Chapter 1

Eight Years Later…

I need to get out of here. The thought swarmed through my mind as my eyes drifted down at the body of my victim, his skin had grown cold as time passed. While killing people, I had gotten good at making sure to keep my DNA off of their body, keeping my name anonymous and the detectives stumped. 

 It’s not like I’m even on the government's list anyway, the organization that I work for has made sure of that. They told us that they have a group of hackers that had deleted our files from the government, everything from mentions of our name to our social security number. 

They told us that we were all orphans, that they took us in to give us a purpose to fight for, to help the community. When a boy had tried to question this, the adult that was talking to us had shut him down with an aggressive look. 

 I gave the body at my feet a good kick, just because. The dead man’s face, once clean and handsome, is now coated in a sticky layer of dirt and blood. 

They said he was a government official. They said he was trying to spill secrets to the Japanese government, that he had to be stopped before he put our country in danger. 

When I killed him, I made sure to make sure it didn’t look like a homicide. I had slammed him into the wall over and over, knocking him out. Over and over and over until he slowly stopped breathing.

The police would likely think he was hit by a car, or maybe he fell from a roof. Sirens echoed in the distance, and they seemed to grow closer every second. 

I looked around wildly, trying to spot a witness. Someone had tipped them off, and I needed to find out who. Sure enough, I spotted a head poking out from a wall around twenty feet to my left. 

I started to run towards the sidewalk, maybe I could disappear into the crowd before they got here and had me cornered. 

Before I had gone more than a few paces I spotted two cops running straight at me, their eyes darted from the body a few feet behind me, to my face. Shit. 

I spotted an emergency exit to my right, attached to the apartment building and ran for it. Once I got underneath it, I jumped into the air and my hands grabbed onto the bottom of the fire escape ladder. I swung my legs and flipped, landing on the first platform. I started to hear shouting, getting louder by the second from the cops behind, but that only pushed my mind to go faster. I put my feet on the metal platform and ran up the stairs, aiming to get to the roof before those idiots could catch me. The cops were right under me now, their voices were loud and authoritative but I didn’t care.

“Stay where you are and put your hands up! You’re under arrest!” The shout came from behind, seeming to get closer by the moment. 

 With every step I took, I felt the fire escape squeal in protest. You could tell it was old as dirt, the railings showed signs of rust, the result of constant rain. I had a pretty good feeling it wasn’t up to the current fire code. 

I needed to plan my steps carefully if I was going to reach the top without this thing giving up the fight against the force of gravity. My steps continued and I ran as fast as I could, my legs burning. I was fit, I had to be for my line of work, but stairs, stairs are an entirely different story. 

I was already breathing hard but I had more stairs to climb, and the cops, during the time I had been climbing, had gotten onto the platform and were hot on my tail.

Finally, when I thought I was going to collapse from the pain, I was at the top of the last platform and all that was between me and the roof was a ladder. The ladder was much bigger than the others, at least 15 feet in the air. It towered over me and I let out a sigh.

Get it together, I mumbled to myself, as if that would calm my nerves. Before I could second guess myself even more, I took a step forward and stopped right in front of the ladder. My hands grasped onto the metal sides and I hauled myself up, one rung at a time. 

I found myself lost in the rhythm of it, the constant motion in my body allowing my mind to empty, and then drift. The city sounds were music to my ears, the honking of cars, the chatter of people even at this late time of night, the sound of music coming out of stores all around me. 

After a lot of sweat and pain I managed to pull myself up the last rung and onto the concrete roof. I stood there for a moment, staring around at all the buildings that surrounded me. The inky darkness of the night sky with a splattering of stars seemed to consume the city, and it stunned me in its simple beauty.

 After a second too long in awe, I heard the shouts and heavy footsteps of the cops closing in on me. I had to think fast, or I’d be in a cell before I could call for backup. Not that I would ever need backup. I let out a sharp exhale. I needed to figure something out and fast. I pushed my heavy coat to the side and felt around at my belt of tools. I had a gun. Could I threaten them off me? 

My hand brushed my knife and I pulled it out, as I formulated a plan in my head. I ran over to the top of the ladder and saw one of the cops just feet away from me. 

My hands were trembling as I held the knife to the metal side of the ladder and started to vigorously hack at the metal with my knife, the serrated edge tearing up the hollow metal. I was fighting against time as the cop grew closer and closer. My hands were trembling as I sawed through one side of the ladder. I shifted to begin sawing at the other side of the ladder. My hand started to cramp from doing the same motion over and over again, but I had to fight through the constant throbbing. 

The ladder started to shake violently as I continued to push myself to finish it. I was so close to tearing through the metal when, suddenly, the knife was wrenched from my grip and I was shoved backwards. I quickly recovered, planting my feet on the ground. The cop pulled himself onto the metal platform.

“Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be, girl,” he spat, saying the last word like it was an insult. He pulled his gun out of his holster, but I was quicker to draw.

 In my panic, I shot him in the arm when I was aiming for his face. He let out a wail of pain, and the impact made him stumble backwards and off the metal platform, while dropping my knife and desperately shooting bullets out of his gun. 

None would hit. But in the blink of an eye I was at the edge, catching my blade mid air and using it to chop the last bit of metal holding the ladder to the platform apart. The second cop, only about half of the way up, looked up as he realized what I’d done, starting hopelessly climbing down the ladder. But, in a perfect alignment of the stars that day, as the cop I had shot off the platform and the ladder fell, and they collided. 

The blunt metal, of course not made for slicing, tore a bloody path through the skin, fat, and muscle of his back to then crack his ribs and spine, with a haunting scream to accompany the sound of ripping flesh and bone. Then, a tidal wave of blood, and from the look of it, some sinew, skin, and God knows what else came bursting out of his already mangled corpse. The blood splattered all over the ladder, on me. 

It also splattered onto his partner, who at that point had been caught between both the ladder and the metal railing, and, more importantly, was still alive, though the ladder had probably already done fatal damage to his body. He slowly raised his eyes, best as he could, to see the bleeding corpse of his partner lodged onto the metal above him. He wailed like a dying animal, a pathetic plea to God, for anyone to save him. 

His cries would be met with deaf ears. At that point I decided to put the man out of his misery, shooting a bullet into his skull, the impact breaking his neck with an unceremonious crack. I took a step back and looked out into the horizon. I spotted a helicopter coming towards me and I let out a sigh of relief. I gave myself a second to breathe and look around as I waited for the approaching helicopter. My hands slowly stopped shaking as I stared around at New York City. It was my first time here, I wish I could have stayed longer, but I’ve got another target to take care of. Thankfully, I have one day off after this one, a luxury in my line of work. 

Before I knew it, the helicopter stopped and was hovering right over the building’s rooftop and had dropped a rope ladder I could climb up into the helicopter. As my hands landed on the sides of the ladder I shuddered slightly, the memory of the cop dead still fresh in my mind, but I shook it off and started to climb. 

This ladder was only around ten feet off the ground, but the fact that it swings back and forth as I climbed it made it more of a challenge. After a few minutes of climbing, I pulled myself into the helicopter. I grabbed the ladder and pulled it back into the helicopter and slammed the door shut. This helicopter used to be a military helicopter, one of those big ones that fit around 36 people. 

It's an old CH-47 Chinook, painted all black. It has two propellers, and used to be used to transport military vehicles but now had hard wooden benches that gave off many splitters and a weaponry in the back, as well as a small bathroom that got installed. 

This was one of the more fancy helicopters, we have many that are flying around at all times, transporting all assassins to their next job, and some are barely big enough to hold four to six of us. The helicopter quickly went back into motion and we were flying away. I sat down on a spot near the exit, a place I always chose if I was given the opportunity. An agent came up to me and nodded curtly, handing me a laptop. I took it and he walked away. 

All transportation in this organization had an assigned person to supply all the assassins with everything they needed to get their job done. That role was most often kept to use as a punishment because of the amount of labor it took. It was also a really lonely job, but as an assassin that really just kills people all day, not engaging in talking to them at all, I can’t really judge. I opened the laptop and took the piece of paper that was resting on top of the keyboard and examined it. It read,

”Your next target is Rhysand Rodriguez. He will be at the bar between 4th and West Street in Albuquerque, New Mexico.” I set the piece of paper in my pocket, opened the laptop and started searching for anything about him. The paper had some basic information on the back, but nothing that would be of much use. I had been looking for hours when I felt the helicopter slow down and I knew we were picking up another assassin. I looked around the helicopter and spotted two others that I didn’t recognize.

They must be new, I thought to myself. 

Story by- that unkown writer

Published by- powerful like a girl