IV

I woke up just before dawn, my mind overcrowded with the voices.

When will they stop? Why won't they leave?

The world was still dark; the stars flickered in a faraway world where everything seemed distant: unimportant.

I forced my sore body off the hard mattress. I supposed I could've gotten a more comfortable one, but it felt so wrong and it slowed down my reflexes. If one were to make the imprudent, suicidal choice to come barging in my rooms unannounced to murder me, I wouldn't be able to spring out of the bed as fast. Therefore, although I hated the rough mattress that killed my back, it stayed. I dragged my sorry self to the washroom and washed up. As I turned I noticed the tray of food that I'd left on my nightstand, untouched, disappeared and the book with the mysterious writing was no more. Sunshine's work, no doubt.

Disgusted and pissed, I entered my bath chambers to shower. The ice-cold water was brutal on my skin, but it provided a numbness and the agony deadened to a dull, throbbing ache. The lash on my face was barely scabbed over and the slightest provocation would cause it to gush all over again. The voices returned, but the rush of the water drowned out their words. They stood as silhouettes on the other side of the curtain but didn't cast any shadows, it was how I identified them from the "real-life" people. As such, I knew I could just walk through them, didn't shoot at them in a mission, or not to run them down for info.

Perverts... I thought to myself reciting the same line I recited for seven years.

I am the predator: not the prey: not the pawn.

A trail of dirt and blood ran down the side of my arms and over the ink located on either of them. Another stream ran down my neck and over the commander's tattoo that made most people wet themselves in fear.

With a sigh of disgust, I got out of the shower drying myself as I walked to my closet across the room. I donned on the first pair of clothes I touched, simple black slacks and pants, stuffed some into a backpack and climbed down to wake my darling. If I could get him to leave at dawn with me, then we might arrive at dusk, which would be ideal, since the next day would be a new week of school. I made my way across the library and to the main building.

Darling's room was on the second floor with the gaming quarters, the gym and Hawk's bedroom. I passed Hawk's room when whistling sounded. I spun around. I had forgotten – neglected – to wrap the injury on my face with a bandage, in hopes that it would heal much faster without it, though my shades bothered the healing wound.

Hawk towered over me, a giant of 6 foot 8: ripped in every sense of the word. His cropped dark hair stood on ends, while his dark chocolate like eyes studied me with wry amusement. He scoffed derisively: snickering at my state.

"Dar was right." He said his voice grumbly, he must've stayed up all night snacking and playing VR. "You look like hell." He continued, flashing me a toothy grin, that might send lower life forms scurrying away.

"Been there, have you?" I snorted. He chuckled the sound deep and reverberating. Hawk was the kind of person that will act all scary and macho just to piss you off. He was the predator that attacked his prey for entertainment. If the chase became too boring for him, he would just kill you. It was that trait in him that made him one of the deadliest assassins ever. If his prey resisted him it was more amusing. Having said that, he sought that entertainment in several diverse ways outside assignments, being chicks or just pissing us off. With me, he wants a reaction of any sorts, I presume. He said that I was too "cold" and so his goal where I am concerned is to get a reaction out of me in any way, sort, or form. He took it so far that he was the only one in my crew who volunteered to be there, apart from Dragon.

It wasn't like that in the beginning. Hawk, like I, was also League born and so I met him long before I ever met Dragon. It was a rivalry between us back then, a rivalry that usually ended up with both of us bloody and bruised: the score unsettled. It was hard to avoid each other since both of our commanders had us attend what was the equivalent of school inside the League. It was "Assassin's institute" and was extremely difficult to attend so that unless you were a recruit from the higher order you were unwelcomed. The case was that a League born would be unable to read and write and as such useless and dumb. Therefore, they created The Assassin's Institute to fix that problem. Over the years its purpose shifted slightly as the capital city needed people to run it other than assassins and so it became a very violent version of the school that most kids attend to. It was not the choice of the assassin to go, in most cases, but that of his or her commander and theirs alone.

I hated it there, but unlike most assassins, I did not drop. I finished it all the way, graduating when I was thirteen years old with honours in computers, programming, and other technologies.

"I am in hell," Hawk's voice was low and soft. "every time I lay my eyes on you, commander." The last part he said with a roll of his tongue that he learned from Darling.

"Keep trying," I told him as I entered Darling's room.

On my way in, I stepped in something. It was slimy and disgusting and ruined my clothes. I had no intention of looking down to see what it was. Darling's room was, well, him. It was messy, flamboyant, boldly coloured, and looked as if a tornado came crashing through. His closet was open, clothes spewing everywhere, the floor, his bed, the desk, even on the walls somehow. The work desk, overcome with all sorts of packages of junk foods, most of which were chocolate, was where he did his work. His laptop sat open and heavy metal music was blasting from somewhere in the middle of the chaos.

Darling was sleeping hugging an empty bottle of soda, which spilt onto his mattress. Around him, sat more packages of chocolate and marshmallows, alongside empty cans of molten chocolate. More empty bottles and cans littered the floor next to his bed. I carefully made my way through the clutter that was his room.

"Darling." I tried to shake him awake. "Come on, we have to go." He didn't stir.

"Darling," I said more sternly. "Wake up! We've already been through this, you junk-bag!" He made a weird sound as if to tell me off. I ignored it and tried to drag him out of bed.

"Get up!" I hissed at him. He glanced at me, his face a mask of disgust. He proceeded to stick his tongue out.

"I am on leave." He mumbled. "Take someone else." At that point, I was hauling him off, but he wouldn't budge, instead, I was lifting the entire bed off the floor, banging it.

"Get up!" I hissed at him, but he flipped me off and went back to sleep.

"Fine," I told him sweetly. "Sleep on my precious darling." I went into his bath chambers and filled two of the discarded bottles with chilly water and then stood on top of his bed.

"This is your final warning," I told him, my voice colder than the water in my hands.

"Get the hell out." He mumbled still holding on to the empty bottle in his hand.

"Fine. You brought this upon yourself. Enjoy." I spilt the bottles at the same time onto his face, but the bastard mutant didn't even flinch.

"Ugh. You're so typical. You want me to get a cold? If I do I'll kiss you," He looked up at me with drowsy eyes. "on the mouth." He clarified, and I gave him a peeved stare. I dragged him, with his mattress that he refused to let go of, down the stairs, bumping into Sunshine on our way out of the kitchen. I had already packed and so I grabbed those as well. Sunshine was holding a tray of breakfast as he approached us with boredom.

I glanced back just in time to see the predator launch himself on the stupid prey that had thought him too docile. Darling, like a wild cat, jumped poor Sunshine taking the tray of food and shoving the good part of it in his mouth all at once, proceeding to return to his earlier position. Sunshine unamused by the performance, kicked at the mattress.

"You two are so typical." Sunshine sneered, pissed.

"That's what I said!" Darling replied chewing on his prey.

I gave a sigh of disgust as I continued to drag Darling out into the garages. I had not packed for him, but that will be his problem to deal with. I stopped in front of one of my cars, I had three. It was Ace that was my favourite and the one I picked to assist us on the mission.

Unlike Dragonfly's fighter, Bullet, my Ace was for exhilarating speed and manoeuvres more than anything else. She ran on electric power, as such was noiseless. Unlike Bullet, Ace was a black so deep it sucked the life out of everything else. She was one of the newer models, as I'd acquired her the year before and fell absolutely in love. I think that is what most fools would refer to as love at first sight. In my case, instead of falling for a girl like a normal guy, I fell for the car. Ace, unfortunately, could not impale people, as it featured smooth curves to allow for much higher speed and less of the drag faced by larger vehicles. It can go from 0-100 in under 2 seconds and had a top speed of 600 mph, which was insane even by our standards. Ace also came equipped with bullet-proof glass, two parachutes (to slow down the insane speed), adaptive camouflage, and a grappling hook. My Ace did not have missile launchers, unfortunately, which was a let-down, but one could work around it. It was also fully automatic and was also connected to Alexia. I dragged Darling to the back of the car.

"Alexia, open the trunk." I stared at Darling, all cuddled up under his blanket shirtless for some reason, his face smudged with crumbs of food. I grimaced.

"Darling," I ordered him trying to shake him off one last time. "If you do not get your damn ass in the car, the trunk's open for you," I warned coolly. He picked the later and I locked him up in the trunk of my car for the rest of the ride as he railed against me for all sixteen hours it had gotten to arrive at the third district. The one with all sorts of artificial technologies. Our assignment was about to begin.

====

The third district was the closest as one could get to living in Astrid without being an assassin. The skyscrapers were luxurious and marvellous to look at and admire the ever-changing architecture. The third district located at the bottom of a raven lacked all semblance of nature. There were museums all over the city, built to resemble famous buildings and landscapes over many centuries. One of such said buildings was the Great White House, located in what used to be the city of D.C. Washington in America. It was one of the most powerful countries at the time economically and military wise. It also hosted, like many other countries the phenomena of "democracy" as they liked to refer to it before the outbreak of the plague often referred to as the X- Virus.

The X-Virus was the same virus that had killed the dinosaurs at the beginning of time, which returned to finish the job with wiping off humanity when something called global warming took place and melted all the ice of what used to be Antarctica. Global warming was at the time, an excessively large deal. It was the idea that carbon dioxide or CO2 produced from the fuel they used at the time, fossil fuels, trapped the heat from the sun in the atmosphere refusing to allow it to escape and as such overheating the surface of the earth. It became worse when the Ozone layer in the atmosphere, keeping all the harmful sunrays at bay, begun decaying away, which "aided" in the reviving of the virus trapped in the ice.

It was just a theory though. No one really knew how we went from being the "democratic" geniuses to this living hell, lit with the garish sun. It was the mystery of our time, though if I were a gambler, I'd bet my money that the story about the X-Virus might just be a cover story for the real ordeal that went down. I think there was a slaughter so brutal that went down, a massive war of sorts that might include this virus or might not. The people must've realised how deadly a situation they were stuck in and found a solution to the problem of global warming ages ago. They were already making the preparations in the early years of the 21st century. But that was neither there nor here... the idea was fascinating to me and so that was what most of my research outside assignments entailed. As such I taught myself all those ancient, dead languages because no one ever bothered to translate them into universal.

The structures of the third district otherwise known as the city of Gnosis, meaning knowledge in ancient Greek, was looming over the horizon as the sun began its descent into the earth. It was already arranged by Alexia that the place where Darling and I will be staying over the next couple of weeks will be a recently discarded house three miles away from the school we were to monitor.

We arrived at the house structure in the middle of the identical silhouettes. Darling was moaning as if dying. I ignored him. The house was a simple box-like structure made of cement, grey and rough: cold and standard. I parked Ace in the threshold and glanced back at the trunk as I got out, grimacing.

"Darling," I warned him coolly. "I am going to open the trunk, but you will not jump me." Moaning was all he managed. "Darling, I am serious." I threatened. "If you jump me, I will impale you." More moaning followed. I lifted the lid of the trunk slowly. I heard the cracking of bones as he stretched for the first time in sixteen hours. The minute the lid opened, he jumped me! Like a fucking wild cat!

I, out of habit, ducked, flipping as I counter-attacked with my left hand: it had a knife. Before I could prevent it, my knife had gone through Darling's shoulder as he grunted.

"Damn you!" He cursed after slamming face-first into Ace, kissing her in the process. He let out a foul stream of steady curses as I half-helped, half-dragged his whining ass inside.

"I told you." I kept telling him. And I did. I warned the fucking deranged barbarian lunatic not to jump me and he still did. "Next time," I told him shoving him onto the couch. "It might go through your heart."

Despite that warning and his royal whining ass, I ended up helping him bandage his wound as the idiot continued to piss me off. I guess I knew how Selene and Moros felt towards me after all and I couldn't even blame them.

After I helped his royal ass to bed for recovery, bought him clothes, and promised him that the first day of the mission I was going in solo, the bastard agreed to retreat to his bed and call it a night. The house only had one bedroom and bed, but it hardly mattered, it wasn't as if I slept.

The clock stroke midnight as I reclined on the hard sofa, trying to translate a book. It was in a language that was easy and like Universal. They called it English. Universal was a newer form of English, it shared some elements, but it was not the same. The difference between the two was like the difference between Latin and English, but a little less exaggerated. It was not the book I was looking for, instead, it was that of religious standards called the Bible and it read:

Isaiah 57:1-2

1 The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. 2 Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.

That was not true. Everyone takes it to heart when the righteous perish. Some actually care when others are killed: they care when their beloved is no more. And why do they have to be taken away? From bad? Evil? Why, doesn't it exist everywhere? And what is this heaven they keep referring to? It sounds like a utopia and we all know that doesn't exist. Those ancients are absurd! I can't get a word of what they're saying. It doesn't add up and their religion seems backwards to me, but what do I know? Skies know I have never been on the best of terms with the priests of the first district – Aggelos (angels) – who believe I am the incarnation of the Mozzar (What they believe is the emperor of demons and Evil in general). Apparently, Mozzar was a genuinely nice person to be the incarnation of.

I closed the book and set it aside on the little table as my eyelids grew heavier. I had to complete the paperwork that I was going to give to the school the next day. I had to complete Darling's paperwork and device a proper plan as to how I was going to draw the hacker out. I also had to check whether the information had reached me. Not to mention a plan to train a newbie for an initiation whilst at the same time finding the hacker ghost. Erebus' words echoed through my head.

Be careful.

That was a threat. I was sure of it. Why didn't he simply finish me off then?

Get up. You have work to do. I looked at where my computer was, but one of them was sitting on top of it: a child.

The features of the child were quite clear, which was unusual, he looked... alive and it sickened me because I knew he wasn't.

He was young, five or six: his hair sticking on ends and matted with dark, his hands tiny and fisted in his lap as he sat like a statue. His clear blue eyes glazed as if he was amid a nightmare: as if he were in shock. I didn't move. I wanted to ignore him, but the sight of him was so familiar: the way his shoulders were slumped in defeat, the unshakeable air of gloom that surrounded him. It was as if I were looking into a mirror. He looked up at me then, his dead eyes tedious as he scanned me over. Suddenly there was a spark in them, of anger: deep and true as he jumped off his sitting position and stood over me. The rest of the people were quiet.

"You're a monster!" He sneered, as he attempted punching me, but couldn't. His tiny fists went right through. I didn't speak.

"They murdered my baby sister! Assassins murdered her! They killed mommy and daddy too! I hate you! You're a filthy assassin! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!" He was shouting on top of his lungs, my right ear bled as the others joined in assaulting me verbally, wishing on me all sorts of evil. I reached and grabbed my laptop and started typing ignoring them as my ear – that of which attained an injury a few years back which caused it to bleed at high sounds – continued to bleed. It was one of the things that set me on the edge the most about them. If they were all in my head and all was silent outside the illusion of my mind, why did my ear bleed?

A knock sounded on the door. At first, I assumed it caused by my oh-so-wonderful company, but as it persisted they quieted down slightly all staring at the front door. There was a shadow peeking from the window: two. I rose to my feet and swung the door open: scowling at the absurdness of the situation.

I was face to face with...

Dragonfly? What is he doing here?

I looked down and Grace was staring up at me with her wide, huge, green eyes. Her smile stretched from ear to ear as she grinned: fidgeting with nervous energy and anticipation.

"What...?" I didn't even finish the sentence as I looked between the two of them. Dragon though, unlike Grace, looked pissed. He grabbed me by the front of the shirt.

"HOW DARE YOU LEAVE WITHOUT ME?!" He yelled as he tackled me to the floor. I groaned, trying to get him off me, but it was of no use. He was on top of me. I really should've seen it coming, but... seriously?

"You...!" He broke off, flabbergasted as if I was the insane lunatic.

"Who told you, you could leave the house?!" I gave him a peeved stare. He ignored me and kept going while Grace came inside and closed the door after her. All was normal where she was concerned.

"Sorry. I did not know I needed your permission." I told him, sarcasm practically dripping from every word out of my mouth. His face heated up.

I'm dead meat!

"You're Hurt!" He wailed on.

"Oh! saddling me like this is okay?!" He returned the peeved stare, the same I gave him.

"Stop being a smartass!" He countered his voice dropping in volume but becoming more vindictive.

"You want me stupid?!" I asked sardonically, and he ranted against me until Darling joined the fray.

"WOULD YOU TWO SHUT THE FUCK UP?! WE HAVE SCHOOL TOMORROW!" He chastised.

"IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!" Dragon and I yelled back simultaneously.

"Black is a bad boy! Dragonfly's gonna punish you!" Grace chuckled as she settled down. Dragonfly gave me an evil smirk.

There is a big brother for you!