“That’s all I have to do?” I was confused, it was too easy. “I just have to break into her apartment and wait for this kid to show up?”

“He’s not just a kid, he’s the kid that killed your brother.” He sighed. Clearly I wasn’t giving him the responses he wanted. “But yeah, that’s it. Just tell me once he gets there and I’ll handle everything else. Got it, girl?”

“My name’s not girl, it’s Samantha.” This guy really didn’t like names. Wouldn’t tell me his, wouldn’t tell me the woman’s name, not the kid’s name, and he didn’t even have the decency to remember mine. His money was good though, and that’s all that mattered right now. Now that I had to bring in my brothers share too.

After my brother died in a gang fight, my financial support stopped. Stupid as he was, he was a nice guy and he’d kept us off the streets, more or less, after we ran away from our fifth foster home. He'd never been able to hold onto a real job, but he always found a way to get money. That’s what led him to the gang that he’d gotten killed with. It wasn’t even a fight really, they were massacred. According to this giant of a guy some kid he had a picture of did it all himself. I found it all hard to believe, but the kid was scrawny, so he wouldn’t be that much of a problem, and this guy was paying me a lot of money to do pretty much nothing.

“Do you understand, Samantha?” He growled out my name.

“Break into the apartment, wait for the kid, call you when he gets there.” I repeated.

“And if the woman gets there first?”

“Knock her out and tie her up.” I improvised that bit, it sounded about on par with what he wanted. “That’ll cost you extra though.”

“I’m already giving you ten thousand dollars and revenge. That should suffice.” I rolled my eyes, it was money I needed, not revenge. I didn't feel like pushing my luck though. I could tell that this guy wasn't someone I wanted to mess with.

“Fine.”

“Now take the picture and go, he should be there soon.” The man put the picture of the kid down on the table and slid it across to me. As I tried to pull the picture closer he hesitated and pulled it back. “One more thing. If you find that you’re losing control of the situation, which I truly hope does not happen, take this.” He placed a small black revolver on top of the picture. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a gun, and it wouldn’t have been the first time I’d used one. I had never pointed one at another human being before though. “It only holds one shot at a time, but this gun fires special bullets. They’ll kill anything in one shot regardless of where you hit it, but it’s still only one shot, so do yourself a favor and only have one target.” He placed a small black satin drawstring pouch on the table that tinkled as it came to rest on the hard surface before standing up and walking out without another word.

It was the weirdest transaction I’d ever made. It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten paid to do something illegal, that was for sure, and it wasn’t the first time I’d been given a gun just in case. It wasn’t just something that was odd about this though, everything about this guy was strange.

He had contacted me out of the blue by calling my friend’s cell phone. tThe second I met up with them, said he could tell me about my brother’s death. Tells me to meet him at a bar I’ve never heard of that’s apparently in a part of town I know like the back of my hand. When I get there the bar’s empty except for him and he starts saying he needs me to do something for him and he’ll tell me everything I want to know. Next thing I know he’s gone, I’m alone in the bar, I have a picture of a kid that’s going to be at the apartment I need to break into and a loaded gun for insurance. It was insane, and it was only for ten thousand. The whole ordeal was a terrible mess, but he was already gone by the time I was starting to regret taking the offer. I tucked the gun away under my jacket and checked the pouch before stuffing in in my jacket pocket. There were only three bullets in the pouch. I would keep it even if only to protect myself from this guy. That is, if I managed to grow the spine to back out.

---------------

The street around the apartment building was eerily void of spectators. I checked the address on the back of the picture again, only to find that this was still the place I needed to be at, spooky as it may have appeared. While it was unusual, and left me uneasy, it gave me nothing to worry about as I picked the lock and broke into the building. It wasn’t the first time I’d broken into a building, however I had no intention of making a habit out of it and used my lock picking skills sparingly. There were better ways to make money than stealing, most of the easy ones still broke the law though. It may have been wrong, but it was how I’d survived this far and I hadn’t had a problem yet, with the law or with my morals.

As I entered the building I was again stricken by the absence of people. Not just that I couldn’t see any, but that I couldn’t hear any. While the building looked like it had plenty of tenants, judging from various scattered traces of human activity, it felt like they’d all suddenly just up and left. I couldn’t prove it at all, but it felt like the building was completely empty. It was starting to put me on edge, it was like with every step I took up the stairs and closer to my destination was one step closer to a trap. I was supposed to be setting the trap though. It would have been funny if it wasn’t all so surreal.

I stopped in front of the apartment door. I was sure it was the right one, the man had made me repeat the number ten times so that I wouldn’t forget it. It felt just as empty and void of life from the outside. Even with the lack of presence I felt, I hesitated. For the first time in my history of criminal activity it felt uncomfortable for me to be somewhere, it felt unsafe. I’d always felt a strange security, even when undertaking the most dangerous jobs, because I knew in my gut that I would make it out just fine. To ease my mind I unscrewed a light bulb from one of the wall mounted fixtures, removed my jacket and crushed the glass under the thick fabric to spread across the floor behind me to act like an alarm. As I put the jacket back on the revolver tumbled out onto the floor. I hadn’t forgotten about it, but again I hesitated as I picked it back up and shoved it into my pocket and kept my hand on it just in case.

I couldn’t be sure if I was starting to see things now. Perhaps I was just hallucinating under the stress of my circumstances, but the apartment door was open. It was only a slight change, like a light breeze had pushed it open. It could have just always been open and I hadn’t noticed, but I could have sworn it was closed before I set the glass alarm.

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“Come on in already.” A woman’s voice sighed from beyond the door. “I’m not waiting forever.”

Dumbfounded, I walked through the threshold. The door immediately clicked shut behind me. Even more on edge at this new turn of events, I took in the small apartment I’d just entered. The front door connected to a small hallway that branched into the kitchen and dining/living room to the left and another hallway to the right. Sitting gracefully on the well-worn and grubby couch in the living room was quite possibly the most plain, yet elegant woman I had ever seen. This must have been the woman my employer wanted me to knock out, only she wasn’t supposed to be here already. I’d been walking into a bad situation from the start, all I could do was improvise. Which was the one thing I could never manage to do properly.

“Who told you about me?” I wasn’t within striking distance yet and I didn’t want to jump the gun with the small hand cannon I found myself gripping in my pocket. I didn’t want to use it at all if possible, I was starting to feel dirty just carrying it in my pocket, but at the same time I felt safe too. “Was it that old woman? You’d think she’d be grateful enough to keep her mouth shut.”

“Some people just can’t stop talking though.” What were we even talking about? My index finger was starting to inch over to the trigger.

“Well, here you are. We may as well deal, have a seat.” I sat down on the small sofa she gestured to.

“That’s what I came for after all.” Far from it. I could steal treasures, I could fight if I needed to, I could destroy evidence, but I never felt comfortable lying. It always showed on my face.

“You’re lying.” I was doomed.

“No…” No chance of recovery. I was caught.

“No, you’re definitely lying. Why? Why are you lying to me, and what are you lying about?”

I didn’t have time to talk things over with this woman, the job was blown but I could still escape. My muscles tensed and I leapt up and over the back of the sofa, flipping it over in the process. Somehow she had been just as quick to stand and had stepped back to escape the tumbling sofa. I turned to sprint to the door but she was right there in front of me. Her speed was impossible, there was no way she could have gotten there so fast.

“Where do you think you’re going?” The woman sighed as she grabbed me around the throat and lifted me off the ground with one hand. “We aren’t done talking yet.”

I felt weightless for a second as I was thrown back over the flipped sofa and across the room. The lower half of my body skidded across the ground just enough to slow the impact of my head against a small television. The glass screen had cracked, my head was ringing, and I was pretty sure there was a bad cut on the back of my head from the glass.

“What are you doing here?” The woman was standing over me now, she’d reached me so quickly I hadn’t even seen her cross the room. My vision was getting blurry so I might have just missed it.

“I…” I couldn’t finish. I was beginning to feel the pain in the back of my head from the impact as the injury left the numb shock impact stage and progressed to searing panic.

“Speak up.”

I was in the air again. I don’t think she realized that causing pain would only result in an inability to explain myself. Not that that was a better option, but it was an option. She seemed a little too eager to throw me around the room, like she already knew exactly why I was there.

“Please…” I was cut off again, this time as I was thrown down against the small dining room table that separated the kitchen from the living room. The impact split the table and I was on the ground again. This time face down. The temperature in the apartment dropped. It was like a walk in freezer all of the sudden. I could think of no other explanation than that I was dying. After everything I’d done and been through, I was dying.

“What did you do to my son?” She was shouting now. She’d been completely calm until she mentioned her son, but now I could hear the desperate rage in her voice.

A crashing noise distracted the woman from finishing me off. I was amazed I was still even conscious, though it was hard to tell if I actually was. I couldn’t follow what was happening around me, everything was so blurry like there was a fog covering my vision. A boy and a girl had run into the apartment. I recognized the boy, it was the same one from the picture only paler and more tired looking. The one I was supposed to wait for. Only now it was too late, I was done for.

“Mom?” It was the boy. I had sort of figured that the woman was his mother. I had just tried to wash over the fact that I was probably going to be hurting a family this whole time. He looked surprised though, almost as if he hadn’t expected to see his mother there. Wasn’t this their home?

“Eleanor?” The girl finally spoke up. The woman looked at the girl as she spoke. So her name was Eleanor, she didn’t look happy at the mention of her name though. The boy looked even more confused.

“Hope?” The woman finally addressed the intruders. The boy turned to the girl he'd busted in with. He looked like he was losing it.

The room was silent for a second. The three of them were exchanging baffled looks. None of them seemed to realize what was going on, which made it a perfect time for me to move. I managed to slip the gun out of my pocket without anyone noticing. I didn’t want to use it, but I was too weak to escape without it. I pushed the hammer down with my thumb.

“Ellano…” The boy stopped as he caught me moving.

I was panicking as I aimed for the girl. She would distract them long enough for me to get off another shot. My hand was shaking as I pulled the trigger. A noise like thunder filled the room and sent my ears ringing again. The boy had stepped in front of the girl, I could see blood soaking through his shirt. I had just killed someone. In the shock of the moment I dropped the gun.

“No!” The girl shrieked. She was panicking as the boy dropped to the ground. “No, no, no, no. Why would you do something so stupid? I would have been fine!”

“Hope… he’s already dead.” A man had appeared out of thin air next to the girl, who was now hopelessly crying over the boy’s dead body.

“It’s not too late yet,” The girl managed to speak through her sobs “We can still…”

“Don’t you dare lay a finger on my son, Victor” The woman had finally spoken up. The fury in her voice sent a shiver down my spine. “I won’t let you put him through that.”

“I’m sorry Eleanor, but I cannot let him die. If he fades away, I’ll die with him.” The man scooped up the boy’s body. “If you think about it, it’s your fault that he has to go through it now anyways. After all, you’re the one that started this whole mess.”

“How dare you pin this on me! You self-righteous pig!” The room seemed to be getting colder every time one of them spoke. “I won’t…”

“It doesn’t look like you’re stopping me, so I won’t stop.” The man hummed. “Hope, take the girl, and please try to keep her in one piece.”

The girl walked over to me and stared down at me, not shying away from eye contact at all for a solid five seconds before the heel of her boot came smashing down into my face.