Chapter 1

"Nix, stop this," he gripped her arm strongly, pulling her to the side of the corridor they were walking in.

"You don't tell me what to do Max, I don't care for it and we both know there's no other way to stop this from happening. Besides, I can kick some ass even if my junk ain't workin." Nix tapped on her head and tilted it side to side jokingly, letting her brown hair flow all around her before she quickly flitted away from Max's grip.

He didn't like it when they were placed in all-or-nothing situations. "Nix!" he yelled with warning, of course she ignored him and continued on her way. Max let out a frustrated sigh and chased after Nix, if she was going to do this, then she wasn't going to be alone. Max was a human, well mostly human; he had traces of demon inside him that made him stronger and more versatile than your average man, it made him one of better candidates for being Nix's partner.

Nix moved quickly through the halls, slowly down only to catch voices now and then as she approached her target. She could hear Max approaching and instantly held her arm out to stop him from going any further. Max stopped right behind her, "I'll go in and distract him, you do the grab and dash, once you're out I'll take out the targets. Got it?" Max started to argue with her but she held up two fingers and issued his silence. "No buts, this is how it goes, there's a child in there. We can't take the risk of you playing hero and getting you both blown to smithereens."

Max's eyebrows drew together in anger, instantly he pushed her hand down, "Fuck that Nix, I'm not leaving you in there alone to deal with those criminals! We're partners; we watch each other's backs. That's how it's been and how it will always be." A quiet laughter filled the corner they were tucked in.

"If you're watching my back then who's watching Sydney's, me? I'm going to be too concentrated on keeping them busy to be of much help for the girl." Nix pointed a slender finger to her temple, "Just because I can make em see shit doesn't mean they'll always comply, they might start shooting randomly. If that happens, and it probably will, I need you to get out of there as fast as possible." Max took in a big breath of air ready to refute her, but he released the breath as soon as he had taken it in. She was right. If their past missions taught them anything it was that hallucinations don't always calm people down. In fact more often than not, it caused people to fire their weapons in a wild frenzy, shooting at whatever hallucinations they saw flying at them. A few of those times Max had been hurt and Nix had to be the one to save his ass many times over.

Max nodded in solemn agreement and Nix gave him a brilliant smile. "Good, now let's go." Nix ran over to the door and burst through it, as she hit the floor she rolled out and landed on her feet. There was one gun shot before everything went silent. That was his cue. Max ran full speed into the room and saw the little girl, Sydney, grabbed her and ran back out of the room.

The hallucination wouldn't last much longer so she had to take her chances and hope that the disorientation the kidnappers would feel would last long enough for her to take them out. Nix filled her mind with a blank space and sprang forward, jutting out with her legs into the first of the kidnappers. As the man fell Nix pulled out a gun that was holstered at her side and fired into the man's temple, he fell to the floor before anyone else had realized what was going on.

"Two more to go," Nix thought to herself. She stayed perched on her legs, crouching down as low as she could and fired two rounds into the next man. She wasn't as lucky with the third man however. It had taken too much time to eliminate the first two kidnappers, by the time Nix had her gun trained on the third captor, he had his own trained on her. They fired at the same time. Nix saw the man fall to the floor and groan loudly in pain just as she felt herself go still with pain. She gritted her teeth in order to stay quiet and quickly jumped to the injured man and snapped his neck between her two hands.

Nix was sweating profusely, she hadn't yet mastered hallucinations and it took a lot of her energy to produce one, even more when she tried to produce a conjured image from her mind instead of a random one from the captors. As Nix reholstered her gun she felt a sharp twinge of pain in her side, "fuck," she said out loud. Unwilling to faint at this time she urged herself to keep going, digging into her energy reserves to keep going. Ignoring the pain she felt and the lulling sensation of sleep she ran back outside to meet Max at their gathering place.

"Jesus Christ Nix," Max half whisper-yelled as he looked her over. She was pale and sweating like crazy, she was at the verge of passing out but she was trying to hold herself together. Her hand flew out to steady herself on Max.

"Sydney?" She asked breathlessly.

"She's fine. I put her in the car. Nix," he said with a worried tone, "You've been shot."

Nix chuckled weakly, "Oh really? I didn't know," suddenly she was aware that she was falling but she couldn't remember what happened after that.