Failure

   Two guards walked Floyd Lawton to his cell, keeping a violently tight grip on each of his bruised and beaten arms. As the door slowly slid open, Floyd gave each of the guards a smug grin. They shoved him in the cell, slightly harder than they actually needed to.  The prison had lost quite a bit of credibility with Lawton's unexplained escape last month, and all employees were under strict orders to treat him with unforgiving suspicion and as much brute force as state law would allow.  Of course, this only fed into Floyd's ego, as it proved just how important he truly was.
   The guards pushed Floyd down onto a lone chair in the center of the cell, chaining his handcuffs to the chair's back.  The feet of the chair were bolted to the floor.  Floyd was impressed.  Restrained like this, there was no way he could move in the slightest.
    It's kinda overkill, Floyd thought, considering I'm still stuck in a cell anyway.  Heh. Musta gotten on the warden's bad side, being the one-and-only prisoner to escape Stryker's.  Either that or he's still mad about the "incident" with his daughter.  One of the two.
   The guards left, leaving Floyd alone to contemplate his own greatness.  At the present moment, he was pleased with himself.  The girl was still alive and he'd been re-captured, but it wasn't over.  Luthor still had a way to break him out, and the girl apparently wasn't willing to kill him in the end.  If both those remained true, he cold simply break out again, and again, and again, until the princess had a bullet in her brain and there was no one left to take him down.  Except for maybe the other guy.  The bulletproof one he'd met in the school.  Floyd hadn't told Luthor about him; glossed over that part of the story.  He wanted the girl dead; he had no gripe with the other freak.  No reason to tell Luthor that there was possibly anyone else to be interested in.
   As perverse as it seemed, life was good for Floyd Lawton.  Even while chained up in prison, he had fame, recognition, respect, and—ultimately—freedom.
   A few of the lights in the hallway outside began to flicker.  Muffled sounds from down the hall told of minor commotion.  Floyd was intrigued.  He tried to lean a little closer to the bars, but his handcuffs held him back.  The lone overhead light in his cell flickered off.  A silent brush of wind told Floyd that something was moving inside the darkened room.  A few seconds later, the light came back on.
   A girl stood in front of Floyd.  She was young—no older than seventeen—but carried herself with a sharpness and a confidence beyond her age.  She wore all black—very form-fitting—and let her long, dark hair fall in front of the left side of her face.  Floyd wondered if she had some terrible deformity on that side of her face, or if it was just a stylistic choice.  He figured it was probably the latter.
   "You failed, Lawton."
   The girl had an accent.  Floyd couldn't place it.  Romanian, maybe?
   "Yeah, sue me."
   She ignored his joke.  "It's a shame, really.  Had you succeeded, you might have been on your way to one day joining us."
   "Joining? Who, Luthorcorp?  Yeah, I 'aint the businessman type.  Look, are you done?  Are you gonna get me out of here, or what?"
   "I speak not of Luthorcorp."
   "Wait, what...?"
   Suddenly, it made sense.  She wasn't from Luthorcorp; she was from his prior employer.  The one who hired him for the Excelsior job.
   "Aw, seriously?  You're upset over that job?  Come on; that was a stupid plan anyway!  I mean, why'd you need—"
   "My father's designs are not to be questioned, least of all by you.  Your assignment was merely a small part in his grand plan."
   Father? This girl was seriously starting to weird Floyd out.
   "Huh.  Okay.  Well, little girl, you go tell your daddy I'm sorry, and that I'll do better next time."
   She didn't blink.
   "The League of Assassins does not allow failure, Floyd Lawton."
   She reached behind her back, slowly pulling a short sword from its sheath.  With a single swift motion, she stepped forward and stabbed, slipping the blade gently into Floyd's heart.  She then stepped back, wiped her blade, and sheathed it.
   The light shut off once more.  When it switched on again, she was gone.  A few minutes later, the guards found Floyd's dead body sitting in a pool of his own blood.