Jay remembered that house. It was hard not to. It was the cold, hard brick of her childhood, and she was finally back. The porch creaked under her feet, and Jay didn't have the heart to care.

She didn't knock on the door. She'd never had to knock; why start now?

Inside, it was dark, just as she'd always remembered it being. It smelled like urine and feces and everything rotten, food, wood, and people. It wasn't a nice place. It had never been a nice place. If it was she wasn't sure she'd be here now.

There was only one place she needed to go, and that was the living room. It wasn't a slog, though the stench in the air made it feel like one. Her skin prickled seeing the photos on the wall. They were dusty, almost unrecognisable. She wouldn't know what they were of if she hadn't been there to see them taken. Pictures of her small, chubby face.

Jay shook her head. She was here for a reason.

Sitting on the sofa was a woman. She didn't look anything like Jay, her face wrinkled and sagging, alcohol seeping from every pore. Lan Phoung sat there, a cigarette in hand, staring blankly at the daughter she thought was dead.

"They'd told me you'd come back."

Jay knew it. She knew Abscess would contact her mother the second she took that shot in New York. They wanted to make sure that Jay had nowhere to go. It was funny, though. She'd never come back here unless it was for a reason.

"I'm not coming back," Jay said, her nose wrinkled. "I'm coming to say goodbye."

Lan raised an eyebrow, giving Jay the look she had always despised receiving. It meant she'd failed in some way, that she was a disappointment. "So say it."

"I hate you," Jay said, her voice was soft, and her tone was numb. She'd been thinking about this moment for almost 15 years, and now that it was here, it all felt numb. "I hate what you did to me, who you made me into. I hate the way I grew up. I hate how you gave me no choice but to be exactly who I am right now. I hate you."

Her mother's lip curled as she took a drag of her cigarette. She didn't say anything. She just waited.

"I hate the way you used to slap me around. I hate that you started making me pay rent at 15, forcing me to find some way to make money. I hate that I didn't graduate from high school because of that. I hate that Bá and Ông were rich and you never had to fucking work a day in your life. I hate that you took my money but not theirs–" Jay's voice broke then.

It was 15 years of resentment and pain coming out all at once, and Jay knew she had a goal here. "So you tell Abscess when they come knocking that I was here and that I'm mad. I'm angry because they took as much from me as you did, if not more. You took my childhood, they took my adulthood."

Lan got the look on her face that Jay saw often, not only in the mirror staring back at her but in her nightmares and in her memories. It was a look that preceded a quiet whisper of her name and a promise of violence and anger later. "M–"

"No. You don't get to talk. This isn't about you." Jay cut her off. She wasn't here for Lan, she was here for Jay. She was here for a reason. She pulled out the gun from her holster and pointed it directly at her mother. She felt nothing. She never felt anything when she killed.

"You're going to kill me?" Lan said, sounding almost astonished. She'd never sounded like that before, and Jay relished in knowing that she could make new sounds leave her mother's lips.

Jay sighed, lowering the gun. "No. But it will hurt." She fired, the bullet ripping through her mother's leg and the couch. Killing Lan wasn't the point. It wasn't what she was here for. Jay was here to send a message, and the message wouldn't be received if Abscess didn't know that the message was waiting for them.

The screams and soft sobs of her mother's voice echoed in the stench of the house as Jay walked out the back door to the garden that was overgrown with weeds, and covered in trash and sewage. It wasn't as pretty as she remembered. She used to plant things back here. She used to plant cherry pits and apricots, just to see what would happen.

Clearly, nothing grew.

~

"They want to kill you," Jay said, her voice calm and still so as not to scare away the woman standing across from her. "Do you understand what that means?"

The woman frowned, her short black bob moving with her head as she shook it. "I get what you're saying, but you just broke into my apartment. I don't necessarily know if I trust you."

Jay sighed, her hair up in a ponytail. Sure, she'd broken into the apartment, but that was because she had no idea if Abscess was already watching Mandy Slow. She was a target, a high-profile one, so Jay knew that Aye must have handpicked her, probably because Senator Cole paid him to do so.

"I don't necessarily know if you understand the gravity of what's going on here," Jay said, her eyes scanning the room, taking in the cheap decor and the lived-in feel of the place. There were places to put mics and cameras here. She only knew there weren't because of the sweep she'd done when she entered the apartment before Mandy got home from her barista job.

Mandy shrugged, "Even if I did, you're saying that the job I'm going to tonight is a set-up for a secret government agency to kill me? Because I fucked a Senator once?"

"Let's both be clear here, you fucked the Senator multiple times."

"Okay, whatever," Mandy shrugged, before standing in the middle of the living room, her arms crossed as she waited for Jay to respond.

Jay sighed, massaging her temples. She's been having headaches more recently since the car accident. Trying to go back to Mandy's original question, she responded, "Yes. But they're not really a government agency anymore. They operate outside the realm of the law. They do what they want when they want to as long as they get paid."

"So someone's paying for me to die?" Mandy sat down on the couch, her arms crossed in front of her, the motion turning into more of a hug. A self-soothing method. She was scared, and she was right to be scared.

Jay nodded. She didn't really have anything else to say because it was true. Senator Cole was paying for Amanda Slow to die. To be killed, to be specific. He'd hired the most powerful government agency in the world to kill this girl, and, looking around the apartment at the sweaters strewn about the place, the dishes in the sink and the ungodly amount of yarn and potted plants, Jay wasn't really sure why.

"Do you know why the Senator would want you dead?"

"John is the one paying for me to die!" Mandy shrieked, her voice high and her eyes wide.

Jay paused. She thought she'd covered that. She nodded. Yes.

Mandy took a deep breath, her arms unlatching from her body, and she stood up, her eyes holding that glint in them that Jay recognised. She saw that glint in her eyes every single morning. It was the one that kept her going. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay. John wants me dead. That's real nice, but even if they're gonna kill me, I need this money." Mandy stood strong in her living room. Her body in front of her couch, the large sweater she was wearing and the jeans made her look younger than her 26 years of life. Jay didn't want this to be what killed her. She deserved more than this.

Jay sighed. There was no arguing with Mandy. She'd looked into her before coming here. She still had access to a lot of government databases. Amanda Slow got paid a bunch of money under the table for this prostitute job. She took that money and gave it to her mother's caretaker. Her mother had cancer. Her mother would die without the caretaker and the medicine that this job would provide. Jay knew that no part of Mandy was going to leave and abandon her mother.

"Then we need a plan," Jay said. Her voice was still and calm. Mandy Slow wasn't dying tonight.