The Lady's Kill Doll

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse through his window. Landscaped courtyards, black topped parking lots, and a roadway to the office where men took charge. Who she didn’t know. But in her world, she assumed men still run everything. Decide things for her. They gave her the American code name, China Doll Seven. Even she knew that her government disapproved. Her real name was in Shanghai Chinese Sign Language for Water Life Death, but in English, her name was May Be Wrong.

You know the stories from the classic tele-novels in the O'50, The Hunger Games, The Battle Royal, and The Long Walk.

As a fetus, because of the aged government population policy, her gender continued to be rejected by parents even in an unknown village before they moved her to a facility sixty miles above the Gobi desert. The facility, Xingyun Ji Hu, built on a hovering platform unreachable except by a space plane, remained one of the greatest secrets of the world. The platform’s building structure based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs resembled a flat pyramid.

Every ten years, the government delivered 1000 germline genetically altered prime female one-year-old-toddlers supposed to be eviscerated from the wombs through medical procedures to the bottom of the platform, an enclosed oxygenated pen in the vast current of space. The oxygen was turned off for ten minutes so they must fend for the limited series of openings to the next level, enough to suit 950 subjects. The next level will be open for five days, with dispensers that give enough soy milk for 900 subjects. Each level eliminated 50 failed subjects for ten years, including charm school classes, combat training, and proving ground and it shuffled them into the disposal unit on each level until the last subject reached the top level, The Jade Room. For the first time in history, The Jade Room required scheduling an SCSL interpreter for the apex predator to receive her China citizenship paper with dual citizenship for the United States.

But that was over three years ago. Aged fourteen, her fine-tuned lethal body encased in a crisp blazer, a skirt that reached to her knees, knee-high socks, the sensible clunks waited in her seat at the office. With black silken hair pulled back, the two abysses that were her dark eyes glittered from a smooth olive skin face. In her purse, she carried the device, the size of a pen. An execution tool called a Portable Unit for Disposal (P.U.D.) Nick-named gamma stick, rad stick, or poison pen, it never emitted radiation but a sound wave that can boil organs through orifices like ear holes, nostrils, mouth, anus, urethra, vaginal opening, and meatus like a microwave. Also, inside, amidst a clatter of tampons, napkins, a bottle of Prozac, a jasmine perfume, and lotion, was a stuffed doll. Neat red dots showed all the deadly pressure points of the human body. From the top of the head down to its silken (made from clam spit) toes, it showed all the points where you can really hurt with a firm poke of a dainty manicured fingernail. Never mind that a poke from her would puncture a person’s skin like a screwdriver with the ballistic force of a two-ton car.

She waited for her manager to come into the office. On the office desk was a laptop with a screenshot of the manager’s family. The office door, painted baby blue, opened. A lean athletic man poked his head in and gave her an America No. 1 grin. The blond stubble on his head revealed that she was still in the army base. He said something, a greeting.

She gestured to her ear and pointed at her stuck-out tongue. An endearing way to point out her shortcoming, something she learned to use to soothe any opposition. Just one way to survive an encounter with a government-supported evil. The evil had come for them as a lab specimen called an ogre that did worse than killing and eating the flesh of over twenty-five subjects in the upper level. The other twenty-five, enduring varying wounds, broken bones, and violations of the body and spirit had marched, most willingly, to the disposal unit on the same level. Near the end, all the girls united to form a mob of rending muscles and bones and finally destroying the ogre.

Now, the man chuckled and held up a finger, signifying her to wait. The door snicked shut again. She looked to the window again and then to the cherry wood floor. She could see that her handler had set aside a space for yoga and meditation. As a person traumatized by the violent deaths of the other girls, some she saw as sisters, others as rivals, she appreciated that. Her body felt extended and pliable, including her thoughts, for she had practiced her pralms in her apartment just this morning before her orders came through the limited SCSIL interpreter on her video phone. She wandered over to the space for meditation and fanned the scent of the lit candle to her nose. The smell of red roses filled her nostrils. Yoga had set her mind on a peaceful but focused plane. Now she became pleased even more by the classic scent.

She glided to her seat after she felt footsteps on the other side. The door opened, and crestfallen, she nodded at the middle-aged woman who entered. Within herself, she quashed the feeling of betrayal, even from a woman with a heavy brow and a strong masculine chin. Something the comic books would call a chiseled chin. Her handler seemed very settled as if she had found her purpose in life, including a family as the screenshot of her arms in arms with a grinning man and two boys, all dressed in crisp jeans and white sweaters, showed. She did not speak until the SCSL interpreter arrived in a business suit. They started the meeting.

“Good afternoon, I am your contact person for the Central Intelligence Agency.” The woman said. “I understand you come from China, a previous decade’s graduate of The Jade Room.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Maybe Wrong signed as the interpreter translated. “It is an honor to meet the Olympian swimmer, four gold medals.” She gave a Silat bow, arms clasped to her side and hands in front as if in prayer. Her gaze never left both.

“That person doesn’t exist. His name was Jonas Klonsky. I am Johnette Banaszynski, a somewhat happily married mother of two. How are your room and quarters good?”

She nodded. Signed, “Yes, thank you for the video phone.” She looked at the interpreter and saw that it was the same one from the video phone.

The interpreter’s eyes twinkled at her with recognition.

“Certainly,” Mrs. Banaszynski said. She opened the drawer, took out a UBS pin, and pressed it into her laptop computer.

In an instant, it projected a 360-degree hologram of a cherubic boy’s head and shoulders between them.

“His name is Christopher Poole. His birth should have terminated, along with his brother, Gregory Poole. Instead, he is the subject of a nationwide hunt, with the same genetic predisposition that you have. He had led various attacks on the U.S. military personnel, including marines and rangers scouts. Many families have suffered losses. The president in service of the people had authorized convert means including sending a foreign personnel from a superpower nation like China. It surprised us to see that a person who completed the government’s Fortune and Chance program was Deaf.”

“It was crucial to my success that China Doll 409 and 994 both knew SCSIL,” the interpreter translated for her. “Otherwise…”

“Very good. Your orders are to take the earliest train westward until you reach Missouri. Your cover is that you are a foreign exchange student from the province of China learning English through ASL. I had deposited funding for your assignment in your account. First, find him. Cut his communication. Then take him out. I made sure that we equip you with the best weapon, and they installed an electromagnetic pulse device on your laptop. Once you activated it, it will shut everything with an electric pulse. My text number is also in your sidekick. Use that, not internet in the laptop.”

Mrs.Banaszynski signed. ASL KNOW?

She didn’t understand.

“You need to learn ASL. I suggest you practice on the way over there.” The SCSL interpreter translated for her.

She nodded and bowed.

The mag trev hissed through the new station, The Gold Line. A girl with a solemn face stepped down to the platform, tugging a travel case. They had converted most of her money into cash in the pocket of her raincoat. She checked into a nearby motel. The owner raised his eyebrows and after she slipped him a one-hundred-dollar bill, he kept his mouth shut with a nod and a wink. The girl spoke mostly in gestures, pointing and nodding eagerly at the time and schedule for check out for a three days stay.

To pass time, she did her routine, vision goggles strapped over her eyes that showed her the interior of the dojo back home in The Jade Room. Far away in Missouri, her body whispered the motions of Kung Fu, Combat Sambo, Muay Thai, Silat, and other deadliest forms of contact. Slick with light sweat in her underwear, she paused and took out a handle. She slide her thumb along the mechanical handle that converted to a hilt as it unfolded with a snick, a honed double-blade Katana that she called Last Resort. Blades made of tungsten diamonds and graphene, it could slice apart steel as if they were toilet paper. She put it on the side of the bed so she could take a shower.

The hunt began the next morning at the new and expanded Fisk Community Library on Garfield Street. In the center, besieged by a cheerful atmosphere, she pored over maps, and local guides, and discovered that they had allotted a section of the shelves to religion. She spent more time there, following her instincts that quiet people of faith would hide people with disabilities. Her hunch proved correct when she spotted a brochure on an organization for a non-profit organization called the Shephard Club. Plucked out of the shelf and in front of her eyes, she glanced at the mission statement:

The organization rights all wrongs and rescues the lost ones from all and any agents of evil.

She made notes of its address in what she named (to herself only) The Mundane Assassin’s Notebook. Copied the mission statement. Aware that Christopher Poole traveled from Virginia as part of a family of genetic refugees to Missouri, she spent a few hours researching combat classes and clubs on the east coast to Missouri to see if she understand the often lauded superhero’s fighting style. Before closing time, she checked the graphic art section, and found a comic book, The Red Kite Strikes Again!, from a Missouri National Guardsperson’s account of her encounter with a Deaf superhero. The colorful panels detailed how the hero tricked her out of her prejudice against people with disabilities as being helpless creatures when a twelve-year-old deaf boy beat out twenty adult recruits on the obstacle course. The last panel showed the characters sharing a laugh as the boy scratched his head after being questioned if he liked music. She took notes of what the boy wore. A pair of jeans and a hoodie sweatshirt that showed two pairs of red handprints to signify the two tail feathers of the Red Kite.

On her way out, she swiped an American Sign Language Dictionary from the language section, used her often mythic peripheral vision to check the occupied staff, tossed the laminated paperback up and over the alarm passage to the exit doors, caught it with her left deft hand, tucked it behind the notebook, all in one fell swoop. The closing doors cut off the dusky sky, the dark lawn, and her retreating back.

In the evening, back in her motel room, she scanned the entire dictionary and tracing of the signs, with tiny arrows to resemble movements of the hand shapes and their orientation. Her photographic memory easily absorbed the material. Laying back on the cover, she slept and breathed easily, the body still in the night. The next morning, on the way to the Shephard Center, she left the ASL dictionary in the outside return bin.

The Shephard Center was just an old gymnasium with a card table set up in one corner of the basketball court. A poster for the Black Youths Club curled on the tile wall. They had ripped others off. She walked around, her eyes scouring for any signs of people with disabilities. There, on the bleacher, sat a mournful teenager wearing what looked like a grayish helmet seen in science fiction movies and the classic series. Someone had carved out an entire opening for his face to peer through. Hands clasped in front of her, she approach the teenager and smiled, with a lift of eyebrows.

YOU DEAF? She asked him, eyebrows raised.

The teenager’s brown face lit up. He spewed forth the language.

YES. ME NAME G-A-R-Y-S-H-E-P-H-A-R-D STAR W-A-R-S COOL B-O-B-A F-E-T-T MY FAVORITE!

She had no idea what’s Star Wars , so she asked.

He stared at her, his eyes bulging from his thick face until she lowered her eyebrows and signed WHAT…STAR W-A-R-S?

GREAT STORY…LONG TIME AGO IN GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY. “BAM, BAM, BAM,” He sang.

From the doors, brisk sunlight bounced in and out, and a gaggle of teenagers, two males in basketball junior variety jackets, and three girls came in chattering. One girl’s face sagged in recognition of the boy named Gary Shephard. She stomped her way over. The others froze.

She signed his name and her hands chopped at the air. Maybe Wrong did not understand and stayed silent.

Gary smirked, and pat his ear, “Me…deaf, not know not know.”

KNOW YOU! YOU NOT SUPPOSE BE HERE!

MY DAD BUILDING. He signed.

YOU SUPPOSE TO STAY HOME!

ME BUSY. MEET PRETTY GIRLS.

One boy came over. An emerald earring twinkled on his right earlobe from the sun peeking in narrow windows between the rafters. His placate hands raised at Gary, he murmured something, laughing. The other one, a malicious glint in his eyes, bopped Gary in the back of his head, knocking his plastic helmet off. It spun on the ground, and Gary started yelling, clutching his head. The two other girls stayed still, their gin grins slacking on their faces. The adolescent who knew ASL took a swipe at the two boys, shouted, signed, DON’T PUT YOUR HANDS ON HIM! Gary shook his head and groped at the one with the earring. That boy put on a mock fearful face and pretended to retreat, shouting nonsense. Gary’s defender slapped the other one with mean-looking eyes. That boy sidestepped the girl and threw a wild punch at Gary. His fist stopped in mid-air, inches from the deaf teenager’s bulging cheek. Trapped in Maybe’s grip. In an interview with the police officer and a National Guardsperson in their presence hours later, the boy named Todd Pitcher would tell them it was “like being caught by Terminator or something…” Maybe smiled and her other hand raised up. Lowered, a gesture meaning, calm down. They did. She turned to the teenager. She looked at him sternly and let go of the fist.

This time, she remembered to lower her eyebrows. NAME WHAT?

ME FINISH TELL YOU! Gary started in.

HOLD…ME TALK TO GIRL. NAME?

She finger spelled hers. T-E-S-S-I-E.

Maybe looked at the other teenagers. BYE.

The two girls who didn’t know sign language took their cue, walking out fast as gazelles. The two boys sauntered out, but with hunched backs and distressed glances over their shoulders.

T-E-S-S-I-E NAME SIGN?

She showed them the sign the local tribe had conferred to her. A T hand-shape tracing one of her high cheekbones. Arms crossed, her face placid, she waited for Maybe to speak.

YOU UPSET WHY?

Gary was about to discuss the outrage, but the stranger turned to him and pointed at Tessie, her face stony.

THEY FINISH D-O ALL CLEAR EVENT.

WHAT ALL CLEAR?

IT GOVERNMENT EVENT WHERE CHEMICAL LET OUT IN CONTROL ENVIRONMENT WHILE EVACUTE ALL PEOPLE WHO NO DISABLE. HAPPEN IN TOWN NEAR HERE.

WHERE DEAF?

Tessie looked at the floor. Back at them. She shrugged. ME THINK LEAVE. DEAD. SOME STAY WHY? WANT FIGHT.

WHO?

Tessie looked at her, her face aware. WHY YOU HERE? ME NEVER SEE YOU.

Her answer rattled out too quick. ME FROM CHINA LEARN ASL.

Keeping her eyes on Maybe, her hand clutched for Gary’s arm. GO NOW. WITH ME GOT GO.

Gary shook his head. TALK TO PRETTY GIRL. ME STAY.

The doors swung open again, and two earnest looking clean cut soldiers in cherry and grey chiclet fatigues strode in. Tessie turned back to Maybe to try to warn or beg her not to hurt Gary, but she was gone.

Christopher Poole sank in a plush chair in the waiting room in a robotic medical device warehouse owned by Tyler Shephard, somewhere in an unknown city in Texas. Even though he basked in being a childhood dream of a superhero, doing things that no boys his age could do: hit a home run that could reach the moon, take down evil agents, save all people, wicked or not, take a bullet right into not yet descended ball-sack without being a crybaby about it, and still do his homework and pass all the spelling tests with at least a B plus, it was still too much to take. He couldn't pass the tests as a phonetician.

YES WE CAN! poster hung, peeling by the bulletin board, and since it had the black-and-white picture of the first black president, his hands reaching for the crowd, it must be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And should hang displayed in a frame behind glass. But it remained there, gently rotting away with age. The bulletin board itself had a series of pinned photographs printed from the internet of the hotel in Missouri. Bodies of people in cosplay costumes carried out, a woman in a bright orange shirt and green tights, a campy Aquaman outfit, holding her child, her face stupefied at the carnage. A member of the band, The Mighty Trumpets, trying to compose himself while telling the press what really happened. Several military police officers with guns guarded the entrance of the hotel. Many described it as an utter and complete disaster. Or as Adam Dunce, his last mentor, would have signed, SHOW SHIT.

He pulled at the drawstrings of his Texas Rangers hoodie, thinking it would make him mysterious like Obiwan Kenobi, or Kull before they show their faces and kick ass. But he only resembled a human with the head of a toothless sea lamprey. A hand with a note hovered in view. The thing with a sucker grew a brilliant green eye surrounded by flawless skin as he read the note.

Got Terps Holo working.

The suctioned head with a single eye nodded, and his nail-bitten hands pulled back the hood to reveal a shaven head, smooth and androgynous because of his expressive eyes, and arched eyebrows. Even though he can follow the conversation with interpreters, anxiety rippled through his mind. It was like a makeshift school where the hearings take charge and the Deaf must defer to them, including their own language. He wondered if the meeting had to do with the lice problem because there was no time to clean up, and it was as his father said, G-E-A-R UP G-O! Or maybe he had, a week ago, slaughtered a platoon of robotic corpses armed with sledgehammers, spears, sickles, and sling blades. It could be simple as his father’s not paying his bills or what it means when the father said it is best to KILL WITH KINDNESS. Especially for Dad. With a sigh, he carefully stood so as to not break the chair by clenching the armrest and walked to the office. Deaf Man Walking, he thought, his mood grim.

The person who had handed him the note, her matron face composed in a dour look of the elderly, beckoned him to follow her to the office.

The office had a glass-top table, and metal furniture on a neutral gray carpet. It smelled clean, with none of that lemon or pine flavor. More sharp and antiseptic. At the table, a mild man in a suit stood up and smiled. A file waited on the table. A doll-sized holo-interpreter waited on the table, a plain woman in her mid-thirties, the colors grainy. Christopher clicked his sneakered high-top heels and gave the man a crisp salute. The man shook his head and beckoned him to sit down, and relax as the interpreter signed he was not Painted Army but a committee member.

The man tried to sign, GOOD MORNING, but his arm fwaped the other way so it looked as if he was telling Christopher, up yours. Christopher sat down and signed nothing. He turned and focused on the holo- terp. The man’s secretary left them.

ME B-O-B D-E-V-O-N. THANK YOU FOR COMING HERE. ME NEED TO TELL YOU GOAL.

Christopher nodded at the holo terp. O.K.

POLICTIAN IMPORTANT FOR FUNDING HAVE DAUGHTER DISABILITIES MANY. WE NEED YOU MOVE HER. QUIET NO ATTRACT ATTENTION. MORE IN FILE. WHEN DONE BURN IT. WE HOPE SHE WILL SEE OUR SIDE OF THINGS.

Christopher studied several pages of typed instructions and the girl’s demographic. He looked up, Bob Devon had left. A petite grill and a lighter waited on the table.

Later, a series of blunders due to again miscommunications left Christopher with Danielle Stricker strapped to his chest in a baby carrier sling, with a small portable oxygen tank. His cell phone with the Video Interpreter Phone fizzed out because of that Deaf Asian girl who used a device to shut down a grid of electricity. He will work on blaming once he gets this sorted out. Right now, he needed to find his way out of the junk yard without being spotted by her.

How do I get into this? He thought, trying to slow his breathing. First, there were no interpreters arranged, distressed gestures, some idiot woman gave him the wrong direction on the note, his Dad told him on the cellular phone that a Chinese Deaf girl wanted to see him about something, in FaceTime, Dad signed the word for Chinese by pulling back his eyes with his fingers. Flustered, he got lost leaping buildings in bounds. By WE BUY OLDIE OBAMA’S CLUNKERS! billboard, he saw the girl perched on the platform, hunched over a laptop, and suddenly, the digital board shut down, along with his cell phone. The girl gracefully jumped to the ground, fanned flat hands wide in a stance, her hand beckoned in a Kung Fu classic move. He ran, his cargo jiggled, and hid. He checked to see if Danielle was alive. His hand reached over his shoulder and felt the comforting hilt of one of his Gurkha Kukri banana blades.

The baby appeared like a stuffed doll with a gentle face, tiny hands, and a heartbeat. The oxygen tank still hissed air into her nostrils. In a frenzy, he searched for one clunker that might still have a car seat left. There, he spotted a Chevrolet 2110, Lance. He crept to the door and pulled it open. Locked. Realizing the girl was that Deaf Asian girl, he yanked the door open, breaking it off. The last thing he saw was Danielle's smile, as he tucked the sling with her into the car.

He wedged the car door back in, leaped over it, and clambered up a tower of crushed cars. Using the top as a vantage point, he searched, moving away to draw her away from Danielle. There, down below a valley of ruined cars, she strode a confident killer’s smirk on her face. She signed.

A LITTLE GIRL AFRAID O-F ME?

Pleased that at least she knew ASL, Christopher studied her movements. He crept along as the girl scrutinized the horizon for him. Her head tilted upward, and in one fluid movement, she twirled with a spinning back kick. He threw himself off, and the top of the crushed steel tower jangled with her impact, toppled, and it rained dead machines. He landed on the ground on his back, threw his arms backward to prevent the back of his head from slamming on the ground, and rolled from the crushing cars. He did not feel any pain and sprung to his feet, holding up his fists. His assassin landed about eight yards from him.

They remained in fighting stances, studying each other for a single grain of weakness. She burst forward with a flurry of flat hands, which he easily blocked with his forearms. Her leg lashed at his face and he bent backward into a sprawl and tried to sweep her legs with his own. She flipped into a no-hand cartwheel, her blocky shoes missing his nose by inches. They froze again in their respective fighting stances, studying each other again. She looked upward, and so did he. His steel jockey cup split as pain exploded on his groin, and Christ, on his good testicle, and he tumbled a dozen yards backward, his hands cupping his genitals. His body skidded on the stony ground, his buttocks leaving funnels. He reached in front of his pants, eased out both pieces of his protection, and threw them aside. The girl, an ear-to-ear grin, actually skipped toward his huddled form. He timed her movements and held up a placating hand. She bowed with her hands in prayer. His foot thrust and it connected below her stomach. Right in her public bone, he thought. It was as if she flew several blocks away by the lopsided flap of her twat. She landed on her buttocks, her grimacing face flushed from the pain, and hit the wall of junked cars so hard that several toppled and landed on her.

HOW DO YOU LIKE IT YOU BITCH!, he signed.

The pile shifted and parted as if in an earthquake, and in the billow of metallic dust, doors, steel bodies, a rainbow of broken colors. He saw her bloodied body folded in half, and she lost one of her shoes. Her limbs askew and skittered around like a spider’s, and she raised something under the setting sun that looked like a handle. She flipped to her feet. Her ruthless face turned to him, and the device she held clicked two long blades. The blades spun in her apt hands, faster than a helicopter’s. His hands reached behind his neck, seized the hilts, and whipped out the curves of thick blades, shaped like leaves.

They leaped toward each other. Both of his blades splintered when steel met tungsten diamond and graphene. A dumbfounded stare at his broken hilts before he threw them at her face, which only clacked apart in the lethal blur. He pinwheeled to the side to get away from her, and he thought of Danielle dying alone if he got killed. She stopped. Her head tilted toward the direction he had come from. A sly smile crept across her face. Found her other shoe. Put it on. Turned to race toward the junked Chevrolet Lance. He clambered on the junked cars. Both bounded twenty yards apart, pacing each other. She leaped first to the Chevrolet door, and he had a sickening image of himself holding the daughter’s severed head and signing to them, ME TRY, with the other hand. He stopped and held up his hand. She opened the door, reached in, and took Danielle. Her other hand closed into a fist, and all he could do was watch.

Danielle babbled. Her small hands patted at the killer’s cheeks. Stroked her about the hair and the delicate neck. The enemy’s face became baffled, and her mouth sagged. She closed her eyes as Danielle squealed and clasped her tiny arms around her neck. The girl knelt on the gravel and her arms entwined Danielle’s back. She moved her head back and looked at the toddler’s face. Her entire body shook with sobs. Her eyes glistened, she carefully put the cargo back into the baby sling. She placed her back into the car. Faced him. The moon fell upon her peaceful expression.

MERCY, she signed, her fingers canceling out everything.

She sprung over the wreckages. He pulled Danielle out of the car and checked her for any injuries. She cooed and burbled. A moment of peace savored. He headed back to wherever her home was. When he looked back upon this, he wished he had the artistic skill to draw the whole thing into a graphic novel. If he could, the last panel would show him handing the package to loving hands. Of course, other people’s word balloons would ask him how did he survive, and the word balloon in italics that comes out of his signs would have to say complete with ellipses, SHE KILL ENEMY WITH NICE…