Chapter Four
And the laughter ran down the empty hallways as Mia and Gunner met them half way up the stairs to the next floor, "all done I guess," was all Jess could muse.
The assignment had been easy, but it always was these days, a walk in the park as Kyle kept saying.
Her gaze swept past Mia and Gunner and forlornly up the rest of the flight of stairs, like down here a tide of death had erupted up there. She turned around and walked down with the rest letting Ryan and Mia lead, Mia with her long white hair and blue eyes, she was pretty. Ever so pretty that every girl she met was jealous of her, Jessica included.
She could be jealous at times she knew, but what the admiration of her beauty brought the others to, well she could live without death, if that made sense at all. And Gunner, Gunner was gorgeous. A lamia with a flashing smile and grey eyes that you could drown in, they had dated for a while but it just grew too weird.
In some sense Jessica knew she was somehow Ryan's possession even if this didn't mean they were dating, as she was Ryan's, Ryan was hers.
The uncomfortable silences between Gunner and Ryan only grew and the decision to end it seemed the only way out, there were no hard feelings about it. Gunner had enough women trailing after him anyway and what did one human matter?
Mia easily discarded the binding spell and they walked their way over the fallen that had thought that they could run to safety and make their way out of the building. The spell had done its deed well and like everything else was forgotten about once it wasn't needed.
She followed them in silence, got in the car and said not a word as they dropped her outside her place, somehow noticing her mood; Ryan got out as well and followed her up.
The place was dark when she opened the door and the blinds were sharply shut down against the rising sun. Their routine didn't actually depict a routine at all, so sleep was at random and when she could get it and little things like daylight wasn't exactly yearned for at these times.
She slipped off her shoes and turned to grope for the light switch at the side of the door and like a birth of a new day, light suddenly flooded the room. With Ryan still behind her she trailed her way into the kitchen and opened her near to empty fridge, always on the impulsive thought that someday food would suddenly appear out of nowhere in there, without her even having to go shopping for it.
With another miracle not carried out she shut the fridge and made her way to her bedroom and through the open door, without even bothering to turn on the light she made her way through and collapsed on her bed. Like a shadow, Ryan silently followed her and sat at the side of her bed, not saying a word.
Yet for Jessica the silence grew so loud that it felt like it was going to burst her eardrums in the end so she poked him in the ribs as she lay on her side, "why you following me?"
He shrugged and to ease the tension, he lied, "I couldn't be bothered for the twenty minute drive to my place."
"It would have only taken ten at this time in the morning."
He lay down on the bed next to her and kicked off his shoes, "well you can't get rid of me now."
And she didn't really want to anyway, she sighed and shifted over so he had some room and suddenly she felt a thousand years older.
"What's wrong?"
She looked at him when he said that and simply smiled, and the word 'nothing' was at the tip of her tongue but she shut her mouth and closed her eyes.
"Do you ever feel you're in the wrong type of job?"
Ryan laughed, "a surreal question to ask, especially in our line of work… its like asking Oil Companies if they support Green Peace."
Her own uncomfortable laugh didn't seem to remove the tension in her stomach, "well it was only a question."
She felt his hand stroke some hair away from her face and as her eyes flickered open, for the first time Ryan could see the torment there and within a moment it was covered and she was looking way.
"I wanted to work in a zoo when I was a kid and you know what? I think that my parents would have let me, I was a spoilt little brat…"
"I could never tell," Jess dryly retorted.
"Oih princess I can't exactly seeing you putting down hired assassin as one of your career prospects when you were in school."
She smiled to her self; her eyes closed, where her mood was attuned to the soft breathing of Ryan, her muscles relaxed and she was at ease, "I wanted to be an Artist, everyone told me I was really good," something flickered in her voice, "I think it was the only time I saw my mum smile near the end was when I was painting and when I brought that stuff home from school. She looked really pretty when she smiled."
Warm arms came around her and she opened her eyes to find Ryan beside her, his head above hers. She let the gesture slide and settled down and closed her eyes and let the soft thrumming of Ryan's heart send her off to sleep.
The corridor was cool and Kyle walked down it with a silent pleasure as the fresh breeze caressed his sweaty and wrinkled skin, tingling it into a new awakening and for now throwing away the aching feeling from his reoccurring insomnia.
He had never killed anyone, never even drawn blood, he paused in his pacing then and corrected him self, he had never pre-planned to draw someone's blood. He'd been in his drunken Yob stage and had beaten a few arrogant drunks but apart from that he hadn't had the stomach for anything else.
He didn't even have a criminal record and what did he do for his living? He signed papers and briefed his assassins, sure they were not really his, but he had helped to train them. He briefed them on their assignments where they went out and ruthlessly killed people.
No matter what their gender, their age or even their creed. They had gone emotionlessly on with their mission.
He had helped to mould them; he had never had a conscious back then, so when did he suddenly grow this one? Where was the guy who had told sobbing children that there was no way out accept death? The one who had stared vacantly as the students went out and hunted down brought convicts?
He had changed so much along the way he hadn't even noticed, hadn't noticed the way he had suddenly fallen from grace with his wife, he only seemed to have gotten the gist when he found his empty house one night. He hadn't been home for so long he wasn't even sure if she had left recently or not and like everything else he had put that down as it being for the best. Emotions and relationships didn't mix with his type of work and how right he had been.
He resided in his pacing and stilled himself in front of the open window and let his gaze out into the outside world, something he so rarely saw these days. The sun was slowly rising from its sunken hiding place and now making its appearance seen. He had been so senseless over the years and now he realised he was suddenly too old to reset all his mistakes.
He used to have so many dreams and now, now so many of his regrets took over them. He was literally dead inside, living for a job that was grounding him down to fine dust. But retirement, his retirement was soon to be due. He was in progress of training his successor, after it had taken him a couple of weeks to find the right one, now all he had to do was go over the basics with her.
Yes, a woman to take over his place. It had surprised him as much as the others, the only suitable person was a woman, but he saw the same light in her eyes that he used to have when he first entered this job, he just wished that she wouldn't have the same fate as him and slowly crumble away as his conscience rose to the surface.
Because out of all of it, he knew that was the one thing to blame. All of those years he had been so callous, and now, well what he was now was clear to see. He turned away from the window and headed back to his suite as he heard stirring in the rest of the building and shut the door firmly behind him.
His hand hovered over the phone and he suddenly turned away, the yearning in him to hear a familiar voice being quashed by protocol.
He would have phoned Jessica, his favourite student out of them all and the brightest, but he would have no reason to really call, the mission should have been completed by now but they were due to come in this afternoon about that.
He went back into his room and lay down on his bed and stared wistfully at his bedroom ceiling, he would be gone soon. Gone to somewhere, where his conscience wouldn't be constantly reminded of its crimes.
Ryan left before Jess was fully awake; he had crept out leaving her sleeping behind. Her being what she was meant that he had to make allowances for her, the only one he had ever had to make for her though was that she slept longer than him. He didn't really care though, she looked cute when she was asleep, none of the seriousness was etched on there and he could see the little girl there that she was such a long time a go.
He yawned and closed her door behind her as he sat himself on the couch before making the decision to leave altogether, the long descent down the stairs let his mind unwind. He never had a particular liking towards elevators, stairs were quicker and much more efficient if you were being attacked, simply more room.
He had meant to tell her last night, after all that time being locked in that damn compound he had finally decided enough was enough. He was going to sit her down and simply tell her. How hard could it be? But it had been. No matter how hard he had tried to let the words fall from his lips he couldn't say them and then she had fallen asleep in his arms.
Somehow lengthening his torture even more. How hard was it to say?
'I like you Jessica.' Those words weren't too hard. But she already knew that he liked her and then he would have to explain that he didn't like her in that way but in another. He should have said,
'I've fallen in love with you and every thought of you torments me.' Maybe he should leave the torment bit out, he had been going over this for the last three weeks and still he was nowhere nearer to telling her.
The afternoon sun scorched down and he took out his sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. In public he had to do this, his pupils had a habit of fully contracting when the full beat of the sun was out like this and his eyes were simply a swirl of molten silver with a tiny speck of black where his pupil should be. That was the problem with being feline and having to walk around in public with humans.
Jess loved his eyes and would stare at them when they were kids as she kept flicking a flashlight in them to watch them change, but her eyes were more beautiful. Her deep greens eyes that spoke of so many things that he knew he could only read, it was hard to describe the colour of her eyes. From far off her eyes looked so intense and like a murky tropical forest ready to consume you. But close up they were different shades of green, a deep seaweed green ringing around the outside and flecks of rainforests filling in between.
And the point was that he could never tell her these things to her, face to face and he had tried, so many times now. He wanted to shift and run the rest of the way home but that would mean being seen and punished and he didn't fancy being punished by the company again.
The last time had been tediously boring enough. He stopped mid-step and heard the curses of the people around him as a couple of them bumped into him and then made an adjustment and walked around him. He swiftly turned around and headed back to her flat and opted for the now or never choice. He silently cursed himself for being such a fast walker and dragged his feet back the way that he came.
Out of all the things he had done in his short life, out of the killing, even the training. This was one of the hardest, the fact that he might have to face rejection if she didn't feel the same way. And that was around about the same time the doubt resurfaced again and the walk back seemed too short. Where was all the time he needed to think about this? He was suddenly outside her building; he made his way inside and up to her door.
Jess stood at the start of the long corridor, the door against her back and her eyes in slits as she strained to see into the darkness in front of her. The corridor was eerily long, had that feeling of stillness in the air as if Death himself was waiting around the corner.
She took a deep breath, trying to remember how she had gotten here and desperately trying to depict where she was before. She was sure she was with Ryan so how come she had ended up here, how come he was nowhere in sight? She reached out for him with her mind, opening it to his distinct thoughts.
It was a blank, wherever he was. He wasn't here.
"I am Jessica Thomson," she muttered to herself, determined to keep that truth about her self in mind unless she forgot about it like everything else. She urged herself on; remembering the lessons the company had veered her through. Do not self-doubt, doubt is the starting cracks in the self and you need your whole self to succeed in what you do.
And she wanted to get out of here, simply said yet not simply done. She wanted Ryan, Ryan to hold her hand as he had done when she had felt like giving up in the training. An easy way to grow up that was, when a nine year old accepts death as the only way out, it takes an even stronger nine year old to lead her the way out.
She took a step forward. A light flickering to the side taking her interest, she followed the light as if re-enacting a scene from a very bad Seventy's horror flick, she was expecting an spine chilling shadow over her shoulder any second.
It took her a matter of seconds to reach the corner; her feet seemed to float and her head felt all light, whatever was going on. It wasn't right, none of this was. She rounded into another corridor, the light bulbs flicked in this, off, on, off, on. She was scared and it felt strange she hadn't had this feeling since she had finished her training; it was like she was feeding off it now; something to keep her going through the chill and the deceiving light.
"I will not run, I will not run," the more she said this the more she thought she would believe it. The corridor ended and a reinforced metal door stood in her way. Her hand went to the handle; it was about this time the sensible part of her mind kicked in; its whispers filled the rational side of her mind.
If there was a metal door like that there, wasn't it most likely there to keep something in or out another strand quipped. She spun around, looking into the shadows every time the light flicked on; she half expected something to be in front of her when the lights flicked back on again. But there was nothing, nothing there but the growing urge to open the door.
Her hands grasped the handle and turned it, it sounded a heavy thud but stayed where it was. She looked around the frame and found intricately made bolts along the edge and what seemed the remains of a heavy lock.
She disregarded it almost immediately and began opening them. When the last one was pulled across she pulled the door open and a blinding light burst through the doorway.
Jess sat up with a gasp of air and was confronted with a distraught Ryan at the foot of her bed.
"Are you alright?" was all he seemed to enquiry.
As she tried to get as much oxygen in her lungs as possible she frantically nodded, "yes, yes, must have been a bad dream. Just a dream."