Alexia's eyes struggled to focus as the numbers went by.

Eighteen…Nineteen…Twenty…

She knew her apartment was on the twenty-third floor, Unit 57. As Lamar had pulled up to the curb, she'd craned her neck up to look at the towering apartment complex she would be living in. It wasn't as tall as the building across the street, the one she had noticed earlier that was under construction, but this one left quite a mark on Alta Street. The building was an art deco construction of plexiglass and beige concrete, twenty-four stories high. Unlike the city as a whole, which glowed orange at night, this building's roof glowed electric blue, courtesy of four prong-like structures on top that looked like lightning bolts hitting the top of the building, which Alexia had marveled at as she'd fetched her suitcase and backpack from Lamar's trunk.

On the ground floor, a brick courtyard spilled out onto Alta Street. The building was mixed-use, sporting apartments on the higher floors and a Bean Machine coffee shop at ground level, along with a few higher-end clothing stores such as a Didier Sachs. Alexia had never really liked coffee or designer clothes, but since these amenities were so close now, she thought about giving these stores a chance. If nothing else, it was a major change from South Yankton, where she'd had to drive thirty minutes just to get to the nearest grocery store.

Lamar had given her the key to her unit and had offered to help take her luggage up, but Alexia had felt like she could handle it. She was feeling a bit more confident in herself after the street race, mostly because she hadn't ended up killing herself or someone else. She'd done a lot of things that day that she hadn't thought she was capable of, but at that point, Alexia knew she needed sleep. On the way up in the elevator, she'd realized she had forgotten to take the rose that her uncle had given her, which she had left in Lamar's cupholder. She felt a little bad about this, but she had at least remembered to take her new gun, which she had stored in her backpack.

She caught her eyelids drooping as the elevator passed the twenty-second floor. The arrival at twenty-three was announced with a soft ding, and Alexia's eyes shot open, struggling to focus as she lugged her bags into the hallway. Luckily, there were only three units on her floor, and she had no trouble finding the golden '57' displayed on the door of her apartment.

Alexia dropped her suitcase for a moment and grabbed the key, inserting it in the lock. She didn't really know what to expect of the place – her uncle had told her it was a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment, fully-furnished, with rent at five thousand dollars a month, not including utilities and garage fees. Even considering its location in the heart of the city, that much money for a one-bedroom had seemed absurd to Alexia, but Remus had told her she'd have no trouble keeping up on payments if she worked hard.

A click was heard in the lock as she turned the key. She grabbed the handle of her suitcase and pushed her way inside, then immediately froze up, her tired eyes popping open at the sight in front of her.

Her first thought was that there had been a mistake – she thought Lamar had accidentally given her the key to a high-end restaurant, one of those top floor establishments that rich people liked to dine in. In the far distance across a shiny hardwood floor was a granite island countertop with an attached bar, its own wine rack, and padded leather stools, right next to a ceiling-high column which contained a fireplace. Behind that was a glass dining table and two giant windows that took up most of the far wall, providing a cinematic view of the Los Santos. This, she told herself, clearly indicated a restaurant and not her actual apartment, until she saw the living area right next to it. In front of the biggest of the windows was a white sectional couch, which surrounded a glass coffee table and a rug that swirled with red and black, perfectly complimenting the cloud-white sofa.

In her shock, Alexia lost her grip on the handle of her suitcase – it smacked to the floor beside her, making her jump, a shout of fright echoing across the vast living space.

She put a hand to her mouth, her eyes fearful as she took it all in. The kitchen and living area alone were bigger than her entire trailer back in South Yankton, and that was only the top floor. Alexia quickly noticed a staircase in front of her, which she assumed led down to her bedroom. She walked over to the plexiglass railing and peered over, and from what little she could see of the bedroom, she could tell that it too was much bigger than anything she was used to.

Alexia could feel her heart racing underneath her jacket. All the modern furniture, all the high-end appliances, all this floor space…She tried to tell herself she should be happy, but instead she felt like a fish out of water. She worried most of all that she was going to break something expensive, so she proceeded carefully down the three steps that led to her living area, her ratty high-top shoes treading softly on the freshly polished hardwood.

As she approached the window wall at the far end, Alexia's nervous eyes softened a bit. Instead of worrying about what she was going to with all this square footage, she instead focused on the incredible view before her of a city lit up like a Christmas display, still buzzing with activity even at such a late hour. Twenty-three floors above street level, just about everything was visible. Immediately below her feet was a ten-lane freeway with a stream of headlights traveling down it. In the far distance, Alexia recognized the lights of a pier, which led to an inlet of the Pacific: on top of everything else, she even had an ocean view.

She stopped for a moment, and an uneasy laugh escaped her lips, fogging up the window in front of her. An ocean view was something she never would have thought she'd have. She had been fully preparing herself to spend years in a tiny prison cell with a four or five-inch window to the outside. Instead, she'd managed to find a place with windows that were even taller than she was. Alexia had found a way to live in luxury, provided she could make rent payments on time each month.

She turned around to look at her apartment, her nerves buzzing with newfound joy. She couldn't help but jump up and down a few times, the walls echoing a brief yelp of excitement as she punched the air. She was breathing heavily, her eyes wide and excited as she took in the place. Alexia ventured over to her couch, unlacing her shoes and kicking them off, then sliding the backpack off her arms and placing it down on the soft wool carpet. She sat down, taking a black throw pillow and hugging it to her knees. She was very glad her uncle had found a furnished unit – with all this floor space, she wouldn't have known where to begin on filling it up.

Her uncle…She'd promised to call him once she'd made it to her apartment, but Alexia knew he didn't take calls from cell phones. Next to the couch was a landline phone. She reached over and grabbed the receiver, then dialed her uncle's number into the keypad. The line rang a few times before she heard a crackle on the other end, her uncle picking up the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Uncle Remus, hey. It's me," Alexia said breathlessly, a grin spread across her face.

"Alexia…" Remus laughed softly. "How are you?"

"I'm good, uncle. I really mean that, too." Alexia sighed as she looked around her place again. "I just made it to my apartment, and…wow, I mean, thank you so much for this, uncle. You didn't have to get me something this nice."

"Well, of course I did, Lex," he said, calling her by the same name he had called her ten years ago. "You're my family, and I wanted to make sure you were comfortable. We have some rooms at the Skulls' compound right now that crew members can rent, but I figured that you're an adult, and that you needed a bit of space."

She chuckled a bit, leaning back on the couch. "Well, we've had space for the past ten years, you and me. You'd better believe I'm gonna come up to your office and thank you in person."

"That would be great, but remember what I told you." Alexia could picture him holding a finger up. "First thing in the morning, get to work on finding a steady income. I know that Gerald has that one job for you, but work on building some other contacts in the city as well. It's always better to have multiple sources of cash."

"Y-yeah, for sure," she said with a nod. "Any advice on how I should start?"

"Talk to people," he answered firmly. "I know you're pretty shy, Alexia, but I'm afraid there's no getting around it. You haven't proven yourself yet, so you'll need to reach out to any potential bosses and ask them for work. You'll be surprised at how many businesses in this city are crooked, and how many of them are offering cash under the table. My advice: look especially at auto dealers. A lot of those guys contract with criminals, so maybe the guy who's fixing up your car can give you work, maybe a repossession job or something. It would be a start, at least."

"Yeah. My car…" Alexia's voice lowered. "You heard about the race, huh?"

"I sure did." She could hear him grinning. "I tapped into the city's camera network, and I was watching you the whole time. I wasn't going to miss my niece's first street race."

"That's…"

Alexia's face scrunched – she didn't know what to say to that. Could Remus just hack into the city's camera system at will, watching her wherever she went? Even if he was her family, this thought unsettled her a bit.

"And I don't know if you knew this, but the route went right by the Skulls' compound, so I also watched some of it from my office window. Including the, uh, final crash…"

Her uncle paused, which immediately started worrying Alexia. He was being nice to her at that point, but was he going to suddenly blow up with anger, like Reese had? After all, he'd bet a lot of money on her to win, and from what she'd seen of Reese's clipboard, she knew that a few of the other Skulls had done the same, trusting the guidance of their leader to make them a big return. However, the race hadn't gone to plan at all, and like Reese had said, the crew had lost out on some revenue due to her actions.

She heard her uncle sigh, and she braced herself for whatever was coming from the other end of the phone.

"Look, first of all, I wanted to apologize for not telling you about the street race. I just wanted to see how you would handle an unexpected situation, since they tend to come up a lot in this line of work. But since you're new, I probably should have told you something so you would have been more prepared."

"N-no, it's okay, uncle," she said, her shoulders relaxing a bit. "I probably should've figured that you guys had an initiation or something."

"Yes, but let me just tell you right now that it was a very…controversial decision to let you join the Skulls after what you did. Some of my commissioners, they didn't want me to let you in because you helped Noël, even though you were supposed to be competing against her. They thought that you doing that indicated some kind of weakness."

Alexia felt her stomach drop. Not only had the other Skulls been pissed at her for throwing the race, but they'd tried to oppose her joining the crew, even though she'd crossed the finish line and had followed their 'street rules'. She had known she was on bad terms with the others, but this animosity had been taken a step further: they didn't want her to be their crewmate. This hurt her deeply, but she didn't want her uncle to know this.

She gulped. "Uncle, I-I was just trying to save you guys the trouble of finding another getaway driver – say what you will about Noël, but she can drive really well, and I know you recruited her for a reason. And besides, me and her are both Black Skulls now. I couldn't just leave a fellow crew member to get picked up by the cops. I felt like I had to act, because she'd probably tell them about the meets and anything else she may have learned."

"Noël wasn't in the crew yet," Remus said, his voice grave. "Therefore, she wasn't your crewmate, and you had no obligation to help her. And like Reese said to you, the street races are about competition, not helping others cross the finish line." He sighed deeply. "Alexia, the Skulls aren't exactly known for being Good Samaritans. I know you're capable because I'm your family and I've seen how good you are at shooting, but some of the others are worried that when you start doing missions, you'll let your emotions get the better of you and start helping people, even if they're our enemies."

Alexia sat, shaking her head in disbelief as her uncle spoke. She wasn't even five hours off the plane yet. She hadn't had a chance to prove herself, and they were already saying she was too soft? That she didn't deserve to be in the crew?

Her hurt turned to anger; of course she was going to be a little bit soft to start with. Her uncle had known she wasn't a career criminal when he'd recruited her, yet he'd done so anyway, and she thought it presumptuous they were trying to overrule him. She felt it was perhaps something else that was causing the others to turn on her before she'd gotten a chance to prove herself.

Alexia's grip tightened on the receiver. "Uncle…with all due respect, that's crap. Just because I'm a girl, that doesn't mean I'm a slave to my emotions."

"It's not because you're a girl," said Remus. "That's not what they meant."

"That's totally what they meant," she rebutted. "There were maybe two or three women at that street race, including me. And one of them was just strutting around in a bikini all night. That's why she was there, as an object to entertain the men."

"Alexia…" Remus sighed. "Look, I don't organize the street races, okay? Don't blame that on me. I'll admit, we're a male-dominated crew, but it's not our fault that most criminals out there are men. And the few women who are in the Skulls, we don't discriminate against them. That girl you mentioned, she happens to be a very accomplished pilot. She's flown several combat missions for us over the years – I trust her to fly planes, helicopters, even fighter jets sometimes. I wouldn't give that responsibility to a woman if we thought all women were too emotional."

Alexia looked down at the floor, her anger subsiding quickly. Jess had told her that she was in air trafficking, but she hadn't mentioned fighter jets. However, her uncle had a point: that was an important position to give to a woman, even if Alexia personally wouldn't give such responsibility to a junkie.

She breathed out through her nose and grimaced. "So it's just me, huh?"

"We've been doing these street races for years now," said Remus. "We've had plenty of people knock others off the road to help their friends or relatives get in the crew, but we've never had anyone put another racer in their car and cross the finish line with them. I know there was no specific rule against it, but it's kind of unprecedented what you did."

"Well…Lamar told me these things were about expecting the unexpected," she said, attempting a smile.

Remus laughed a bit. "You have a point, Lex. I guess we could do a better job of that ourselves." She could hear her uncle composing himself. "But still, I want you to take my advice seriously. It's going to be a bit harder for you now to prove yourself to the others, and I want you to be able to rise up the ranks…By the way, once you get settled in, I want you to sign up for sniper training in the Skulls. You've been keeping your aim sharp, right?"

"Yep." Alexia nodded. "I had to cut my practices down to once a week back home because ammo got too expensive. But I'd say I can still shoot well."

"Good, good…" He seemed genuinely pleased at this. "Also, I don't know how strong you are now, but practice doing some pushups and sit-ups at home. I didn't warn you about the race, but I'm going to warn you now that sniper training is pretty tough. We do it in the heat of the Senora Desert, and it's military style. A lot of running, obstacle courses, crawling under barbed wire, that kind of fun stuff. It's a lot like what the Army made me do before they sent me to Vietnam, but I've told you all about that."

Alexia swallowed. Remus had indeed told her about his military service during the Vietnam War, how he had been captured by the Viet Cong and had spent eighteen months as a prisoner of war, a resident of the infamous 'Hanoi Hilton'. As a kid, she remembered Remus buying her root beer floats at the local diner, one of her favorite treats. They would sit together in a booth, and he would share stories of his military experiences with her, Alexia listening intently as she sipped her ice cream.

Sometimes though, Remus would forget that his niece was there and would become lost in his war stories, some of which – when she thought about it - were highly inappropriate for kids. He had told her the numerous ways he'd been tortured by the Viet Cong and some of the atrocities committed by soldiers in his own platoon. On one instance, Remus had watched as his fellow soldiers interrogated a little girl, the daughter of a Viet Cong operative whose battalion was planning to attack an American base and kill hundreds of servicemen. To get the girl's father to talk, they'd started dismembering her with a saw, one piece at a time, starting with her fingers and toes. He'd described in graphic detail how the girl's shrieks and sobs had gotten louder as bigger and bigger pieces of her had been cut off, the girl's flesh scattered in the wet, stinking mud floor of a village hut.

That story had stuck with Alexia. She remembered asking him not to repeat that one whenever he'd brought it up, as its first iteration had given her nightmares for weeks.

The thought of her going through military-style training was also deeply unsettling. She hadn't thought that the Skulls, who thrived on anarchy and lawlessness, would align themselves with the Army, which relied on strict order and discipline. She also wondered why such physical training was required for snipers; she was strong enough to hold up a rifle and control the recoil, but she knew she couldn't do pushups and run for miles through the desert. The fact that Remus expected her to do this, despite knowing she was never very athletic, left her confused and frightened as she pondered it further.

"Damn, Uncle, I…" She stuttered a bit, her mouth drying up. "You sure I can handle all of that? I mean, I'm not really the strongest girl around, and…"

"I designed the training to be that way because snipers are crucial to our operations. I wanted only the best of the best to get in. And what's more, if you can get through that, the others will have a lot less room to say that you're not strong-willed. You clearly had a problem with what they said about you, so work on fixing it. Show these guys that you're not here for a handout - show them that you mean business."

She exhaled, sinking back into the soft couch cushion behind her. She could feel her hand trembling a bit as she gripped the phone, trying to decide on a response.

Physically, Alexia knew she was far from a soldier. She was short and scrawny, with pencil arms and a visible rib cage. She'd been a lot chubbier as a kid, when Remus had last seen her, but she'd thinned out a lot as a teenager. In recent years especially, she'd been skipping meals to save food for her brothers, who she knew needed more calories than her. Not only were they growing boys, but her brothers were starters on their school's varsity football team: Anthony was the starting quarterback, and Ryan was the kicker and punter. A sports scholarship for one or both of them would massively help the family's finances, so Alexia had made sure her brothers were healthy and that they ate well, even if it meant she'd went to bed hungry some nights.

However, if what Lamar had told her was correct, snipers made a lot of money. To keep living in such a nice apartment, she needed a high-paying job, even if the work was physically demanding. If she did this, her brothers would also have a chance at a much better future back home. Maybe, by some stroke of luck, she would end up living long enough to send them even more money, maybe even setting them up for life if she played her cards right.

For this to happen though, she would have to worry about herself for the time being. Much like her brothers had be healthy to play football, Alexia would need to be healthy to become a sniper in the Skulls.

"Okay, I will," said Alexia, sitting up straight. "You'll see, it wasn't a mistake for letting me join the Skulls. And I'm also gonna do my best in that job for Gerald tomorrow."

"Good. Make sure that I get results," her uncle said firmly. "I'm gonna let you go now so you can get some sleep. Be ready for Gerald to text you first thing in the morning."

"Of course." Alexia made herself smile. "Love you, Uncle."

"Love you too, Lex." She could hear him smiling back. "Call me when you get back tomorrow night and tell me how it goes, okay?"

"You got it."

Alexia hung up, placing the phone back on the receiver. She lied on her back on her spacious sofa, staring up at her ceiling.

She should have expected a lot to come from the call – her uncle had a talent for packing as much information into as few words as possible. However, she at least knew what he expected of her going forward:

Sniper training in the desert. She'd read a little about the Senora Desert, which was a few hours away from the city by car. A huge salt lake called the Alamo Sea defined the region, along with cacti, tumbleweeds, methamphetamine, abandoned storefronts, and row upon row of rusty trailers. In some ways, it was a lot like South Yankton, only this place got much hotter, with temperatures exceeding one hundred twenty degrees during the day. Alexia had never experienced heat like that before, so the prospect of training and exercising in it filled her with intense anxiety.

Noticing the sweat clinging to her forehead, she tried to calm down a bit, closing her eyes and hugging the pillow to her chest while taking some deep breaths. She tried to tell herself that, while she didn't think she could do it, her uncle clearly did. He had faith in her to succeed, which Alexia felt she shouldn't discredit. Not only was Remus much older than her, but he had also been in this city a lot longer. He probably knew all the possible ways that new recruits could break and how to exploit their abilities to the crew's advantage. If he thought she could do it, then Alexia tried to tell herself she shouldn't question his wisdom, even if her doubts ate at her like bacteria on an open wound.

Eye floaters swam through Alexia's vision through her closed eyelids. The couch was big and very comfortable, and she was much too tired to try and get up. She felt herself sinking into the soft white cushions, the pillow hugged close to her chest, her head falling back and her black hair spilling over the edge of the sofa. Normally, her anxiety would have kept her awake for a few more hours, but she'd had such a long and exhausting day that her anxious brain was being overridden by her body, which demanded rest.

Eventually, her doubts were forcibly silenced as she drifted off, the soft whoosh of cars on Alta Street lulling her to sleep.