6: The File Room

"What's a queen without her king?

Well, historically speaking, more powerful."

C H A P T E R 6

L U C I A N A

Not a minute had passed since I reached my bedroom and Angela came in with a file, placed it on the side table and left without another word.

Strange.

I picked up it anyway. Looking through it, I sighed. What had I agreed to?

It consisted of the names of the 6 new recruits.

Zachary Barnes

Aaron Kendall

Cole Grant

Carter Anderson

Evie Hayes

Thea Miller

All of them 19 years old.

They would have told their parents they were going away for school or simply faked their death. I preferred the second option, although it never came down to these two choices for me. In fact, I never had a choice, I was born into this. My parents were assassins, so naturally they turned me and my brother into brutal killers just like them.

Not that I minded. It's fun killing stuff.

But this was not the time to think about my unalterable fate, I needed to find a way to train these recruits without killing them, which would be a lot harder than one can imagine.

Thinking back, I remembered a room. A room which contained the files of all the people working in IAO, including the names of their trainers and their training techniques. Surely no one would stop me from going there now, would they?

Determined, I walked out of the room. On reaching the files room I was surprised to see the one and only Alex Ronald leaning beside the door looking bored. On seeing him I remembered that I was supposed to be mad at him. Even though I was not really mad I decided to have some fun so I let my face harden and narrowed my eyes to slits.

Alex saw this and his own eyes widened. Clearly, he did not think that I'd still be pissed.

"Before you say anything, hear me out. You were hanging upside down in the car, barely breathing, and the sight of you like that scared the shit out of me so I did the most reasonable thing I could think of and brought you here, so please don't be mad I know I ruined everything that you had done from when you left and-"

"Alex!" I cut him off. I must have terrified the poor boy. I continued. "It's fine, I'm not mad anymore, you can calm down."

"Okay that's good because I don't want to get on your bad side, especially since you got assigned to teach the trainees."

"Oh great, even you found out about that, care to tell me who else knows?" I asked, annoyed.

"Almost everyone in the agency knows it's become common knowledge."

"Under a span of 15 minutes?" I asked, clearly having underestimated Amber's news spreading skills.

"Apparently." he said with a smirk.

There goes my plan of trying to be discreet . . .

Then I remembered the main reason I was here.

"What are you doing here Alex? I'm pretty sure I didn't tell anyone I was coming here."

"Well, after I found out you had to train the new people I figured you'd come here to look through the old files and I thought maybe I could lend a hand in both, looking through the files and the training, that is, if you don't mind, of course."

"You sure you want to do this? And did you talk to David?"

"Yeah, I'm sure and he doesn't mind."

"Okay then, let's get started."

I reached towards the door knob, gave it a twist and pushed the door open, revealing the sight of a million files on killers just like me.

This was going to be a long day.

~~~~~~~~~~~

About 3 hours had passed, I'd been through quite a few files and I had a rough idea of how to train newbies. Thinking it was, time for a break, I grabbed a file from the pile next to me and threw it on Alex to get his attention.

"Hey!"

Giving him a sorry, not sorry smile I said. "We've been through almost half these files and I'm getting tired, so why don't we go take a break?"

"Sounds good to me."

We made our way back to the kitchen, talking about the missions Alex had when I wasn't here.

Now in the kitchen, I walked over to the fridge and took two bottles of soda. I passed one to Alex. Taking a few sips, I asked. "So any other recruits since I left?"

"Not exactly a recruit, but we got one, a girl."

"What do you mean, not exactly a recruit?"

"A few years back, Nathan was on a solo mission and he encountered this girl who showed up with a gun, determined to get to our client and finish him off. She didn't work for anyone but she wanted that guy dead. Unfortunately for her, he had paid us to kill any person trying to kill him and you know Nathan, him and his soft heart. He basically knocked her out and brought her here instead of killing her."

"That's very classy of him, if I were there I'd shoot her without a second thought."

"And here I thought both the brother and sister would be alike."

We were so preoccupied by ourselves that we did not notice a girl standing near the counter. She was tall, wearing a purple t-shirt with jeans, red hair pulled back in a pony, looking to be around 25 years old.

"Hello Lucania, I'm Miranda Roberts."

"Hi, do I know you?" I asked in a confused tone. She didn't look like anyone I'd seen before.

"I am the girl that you and Alex were so fondly talking about before I interrupted."

This just got awkward.

She was just standing there, and I made a comment about killing her without a second thought.

Great job, Luce. Keep it up.

Yeah, I probably will.

"You know, I'm just kidding, your comment didn't really bother me."

"That's good seeing as we'll be living under the same roof from now." I said with a little relief.

"So is no one even going to acknowledge me?" Alex asked looking as if we abandoned him in front of a strangers house.

"Don't be such a baby Alex, I just came to get a little water, she's all yours." Miranda said with a little smile.

They continued to talk about random things and I completely zoned out. I thought about how easy it was to get lost in yourself while talking to your loved ones, but when you were an assassin, you could lose them just as easily. So maybe it was better to cherish all the time you have with them rather than dwell on something you might not get.

Maybe being back at IAO is not that bad after all.