Chapter 1

Call me Precilla. No, call me T-29. No, no. Something else. I am after all making this up as I go along. I will be sending this report from an undisclosed location. But then you know that. I mean, you don’t know the location but you know I’m sending this report, if you get this report and if you read it. I got it! Not the report, my code-name. Call me Narita QT.

Three years ago, at the age of twenty-three, I found myself facing bankruptcy. Deep in debt, I was down to one loft space, a slightly beat-up late model Mercedes, thirty-three mostly black outfits, and my trusty sharpei, who for these purposes will be called Captain. Good God, I was buying my sheets at Ikea! The thread count is like, zero and a half. I considered selling my body, even tried, but who could afford me? And I wasn’t going to drop my prices just to satisfy some market economy bullshit. I spend four hours a day working out, my spray-tan is perfect every single day and I am capable of sexual acts that combine a Bangkok sex show and San Francisco sex club with your dream honeymoon, go ahead, fill in the blanks. Admittedly I was asking a lot for a night of lust—pay off my loft, a new Mercedes, and at least a dozen mostly black outfits. Somehow, no takers. Fuckers all wanted to play house. I said, show me the green.

So, when a man who for this report will be called Pine Fannon came up from behind, kneed me in the lower back, threw me in the back of an SUV, and threatened me with a rather large gun that I later learned was a Lamassacre 50 caliber Repeato Charger, I was, um, intrigued. And then, when he offered me a job as an agent-provocateur, with an offer to train me in the deadly arts, the kind where you scream meaningless Asian sounding phrases and kick somebody with your terrific high-heeled boots, I said sure, if he could pay off my loft and score me a new Mercedes and get me some fucking sheets. I mean, “don’t have decent sheet to fuck on” is to me a perfectly workable definition of poverty.

My life as an agent had begun. After much training in a basement space that looked like a 24 hour gym as designed by Frank O. Gehry I was assigned to the Steelskirt division of Grizzly, which I later found was a rogue breakaway unit, once part of the Joppa Squad, who came under the umbrella of SKRUGG until they lost funding and moved over to the dark side to avoid a Senate hearing.

SKRUGG has gained some notoriety since then, for the usual reasons, Gov funded murder and mayhem, a little torture. Lightweight stuff really, compared to Grizzly. I learned this from a journalist that I later had to depersonize, as we call it. He was great, too. Looked like a soap star, that hair that looks like it could break if he fell over and a just-right eighteen-hour beard. He loved me—they all do, the fucks. I dazzled him with my Bangkok sex-show routine and then I pulled out my Lamassacre 50 caliber Repeato Charger and painted the white walls of my loft with his insides. Afterwich I called Pine Fannon, who called a Cleaner, who called the painters. I went out to the 7-11, bought the guys a few beers, came back, went out for sushi, and, presto-chango, my loft was like new.

But I digress. The journalist, in the throes of last-breath orgasmic (I had removed my skin-tight black thing without disturbing my spray-tan, that always gets them off) thrust, had described the many inhuman and just-plain-bad deeds of Grisly, and especially those of Steelskirt division. And in, um, grisly detail. I was sickened. I had, up to that point, pulled men’s arms from their sockets, kicked an enemy agent’s nose so hard with my perfect boot-heel that he needed several rounds of plastic surgery, shot at least forty people with my Lamassacre 50 caliber Repeato Charger. I had chomped off fingers with my perfect bleached and reconstructed teeth, I had thrown a mother and her child from the top story of the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles (Paris Hilton was in the hot tub that night!), but I hadn’t come close to Grizzly’s evil deeds as described by the sexy, now dead journalist.
I had to get out. Steelskirt had gone too far.