by J. N. Chaney
I looked down. I knew that this was the most likely explanation for what they did, but I still hoped it was something else. Something nicer, closer to what the sisters did. Mable obviously knew Mulberry, so she probably knew what it was that he did for a living.
Hell, from the way they had spoken to each other, I was starting to wonder if Mable was a killer like Miss Pearl.
No, I just couldn’t imagine it. Mable was the image of peace and patience in my mind, not killing people. It just didn’t make sense.
Maybe that was why Mulberry had second thoughts about me being a part of this. I had only joined because I couldn’t bear to part with my best and only friend. My selfish decision had put me in a position that I wasn’t entirely sure I was comfortable with.
Clementine seemed quite excited by the prospect of our teacher being a trained killer and was bubbling with questions. “So have you killed a lot of people? Were they important? Were they bad?”
Pearl shook her head. “I can’t talk about the specifics. And you shouldn’t ask about them.” She paused. “But yes, they were…bad.”
“Is that what this whole place is for?” I asked. “Are you training assassins?”
“Yes,” Pearl said simply.
“Is everyone here like you?” asked Clem.
Pearl nodded.
“What’s the name of this place?” I asked.
“It doesn’t have one,” she said.
We both stared at her, confused.
She sighed. “Names are used to identify you. The same is true of an organization, a government, a business. It gives it shape, makes it so you can point to something and understand it. Without a name, you release yourself from the world, fading back into its noise without ever having been seen. Men whisper in fear of the unknown, and that is precisely what we are, simply by existing.” She raised a finger, letting silence fill the moment for several seconds, and then continued. “So it is with each of us. When I leave these doors, I become no one. I become shapeless. And when I kill, I do so as a concept, a force of nature.”
Clem and I both swallowed.
“Numbers are used as a form of identity, based on our rank inside the organization, but only when communication is needed.”
“What’s your number?” I asked, timidly.
“Three.” Pearl’s lips curled. “Mulberry is number one, obviously.”
Clementine was looking more and more interested. “Who’s number two?”
“None of your business,” Pearl scoffed. “Now, it’s been more than five minutes, which means it’s time to get back to work. I still haven’t seen you knock that dummy over, Abigail, and you won’t be getting dinner until you do.”
I finally did it. It took most of the afternoon, but I finally managed to kick the dummy off its weighted feet.
The feeling of pride from that didn’t put a dent in how tired I felt, though.
My body felt weak with every movement. Even the act of lifting a fork to my mouth got me wondering if I could do this for another day. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this tired, and I had been training for a month now.
My fuzzy brain tried to work out that logic. All I could determine was that this was the first time that I had actually applied myself to this. Meanwhile, Clem had been training like this since the first day. She was so fearless, so sincere in her devotion to what we were doing.
I just wanted to keep up.
I didn’t bother changing into my night clothes after we got back to our room. I just dropped onto the bed, dressed in the clothes I was wearing. My body felt like it was on fire as my sore muscles burned in agony. But as tired as I was, I still couldn’t fall asleep. My brain wouldn’t shut down.
I looked up at the ceiling, reimagining the day’s routine again in my mind, visualizing all of my mistakes.
“Hey, Abby?” I turned my head to see Clem lying on her stomach, chin resting on her forearms as she faced me.
“Yeah?” I asked, still not moving.
“What are you thinking about? You’re just staring at nothing.”
So she’d noticed it too.
It made me smile, giving me enough energy to turn my body on the bed to face her. “Just thinking about Mable. She knew Mulberry very well, and it made me wonder if she was an assassin like Pearl. What if she was number two?”
Clem shrugged and didn’t answer, giving me the impression that it hadn’t been what was on her mind. So I asked, “What are you thinking about?”
She paused before answering. “I’m just thinking what my number’s going to be.”
“It’s based on your rank, isn’t it?” I asked.
She nodded. “Which means it can change.”
“What number do you want?” I asked.
She turned over on the bed, facing up at the ceiling like I had been. “Number one. I want to be the greatest assassin in the universe.”
My eyes narrowed.
She continued. “I’ll be better than everyone else. Better than Mulberry. Better than Rose and Pearl. All of them. Everyone will talk about the girl with the black hair who doesn’t have a name. I’ll be a ghost, but I’ll be the best.”
“Is that really what you want?” I asked.
She looked at me with sheer determination in her eyes. “More than anything in the entire galaxy.”
I watched her for a moment, not knowing fully what to say. I only knew that this was important to her, and because I loved her, I had to support it. “Then that’s what you’ll be, Clem. I know it.”
She smiled at the last part and lay back down. “Me too.”
I could tell Clem had changed since we first began these lessons. She’d become more determined, more purposeful in her actions. When she went to the training room to practice, she pushed herself to her absolute limit. Even her grades had improved.
Maybe she had always wanted this life. Maybe I’d been blind to this side of her. I couldn’t really say.
All I knew was I was afraid. Not for myself, but for her, because the path she’d chosen would be a dangerous one. We weren’t in the orphanage anymore. I knew things now, more than I ever had, and one of them was that the world was full of corruption and danger, and it was constantly trying to change you.
Then again, I wasn’t so sure the world had done this to her. Not entirely.
Even in our first week here, she’d pushed her boundaries with Pearl. Now that she knew that she could be an assassin, she seemed exhilarated. Not changed, exactly, but completed.
Was she going to keep changing? Keep going down this path? I turned to look at Clem, but she had turned over to face the wall.
No matter what she ended up doing, she was going to be my sister through all of it. Clem wasn’t going to change that much, and even if she did, I would always be there for her. I would always look after her, the same way she had for me.
She was my sister, my friend, my partner. Whatever happened after this, we would always be together.
7
Blinking a drop of sweat away from my eye, I jumped lightly from foot to foot, weaving a bit in place. I bent my knees slightly, moving easily and quickly as I saw a black glove arcing around towards my face.
I ducked under it, pushing forward with my left foot to counterattack. My left hand delivered a probing jab as my right fist hooked underneath, heading for the ribs.
Clementine evaded, bringing her elbow down to block the hook. Even as she dodged, she was closing in. Her left foot darted forward to stomp mine.
I stepped back to avoid it, and she pressed her advantage, feigning with her fist, but then hooking with her other one. I leaned to avoid it, and she clasped both hands behind my neck, holding me there in the clinch and backing me up.
The full weight of her body pressed on me, helped by the substantial strength of her core muscles. She dragged my head down, and her knee came up. My hands caught her knee and pushed it down before it could hit me in the face.
It wouldn’t break anything, but it would still hu
rt like a whore’s ass on a busy night, as Pearl was fond of saying.
We continued exchanging blows, blocking most of them, until Clementine finally managed to come in close and wrap her arm around me, bringing our hips together. I tried to break free, but she held firm and tight, leaning to her side and pulling me into the air before slamming me to the floor with a hard hip throw. My back hit the mat with a loud smack, surprising me.
She pretended to stomp at my neck, ending the match.
“You’re getting better,” she said with a grin.
I scowled up at her, making an annoyed sound as I gripped her hand and got to my feet. “Is that why you almost pulled my arm off and took it home with you?”
She laughed. “You never know when you’ll need a spare.”
I stuck my tongue out at her as we grabbed our water bottles and towels.
“You need to stop charging at openings like a blind masoon, Abby,” Clem said, referencing the large animals we’d recently read about in class. They slept sixteen hours a day, but if you woke them, they’d chase you until they fell over from exhaustion, which could strangely take up to several days. They also had tunnel vision and hated the color yellow. “That’s twice in one fight. All I had to do was wait for you to drop your guard, which always happens if I’m patient enough.”
I nodded, stripping the padded gloves from my hand and the guards from my face. I filled my mouth with water, and after swishing it around a few times, spit into the floor drain behind us.
Clementine made a face. “Gross,” she said, still undoing the padding from her knuckles.
I grinned. “Just washing the taste of defeat out of my mouth.”
She shook her head. “Come on, you weren’t that bad.”
“Neither were you,” I said.
We both laughed.
The gym door opened, and I turned to see Mulberry enter. He looked like a fairly well-to-do businessman out for a night of fun. Clem’s face reflected my own confusion, but before we could say anything, Pearl shouted, “You two! On your feet!”
We’d been here for three years now, and Pearl had taken to simple observation, with only the occasional correction as the two of us sparred with one another.
She and Mulberry were already talking by the time we jogged over to join them.
“Rose couldn’t handle it,” Mulberry said. “She mucked it up big time and got herself flagged at Customs. Thankfully, the target still doesn’t know that we’re coming for him, so he hasn’t upped his security yet. It’s easy, but there’s still a time issue.”
Pearl rolled her eyes as we came closer. “Are you pawning off another job on me?”
He nodded. “Sure am, because it was your job in the first place, and I only gave it to Rose when you decided to pass on it. We lost our shot at this target, but he’s landed in our lap again, and I just can’t stand to pass up the opportunity.”
“You’re talking about three years ago,” she said with a scoff. “You can’t blame me for that. I didn’t want to lose the contract, but it couldn’t be helped.”
Mulberry tilted his head, almost conceding to her. “Doesn’t matter. He’s back on our radar and the contract is double the old price. I need this done, Pearl, and I need it done tonight. It’s the best shot we’ll have at him, and we don’t know how long the security’s going to be this lax. He could go underground, the same way he did the last time we tried.”
Pearl let out a long sigh. “Fine. I’ll take care of it.” She turned to us, her displeasure still showing. “I’m going into the city. It shouldn’t take long. A couple of hours at most. I want you both in practicing for the next two hours, and then you’ll clean everything up, and—”
“Actually,” Mulberry interjected, scratching at the bristle on his chin. “This might be a good opportunity for them to get some supervised field experience. Don’t you think so?”
Pearl made a face as she swung around to look at the man. “What?”
Mulberry kept his face straight. “Lax security, in and out in a couple of hours. We couldn’t ask for a better mission. Besides, they’ll only be observing. You’ll be on a rooftop, firing at a distance. Easy training.”
“Easy, he tells me,” she said, looking at Clem and me. “This is the same contract we lost three years ago because he disappeared, but now you think I should take the girls?” Pearl sighed again.
Before she could continue, Clem stepped in with an excited expression on her face. “We could really use the experience! Right, Abby?” She nudged me with an elbow, and I nodded quickly in response.
Pearl eyed the two of us for a long couple of seconds, her whole body stiff, until finally, she relaxed. “Fine,” Pearl eventually said. “But if either of you screws this up, it’ll be years before you get a second chance at this. Am I understood?”
“Yes, ma’am!” we both snapped.
Mulberry grinned at her and winked at us. “Have a good time, girls. Don’t stay out too late.” He turned around, pulling the doors open, and exited the training room.
Pearl casually started walking to the exit. “We’ll be leaving in half an hour. I want to see both of you showered, changed, and waiting for me at the shuttle exit in twenty. If you’re late, you get left behind.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Clementine said, running ahead of me to the lockers. It was the most excited I’d seen her in weeks.
8
Clementine slowed down enough for me to catch up with her, and we stepped inside the shuttle bay together. A handful of transports waited beside a road leading out of the building. It wasn’t an expansive area. The room was about as large as our training gym. Like everything else about this place, it didn’t even have a name and remained low key and understated. If you were driving by this place in the middle of the afternoon, you’d never suspect it housed one of the most successful assassin guilds in six star systems.
Clementine checked her watch as we entered. “Seventeen minutes and forty-five seconds,” she announced proudly. “That’s got to be some kind of record for getting ready.”
Pearl’s voice came from behind us. “Absolutely. You can expect medals and a call from the governor any minute now.”
Pearl wasn’t wearing training clothes. Instead, she had on what looked like a pure black jumpsuit, black boots, and gloves. It looked loose and baggy, but as she came closer, I saw that the space between the clothes was actually firm and hard, indicating some kind of light body armor underneath.
Clem was immediately interested, reaching out to touch the arm of the jumpsuit.
“Is that Neuro-Mass?” I asked, narrowing my eyes, trying to remember the name. I’d heard of it before in one of my books. Over the past three years, our standard education had been supplemented with a handful of extra courses specifically related to—well, what we were about to do.
One course had covered all the known forms of body armor, both modern and ancient. Neuro-Mass was a type of protection recently developed for the Union’s special forces. It incorporated a tactile sensation, allowing the armor to feel almost like a part of the user’s body.
Pearl chuckled and shook her head. “No, Mass sets off all kinds of alarms and attracts the kind of attention that I could do without. This has a ceramic-titanium weave underneath that acts like regular clothes until it’s hit with something. The impact causes it to harden and stop the attack. It can stave off most small-arms fire, knives, and even blunt-force trauma. If anything gets through, the material releases a gel anti-toxin and coagulant into the wound. It can’t stop the heavier stuff, but it’s effective in most fights. A bit low tech, but it gets the job done.”
Clementine was still stroking the material in pure fascination. “It’s amazing. When do we get armor like this?”
An odd smile crossed Pearl’s features. “When you’re older and ready to have jobs of your own.”
I could read the excitement on my sister’s face as we headed toward one of the waiting shuttles. Soon we were heading to the city.
&
nbsp; “You got the mission briefs on your pads,” Pearl said. “Read them back to me.”
I turned my eyes away from the edge of the rooftop. We weren’t in the nicest part of town, but the view from this high up was still incredible. We were near the docks, and I could feel the ocean salt in the breeze as it cut through my clothes.
Clementine had her pad out before me, and she started reading the brief. “Target’s name is Michael Dunn.”
I narrowed my eyes. Why did that name sound familiar?
Clementine kept going. “Longtime operative and high-ranking official of the Osiris-based drug cartel known as the Conference. He was originally a Union naval officer before being dishonorably discharged when he was caught using his position aboard the UFS Peaceful Resolute to smuggle weapons, drugs, and…miscellaneous?”
“Artifacts, electronics, pretty much anything that can be moved for a lot of money,” Pearl explained, pulling out the briefcase she’d brought and putting it on top of a ledge.
I read over the information on my pad. “His wife divorced him after the discharge. The criminal charges were dropped, though. I wonder why.”
“Maybe he had the right connections,” Clem said.
Pearl nodded, pulling a red velvet blanket from the case and placing it on the ledge beside the briefcase. “The intel says he was working with the Conference at the time. He funneled military secrets to them for a fee. They slicked a few palms to get him out and the files sealed.”
“If they’re sealed, how did we get them?” I asked.
Pearl raised her eye like the answer should be obvious. After a moment, she continued. “Once he was released, he started working for the organization full time here in Ruto City.”
I glanced down at the pad and continued reading. “He didn’t have any kids, and most of his family is dead. He has an uncle living here in the city, though, who has a history of disorderly conduct and possession of controlled substances. The uncle has no job to speak of, and he hasn’t paid any taxes in almost a decade. He’s a drunk and a junkie. Dunn has been paying for the guy’s housing in this neighborhood.”
