Chapter 8

Josuke walked quickly to the elevator and down to where his family was. He had seen spiked readings of the girl and wanted to make sure his family was safe. Although he wasn't as strong as his wife, he still had responsibilities of a father and husband to protect his family. He ran out of the elevator once he reached the 20th floor and swiped his ID to get the door open. Josuke saw the girl and his son both glowing green as Mitsuki put his hands on the tank. Raze was standing behind the microphone and he heard her say,

"If we do that, do you promise not to try to escape or hurt anyone?" Josuke jumped, figuring out what his wife was trying to do and he tried to stop her from pushing the button that would decrease the water level.

"Raze! What are you doing?" Mitsuki was directly in front of this girl and she had already tried to kill his family.

"Josuke!" Raze was surprised. Putting herself in front of the controls so that her husband couldn't reach around her, Raze put both her hands on her husband's face. "It's okay. Mikki and I know what we're doing. She's clearly been brainwashed by someone in the military, but I don't think she will actually hurt us now. She can't break through the tank and she's responding to Mikki. Even during the fight, she tried her best not to hurt him."

"Are you trying to use our son as a shield? What if you're wrong?" Josuke argued back.

"Trust me. Have I ever been wrong?" Raze smiled gently.

"Sometimes..." he grumbled. But he did trust his wife's intuitions and so he stopped trying to get in their way. Once the water was at an acceptable level, Raze pushed another button to stop the vacuum and the girl pulled off the breathing mask. Taking deep breaths, she look around and saw three people in the room with her. But in front of her was a young boy with dark hair with a tinge of red. He had a mostly normal looking face with high cheekbones and a narrow nose. Given time, he could be a very handsome young man. But his most striking features were his eyes, which were gray. His hands were on the same level as hers on the tank, and she realized that he had been providing the warmth. Blushing slightly, she pulled her hands away from the tank.

Past the boy, she saw an older couple, Raze and a tall man holding her hand beside her. While she had studied what Raze looked like extensively, she guessed that the tall man was probably her husband and the boy's father because they had the same cheekbones and nose. The father had hazel eyes while the boy had inherited Raze's gray eyes. Looking back at the boy, she realized that he was probably their child and the same person who had interfered with her mission. Even knowing that, she wasn't angry with him at all. He was still an innocent person and she understood his desire to want to protect his mother. It wasn't his fault she had been kidnapped as a child and then trained to be a monster by the military.

Looking at this small family of three, Hana felt her heart ache a little. She had never known her own biological family and was raised in an orphanage. But these three people seemed to genuinely care for each other and she felt a little envy in her heart. She hadn't felt love or warmth ever since she was brought to this horrible place, which is why she always slightly rebelled in her missions and never killed innocents or took collateral damage even though she would always be punished if she failed her missions. Hana just didn't have it in her to put more people in harm's way if she could prevent it, but her unique capabilities made her indispensable to the military so they continued to teach and use her. When she was much younger, they had tried to extract her genes to figure out how she could manipulate the elements, but always failed. When they tried to get her to tell her about her home, she never spoke a word because she knew they would try to find it and capture more of her people to be used as weapons. She had become a singularly unique weapon in the military's arsenal, but only a few people were allowed to know about her existence. Hana wasn't sure how the rumors had started, but while people were starting to figure out her presence in some assassinations, no one had definitive proof she existed or what her abilities were. But the rumors did give some of the leaders leverage over other people, as they could churn the rumor mill to frighten people into submission.