by J. N. Chaney
Understandable, I supposed. Her shipment had just come in short, and now there were two people here to kill her.
Not exactly the best day.
“Who the fuck are you?” she asked imperiously, wisely not moving as I had my gun trained on her forehead.
“I’d tell you,” Clem said, using the modulator to warble her voice and sounding a lot like Mulberry, “but I don’t actually have a name.”
Clem approached, walking directly through my line of sight. Fantigue noticed, probably thinking that it was her chance to act. She jerked towards Clem, trying to grab at her, maybe use her as a shield.
This seemed to happen all the time. Everyone thought we were pushovers because we were small and thin. That was a good thing. It meant they’d never see the next part coming.
Clementine sidestepped the woman’s grasp, reaching up and stabbing her knife into Fantigue’s arm. The scarred woman staggered, gripping at where the knife dug in deep, letting out a quick yelp.
Clem didn’t let up. She grabbed hold of Fantigue’s hair and stuck the knife through her lips, cutting her lips on each side to form a kind of permanent smile. From there, she spun the blade around in her mouth, cutting what I guessed was her tongue, and filling her with blood.
The sight of it made me sick.
“No more talking, bitch,” said Clementine, almost giggling.
“H-hey!” I said, raising my hand at her. “What are you—what are you doing? Just end it so we can go!”
Clementine sighed but flicked the knife around into an over-handed grip and stabbed Fantigue in the ribs, near the left kidney. She circled around the woman as she fell to her knees. The final cut went deep into the back. Fantigue’s eyes widened at the sudden disbelief of it—that a girl so small could take everything from her.
I felt sick to my stomach, the same way I always did when I watched Clem in action. The wicked smile across her face gave me chills. In these moments, she looked the happiest, as though this was her true home. I clenched my jaw as I looked away, my eyes scanning the area to make sure that none of the security was coming for us. They weren’t, and when I glanced back at the two women, Clem was cleaning her knife on one of the unstained parts of the dead woman’s shirt.
“Was that really necessary?” I asked when Clem walked towards me.
Clem turned her modulator off and shrugged. “I’m just thorough. Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”
I nodded, shaking my head as I moved back the way we came. The guards would have returned from their unscheduled break by now, so our way in couldn’t be our way out. Even so, I had kept my mind on a handful of different potential escape routes while memorizing the layout. Back through the wooded area was still our best shot
I motioned for Clem to follow me, and we made our way back to the outside. We came to a halt, hugging the shadows again as a team of four guards jogged past us. They didn’t look concerned, but as they passed, one of them was talking into his comm.
“He’s not here,” one of them said. “Still hasn’t reported back.”
“Keep looking,” one of the men in the middle said. “He may just be taking another smoke break.”
The one in the back grinned. “He’s so getting fired for this.”
They hadn’t found the body yet. They would have the urge to look for a body in a few minutes, and someone would have to report to Fantigue, and then they’d find that body too. We needed to get clear, fast.
We were just a few meters from the wall, and I pointed toward it. Clementine nodded, and as soon as the guards were clear, we ran for it.
I went first, stopping and turning away from the wall, holding my hands out. Clem sprinted for me, jumping into my hands. I heaved upward, letting her get another step on my shoulder.
She scaled the wall and lay prone on top with a leg dangling down for me. I took a few steps back for a running start, sprinted, and reached up to grab her extended leg. She grunted, helping me up, and I finally grasped the top with both hands. Clem slipped over the wall and dropped down on the other side. I landed next to her a second later.
A minute or so after we had cleared the wall, the sound of alarms blared from the property. Men yelled, and dogs barked, but we were already out of reach.
As we made our way through the woods, I didn’t say anything. Clem seemed elated, as she always did when we got the job done. For the first time, I didn’t feel like pretending that I felt the same.
I had seen what she’d done. I’d seen her do it before, but not like that. Never had I seen her enjoy a kill so much or for so long.
My feelings weren’t as secret as I’d meant them to be. When we got back to my rifle, I felt her hand on my shoulder.
“Hey, so what gives?” she asked, pulling her mask away to reveal an annoyed and confused expression.
I shrugged her hand off. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Come on. We’ve been around each other long enough for me to know when something’s ticking you off.” She idly stroked her belt of knives. “What is it? Something I did?”
“Are you kidding me?” I snapped, spinning around to face her and pulling my mask off. “Was it something you did?”
“So it was. Okay—”
“You stabbed her seven times, and once while she was already on the floor.”
“So what? She was the target.”
“I don’t care. If she were only a target to you, you would have known that she was dead after the first few stabs. Definitely after the sixth.”
“I was being—”
“Don’t tell me about being thorough.” The anger I had been holding in over the past six months bubbled to the surface. My neck throbbed, and my face went red. I could barely stand to look at her, so I just turned around. “You’re supposed to be acting like a professional, not playing with your targets. Not pin-cushioning them. You always take it too far.”
“Hey, what’s your problem?” Clementine snapped back. I felt a sudden push at my back, causing me to stumble forward. “You’ve never complained about how I do my job before.”
“I kept hoping you’d slow down, get yourself situated, but you never do. I just—”
She raised her hands. “Look, I do my job, and I do it well. What the fuck else do you want from me?”
“I want you to be professional!” I barked.
“Fuck being professional,” Clem scoffed, pushing at me again, now with both hands. As I looked at her, I noticed a strange but familiar look in her eyes—the same hunger and passion that burned before she made a kill. The same one that made me sick to see. Something dangerous and ugly, waiting to break out of her.
A bloodlust.
I saw her thumb the dagger on her belt. “Just shut up and leave it alone,” she muttered.
“Clem, you need—” I started to say, but I stopped short when she slammed the knife into a fallen log right next to her.
“Don’t make me tell you again,” she said, her voice devoid of all emotion.
My instincts had my hand gripping my pistol. “Okay,” I said, my voice quiet and flat. “Relax.”
She stared at me for what felt like too long, but after several seconds, she turned and grabbed the knife, drawing it from the log and placing it back inside her belt. She began walking away, headed towards the shuttle we’d left parked in the clearing near the woods.
I let her put some space between us, and once we were inside the ship, neither of us said a word.
14
I stared at the screen, watching the minutes tick by on the security footage. I’d been playing it at three times the actual speed, but even at that rate, five hours had passed, and I’d barely made a dent in my workload.
Every mission required long hours of preparation, review, and research. At no point had I ever realized just how much of this the job required or just how boring it could be.
I never expected the life of an assassin to be so tedious.
I was on my third coffee and still struggling t
o stay awake.
It wasn’t my fault that things had changed. I never wanted to push Clementine away. I didn’t regret it, but it really hadn’t been my intention. She had changed over the years, but I always hoped I could get her to change for the better.
She had her demons, but who didn’t? None of that was any excuse for what she’d done on our missions together.
Maybe it was therapeutic for her. Maybe she was just a sadist. I honestly couldn’t say, because the girl I once knew had become someone else.
I had hoped that standing up to her might wake her up to how she was behaving. Maybe it was vain of me, but I thought I could fix her. I was wrong.
After that mission on Epsy, she had demanded she be given solo work from then on. No more cooperative jobs, and when Mulberry had asked me what I thought about it, I agreed, requesting to work from home.
Clem had been sent off on assignment after assignment, barely spending any time at the complex anymore. Sometimes, she didn’t even come back between jobs. Her life had become a cycle of death, and I simply couldn’t be a part of it anymore. Not with how she’d chosen to do it. Not with those hungry eyes, so desperate to inflict pain. It was one thing to kill, one thing to take the lives of murderers, rapists, and terrorists, but it was something else to take joy in it.
I paused the footage, taking a note on my pad of a couple of people entering the building, and then resumed the footage.
I had acquired an identity of my own without Clementine—one focused on intelligence gathering and analysis. It had taken months of additional training, and the pay had dropped significantly, but I was fine with all of that. The only reason I’d chosen this life in the first place was that I didn’t want to leave her, but with her always away, I saw no reason to continue taking contracts.
Now my friend—my sister—had made it abundantly clear she did not want me around anymore, and it hurt to know that. And it hurt that I was the cause of that, by snapping at her on Epsy.
Was it my fault?
I paused the video, rubbing my eyes as I leaned back in my seat. I had done what I thought was right at the time, but I hadn’t done it for her. It hadn’t been out of concern for her, but rather for my own sensibilities. But if I was going to practice my own restraint, maybe being an assassin wasn’t the life for me.
Maybe I had been right in pulling away from the killing part of the life and settling for desk work instead. The pay wasn’t as good, and I was sitting on my ass most of the time instead of traveling the stars like I’d always wanted.
Had I changed that much? Had my dreams changed, or had a fear of what I’d have to do to realize them made me think I didn’t want that anymore?
I looked down at my desk. Mixed in with all the clutter and electronics, my old school pad stuck out. I’d read through the library in it twice over by now, but I still kept it around for reference.
Like many times before, I’d recently picked up Tales of the Earth: Mankind’s Lost Homeworld. Reading it always put a smile on my face and made me remember my childhood, and I’d often get lost, even now, imagining a planet rich with life, monsters, and magical creatures.
There were all sorts of stories about Earth, besides those in this book, and I’d read most of them. A lot of scholars believed that Earth, or a place upon which this mythical planet was based, could have been the place where humans originally evolved. The only problem was that no one had ever found much proof, one way or the other. There were only vague mentions in ancient writings. Never anything concrete. Still, the thought of such a place exhilarated me, and I found my dreams were often better after a quick read from the book. One day, I wanted to leave this place and search for a planet like the one they talked about in these stories—a place rich with green hills and fields, crystal blue waters, and beautiful skies. There didn’t need to be any dragons or flying dogs; just a lovely countryside with kind and welcoming people.
I looked up at the video. I had twelve more hours of footage to check over, but I didn’t have to turn in a full report on it for a couple of days.
My ass and legs hurt from not moving out of my seat for most of the afternoon, so I decided to take a break and stretch my muscles. Maybe get a little exercise in while I was at it. I stood up, grabbing my old pad and taking it with me as I made my way to the gym. I switched to exercise clothes, leaving the pad in my locker.
I started with a nice long run. A lot of the others liked to listen to music or maybe watch something while on a treadmill. For myself, I liked the path around the complex, through the neighboring streets and into the garage entrance.
If taken in its entirety, the route might take someone about fifteen minutes to jog the whole way around, but it gave me a sense of tranquility like I was someplace far away.
I took the path around three times, breathing heavily by the end but feeling good. I’d have to start pushing myself harder to make up for the lack of physical training sessions and fieldwork. All this desk time was making me soft.
I made my way back inside. There were a handful of people in the sparring room, but I had no reason to go there, so I avoided it. I headed for the indoor rock-climbing room instead. I wiped the sweat off my hands with a towel and patted them with the chalk. It was weird. When I was alone and didn’t have anybody watching or judging me, I found myself working better. I’d even broken Pearl’s time on the rock wall, and I’d slowly nudged my way closer to Clementine, who still held the record.
After I finished my climb, I used my remaining time to practice my stances. I might not be in the field, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep my limbs trained and ready.
Finally, I decided to head to the shooting range. Target practice didn’t offer much in the way of exercise, but I enjoyed it for the stress relief.
Five rounds went by in a flash. Each one found the target, tagging the head with exact precision, dead center.
Part of me wondered if I should get back into the field again. After five months at the desk, I was beginning to grow sick of these walls, and I had certainly enjoyed traveling between planets. Epsy, Calipso, Mantei, and Shoro, to name a few. The best part of fieldwork was traveling.
I could ask Mulberry for a job. Maybe something off-world, closer to the core system.
Maybe getting out would be good for me.
I leaned into the scope and fired.
Another five rounds, all within the ten-centimeter circle, making a slightly off-center five-pointed star.
I felt good about my aim. It had actually gotten better since I quit going on missions. More practice time, I supposed. But what good were these skills when I couldn’t even use them? Maybe I really did need to ask for a job. Maybe it was time.
I winced. The thought of doing missions again just didn’t feel as appealing as I wanted it to. Perhaps it was time to find another career. Put the organization behind me and move on to something else. Clementine and I would eventually figure things out, after all. She’d meet me halfway, and then we’d leave together to do something that didn’t involve killing people I’d never met before, or at the very least, doing it for a reason besides money.
Was that what had bothered me about the contracts? That it wasn’t for any particular purpose? Mulberry had made it a point to only take on criminal cases, but because those jobs always came from the target’s rivals or other crime lords, it had created a power vacuum, soon to be filled by the person who hired us. Only very rarely had the job resulted in a drop in crime. Was that what I was missing in my life? Some kind of purpose? A mission to dedicate myself to, like those people in the stories I always read?
Mable had made it out of this life, so why couldn’t I?
Well, I still wasn’t sure if Mable had been a member of the organization or if her relationship with Mulberry had been something else entirely. The old man refused to talk about any of that.
Even so, there had to be jobs that required the skill-set I’d acquired here. Maybe Mulberry could fix me up with something. I didn’t doubt he n
eeded contacts outside of his own people to get information. Maybe I could leave this place and be his eyes somewhere else. At the very least, it might give me the chance to branch out and see the galaxy.
I made my way to the showers and took my time there.
I sighed, letting the warm, steaming water rush through my hair and run over my body, relaxing me. The soothing sound and the calming heat helped my mind go blank, and for a moment at least, I felt at peace. My thoughts drifted to the same place they had so many times before when I needed an escape—sitting with my mother, making cookies. Father had just come home to tell me about his day.
I finished the shower quickly, drying myself off, stopping only to pick up my pad from the locker before heading to the room that Clementine and I had once shared. I plopped down on my bed, taking the pad and activating the V.I.
“Good evening, Miss Abigail,” the text read as the still-unsettling smiling face appeared. “How may I help you today?”
“Got any mental gymnastics for me to run through, Angus?” I asked aloud.
“Of course. Here is a selection of mental exercises. Please choose one whichever one you prefer.” The text disappeared, and a series of challenges and puzzles appeared in its place.
I ran my eyes over them. I’d completed most of these already, but there were a few I’d continued to put off, saving them for later.
“Abby?” came a voice from the doorway.
I looked up from the pad to see a familiar face staring back at me.
“Pearl!” I exclaimed with a smile, pushing myself up into a sitting position on the bed. “I thought you weren’t coming home for a few more days.”
“Back early,” she said cheerily. “Mission successful. Mulberry wanted to see you for dinner tonight. He said he left you a message on your comm but asked me to make sure that you got it. I’d join you, but I really need to sleep. Travel-lag is hitting me pretty hard right now.”
“Oh,” I said, giving a quick nod. “Okay, thanks, Pearl. I’ll be right over.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Let’s catch up,” she told me, then turned and went towards her room on the far end of the hall.