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100 Bullets
Issues 1 - 3

The story opens on a rainy Chicago night. A young Latino woman is on her knees, with a gun pointing at her head, and this is how she got there...

Isabelle 'Dizzy' Cordova is released from Stateville jail having served three years of a fifteen stretch for her part in a gangland drive-by. During her incarceration, Dizzy's husband Hector and infant son Santiago have also become the victims of a drive-by in which both were killed. The perpetrators, members of a rival gang, were shot dead by the police whilst  fleeing the incident, or so Dizzy believes. As she is released, she tells the warden that she will never be free, an innocent comment which is more true than Dizzy knows.

On the train home to Chicago, an old man with a briefcase sits next to Dizzy, although the carriage is almost empty. Without pausing for an introduction, he recounts Dizzy's rap sheet and life story. Dizzy asks if the man is Five-Oh. He calls himself Agent Graves, and explains that Hector and Santiago were gunned down by Detectives Swirski and Morgan, not by any gang. He shows her irrefutable evidence that this is the truth, and gives Dizzy a gun and 100 untraceable bullets. Dizzy has carte blanche as long as she uses the weapon. No enforcement agency will be able to touch her once the bullets are retrieved. The only rule is that she must tell no-one of this, or there will be grave repercussions.

Elsewhere, Dizzy's brother Emilio is out boosting cars for his gang, acting as a valet parking attendant. The cars end up in the garage at the Cordova family home. Dizzy returns to find her young sister alone. They talk about Hector and Santiago before Dizzy goes outside to check the garage. Two old friends are working on a car when Emilio arrives with a stolen Mercedes. Emilio never visited Dizzy in jail. Their mother wasn't taken by the change in Dizzy and wouldn't let him visit. After their reunion the conversation turns to Dizzy's dead family once more. Dizzy doesn't understand why they were killed, especially as Hector had gone legit. Emilio speculates that it was someone trying to make their rep by offing a former leader, but Dizzy is now unsure about what happened. 

Detectives Swirski and Morgan soon show up at the house to hound Dizzy, and make advances toward her. As one of them grabs her, he feels the gun in her belt. They pull their weapons, making Dizzy assume the position over the bonnet of their car. Meanwhile Emilio arrives to meet his 'used car' connection. Whilst delivering some new wheels, it is apparent that Emilio is carrying a lot of money, which he explains away as savings. Having run a trace on Dizzy's gun, the two detectives are forced to return the weapon and let her go, but they swear to find out how she has gotten away with such a parole violation. Dizzy returns to her room. Nothing that has happened makes sense, unless what Graves said is true.

Dizzy's mother Bonita arrives home with current boyfriend Carlos. They argue about gang violence, death and the blood on the streets. Bonita tells Dizzy to move on and find another man, start another family, but Dizzy can't.

As Dizzy patrols the neighbourhood catching up with old friends and watching Emilio play basketball, Swirski and Morgan follow up the gun incident. They find out that the whole thing was never logged, arousing their suspicions further. They realise that Hector was Dizzy's husband, but they have other business to attend to first. Dizzy is sitting with some old friends, who are also young mothers, when that business comes to light. The area is soon crawling with cops, as something big has gone down at Big Poppa's, an OG hideout that's also big on heroin. Dizzy takes a ride there with Emilio's friend Freedy. Dizzy is soon past the police and inside the house, where there's been a massacre.  The cops realise that whoever did this was known to the dead men. Dizzy is discovered and arrested, as she leaves she spots Swirski and Morgan, and shouts out that it was them who did it. She accuses them of murdering her family as she is carted off to jail. 

Dizzy thinks that she will soon be on the bus back to Stateville, but instead she is bailed without charge by a mystery man. Dizzy believes that Emilio has posted for her as he is waiting outside. He tells her to drop her ideas about the cops, and that it must have been the Lords who did this, the same as it was they who killed Hector and Santiago. Dizzy says that if that were true, why isn't Emilio, as a new big man in the gang, out retaliating? He tells Dizzy that he isn't playing around. As Dizzy goes inside the house and grabs the gun, she says that she isn't either.

Dizzy sits  in a church praying for her lost family when the mystery man who bailed her out, a Mr. Shepherd, arrives. Shepherd explains that he is an associate of Agent Graves. He pushes Dizzy into finishing the mission Graves gave her. Dizzy wants to know why she should be the one, apart from the obvious revenge issues. She wants to know why Shepherd and Graves want the cops dead, and why they haven't done it already. Shepherd's answer is enigmatic. He says Dizzy has a choice. It seems that how she deals with the deaths of her family is more important than the outcome, but she knows the score, and as she believes in payback, perhaps she should settle the bill. 

Dizzy is picked up outside the church by Swirski and Morgan who now believe Dizzy knows all about them.  As they drive they talk about what happened, assuming that their connection has told Dizzy everything. They reveal to her that they are in partnership with the man who arranged  the hit on Hector. This man has taken up where Hector left off, and is running heroin in the neighbourhood. Baby Santiago was an unfortunate mishap, caught in the gunfire when Hector was supposed to be alone. They say that their connection must have more power than they thought, being able to arrange for Dizzy to carry a gun around. They send Dizzy to meet with their connection at a meat market. The connection shows up behind Dizzy,  takes the gun, forces her to her knees and tries to explain what has happened. The connection is Emilio. He tries to explain that he had nothing to do with the murders. Dizzy says that the two cops carried out the OG massacre, and that they are dangerous. Emilio believes that they are nothing to worry about.  He says the cops offered Hector a deal, because although Hector wasn't on the street, he was still in control. Hector turned down a partnership, but by then it was too late. Having revealed themselves as dirty, there was no way Swirski and Morgan could let Hector live. Emilio is surprised that Dizzy believes the cops killed everyone at  the smack den, as that was his own work, but just for business. He had to step up where Hector failed, and so he shows Dizzy all the heroin in the boot of his car, stolen after the massacre.

Swirski and Morgan burst in and shoot Emilio up badly for talking too much. Having heard him talking to Dizzy they realise that she didn't know the story after all. They mean to finish Emilio off, and Dizzy with him, as someone has implicated Emilio to the cops for the massacre, and they know he'll roll over on them. To save herself, Dizzy uses Graves' gun to wound the two cops. Believing Dizzy won't have the courage to kill them, the cops offer her a deal. She can take Emilio's place as their partner. Dizzy responds with a couple of well aimed shots to their heads before turning on her brother. Rather than kill him, Dizzy leaves Emilio covered in heroin, lying crippled among the bodies for the police to pick up. She then leaves with Mr. Shepherd, who just happens by in a limousine.

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