Silver Shadow #3
"The Stunt"
by Aaron Baugh

"Electronics must not be your strength, Mister Lazzarini. Very few people possess the incompetence to fail robbing an isolated warehouse in the middle of the night."

Adolfo Lazzarini sat across from the man who called him incompetent in his own office. The leather of his chair stuck to his sweaty palms. He licked dry lips, his face pale. All bravado had been taken from him when the small man who sat across from him had entered his building and killed every security person on their way to Lazzarini's eighteenth floor office. The hulking man-mountain behind the visitor was the reason. Luke, as the small man had addressed him, seemed impervious to pain and the damage that gunshot wounds do to the human body. He had proven himself capable and willing to use human beings as thrown weapons.

"What do you want?" asked Lazzarini as he stared at the huge man behind his visitor.

"Nothing, Adolfo. Not much, that is." Luke cracked massive knuckles.

"I can pay you!" cried the man behind the desk. Only this morning, he had personally overseen the negotiations that guaranteed the results of the next city council election. Now, he quaked as he fought to keep from letting panic get to him. "Millions! Yours, just let me leave the building alive!"

His visitor thought for a brief moment, his brows furrowed. Abruptly, he smiled thinly. "Very well, Adolfo."

Eager to please, Lazzarini began the process of wire transfers into accounts located in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Without hesitation, he turned the numbers over to the small man in the overstuffed chair before his desk. Swiftly, the man folded the sheet of paper in half twice, before slipping it into his jacket pocket. He stood. Adolfo smiled, then winced and cried out as a massive hand gripped his shoulder, squeezing so hard that the sharp 'pop' of splintering bone could be heard plainly in the quiet room. The hand lifted him from his chair.

"Y-you promised!" stuttered Adolfo, his words coming out through teeth clenched in pain. "I could l-leave alive!"

"And you will," said his guest as he examined something under his right thumbnail. "You will, just as I agreed. Once you break the plane of the window, you'll be outside the building and very much alive. You'll stay that way until the sudden stop at the end.
Goodbye, Mister Lazzarini. Luke, proceed."

The crash of shattered glass was the next to last sound Adolfo Lazzarini ever heard. The very last sound was his own screams as he fell eighteen stories. A wet crunch at street level coincided with the termination of his screams.

". . .and now with a news update, here is Julianna Brumby. Julianna?"

"Thank you, Charles. Commodities Exchange Chairman Adolfo Lazzarini plummeted eighteen stories to his death very early this morning. Preliminary reports from the coroner's office indicate a time of death between 1 and 3 AM. Signs of extreme violence in the building and the recovery of between ten and fifteen corpses indicate that Mister Lazzarini's death was not a suicide. Investigators are examining all the evidence at hand, as well as following up on the rumors of organized crime connections that have plagued Lazzarini for the past nine years."

Wavy horizontal lines moving vertically down the screen distorted the pretty image of Ms. Brumby's face. As Jian turned off his blender, the picture cleared, but faded to black and white.

"Why don't you get that fixed? Or get a new one?" asked Chuck Starling, director and producer for Pacific Limits Studios.

Jian slapped the TV hard on top, jolting it back into color, although the new picture made Julianna's flesh appear too red. "What? It's working just fine." He tipped the blender's pitcher over a glass, and a thick paste the color of wheat dropped slowly into it. He slid it in front of Chuck.

Chuck picked up his glass and stared at its contents while Jian upended the pitcher over a taller glass of his own. "So," said Chuck uncertainly, "I, um, drink it?"

"Good for the muscles, good for the blood, gives you energy, too. Try it," admonished the stuntman and fight choreographer as he took a large gulp of his own portion.

"I don't think so."

"Try it," said Jian, his eyes narrowed. "You want to get through the ninjas today, right?"

Chuck sighed. "Threats, John? I didn't think that was your style."

"Don't be a baby," chided the martial artist. "It tastes like banana."

"Really?" At a nod from Jian, Chuck took a sip, licking the thick mixture off his upper lip. He paused, considering. "Not like any banana I've ever had. What's in this stuff?"

"Ancient Chinese secret," said Jian, laying on the thick Chinese accent common to movies, one which he didn't naturally have.

"Well, whatever," said the producer as he sat his glass back on the counter and pushed it away. "So, how about your new assistant, huh?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Nice, don'cha think?"

Jian smiled. "Assistant is hardly the word. Your new co-star needed a body and stunt double, that's all. How convenient for you to only have to pay one woman for both jobs."

"True," said Starling, "but what a body!" He shook his head in appreciation. "Hey, any REAL food back there? Bacon? Donuts? I need breakfast here, man."

"Time to go to work, Chuck," said the stuntman as he placed the unconsumed breakfast drink in the fridge and began to walk towards the door. "I offered, you declined."

"THAT was breakfast?" asked Starling as he pointed at the sludge still in his glass.

"I'm leaving!!" came Jian's echoing voice from the stairwell.

Sighing, Chuck turned to grab his PDA and flipped the lock on the door, closing it behind him with a slam as he jogged down the stairs.

"CUT!!" bellowed Chuck Starling, his yell amplified to a level that was very close to painful by the megaphone he held. "How many now?" he asked his assistant through clenched teeth.

"Ah, thirteen, sir."

"THIRTEEN!!" he shouted. He crossed to the center of the shot, where Ben Carlisle, the male lead, was having difficulty with his lines. "For Christ's sake, man," began Starling, "the line is 'You can never trust, or love, when you're a person like me. That's
my burden.' It's not bloody Shakespeare, dammit! You say your line, and then you," and here Chuck pointed to the shapely redhead lurking off-scene, "enter and say. . ."

"But I understand," said the actress.

"YES! At least SOMEBODY knows their job. Then what comes next?" demanded Chuck.

"I hug him from behind and he turns. We're about to kiss, when the ninjas attack through the windows and the door."

"Exactly!" Chuck turned to stand nose-to nose with Carlisle. "GOT THAT!? The actor nodded. "Tell John and Emma to stand by," he muttered to a set man. He trudged back behind the camera and plopped into his seat, bringing the megaphone up again. "Let's get it done this time, people. Quiet! Ready! Action!"

The scene unfolded according to the script, and Jian watched from behind the cameras, looking at a closed-circuit TV monitor showing the extras poised at the windows and doors to the set. As the moment approached, the ready light behind the set turned green, and the men hurtled forward, two kicking the door down and one smashing through each of the three
sugar glass windows.

"Cut! Good job people, even you, Carlisle. Stunt doubles! In scene!" called Chuck.

Jian swigged back some water and stepped in to relieve Carlisle. The stunt double for the redhead, however, was nowhere to be seen. Chuck Starling noticed, a vein on his forehead threatening to burst. "Where in the blue hell is Emma? I'm on a schedule and a budget for Christ's sake!"

Footsteps echoing down the hall announced her approach. Emma Randolph had much the same body shape as the actress she was going to replace in the scene. Long, auburn hair, a nice shape with a slightly smaller bosom, due to an athletic bra, no
doubt, but Jian's eyes narrowed as he took in her very very green eyes. His memory shot back to the museum only a few short days earlier, and his ribs twinged in slight pain as if they, too, remembered. Emma, for her part, only smiled warmly at him,
although the look in those green eyes of hers were more apt to belong to a hunting lioness than a movie stuntwoman. She gave him another intense, head to toe and back again look, then stepped into the place the actress had just vacated. The 'ninjas' were all men that Jian had worked with before and trained. They hadn't had any time to work through a rehearsal with Emma due to Chuck's balls to the wall shooting schedule.

"Hi," said Jian by way of greeting, offering his hand to Emma. "I'm Jian Li, most people call me John."

She took his hand and shook it firmly. "I'm Emma." her accent was only very slightly British, and Jian found it oddly alluring. "I've heard of you, I like your work. I actually saw you three years ago at the world martial artists convention."

"Seoul? You were there? I'd like to think I'd remember you."

Emma shrugged. "Your breaking demonstration was very impressive. Was it a record?"

"No," said Jian. "Tied the world record, but I didn't want to break it, or my hand."

Emma arched her left eyebrow at his response. The slight movement of her upper lip curved into a smile, just as Chuck approached the pair.

"Are we ready?" asked the director with a smile. "I hope so," he said, not bothering to wait for any reply. He moved beside Emma and sketched out the scene for her in words and gestures. "Okay, the two that come through the door are after you, Jian
gets the three from the windows. Normal stuff, nothing fancy. Don't show me anything too breathtaking or fancy here. The character isn't a master, and I don't want you showing up Johnny here," he said with a wink. "Got it?"

Emma nodded. "I think so."

"Good, let's get it ready, then. Sound tech!"

"YO!" came the call from beyond the cameras. Chuck moved away towards the voice, but the two stunt people moved to confer briefly with their opponents before the call of "Ready? Quiet! Aaaannd, action!"

The figures on the screen froze, then moved backwards through the air. One 'ninja' sprung up from the splintered remains of the coffee table that put itself back together. His arm entered the grip of Emma Randolph, and the man levered himself up to attack her from behind. Jian rewound the tape all the way to the beginning, then hit play again, watching Emma's movements carefully, with the trained eye of a master martial artist.

It was her eyes that kept springing back into his mind, the whisper of knowledge that he had seen her before in a different form. At least, that was how he felt. He had seen scores of women since his fight at the museum, and several of them had green eyes, but none that stirred his memory like the ones Emma Randolph possessed. Turning his attention back towards the images on the screen, his eyes searched her actions for signs that she was the woman he had fought in the basement of the Museum of Antiquities.

From the third story catwalk, Jian looked down on the auburn-locked form of Emma Randolph as she practised a scene with two of the other stuntmen. They each held kick pads and moved about according to the pre-scripted fight choreography, perfecting their timing before going before the camera.

No other staff were around, and Jian withdrew a slim blade, shaped like a 'V' and modified for throwing. Looking around once more, he whipped the shape towards the wire securing a large multi-lensed spotlight that hung over Emma and the other stuntmen.

As the knife left his hand, he backflipped off of the catwalk, landing lightly on his feet thirty some-odd feet lower than when he started.

His head came up just in time to hear a shout of one of the stuntmen who lay on his back after one of Emma's kicks. He had seen the shape, about the size of a computer monitor, as it fell towards his head.

Emma Randolph looked up, paused, and as the light was six feet off the ground, spun on one leg and kicked the side of the light, denting it and making it fly ten feet to the side before it struck the ground in a spray of splintered glass and buckled metal. The immense noise drew lots of attention very quickly, and Emma was looking up towards where the light had been
after she knelt beside it to examine the neatly cut cable.

She should have been looking about twenty feet to her let, where Jian smiled a small smile to himself before stepping back into the shadows and leaving the studio building. He had found his mysterious assailant.

Very few people could have reacted in time to save themselves in such a situation, and Jian had even seen her pause before taking action. She was clearly the woman he had fought with earlier.