She shot off again, ducked around a corner and sprinted down another hallway. Finally, she let herself out the back door of Maplewood Hospital. Blazing sun assaulted her vision as she dashed across the immaculate lawn. The security guards were after her, as she knew they would be.
Elbow! a voice hissed.
Brianna dropped an elbow into the groin of a burly security officer. As he fell to the ground, Brianna reached for his Taser and stuck it into the neck of the officer coming at her from the other side.
Sweet! We're in beast mode!
Brianna dashed across the length of lawn. With cat-like reflexes, she scaled the black- iron fence and landed down on the other side. As if planned, a somehow familiar, unfamiliar red sports car skidded to a stop right in front of her.
"Come on!" a middle aged, white woman shouted when Brianna hesitated.
Brianna shrugged and ducked inside. The car sped off.
She glanced in the side view mirror in time to see an ominous black van parked in front of the gate. She wasn't sure how she knew it was supposed to be there. That van was somehow going to ensure that nobody ever knew Brianna Miller.
Yeah, like that's a problem. We don't even know Brianna Miller.
She rolled her eyes at the voices. She was about to retort when the woman driving the car held an envelope out to her.
"Nice to see you again, Miss Miller. It's been, well, I guess a year now, hasn't it?"
Brianna took the envelope and looked at her through narrow eyes, as if the action would help her to remember who this woman was.
After several seconds, she smiled and said, "Whitmore Junior!"
The woman laughed, and Brianna opened the envelope. She let out a low whistle.
Oh, yeah!
That's what I'm talking about!
Ca-Ching!
Ooo! Ooo! Can we still get the Darth Vader life sized action figure?
What are we? Twelve?
Anakin, you are the father!
Brianna laughed, shaking her head at the voices. "Darth Vader it is."
"Hmm?" The woman asked, glancing at her. "Oh!" She gave her a knowing look. "Still hearing all those voices?"
"No, dude. I told you, we're not crazy. We mean? I'm not crazy."
Liar.
You're also a hired gun.
We're so screwed.
"Oh, look. Candy!" Brianna reached into the cup holder and pulled out a wrapped mint.
The woman simply smiled.
"Of course you're not. Where to, Brianna?"
Brianna pursed her lips and looked through the sun roof. "Do you happen to know of any Star Wars conventions in the area?"
***
"You're asking me to what? Be afraid of a child?" Hisoka exhaled the heady smoke from his over-priced cigar and looked up at Jin Wang with that smug expression of his.
Jin looked back into Hisoka's dark brown eyes. "This is no child. This is an assassin they say can be wearing bright orange and hit her mark in the middle of a crowded street."
Hisoka leaned forward and laughed.
"Yes, Jin. I've heard the stories." He put his cigar out in the ashtray atop his desk and waved him off. "I've been in this business for twenty years. Do you know how many people have put a price on my head in all that time?"
Jin shook his head. "This time is different."
"Every time is different. I refuse to fear a seventeen year old."
Jin shook his head again and crossed the room to look out the large window of the top floor of the skyscraper centered in the heart of New York City.
"Sir, with all due respect--" His eyes fell to the rushing traffic below. "Perhaps you should consider leaving town until we get this matter settled." He glanced at his boss. "There is no weakness in practicing caution."
Hisoka cocked his head. "Jin, if you think that a ch--"
The rest of his sentence was swallowed by the grating swell of fire alarms. Jin sighed, raised his eyes to the ceiling, and walked toward Hisoka. Jin picked up his expensive leather suitcase and waited as Hisoka slipped on his blazer. They headed for the door.
Jin found it odd that the top floor was empty, but pressed the down button on the elevator.
Hisoka chuckled behind him. "In case of a fire? take the elevator."
Jin shrugged, looking back at him. "It's just another drill."
Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, someone came barreling around the corner.
"Jesus!" Jin complained as a small figure crashed into him, sending scalding hot coffee onto his freshly pressed shirt. The figure did not apologize, only mumbled something and ducked around the corner.
"Damnit!" Jin pulled his shirt away from his chest. He looked up at the ding of the elevator.
Hisoka laughed, stepping past him. "Clean yourself up. I'll meet you downstairs in the limo."
Jin narrowed his eyes as the elevator doors slid shut. He muttered in Japanese then turned on the balls of his feet with every intention of returning to the office to change.
Instinct made him turn around. His eyes went to the floor numbers above the elevator. His heart nearly stopped. The light blinked, much too fast. His boss was plummeting.
"Dear Lord!" He rushed back to the elevator and pressed the up button in a panic.
Sweat broke out across his forehead. He glanced up at the numbers again.
Forty? Thirty?
With shaking hands, Jin dropped Hisoka's briefcase to the marble floor and reached into his pocket for his cellphone.
Thirty? Twenty?
The entire building shook when the elevator cab hit the bottom floor. Jin broke away from the doors as if something were going to jump out and bite him. His heart hammered and his ears filtered out the blaring of the alarms. When his legs began to work again, he headed down the stairs. It seemed a lifetime before he finally reached the bottom level.
A chorus of screams greeted his ears as he tore into the lobby. Just as he began forcing his way through the crowd, his memory flashed to the tiny figure that spilled coffee on him. Something told him that she was responsible for this. That same something wanted to argue the absurdity of it.
He made his way to the elevator cab wreckage, noting the cracks in the floor as he approached. Blood splattered across the shards of golden sides, now splayed like petals on a flower. When he saw Hisoka's left arm, still twitching under the pile of rubble, he knew the truth.
That tiny figure was her, and all the stories were real.
Jin backed into several onlookers. He couldn't decide which was a bigger shock: his boss laying in pieces on the ground floor of an empire he built himself, or that they were both just inches away from his killer.
Jin had been told she was infallible. He just couldn't understand how a seventeen year old girl could have pulled this off.
***
Brianna watched three police cars and an ambulance dodge through traffic and knew they were heading for the Wang Center. She put on a dark baseball cap with matching sunglasses before boarding the Greyhound bus, unnoticed. She hoped the voices would give her some rest.
She took off her back pack and sat down in the seat farthest to the rear, exhausted. She stared straight ahead for an undefined length of time, watching passengers enter and exit the bus. Her stomach clenched. Years of doing this was beginning to take its toll.
The sound of her cellphone ringing made her jump. Brianna looked down at the time display, realizing she'd been zoned out for nearly half an hour, before speaking a rough, "Hello," into her phone.
"You missed the drop off," a deep, familiar voice told her.
Brianna sighed. "I need to get out of town. Keep it."
Say what? a voice shot off, clearly appalled.
Oh, we've lost it. We have lost it!
Well, that last kill was easy. I mean, crashing an elevator cab. We're being good Christians?
"Ssh!" Brianna hissed into the phone in frustrat
ion. "Just keep it, or hold onto it until I get back."
She hung up the phone and glared at her reflection in the large bus window as if daring the voices to make an objection.
They did not.
Brianna rode the bus for days, safely tucked away from the psychedelic haze that had been turning her into something else since she was a child. She spent her time getting off at designated bus stops and dozing until she reached her destination: a small town outside of Rodessa, Louisiana.
She checked into a Motel 6 across the street from the bus station. Brianna handed money to a surly, overweight woman and stopped at a vending machine for dinner. Once in her room, she took an almost painfully hot shower and sat, wrapped only in a towel, as she downed candy bars. Then she crawled into bed and didn't so much as roll over until dawn broke.
She turned to stare at the digital clock on her night stand. Seven A.M.
We're going to that place, aren't we? a voice inside her head asked.
Dude, let's not do this. Just go back and get the money.
Yes, we can buy cool stuff. You know how we feel about cool stuff.
She shook the voices out and got up to dress before leaving the hotel room.
She walked the two miles to Kais Cemetery, pausing just outside the gate. An unshakable sadness swelled in her heart as she looked out at the rows of tombstones. The ever rising sun streamed into her eyes, and she blinked against it. Warm tears fell down her cheeks.
She clutched the gates iron posts for support and deeply inhaled. On shaky legs, she walked past several rows of monuments to the dead before falling to her knees in front of one.
With tears in her eyes, Brianna swept away the dead leaves on the cool granite, revealing an inscription.
Here lies Rachel Miller.
She stared at the words for several moments before her body wracked with sobs.
"Oh, Mom!" she wailed.
Painful memories flashed before her eyes. Her parents fighting. Her mother threatening to leave if he enrolled her in that special program: Project Delta. She could still see herself, as a young girl, running to hide under the bed with an old teddy bear clutched against her body for comfort.
She could still hear the thud of her mother's body hitting the floor, her father's hands around her neck. It was the first time the world went orange, and it hadn't stopped since.
Dude, why do we do this to ourselves after a few kills?
Guilt?
"I don't know," Brianna whispered.
Hmm, are we getting philosophical? Are we looking for answers?
Brianna felt a gentle hand grip her shoulders and jumped to her feet with a surprised gasp.
"Are you alright, child?" a woman asked in a Jamaican accent.
Brianna stepped away, taking in the short, dark skinned woman that resembled her mother in the darkness of her eyes.
"What's it to you?" she snapped.
Whoa, Tiger!
Dial the Bitch-meter down to about a three!
Brianna huffed, and the woman gave an easy smile.
She flipped her long braids over her shoulder and shrugged. "Sad day and age when one human being can't show concern for another." The woman laughed, as if she were in on some joke to which Brianna could not be privy.
"Um, I guess?"
The woman turned toward the tombstone, and then glanced back over at Brianna with what looked like sympathy. "It's hard to lose loved ones, huh, child?"
Brianna stared at her, deciding to say nothing in the hope that she would go away.
"You know, the world is all about balance. You lose something here? maybe someone else picks it up over there." The woman looked at her with an intense stare. "I'm going to make a request, child. A request that will give your life meaning."
Houston! We have a crazy! a voice warned.
Crap! Did we bring the Taser we lifted off that security guard?
"One day, a woman? a being much more than woman? will come to you with a job offer. There will be no money involved, only a chance to have balance restored in your life."
Brianna gaped at the woman.
"Trust that you are the Core's silent Guardian, the natural protector of the Alpha, and you will find balance and meaning for what you've lost."
Brianna and the woman stared at one another without speaking for several moments. Then, the woman turned and walked off.
"Hey!" Brianna called out, without thinking.
The woman turned and smiled brightly at her.
"Are you on crack? Or did I take a righteous bong hit before coming here?"
The woman laughed, and it was purer than any beauty Brianna had ever heard. "No, child. I just know that you are more than a hired gun."
Brianna felt her mouth open and almost fell over into the tombstone. "What? Who are you?"
"I'm a Guardian, child. Same as you."
In a flash of light the woman vanished, leaving Brianna trembling. She sank to the cool earth, unable to make sense of what just happened.
Man that was one wicked hallucination!
She pushed her back against the tombstone and frowned. "I don't think so."
Oh, right. How else would you explain a crackpot coming up to you, claiming to be a Guardian?
"Maybe we don't know everything about the world."
Of course we do.
Kill.
Make money.
Get cool stuff.
Brianna huffed, trying to keep the warm tears welling up in her eyes from falling down her cheeks. "We could be wrong about that."
Doubt it.
She laughed bitterly. "Yeah, you're right. Just another hallucination," she agreed, but for the first time, hoped the voices were wrong.
About the Author
Natasha Larry was born and is still alive. She has an M.A. in American History, making her a professional cynic. Apart from writing, she is a self-proclaimed comic book nerd and urban fantasy junkie. For more information about her and the Darwin's Children series visit:
https://natashalarrybooks.com
Twitter: @natashalarry
About the Editor
When Rainy Kaye isn't plotting world domination, she enjoys coaching aspiring overlords on her blog, Rainy of the Dark (https://www.rainyofthedark.com). She is powered by coffee, encouraged by chocolate, and convinced the household felines are plotting her demise. She is married to a man who excels at humoring her.
About the Cover Artist
Kris is a graphic magician. From book covers, banners, or badges, Kris can conjure it into existence. When he's not sketching, painting, or creating magic with his arsenal of graphic design tools, he enjoys comic books and not taking long walks on the beach. He resides in Arizona with his wife and four children.
To see more of his art visit: https://www.facebook.com/digitalgunman
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