by J. N. Chaney
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, turned away from the scene.
Clem didn’t respond. She simply looked towards the door I was supposed to be guarding. “Listen!” she snapped, motioning with her bloodied knife to the hall.
Footsteps and voices were growing steadily closer.
“Time to go!” I snapped.
Clem nodded, and we fled into the nearby hall. The dining room came into view, the glistening chandelier sparkling above us. Not far to the elevator from here. We just had to—
A heavyset man came charging from another corridor. Clem leaped clear of his path, but I wasn’t fast enough. He slamming directly into me, shoving me into the nearby table. I slid across it, rolling across the middle of the floor until I hit the wall.
Even though it all happened before I could process it, the suit absorbed most of the damage. I pushed myself on my side, locating the thick man with padded armor on his chest. He had a tattoo on his neck, although I couldn’t make it out in the dark, and a metallic, prosthetic arm. Based on how hard he’d hit me, the arm made sense.
I retrieved my pistol, but he was too fast. The gun left my hand as his foot slammed into my fingers. While nothing broke, I still screamed.
He raised his metal arm again, but I dodged, kicking at his face in a desperate attempt to keep him away. Suddenly, Clem charged him, sticking one of her knives into his shoulder.
He reacted by swinging his arm around and hitting her in the stomach.
The force knocked her into the nearby kitchen but gave me enough time to move away from him. As he turned his attention on me again, I frantically searched for anything to use as a weapon. A lamp. That’s all I could—
I grabbed hold of the bar and yanked the cord from the wall, hitting the guard with the base of it, directly in his shin. He cursed, and I feared it had only made him angrier.
“Hey!” shouted Clem.
We both turned to the kitchen nook where she stood at the counter with a set of kitchen knives.
They flew at him, one after the next, and he managed to block the first few with his arm, but had to move to avoid the rest. Even with the armor, Clem’s throws were deadly. He was smart to avoid—
A butcher knife flew between us, colliding with the man’s knee with such force that it stuck.
I found my gun in the chaos, then got to my feet.
The man raised his metal arm towards me, and it began to morph into something else. A barrel at the end.
“Sparrow!” cried Clem, coming back from the kitchen in a full sprint.
She dove onto the guard’s neck, stabbing his shoulder with her knife just in time to send his bullet into the wall beside me.
I ran close, leaping over his arm and digging the pistol into his neck.
I fired, splitting his throat on both sides.
Clem backed off, and I shot him again in the temple, finally causing him to go limp.
We were both heaving, breathing hard enough that it burned. “Gods,” I muttered.
“What’s going on in there?” called Mulberry over the comm. “Is the target eliminated?”
“Confirmed,” said Clem, holding the nearby wall as she tried to catch her breath.
“Then I want you gone. Get to the laundry department and—”
Two men appeared from the hall behind us. In the heat of the moment, I’d forgotten to watch my surroundings. One of them rushed me, but I reacted at once, sidestepping the attack.
The world seemed to slow as he went to grab me, and I responded automatically, bringing my pistol to his chest and firing. Centimeters from his ribs, the gun sent the bullet all the way through, and he fell away from me, dead before he hit the floor.
The bright flash blinded me from staring directly at the gun when it went off, and I dropped the weapon in surprise.
Clem’s yell registered over the ringing in my ears, and she jumped nimbly beside me, charging at the second man. A knife in her hand flicked toward his neck. He evaded the knife and grabbed Clem by the neck with his uninjured hand. Stopping her in her tracks, he paused briefly with an ugly smile, then lifted her off the floor with a single hand.
“No!” I snapped.
I jumped forward, forgetting my gun on the floor, and drew the knife from its sheath on my thigh. The monster tracked my movements, but Clem tossed her knife into her other hand and stabbed it firmly into his bicep.
He roared but kept his grip on her neck.
I circled around, my heart hammering at seeing Clem being suspended like that. Her face was already turning a dangerous shade of purple. I jumped on top of the man from behind, tangling my legs around his torso and wrapping my free hand around his neck.
He reached back for me, and I quickly stabbed him in the shoulder. The wound didn’t slow him down. He grabbed the top of my head and tried to dislodge me, so I dug the knife into him again. And again. And again, punching the short, broad blade through the thick muscles in his neck. I was trying to find his carotid artery, but in the middle of so much muscle, I had a hard time of it.
Warm blood splattered my mask and coated my arm while the man’s grip on me loosened. He finally dropped Clem as she fell to her knees gasping for air and clutching her throat. I dropped down as the man staggered forward, trying in vain to staunch the wounds, but collapsing before taking more than three steps.
My eyes were on Clem. I wiped the knife clean on my sleeve before sheathing it and running over to my sister’s side. She pulled her mask up to breathe freely but coughed as soon as it was off. I knelt beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You okay, Cl—Raven?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, only nodding as she struggled to her feet and pulled the mask back down.
My earpiece buzzed as Mulberry’s trademark growl filtered through it. “I just intercepted a call to the local authorities about someone triggering a silent alarm. I suggest you leave. Now. Do you hear me, Sparrow? Raven?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered, then gestured for Clem to follow me. I swept my gun up from the floor on my way out, while Clem picked up her throwing knife.
I sprinted for the end of the hall, skidding to a halt and spinning around once I reached the elevator. Clem was right at my heels as I entered the lift. My throat felt dry, my hands sweaty inside my gloves, but I tried to keep a cool head.
What would Pearl do?
The light above the elevator blinked, indicating that it was on its way to us. “We’re about to have company,” muttered Clem, placing her back to the wall beside the lift doors.
I positioned myself on the adjacent side, giving my pistol one last check before the elevator opened. “Raven, I—” I paused, trying not to panic. It took everything in me to stay calm. “Maybe we should try another way. Didn’t the plans show an emergency exit?”
Clem hesitated. “The alarm will sound if we go that way.”
“That’s good,” I said, grabbing her wrist. “We can use it as a distraction. Come on! We took those other guys down, but we can’t handle an entire team.”
She blinked, processing everything. “R-right. You’re right.”
I brought up the building schematics and pulled her with me, heading to the far end of the hall and around the end corner, straight into a closed set of doors. We both looked at one another, then shoved the silver handles inward, causing the overhead lights to come on and the alarm to sound.
“Emergency! Emergency!” stated the automated system. “Evacuation protocols initiated. Remain calm and proceed to the nearest exit.”
“Let’s go!” I shouted, yanking Clem’s hand through the opening and into the stairwell. We shuffled down to the next floor, leaping two or three steps at a time, trying to outpace the residents from the other floors. As soon as my feet hit the bottom level, I peered up to see almost every single door open, filling the stairs with shuffling footsteps as the building’s residents arrived.
We were both breathing heavily, our black suits obscuring the red blood tha
t coated us. I quickly checked my gun, opting to replace the magazine before continuing.
I had been through hundreds of training sessions, and while it wasn’t exactly the same, I had gone from feeling overly anxious to focused. Somehow, all of that training had worked, and I’d found myself ready.
I could do this. I could be an assassin.
A short corridor later we found the laundry room. As we had with Pearl on the first mission, we exchanged our outfits with the blue-marked bags in the dryer and got dressed quickly.
I tossed on my fresh shirt, pants, and jacket. Clem did the same. I pulled the mask off my face, placing it inside my suit’s leg compartment. It was still wet with blood and sweat.
We packed our old clothes into the same dryer and started through the same door we’d entered when we first arrived, heading into the back alleyway and towards the eastern street.
The crowd had already gathered there, filling the entire area with a bustling mob of confused people. Children cried in their parents’ arms, while others complained loud enough to be equally distracting.
Several police vehicles lined the street, shining lights that mimicked a circus show. I stepped into the mob, staying quiet and trying not to bump into anyone. Clem followed, saying nothing.
When we were safely on the other side, I fled into the park, getting behind a set of thick trees. Our pace quickened from there, and we raced to Mulberry’s shuttle.
“We did it!” Clem yelled, skipping instead of running.
“We’re not out of it yet,” I said.
Clem rolled her eyes. “I know we’re not,” she said, although now she was whispering. “But we got the target, and we’re out of the building.” She giggled, genuinely satisfied.
Mulberry’s shuttle was at the same place we’d left it. The doors opened, and we jumped inside with the engines already primed and ready. As we lifted off the ground, Mulberry stepped hard on the accelerator, and we quickly careened away from the building.
“What the hell happened in there?” Mulberry asked, looking back at us as his growl turning into something closer to a roar.
He had a dangerous look in his eyes, almost murderous.
“The target was awake and, on his feet, when we got to the room,” Clem said before I could answer. “Might have been going for a piss or something. We had to act, but we woke up the wife.”
Mulberry’s eyes shifted over to me for confirmation.
I hesitated.
Clem’s eyes were on me too, so I sighed. “H-he saw us,” I said, nearly vomiting out the words. “I moved deeper into the room than I should have. That’s why I wasn’t covering the door.”
Clem grinned and turned back to Mulberry. “We took care of it, though. Got every single one of them. You should’ve seen us, Number One. We were out of this world!”
Twelve
Getting used to a regular schedule the next day was going to be difficult.
My face had swelled up during our getaway from where the giant had clipped me. I had to spend hours with a cold pack to get it back down to something resembling normal again. In the heat of the moment, I had taken more bumps and scrapes than I had noticed and was feeling achy and painful all over.
My ears were still ringing from the unsilenced shots, and it was painful to move after I had gone to bed.
They canceled most of our classes for the next day. Angus only showed up on my pad to pass along a couple of lessons regarding the physics involved in a shot spanning more than one thousand meters. I couldn’t bring myself to look at it.
For the first few hours of the day, all I could do was stare up at the ceiling. Exhausted after the mission, I was practically falling asleep on the way back home. My sleep had been dreamless, but when I woke up, the memories of what happened the night before—what I had done—all came back to me in a slow ebb.
First, watching Clementine kill the target herself. I didn’t dispute that it needed to be done. We were on the job, and the man was a terrible human being. I would be lying if I thought anybody other than his mother would miss him. No, he wasn’t bothering me.
It was Clementine.
There was a desire in her eyes when she moved over him. It hadn’t been enough to simply kill the man. She needed to get up close and deliver the killing blow herself, to feel his flesh give way around her blade.
I was hoping I had only imagined the expression on her face. The room was dim, and I’d only had a moment to catch her eyes. Maybe she had intended to do it the right way, but he woke up when she came close. Maybe she had no choice but to use the knife.
Who was I to judge her anyway? I had blood on my hands, too. Did it matter if our target died by gas, knife, or gun? Murder was murder, and I’d done my fair share of it.
It took me most of the morning to come to terms with that. Clementine had been up early, gone before I woke up, so I had the room to myself, allowing a long morning of silent contemplation and self-reflection.
“I wonder what Mable would think if she knew,” I said aloud, reaching up into the air above me and grasping at nothing.
My shoulder ached.
I closed my eyes, but all I could see were the bodyguards’ faces. The man charging at me, enraged by the death of his friend. I hadn’t seen the big fellow’s face as I killed him, but I did remember seeing him holding Clementine by the neck, lifting her off the floor, and then I saw red. It didn’t matter to me anymore that he was a human being.
All I knew was that he was hurting my sister, and by every scrap of will in my body, I was going to stop him. It. Whatever.
I rolled over on the bed, reaching underneath and pulling out my book. It was a little worn out. Galion had given it to me, saying that it was one of his favorites. The cover was a bit faded, but it showed a woman in full armor with a gun in her hand, shooting at an unknown enemy. There was a small, scrappy ship, framed with a beautiful view of the sky behind her.
I smiled, running my fingers over the cover.
I found my spot from last time. I usually folded the page where I stopped to make it easier to pick it up the next time I wanted to read, but since it wasn’t mine, I didn’t want to damage it.
I had to give it back once I finished it of course, but the story made me want to find the rest of the series. There was probably a store in the city that sold hard copies of books. I liked having the physical paper in my hands, reading over the printed letters. It felt more grounded and made it easier to immerse myself in what was happening.
Slipping into the comfort of the pages, I let the day pass me by. I missed lunch. I imagined being in the conflicts the heroine found herself in, sometimes even saying some of her cooler lines aloud.
Clementine thought I was crazy for doing that, but in the end, it was what made the book enjoyable to me. The ability to slip into someone else’s skin for a little while, and able to escape my own troubles and live life on the gritty edge, where violence was glorious and always had some sort of deeper meaning.
The hours passed, and I even missed that the sun had set. I only had a few chapters left when Clementine returned. She had just come out of the shower from the looks of her wet hair, but her cheeks were flushed, and she had the distinct look of someone who had just finished a vigorous workout.
“Hey, Abby,” she said with a smile. “Have you been in here all day?”
“Yeah,” I answered, putting the book down and stretching. Had it really been all day?
“You need to get some exercise in, stretch those limbs. It’ll help the bruising heal a lot faster.”
I nodded, relaxing against the bed again and looking up at the ceiling. “I know. But with no classes or anything to get to, I just needed some time to myself.”
She looked at me, a confused smile on her face. “What for? We had our first successful job last night. We should be celebrating. I mean, we need to get paid first, but then we should celebrate, right?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. We killed people. I mean, the target was
an asshole that deserved it, but what about those guards? Weren’t they just doing their jobs? Did they deserve to die too?”
Clem sat down on her bed, a thoughtful look on her face. “Well, it was them or us, wasn’t it? I mean, they were just doing their job, but they would have killed us, or worse, sent us to jail. Is that what you’d prefer?”
“Of course not,” I said, propping myself up on my elbow. “But it wasn’t them or us, was it? If you’d just used the canister like we’d planned, the wife wouldn’t have woken up until we were already gone, and none of them would’ve had to die.”
“You can’t know that,” she snapped, looking annoyed now. “What if the medicine didn’t work? He could have built up a resistance, or they might not have put the right concentration in the canister or something. With a knife…” She looked down, and I knew she imagined a knife in her hands right now. “With a knife, you can feel it. You just know. There’s no room for error.”
I shook my head and laid back down, staring up.
The researchers had done their jobs. They wouldn’t have suggested the gas if they weren’t sure, and Mulberry had advised us to use it, too. It hadn’t been a matter of her doubting the gas’s effectiveness. It couldn’t have been. I knew that she trusted Mulberry well enough.
So why hadn’t she used it?
Clem’s face softened as she moved over to my bed and put a hand on my shoulder. “Look, you noticed how I was going on about what a good job I’d done to Mulberry on the way back?”
I looked at her, confused. “Yeah? What about it?”
She squeezed my shoulder gently. “Well, last night, I saw what you’re capable of. You’re an artist with that gun. It was amazing to watch. Hell, you saved my life when that big fucker had me by the throat. I was feeling insecure. Before then I never realized how good you were, and well, I think I felt threatened. You were amazing last night. Like, proper godsdamn fantastic.”
I felt my face grow warm, and a small smile touched my lips. “You saved my life too.”
She grinned and brushed her fingers through my short hair. “See? This is what I’m talking about. We’ve got each other’s backs. We’re the future of this organization, and together, we’re damn near unstoppable.”
