I, ASSASSIN

Chapter Twenty-Three

Remy stood there for some time trying to figure out what to do. Horror numbing every limb, nausea burning his throat, blind panic jolting it's anxious electric tingles across every vein.

A dead body lay trapped beneath the trunk of a tree, faced down, hand still clutching the branch that had snapped off and sent him to his death.

"I killed him..." Remy said to the woodlands, his voice coming out in shuddering breaths. It seemed that the wind suddenly had stopped, and everything was eerily still.

He felt around his pockets for the phone he realised he'd already surrendered to his mentor. He needed to phone paramedics...a doctor...someone...anyone!

He's dead, Remy...the tree killed him instantly. You can't help him, the logical part of his brain told him. There ain't nothin' you can do to help him now.

In a moment of panic, he almost yelled out for help, but then he thought twice. What if this Assassin...the one with the real gun...what if he wasn't the only one out there? There could be more...more than Marius had specified.

Not knowing what else to do, Remy took off running. He had to get out of there...he had to be gone and fast. He might be in danger and self-preservation was just that tad stronger than the mind-numbing fear of being a murderer.

The sky was getting darker quickly, and the weather felt different, the stillness felt all wrong. It had been like this all day, moments of calm followed by an hour or so of warm wind. He gazed up as he ran, almost running into a tree to examine the dark clouds gathering over the woods.

It's a storm, he realised. He kept running; as he gazed up again looking for any changes he saw the flickering of the lightning, and then there was the loud deafening of thunder that despite the warning he'd had, still caught him by surprise.

He picked up his pace, legs aching, feet burning in his boots, new blisters screaming. He tripped and fell in his haste to escape the woods and he rolled over and gazed up to the sky as the rain began to rush down; it was a downpour, heavy and sore as it pelted him. He turned quickly, scrambling to his feet and he ran harder, faster, arms held inwards, shifting through narrow passages between trees, getting scratched and smacked in the face with branches and twigs. Terror gripped every part of him, his mind, his body, his thudding fast beating heart.

It seemed like hours before he made it to the outskirts of the woods, the trees beginning to thin, he saw pale light filtering through.

A lightning strike hit somewhere far behind him, he felt the shockwave jolting through him from the feet upwards and it only made him run faster, gasping for breath. It felt foolish to even think about it but for those moments it seemed almost as if God were chasing him, trying to strike him down for his crime.

Finally he broke through the trees and the thickets and landed in the field; he fell to his knees in the long grass, trying to find some air again.

The moment he stopped moving every part of him was in agony, and he remained there, kneeling, trying to recover; only vaguely aware of the sound of the Jeep Wrangler engine as it grew closer and closer.

The white beams nearly blinded him as he looked up, and the car stopped before him, leaving him there lit up like a deer in the headlights; for one moment he almost expected to be hit.

"Remy!"

It seemed like he must have spaced out for a moment or two, because he couldn't remember getting into the Jeep, he couldn't remember the vehicle switching from the field to the road.

"Daddy, he's covered in blood...there's cuts all over his hands and face..." Bella Donna was saying, she was in the back with him, trying to mop mud and blood off of his face with flimsy pieces of tissue from a packet she had tucked between her knees.

"It's superficial, he'll live," came Marius's response from the front.

"Did you bring a medkit?"

"In the back," Marius responded. "LeBeau, what took you so long? Belle got out hours ago..."

Remy tried to think straight. He'd been running, trying to get through...how had Bella Donna got out so quickly? Had she found a shortcut? Had she known where she was going? Had she even run into any trouble?

Did someone shoot at her too?"

He couldn't voice what he wanted to ask, he was too shaken. Inside he was screaming that they had to go back, that there was a person in those woods who had died...and that it was his fault.

"Remy, you aren't speakin'..." Bella Donna leaned over the back seats awkwardly to get to the medical kit, "what happened?"

"Your last altercation in the woods was documented at three hours ago," said Marius stated, "why the hell you take so long? Don't tell me you got lost..."

Remy gazed to the front seat, "I didn't mean to do it..." he stammered.

Bella Donna stopped what she was doing, she turned to look at him strangely, "what?"

"The guy with...the guy with the gun..."

"They all had guns..." Bella Donna said, sounding confused and worried, she tilted her head.

"The real gun..."

"What real gun?" Marius twisted to look around as he drove along the deserted stretch of road steadily.

"You said it weren't a game!" Remy reminded, "you sent him out there with a real gun, didn't you!"

"I sent no one out there with a real gun," Marius snapped coldly. "They all had paintball guns. Ten men went out there, ten men came back. They all reported back to me; any time someone came across you and you took them out of the session, I got a notification through the walkie talkie. No one had a real gun."

"I'm tellin' you there was someone there with a gun! A glock! A suppressed glock! I killed him!"

Bella Donna stopped what she was doing, she slowly turned to look at him and even though Remy was staring straight ahead into open road, he could see with his peripheral vision that her eyes were huge like a pair of painted blue saucers. He sensed she believed him.

"You took him out with your paintball gun?" Marius asked.
"No..." Remy stammered, "I...blasted him out of a tree...it fell on him...he's dead...in the woods...I...killed him."

Marius gave something of a strange, 'huh'.

Bella Donna let out a little breath, "you...killed a guy..."

"I...I killed him. Jesus, it was an accident. I swear it was an accident," Remy run his hand through his wet hair, he saw his fingers trembling, he dropped his hand immediately, thinking of how he had been warned not to let his nerves show.

"Did you see his face?" Marius asked, his voice firm and direct.

"No."

"What was he wearing?"

"Dark camoflage...I think it was Black...it looked...serious...professional...well made...like army..." Remy confessed uneasily, he let out a shudder.

"Insignia? Badges? Anything to identify him with?"

Remy tried not to snap, remembering whom he was talking to. "I didn't take the time to check. I had just got shot at! I didn't know how many more there might be. I went on instinct, the weather was turnin'. I left him there..." Remy drew a breath, "Jesus, he's dead in there..."

"Ain't no one we sent in with black army fatigues," Marius stepped on the gas, "whoever that were, he weren't supposed to be in there."

"Who was he?" Remy swallowed hard.

"Hard to say. We won't know 'til we get in there ourselves to see...or until someone comes up missin'."

Remy felt Bella Donna's hand grip his own tightly, it made the cuts on his hand – his trophies for running through the woods blindly without care to getting scratched up by thorns, sharp branches and bark – sting and burn hot.

"Did he suffer?" Marius asked, none the wiser to the gesture.

"No..." Remy swallowed hard again, there seemed to be a lump stuck in his throat, "at least...I don't think so."

"Daddy, does that mean-?" Bella Donna dared to ask, she stopped herself, "It means..."

"I know," her father responded, his voice strangely soft and almost wistful, "he's made a clean kill...of a human life."