Her father held her chin in his hand, grip strong. He brushed his thumb against the tear that rolled down her cheek. "Shh, aniołku, shh," he cooed, hushed voice unable to stop the hiccupping sobs. "I know it hurts, aniołku, I know. But that's what makes us strong."

Anja couldn't stop the sobs, her shoulders shook and her little body trembled. Her veins were burning; she was boiling from the inside out and she couldn't catch her breath. The heat spread and her face grew redder. Her father kneeled in front of her, tutting and sighing as he watched his crumpled daughter whimper and whine. "Stand, Anja," he commanded his daughter, rising to his full height. "You need to learn to deal with the pain, to fight through it, or you'll grow weak."

"Nie mogę ... boli, tato, to boli. Nie mogę," she wailed, snot dripping and eyes squeezed shut.

The boiling of her blood was so consuming and so much that she couldn't even feel the sharp whip of her father's hand across her cheek. "English!" he boomed.

"I…cannot," she forced, foreign words escaping her and gasping for air, wanting it so desperately to rush her lungs and alleviate the pain, to cool her off. She needed water, she needed something.

"You will," he insisted.

So she did, legs trembling as she rose to her height. She couldn't even meet her father's chest. And before her knees had straightened out, a swift kick left her flat on her back once more. "Fight back, Anja, fight back!"

She woke up hot.

Panting and coated in a sleek sweat, Anja scrambled, shooting up out of her bed and searching. Looking for some kind of proof that it was a dream or that it wasn't and she started to calm when she realized that she was still tucked in the corner of her studio apartment. Her chest rose and fell with heavy breaths. Anja didn't really have dreams like that.

A morning dusk fell through the windows; she checked the watch on her wrist to see that it was barely five. She didn't know how much sleep she had gotten but it wasn't enough. Either way, she couldn't fall back asleep. Not with any memories on her mind. Anja shuddered.

Her apartment was just as she left it; her mattress on the floor, pushed into the corner, stacks of plywood pushed up against the wall she used for dagger throwing, a punching bag looming near the kitchen, boxes of her belongings and her clothes and her life savings. It was just a studio, her cluttered kitchen directly across from the piles of clothes she called her bedroom. Anja groaned, rolling off her mattress, bones and muscles aching.

Anja had a side project. One that brought her to New York, like a dog following a scent. Her gig of smashing in the skulls of the sewer rats that called themselves men kept her a little too busy to keep up with it. Anna reached for one of the cardboard boxes she had, filled with loose notebook paper and documents and trash. Her fingers flicked through each paper, eyes hungry.

Eighteen names, thirteen crossed out.

Eyes closed, Anja let out three breaths. Exhaling slowly, controlled and then inhaling quickly and sharply, letting her lungs fill up as quickly as possible. There was a time when that list was all she cared about, when it consumed her. She remembered waking up, eyes dry and head dizzy, strong scents of ash and hot metal still prominent. And she was alone. A dark, grimy room with ugly yellow lighting and spiders that watched her squirm. Anja had looked for them, for a little while, for the men that raised her and trained her and made her lethal. But they hadn't bothered to look for her, and her motivations slowly started to shift. That was the beginning of the end of her Stockholm syndrome. From there, she was out for blood.

Revenge didn't bring her the catharsis she was looking for. She didn't really think it would, anyways. It was more about justice. Intervention when the universe was too slow to take care of things. Anja looked in the mirror, and saw herself as karma incarnent. She made them regret. She tortured men as she delivered them to hell. She was a harpy.

It made her a little drunk with power at first. She got stronger every time her fingers curled around a broad neck and pressed, squeezing the life out of them and watching it drain from their eyes. Anja had to set her limits, to humble herself. She was still only human, after all.

Four of the five remaining names were somewhere in New York. Somewhere lurking in warehouses and studio apartments and dark bars. Electricity prickled in her head, and she shoved the paper in the pocket of her sweatpants. She'd been busy, but she'd make time.

"When are you going to marry my son?"

Anja laughed, a quick bark of disbelieving amusement. She looked down at the older women, eyebrows raised and a sly smile on her face. "Never," she snickered.

The woman tutted, waving a dismissive hand and rattling her IV's with it. "Oh, come on, Anja. He's not that bad."

Anja scoffed, imagining the beer red face and popping veins on Mick's face if he ever heard his mother's end of the conversation. "Yes, he is," Anja insisted, her tone light. She sat down on the edge of her bed and lowered her gaze, giving the woman a serious stare. "Okay, Ms. Hirshman, on a scale of one to ten, rate your pain."

"Are you talking about the cancer, or your very harsh rejection of my son?" she questioned, twisted grin looking misplaced against her sagging and worn down skin.

Anja tapped her fingers against her knee. "Hmm, both."

"I think it averages out at around a six. But it's more so the rejection."

"Of course."

"The cancer gets maybe a three. Two and a half."

Pushing off the bed, Anja let out an exhausted and exaggerated sigh. The bedroom was small, tight and compact and it smelled sterile. It was cluttered with hospital bills and bulky equipment and mountains of pill bottles. Sunlight beamed through the two open windows, letting a gentle breeze and the sounds of a bustling street below into the room. Anja grabbed a heavy black bag off the dresser. The pills rattled at the movement and Anja shuffled through the bag with a dry mouth. She didn't like stealing, but she was good at it, and Mick's mother needed them. Anja fished out three thick, white pills and placed them on Ms. Hirshman's bedside stand. "That's better than last time," she commented, voice smaller now. "Feeling like you maybe wanna walk around? Give those legs a stretch?"

With shaking hands, Ms. Hirshman dropped the three pills in her mouth and swallowed them dry. She shook her head. "These will knock me out; it's the good stuff. I'll have Mick help me out when I wake up."

Anja gave her a side smile. "I'll see you later, Ms. Hirshman."

Her eyes were already fluttering shut. "Anna Hirshman, it sounds nice, doesn't it?"

Anja pursed her lips. "No, it doesn't."

"Hmm. It doesn't."

A small laugh fell from Anja's lips as the older woman let her eyes shut and small snores filled the room, pushing through her nasal tubes.

Mick was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a freshly brewed cup of hot coffee in his hands. As Anja approached, he slid a second mug towards. She caught it with his, bringing it up to her lips with a satisfied hum. "How is she?" Mick questioned, elbows propped up on the counter.

"A little better," Anja answered, tone terse. She had only known the both of them for about a year, but they had become the closest thing she had to a family. Her surrogate mother was dying in her bed. It made her uneasy.

Mick nodded, mouth pressed in a thin line. He didn't like talking about it, so he moved on. "Okay, so," he started, clapping his hands together. "I did some digging, some research. And after countless hours listening to police scanner recordings and digging through public records, I figured it out."

"What'd you figure out?" Anja asked through her small sips of piping hot coffee.

"Well, that little buggy eyed blonde girl squealed like a pig, is what happened."

Anja narrowed her eyes at him. "Watch it."

She got an eye roll back as Mick straightened out. "She got freaked after your meeting with you and ran to the cops. Turned herself in and told them everything. Real Stockholm case, if you ask me," he mumbled, mostly to himself. He cleared his throat. "Fortunately, the only information she had was your street name and our old hotline number. Don't know how or when that ended up being Spider-Man's deal, but she wasn't sent there."

"Huh," Anja let out, hands right around her mug. "They're not prosecuting her, right?"

"Nah," Mick dismissed with a shrug of his shoulders, " they gave her immortality, the way she sang."

"Immunity."

"Yeah."

"You said immortality."

"No I didn't."

Anja rolled her eyes. "Whatever. She give out a description of me?"

"Not a very good one," Mick answered. "Described you as a blonde girl with a blurry face."

"Ha," Anja chuckled, looking down at the thick and brown ends of her hair. "Blonde."

"How'd you make your face blurry?"

She shrugged. "Little trick I picked up in the art of mental manipulation."

"Huh." Mick shook his head. "Anyways, the only information that was let up was that you're a hitman and you have a blurry face. Nothing too concerning."

"Good," Anja nodded, and leaned in towards her cohort. "Alright, Mick, I got a couple of tasks for you."

"Hit me."

Anja reached into her pocket and held a small piece of paper in her fist. "First, figure out why Spider-Man met me in that apartment building instead of the cops. Second, find out what happened to Ronnie Trevino. And third," Anja placed the paper on the counter and pushed it towards Mick. "Find this man."

Apprehensive, Mick grabbed the folded up paper from Anja and held it delicately in his fingers. He unfolded it, eyes scanning over Anja's chicken scratch. " Antoni Broz ," he read aloud, and then looked up at Anja. "What's this about?"

Anja took a sip of her coffee. "Don't worry about it. You'll get paid."

"I'll need your social security number and a blank check from your bank."

Anja narrowed her eyes. "No," she crossed her arms defiantly, staring at Stavros from across his desk in his tiny and cluttered office.

Stavros sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. In front of him was Anja's application. It was a simple, college ruled notebook paper that read, simply, Hire me. She didn't have the patience to fill out the monstrosity that was the real application form that he gave her. "Anja," he started, voice dripping in exasperation.

She was quick with the interjection. "I'm absolutely not giving you my social security number. Not a chance in hell. You know what? I'm backtracking. I don't even have a social security number."

"Everyone has a social security number," he told her, unimpressed.

"Maybe not. I was born in Poland."

Stavros was unimpressed and the bags under his eyes looked just a little darker when he was talking to Anja. "Vaselevsky, please, can this just go smoothly? I need this information to pay you."

Anja shrugged. "Just pay me under the table."

"No," he countered quickly.

"Why not?"

"It's illegal."

"That can't be right," she replied, shaking her hand.

Stavros pressed his palms together. "Please just give me your information."

"I don't even have a bank account."

"You don't have a bank account?"

"What's the point?" Anja questioned with an easy shrug of her shoulder. "I can fit my life savings in a box and no one's stupid enough to steal from me."

He gave her narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow. "How old are you again?"

"Nineteen."

"Nineteen years old and you're already this much of a pain in my ass?" he sighed, pushing up from his seat with a groan and stretching out his limbs. "I'm giving you two weeks to get a bank account. Cash until then but then we get serious. Alright?" He stuck his hand out.

Anja stood, taking his hand and shaking it fiercely. "Deal."

"Tomorrow, three P.M practice. Don't be late."

Anja gave him a wink. "Wouldn't dream of it."