Getting there…

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Anne was in the lead again and was very conscious of the people behind her. Why did they have to be here? This was a private matter between her and Ace, wasn't it? There was no point, having them here. She was only inconvenienced by them, by having to keep them out of what trouble was to come. If she had any chance of being obeyed, she'd order them to go back to the plant and wait for her return, but she wasn't vain enough to think that they would listen. Her thoughts circled round and round on themselves, a protective camouflage to mask the fact that she was prepared to kill someone that she loved.

Dwelling on that would do no good, and might actually harm her ability to respond. Ace was all grown up now, and if this was how she chose to act then she would need to learn how to accept the consequences. Sadly, you just couldn't let someone go about taking lives and pretend that just stopping them from doing it again was enough. Unless they personally changed the only thing that would stop them was having their right to life stripped from them.

She knew very well how hard it was to stop killing once you decide that it's an acceptable response. How easy taking a life can be, and how the soul just goes away for a while in self-defense. Maybe she could stop Ace before the girl grew hard and cold, but what if she was too late? What if only a killer met her today, a killer wearing the body of the girl that had stolen her heart? What if she had to kill someone that she could never stop loving?

She didn't lie and tell herself that life could not be so cruel, that she would not find someone to love just to have to end it. Life could be that cruel and often was. Especially to her. It was nothing more than a fact, no emotions attached, no pity or pain. Likely the worst possible thing would happen just because it almost invariably did. She would go on regardless, just as she always did.

All of these thoughts lurked in the recesses of her mind, not lingered upon, not acknowledged, but present all the same. Her ill-temper was her only shield against having to think things through, and if she did that she might not be able to make herself go through with this. Better to stay mad, to focus on things that didn't matter.

Then even those thoughts were pushed aside by ones of greater import. Something twitched and her brain responded, categorizing and assessing the threat. Shadows moved along the floor, gliding, pressed close to the concrete, hiding in the dust that lingered in the corners. Focusing on them, Anne noticed with a hint of relief that they were just dogs.

Dogs, but not tame ones. A pack, and one unmoderated by any human contact, these dogs were either feral litters whelped in this very building or abused victims that had finally fled to the streets to find a home with others of their ilk.

Anne didn't even try to stop her lip from curling. Hiding out in a pack of dogs? What a place to call home, and an ironically fitting place for the child to have gone to ground. These animals were hardly worthy of the name. Stripped by man of the characteristics that make the wolf noble, then stripped again of their place by a man's side, these animals were little more than a pack of mangy cowards. What a fitting place for Ace to hide, she thought, sneer deepening.

One of the hounds that watched their passage had been abused. Threatened and beaten by the human members of his pack, he had been left behind to fend for themselves when they moved to another city. Falling in with this pack, he survived his time on the streets and thrived enough to keep greeting another new dawn, but no passage of days or years could erase the memory of the abuse that had been heaped on him in his youth.

Here, his home, where it was safe from the humans that had always been a hazard to him, here paraded a pack of them, walking in as if there was no threat. A soft growl rumbled in his throat as he pondered the threat that they posed. Humans were pain, were hits and bruises, sticks and clubs and rocks. He couldn't bear that they were here, was sure that they were only here to bring pain and throw things and hurt, and with that thought he gathered his legs beneath him and launched himself at the first human to come his way.

Anne barely had time to register the threat before she reacted. In her years as an assassin many of her targets had kept dogs as a bit of added insurance. Big, vicious dogs that were trained and tortured into being cold killers, they were supposed to be some sort of deterrent. Sadly for her targets, and even more so for the poor dogs, it was easy to reach into the mind of an animal and disrupt brain functions. Anne had perfected the thought-quick technique of sliding between the synapses and ceasing all function. Killing them with a thought, essentially, and the worst threat that they ever were to her was when they had already launched themselves at her. If they hit she got bruises.

This dog was no different. That same move came to her as if the years between her last time and this were no more than days. What she had drilled into herself long enough to be reflex still remained, and the dog died almost before his front paws left the ground.

Those behind her noticed that something had happened but not quite what, seeing only a flicker of movement before the threat had ceased. Knives knew that it involved a trick but not much beyond that, and he stared at the body as they passed, sparing a thought to wonder what else she knew and hadn't passed on.