Chapter 1
Number 13 Plumebrough Lane was a simple place. Three stories of plain grey stone topped fetchingly with a blue slate roof; well tended gardens and hanging baskets; front steps scrubbed to shine in the dimmest dusk. The windows of Number 13 Plumebrough Lane were cleaned regularly and routinely, four 'o' clock every Tuesday afternoon every week. At five thirty exactly, Miss Elma Jones ( the housekeeper) would come to each in turn and proceed to fasten the latches and draw the smart blue curtains to keep the unwanted from gazing in. She had done this task every night for twenty-two years with out fail, every latch shut and curtain drawn; which is why it was so strange that, on the fourth of May, eleven pm, the front right attic window sat slightly ajar.
Ten forty-three pm: fourth of may.
A lone figure wandered the streets of the New York suburbs, hugging shadows and weaving through untamed back alleys. A strange sight for the city that never sleeps; however, tonight babies slept peacefully and cars were parked in front drives, the only sounds were the occasional car and a married couple yelling at each other about whose turn it was to wash the dishes or take the bins out ( or some other trivial nonsense that didn't merit the disturbance). The bustling streets sat slumbering til dawn, but for the lone figure gradually making their way purposefully towards Plumebrough Lane.
The still night air fractured suddenly, as a police car came roaring down the street. The figure would seem to have continued at their normal pace to the untrained eye, but those who had watched closely would have seen a momentary decline in speed; drowning themselves in shadows. Those that had listened to them, and not the wailing siren, would have heard the sharp intake of breath and suddenly pounding heart. None, however, paid them any mind, nor did they see the flashes of panic across their face slide into a look of guilt.
The figure paused to check their watch in the warm light of a nearby streetlight. Time had slipped away as they had come to their destination, yet they were still a good two minutes early. Pulling their coat a little tighter around their shoulders, they moved deliberately toward the payphone across the street.
The chinking sound of quarters filled the small booth as they slid the money into the old machine. Toll paid, they dialled the number of their employers. They picked up almost before the phone had even begun to ring.
"Yes?" A man's voice echoed hoarsely down the line, with a thick European accent that was to hard to place that no one tried anymore "Who?… …Speak! Is there no tongue in your head!"
"Y-yes. I'm at the address." The figure in the booth turned towards the building before them "Your delivery will be with you soon." They clicked down the receiver. A long sigh emanated from them as they leaned against the cool glass behind them. Looking into the distorted metal of the phone booth, a twisted face stared right back. "Is it really so distorted? Or is that just me now? Am I just what they wanted? Am I still the girl I used to be…" she thought to herself. She tucked a long strand of blonde hair behind her ear, pulling her tumbling tresses up into a tight ponytail once again.
Stepping out into the cool night air, she caught a glance of black cat winding its way towards her. The inquisitive little creature pulled itself around her ankles, purring. "Oh, You want me to pet you?" She bent down to stroke the cat between the ears "look at us, ghosts of the night, shrouded in darkness… I suppose that makes us kindred spirits… that and other reasons." She smiled sadly down at the shabby feline. The creature sensed something to pounce upon nearby and darted off after it. The girl in the black coat stood before number 13 Plumebrough lane at just before eleven pm.
With a deep breath, the girl pulled on her dark gloves and adjusted the black roses in her hair, then
leapt up the drainpipe to reach the attic window.
Her deft touch rendered the simple locking mechanism utterly useless, it surrendered at her first turn of the pick. Slipping her nails into the slim cavity between the frame and casement, she lifted the stiff window to eye height and causally slid inside the darkened space. She meandered to the bedroom door at her own leisure. Stepping into the corridor, she paused to blow her lose fringe out of her eyes, before nimbly walking the banister's tightrope surface down to the second floor.
The study of some business tycoon who didn't give a crap about anyone but himself, lay before her. She knocked the ming vase she knew him to be so proud of from its plinth and surveyed it as it shattered across the floor. An amateur mistake to be sure, She thought to herself, smiling gleefully. Throwing the painting from above the mantelpiece, she twisted the dial of the safe effortlessly, watching the door swing open as easily as the mechanism in a child's toy. Twenty-seven thousand dollars sat before her as cold hard cash. A further eight thousand was in the form of a rare stamp from the Victorian era. Insurance documents, wedding and birth certificates, and other personal effects fell clumsily to the floor. The stamp fluttered down mere seconds later. Stuffing the money into her coat pockets, she scanned the room for and other valuables that the amateur thief could grab and pawn for a fortune. Settling on an old gold plated jewellery box and the desktop computer, she swept them into the duffle bag hanging around her shoulders with the rest of the money.
Padding out to the hall, loot in hand, she pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and let it fall gently to the floor; a small thing that held with it the fate of the doomed innocent. Across from the study sat another: The woman's. The man of the house had a booming oil business and more enemies then lose change at a yard sale. However, his wife was a simple woman, who was perfectly content with the simple things in life, and even to pay her taxes. Her career was completely overshadowed by that of her husband's, yet, when compared, her's was the far more important of the two.
Flipping open the laptop, she grabbed a usb from the side of her belt and stuck it straight into the side of the unsuspecting machine. Asked for a password, she almost laughed, before tapping the usb and watching as characters spun like a slot machine in vegas before the pay out. Her fingers flew across the keys, as though the legs of the dancers preforming an Irish jig. Data flowed smoothly through her grasp, until she saw her prey, and pounced upon it. Duplicating the file, a blue bar popped up across the length of the screen as the usb took its target.
A quiet clicking sound echoed from the ground floor. She spun towards the door, knocking a small set of keys from the desk's surface. Staring down at them, horrified, she was greeted with the sight of the house-keys of one Miss Elma Jones that had been unfortunately forgotten after a strange encounter with a rather rude pigeon flying in from the street during the dusting. She groaned angrily.
The housekeeper was a lovely woman who loved her family, but was hopeless in the kitchen, so her husband would do most of the cooking; except birthday cakes for her children, which she spent hours meticulously preparing to the point of looking half cooked and not quite on fire, yet they would "miraculously" turn out not to be poisonous and of shop quality (her husband would stealthily swap the cakes and tell her she did a fine job, and not to go to Walmart for a bit because of some problems with the air conditioning, or that alligators had risen up and wrecked the toilet paper aisle). Her only mistakes in life were buying the wrong kind of pasta sauce, or forgetting that she needed to take the boys to baseball practice on Tuesday. She now must unknowingly add another to the list: forgetting her keys, and that mistake could very well turn out deadly.
Standing rigid by the desk, she listened to the new arrival bumbling around looking for the keys they'd forgotten earlier that day. The words of her employer echoed through her mind "No lose ends. Leave even one…" he'd made a slitting gesture, presently prompting her to let her hand rest around the hilt of her sheathed weapon. Footsteps came towards the study door…
Miss Elma Jones wandered home, keys in hand after finding them glinting on the hall table, blissfully unaware of the fact her life had almost been severed at the throat mere seconds earlier. Turning from the window where she'd watch the housekeeper leave from, she smiled happily to herself about how the woman would live to see another sunrise with her family and friends, as opposed to another thread being shorn by Atropos's shears before its time. She pulled the now full usb from the computer and turned the laptop off again. The room was once again set to rights as she left without a trace.
Climbing back up the banister (making sure not to scuff it with her heels) she grabbed the valuables from the attic rooms. She pulled a red yo-yo from the depths of her pocket. Playing for a moment, before tossing it to the top of the stairs and watching it break the beam of the motion sensor. Piercing wails broke the silence deafeningly, echoing out into the night (momentarily distracting the arguments of the aforementioned married couple, before they began to argue all over again).
Neighbours swarmed the streets, yelling for police and lamenting of the fact this had to happen. One pointed out the silver lining of the fact the the occupants were on vacation in Hawaii, and consequently were not at home and in danger from the burglars. Within minutes the slumbering city slept no longer, police officers rushed the scene and cordoned off the area, demanding that the culprit come out with their hands up. Nobody realised the building was empty, neither did they realise this had nothing to do with money, nor did anyone pay the girl with brown hair twisted into a tight bun, with a blue beret and red backpack. Nobody saw her concerned mask turn to a truth of pride and guilt. Only those who truly looked at her would see that she and the girl from the house walked the same way, only if she'd been stopped by the police would they know the red backpack held the loot from number 13 Plumebrough Lane.
One am: fifth of May.
The subway was quiet. Platform 18 always was. Not one person needed to go from Brooklyn to Jersey at half-past one in the morning. Commuter rush hour would soon come and busy the silent spaces and disturb the pigeons from their scavenging of chips and hotdogs left the day before.
A quiet news report played over the Joey's television. He flipped through an old book from the lost and found to pass the time for the dead shift. He wandered when Harold would come and relieve him of duty as station master for today; he needed to get back home and get some sleep before his veterinarian classes started that day.
"Could you turn that up? Please?" Joey started. A young girl stood next to his office door "The news report. Could you turn it up please? Sounds interesting."
"Oh!" He stared down at the television as if seeing it for the first time "S-sure. Sorry, I didn't know you were here." He search the mess of paper work spanning the length of the desk for the remote. She stepped inside the office and pulled the remote out from underneath a packet of stale biscuits. Leaning casually against the teetering pillars of forms and documents piling up atop overspilling filing cabinets, she turned up the news report.
Joey stared at her "Are you here alone?" He scanned the platform beyond, finding nothing and nobody but a stray cat fighting with a rat over, well, the rat.
"Why do I need to be with somebody?" She seemed to tense "Can't a girl take the subway alone?"
She stared piercingly at him. He took a nervous sip of lukewarm coffee to avoid her penalising gaze.
Did it really seem so unreasonable to ask? She hardly looked older than fourteen, and yet here she was, alone and unsupervised at one in the morning. "You're not a runaway, are you?" He asked suddenly, panicking at the prospect of the young girl coming here to leave home.
"Ugh…" she tossed the remote down on the table, turning her attention from the news report about a burglar somewhere called Plembrew or something like that onto him "Not that it's really any of your business, I'm taking the subway to get back to my place. Where my family is. So, no. I'm not a runaway. I'm a girl who stayed arguing with her boyfriend till midnight and broke up with him because he sucks, and now has to take the dead rail to get home. Enough information for you?" She glared darkly down at him. He gulped and nodded. Something about her scared him; maybe it was the tight ponytail her flaming red hair had been drawn into; the skull insignia emblazoned across her tee shirt; or the eyes so green they made his heart skip a beat. She adjusted her satchel and turned her attention toward the news.
A train pulled onto the desolate platform. She turned and strode toward the new arrival, but paused and turned back for a second "The nights pass faster if you just stop lolly gagging and just do your job. That paperwork doesn't do itself." She smiled a little at him and gave a two-fingered salute to say goodbye, before disappearing into the steel confines of the train compartment.
Joey put his book down and turned off the television. Picking up a ream of paper from under the desk, he began to sort through it systematically. She was right; he needed to get his act together and start taking the job seriously. After a few minutes of sorting, he went to put a stack of papers in the out box. The paper slipped from his grasp in an avalanche of bureaucracy. He stared up at the old clock ticking merrily from the wall. There weren't any trains running between one and six in the morning that day due to track maintenance; how had that girl come here to get on a train that didn't exist? How did a black and red, one-carriage train come past on track the currently had a gaping hole in it and take her as a passenger? How had he not noticed any of this when she arrived! He pulled the phone from the desk and began to dial his boss.
When Harold came to relieve Joey of duty at two in the morning, his cheerful hello was greeted with silence and the sight of Joey lying face down on the floor next to a hanging phone. And when the police came to check the security tapes they found the entire system wiped clean. The only clue to the terrible tragedy was a cup of cold coffee, specifically an almond latte, laced with cyanide…
Eight forty am: fifth of May.
John's Cafs was as disreputable a coffee shop and internet cafe as its owner was bad at spelling. The floor was a health code violation; the tables were a health code violation; the windows were a health code violation; the food was a- I think you get the idea. Police suspected it to be a secret crack den or something of another illegal activity. To enter was seen to be as a risk to one's health, so it was strange that they had a surprising number of regulars who would seemingly spend days at a time on the premises. One of these regulars was a young girl of about age 14 with shiny black hair cut to chin length. Today, like many other days, she had a grey backpack slung over her right shoulder, and a pine-green baseball cap pulled down low over her eyes. The sun shone strongly down upon her, so this must be why her hat was pulled so low. It was nothing to do with the tears staining the skin of her cheeks; or the guilty look of one with immense regret; or the fact that only a few hours ago a young man named Joey was found dead on a train platform, and she knew why he was dead. Or maybe that is the case and the sun was just a useful disguise.
The cafe's door bell tinged meekly as the heavy door groaned open. The waiter looked up at the newcomer disdainfully, smiling at her dour expression and reddened eyes. She caught his gaze. Her face twisted angrily, she strode straight up to his face and gave him the fingers.
He recoiled in disgust "put them away before I cut them off." He growled sinisterly. She laughed.
"Go ahead, your funereal. Boss needs all these attached. Besides… If you do it, then he can't." She pulled a knife from up her sleeve "Go on, please." She purred, pushing the blade towards him.
"You're a piece of work, Kid." He slid the knife back towards her "Heck, you're crazier than Mary!"
"In that case…" she thrust the blade against his throat "Maybe you need to apologise, hmm?"
He gulped nervously. "Stay off my bad side, Johnny Boy, or next time won't be a threat."
She pulled back from him slowly, wandering round to the back room. John stared after her, clutching his neck protectively. She blew him a quick kiss and slammed the door.
To those of you unfamiliar with the term "crazier than Mary", it refers to a situation in which someone or something is extremely unbelievable or unlikely, or psychotic and insane. The term was created in reference to an agent named, unsurprisingly, Mary; Typhoid Mary to be precise. She is as insane as they come (think Joker without the gimmicks). Her manic nature became so legendary as to be, eventually, shortened to a concept and then expression. This term is never to, under any circumstances, be used in her presence, lest you lose a limb. It is a colloquialism used exclusively by members of them same organisation.
She grabbed the handle of the disused mop sitting festering in the corner in a bucket of stagnant water, and yanked on it sharply. The floor beneath her feet opened up into a long chute leading downwards. Sliding down at breakneck speed, she braced for impact on arrival. Landing softly at the base, she pulled her hands up protectively to shield herself against whatever her punishment her boss had decided was necessary for an inconsequential mistake on her last mission. She was surprised to find herself standing alone, free from new pains. A crushing blow smashed the back of her ribs shatteringly. Any normal person would have been bend double, gasping for breath, maybe even killed by such force. She wasn't a normal person, and this wasn't new to her either.
"Hello to you to, Boss." She said stoically. Her boss moved to stand in front of her, his dark eyes burning into her as he looked her up and down. He held his hand out towards her demandingly. She pulled the usb from her pocket and dropped it into his outstretched palm.
He eyed it carefully. "You're late." She paled. "Never keep me waiting. And turn back to your normal horrid self. I can't stand your silly tricks, Actress." He turned away from her, waving his hand dismissively.
"Yes, Boss. Right Away." She glowed a light blue and shifted from the girl in the green hat back to her own (not horrid) skin. She brushed a strand of blonde hair out of her face.
She closed the door to the boss's inner sanctum quietly behind her. Her face scrunched tightly as her ribs screaming reached its crescendo. Sighing quietly to herself, she told herself how silly she was being, complaining about fractures and internal bleeding. She knew she was one of the lucky ones. She was lucky to still have all her limbs attached, or to not have possibly ended up in the meatloaf (not that there was any evidence that people actually did end up in the meatloaf, but once you find a thumb and a couple of toes, you tend to assume).
"Chloe!" She turned to see her brother Adi rushing towards her. Her heart sank to see the fresh black eye blossoming across his left eye. "Chloe, you're back." He threw his arms around her tightly. She gasped involuntarily as she felt her ribs bend in his grasp. He pulled away quickly, tucking his arm under hers.
"Hey, Adi. I'm home. I'd love to chat a bit, but I think my lungs are bleeding, so maybe we could talk later?" She laughed pitifully through gritted teeth.
"Of course. Come on, let's get you sorted." He helped her along the corridor. "What did you do anyway? Wrong shoes?"
"I was born."