The Price of Life

by T. M. Nienaber

  Miriel walked past a deserted gas station, the last time they’d bothered to update the price per gallon it was $9.55 for regular. No one had anywhere to drive to anymore. Everyone stayed in their own areas, walking where they needed to go and making sure they didn’t need to go any further. The few cars Miriel had seen from the lobby were an irregularity and usually people traveling from home to see if things were any better anywhere else. They still had taxis and public transport, but the price for that was slowly becoming impossible to pay. Society was de-evolving, the massive cities that spanned miles and miles were crumbling, no longer practical. It was like the population had agreed to give up and settle in for the end of the world. Houses were safe and secure. Bomb shelters were built by the very paranoid and the very wealthy, stocked with enough supplies to make ever leaving again just another option. Miriel had no reason to complain. The more people staying inside with their heads down the fewer people she had to worry about getting in her way. High tensions and frayed nerves meant even more people were willing to seek out her unique services. Mass panic was good for business.

  It was a change from when she’d first started out, in some ways it seemed like her job had gotten easier since the ‘war’ had gotten worse. When society falls apart it’s usually the people who didn’t play by the rules to begin with who survive and thrive in its upheaval. Miriel was well equipped for the new kind of life the world was entering. She knew how to take care of herself, how to get whatever she needed without help, and how to blend in when it was called for.

  Miriel’s father had been a Marine when the threat of war was something new. He was never home and always had to keep what he was working on a secret. Miriel loved the mystery of it all and she liked the idea of not having to be stuck in one place. Her father seemed to enjoy whatever it was he did, and before Miriel turned thirteen he was teaching her how to kill. It was something they could enjoy together. She was taught all the ways to kill quickly and painlessly as well as every weapon that could help get the job done. Her father wanted her to be prepared for what he knew was coming, to fight for her life and come out the winner no matter who the opponent was. He expected his daughter to turn it into a profession.

  Even so, it was Miriel’s mother who caused her to choose her current career path. The woman worked as a teacher for one of the now illegal government schools. The ones notorious for trying to transform children into the perfect soldier. Unlike her father, Miriel’s mother was home every night and each day brought a new horror Miriel was forced to listen to. There were experimental drugs being injected into toddlers at naptime, jungle gyms were being replaced with obstacle courses for more efficient training, and corporal punishment was brought back with force. There never seemed to be any hope, all you could do that was worthwhile or valued was fighting. No life was ever worth more than your own.

  The outside seemed to stay the same, people bought the same clothes and lived in the same houses. All those big, glaring signs of change were safely in the distance, seen only by the people making them. Life seemed to go on as free as it always had been. There was no big brother watching through your TV set and people didn’t mysteriously disappear without reason. Attitudes were slowly changing, all the subtle signs were becoming more obvious. Now, Lucian and Kristopher were planning to take control and they would just speed up a process already in motion. Maybe that was necessary too, just like killing because there was nothing worth keeping alive.

  As a young assassin Miriel was a complete failure. She struggled with the simplest kills and lacked the necessary rhythm of killing and covering your tracks without making things look too obviously set up. There was also the emotional turmoil, Miriel had yet to develop the impenetrable skin she now wore. Every client was forced to tell her their story before she would agree to work with them. The young assassin soon discovered trying to justify other people’s reasons for murder was even more difficult than trying to justify her own. It was exhausting. Before Miriel started any job she had to be sure her client had a legitimate reason for what they wanted done so she could have a clear conscience. It made finding work difficult and there was little enough work to be found, regardless of the field.

  Eventually Miriel found herself looking for another way to practice her talent and that lead her to Jon. Jon was the leader of what could be described as an assassins’ union. It was exactly what Miriel needed. Jon was a heartless bastard but he was fair enough. Instead of killing off his competitors he invited them to join him. It only took a few years before Jon was controlling the largest, and best, team of organized assassins in the underground. He worked as a networking agent most of the time, making sure clients were set up with the right assassin and taking only a small fee out of the assassin’s own cut. It was as fair as it could be. Jon was no stranger to the job himself and made sure his assassins were paid based on the level of work they could accomplish without getting sloppy and he examined each member carefully before he allowed them on his books.

  Miriel never fooled herself into thinking she was good enough to be recruited by Jon and his men. She was nowhere near equal to their caliber when she first started. Jon was the best in the business, at least at the time, and Miriel could do nothing more than look up to his work in admiration. But she was smart. She knew that to make a career out of the one thing she had any potential in she needed Jon’s connections. It took years to track him down but she managed it. Jon wasn’t impressed by her track record as a hit woman but he admired her for finding him. She was let into the elite union as an unpaid grunt. She did leg work, tracked certain targets’ schedules, and helped Jon keep his client meetings organized. Overall Miriel did little more than learn a lot of names and do a lot of paperwork that wasn’t supposed to exist.

  It was all the office work that finally caused Miriel’s change of heart. They say the best way to ruin something you love is to do it for a living and in Miriel’s case that became true. She spent all day documenting deaths, how they were carried out, and the clients who paid to make them happen. People weren’t wasting their money on much but with the amount of filing Miriel had to do it seemed the recession had yet to reach the killer-for-hire business. Clients wanted people dead for the most bizarre reasons. Everything from running over a pet dog to not having the right ‘look’ to corporate espionage. Miriel started to wonder if the people doing the killing were really worse than the people doing the paying. Finally, Miriel stopped caring about everything. It was easier that way. Reason of the client became nothing more than a unique filing system and the more apathy she built the more Miriel wanted to get back out in the game.

  Jon was wary to send Miriel out on a job, the work she had behind her name was nothing to her credit. She begged him for training but nothing worked. No one took her seriously after her months as the file girl. The assassin decided to prove them wrong on her own when she had exhausted all other options. That was how she met Lucian. The two of them crossed paths on the same job, occupational hazard for Miriel, absolutely unacceptable for Lucian. Miriel wasn’t supposed to be there, the job had been picked for an assassin Jon needed to get rid of. Jon knew Lucian would be there and he was hoping to send the now worthless assassin to his death while gaining some favor with the legendary Lucian and his cult. Instead, Miriel stole the file for herself and went out to make a new name.

  Lucian wasn’t sure what to think of the novice assassin when he first saw her, but he wasn’t about to kill her. Playing into the hands of Jon and his union was not something Lucian found very appealing. It was Miriel who offered the compromise, Lucian could have the satisfaction of actually killing the mark as long as he let Miriel set the whole thing up. The idea appealed to him, not being responsible for covering his own tracks would make life easier. If the girl screwed up he could always take it up with Jon. He’d been looking for a reason to get rid of the assassin’s union anyway. They’d been taking a lot of his good bodies recently and it was becoming an annoyance. Everything went beautifully, enough so th
at Lucian went to Jon the next day and asked that Miriel be contracted exclusively to him.

  That was the beginning of Miriel and Lucian, the deal that led to their eventual partnership. Miriel’s name became infamous and she left Jon soon after, along with most of his carefully built client list. The clients that didn’t end up following Miriel ended up dead. Jon came after her but even he didn’t stand a chance against the pair of them. The union disbanded quickly after his death and no one bothered to form another. Most of the assassins went into hiding, worried Miriel would track them down now that she was done with Jon.

  Miriel smiled to herself. Those were the good days, her golden years. Now everything was getting too complicated.

  5. Still Three Years Before the War (Lucian)

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t have her followed?”

  “Not yet, and certainly not by you.” Lucian looked over at Kristopher, annoyed with him already. Apparently there was something about Miriel that made other people more tolerable. “Shouldn’t you be more concerned with finding someone to kill?” Lucian spoke through clenched teeth, attempting to reel his new partner back to the present and away from wherever Miriel had gone.

  “I thought I had one,” Kristopher shot back and his voice was surprisingly jolly.

  “It doesn’t matter what you thought.” Lucian had to bite his tongue to keep his anger in check. This partnership was starting to seem like a mistake. “You have to learn how to hunt them out anyway.”

  “What do you mean them.” Kristopher still kept his jolly tone and Lucian was sure the man would have slapped his back if he’d been within reach. “Once this is over with I’ll never have to hunt anyone down again. I’ll never have to worry about anything again.”

  “Do you honestly not realize how this works.” It wasn’t a question, it was one of those lines Lucian had had to say a hundred or more times before and he always let it come out like he was talking to a child.

  “What does that mean?” Kristopher lost his jolly tone immediately. He obviously didn’t understand how things worked.

  “Eric, can you come over here?” Lucian gestured to a young acolyte. The boy had slipped in through the back door after Miriel had run and was sitting in a corner concentrating on a book that looked suspiciously like the pages were made out of skin. The young man, Eric, couldn’t have been in his 20s long and he was over-eager to jump when Lucian called. He tripped awkwardly over his own feet and dropped his skin bound book as he half walked-half fell to where Lucian stood.

  “Yes, sir?” The boy looked up eagerly.

  “Tell me, how long have you been one of us?”

  “A year, sir, Lucian, sir.” He seemed proud of himself, even smiled a little.

  “How many rituals have you actively participated in?”

  “None, sir.” His face fell. “Your rules state that a member must practice for five years, loyally, before he can raise the dead.” Lucian nodded and Eric took it as encouragement. “But I’ve been studying!” He held up the book. “So if you need my help I know how to perform every rite. In theory at least.” The boy had probably failed out of high school or run away from the government schools before they were shut down. He looked like he’d never picked up and read a book in his life. All he was really capable of doing was taking care of himself. Yet here he was, groveling in front of a man he didn’t know because Lucian offered him a perverted hope for the future. He taught himself how to read, studied, and made himself work hard. Not that this was really being a good, upstanding, contributing member of society, but it was something. He studied in the gym whenever it was empty and followed every arbitrary rule Lucian chose to give.

  “I need your help to teach our new friend here, Eric.” Lucian nodded in Kristopher’s direction. Eric had to hide his excitement at Lucian knowing his name and using it multiple times in a conversation.

  “Of course, sir!”

  “Stay standing here for me, Eric.”

  Eric nodded and continued to look proud.

  “Good.” Lucian smiled at Eric before running his knife through the boy’s stomach. Eric didn’t have time to look shocked as Lucian pulled the knife out and the boy slumped to the ground in a puddle of his blood. Lucian waited a few minutes to make sure the boy was dead before he turned back to Kristopher, which gave Kristopher time to hide the shock on his face.

  “I try not to kill my own.” Lucian used his foot to roll the body over so its eyes were facing the floor. “But I don’t trust you and my day was almost over.” He paused but Kristopher wasn’t able to feign understanding or say anything clever so Lucian continued uninterrupted. “You see, cheating death isn’t just a one-time deal. There’s no magic spell that makes you invincible that you get for free. It’s best to think of it as a loop. I can bring anyone back from the dead once but it requires a ritual and a lot of time and energy. Those of us who know how to use the more express method for ourselves, do. You can still be killed, but you won’t stay dead. It takes about ten minutes of our time for the resurrection to be completed but when you’re dead, at least for the first few times, it feels like much, much longer. Just remember it won’t last or you’ll go crazy. And I’m not in the mood to deal with a mess. It’s simple enough.”

  Kristopher nodded as if he really understood.

  “But the rite has to be renewed daily, if you forget and you’re killed then you’re dead.”

  “And how is it renewed? You kill every day as head of the cult, not everyone in a loop would need to do that,” Kristopher’s voice had a slight shake to it and Lucian was amused the politician seemed to be regretting the deal already. It didn’t seem to be the killing that upset him, it was having to do it himself.

  “I don’t kill to build up my reputation if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s how I stay alive. You want that same gift, you have to give one once a day. Just like the rest of us.”

  “Every day?” Kristopher was starting to look upset and Lucian could see his mind working as fast as it could. Having to kill someone every day meant 365 murders a year to cover up and a huge story that could potentially leak to the media and ruin his chances at staying in power. It would be almost impossible to keep a secret like that under wraps for long, especially if someone got suspicious. He had come to Lucian prepared for one murder, one body, one bloody mess, and one final washing of his hands. Killing every day would make him just as vulnerable as humanity would. It was fine for Lucian, the sociopathic cult leader is expected to have a few bodies lying around, but it wouldn’t do wonders for the appearance of a president.

  “You didn’t think this would be easy?” Lucian sneered, glad to be in charge for what felt like the first time that day. “And no paying someone to do your work for you. It doesn’t work like that in our world. It’s a personal rite, they have to be personal kills.”

  “Why not? I’m sure there are some words you can mutter and offer a virgin sacrifice or something for me, get some marks on the board. Once I’ve agreed to whatever terms you have I don’t really see what difference it makes.” Kristopher started to shoo Lucian with his hand.

  “This isn’t a parlor trick or a hoax,” Lucian responded to the hand by stepping in uncomfortably close to Kristopher, eyes level and blazing with both anger and an inhuman lust to kill. “This is a science we’ve spent years learning how to perfect. It requires a devotion to the art and the task. I’m only asking you to respect one. You aren’t worthy of it but I’m willing to make the exception. One kill, once a day, by your own hands. Those are my terms, the ritual’s terms. You can’t stock up kills either so don’t think about setting off a bomb and being set for life. This requires something much more personal, intimate, even.” The fire in Lucian’s eyes blazed even brighter. “Do you agree to these necessities? Or are you just going to leave? Keeping in mind that right now I can’t die. But you can.”

  “Fine. Deal. Do what needs to be done but only under one condition.”

  “You think you’re in a place to make con
ditions?”

  “It’s an easy one, I promise. There’s been no proof that this works. I want to watch you die and come back to life. You’ve had your kill for the day. Shouldn’t be too much to ask.”

  “You came to find me. Why go through all that trouble for something you weren’t sure was real.”

  “You said it only took ten minutes. I’m offering you a world where your life isn’t based out of a school gym. It’s not too much time to prove your point.”

  Lucian knew the politician was right. Kristopher wasn’t entering the cult, he was trying to make a business deal. As a potential business partner he deserved a demonstration. Lucian nodded. “Fine.”

  Kristopher pulled out a small, pathetic looking gun from under his shirt. It wasn’t much of a threat but Lucian felt embarrassed it hadn’t occurred to him to check Kristopher for weapons.

  “And what’s that for, Kristopher? I thought you were against conceal and carry.” Lucian eyed the gun like it was an unruly child, more of an annoyance than a problem.

  “Seeing what happens when you die.”

  “Put it away.” Lucian shooed the gun away the same way Kristopher had tried to shoo him and wondered if Kristopher put the two movements together. “I’ll let you watch me die but I won’t let you kill me. Just think of the embarrassment if word got out that I’d been killed by you? I’d never live it down. No matter how long I lived.”

  Kristopher turned slightly red. “I could kill you anyway, you couldn’t stop me!”

  “Do you forget why you’re here? You might get it right the first time but I get to come back. You don’t, at least not yet. If you want me to help you, you have to trust me. I can promise you I’m not worth trusting if I don’t trust you. Gun down? Good boy.”