I, ASSASSIN

Chapter Seventeen

Remy LeBeau did not sleep again that night; every time he closed his eyes, the vivid visions of his nightmare returned, darker and more fierce, closer than ever before, flashes of things he'd never forget again until the day he died. He lay there, unable to force himself to turn the light off now, eyes on the door in case anyone might come in to make him pay the price that the man in the woods had.

It didn't matter how much Marius had tried to justify that act, murder was murder. Whether that man had raped, tortured, murdered and dismembered those women in cold blood, nothing was deserving of that kind of torment. Remy wanted to feel it was deserved, wanted to feel like it served the guy right for his acts (or the acts the Assassins claimed he had committed) but after seeing the carnage that had been left in their own brand of justice...he just couldn't find it in himself to agree.

This is what you're a part of now, these are the sick fucks you are associated with now, Remy shuddered, eyes locked on the doorknob, sometimes wondering if he was imagining that it moved slightly in his paranoia that he may be next.

When they find out you ain't got murder in you...that's gonna be you out there, he reminded himself, fear juddering down every bone, stiffening his spine, making his blood turn to ice. When they find out you can't do this...they're gonna have to get rid of you, and maybe Jean-Luc and Henri too.

When five am came, he forced himself out of bed, showered again, still convinced he could smell decay all about him, and then went out to run around the perimeter of the Boudreaux's land; he'd hoped a little parkour would help to alleviate some of the anxiety he was feeling but all it did was leave him with tired legs, worse-feeling blisters, and the stink of sweat as well as rotting flesh. All the while, he felt observed like germs in a Petri dish, like someone was watching him through the lens of a microscope, studying his every move, waiting to see what he would do.

Waiting to dissect me, he thought uneasily, despite his body was flushed from the run, he felt cold at the thought.

A cramp in his right calf caught him on the last leg of the return back to the house, and he had to stop to sit on an abandoned toaster oven that someone had ditched out there, the thing made a sturdy enough seat at least.

He glanced at the display on his phone, he'd run a timer to see how long it would take to get all the way round the perimeter and back, he wanted to improve on the time, he thought it'd help to set goals, try to distract himself. He wasn't running to a goal, he was running from what might happen, and the thought still shook him as much as he tried to let it not bother him.

He paused the timer, his eyes catching the notification at the top of the phone display advising he had a text message.

Remy went to his messages to check, seeing that there was a message from Bella Donna, asking where he was.

Remy stared down at the message, feeling torn between wanting to answer, to talk to someone who might somehow understand this messed up situation he was in, and the very shrewd part of him that wondered if this might be some kind of trap. What if Marius was at the other end of that phone, trying to catch him out? Wanting to set him up and catch him in the act?

Instead, Remy ignored the message entirely, feeling it might be better safe than sorry. He pocketed the phone in his shorts and he hunched over to rub his calf; the muscle was taut and sore and he clenched his teeth as he massaged it vigorously to try and get the pain to ease off.

Pain was just another obstacle he had to overcome, and he had no choice but to overcome it. It was overcome it or fail, and failure wasn't an option here.

Get it together, harden yourself, do whatever it takes to make it through, and do what you do best, lie through your back teeth like nothin' ever bothers you, Remy told himself. You know how to do this, you know how to fool people, this ain't no difference. Act the part, fool them now, figure out later how to get out.

With a grunt of frustration for the situation he was in, he drew his cigarette packet from the left pocket of his shorts, he flipped the top open and gazed in, a sigh escaping his lips that there weren't any in there.

By the time he had made it back to the house it was almost six fifteen, he limped his way to the second shower of the morning, and dressed, grabbing the clothes from yesterday he'd dumped into a black plastic refuse sack on his way out of his room. If he was going to deal with this, he had to have cigarettes, he needed something to take the edge off. He left the bag on the porch, deciding he wasn't quite ready to burn the clothes yet. He needed a cigarette first.

It felt good climbing onto his Harvey Davidson Road King for the first time in over a week, the seat was warm from the hot morning sun and there was something almost comforting about that. At least something felt the same, felt familiar and reliable and almost safe. The nearest place to get cigarettes was almost ten miles away, and the route was scenic and pleasant.

For one moment, as he thought of his destination at the twenty-four hour gas station (the only place to get gas between the parish and the nearest town), it struck him that he could just keep going. Stop and get gas, make sure he had enough to get far enough to somewhere where he could dump the bike and get something else to drive between there and...and where?

Could skip off to Europe, I suppose, he thought, then scolded himself angrily. NO! Don't be so fucking stupid, there'll be a chapter of the Guild in every major country.

It struck him if he was going to do that, he'd have to do far more than just take off without thought. It'd take planning, he realised with a frown. Probably have to stay in the guild a year, maybe two or three, find out where all the other guilds are located, look for holes, for gaps out of their radar where no one would find me.

Of course, it also struck him that if he did that, his adoptive father and brother would pay the price for his treachery.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, he thought as he rode the bike up to the gas station, settling at a pump. There was an eighteen wheeler blocking most of the pumps, the sixty-ish driver in leather pants, a leather waistcoat and no t-shirt was thumping the wheels of his rig checking the pressure, a bad smokers cough bothering him.

He looked like the type to make trouble, as so many of the people who frequented this stop did. Remy knew this area well, look at someone the wrong way around these parts, and it usually ended in a brawl, broken teeth, a bashed in face, and a flick knife in the gut. The people in this neck of the woods were selective in who they associated with, they didn't like people of any colour (other than white, that was), and they definitely didn't like mutants.

Remy stood for a moment, pushing his sunglasses up his nose to hide his mutant eyes.

A woman who looked like she didn't belong there was getting out of a rather ostentatious silver Lexus, she seemed to be in her early forties and looked ridiculous in an expensive pristine white suit, oversized gold jewellery and designer sunglasses, platform heels too dressy for a road-side gas station in the back of beyond at seven-thirty in the morning, her blonde hair was filled out with extensions (he could see the combs poorly put in) and held hard with too much hairspray so that even the slight breeze didn't shift the curls.

Remy realised she must have been desperate for gas to have stopped here; this was one of the diciest gas stations in the locale, local gangs frequented here (mostly meth-head bikers) and most women (and some men) knew enough not to come here on their own. Many a young woman had gone missing from this gas station in the past decade. Remy wondered if any of them might have been victim to the man whose corpse he'd seen in the woods.

As she opened her Louis Vuitton wallet (retrieved from a matching bag), Remy saw that the money flap was thick with bills.

"You'll get yourself robbed, wavin' that much money about in these parts," Remy commented calmly to her, leaning back against the bike, thinking perhaps he should wait just to see if the truck driver might have caught a whiff of the money, or if any local gangs were lurking about. If she was about to get robbed, he'd at least be gentlemanly enough to try and stop it.

The woman lowered her sunglasses to look at him, her expression one of disgust as she looked him up and down in his torn at the knee jeans and his faded Jim Beam t-shirt and scuffed Doc Martens. She snorted in contempt of him, removed her black credit card from the wallet and slipped it into pump (there was a large sign on the side of the pump labelled 'pay as you pump', which someone had crudely spray-painted over the u in pump with the letter 'i' to turn it into 'pay as you pimp').

Remy laughed inwardly, and folded his arms casually as he stood watching her, she was either so completely in the dark about where she was or too arrogant to care, she gave that nonchalant and almost cold air of being bullet proof, and untouchable. He observed carefully as she pushed her PIN number into the machine. 8520. It was easy to memorise, the numbers went straight down the middle of the keypad.

Idiot, he thought. No one in their right mind has an obvious pin number like that and not bother to hide it.

Remy made himself look busy by pretending to gas up his Harley as she was filling her car, he watched her from his peripheral vision, noting how she huffed, he felt her throwing him a dirty look, the kind of look that said 'you're scum'.

That's fine, he thought, amused. His eyes fell upon her little dog in the front seat of the Lexus, it was standing with it's paws on the edge of the passengers side door, leaning outside the open window panting in the heat. A little blonde Pomeranian with a rather dazzling and ridiculous diamonte collar, black little evil eyes, and sharp little vicious teeth.

As the woman was trying to get her receipt to come out of the printer in the pump, Remy took a playing card from the deck in his back pocket, and tore the corner off. He folded it up, making sure it weighed just enough for the purpose he needed it for. It didn't take much effort to charge the tiny folded piece of cardboard up, barely any concentration at all required. And with the blonde's back still turned to her shining Lexus, Remy flicked the piece of cardboard towards the open window; it shot into the car and hit the pristine dash with a loud pop as the kinetic energy he'd focused into the cardboard exploded without trace.

The tiny dog let out a shrill yelp, and leapt out of the window on the drivers side, and the blonde gave a gasp and yelled the dogs name – just as ridiculous as everything else about the silly bitch - "Muffin!"

Muffin took off running down the dusty road, and the woman, forgetting what she was doing, started attempting to run in her ridiculous gold platform stilettos, crying after the dog, whistling, stumbling on the uneven ground.

Remy knew exactly where the security cameras locked onto the ceiling pointed; every time he'd ever gone into station to purchase cigarettes he'd always made note of the TV monitor behind the counter, four different images of the six pumps. But there was one blind spot, and it was just convenient he'd parked there today.

With a smug grin, Remy grabbed the woman's black credit card hastily from the machine she'd been using and slipped it into the one he was parked at, briefly checked that she was nowhere near to see, then proceeded to tap in her PIN number; the authentication went through easily, and Remy filled the tank up quickly while watching as the woman crossed the road, almost getting herself hit by a slow driver in a red flatbed.

His purchase completed, he slipped the card from the pump hastily, tore the printed receipt from the machine and he leaned into the Lexus to slip the receipt into her glove compartment. With any luck, she'd never realise, especially not if she had the receipt right there to prove it.

As he was putting the black credit card back into the pump she'd been using, he saw that her bag and wallet had fallen to the ground in her haste to chase after her previous Muffin, and he knelt down to pick them up, glancing through the open wallet to see the stack of cash there, there must have been more than three grand of bills in there, all fifties. Shrugging, he took a single fifty from the wallet, closed it, and placed it back into her bag. He certainly had the opportunity to take more money...in fact, he could have taken the entire contents of the wallet if the mood had taken him, but there were certain rules to being a Thief, the things Jean-Luc had taught him the same day he'd caught him pickpocketing in New Orleans when Remy had been a boy.

The man he'd picked to rob from was wiry, gaunt faced and deeply tanned, a pencil moustache and a scraggly thin hair tied in a ponytail. He looked as average as anyone else on that street, he didn't stand out, he didn't look extraordinary. He was the exact type Remy always went for; easy pickings.

There were plenty of richer looking marks out in the street, but Remy knew they were the cautious types. The richer they were, the harder they were to steal from, he'd learned that fairly early on once he'd run away from the Orphanage and made it further into the city. The wealthy tended to guard their money greedily in inside pockets of coats, in bags held tightly to their hips. Some didn't carry cash at all, only credit cards. Remy was young, he didn't know how to use a credit card...and he was almost certain if he tried the police would be called for immediately.

Remy was taking a chance being out at this time of day, it was November, and it was barely eleven am, which was the wrong time for children to be out in the streets on a school day; all it took was one person to notice an eight year old wandering around unsupervised in a busy street on a school day during school hours and there would be calls to the police, to social services.

He'd already avoided being caught three times in October.

It was a risk he'd had to take this day, he was starving. The money he'd stolen three days before had all dried up in junk food and arcades. What little had been left, he'd given in exchange for shelter. He'd need more if he expected to have a roof over his head tonight. Twenty dollars a night...it was extortionate of course, but what choice did he have? There were rumours the kid – whose name he had never asked – was going to hike the price up to forty. Remy wasn't sure what the money was being used for as the kid never brought any food in and all he ever seemed to do was sit there staring at the wall most of the time in a dazed fashion.

He was working his way through the busy street of people hustling and bustling to and fro towards restaurants, stores, and businesses, chatting on their colour-screen cellphones (everyone seemed to have one nowadays, he almost envied that although he had no one to call) and hailing cabs.

The thin man was just near enough now, he had the right clothes; a loose fitting thin waterproof jacket, the pocket hanging slightly open and the peek of a black leather wallet barely visible.

Remy held his breath nervously, something he always did before he attempted to pick anyone's pocket; the attempt to be silent, hands moving closer as he picked up the pace just a little. He'd lift, grab it and stop, and if he'd judged it just right by that jacket and that pocket, the wallet would slide right out without the tall thin man noticing anything had happened at all. He'd have left the area before he noticed it was gone with any luck.

Remy wasn't sure how the man knew it was going to happen, but somehow he just had; it was just as his fingers grazed the soft black leather of that wallet that faster than lightning his wrist was in a vice-like grip and he'd been swung into the nearest alleyway, his back slamming against a dumpster.

"We cut the fingers off little boys who take what ain't theirs," snapped the man, he glared down at Remy; his expression changed quickly from anger to almost fearful, "christ all mighty, what the fuck is wrong with your eyes...?"

Remy struggled to try and twist his wrist away from the grasp, he let out a grunt, "let me go!"

"You're one of them, ain't you?! One of them freaks!"

Swinging his foot out, Remy attempted to kick the man in the family jewels but it didn't work out that way, the guy somehow pinned him by grabbing a hold of the foot and twisting his ankle around a little, stopping him from moving.

"Let me go!" Remy demanded, "I'll call the cops!"

"And say what? That I caught you tryin' to take my money? What your parents think of that? You arrested for thievin'?"

"What parents? I don't need no parents, I take care of myself," Remy retorted, he tried to struggle, "You're hurtin' me!"

The man loosened his grip a little, not enough to allow Remy to move, "You're out here alone?"

"I don't need no one," Remy frowned.

"Look at you, what are you? Six?"

Remy was quite insulted by that insinuation. He was smaller for his age, it was a sensitive subject; he was small, thin and bony, unkempt hair and dirty-faced.

"Eight," Remy retorted, making it clear he was offended.

"Eight years old and out here alone? How you survive? A pimp take care of you?"

Remy blinked, "ain't no one pimpin' me, I ain't no queer!" he said, outraged.

The man let go of him, backing off a little, staring down at him. Remy was almost compelled to run but thought the better of it, he needed a moment, rubbing his wrist which hurt immensely from the way he'd been held.

"You're a fiery little one, ain't you?" suddenly the man laughed, an almost husky and dirty laugh, "a little sharp for your age no doubt...good too, I caught your little act quite well, you tailed me all the way from North Rampart street, kept to the busiest part of the crowds so you'd get lost in...moved behind alleys and around..."

Remy stood, still rubbing his wrist, glancing up at the man, wondering how he'd known.

"You think I didn't see?" chuckled the man, "you think when I stopped to check my watch I didn't see you there in the window reflections?"

Swearing inwardly, never realising just how poor a job he'd been doing at his attempt to sneak, Remy looked away, frowning. He'd thought he was getting better at this, not worse. If he was getting worse, it wasn't a good thing, if he was getting worse, he'd likely starve, and he'd likely go without a roof over his head tonight.

"Don't be so moody," the thin man responded, "You wouldn't have been obvious, not to the untrained eye..." he stared down at him, "so...what...is this...with the eyes..."

"I don't know," Remy said, "they just always been that way..." he couldn't help from sounding insolent and angry at the man, despite he himself had been the one at fault.

"Well," said the thin man, "never seen the likes of it myself. Know a lot of people would say thems the devil's eyes. You the devil?"

"No," Remy replied haughtily.

"So...eight year old cut purse. Ain't often you see that round these parts...these days likes of you be in some place...orphanage or the likes of one."

"I ain't goin' back to no orphanage," Remy snapped.

"Ah, I see," he folded his arms, "so you're a little runaway, huh?"

Remy glanced down the alley, watching people walking by, wondering just how safe here he was with this stranger. Would anyone notice if this guy tried to take him away? Why was he asking all these questions? Was it to make sure he wouldn't be missed? Was he going to try to drag him away to some place where he could hurt him?

"The money you steal...you payin' someone? Some Fagin for a doss?"

Remy blinked, "Fagin?" he asked. "That some queer?"

"You even know what a queer is?" laughed the man. "And didn't you ever read Oliver Twist at school? See the movie...?"

Remy was familiar with the name, but he'd neither read nor seen either. He shook his head unsure of what the significance of this was.

"You'd like it," said the man, "there's pickpockets. So is there? A Fagin?"

"What's a Fagin?" Remy asked stupidly.

"Someone who takes your money for a roof, boy. Someone you pay for a place to stay..."

"Oh," Remy replied, he didn't feel particularly sure he wanted to answer that. Did he want this creep knowing where he stayed? Knowing where to find more boys his age? Better to keep schtum and ride it out.

"You're awful thin," the man grabbed a hold of his upper arm and held it up, "No fat, just skin and bone...malnourished and underfed. And filthy."

He didn't normally feel embarrassed but Remy looked away stubbornly, pursing his lips. He felt quite humiliated by all this, it wasn't a feeling he was really accustomed to.

"Come," said the man, he pointed towards the street and let Remy be the first to walk out of the alley.

Remy wasn't sure what it was that compelled him to walk with the man; they might be walking towards the police station? No, Remy knew where that was and knew where the cops usually had their beats, he knew well enough where to avoid and it was nowhere near here.

"The first thing you should know," said the thin man, shoving his hands into his pockets, "first rule of pickpocketin', don't get greedy."

Walking, Remy turned to gaze at him, curious now.

"You get greedy, you take more than you need, you take more than you need, you spend more than you should, and you spend more than you should, and people pay attention, you get me?"

Remy gave a vague nod.

"Second, never stick to a specific locale," the man went on, his stride casual, "people start to notice the same faces around them, you get notoriety. In this game, notoriety ain't what you need...you need to be invisible, you need a thousand faces for this life. Third...never steal more than a target can afford to lose," he continued, "people earn this money, you take the money they earn, you might not go hungry, but them and their kids might."

"Okay..." Remy said quietly.

"You watch for the wealthy ones, wealthy and careless and stupid...and you don't go in for the kill immediately, you watch and you wait, you look for weak spots, you use those weak spots to your advantage. Fourth. Never take more money than the mark is gonna notice. You see a hundred bucks in there, you never take the hundred, you take five, you take ten. That money can be overlooked, money goes missin' all the time, accidentally dropped, handed over, it can be written off, no one immediately gonna suspect it was stolen."

Remy listened closely, completely floored by these tips, trying to absorb them like sand seemed to absorb water.

"Fifth. Always make sure you never leave a trail. Never take a mark to a place you're known, never leave fingerprints, never leave DNA."

"What's DNA?"

The man stopped, and thought a minute, "I don't know exactly, but it ain't a good thing...the people on that CSI show seem to catch people like us all the time 'cause of DNA..."

Remy gazed up at the man. What did he mean like us?

"Sixth," the man stopped in front of an outside table at a cafe, he sat down and gestured for Remy to sit at the other side of the table as he reached for the menu, "when you become a master thief, always remember who taught you the first five rules. My name is Jean-Luc LeBeau, and I have so much to teach you."

Remy shook himself out of the reverie he'd fallen into, thinking of the day he'd met his adoptive father. He stood there holding the woman's bag as she returned holding her dog, her cheeks red from the effort of running, her knees brown with dirt, she'd fallen in the mud and stained her once-pristine suit.

"You dropped your purse," he smiled sweetly, holding the Louis Vuitton bag towards her.

The woman huffed at him, snatched the bag, and went to get into her car, not even saying word to him. She climbed in, pulling her seatbelt on, lips pursed.

"Don't forget your credit card," Remy cleared his throat, he took the credit card from the machine she'd originally left it in. His fingerprints now had a reason to be on that card should she realise her card had been used without her consent.

Never leave fingerprints, Remy could hear Jean-Luc saying in his head. He supposed Jean-Luc would shake his head at him if he were there to see this.

The woman grabbed the card from him, snorting in contempt again before turning the ignition and driving off.

Remy watched her, amused and for one brief moment, distracted from the horror of yesterday. Feeling cheered up (at least momentarily) he headed for the station and went in to buy cigarettes. He took his time, deciding to shop for a few cereal bars just in case he didn't have much time to eat later during his training. Remy noted, as he was walking across the store, there was a soft whirring of the security camera in the corner of the store, the one that was positioned right above where the pornography magazines were.

Curiously, Remy moved away from the area after grabbing a couple of boxes of the cereal bars and made his way across to the other side of the store to grab a bottle of Mountain Dew. The camera followed him slowly, he kept one eye on it as he grabbed the nearest bottle, and then turned to head towards where the potato chips were kept.

He couldn't believe it. The camera was still following his every move. He glanced towards the old CRT monitor behind the counter on the back shelf that had all the security camera footage live; he could see himself. Every time he went across to pretend to look at something, it moved with him. He was being watched.

Fuck, they got spies, he realised in dismay. They know exactly where I am and what I'm doin', he tried to shake off the eerie feeling it left him with and he went to pay. As he handed over the money at the counter, he noted the suspicious expression the guy at the register gave him.

I know that look, Remy thought. Yes, that look said I know who you are and what you're thinking.

He couldn't wait to get out of that store. As he left, he realised that the cameras outside were also following him; he hadn't noted it before, he'd been far too distracted by the wealthy blonde and her snooty attitude. He tried to push the thought out of his mind as he mounted his Harley and took off back down the road.

How did they know where I was? Remy wondered with concern. He slowed the bike to a halt and stopped at the side of the road for a minute to think. How did they know I went in there? How would they know to look out for me? How did they know I even left? I never told anyone I was goin' out...

Remy dismounted the bike and moved back to examine it. It looked the same, it sounded the same, it had the same damage to the seat, the slight damage to the paint job.

Curiously, he knelt down and took a further look, being thorough, checking the obvious places. He didn't see anything at first, until he stretched out on the dry mud and craned his neck to see underneath the thing...and there it was.

The small tiniest little chip, a small light flickering, just barely visible, stuck right under the rear fender in deep enough that he'd have never seen it without looking for it.

Fuckers are trackin' me! He realised angrily, he reached beneath awkwardly and tried to take it out, he couldn't quite get his fingers in there with the wheel blocking the access. He'd have to remove the entire fender. What now? He needed some kind of tool, perhaps a slim tree branch or twig to scrape it out...if it was only stuck in and not bolted.

He wandered up and down the side of the road until he came across a twisted and bent piece of coathanger (Remy had the distinct feeling it'd been used to jimmy open an old car at some point judging by the way it was shaped). It'd do.

Lying there he prodded and twisted the metal and pushed at the tracking chip, realising it was magnetic as it slid aside enough that he could grab it with his fingers. He pulled it free of the fender, and examined it in his palm for a moment.

No one gonna keep tabs on Remy LeBeau, Remy thought coldly as he tossed the thing towards the long dry grass, he mounted the bike, and just as he'd turned the key in the ignition, he stopped himself, a chill running through him.

What if this was a test? What if they were testing him for disobedience?

"Fucking assholes," Remy muttered as switched the engine off, dismounted again and began looking along the side of the road for the chip. It took almost forty minutes for him to find the blasted thing, it had stuck to the side of an old empty metal box that had been half buried in the mud.

With a sigh, he slipped the tracking chip exactly where he'd found it (or as close as he could tell) and climbed upon the bike, bracing himself for the day ahead.

End of Chapter 17

Thanks to those who have reviewed the story so far, it's nice to know a few are reading it (and a few appreciate the way I've written Remy in this one). Hope the slightly lighter moments in this chapter were enjoyable though. Don't know why I felt it necessary to throw in a flash back of Remy's meeting Jean-Luc. The credit card trick I thought might amuse a few though who haven't seen Remy get to use his skills much in any of my stories lol (not that there was much skill involved, lol).

Anyway, it's 4.38am, I'm rambling and should be in bed (oops). Hope you all have a super week. :)