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“He’s called the Faceless Man.”
“Who is he?”
“We don’t know. He could be one person. He could be a group of people. He might not exist at all; just a name people gave to unrelated assassins over the years. We don’t know who he is, who he works for, or what he wants. Plenty of us thought he was a ghost story.”
* * *
“Go, I got this!” Tarth yelled, and Gendry left the sound of gunshots behind and ran.
The Faceless Man was on top of an overturned car, his gun pointed at something Gendry couldn’t quite see, and Gendry launched himself at the assassin, his shield up.
The first thing he registered about the Faceless Man was that he was short. He wasn’t sure what he had expected – not someone as large as himself, but certainly not someone who couldn’t be taller than five foot four. For a terrifying second, he thought the assassin might be a kid.
The second thing he registered about the Faceless Man was that he was armed to the teeth, covered in body armor, and masked below the eyes.
The man turned to face him, and Gendry took in his stature, his muscle definition, the set of his hips. Not a kid. A woman. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered vaguely how, with all of Dondarrion’s resources and information, nobody had figured out that the Faceless Man was female.
The third thing he registered about the Faceless Man was that she stopped him dead in his tracks when her metal fist connected with his shield. Oh.
She kicked him away and his body connected painfully with the asphalt. He brought his shield back up just in time to protect himself from the hail of bullets, but he felt the vibrations in his arm and gritted his teeth against the pain. He propelled himself up, launching himself at her again. He twisted and ducked, using the edge of his shield as a weapon. The woman dropped her gun, catching his shield in her metal hand and twisting with the momentum, yanking it out of his grasp and throwing it to the side, useless. Gendry regained his footing, twisting his body to land a solid kick at her ribs.
At some point in the half second he had taken to turn, she had drawn a slender knife, and he barely dodged the slice at his face that would have blinded him. They grappled, and somewhere far behind him Gendry heard screams.
He had ten inches and well over a hundred pounds of muscle on her, but she was armed and clearly had the hand-to-hand training he lacked. She had a much lower center of gravity, and the metal arm lent a great deal of strength to her already-muscular frame. Gendry was hard-pressed for the advantage in the fight. He felt the first fingers of panic begin to clench in his stomach and shook them off.
Duck. Twist. Block. Strike. It was a dangerous dance, faster and more deadly than the ones he had learned in Flea Bottom alleys. Much later, he would admire her grace, the fluidity of her movements, but for now most of his mind was offline and he threw all of himself into the fight.
He wouldn’t beat her in hand-to-hand combat; that much was obvious. He didn’t have the time or the endurance to wait until Tarth cleared the gunmen and came to his aid. Gendry thrust a knee at the Faceless Man’s chest, slamming his full body weight into her and driving them both into the SUV behind her hard enough to dent the passenger-side door. He hoped the force of impact would be enough to stun her for the fraction of a second he needed to gain the upper hand, but she was already forcing him back, raining blows just as fast as he could block them.
He saw an opening, finally, and took it, using the momentum of her swing to pull her into his grasp and roll her over his shoulder. She hit the ground hard, harder than he had intended, and her mask clattered to the ground during the fall. He took the extra second to catch his breath, shift into a defensive stance, and wait for her next attack.
Then she turned around.
The fourth thing Gendry Waters registered about the Faceless Man was that he knew her.
Stormy grey eyes he hadn’t truly noticed earlier stared blankly at him, and Gendry felt himself stiffen in shock. The gunshots and screaming around them faded into blankness, and the only sounds he heard were their own ragged breathing.
“Arya?” He said numbly.
She looked at him blankly, and he searched desperately for a hint of recognition in her face. “A girl has no name.”
There was a shout, an explosion, the shattering pain of impact; when the smoke cleared, Tarth was at his side, and Arya was gone.
* * *
A girl was aware, distantly, of her arms and legs strapped to the chair and a piercing light somewhere above her. Something was being done to her arm, and she felt the sparks of pain among the metal endings to her nerves. She sat perfectly still. Arya Arya Arya Arya Arya, repeated the voice in her head, the one that came out when she spent too long out of cyro, and a girl tried to shake it off.
Arya Arya Arya… put her on ice… Who are you? No one. smack. Who are you? No one. Arya. A memory (a dream?); the rain stinging her face as she fled into the night, a man screaming Arya behind her, pain.
The click of a gun’s safety broke through her mind, and she looked up to see the guards in the room with their weapons trained on her. At some point she had thrown off the doctor working on her arm. Arya.
She heard voices in the hallway, and the man with the kindly voice strode through the door, gesturing at the guards to put their weapons down. He stood before her as the locks clicked back on the doors.
“Mission report,” he said.
A girl stared numbly at him. Arya? A girl has no name.
“Mission report. Now.” His voice was less kindly.
A girl said nothing. Who are you? No one.
Smack. The blow across her cheek was real, this time, not in the fog of a half-forgotten memory.
“The man on the bridge,” a girl said quietly, “who was he?” (AryaAryaArya).
“You met him earlier this week on another assignment.” Truth or lie? A girl had been taught to read lies in faces and voices, but her head hurt like fire, and the kindly man was not being kindly.
Arya. Cold nights on the road; bugs between her teeth; flames.
“I know him.”