The House of Killers

by Samantha Lee Howe

  Neva’s knife is knocked from her hand as the guard throws himself on her. She crashes back into the door, slamming it shut and blocking herself and the guard from the hallway. She swings at him, lands a punch, but he has her by the throat with both hands and starts to squeeze. Neva brings her knee up, aiming between his legs, but the guard jerks his lower body out of reach; her blow brushes against his stomach, but not with enough impact to wind or injure.

  They struggle. The guard smacks Neva’s head back against the door. She’s dazed for a second but then her training kicks in. She cuffs the guard hard on both sides of his head simultaneously, boxing his ears. The impact hurts enough to make him yelp and loosen his grip on her throat. Neva gasps in air before throwing her body weight into the guard, propelling him backwards and smashing him against the desk. She delivers a hard kick to his calf and the guard’s knee gives out under him, but he saves himself from falling and still fights back, punching her in the face. Despite receiving a hard blow, Neva doesn’t stop until her knee connects with the man’s groin. He crumples.

  Neva kicks him in the stomach and then the head, over and over again until the guard no longer moves.

  Then she turns to look at the security monitors and flicks through the various screens until she’s located all of the guards that might be an issue. There are five more outside walking the perimeter, all armed to the teeth. Getting in was easier than getting out will be.

  The guard on the floor isn’t wearing a gun belt, but Neva finds his weapon in the top drawer of the desk along with a box of bullets. She checks the clip, then fills the pocket of her jacket with the bullets. She puts the gun in the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back. She’ll use it when necessary but until then, stealth is important. She picks up her knife and holds it down by her side.

  Neva turns off the security cameras and monitors. She rips out the wires, making them useless. She takes a breath and opens the security room door.

  Chapter Seventy

  OLIVE

  Olive is unsettled. Michael’s presence and reception at the house unnerve her. After Mr Beech takes him from her office, she sinks down into her executive chair and leans on her desk, her head in her hands. She doesn’t feel well. She feels sick, as though she’s eaten something bad.

  ‘Why does he warrant such special privileges?’ Simone asks, and Olive has to agree she doesn’t understand Beech’s leniency towards Michael. He should have been searched on arrival. Instead they were told to greet him like normal. Yet here they are, knowing he should have come in sooner. None of it adds up. Olive doesn’t trust him at all.

  They’ve all made sacrifices to be where they are. Olive perhaps more than most. She is brave to a point. She’s taken lives many times for the Network. A fight holds no fear for her, just the same as all of the operatives trained in the house. Failure to fight is never an option. Losing a battle even less so. Olive manages to cope with being here, day in and day out, passing those kids into the clutches of the new doctor. She cares for Mendez, despite what he did to her. And yet there isn’t a day that passes that she doesn’t want to press a pillow down on his face and feel him struggle under it. At those moments, Olive tells herself that Mendez suffers more being alive, old, decrepit, and now losing his mental faculties, than he would if she just put the old bastard out of his misery.

  Now she tells herself all is well and meditates, saying her mantra over and over in her head to keep herself grounded. Sane. The house, after all, is her personal hell. At least, it would be if she let it get to her.

  She’s never spoken out of turn, and she doesn’t now, even though Simone bitches about Beech. Olive won’t tell on her though; Simone isn’t her superior but she won’t risk saying anything that could bring about an early retirement for either of them. Silence, as she sees it, is not betrayal. Silence is the biggest lesson they have taught her. Even now, as the cracks begin to appear, the thought of breaking terrifies her. It would mean the end of everything. She’d be finished off by someone just as she’d ended Sharrick.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Simone says.

  ‘Do what?’ Olive asks. For a moment she’s glad of the distraction. She’s scared to think right now. Thinking is always dangerous. Sometimes, lost inside her own head, she fans the flames of her own destruction.

  ‘You know,’ says Simone. ‘What they do here. They took Amelie; I had to let them. That’s what happens when you sell your soul to the devil.’

  ‘You got what you wanted out of it,’ Olive says. ‘The money, your husband’s career.’

  ‘Every day he asked me, why not try for another one? But they wouldn’t let me, and I’m too old now. They have that much control.’

  ‘Would you really have wanted another child? After all, they might try to claim that one too.’

  Simone weighs her up. ‘You know where Amelie is, don’t you?’

  ‘You know I don’t.’

  For the first time, Olive sees real emotion in Simone’s face. It shakes her stoicism more than Simone’s questions. She sits back in the chair, turning her expression blank as Simone talks. She doesn’t want to hear more, but she also won’t stop her.

  ‘The day she was born, I looked at her and I knew I couldn’t keep her. She was so small! Born a month early, too. I tried not to love her. Every day, I did what I was supposed to as a mother. Then I got the nanny. I had to put distance between me and this fragile thing. Part of me hoped she’d have a defect, being so little. But she thrived and grew and was so intelligent. There was no way they wouldn’t take her. And then, one day she was gone. They made me bring her in myself. It was only then that I realised how much of my heart Amelie had. I rang Beech. I begged him. Please, not her. I can find you someone else. He said, “Simone, if you break our deal, you know what will happen. You and your husband will be finished, in every way.” I cried and he hung up on me. Cold bastard.’

  Olive says nothing. She feels … nothing. Though this is just her telling herself not to feel. She repeats her mantra to deflect Simone’s tears.

  ‘Is she good at the job?’ Simone asks. ‘Tell me that at least.’

  ‘I can’t. I don’t know anything about her. You know this, Simone. They don’t ever tell anyone all of it. I only know about the ones I’m working with now. Nothing more.’

  Simone stands. ‘My week here is over. I need to get back to London.’

  ‘You should,’ Olive says. ‘At least you don’t have to do it again for a while.’

  Simone sighs, rubbing at her eyes. ‘I’ll go and pack. Then I’ll come back for you to sign my pass to leave.’

  Olive can’t help feeling some sympathy as she nods her agreement. This place … this entity … has that impact on all of them. Except Beech, who is always happier here than anywhere else. This, the heart of everything his father started and he continued, brings him joy. Olive can’t imagine such glee in anything, especially not the house.

  Simone leaves.

  Olive sits again with her head in her hands, waiting for her to return, hoping she’ll be a long time. She’s feeling fragmented. She lied; she knows all about Amelie and where she is. Her predecessor did not redact as many documents as she should have. The filing cabinets are full of information about all the previous children. The truth is, Olive needed the access in order to do the right things with these new kids. The only file she hasn’t looked at is her own. She can’t bear it, knowing that her own parents, like Simone, probably sold her to the Network for some monetary gain. One day she may look them up. Perhaps they deserve a taste of what they created. She has the documents, hidden on a cloud space – should she ever find it impossible to resist.

  But Olive knows she will never do this. She has to stay strong. Who else will make sure that these children don’t go through everything she did? Everything they all did.

  She goes to her filing cabinet now and pulls out Amelie’s and Michael’s files to remind herself of the details. She opens Amelie’s first. The picture of th
e small, fragile child arriving at the house haunts Olive. She finds herself often looking at Amelie because she uses her as an example of how not to start the training. It’s why they changed things, almost twenty years ago. This is the reason they ended up with Neva and the knock-on of her defection.

  Olive torments herself with the gory details for a time, then she closes the file and looks around her office. She doesn’t open Michael’s file. She’s saving that for later, when she feels stronger.

  The house should feel like her own personal empire. How she’d delighted in the promotion! Then Sharrick came, bringing change in his wake. It was the moment that had started her own fall. But she’ll struggle against it. Remembering the past is not all it’s cracked up to be. For her it brings pain. She is fighting it, though. She doesn’t want to break; she wants to bend like a reed in the wind. Let it all flow over her. Look how well she’s held up! She has a lot to be proud of; at every turn, Olive has done what the Network asked.

  Ten years here. That’s all they want from her and then she’ll be free.

  She’s saved a lot of the money they rewarded her with for the assignments. Now, she is on a retainer of £120,000 a year. It is a cushy job too. She just has to make sure everyone else plays their part and instils the mantra in the trainees to prevent betrayal. No risk. It is simple. Easy.

  But then there are the ‘Simones’ she has to deal with. Those who have graduated to a different status, lesser than Olive’s but with more freedom. Simone can come here and cry, and regret, but she only has to attend one week, and not every year. Just when the Network feels it is time. She doesn’t even have to be conditioned. No, Simone was a willing recruit, unlike most who come for the week’s ‘top-up’, and she will go home now, and forget for a while that she sold her child into torture and a lifetime of servitude.

  Olive’s irritation with Simone grows to anger followed by disgust. What was her deal anyway? The ungrateful bitch! She has it all!

  Olive has never wanted children. Or a lasting relationship. She finds any form of commitment inconvenient. Early on, she underwent surgery. A minor procedure in the scheme of things, a sterilisation. She doesn’t regret it. She knows that any child she might have had would have been taken from her. She saw it with another recruit, a girl in her own year. They called her Creda. She was sixteen at the time, and, first assignment under her belt, she’d been ready to move on to the halfway house. But Creda was stupid. After her first kill, she had sex with two of the security guards. She’d been active with one of them for a while, but the house leader had turned a blind eye until she became pregnant. They’d kept her back at the house until the kid was born. Then the baby, a girl, was taken away. Fostered probably, until the day she’d be brought in and become absorbed into the Network.

  A year later, Creda, now seventeen, had joined Olive at the halfway house but she was subdued. She had confided that the security guards in question had been ‘retired’. Their punishment was not for sleeping with her, but for not taking precautions with a valuable asset. Olive hadn’t been sad for the guards. They had tried to interfere with all the girls, Olive included. They were forceful about their interest, and Creda and Florence had given in, thinking it would gain them some privileges in the future. But Olive avoided being ‘caught’ alone with any of the men. She saw them looking at her, heard crude comments about how they had ‘broken in’ the other two, and she didn’t want to be used that way. She went through enough at the house as it was. The policy regarding interaction with the trainees and the guards had changed dramatically since then. They were warned they were not to have anything to do with the students at any time. Any deviation was quickly dealt with. Olive took a personal interest in this and made sure the guards were never permitted alone with either the boys or the girls. She’d also implemented a vetting system.

  Even so, Olive has never forgotten the lesson Creda learnt: don’t do anything that the Network doesn’t allow. But as soon as she was given freedom to live alone, Olive had made sure she couldn’t conceive. She kept it secret from her handler, and the issue had never been raised of her viability, because her role was as a killer, not a breeder.

  Now she has children to care for anyway. ‘Care’ being a loose phrase that she bandies about in the meetings she has with the trainers. She will see this batch of trainees through to their first assignments, and then they’ll move on to the next house. After that, the guards and the head teacher will change and the new influx will be someone else’s problem. It’s always the way in the house and the Network. In her own mind, she makes things better for the trainees now. It’s all she can do to make sure she sleeps at night. Olive hopes to leave this new legacy in place. But she has to hold it together in the meantime. She has to make it through the next ten years.

  Adrenaline floods through her veins at the thought of real freedom. Olive walks around her office, trying to relieve the tension that Simone started and which her memories now compound, but it doesn’t work. There’s only one way to feel better and that’s to go to the shooting range.

  From her weapons chest she takes her automatic crossbow and arrows. This has always been her weapon of choice; all of the operatives have them, but most like the finality and ease of a gun. Olive loves to watch the movement in the air when she releases an arrow, and that fierce and intrusive thump as it hits home. That sound, like the last beat of a heart, eases the pain inside her. Pain that she refuses to acknowledge in any other way.

  Locking her office door, she walks around the staircase and heads towards the back of the house where the range is located in a long extension. As she passes the security room, something smacks hard against the door.

  Olive freezes. She considers raising the alarm, but instead her training kicks in. She becomes calm and she loads her crossbow. She’s been ready for this, ever since she heard Michael was coming in. She doesn’t know Neva, and her file is closed to all but those who need to see it, but this has to be her. From what she was told, Neva is the best they’ve ever had. Olive is determined to be the one to bring her down. Surely that will count for something with Beech? Maybe she’ll even make committee level after this?

  She waits by the door, bow raised.

  Chapter Seventy-One

  NEVA

  As the door opens, Neva hears a familiar hum as the air shifts. She heaves herself aside a split second before an arrow flies into the room. Even as more arrows follow, she weaves forward, deftly avoiding being hit. The security guard behind her isn’t so lucky and an arrow thuds into his leg.

  The arrows stop and Neva draws the gun from the small of her back as Olive frantically pulls at the trigger of the jammed crossbow. As Neva’s and Olive’s eyes meet, Olive’s expression changes. She stops trying to shoot. She takes a step back.

  ‘No! You’re hers. You can’t be!’

  Olive lowers the crossbow, shaking her head.

  Neva looks at the woman, her gun held steady, pointing at her chest. Even as she expects the alarm to be raised by the commotion they’ve caused, she waits to hear what Olive will say next.

  ‘I suppose I’m on your target list,’ Neva prompts.

  ‘You’re her daughter. I never knew.’

  ‘You know who my mother is?’

  Olive nods.

  ‘Who are you?’ Neva says.

  ‘Olive. I’m the headteacher here.’

  Neva’s face hardens. ‘Then I’m going to kill you.’

  Olive raises the crossbow between them. ‘Wait! I can help you.’

  ‘Why would you?’

  Olive shakes her head. She looks confused, frightened. ‘I don’t know. But I feel I have to. She staggers back against the wood panelling surrounding the staircase. Tears flow down her cheeks. ‘I’m … broken. It hurts!’

  Neva watches. She can almost hear the snap as the Network’s control over Olive ends.

  Olive lets the crossbow drop to the hardwood floor. The loud clatter echoes through the hallway. Her hands fly to her head as th
ough she has a headache and then a soft moan escapes her lips and builds into a cry of pure anguish.

  Neva understands this moment – this feeling of breaking apart as you fight against everything that they made you become. She feels a further crack in the cold place of her own heart. Olive is shaking and no longer a danger. But how can she be trusted? This could all be an act to get Neva to lower her guard.

  Neva steps out of the security room and casts a glance either side. There is no one around. Olive’s fall hasn’t been heard. Neva stands over her as the woman becomes a blubbering wreck.

  She considers shooting her and ending her misery but such a kill would be rash and pointless. Olive has information that Neva needs. Her mind is in turmoil, torn by this difficult decision. To destroy Olive will finish the house. But why is she here if not to save someone? The children, yes, but what about this woman, faced as she is with some inner torment that has broken the conditioning?

  Neva grabs Olive’s arm. ‘Come on. Let’s get the children and get out of here. This ends now!’

  Olive nods but she’s shaking and in shock.

  ‘Hold it together,’ Neva says. ‘You can do this, Olive. You’re broken but you’re alive!’

  Glancing around, Neva pulls the security room door closed.

  ‘Is Michael still with Beech?’

  ‘Yes,’ Olive says, her voice breaking.

  Neva picks up the crossbow. She unblocks it and then presses it back into Olive’s hands. ‘The only way to be free is to take down your handler. You’ve been questioning your life a long time, haven’t you? It’s time to end this.’

  Olive shakes her head in denial. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I can,’ says Neva. ‘And you will too if you want to be free.’

  Holding Olive’s arm, Neva leads her back around to where she heard Beech’s voice. This time she knows he will have no effect on her.