第5章 Petal Story: Work Hard Play Hard（2/2）

\"One downstairs. The other two are in the elevator, don\u0027t know where they are going.\"

\"Perfect.\"

Wearing nothing except her hair bun, S laid down on the floor next to the fire escape stairs one floor down. She did her best to be motionless with her eyes half closed as if she was knocked out or killed herself. She did not bring any weapons, only one syringe hidden in her hand, the rest behind the stairwell door.

\"Tango coming around the corner in four, three...\"

She heard a gasp from outside her radio then running coming toward her. The Petal fell into her trap.

As the girl came close enough, S kicked her from the floor, hitting her behind the knees. Then, she kicked her in the stomach. The Petal sat down coughing for air, not understanding what just happened.

S brought the syringe out and put it into the Petal\u0027s open mouth. She stuck it under the girl\u0027s tongue and pushed all the morphine in. Then, she dragged the girl into the fire escape stairwell.

The minidress this Petal wore was pink, for bank desk duty, not red for guards. She also had short white socks instead of long stockings. Then, S was surprised by what she realized when she checked out her face and hairstyle. This girl had starred in some Petal porn movies and celebrity sex tapes she watched, with a beauty mark on her right chin and one short side ponytail. She had the same lacy white panties too.

\"I\u0027m so sorry, I liked how you look.\"

She was being honest. However, the morphine injection did not give S any way to go back and secure the porn star Petal in a non lethal way. S felt bad to have exploited her kindness, after fighting the Petal team boss who had no compassion. She held the girl close and kissed her, first on the lips then on the exposed chest. The Petal was still breathing, but becoming weaker.

She went back to stripping. Another surprise came to her, the Petal was busty and topless, but had scars from breast implants. Bai Bi must have paid a lot on plastic surgery to make them have the same face, and different bodies for different tastes.

The girl coughed sleepily and tried to open her eyes, the injection under her tongue was choking her. S laid her flat then tightly clutched onto her throat with one hand. Another gurgling cough came but it felt weaker. S gave her breasts a few gentle strokes to comfort her. Then another cough happened, the girl twitched and stopped moving, head leaned to a side, drool flowing down her cheek like a waterfall.

S took everything the Petal wore but the lacy panties. She also let left her hairstyle intact because she changed her own hair bun to match the style. This Petal looked very unique, but S knew confusing and angering the enemy were as useful as disguising.

\"Boss, they found all the bodies. Now they are coming back down for the lobby.\"

She took a deep breath and headed down.

One of the two Petals in the lobby waited in front at the elevator and the other near the stairwell door. The latter was petite, just like the first one in the dorm, with Two hair buns on a short bob cut. The other one had a long ponytail. Both of them wore white stockings instead of black. The more important thing was they both had pistols out.

\"Report to me! What happened?\"

The Petal shouted in Chinese. S covered her lower face with both hands and coughed, but kept walking towards her.

\"What...\"

S jumped at the Petal with her right knee forward, hitting her in the bottom of her rib cage. The Petal dropped the pistol and bent over, dazed. S did not have her a chance to relax, but punched her left hand upwards under the Petal\u0027s chin. A sharp crack was heard around the lobby and the Petal fell backwards, sat on her knees shakily then lied down dead with a broken neck.

The ponytail Petal threw her pistol away before S could pick the bob cut Petal\u0027s gun up.

\"Thank you for saving me the trouble. It\u0027s hard to write the after action report if I shot that one.\"

The ponytail Petal had the same voice as S. Then, S looked harder and saw her own face.

\"Let\u0027s go over this quick. Your boss is way more closer to Bai Bi than you thought, he was trying to set up a formal partnership. His offers included security contracts for cities we operate in, and genetic data from every female mercenary in the payroll including you and K. I am the new you, the better version of you.\"

\"A Chinese copy of me. I must say they have a good taste!\"

The Petal clone of S drew her sword, threw the sheath behind her, and pointed it at S.

\"Let\u0027s show everyone a good dance!\"

S threw the gun at her clone\u0027s head, and raised the dead Petal on the floor up. Clone Petal dodged the gun, but S shoved the corpse into her path before she could strike.

Clone Petal pushed the body away with the free hand. She must have an order of minimizing damage to surroundings too, thought S. She had planned to let the sword get stuck in the dead girl or knock it off, but there was no luck.

The clone came at S from another direction, swinging the sword like she was dancing. S stretched her fishing wire out and prepared to tangle the sword between her fists. She made a leap to go towards the sword, but the clone Petal pulled back at the last second and grinned at her.

\"I know every trick you have!\"

The Petal made a very accurate cut and sliced the wire in half. There was more hidden inside the roll on S\u0027 wrist, but it would be harder to pull out and hold onto in combat.

S retreated towards a row of computers used by bank employees in the lobby. The clone followed like she have guessed. She must be trying to prove how superior to the original she is by perfectly following her order to guard the bank\u0027s property. S also wanted to prove her own superiority over the copy, but she was having a hard time thinking of advantages on her hands. The Petal was faster, armed with a sword and bulletproof Chi armor, and not exhausted from earlier fighting. She even had longer, smoother hair.

The Petal was within sword reach and sliced at S horizontally. S ducked down and rolled away, not caring about how bad this may have looked in a minidress. The clone followed but kept distance, her sword raised high.

S threw out her two last remaining syringes at the same time. The clone blocked both of them with her sword, just as S expected. Before the clone could pose her sword again, S kicked her straight in the right hand which held the sword. The sword fell off and the girl backed off in pain. A normal soldier or even a normal Petal would have cursed and screamed, but she only frowned.

S then kicked the sword away as she stood up. The Petal regained her pose too, and punched at S with her left hand. S moved aside to let clone Petal pass, then grabbed onto the long ponytail tight.

Wrapping both their left arms in the long hair, S dragged the girl identical to her down to the floor and stretched the clone\u0027s right arm straight backwards using her own right hand. She pressed both knees onto the back of the elbow, dislocating it.

The Petal screamed in pain. It sounded different than S\u0027 memory of herself being injured, more animal like, more child like too. Time to finally end this night.

Left arm still tightly locked with the clone\u0027s, S dragged both of them slowly towards the sword on the floor. She picked it up, and gently pressed it onto her clone\u0027s neck.

\"Any last words?\"

\"You can\u0027t... You can\u0027t... Ahh!\"

Pain from the broken arm stopped the Petal from saying anything more, she kept gasping, even started sobbing a little.

\"No, I don\u0027t know either. Sorry.\"

S ran out of patience. She made a fast cut, opened the clone\u0027s artery and windpipe with no resistance. Then, she dripped the sword and held her right hand on the girl\u0027s waist tight from the back. There was no sexual touching, S tried to be compassionate to the Petal who once tried steal her identity. The hot blood washed over both of them, and S started to feel relaxed for the first time this night.

\"Good work, kid. You call for cleanup anytime you want. Go get a shower.\"

The voice in S\u0027 radio this time came from her boss. The man could be very demanding on her performance, but deep down he wouldn\u0027t sell her out.

Epilogue

The next evening, the board of directors\u0027 room of the American headquarters of Bai Bi industries was in heated debate. A man and a woman stood in front of a video conference screen with two older men facing them.

On another screen was a terrible scene laid out in detail, but presented in a strange way that could be called loving. The seven Petals killed in the incident were laid side by side on a wooden floor of an unknown building somewhere. Each of them were dressed in a set of spotless clean white pajamas, barefoot and hair undone, with pink ribbons tied around where they were injured and where the killing blow hit. It was S\u0027 idea and handiwork to pay them respect and reflect her own victory. The dead Petals looked more peaceful and beautiful in death than in life.

\"Professor, this was a waste of money and lives. Your new generation clone had no improvement over the orphan soldiers, yet went on the mission without sufficient training.\"

One of the men on the screen was Shen Long, chief of the Petal field operation.

\"It was your insufficient training.\"

The man he referred to as the Professor complained.

\"You did not gave her enough time! She have not learned teamwork or leadership.\"

Shen Long was irritated.

\"It was insubordination from one of your top student that stopped the team from preparing defense.\"

The Professor shouted back, but the woman next to him, the CEO Bai Meihua, gave him no support. Her eyes were fixed on the Petals\u0027 sweet sleeping faces. The white pajamas made the dead girls look like angels, pink ribbons a cold but not grotesque reminder of their errors. Broken necks were made straight again, so was the clone\u0027s dislocated arm. Painful expressions all fixed by S, as nicely as she could. Even the sword cut was sewn back. However, S\u0027 boss did not mention her role in the incident at all.

\"Enough! It was pointless. The Americans were open to our offer in the first place. Showing them weakness did not build their trust in us.\"

Bai Yong, the founder of Bai Bi, said sternly.

\"However, we gave their ego a boost. They were running dry, needed our money to operate, and we need a new partner in the American Midwest. We can build a mutually beneficial relation from there. This can be a night we all put behind.\"

\"Yes, yes, I will put it behind and go back to step one with cloning experiments.\"

The Professor brought the topic back to his work. Shen Long was about to speak but Bai Yong waved him down.

\"Correct. Your project has not been changed in any way, but you should no longer interfere in training and field operation matters.\"

The Professor grinned. Bai Meihua pushed him aside.

\"We lost six people because of him. His clone Petal is also our loss. We can\u0027t even bring them home. Old man, did you just say we should forget their sacrifices and keep doing business without the American mercenaries having to pay?\"

\"I understand you. Be assured, I will not deploy Petals to the United States outside of being your personal guard. Not all is lost for the Petals either. The Americans have sent them to a cryo storage lab they owned and gave me their DNA files.\"

The video conference shut down. Bai Meihua waited for the Professor to leave, and started sobbing in front of the screen. The clone Petal\u0027s face appeared relaxed and and apologetic to her, as if telling her none of it was her fault.