Elise's fingers tightened around the stem of her glass as she contemplated what to say next.
"What happens now? Another job?"
"You know those questions are against protocol."
"Do you have family waiting somewhere? Someone who worries when you're on assignment?"
Gregor's eyes, gray as gunmetal, revealed nothing. "Confidential information. You know better."
Silence stretched between them, punctuated only by the ticking of the cheap wall clock.
"No," he finally said. "No family."
The wine bottle clinked against the glass table as he set it down. "The organization is my family. My handler found me as a child, dog tag around my neck with my name on it. Nothing else."
Elise sat on the edge of the bed, towel cinched tight. "This is your last assignment, isn't it? I heard rumors."
A nod, almost imperceptible. "Going off the books after this. Japan, maybe. Live out whatever's left under a new identity." He exhaled smoke toward the ceiling. "Teaching martial arts. I know sixty-seven distinct forms."
"Sixty-seven," Elise repeated softly. "Of course you do."
She traced the rim of her glass with one finger. "My real name is Catherine," she offered suddenly. "Catherine Elise Dubois. My parents were killed in the Brussels bombing when I was nine. The organization found me in a foster home three years later."
Her eyes met his. "What's yours? Your real name?"
"Gregor Fidget Scrob is the only name I've ever had." He reached for the wine bottle and tilted it directly to his lips, draining half its contents in several long swallows.
After arranging his suit jacket on the floor beside the couch, he lay down, hands folded across his chest. "Extraction team arrives at 0600. Be ready."
Elise—Catherine—nodded, moving to the bed. She clicked off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness pierced only by the glow of Gregor's cigarette.
"Goodnight," she whispered.
No response. Just the sound of measured breathing.
Minutes passed. Perhaps ten. Perhaps thirty.
"Gregor Fidget Scrob," Catherine's voice cut through the darkness, soft but clear. "I'm sorry."
The burning sensation in Gregor's stomach erupted without warning. Sharp, intense, radiating outward like molten lead. He rolled from the couch, muscles already beginning to seize.
His mind—disciplined through decades of conditioning—analyzed the symptoms with clinical detachment even as his body betrayed him.
'Thallium. Tasteless when mixed with tannic acid in red wine.'
He dragged himself toward the light switch, each movement an exercise in agony. The door—he needed to reach the door. His fingers scrabbled against the wall, found the switch.
Light flooded the room, revealing Catherine standing beside the bed, still in her towel, watching him with cold eyes.
The key card to the room was in her hand.
'Amateur mistake,' he thought, vision beginning to blur. 'Never checked her glass.'
Memory replayed the scene with perfect clarity—she'd poured the wine, then set her glass down as she reached for a napkin. Three seconds where it left his sight. More than enough time.
"The glass was a misdirection," Catherine said, as if reading his thoughts. "The bottle was laced before room service ever delivered it. I paid the busboy."
Gregor's legs no longer responded to commands. He slumped against the wall, muscles spasming.
"You were right about one thing," she continued, approaching him with measured steps. "I'm good on paper. But you—you're a legend. The man who never failed. Never missed. Never got caught."
She crouched before him, her face inches from his. "Until today."
Blood vessels in Gregor's eyes began to rupture, painting his vision red. His tongue swelled, making speech impossible.
'If I could stand now...'
His fingers twitched uselessly against the carpet.
'If I could just get hold of her...'
His encyclopedic knowledge of human anatomy presented seventeen different ways to kill her using nothing but his hands. All useless now.
"The organization didn't send me," Catherine said, rising to her feet. "I volunteered to help them put an end to your contract. Some family, huh?" She lóoked at him almost absentmindedly.
"Do you remember Antwerp? 2018? A banker named Henri Dubois?"
Recognition flickered in Gregor's dying eyes.
"My father," she whispered. "The Brussels bombing was a cover story. You shot him through the kitchen window while I was setting the table for dinner."
She turned away, moving to gather her belongings. "You were right about another thing, too. We're not heroes or charity workers. We're assassins. It's as simple as the name."
Darkness encroached on the edges of Gregor's vision. His heartbeat, once so controlled, now fluttered erratically in his chest. Last breaths whistled through his constricted airway.
'The irony,' he thought as consciousness began to slip away. 'Killed by a rookie...'
As his eyes closed for the final time, a strange sensation washed over him—not the cold grip of death, but something warm, enveloping. A pull toward something bright, beyond the hotel room's cheap popcorn ceiling.
The greatest assassin mankind had ever known felt himself falling upward, into light.