It was finally dark out. Marx slunk out of his latest hidey, feverish and grimacing when any motion shook his left shoulder. Guess the alcohol the herb-lady'd used to swab out that stab the Parker cunnie left him hadn't worked like she said. He had to get something to eat, though. Then he could think about how to get Bree proper. Whore thought she was all that, getting treated up at the fancy Clinic and all. But the Clinic would dope her, rich folks clinics always did, and everybody on the streets knew what drugs did to Kendall.

"She was asleep when I left," Bashir murmured to Anya. "I asked the housekeeper to stay with her, in case she got up. She doesn't know what she's doing on those pills of yours."

She nodded thoughtfully. "I prescribed the lowest effective dosage for Kendall, given her tolerance and body mass." Pensive twist of her features as she regarded her brother in law. "Beyond willing, she will rest."

He nodded, staring out of her office window into the darkening streets. "Who told you he was coming tonight?" He was a different man from the boy that had come to stand at his brother's wedding, tonight. Hard and grim and exhausted. Worried.

The gun holstered at his side had drawn more than a few stares when he arrived tonight.

Her brows furrowed together while she stirred her mental Rolodex to come up with the name. "Nan. Da, Nan." Security had been alerted to the situation, of course. Stand back until the signal from her. The microphone concealed as a button on her knee length white lab coat would pick up flea flatulence because she designed it so.

She leaned back in the ergonomically designed cordovan leather chair at her desk, and studied the younger Ergin brother with undisguised concern. He's grown up fast, and not the way his Baba or Alper would have wished. By the Beyond, nothing must go wrong tonight. I may not be able to heal him from it.

He jerked a nod when she produced a name he heard her mention before. Somehow, he'd lost the thread of the memory in everything else done to prepare. Kendall's discharge from the clinic had been done covertly, and she'd been spirited to the penthouse without the staff - beyond the housekeeper, who had not been allowed to leave for more reason than that Bashir needed her to watch Kendall.

"We should keep her name out of this. I think we would not be doing this Nan a service if it got out that she told us." He sounded like he was thinking aloud, but it was intended for Anya.

"That guilty secret is safe with me." Solemnly stated. Her bare of rings hands steepled over her tummy covered by royal blue scrubs tunic. In Kendall's room, a female security officer resided in place of her sister in law in the hospital bed. From a distance, the woman would hopefully fool this zasnarec Marx.

By the time Marx had devoured a foot-long 'dog and made his way to the Riverview Clinic, he was almost feeling himself again. Now for the Parker whore. Nan had slipped to Lil who'd slipped to Connie that Kendall was still in the clinic, doped out of her head " and that tonight they were doing a change of the security, new guards up that wouldn't know to watch for him. Marx had beaten it out of Connie.

The clock in Maranya's office ticked interminably. He didn't move, from the spot he had taken beside the window. If Marx came in through the front, Bashir would see him. And he would recognize him.

And he would kill him. Kendall would never be free of the bastard otherwise.

If Bashir did not kill the zasnarec outright, Maranya silently vowed to do the task herself. There was a rather hard glint in her hazels when she pondered exactly how she would do it. Take him to the Isle. He will suffer over and over. And I will heal him again and again, until the blood debt is paid sevenfold. She schooled her features to remain in calm, placid lines. Only someone as skilled at reading kinesics as she was could tell the turmoil and gruesome thoughts that laid behind the surface. He'd scored a gun, resting in the back of his waistband underneath his shirt. And Marx had his knives, all four of them plus a couple. And he had a lust for revenge on that snarky, sharp-tongued Parker bint. He'd make her pay, until she was begging for what he had to give her, and then he'd take out the stab in blood. Yeah. New blood, new guard on the front door for sure. He limped in with a nod to the guard, making it look like he was just looking for treatment to get through the front door.

Bashir's fingertips were steepled against the sill, and flexed in a tick-tick-tick twitch timed with each advance of the second hand on her clock. It was a small irony that the weapon he wore was Israeli, rather than Turkish. Zeki taught him to shoot; his brother would be horrified, not by his decision to kill this rabid dog, but by his choice of sidearm.

The twitching stopped. "He's here."

Slow, deep breaths to calm herself. "Time for me to go on rounds, then. Situation normal, after all." She rose slowly from the comforts of the chair, and tipped a brave smile to Bashir. "He will pay, dorogai Bashir. When the time is right." Hazels flicked a glance to the sidearm, and she paled slightly for a moment. Then she shook her head, sending the long tail of her French braid to swish against the back of her labcoat. It will not harm me. Only the zasnarec. Mental repetition of that mantra.

He was a shadow slipping into the hallway after her, pausing just long enough to shrug into the white lab coat Anya had procured for him. It hid the holster and gun, and made him a little less conspicuous in the hallway, to a casual observer, anyway.

Marx eluded the check-in clerk and found one of the elevators. "Set up in one"a them private suites on th' top floor, yanno.? Nan's words, filtered through Lil and Connie, echoed in his brain. The bint was getting plush treatment, but she wasn't any better than any other two-bit trick. He'd show her.

The dark blond haired Chief of Staff passed through the halls after leaving her office. To the normal observer, she was just doing her rounds. But her path was calculated tonight. The end would be the top floor, and those private suites. Eventually.

For now, she walked the halls. Aware of her Turkish shadow, if peripherally.

Her shadow peeled off as an elevator headed up slid open with a cheerful and muted chime. Bashir pushed the button for Kendall's floor.

And pushed it. And pushed it. And pushed it until it slid closed.

Especially when Bashir's lunge deflected Marx's squeeze on the trigger enough that the bullet went wild through the lobby instead of right at the blonde's belly where he'd aimed it. Marx was snarling something incoherent as he tried to bring his hand back to aiming position. "Two-bit' cheapie—- puts out for everyone " loves it " " By the glazed look in his eyes, it might be safe to guess that Marx had hopped up on something before he headed into the clinic, something that was really kicking in now. And that he wasn't exactly seeing the blonde in the elevator with them.

How Maranya managed to remain on her black sneakered feet after the sound of gunfire was a miracle. Perhaps the wall of the elevator held her up.

Bashir was the youngest of four rough-and-tumble, physically active boys and three beautiful but tough girls. He was no stranger to wrestling over things. And he wasn't seeing straight at this point himself. The growl that came out of him didn't sound entirely human, and he fought to turn the barrel toward the thug.

Somewhere in the lobby, at least one person screamed. People were running. He heard none of it.

In this Vid Movie of the Week, Bashir would be played by someone hot. Maybe Nir Lavi, in keeping with the Israeli theme du nuit.

Another gunshot went wild through the lobby while they struggled, and then Bashir managed to get his fingers dug into the badly-healing wound in Marx's shoulder with one hand while grabbing his gun-holding wrist with the other. Marx screamed. It was a high-pitched, wailing scream. The stab-wound had apparently gotten infected.

Down....down....how he didn't break the man's wrist was the subject for a medical mystery on another channel.

Some bubble headed bleached blond anorexic pseudoactress cast for her ability to keep the producer satisfied in the Doctor's case. She watched the unfolding action through a dim haze as another shot rang out. "Fever," she managed to get out, the signal for security to move in.

More likely, the two gunshots already cued them in.

When Marx saw where the toff was trying to turn the gun, he just dropped the weapon to the ground with a clatter next to the fallen knife. He was practically sobbing with incoherent rage, now, trying to lunge past the toff to reach the blonde " the redhead he saw in his mind's eye. "Gonna kill you "feckin" slut! Whore!"

Bashir bored his fingers down into the knife wound in the man's shoulder, trying to simply keep him off Anya at this point.

Marx wailed again, then hauled off and swung a fist at the toff's ribs and diaphragm, trying to knock out his breath and get the toff off of him. He'd kill her. He'd hurt her and then he'd kill her. She'd bleed for him.

The first blow - into the fresh knife-wound at his ribs, was enough to make him break his hold. The second doubled him over.

Alerted in multiple manners, security officers kept back the panicked onlookers, and waited for their opportunity to resolve the situation, preferably without any collateral damage.

Their chance came when Marx managed to break free of Bashir and lunge for Maranya, into the opening of the elevator door. He was blind with his rage, unaware of the onlookers and the ready Security.

Bashir swung a fist blindly, aiming low.

And Security took advantage of that opening. Without remorse, the lead man aimed and fired on the man intent on using deadly force against the pregnant Chief of Staff. Center mass.

The gunshot echoed in the lobby and sounded like cannon fire in the small enclosure of the lift.

The blow from the toff's fist took Marx in the groin and bent him over " so that first shot took him in the shoulder instead of the chest, and staggered him back with a surprised look. The second shot impacted squarely, and he fell backwards. His breath was a bubbling gurgle on the exhale. "Feckin?" whore." And then he had no more breath to spare for words.

"You ....okay...?" Bashir wheezed out to his sister-in-law as they were converged on by security and staff.

"Da." Bleary hazels focused on the welcome approach of security and staff. "Doctor Lion has been injured. Take care of him. And the trash." Somehow her words came out in commanding tones. Faint chinjerk toward the fallen Marx to indicate who she meant by trash.

Then, once the crisis was over, she allowed herself to sag against the elevator wall.

They saw to her, too.

Marx gurgled something blood-soaked. It would be his last attempt at speech ever, and it wasn't even audible. Then he was hauled out. Like the trash.