Summary: Aaralyn, after a shuffle kills her abusive uncle and an innocent bystander on accident. So, she runs, leaving the country. Upon her arrival in Japan, she gets into a car accident and loses all memories of her life before. So, she starts anew, enrolling in college and changing into a completely different person. There, she meets a boy who is having problems of his own. When her past is beginning to catch up to her, she finds out she is connected with the boy more than anyone would have imagined.

Walking briskly down the sidewalk, I turned the corner onto the busy street. People were lined up as far as I could see to get into KillZone, one of the hottest clubs in the city. It was well known for its music scene and being a great place to pick up dates. I walked up to the doors where the bouncers were pushing people back and pushed my black hood off of my head so they could see who I was.

"Hey, Kale," I smiled up at the more muscular bouncers, moving to the front of the line, cutting in front of all sorts of angry patrons. I pushed my hair out of my face and stared up at the man, waiting for him to let me in.

Kale nodded at me. "Aaralyn, good to see you again," he took the rope down for a moment to let me in, but put it right back up again after I had passed. This earned me and him several curse words from the nearest people, who had all been waiting for hours to get in. Kale pushed them back with an angered look, but he turned and smiled at me as I made my way into the club.

I cast a smirk over my shoulder at the awaiting customers who were angrily pushing forward. They all wanted to go in with me. Sadly, that was not going to be the case. One only really got in by knowing the bouncers or some important people that liked to hang out in the club.

I smiled. What could I say? The Black Knights always got first dibs in this place, and because I was a part of their gang, I got some pretty sweet benefits. All I had to do was scare some people when the time came.

The club was decked out with strobe lights, disco ball, glitter, people dancing on the floor so much so that no one would be able to have much room to move about. There was a band playing tonight. That didn't happen very often, usually we had a DJ. I didn't know the name of the band, so I ignored them and found my way to my usual table with my usual gang upstairs. The room had a glass wall so we could see out and watch everything below us.

"Hey, Aaralyn," one of the guys greeted me as I came farther into the room. He snapped his fingers at the waiter to get me something to drink. I liked this place because the waiters were always so available, and yet disappeared quickly enough into the shadows so as not to be interrupting anything. "I didn't think you were going to make it tonight." He stood up so that we could greet one another formally.

"Joel," I grabbed his hand and pulled him in for a hug, the usual greeting for all of us. "I escaped," I shrugged. "Rather be here than there by far." I took a seat opposite Joel next to Erik. Giving Erik a quick kiss on the lips before I sat down. "Hey."

He smiled at me, putting his hand on my leg to show everyone else that I was his. Not that anyone else needed reminding. We had been dating for a long time, and no one was going to try to come between us and screw that up. "Hey, Babe." I leaned into him and smiled. I loved this part of my life, being here with friends who cared about me.

"So, what's on the agenda for tonight?" I asked everyone. There were three others at a different table behind us, and two others that were standing by the windows looking down on everyone.

Erik piped up, "Boss wants us to take out some guy named Henry Guild. He's got a lot of money, loaded actually, but his son won't give any to us unless his old man is out of the way. Little family drama going on there. So, it's our job to make sure he meets his end."

I nodded, a smile on my lips. "Sounds fun. Let's go."

~.~

The four of us, Erik, Joel, Me, and Candy walked down the alley where we knew we could get into the apartment of the man we needed to ax. Candy was a woman from the club who was ruthless, almost too much so. She wasn't scared of anyone or anything. I admired her take-no-heat attitude, but it had deemed her the bitch in the group.

Joel looked at us, each of us held a bat in our hands. A gun would be too noisy, so beating him to death would be quick and easy. Erik had his knife to cut his windpipe as well, to make the death even quicker. He nodded once before he kicked in the door to the apartment and we surged inside, taking the steps two at a time.

Guild's apartment was on the fourth floor, so it took us a few minutes to reach the landing. Joel nodded once more before he kicked down the door to the apartment and we raced inside.

Guild was in the kitchen, and we took him by surprise. Candy got him once in the head with her bat, and before he had a chance to scream, Erik cut his windpipe. The guy never even stood a chance. Even if we hadn't taken him by surprise, there were too many of us for him to fight off. It was almost unfair, really.

My job was to make sure there was no one else in the apartment. I left the kitchen to do my job, the sound of the bats colliding with Guild's body echoed behind me. The living room was clear, so I moved to the hallway and opened the first closed door. A closet. I moved to the next door, a bathroom. There was no one in there, but I noticed a make-up case. A woman was here as well, or would be back shortly.

I went to the last door and opened it to reveal a woman laying on the bed, waiting seductively for Henry to return. When she saw it was me, she sat up and jumped to the other side of the bed, huddling against the wall, scared. Like that would stop me. Bat at the ready, I hurriedly closed the gap between us, stepping right on the bed to get to her, and I smacked her across the head with the bat right as she began to scream, knocking her out.

I had never killed anyone before, and I wasn't going to start now. Hurting someone, breaking their bones, and screwing them up for life, sure. I could do that. But, I didn't want to have the guilt of taking a life on my hands. I went back into the other room where the others were waiting for me. This job had been quick and painless. We needed to bleach the place now. The bleach would kill any fibers from our clothes for the cops to trace to us.

"Let's get out of here," Joel said, gesturing for us to leave now before someone came and found us. We all turned, heading for the fire escape in the living room. That was the easiest and quickest way to get away, and if there were any cops, it would be easier to escape unseen.

But, just as we were about to leave, a loud ringing in my ears stopped me in my tracks, and I looked over at Candy. She had a dazed, confused look on her face, seeming to mirror my own face.

It wasn't until I fully turned that I saw a boy, about fifteen years of age, holding the smoking gun. Fear rushed through my body as I looked back over at Candy, who had fallen on the floor, dead. The hole in her chest oozed blood. Joel, Erik, and I exchanged looks before we all turned to face the kid with the gun.

"I already called the cops. You guys will pay for what you have done!" his voice was cracking from the sobs he was trying to hold back, his hand shaking from fear and of the knowledge that he had just killed a person. No one moved for a moment and finally, Erik bolted out the window, down the fire escape, and the kid fired the gun again, grazing my arm.

I flinched as I ducked to the side and into the kitchen, landing next to the bloodied, dead body of Henry Guild. I looked around for a weapon, but there was none readily available. Joel and I exchanged looks before he too ran out of the apartment, leaving me cornered, to die.

The boy rounded the corner and pointed the gun at me. I had a bad feeling this was going to be it. I was going to die doing some cheap assignment that should have gone down without a hitch. I waited for my life to flash before my eyes like everyone said it would. What would be the last image in my mind before the very life escaped from me? But, sirens could be heard in the distance, breaking the silence, and the boy cast a glance behind him, through the windows to see how close they were to being here.

I took the moment to run over and kick the gun aside and immobilize him, hitting him in a pressure point in his neck. Grabbing the gun, which he had dropped in the scuffle, I fired one shot, hitting him in the leg before I jumped out of the window onto the fire escape. I had to break the glass to do so, and I ended up cutting myself on the sharp glass I jumped through it. I hopped off the railing and landed on the dumpster on all fours and ran down the alley, disappearing into a crowd full of people.

~.~

"You guys just left me there!" I yelled in Erik's face as I punched him in the stomach, though hurting him did little to satisfy me at the moment. I didn't think there would be much that would quench this fire I had building at the moment. "I nearly died, thanks to you guys. What happened to the code?" Friends didn't abandon one another, I wanted to yell at them. But, something cut the words off before I could make them. Clearly, we weren't as good of friends as I would have thought.

We were sitting in an abandoned warehouse down by the docks, as cliché of a hideout as it was. But, it was our rendezvous point that we had set up. I was surprised when I had arrived, and they were all there waiting for me. I would have bet money they'd have left me there to die and thought nothing else of it.

"That code is bullshit. We all know you would have run off if you would have had the chance!" Erik spat back, clearly just as upset as I was. "You care about no one but yourself. Don't start pretending any differently."

They were right of course, but it still stung. I took a step back, narrowing my eyes at him. How could he talk to me this way? He was treating me like some junkie he met off the streets. We had known each other for years. Didn't that count for something?

He was pacing back in forth in front of me, his eyes darting out the window, towards the door, down to the pavement beneath his feet, up to me, and around again. He was waiting to hear the sirens going off, signaling they had been found out. We had never been caught like this before. We weren't very high up in the chain of the gang. We were expendable; they weren't going to waste precious funds to bail us out of trouble, and we all knew it.

"Tell us you killed the kid before you ran off," Joel said, cutting our bickering off before it escalated into something worse. Joel knew me well enough to know I was seconds from pummeling Erik into the ground.

I looked away, refusing to admit I had let him see all of our faces and then let him go. "Shit, Aaralyn!" Joel ran a hand through his hair, a habit he did whenever he was nervous. "He's going to go to the police. You know as well as we do that the Big Guys aren't going to help us out of this. If we go down, we go down. No one is going to help us out of this one. You're already on watch from all the cheap shit you pull."

I couldn't kill him, even though he had seen all of our faces. I just needed to slow him down enough for me to escape. I may be a bad person, involved in drugs, scams, robbery, assault, and the works, but I was no killer. I had never killed anyone on purpose. Sure, bad things sometimes happened, but it was only ever accidents, nothing I had intended to happen. I couldn't go letting that change now.

Erik kicked a barrel and cursed. "I do not want to go to jail for your stupidity!"

Joel shook his head. "The Big Guys aren't going to be happy with you, not happy at all. You'll be lucky if you live to see next week. Not only did you break the code, you let that kid know about us. He saw our faces and will be able to pin us back to the gang. He isn't stupid. You may as well just kill us right here."

I started to panic. The code was to help each other to finish the job. No witnesses. No survivors. Failure in this was punishable by death. I didn't want to die. But, I wasn't the only one who had failed at this. The boys had left me there; however, my crime was worse. Much worse. The gang would either let me rot in prison for the however long, or they would kill me off so I couldn't give away any secrets.

"What should I do?" I whispered, refusing to look either of the guys in the eyes. How could I have let us all down? It was worse than anything I could think of. I deserved to die for what I had done. Killing the bastard would have been better than dealing with this.

"Hell if I know," Erik shook his head. "I'm not taking the heat for you, not on this one, Aaralyn." Erik had on more than one occasion had to finish off killing the victims because I couldn't bring myself to do it. I could beat the shit out of people sure, scare them a little, oh ya. But, nothing else.

I had gotten into this gang when I was fifteen, when they had caught me beating up a local school bully. They offered me money and I had accepted because my family was poor. But, they blackmailed me into staying, threatening the lives of the family I was fighting so hard to protect. I couldn't say no. No one walked away from this life. The only way you got out was by death. And that was looking closer and closer to being in my future a lot sooner than I had anticipated.

I started pacing. "I'll figure something out," I told him. "Just go home, and we'll figure this out in the morning." I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew it was going to have to include me running away. And, if I did decide to run away, I didn't want to get these guys any more involved. They'd be in enough trouble.

~.~

I crawled into my room through the window, trying desperately to be quiet, after climbing the tree and onto the porch roof. I had done this so many times, I could do it in my sleep. I threw some clothes into my backpack along with other necessities and all the money I owned, which wasn't much more than a handful of twenties. Satisfied, I slung it over my shoulder and headed downstairs quietly.

I was hoping I could grab some food before I left, to help save the money I was planning on using for transportation. If I was lucky, I might even be able to sneak into the office and grab some money out of the safe. It was never that easy. My uncle intercepted me, catching me by surprise. Slapping me across the face, he made me fall back onto the stairs. I held my stinging cheek and looked up at him, waiting for the next blow.

"You were supposed to have been home an hour ago!" he bellowed down at me with his loud, booming voice. Anger was flaring in his eyes, and I recoiled away from him as he kicked me in the side, making me fall down the last three steps.

"I'm sorry," I stammered, trying to get to my feet, but the wind had been knocked out of me, and I was having a hard time doing much of anything. I was on all fours now, my knees hurt from the wooden floor. This gave my uncle another chance to kick me on the side, pushing me against the wall.

Wincing in pain, I made my body move up off of the floor. I was a sitting duck on the floor with a sign begging to be beaten. Standing up, I ducked a punch. I lashed out and hit him in the face. My eyes widened in fear. I hadn't meant to really hit him, but I just wanted to defend myself, to get him off of me, even for a moment. But, having made contact, the anger that was simmering at the surface boiled over and he came at me, a murderous look in his eyes. Great, so I had escaped a bullet to be killed instead by the hands of my angry uncle.

I bolted for the door, running through the night, trying to escape. I didn't make it very far when I was tackled to the ground. He had me pinned beneath him. I was far too small to do anything against him, so I was stuck there. He pulled a gun out from his waist band and pointed it at my head.

I freaked and bucked under him, throwing him over my head when he lost his balance and fell forward. In the shuffle, he had dropped the gun, and I quickly grabbed it, backing away from him. It was different being the one holding the gun for a change. A part of me really liked the power I now held over my uncle. There was no way he was going to be able to beat the crap out of me tonight.

"I'll shoot you if you come near me," I warned, my hand not very steady at all. I released the safety and pointed the gun to the man who had been beating me for over five years.

He stood up, a small smile on his lips. "You don't have the guts to kill me." He took a step forward, and I pulled the trigger, but I missed him, just going over his shoulder. He took another step towards me. I took a step back before I shot again, this time hitting him in the chest.

My uncle looked surprised as he looked over at me before he dropped to his knees, his mouth gaping open and then closed like a fish out of water before he fell face first onto the grass, laying in a pool of his own blood. I took the gun and ran. I couldn't leave it behind or they'd have my prints.

I crossed the street and noticed someone laying on the ground. I walked closer to see it was a boy. He had a bullet hole in his chest. I gasped, falling back onto my butt. When I had missed my uncle the first time, I had hit him and killed him. What had I become? A murder. To think that I had gotten into this mess because I couldn't kill someone, and now I had just killed two people. How cruel the world truly was. This was the punishment I received from my poor life choices.

Running, I took off down the street, keeping to the shadows. I was headed to the lake, which wasn't too far from my house. I threw the gun into a lake and left the city, unsure of where to go or what I'd do.

So, this is part of an original story I thought of awhile ago. Finally getting around to posting it. I really would like some feedback as I really want this one to be great.