Worth It

WORTH IT

Whenever it was just about to rain, whenever the air was cold but thick, whenever your breath exhaled in a plume of steam in the Spring morning, Annette's hip ached with the force of a ninety-pound weight. Still, even eleven years on, waking with this perpetual soreness, she felt it was all worth it. Annette leaned to one side in her wheelchair, peering absently out the electrified viewport. Forlorn patches of scraggly grass peeked up over the swathes of sepia mud. Upstate New York. Annette remembered her time before.

In those days, you didn't need to be the Manchurian Candidate to want to blow the President's fucking head clean off his shoulders. Annette's normally neutral gaze turned salty and sour at just the thought of that shambling, slapstick cartoon of a man. Her motivation remained a flickering flame even now. That same salty scowl crossed her face when the verdict came down: life imprisonment, no chance of parole.

She remembered further back, to the hundreds of hours training with her rifle. She trained her eyes and aim taking out the unmanned drones in East Coast cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Hartford. Each time she would expertly disassemble her rifle to stow in the artful leather case slung across her back. Each time she would zip away on her Vespa, turning into a streak of whatever colour it was at the time: sometimes a deep violet, sometimes a glittering metallic blue, even one time a day-glo pink. That colour-changing technology is one thing she was particularly proud of. It blended her ride in with the swelling, roiling rainbow of rickshaws, bicycles, and even pedestrian masses found in all those post-industrial black holes.

Her present aches and pains brought her back, and she shifted in her chair again. A worn, freckled hand reassuringly massaged her stiffened hip, plying the raised scars for the five-thousandth time.

That one used to be her leaning hip. Sometimes after taking out a drone or two, she'd stow her scooter in a contact's lead-lined garage or storage shed, then shoot pool. On the other half of her leather case, there were the pieces of her cue stick, and with the same mechanical precision she would screw together the wooden shaft before her first drink was ordered.

With an impressive win-record, Annette was not a shark, but instead possessing a quiet and unassuming nature startlingly in contrast to her laser-focus and accuracy. For those tricky shots, her denim-clad hips would sidle up to the table, a buttock would find purchase along the table's edge, and she'd sink one more when everyone else thought the odds were against her.

No one suspected her to be an assassin. Even her own sister, Olivia. But she taught Annette a valuable lesson: "Do it methodically, thoroughly, and you'll only have to do it once." She didn't know if Olivia was still alive, but she and her lessons were never forgotten.

Fast forward to only a dozen years ago. The caricature-in-chief was speaking again. Not in the rain this time, but in the foggy, heavy air of a Washington, DC, Sunday morning. Something about more enemies, more bombs, bloviating eventually to the inevitable topic of more victories and more prosperity. The city beyond the concrete and flexisteel barricades - punctuated with flood lights and sonic crowd disruptors - told an "alternative fact."

His final words were, "Tomorrow is yours and mine."

Annette retorted ruefully, "But not tonight." She held her breath and squeezed the trigger. Lights out, and the stage was painted red.

Maybe sticking around wasn't the best choice. But what was to be done? The entire nation - not just the city - was upturned. It was the first time in the 21st Century that the entire country was on lockdown. She had to stay off the streets.

Running constantly was exhausting. Her contacts all turned her away, or she fled herself. The Vespa was uncovered and immediately impounded. It was during a pool match that the hammer came down. Annette leaned on the hickory ledge of the antique billiards table at Ricky's Pub. The door burst open. Shouts, a flash-bang, and one shotgun blast later, Annette's left hip was gone.

Annette's mind was ushered back to the present by the familiar sound of metal scratching in protest to being pushed aside on her cell door. A food tray slid its way into her cell.

A single push, and Annette was rolling the few feet needed to be by the door. Facing backwards, she reached down to retrieve her dinner. "Homestyle night," she mused.

She considered her instant mashed potatoes. The gravy was unmistakably spelling out a single word: "Hero."