Birthdays and Deathdays

Gertrude Fox woke in a cold and lonely bed in a hospital in Astana, Kazakhstan with a bullet wound on her left temple. No one spoke her language. No one cared, not even her former mentor. The Kazakhstani police tried to investigate the shooting, but she was poor and foreign, and they were overworked.

She was relieved at their inattention; she did not want them to know she had killed a man. She was relieved that her former mentor was gone; she did not want to see Maria after freezing in battle, despite all her careful teaching. Conveniently, Maria never attempted contact.

Her father and his partners were disappointed in her mentor's report and had withdrawn their approval of her heirship. Just as well they don't want me back, she thought, now that I know what it's really like. She could not take up the reins of the Family Business, knowing she would not be able to make the tough decisions which sometimes ended in death.

Still, it would have been nice to return to the family home, maybe teach dance or self-defense to occupy her time and provide some cash. But her mother advised against it -- there was too much maneuvering to fill her suddenly vacated position; she would be considered a threat by whoever finally won. Her mother recommended she remain an ocean away, and that she sever all ties with her former family.

Money was wired every few months, on an irregular schedule. Gertrude scrimped and saved to move to southern England, where at least they spoke her language.

She refused to resort to the first profession that had been suggested for an attractive young woman when she arrived with the other illegal immigrants.

It had taken her ages to find people who could get her the documents she needed for regular employment, but she now had them, an apartment in her new name, and some interesting acquaintances who worked outside the law, not that she intended to maintain contact.

Christine Daaé was finally born, six months after Gertrude Fox had died in a Moscow alley.

Hacking her school records had proved too difficult; five years of school, culminating in a Masters of Business Administration, might had never happened. She applied for a job as a secretary; her only references were from legitimate but now defunct small Canadian companies. She also applied for a job as a dance instructor; but no one wanted to be taught by a woman with a severe facial scar.

She sat on her threadbare couch with a glass of lemon squash, fingering the scar on her temple, repeating her mantra: One day; one day I will move; one day I will fix this scar; one day I will seek revenge on the woman who left me; one day I will be me.

Her evening meal was canned tomato soup and toast. Once she had routinely spent more on a single meal than her current monthly food budget. Her apartment was drafty, her fridge barely kept her meat cold, and her clothes were from the Salvation Army.

Then, a miracle happened. She found a job -- night receptionist in a warehouse. The job should have been titled "under-valued security guard", but at least they accepted her references, and it would allow her to search for more enjoyable work during the day. There was a computer in her office, connected to the internet, a luxury she could not afford at home.

She heard a noise and reflexively saved her work. The security cameras showed nothing, not that she trusted them. She waited until there was silence, then reached into her over-sized pockets and held her gun ready as she nudged open her office door.

The hall was empty.

She heard a faint noise through the door beside her; a young girl was gagged and weeping in the cleaning closet. And I thought having to identify all those sounds was a waste of training time.

Christine quietly worked her way down the hall, alert for the intruders. Finally, she came back to the closet, pulled a fastener from her hair, and unlocked the door.

A five-year-old girl looked up at her with wide and frightened eyes. She smiled carefully and put her finger to her lips before moving to untie the child and carrying it to her office. The child refused to talk.

Christine left the child in a dark corner outside the police station. She wrote a note explaining what had happened, but did not want to get involved.

When she saw her boss, she played innocent. If she were aware of a kidnapped child being kept in the building, she would not have been so calm.

Christine began to wander the building during her shift.

She invested in surveillance equipment -- purchased from the acquaintances she had though herself rid of -- and arranged to watch the key areas; the encrypted broadcasts were sent to her glasses. Again, she was grateful for her recent training. She also obtained a simple mask; the cops had been looking for a woman with a scar on her temple, probably from the description of the first child she had rescued. She did not want future rescuees to be able to identify her so accurately.

A month went by. The frequency of the kidnappings increased. The police visited and talked to the owners of the building, with no real effect; she was used to this, having watched similar officials speak to her father about illegal merchandise found on his properties back home.

Finally, she saw them: five men, armed with medium handguns. Two had radios. One had the limp body of a drugged and gagged child.

She adjusted her mask, and waited.

The men talked. Charlie, their boss, was angry at their inability to meet the quota; he in turn was getting flack from his boss, Glen. The man who owned the warehouse was named Charles. The name Glen Adams appeared frequently in the visitors' log in the main entry.

She had the necessary information.

The men went into an office on the second floor. Only four came out.

They reached the stairwell before the unexpected happened. There was a soft "phhhht" and one man fell, a blossom of red in front of his heart. The second shot caught another man. The third man aimed and fired at the dark-clad figure. The fourth used his radio.

Christine pulled her arm out of the doorway and pressed herself against the wall, grateful again for her training, and breathing carefully in order to stay calm for her next shot.

The sounds in the stairwell drew nearer. The door opened. A gun appeared, pointing in her direction. She fired. The arm withdrew. She heard cursing.

There was a sound in the stairwell at the other end of the hall. She dropped a small convex mirror at the edge of the carpet and went into one of the offices, closed the door, and waited, watching the mirror through the window beside the door. The men appeared at the edge of the mirror and walked down the hall, taking turns covering each other.

When the uninjured man was opposite her she fired through the window. She aimed at the other man without pausing and fired again.

Net score: Four men dead. At least one radio call made. One man in a locked office with a terrified child.

She cycled through her sensors; the doors were still closed.

She went upstairs and stood, flat against the wall, outside the office with the hostage. The man was talking excitedly on the radio; the child whimpered; there was the sound of a slap, and the child was quiet.

The lock on the door to the adjacent office yielded to her hair-pin. She left it closed but unlocked.

The lock on the door with the hostage was a deadbolt with a half-inch throw, seated in cheap wood. It broke readily at her kick. Her aim with the gun was not as good; the man fell, clutching at his left shoulder and screaming obscenities.

The woman who had taught her to kill, and, to be fair, her other instructors as well, had told her repeatedly that, short of chemicals, there was no way to reliably render a person unconscious for a set length of time; she could not afford the man waking up before he was found. She fired.

Christine carried the boy into the next office and locked him in, telling him that help would arrive before morning.

The voices on the radio were panicking, but they were not talking about sending backup. She kept the radio on and took it with her.

She went to the telephone and called the police, telling them where to find the child. For identification, she left only her latest name: The Phantom.

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