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Chapter 5: Sacred Scared

Anastasia

oOo

Location: Four Horsemen's Mansion, Crows Landing, Florida, USA
City Population: 248
Current time: 6:57 am, Eastern
Current date: June 3, 2013
Current alias: None

"So. Who wants to be the first to ask our special guest a question, class?"

The question hung in the air for a while, and I was afraid for a minute… about what exactly? Maybe they had no questions, or they didn't want to know the answers. And they had and if they did, then would they like the ones I gave?

Irrational, Anastasia.

But it was Daniel who finally spoke up.

"You left a note on that bench it said… ah..." He snapped his fingers in the air and popped his eyes open as if he's suddenly figured out the answer to the final round of Jeopardy. "You were leaving… somebody, some organization. Weird name?"

"Yes, they had a weird name and yes, I left. Next question."

"What, you're not going to elaborate?" Reeves asked.

"No."

"No?"

"No. If you had asked me to tell you the story, I would have. I said I would answer you questions, and I just answered his, so ask away."

Reeves chuckled a little, and it sounded much too girly for my liking. "If you hadn't just tried to kill me, I would say I thought I was going to like you."

I smirked. "Shall I translate that into 'why the hell are you here?'" They didn't say anything, but stared at me expectantly. "The Eye hired me to train you and to protect you for on this mission, and then I'm gone. I was told by the recruiter that I was to test your abilities when I first met you (and by this I mean surprise attack), I wasn't to inflict any injuries that wouldn't show in a week, and that is exactly what I did. Though clearly you two didn't get the memo," I said, glaring at Wilder and Atlas.

"We were never told the memo, so there was no reason for us to get it. Like you said: 'surprise attack'." I stayed silent and glared as I resisted the urge to wipe the grin off Wilder's face. "Wow, you holed up fast."

"Well, nobody plans a murder out loud, do they? I've already come up with twelve ways to take you out, all of them without even getting up off this bench."

"You've got a broken wrist!"

"I was going to give you a nasty look but I'm afraid you already have one." He rolled his eyes, and I was fast realizing how childish this was. "Keep on doing that. Maybe you'll find a brain back there."

McKinney was the next to make a remark. "Where have you been all my life?"

"Hiding, running, hiding. Stepping on cockroaches, because the little buggers are everywhere. Although, I do believe they are called 'Palmetto Bugs' in the south." I decided his laugh was scary-close to Kevin Kline's.

Dylan, I guess, was still trying to figure everything out and had missed the whole exchange. "Wait, Black hired you to do this job? That's why you're here? I told him to hire someone he knew was experienced enough to do it!"

Trying not to think of this as an insult and just him not knowing about my past, I looked down at the floor and picked at the ice, finding it easier now to move my previously immobilized fingers. "He does know I'm qualified to do this job because he trained me for more years than I can count."

I could feel Dylan's eyes burning holes into the side of my face.

"You... you used to work for The Caste? Like him?"

"The Caste?" McKinney asked skeptically. "Never heard of it."

"And you wouldn't have," I responded sourly. "Based in New York City, but operate all over the country, and rumour has it that they've gone international." About time, Diablo. "Anybody who's anybody with common sense knows to stay away from them, and anybody unlucky enough to cross their paths are either killed or recruitedd. And after their time is up, they're either retired and then killed. Nasty business."

Dylan was still staring at me, unable to get a grip and form a coherent sentence.

"But… what do they do? I mean, they can't have gone international if they weren't a big enough operation with a big enough cause," Reeves questioned, her eyebrows knitting together on her forehead and it wrinkled up like wrapping paper.

I sighed, more than a unwilling to explain in detail, so I kept it vague. "There are assassins, spies,undercover agents, doctors and weapons engineers. Nobody who works for them has any record of ever existing, and if they ever did, it's been erased and they've been given a new name."

"Okay… we still don't know what you," I raised an eyebrow at McKinney, "they did."

"Found, killed and erased any magician or any genius mastermind who had heard tell even a lick about who they are or what they do. Me, specifically? I trained for over ten years for the killing part. But not the kids out on the streets trying to steal wallets and thought they knew how to fool a crowd into thinking they could pull a bunny out of a hat, but those who actually had a gift. "

"A gift?"

"Real magic. Like y'all, with the whole FBI scandal and whatnot. That's why The Eye and The Caste have such a problem. They're the yin to each other's yang. Except… without the 'living in peace and harmony' part of that. The really wasn't the best analogy... "

"Did you just say 'y'all'?"

Oh yeah. McKinney and I were gonna get along great. "Oh, please, New Yorker boy, I've been down here longer than you have."

At last, Dylan's mouth had stopped opening and closing like a fish out of water and managed to spit out a few words. "They told me you worked for a secret organization, but they never said anything about you being trained as an assassin or working for The Caste!"

"Well, Dylan, it's not like you could have done anything anyway!"

He didn't say anything else after that. I knew he wanted to help me, and I knew that he couldn't, but I still blamed him—partly. He (or Dad) could have done something, anything, that wasn't me being left with her old boss. Not, of course, that they knew who the old boss was. But then Dad died and Mom abandoned Dylan and we were both on our own.

But she hadn't wanted me. I was the second child, the weak little girl that couldn't accomplish anything. The screw-up. And so I was raised for only a short amount of time, long enough that everybody else would think they loved me but not long enough that I would remember any of their faces.

I was yanked from my thoughts when Atlas, ever arrogant and clueless, decided to step in. Sort of glad he did.

"So, how did you get out of there? Yes, I am now asking you to elaborate."

Never mind.

"Gee, you really want to hear that story, don't you?"

"Hey, you were the one that said you would answer our questions. And I think we deserve it after you launched up with a surprise attack," Wilder said.

"Just. Doing. My. Job," I hissed through clenched teeth. I shook my head and moved on, trying to begin hastily, not wanting to dwell too much on all that I had done. I was still ashamed and afraid. Broken, some might say, but it sounded a little extreme to me.

"I threw everything I needed into a duffel bag, which turned out not to be very much, and I went to the security room like nothing was off. Three security cameras, two guards (one of them drunk) and seven types of security between me and the office, more than some of them illegal in the country. The guard that wasn't passed-out-drunk was about my age and an insufferable flirt. I picked his card replaced it with my dorm key. I went in and told them that Black, then my Unit Leader, needed a Band Code."

"What's a band code?" Atlas asked.

I looked him in the eye and cocked my head. "Oh, tell me you don't remember," I said snarkily. It was my other wrist, luckily, that had the Band on it, and when I stretched my arm to pull back my sleeve, only a few of my tats were visible below the cuff of the leather. I showed it to Atlas, who obviously remembered it now.

"We call 'em 'choke chains'. The farther out of reach you get or the louder you bark, the harder the owner yanks the leash."

"Euphemism?"

"Nah, not really," I said to McKinney. "Another analogy, but that one was better." He nodded, silent chuckles rippling in his stomach. "The centerpiece, otherwise known as the collar, has wires injected into your skin and into your bones that can twist enough not to cause any damage when you're bones grow or break or you dislocate a wrist," I stated, glaring at Atlas.

I only wished his look was anywhere close to sheepish, but instead, he look proud to know what I was talking about, even continuing for me. "And if you say anything, do anything or go too far out of your regulated area, then you get a shock equivalent to that of a low setting on an electric chair."

I closed my eyes briefly in frustration but continued anyway. "Yes. And the only way to get the Band off is with the Band Code."

"Well, you got it, didn't you?" Dylan asked, an amount of protectiveness showing in his voice and his body language that was more than I thought I would ever see from another person on my behalf. "The Band Code?" I nodded. "Then why is it still on?"

"Well, it's not exactly like I can just take it out. The Band Code doesn't allow you to take it off. It programs, resets and unlocks the Band, by which I mean it makes it unusable unless it's turned back on. Only Unit leaders have access to the Codes for exactly that reason."

"So how did you get yours?"

"Because I had just been informed that I was becoming a Unit leader." Silence, which I once again translated into more than just one simple question with an answer that was equally sophisticated. "They appointed me just before my vacation, saying it was a birthday present and that they thought I was ready. Black was stepping down from his duties and had put in a good word for me to take his spot."

"Why?" Reeves asked. She always chose the strangest moments to interject.

"Because he's Black and he had a crush on me. And because, not to brag, I was the best he'd ever trained. So I was put in charge, all the information was transferred over and I had access to just about anything I wanted."

"Including the Band Codes," Atlas and I said at the same time, irritating me to no end.

"Right. I got on vacation, met you, decided to leave that night. I got into the security room, and nobody was there to watch me except for a few cameras. After I'd gotten my code, I hacked the system in order to turn off my Band without setting off any alerts and made it so that I was the only one who could turn it back on again. I rigged it up with many, many, many different hoops to jumps and passwords to crack that it's one-hundred percent impossible to get back into."

"But wasn't there somebody higher up than you that could override it?"

I smiled, proud of my genius plan. "Not if you get into his system, too, and turn off the warning systems and erase any files or anything there might have been on the hacker."

"You erased yourself?"

"Well, it's not like it's much different from how I was before. Now, it's just that there's no way that any person on the face of the planet, including The Caste, had any record of you being born, living, getting books from a library… only live witness statements that they'd met a girl that looked like me, though they might not even know her by her real name."

"And then you skipped town?"

"Jumped on a taxi that very day and paid him a grand in twenties and fifties I'd borrowed from rich people over the years and told to take me as far out of the state as he could take me and never speak a word of me to anybody." I shrunk my arm back up and the sleeve slipped down once more to hide the only remaining evidence I had (besides a weapon or two and the memories) that I'd been a part of that life.

"Started calling myself Maggie Ray and went as far away from those people as I could. Been five years since, and I finally was found by a moron who can't hold his tongue and isn't even a part of The Caste anymore."

Nobody said anything. "And a hush falls over the crowd," I whispered dramatically. Not even a little chuckle broke the humming of the air conditioning, though I thought I saw Atlas' shoulders bounce a bit when I said it.

Dylan was the one to kill the awkward silence. I think he just made it even more awkward.

"How on Earth can you be joking around when we're all looking at that thing that they put on you, Anastasia?"

The sound of his mortified and protective voice caused me to laugh, which just made him look more upset.

"Because I, unlike you, am capable of making a joke in even the toughest of situations. Deal with it. If you want to sympathize, do so in your head. I've had enough it every time somebody asks and I feel worthy of giving them the sob story that makes me sound like an escaped mental patient."

Dylan looked like he wanted to say something else, but I guess my look was enough to silence him.

"Am I allowed to ask a question?" McKinney asked more than a little sarcastically, and I grinned, waving my free hand with a flourish.

"Yeah, go right ahead."

"What did you do after you escaped?"

"I hitchhiked south across the country for five years after the day I ran away—that was my sixteenth birthday. I made small cash at fancy hotels in need of a piano player and a little street tricks here and there. Oh, and of course there's always pickpocketing. Never stayed in one place for too long. I know they're still looking for me, and unless The Eye can do anything about it, then I'm still in more danger than you all."

"What a way to make a living," he exclaimed with a mocking glint in his eye and a cynical tone to his voice. "And I thought I was doing poorly!"

"Yeah, tell me about it. A new name fro every new county, and I could never use the same one twice. My just near exploded a few times trying to think one up on the spot."

He let out a low whistle. "So you're only..." he put his fingers to his head as if trying to read my mind, "twenty-one? You're Jack's age?"

I shrugged, laughing quietly at his antics (sixteen plus five equals twenty-one. Seriously?) and looked over at Wilder who was once again staring at me.

"You really can't keep your mouth shut, can you, Wilder?"

He promptly snapped his jaw together, looking a little embarrassed.

"I lived on the streets for a while, too," he managed.

"Don't say you know what it's like, because you don't. You're Bill Gates compared to what I have. I mean,you're the Four Horsemen... plus Dylan Rhodes, as he is being called now. Still don't know why you took the name, Dylan." I shook my head, glancing at him again.

"I'm so sorry. I—"

"Stop saying you're sorry. I can't take it anymore! I know you are, and I am, too. But nothing is going to change what happened by apologizing. Neither of us could have done anything about anything that happened to anybody, specifically you or me. I would change the course of history." I smiled; "'The City on the Edge of Forever' from Star Trek: The Original Series can explain that to you if you need a shot of Einstein-esque explaining on the side."

I saw a glimmer of something I had never truly seen in someones eyes before, not directed at me: pride. My big brother was proud of me, even with all the mistakes I had made.

He pulled me into a hug, and for once I thought that maybe, just maybe, I would be safe. Here with him, in his arms, I could at least pretend that everything was going to be alright for once.

It seemed too fake to be real, and I found that my personal hole of black, black, black and everything I would never understand had finally got right up behind me.

"I missed you, Dylan," I whispered.

"I missed you too, Anastasia."

In one sentence, my heart to overcome my brain, I forgave him, and I fell backwards over the edge, everything above me and everything I could wrap my head around was gone, mixing in with the black that was swallowing me up, pulling me down.

And I didn't know how to make it stop. And I was scared.