Life it seems will fade away,
Drifting farther everyday,
Getting lost within myself,
Nothing matters no one else.
2
The day came and went quickly, there was warm food and kind joy, Emilia played with the children, helped clean and cook, and at the end, when night came, prayers were said. The woman whose named she learnt was Ulina, aloud her to sleep on their sofa, and for what seemed like such a rare thing, Emilia actually slept soundly and dreamlessly till the sun rose.
In the morning Ulina gave her a 'care package' as she put it, but was a brown tote bag filled with frozen juice boxes, cellophane wrapped bread and cheese, and a generous bag of beef jerky. Emilia was beyond grateful as she said goodbye, such generosity was a rare thing now a days.
So Emilia left, back on the road again, nibbling on a peace of beef jerky, she walked briskly down the crowded street and at one point, upon spotting a small corner store, shoved the last of the tuff meat into her mouth and entered. She browsed for awhile randomly checking labels on random goods she had no interest in till the elderly man behind the counter felt her no threat and went back to reading paper. Seeing this, Emilia made her move and quickly snatched a carton of cigarettes, stuffing it discreetly into her new tote, then flipped the man a few rubbles for a chocolate bar and left.
That was her vice, smoking, hair and guns aside, it was the one thing that really helped her relax, as bad as it is, and she down right refused to give up yet. So with a smile on her face Emilia lit up and carried on. Watching the street signs she located a train station, this would be a little tricky, boarding, seeing she has no papers and not enough money for even there shortest trip, but she's done it before and will do it again. The wait wasn't to bad, actually Emilia was probably quit lucky she hadn't missed the damned thing, as the platform became crowded with commuters, she made her self home near a group of school girls that looked around her age, now Emilia isn't some over emotional or hormonal teenager, at the ripe age of 25, but she looked young enough anyway.
Piece of cake, she thought smiling inwardly, with the crowd practically all shoving on at once it was easy to slip on unnoticed and hide out in the toilette for the 10 minutes she'd be on the train.
After her short train ride was over, and the warmth of its toilette was gone, Emilia continued on her way, on foot and across the country side. Avoiding major roads and highways was a very important thing to always remember. She didn't really mind walking about the trees and frozen grass, nature was peaceful, its tranquility was soothing on a damage and aching heart. But ever so often, like right now, not even the beauty around her could quell the dull pain within her. It was always there, throbbing away like a dark and foreign mass, a tumour, slowly feeding off her cells, her body, eating away at who she used to be till all that's left is and empty smiling shell. But Emilia doesn't cry, there's no time for tears, so she walks, for miles with stopping till after an unknown amount of time, comes across a large industrial building of sorts. By all appearances the hideous thing looks empty, and even though Emilia knows better than to assume that, she goes and checks it out anyway. the frozen lock on a service door on the western most side was easy to brake open, brittle and old metal snapping quickly under the pressure of a random scrape piece of rebar provided.
"Hmm" Emilia hummed as she looked around, its was spacious in here, a broken down series of conveyor belts littered the floor along with quit the helping of dust and debris. The ware house as it turns out to be, screams of abandoned, so Emilia decides she couldn't have found a better place to hunker down for the night. Not in the mood to explore, instead made her way up stairs to the cat walk the circled the ceiling and found a small room, well more of a storage room actually, given the rotting wooden shelves stalked with an assortment of useless objects. After shedding some of her layers and removing her weapons she sat down and dug in to the food from Ulina, having a good hearty feast if you asked her. Life was grand.
- later that night-
Emilia's eyes snapped open, instinct sending alarm bells ringing into her subconscious and she heard it immediately. Voices, men, quit a few by the sounds of it. Russian.. Fuck not the good ones either. Emilia groaned into the palms of her hands, mad at her own stupidity. Deviate from your path and shit gets messed up, but it looked so inviting, even if she should have kept going. But she'll scold herself later, at the moment focusing on not existing mattered the most, the hadn't found her yet so there was a go-
Emilia's completely stilled when she heard footsteps pass the room she was in. One, two, three… four men maybe. They're sneaking to. Emilia figured out what was about to happen just when the 1st shots rang out, followed by a lot of yelling and screaming from the Russians and silence from their attackers. Interesting.
Once the shooting stopped, she could hear the strangers descending the stair case, so as quietly as possible, Emilia tried to stand up, realizing to late and with insurmountable horror that both her legs are asleep, her arms flailed wildly for something, anything, her hand grabbed onto that old and rotted book shelf, the one with the useless stacked objects.
"Fuck" she squeaks as the whole damned thing comes crashing down making the loudest possible racket it can. Emilia, in a total panic now, grabs her ACR and ran behind the door, pressing herself as flush against the wall as she could knowing that this door would be opened any minute now. Footsteps, growing closer till they stop just outside. There is a distinct pause before the door was kicked opened and the instant realization that she'd have no room to shoot the stupid thing, so Emilia dropped the weapon and lunged at the man who entered 1st.
She jumped on his back, locking her legs around his waist and wound an arm around his neck, when he swung one of his own around to attempt to pull her off Emilia bit down, and bit down hard.
"Aaargh, FUCK get this bitch off me!"
English.. He's speaking English , he sounds Irish or Scottish or whatever, but all that aside Emilia held on as tight as she could till a unseen pair of hand grabbed her and practically ripped her off. She tore out of the other mans grip and scuttled backwards as quick as she could, trying desperately to find a way out but instead became cornered by the two men, one had a black mask on, a white skull painted on the front gave him a distinctly uneasy and dangerous air, the other bigger mans face was bare and clearly pissed off, his right for arm dripping blood.
Right at the same moment that Emilia was going to try and run past them the guy with the Ghost mask charged her first, amazingly she had dodged him only to be cloths lined by the one shed bit, sprawled on the concrete and coughing.
"That's enough of that" unmasked man said and grabbed both her arms, and secured her wrists with black zap straps.
"Let me go!" Emilia yelled in a panic, immediately trying to pull her hands free, fucker really made them tight. "I'm not one of them… please, let me go!" The men ignored her, and pushed her out onto the cat walk where two other men were apparently waiting, one was a little younger than his comrades the other seemed considerably older.
"Thanks for helping out in there Roach"
Roach… his mother named him after a bug? Poor kid. The men behind her not wanting to hang around started leading her down the stairs and out side.
"Hey Ghost, radio for extraction" says the man that she's now sure is Scottish.
Ghost… these have to be there nick names or something.
"What's your name?" the one they called Roach says suddenly, stepping into stride beside her. Emilia choosing to remain silent keeps her eyes forward, doesn't even glance.
"Id guess military, though I don't know which one teaches their soldiers to carry their weapons around in a potato sake" Ghost jibs from somewhere behind her. Emilia just rolls her eyes and continues to fume.
"So.. Nameless girl, your like what, an out of work mercenary or something" Roach prods more, and again receives no reply.
Emilia is led in the middle of their little parade back through the trees and into the countryside, the grass underfoot was frozen and unforgiving.
The group reached a meadow about half an hour later, empty of all but a single black helicopter, at the sight of this Emilia instinctively dug her booted heals into the hard earth, pushing back against or English captors, and even though her attempts where weak and almost comical no one commented, instead someone gripped her arm tightly and walked her up and into the readying chopper, no choice, no way.
