William had promised me that I'd be put to some sort of use, and he made good on that promise several times over the next years. He refined his drug so that I would appear to be completely normal to anyone that we may encounter, as his little "assignments" were more often than not in public places.

It was not always killing- sometimes it was surveillance, recon, simple observation or straight spying. I didn't mind those types of assignments, although they weren't harmless- all of the missions William forced on me contributed, in one small way or another, to his endless hate of mutants, and his efforts to kill as many of us as possible.

I tried to resist every assignment, but it was useless- the drug was more potent, more powerful than ever before. The redundancy of the office provided to me, along with the endless paperwork, a reprieve of sorts. Yes, I was helping William on his quest to destroy countless innocent lives, but the office was quiet, the paperwork distracting.

It was the killing that gave me the dreams- the image of myself, a monstrosity covered in the blood of innocent people. The first time is always the worst, but don't you ever, ever take that to mean killing gets easier the longer that you do it. For every man or woman that William wanted out of his way, I was the one left to wonder, as I stood over their scarlet-stained bodies, who would miss them when they didn't come home that night. Their lover? Spouse? Children?

It was only for a few moments, in between administrations of the drug, that I would be free to see the world without the serum clouding my eyes. I could hear and see and smell, taste and touch on my own for a few precious minutes. For a five-minute stretch, I could be Yuriko Oyama again; that naïve, gullible child who put so much faith into a man that gave no second thought to killing her father and abusing her in any way he could.

Oh, yes, that part was almost as bad as the killing. I hadn't had any serious boyfriends as I was growing up in Tokyo, I had never "known a man", as is the polite thing to say. To put it more plainly, I had been a virgin before accompanying William on my first assignment- it had been an over-night mission and we had stayed in a hotel room that had one bed…

William had opened the door to our shared room and inwardly, I had balked at the sight of the large bed in the center of the space. He saw me staring at the bed, and noticed my frown. The drug's control over me had not been complete in those early days, I had still been allowed some freedom of facial expression, some movement of body- just not nearly enough to give me half a chance of escape.

"I know you hate me, Yuriko," William had said as he leaned against the window frame, absently gazing down on the world below. Truer words had never been spoken in so simple a way.

"And I know you know what's going to happen tonight, after you've gotten someone out of my way. I won't say I'm sorry, because you know I'm not and I know you wouldn't care even if I was. It doesn't matter, none of it does, because you know you can't change any of it. Get some rest, Yuriko, in a few hours you're going to need your strength."

William's words echoed through my mind for hours after the fact, and I remembered that I had looked over at him as he slept. My thighs were sticky from my blood and our mixed fluids. My body was sore in a way that I'd never before experienced. William had not been gentle, he never had been. I looked at the man sleeping beside me, just as naked as I was, and realized that the drug was wearing off.

William knew when to bend me forward and drip that awful green serum onto my neck- he knew how I hated him. It was growing easier and easier as the seconds ticked by to move my body. The mind was clearing and the body began to respond to my control. I glanced back and forth between William and the clock beside our bed.

Five minutes, ten, fifteen…

I raised my hand and extended the claws. I watched with a detached appreciation as they extended, telescoping from my fingers in silence. Each claw nearly nine inches long, nine inches of indestructible admantium links, locked together to form the talons that had killed a man only hours before.

William had waited for me outside, after disabling the building's security cameras. It had taken a double dose of the serum to make me obey his commands to kill, but in the end I was powerless again. William was there almost like a chaperone- he drove me to the destination, waited for me to finish his task and then drove us back to the hotel.

He couldn't leave behind any evidence of himself at the crime scene, but me- a young woman with no fingerprints in the U.S. criminal records, with no citizenship…I had no name, no face. To anyone that saw me, I was just another Asian woman in a business suit, working in a federal office building.

He had mad the joke of inventing some mutant nickname for me, Lady Deathstryke. The "Deathstryke" deliberately misspelled to reflect William's own last name. It was a way of marrying me to him, to have our names bonded. I hated the nickname, but it helped me to separate myself from what he forced me to do. Lady Deathstryke was that cold-blooded killer, while Yuriko Oyama was the last remaining vestige of innocence, gentleness, and purity.

I held out my hand, marveling at the claws. I held my hand up above William's head, casting a warped shadow on the wall behind us. I had killed a man earlier that night; I could do it again, couldn't I?

Lady Deathstryke was starving for a kill, there was nothing she wanted more than to watch as William gurgled and struggled to breathe…but Yuriko wouldn't allow it.

I'm not a killer, I'm not a killer…I hate you more than I ever thought it was possible, William, but I won't let you corrupt that last part of me, I won't choose to kill!

I lowered my arm and laid back on the pillows. I wouldn't give William the power, the satisfaction of realizing, even in his last moments, that he had made me into a murderer.

I glanced at the clock again and felt the throbbing between my legs, remembering what he'd taken from me. Go ahead, William, take what you can of my body. Like you said, it doesn't matter, because you'll never get my spirit.

I laid my head back on the pillows for a few more minutes, planning to wait for the last of the drug's hold over me to dissipate before leaving the room, and William, forever. There wasn't unanimous hatred of mutant in the United States. I had seen and read about places where mutants were safe, and I planned on heading for the nearest safe haven, just as soon as the drug weakened a little more, a little more…

I cried out in surprise when William reached for me. He took my shoulder and rolled me over, not giving me a chance to even realize what he was doing. He pressed my face into the pillows and I felt the burning drops sink into my skin.

Moments later, I felt the cloud come over my mind. I became Lady Deathstryke again, William's slave, William's puppet killer. William's monster.