropping my genetic material into the tank, and then we got out of there as fast as we could."

"You expected them to destroy the batch," Rowena said.

"I did, and so did everyone else."

"But then the Company got word that some former Hand goons had moved the batch and were trying to process the batch."

"Valentina told you?"

"She did. How come she knows so much of this story?"

"She didn’t tell you?" At Rowena’s negative indication, Equinox smiled. "She was on the Company team."

"So what happened next? She didn’t know what happened after that."

"I got a team together and assaulted the facility, but unfortunately they were farther along in the process than expected..." Equinox let the sentence hang, like a swinging noose.

Rowena sat up, suddenly alert. "It wasn’t just Brandon and me who’d been ‘hatched’, was it?"

Equinox just stared at her.

"What made you stop at us?"

"It’s hard to say, really. You two were off in a corner, separated from the rest, and though I had every intent on finishing what I’d started, I just couldn’t. Everyone else assumed I was ‘collecting samples’. I didn’t bother correcting them."

Rowena opened her mouth to respond, but the door burst inward, shattered into bits of lacquered wood and gold inlay. Four goons (clearly of the streetus raticus variety) complete with leather outfits and cheap knives rushed into the room. They quickly searched it before taking up positions in the four corners. Behind them came a dark-haired, blue-eyed beauty, dressed like a gypsy and oozing attitude. "Mr. Knox. I told you this wasn’t over."

"Ms. Olivia Lobo. I believe you know Ms. Logan by reputation," Equinox said, gesturing to Rowena. She smiled and nodded politely.

"Turn off the charm, Quentin; I’ve caught you red-handed."

"Why Ms. Lobo, it would appear that you’ve caught me at something... nefarious, wouldn’t it? Ms. Logan assaulted one of your men, and now here she is, in my own hotel suite. By all outward appearance, it’s as if I orchestrated the whole thing."

Olivia grinned triumphantly.

"Looks can be deceiving." Before anyone could react, Equinox lifted the cane, aimed it at Rowena and pulled the trigger. There was a soft phhhht sound, and a red hole blossomed in Rowena’s chest. Her eyes widened in shock, then slowly closed as her lifeblood fountained onto the floor. "I brought her here as a peace offering. It was my intent to give you her head, hermetically sealed, as a token of apology. As you’ve so rudely interrupted, you’ll have to settle for this. Now get out."

There was a click, and Olivia felt something pressed against the back of her skull. She turned to see one of Equinox’s bodyguards, as well as the round dark void of his pistol pointed at her eye. Olivia turned back to Equinox with a weak smile. "Apology accepted, Mr. Knox. Boys? It’s time for us to be going." They filed out of the room.

"You okay, sir?" the bodyguard asked.

Equinox nodded. "Get me a new room and a cleaner. We’ll need to sanitize the area."

"Yes sir." The bodyguard rushed off to carry out the orders.

Equinox reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a needle. He walked over to Rowena and neatly slid it into her vein after rolling back her sleeve. She awoke with a gasp just as he was capping the needle. "Welcome back to the land of the living."

Rowena replied by depositing veal scallopini and two glasses of $500/bottle wine onto the carpet, right next to the pool of her ‘blood’. "Was that necessary?"

"You’ll thank me later."

"This is a part of that ‘doing what you feel is right’, isn’t it?"

"I didn’t want you playing the Great Game. I tried to talk you out of it but you insisted."

Rowena coughed the last bit of dinner out, then set about looking for a glass of water. It took her a moment to realize that Equinox was already holding it in front of her, complete with ice and a twist of lime. She reached into the hole in her chest and pulled out the squib, still dripping a red fluid that looked and felt like blood, complete with the coppery smell she’d grown to recognize. "Brandon told me why you play the Game."

"Did he now?" Most other people would have missed it, but Rowena knew her father, and her first experience with that dangerous tone in his voice had changed her. She would never forget it.

"He won’t be telling anyone else, and neither will I for that matter. For what it’s worth, I understand."

"Good." Equinox said, and he grabbed his cane. "Let’s get you cleaned up. I’m sure you’re hungry."

"This is just another day at the office for you, isn’t it?"

Equinox grinned, and in that moment, Rowena completely understood why her mentor both loved and hated her father.

--FIN