2009
"Bianca! Be careful!" Lyn shouted out the window.
"I am!" Bianca protested.
She glanced up the fire escape to her mother then descended another rung, her hands on either sides of the bars as she lifted herself and swung forward, letting go and leaping onto the flat of the landing. She loved that feeling of being airborne, if only for a few seconds. Her mother, of course, was more concerned about her breaking her neck whilst she bounded down the fourteen floors of the rickety fire escape that led down to the alley next to their apartment building. She reached the base in one piece, brushing her hands across her clothes as she looked for a good spot to play. Seeing a nice, even clearing on the cement she pulled a piece of chalk from her pocket and walked over to it, bending down to draw one line, then another line, and so on until she had a series of boxes stacked one on top of another. Finally she numbered them then cast aside the piece of chalk and dusted her hands. She hopped inside the first three boxes, jumping and planting both feet firmly into the next two linked boxes with one foot in each, hopping once more then landing on both feet again, jumping and spinning herself around before she reversed the routine.
"You're pretty good at that, aren't you?" a voice asked.
Bianca stopped hopping, placing her other foot down as she stared at the spiky-haired man in front of her. He'd appeared silently from nowhere. Bianca squinted briefly as she looked him over.
"What's your name?" he asked, his English accent incredibly thick. She glanced back up the fire escape. The man rolled back his sleeve, holding up his arm to show the Phoenix mark on his forearm. "It's okay, I'm family. My name's Nathan."
"Bianca," Bianca said quickly, her gaze returning to the ground as she continued her game.
"You know when I was your age we used to play that with pebbles or stones," Nathan said. Bianca stopped at the start as he got up and searched around the alley. Finally he came back with a handful of stones and offered them to her. "Here."
Gingerly she took one from his palm, clutching it in her hand as he took a step back. She watched him as he found a stray solid box and pulled it up towards them, taking a seat and watching her expectantly as if he was about to watch a professional sport. Bianca looked at him strangely, taking a step back to look at the chalk outline on the ground.
"Thanks," she mumbled. Her eyes travelled up and down the hopscotch court as she tried to figure out what to do with the stone.
"Just throw it into the first box and pick it up when you return. But you have to stay on one foot – it's a good test of balance."
Bianca glanced over to him before doing as he instructed. The stone bounced and stopped by the back edge of the first box. Bianca hopped to the end of the hopscotch outline, turned, and then hopped back to the first box, leaning over on one foot and snatching the stone into her hand. She hopped outside the box holding the stone firmly in her palm.
"Very good," Nathan complimented. "Now do the same, but in the next box."
Bianca did the same as before, completing the same routine and retrieving the stone. She smiled with satisfaction as she righted herself again. She found the game quite simple, and it was incredibly easy for her to balance.
"You know you're quite graceful when you do that," he commented, looking at her thoughtfully as she picked up the stone and returned to the start again.
"I guess." Bianca shrugged. "It's not that hard."
"Bianca!" Bianca turned her head up as Lyn descended the last of the fire escape and pulled her aside. "Bianca, what did I tell you about talking to strangers?"
"He's not. He's family," Bianca said.
Nathan smiled warmly at Lyn, his forearm upturned enough for her to spy the Phoenix mark. She gave him a brief, pleasant smile back, lowering her voice as she turned back to Bianca.
"Upstairs. Now," she warned with a steely gaze.
Bianca frowned, her gaze drifting to the ground and the stray piece of chalk she had thrown aside earlier. She bent to pick it up as if delaying doing what her mother instructed showed enough defiance to make Lyn change her mind and allow her to stay. Lyn put her hand on the back of Bianca's shoulder, turning and pushing her towards the stairs. Bianca dragged her feet as she headed back, looking over her shoulder towards her mother with disappointment on her face. Slowly she climbed up, stopping when she reached the halfway mark, keeping low and peeking over the edge so that she could see and hear what was going on down below.
"What are you doing here?" Lyn queried as Nathan stood.
"Observing," he answered.
"Observing what?"
He folded his arms, glancing out to the road, his gaze returning to Lyn then moving leisurely up the stairway behind her to see where Bianca had gone. Bianca scooted back, trying to keep out of sight of prying eyes. She didn't want them to spot her spying on them.
"She's very talented, you know," Nathan said. "Why are you hiding her away?"
"I'm not 'hiding' her," Lyn retorted. "I owe my husband's memory enough respect to at least give him his wish regarding her, and I wish you people would stop trying to change my mind."
Nathan shrugged. "It was just a suggestion. The rest of us were all out in the field by her age."
"I know."
"I just don't understand what your problem is with it."
"I don't have a problem with it. I just explained to you why I haven't let them recruit her."
An ear-piercing shriek suddenly sounded from the end of the alley. Nathan jerked his head at the sound, Lyn jumping almost ten feet in the air at the shock and surprise of it. Up on the fire escape, Bianca cowered down with her hands over her ears feeling as if her eardrums were about to burst.
The high pitched noise soon stopped as a siren uncloaked herself before the pair. She wore a tight leather catsuit and her ruddy coloured hair fell about her shoulders as she strolled closer to the two.
"Oh, fuck, she followed me," Nathan groaned.
He powered up an energy ball, and Lyn did the same. Nathan threw his first and the Siren waved her arm, sending it away before it reached her. Lyn threw hers and the Siren ducked a little as she walked closer, the ball sailing just over her right shoulder.
"You really need to learn to be more stealthy," Lyn hissed at him.
Nathan raised his hands, circling them around each other as he tried to create something a little more powerful. Lyn was less about the play and more about getting the job done. She conjured herself an athame and threw it towards the siren. Bianca watched it tumble end over end before it lodged itself in the Siren's forehead. There was a brief moment of silence hushing over the area, and then the Siren gave one last screech as she was engulfed by flames, nothing left of her but ashes.
"Hey, that was my kill!" Nathan protested.
"You were taking too long," Lyn said and sighed. "Now if you don't mind, I think I should be getting back to my daughter."
Lyn turned from him and began walking back towards the fire escape, her foot on the bottom step as she pulled herself up.
"Wait," Nathan said. She looked back over to him and he flicked his fingers, a manila folder appearing in his hand. "I was meant to bring you this. It's your next target."
Lyn dropped back to the ground, strolling over to him and taking the folder from his hands. She opened it slowly with the other hand as she balanced it, browsing over the contents inside.
"You should have just told me this was why you were here in the first place," she said.
"I could have done that, but then I would have missed out on all the fun of fighting the she-witch that was after me."
"Running from a target?" she asked, her eyebrow rising as she glanced back at him.
"No, just a little distraction tactic," he replied with a wink.
"Just keep my daughter out of it."
Nathan raised his hands. "Okay, I'm going! No more bad guys."
He shimmered out and Lyn pulled the folder towards her chest, sighing deeply. Looking back up the fire escape she decided to shimmer up to her apartment instead. Seeing her mother disappear, Bianca quickly got to her feet and raced the rest of the way to their flat, stumbling as she almost tripped and fell numerous times in her rush to beat her back there.
"Bianca!" Lyn called, shimmering back into the living room and seeing her daughter not there.
Bianca froze with her hands on the windowsill. She could see her mother inside, but Lyn had yet to spot her still on the fire escape. She decided to see if she could do the same as her mother, closing her eyes and concentrating hard on being elsewhere, like her bedroom. When she opened her eyes she had shimmered in behind her bed, relieved to see her door closed. She scooped the colouring book off the bed and headed for the door, opening it and walking into the living room looking as innocent as she could.
"I was just looking for some coloured pencils," she said.
Lyn placed the folder down on the edge of the coffee table, heading over to the small red basket in the corner and pulling out a pencil case. She unzipped it as she returned, handing it to Bianca as the young girl squirmed her way in-between the coffee table and the lounge, opening the book onto the wooden surface in front of her.
"Open your eyes next time," Lyn said as she placed it in front of her.
Bianca stared up at her mother, wondering if she had caught her after all. She seemed to have a sixth sense for things, so it didn't surprise her that perhaps her mother had known without even seeing her shimmer out before.
Lyn disappeared around the corner as she headed into her own bedroom, returning and shrugging on a dark coloured jacket that stretched all the way down to the floor. In her absence, Bianca reached out guardedly towards the manila folder and lifted the cover open. Inside was a pile of black and white surveillance photos, and a few pieces of paper. The one on top was a profile of the man in the pictures, and underneath that an itinerary of his movements. Everything was clipped together neatly with a metal paperclip up the top. Hearing Lyn close her bedroom door, Bianca snatched her hand back, letting the folder fall closed again. She turned her attention back to the book in front of her, and looked up from the page she was colouring in as her mother returned, stopping the pencil in mid-stroke as she eyed her mother.
"Are you sending me to Aunt Kate's?" Bianca asked, disheartened to see her mother was going out again.
"Only for a little while," Lyn said.
"Which means all night," Bianca grumbled as she returned back to colouring in.
"Bianca!"
"Well you're never home. It's true!" Bianca exclaimed, trying hard not to look up at her mother, instead peeking up at her from the corner of her eye as she moved the pencil more violently over the page.
"I have a job to do, Bianca. If I stayed here all the time you wouldn't have a roof over your head. You have to understand that."
Feeling guilty for sniping at her mother and inevitably on the verge of arguing with her, Bianca fell completely silent as she worked away on the picture, still making strokes hard enough to almost put a hole through the paper.
"Why do you kill people?" Bianca asked softly. Glancing up to her mother she could see she was stunned at having been asked such a thing, especially by her young daughter who up until now had appeared oblivious to the whole thing.
"It's not a matter of choice. It's a family legacy," Lyn explained. She crouched down at the other end of the coffee table, turning her wrist over and pulling up her sleeve. "Every Phoenix is born with this mark on their wrist. The mark of the Phoenix. It's a lifestyle. Every one of us get trained as assassins. And it's not just me, it's that man in the street, it's your Aunt Kate, even your father was one. We're all part of it."
"Even me?"
"Even you."
Feeling a little scared at the thought of being thrust into such a lifestyle, Bianca's gaze fell back down to the page in front of her. She picked up another colour, and this time was making lighter and more meticulous strokes just inside the lines. She could feel her mother watching her, her stare almost burning into her. She tried to ignore that uncomfortable feeling, knowing her mother still hadn't moved.
"Does it hurt?" Bianca asked finally, her concentration still firmly fixed on keeping just inside the lines, although she had a million and one unrelated thoughts running through her head.
"Does what hurt?"
"When you kill someone."
Lyn smiled at the worried expression of her daughter, lifting herself just enough to sit on the edge of the table and scooting closer to her. She wrapped a hand around her head and pulled her closer, kissing the top of her hairline.
"Honey, you don't have to worry about that," she said soothingly. "Not now."
"But…" Bianca started. "What does it feel like? To kill?"
"You want me to tell you?" Lyn questioned. Bianca nodded. With no other way to ease her mind or stop her questioning, Lyn plastered that pleasant fake smile onto her face that she was so used to doing and doing well and said to her daughter: "Sweetie, that's the best part about it. You don't feel a thing."