I can't believe it's been this long since I updated... and for that, deepest apologies! It's another one of those in-between chapters and I'm hoping I'm back into the swing of things with this - next chap should be longer, too. Hope you guys enjoy it.

The Death Business

The crew had descended on Purgatory, a mob of black, flecked with purple flags.

What had once been the mission above was now half transformed into the main living area and kitchen-come-bar. Everything had been stripped back, exposing the brickwork and wide hardwood floors that had been hidden beneath rotting carpet. It was far from polished enough to be called industrial-chic, but was well on it's way. The initial entryway had been reworked with double-security measures, so it was officially secure and secluded.

Almost everyone was present, only two faces didn't appear in the small gathering opting to instead meet everyone at the cemetery; Kinzie, who had been determined she could be of more help from behind her computers, and Josh Birk, who had his publicity to take care of.

The gathering itself was subdued; the Boss would restlessly pace, frowning, thinking, and silently working herself up into a lather. It wouldn't be till she grew dizzy and a little breathless that Shaundi would be able to compel her to sit on one of the plush sofas and try to relax. Dingo kept trying to force mugs of tea onto her till he nearly ended up with one poured down his jeans. Mongrel was resolutely silent, though a steadiness in his looks suggested he was paying far more attention than he let on.

When the crew did speak the conversation just ran in circles, as it had for the past week; after the events were continuously recited there were so many questions being asked and no one could give an answer to them. Where was Viola before hand? No one knew. Why would she want the Boss dead? Couldn't say. Oleg suggested Viola's attempt may have had something to do with Monica Hughes; Shaundi agreed, Pierce thought it likely but Gat gave a resolute 'no'. Oleg turned to the Boss with his arguments, about Viola's ambition, her willingness to work with people in positions of power. It wasn't said with any sort of resentment, but with frankness, and on the rare occasion a hint of admiration. This of course lead to a whole other argument about her character, and whether or not she'd turn against the Saints so easily.

Gat stayed out of it then. He was standing against the island counter, lazily cleaning his nails with a bowie knife and not caring to have much input. They'd sort it out; then he'd be pointed in the right direction and given a green light to slaughter whoever was responsible. But something was disquieting him; a look of weariness on the Boss' face, an exhaustion she was trying hard to hide even harder than she was trying to hide the baby bump under drapes of black clothing.

He was so busy frowning about this, he hardly noticed Angel step to his side, though a decent distance kept between them. It was bizarre to see him out of gym gear for once, wearing instead a perfectly black suit, shirt and tie. Unlike the others he wore no flags, save for a small pair of diamond cufflinks, the stones coloured purple.

Of everyone in the crew Angel seemed the most injured by Viola's death, try as he might to hide it. Until this point he'd barely said a word to anyone, so it was a minor surprise when he turned to Gat.

"…Autopsy?"

"Word is they had a lot to get through, then there's the red tape bullshit from keepin' this all on the DL… waitin' on the last results. Find out if she was on anything." Johnny barely looked at Angel when he replied. Their words were mostly unheard under the other conversation in the room; "Did she say anything to you?"

"No," Angel said shortly, but something weighed on him; "Gat, listen to me. Viola had no reason to go after the Boss. And she mightn't show it, but she respects- she respected her. It's hard to believe but I don't think she meant to do what she did."

"I know."

"You do?"

"If any of us really believed she did that shit on purpose, there wouldn't be a funeral today. That bitch wanted me or the Boss dead, she could'a easily shot us. But she wasn't herself. Was like she was empty, not that she ever had a sparklin' personality to begin with, but you catch my drift."

Gat was watching the crew where they and gathered on the sofas, but Angel watched Gat, his stare cold and rueful. When he spoke, his tone seemed to waver, holding back a thunderous rage.

"…Do you even give a shit that she's dead?"

"Do I look like I give a shit?" Gat cut back at him.

"You were the one that killed her-"

"She killed herself the second she walked through that door with the idea of chokin' out the Boss. And if she wasn't in control of herself I did her a fuckin' favour."

It was a half-second of raw silence. Then Angel swung. Gat dodged as naturally as he breathed and instantly a punch was thrown back; the two fell into all-out brawl, grappling and heavy punches were thrown and blocked.

"Hey!" Shaundi shouted and soon she and Pierce were trying to pry the two apart, only to be flung from the fight. The commotion of the crew protesting drowned out the meaty sound of punches and Angel and Gat were locked again in a violent grapple. The Boss threw up her hands in exasperation.

"Oleg! He's gonna kill him, can you help?"

"Da." Moments later hands the size of dustbin lids gripped the scruff of each man and ripped them apart from one another.

"Now is not the time to be fighting, comrades," Oleg placated gravely even as they violently struggled to shake him off. But it was when the Boss came up and furiously gave them both a shove further apart the two stopped struggling; even Oleg let go of them, when he saw the Boss' expression.

"What the fuck is wrong with you two?" She all-but shouted, "Jesus tap-dancing christ, one of my lieutenants is dead and you're acting like a couple of drunk frat boys!"

Dingo was the only one not particularly shocked by her sudden, furious outburst. Gat was indignant:

"This asshole throws a punch at me from nowhere, wh-"

"Oh my god, oh my god," her voice faint and high, hands running over her hair, "You're honestly giving me the 'he started it' argument? You're not fucking five! And as for you!" She whirled on Angel, thunderously, "What is going on in your head, huh? Did you just take in everything going on right now and think, 'Well gee-fuckin'-whiz, this sure is a swell time to start punching people in the face'? Did you think that's somehow productive?"

Angel rolled his shoulders and looked away with a pained scowl, red marks around his eyes that would soon blacken. Gat could taste blood in his mouth where the inside of his cheek had split, stretching tightly around the scar tissue, and a faint ache on his lip. It seemed a moment he was going to interrupt the Boss and retort, but caught a very serious look from Dingo, who slowly shook his head. All they could do for a moment was stand there, chastised, while the Boss continued her violent rant, completely distracted as she ticked things off on her fingers.

"We're burying one of our own today, before we even know what the hell was going on in her head, we've got an autopsy to hush up, Cassius to find and kill, a brand new city-state on the brink of a zombie apocalypse, the nursery still hasn't been painted, and there's Safeword! The largest brothel in the Western hemisphere now has no one running it, first Z, now Viola, meaning the whole of Carver Island is vulnerable, again-"

The hormonally fuelled rant had left her starting to gasp for breath and apparently a painful spasm in her chest; Johnny pulled her in to a hold before the others reached her, steadily patting her back.

"I got it," he said casually. She huffed against him.

"What?"

"I said I got it, nothin' to worry about." He shrugged, and Pierce chimed in.

"Yeah, Boss. Hell I'm always tellin' you, you gotta delegate."

"I think you could use the break," Shaundi added. "Carver Island won't be hard, we just sift through some people deserving a promotion, or split up the territories."

"I don't like the idea of splitting them too much," the Boss said wearily, "You saw what happened last time, those pimps were swooping in before Zimos was cold."

"I know someone who'd be just right for it, thinkin' I could get them out here in a few days, tops," Gat broached, the embrace breaking but he kept his arm slung casually over the Boss' shoulders. She was looking up at him curiously, and he shrugged. "It's a to-do list, right? All that's gonna be taken care of."

Her lips twisted, a hand coming to rest on the swell of her belly. There was something in his fecklessness that made her begin to relax and turn the mood swing around. Eventually she was made to sit down again. The air still tingled around them from the fight, everyone on edge, Angel prowling the edges of the room like a caged animal until it was time to leave. When Gat passed him, he gave him one steady, almost impassive look.

"…Viola, hn?"

Angel only cracked his neck, then gave a single, curt nod.

She was buried with her sister.

The turn out wasn't big, only a few others beyond the crew. Some Saints thought she didn't deserve a proper burial, after hearing rumours about what had happened. Those who had shown were mostly business associates; Viola had lost a lot of people in her defection to the Saints.

But Oleg had commented, if Viola were alive she'd say the funeral would be a good idea, 'for the sake of public image'. No danger, no dissent, no mutiny or assassination attempt. For that reason at the very least, she deserved a proper farewell. No one wanted to linger; it was still bitterly cold, frost creeping over the flowers and grass and by the time she was lowered into the earth, standing there at the grave had become to feel intrusive. The respects were paid, and Viola was allowed to lie by her sister in snowy silence.

Angel wasn't seen at the wake, and many others left when the party began to get rowdy, the Boss and Gat included. The stress was making her exhausted; they were barely back at Purgatory and she already dragged herself upstairs to their half-finished bedroom, falling down onto the bed in sound sleep.

Gat was in no mood for sleep. Events played over and over in his mind, an acute awareness of his current predicament. He knew the Boss would handle all of this if she saw the chance to, meaning it had to be taken care of before she ever got that opportunity. Personally, they had always been a duo, balanced, cut from the same cloth. But in business it could not be denied she was the leader. Even back in the earliest days when she was in his crew, the Boss had often found herself taking charge and coming to the rescue. Gat had become the knife in her hand. She swung; he cut.

But that had to change now. For her sake and, he realised, for the baby.

The computer that had been haphazardly set up as the makeshift office began chiming with a bleep-bloop sound, an incoming call. Curiously he crossed the living space to it, settling down; Kinzie. He answered, her video coming up onto the screen. It was shot slightly above and to the side of her and she was looking at a different monitor.

"Gat?"

"You were expecting…?"

"The Boss."

"Eh, she's got important pregnant-chick shit to take care of."

"Huh. Well, okay. Got back the first biochem from Viola's autopsy, only one abnormality detected so far; a neurotoxin detected similar to the Arapice toxin." There was a beat, but when Kinzie got no response she elaborated; "…Viola was infected."

Gat blinked at that; "So she was turning into a zombie-?"

"Turning into, already was, can't say for certain. Either way, this matches your observations of her and would at least explain the dissociative psychosis, and why she attacked the Boss-"

"But why her specifically? She didn't try to ice Tasha or anyone else on the way in."

"Not sure. But then she had more memories concerning the Boss, who was Tasha to her? No one."

"…She was told to come after me."

Gat jolted a little; the Boss had appeared at the bottom of the stairwell, rubbing sleepily at an eye.

"How the fuck long have you been there for?" he asked, though her only response was a noncommittal sound and a shrug. She quietly waddled over.

"Results back, huh?"

"I didn't want to wake you…"

"You were sleeping? Gat said you had pregnant-stuff to take care of."

The Boss yawned, leaning against the desk. "Get pregnant, Kinz. You'll find sleep is very important business."

Gat chuckled a little, then nodded to the screen. "Kinzie says Viola was a zombie. Honestly I couldn't tell the difference."

"You're an asshole," she replied, trying not to smirk. Eventually she let go of a small sigh, "When I asked her what she wanted to talk about, she said 'Carlos'. I remember that. And you remember, STAG once tried to use Carlos against me, they tried to make him kill me."

"That one aint easy to forget…" Gat muttered. Kinzie actually looked up at her webcam.

"So, you think someone made a zombie out of Viola, so that they could brain-wash her into killing you?"

"…Yes. Yes I am thinking that." She stared flatly at the screen, jaw set as her mind whirred; "Back when Viola and I were clearing out the gas tanks from Arapice Island, Oleg suggested we keep one incase we could use it to create a hoard of zombies to fight for us. I didn't, I trashed the lot of it, but if you thinks it's possible it probably is. No, I know it is, because someone from STAG did it to Carlos. Someone knows how to control zombies aside from me."

"How did you manipulate the Carlos zombie?"

"Oh, yeah that's this whole… crazy thing it's not important."

"But someone in STAG made that toxin," Gat said lazily before Kinzie could further her other line of questions, "So you can bet your ass someone from STAG is behind this. Hell it could even be Cyrus."

"And is infecting people to control them…" The Boss added, frowning, "Not just any people. The Saints."

They shared significant looks, simultaneously realising that if Viola could be hit, anyone else was a possibility too. The Boss spoke to the computer:

"Kinzie-"

"I'm already on it Boss."

"Right. Call us when you get something. Talk to you later."

Gat ended the call, hands rubbing together as he thought. The Boss had fingertips to her brow, gently massaging.

"…Every time I think I've buried this… it just keeps coming back, one way or another. Starting to feel like the past can never be put to rest."

"Hey, some shit you just gotta double tap." He frowned slightly when she pulled out her phone; "Who you callin'?"

"The crew. They have to know what's going on, what to look out for- hey!"

Gat had taken the phone from her hands; "I'll take care of that. Go get some sleep, aight?"

"Johnny, I-"

"You keep worryin' about the past, you gonna forget there's things on the way that need takin' care of too." He pulled her in towards him, his hand unconsciously resting on the side of her belly. It brought the message home to her though. She gave a small sigh, something between resigned and relieved, and turned to go.

"Don't stay up too late, yeah?"

He nodded her off, scrolling through the phone and started making the calls. Several long conversations later the night had worn on to the earliest hours of morning. Gat was about to resign himself to sleep when it occurred to him, there was one more call he could make to cross one more thing off his list, that thing being Safeword. He checked the time, counted hours, then scrolled through contacts and placed the call.

There was a long pause before it started ringing, eventually a tinny voice answered, sounding far away.

"Sleu Vos, this is Perestroika."

"Yo, Stroika. It's Gat, got a business proposition for you…"

True to form, Kinzie didn't take long in her research. By the next afternoon the Boss' phone was trilling; she answered to Kinzie's scowling face.

"Are you home? No one answered in the study-"

"Yeah, home, just busy," The Boss said, pushing the hair out of her face.

"Busy with what?"

"Busy with shit that's not your business. What have you got?"

With a huff, Kinzie typed something and the video cut to a photograph of a swarthy man in his mid to late forties. After a beat Gat paused in his work and came over, glancing over the Boss's shoulder and at the phone. He snorted.

"That's the bad guy? Gotta be fuckin' kidding me…"

"Maximillion Dubois. Fired from the STAG R and D department after the Arapice incident. He's the one who created the toxin."

The Boss scowled; "Where is he now?"

"Looks like he's been working on and off for Boehringer, but recently, he's dropped off the map."

"…And recently, we're getting attacked by zombies. Bit too coincidental. How do we find him?"

"I can look to see if he's still using credit cards, look up known associates… but if he's off the grid he's going to be harder to track down."

"Easy Kinz, this aint the first time we had to track down a drug lab," Gat said lazily. The little redhead scowled.

"This isn't some meth lab, whatever they're doing is much more complicated and complex than that, it'd be a way bigger operation-"

"So it's easier to find, right?" He said flatly, "Can't we just have the crew on the lookout for the usual shit? Gear, barrels, blacked out windows? I aint sayin' I know exactly what it'd take for someone to set up Frankenstien's lab but it aint gonna be easy to hide."

"…He's right. That's unsettling." Kinzie mumbled. Gat made a flat, rude gesture to her, but she continued anyway; "Something like that would require a lot of power to run. If they're not using an on-site generator, it'd cause a spike in the power grid."

"And that old place they were using back in Steelport, we can check that out, see if there's any leads," the Boss added.

"Not to mention getting their hands on equipment and chemicals."

"I'll get a crew out scouting. See what we can find. Kinz, you're an angel."

"I know. I'll be in touch."

"Talk to you later." The Boss ended the call, but stared at the screen a moment longer, bringing back up the image of Dubois' face. She'd gone still, staring at it. Gat regarded her a moment.

"You aight?"

"…If I find out this Max guy was the one who brought Carlos back, I am going medieval on his ass…" She said icily, shutting the phone down and pocketing it with a scowl.

"Baby I'll even lend you my bowie knife'n blowtorch," Gat responded with a smirk, picking up the paint roller again and pushing it through the tray of plum purple paint. He halted.

"You sure this aint gonna be too dark? Figured you was supposed to have, y'know, pastels or some shit."

"Nah, not with white furniture and skirting. And it'll dry lighter anyway. It's gonna look tight."

Gat smirked; "Eh, you the Boss."

With a wry smile the Boss picked up her brush and paint pot, and continued cutting in around the windowsill and doorframe, as Gat rolled colour onto the walls of the nursery.

Only the heavy bass of the house music managed to escape from the nightclub basement and into the street beyond, the pale purple light casting a halo around the bouncer. In the night people milled about, gaggles of thinly-dressed girls stumbling around drunkenly in their high-heels on their way to the next venue, packs of young men practically carrying that one friend who was blind drunk and trying to start fights.

Cassius watched the entry to the nightclub. He watched as patron after patron entered - many with a purple shirt, bandana, shorts, shoes or tattoo, all indicators of who they were in this city. Purple. He'd learned to loathe the colour.

Cassius cracked his neck, hitching the heavy satchel he had hidden under his coat. With slow, determined steps, he started towards Club Koi.