The Zodiac Assassins

Chapter 10

9 Days until DdM

The entire hotel was eerily silent. I'd almost gotten used to the conversation through the thin walls, footsteps on the same floor as me, and people just generally seeming to be everywhere, but now that they were gone and it was only the six of us, it felt empty. Of course, Cancer wasn't bothered by this at all. She bounced in whilst I was going through my third piece of toast and jarlsberg cheese with a black board, two sticks of white chalk and a board rubber.

"Right, seeing as no one objected to the plan said yesterday, I propose that we go through with that" she slams down the board and writes 'Gordon Ellis Asasination' on the top.

"You've spelt assassination wrong" Aries says without looking over.

Cancer stares at her, bewildered, and then back at the board. "Have I? Is it meant to have to 's'?"

Aries nods. "A-S-S-A-S-S-I-N-A-T-I-O-N. Assassination."

"O... okay" she rubs out the word and re-writes it correctly before drawing out and plan of the Ellico factory. "He's going to be here throughout tomorrow so we need to strike then. As we said before, we create a mixture of... of... cobra venom? and something like arsenic which should take him down fast. We'll send in Aries, Taurus and Gemini. Aries will go ahead with the assassination whilst Taurus makes sure she's not disturbed. Gemini'll only really be there in case it goes wrong but then when they're all out of there, we blow the place sky-high. Sound good?"

"What if DdM goes off in the explosion?" Scorpio says, picking at the table cloth. "What then?"

"I never thought of that" Aquarius mutters, frowning. "It shouldn't do. It should be destroyed in the explosion instead of detonated. It's powerful so it'd need someone with a key or a code or something to set it off."

"It won't go off in the explosion" I say, pushing away my empty plate and folding my hands across my chest. "They wouldn't be foolish enough to let anything like that happen. We're talking about world-class scientists and mathematicians who will have a full risk assessment including a meteor shower."

Cancer nods. "No, they wouldn't dream of letting it go off as quickly as that. I brought together some of Scorpio's snake venom and some of my poison to create this." She brings out a long, thin test tube with something blue and bubbling inside. There is a cork firmly in the stop and some sort of gas is billowing up to it and circling angrily below. "I tested it on an arm I found in Aries' room..."

"Hey" Aries shouts, leaping up. "Don't go routing through my stuff. That's private."

Cancer shrugs and carries on. "Nothing happened until I cut it open and found that the bone and muscle had disintegrated and the blood had turned a sickly yellow colour. It's definitely going to kill him."

"So... when yesterday did you have time to do this?" Taurus asks, stirring some kind of long drowned cereal in a puddle of milk.

"That doesn't matter right now" Cancer waves her hand and pockets the test tube. "What matters is that we all know what we're doing yeah?"

"What am I doing again?" I ask. "As far as I know, I have no role in this apart from to sit round and look helpful."

"Well... you're there in case anything goes wrong. We'll send you into the vents again to tamper with stuff just in case and then we'll alert you when Aries kills him and you get out of there."

I shake my head. "I don't need to be in the goddam vent. All I need to do is be in the same room as the person I need to kill. There'll be a carbon dioxide filter in there which we just remove. Easy."

"You go in with Aries then"

"Settled" I shrug and nod.

Aquarius jumps up. "Well, I'm going into the pool. Anyone coming with me?"

No one says anything.

"I'll come" Cancer says. "I might get in, but not for long."

"Same" Taurus sighs and heaves himself up from his chair. "I feel like a swim."

"You don't look like a swim" Aries mutters.

"Haha" Taurus says sarcastically. "Funny."