I paused in stupor, not forgetting to kill the guy who struggled under my boot. “Fuck does that mean?” I asked. Although, I had an idea. There were times when Risky would go off on her own to do jobs. She would always walk with more tactical gear.

“It means, you’re good enough to not be a liability and actually help me,” she dropped a file on my lap. “Antonio Alvarez. Middle-man weapons dealer. Boss realised he’s a snake and wants to take him out.”

I flipped through the file. It was definitely something belonging to a legal, organised entity, like the police. “When do we get him?”

“Now,” she watched me and smiled.

I raised a brow, “Excuse me?”

She wasn’t kidding. We really did intercept him at a busy intersection. T-boned by Risky’s reckless driving, Snake – the dealer’s codename according to Risky – came out of the car very disoriented. From there, I readied my suppressed rifle and shot him a few times under the guise of a homeless man. My accuracy had certainly increased. I noticed she gave me a lot more sniping and recon roles.

His driver came out with a cocked firearm, only to be shot dead by Risky. She recorded a little video of Snake and bailed from the scene. We got on our bikes and left for a gas station to refuel. “Okay, I have a backlog of mid-tier contracts like this one so, we gonna be real busy, kid.” She lit a cigarette, which I promptly snatched from her mouth and outed.

And that was our lifestyle for the next couple months. I’d long since acquired the ten thousand dollars needed to pay Risky to get me into the Calamity, and after a week of asking her to do her job, I blew my fuse. “What is this? What the fuck are we doing out here, Risky?” I stopped cleaning the gun, “Why are y–”

She crossed one leg over me and sat on my lap, facing me. She pushed my chin up, so that I’d look at her. “Oel, my sweet Oel, we need a ship that can withstand a normal sandstorm before we even try to go into the Calamity. Being unprepared will just end in our deaths.”

I rolled my eyes, “What’re you saying?”

She explained that she already had one such ship, but we needed a key part for it to function again. We needed a superconductor, which costed around seventy thousand dollars. I made a squeamish face and grunted in annoyance. She sure did know how to keep me working.

Very soon, we’d move onto really bigwig contracts. These were the guys who always had a convoy of protective vehicles around them. These were the guys drowning in bodyguards. These were the fellas people made conspiracy theories about but no one could identify. Most importantly, these were the people whose heads were paydays over ten grand.

The first person we eliminated was with his daughter that day. A guilty conscience wasn’t the best way to start it off. How could anyone explain to that poor girl why her father had to die? How could anyone explain why she had to die? Risky wasted no time, she had no errs in her movement. The moment our target’s daughter witnessed her father’s death, Risky put a bullet in her head.

When we got back home, I simply stared at her. Without even looking at me, she put some things in place, “For high stakes targets, there are no witnesses. This is especially true for children.”

“So, it’s expected to kill children? Are you hearing yourself?” My nails dug into my flesh. I never wanted to kill her before, but I did now.

“Yes, and yes. I’ve left kids alive before. That’s why I’m missing an arm now. They come back, in one way or another, Oel.” She intertwined fingers, “Leaving them alive is signing your death warrant. The top dogs all have stakes in the broader police system.”

“The police?! The police doesn’t exist in Alkell, Risky! Fuck are you even saying?”

She stopped perusing the files on our next target and look at me in anger. “How long you been here now, kid? You can’t possibly be this naïve still, can you? You think they come blaring sirens and saying ‘Freeze’? Think they show you badges and identify themselves? No. The police are an execution squad in normal clothes just like you and I. The police is the middle class man you see in the better areas of Alkell who’s mowing his lawn.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

She continued reading through the file again, “I say this because I like you, kid. Everyone in Alkell City is dirty, even children.”

I raged inside. The only reason I didn’t try to kill her was because I needed her to find my brother. “I’m going out,” I said. Some time away from her was long overdue, so I found myself enjoying some smokes and a bottle of tequila in a secluded part of a playground. The night was cold, and I could feel the chill enshrouding my heart with every passing day. The only thing that grounded me was my search for my brother, but even that felt like a fairy tale at this point.

My tears began running, probably the last of them. Alkell City had hardened me. That little girl’s look of pure horror etched itself into my brain. It felt like I still heard the screams from time to time. How does one live past that? What do you do to convince yourself that killing a child was worth it? Who is Risky anyway? I asked myself. I knew nothing of her, not even her real name.

As I exhaled smoke into the air, that question went away. Instead, the question of my own identity made my eyes swivel to the Oel that lived happily with his family. How did I go from a boy who found it distasteful to hurt a fly to someone who racked up more kills that Risky?

Coming from a family too poor to eat properly, I always thought having money would fix things. I saw now that money without meaning fixed nothing.

My father always thought he was a failure because he couldn’t get his licence as an engineer, so he drowned his sorrows in alcohol, and took that anger out on his own family. And he was partly right, because my brother and I certainly began looking at him with hate, scorn, and disgust. Not only did he become a burden to himself, but one to his family as well. I squeezed my tequila bottle in abhorrence. Because he felt sorry for himself, mom had to work multiple jobs. Although she was haggard when she came home, she still had to take care of us.

That’s why my brother became a calamity pilot. Our lives improved then, because he would send money to Mom. But a lot of that money was taken by Dad and spent on booze anyway. I chuckled in pity of my life. What a mess.

But, one day, we didn’t get the weekly letter my brother would send. The payments stopped coming in from him as well. Then we began hearing about the disappearances of calamity pilots. I knew Mom thought the worst, but she wouldn’t dare show that face to me. What a fuckin’ mess. Eventually, mom had to continue working extra jobs again, and unfortunately was a victim of a mugging, just like I became. But at least I survived; Mom wasn’t as lucky as I was.

My fleabag of a father ran off with some other woman a couple months after Mom’s death. I’d ponder at times if he wanted to do that all along. I wondered if he viewed his own family as nothing more than baggage holding him back. Other times, I’d spiral down a pit of despair and mourning. I couldn’t give my mother the life she deserved before she died, and I never would be able to now.

Now, with my parents gone, what was I to do but find the only family I had left? If he was alive, then great. If he wasn’t, then at least I would have closure and not feel guilty about ending it all.

I spent that entire night wondering if all my efforts in Alkell City was worth it. I didn’t believe in religion, any supernatural deity residing over us, or any such external force. But admittedly, I’d look to the skies and hoped my mom was watching over me, especially when I felt the most lost. Just, give me a sign, ple–

My episode of doubt and regret got cut short by a call from Risky. Ugh, fuck does she want? “What?” I answered, and immediately heard gunfire. A long sigh escaped me, and regrettably, I sauntered towards my bike.

Within a couple minutes, I arrived back at the theatre we lived in. I found a nice vantage point and had my sniper ready. The call was still on, so I listened in when I noticed a young man approaching Risky with a squad of men in tactical gear behind him. “–mean, only you would pull off a hit so crazy. No other hitman in this city is so messy. Let me tell you what you did wrong,” the guy started monologing. “This is Ross’ city. You don’t take contracts from people outside that association, got it?”

“A contract is a contract, lapdog. What? Don’t tell me big ole Ross is ‘fraid o’ little ole me fuckin’ up his plans to consolidate power.”

“Oh, Risky. We’d hoped this would be an amicable talk where you’d come out of alive, but it loo–”

The lapdog didn’t get chance to finish his sentence. I immediately changed targets to the other men after I took him out. Risky used that confusion to duck behind cover and return fire. We killed them pretty easily, but we couldn’t rejoice. They knew our hideout, so we had to leave.

I pulled up a pickup truck and we loaded all the important stuff into it. Contracts, gear, and her fine assortment of alcohol. Apparently, she had a safehouse outside Alkell City, so we went there.

After we unpacked, she wanted to visit a friend of hers, a mechanic. This was the man selling the superconductor we needed. Upon inspection of the gadget, Risky’s eyes widened in shock. “I’ll take it.”

“What?” both me and the black market ‘mechanic’ said in unison. I certainly wasn’t expecting her to shell out her own cash for it. And I’m sure the dealer didn’t expect her to jump the gun like that without haggling.

Risky gave him the cash, and he gave her the superconductor. “Ah, let me get my receipt book.”

A few seconds later, we heard an engine turn on. Risky rolled her eyes and forcefully pried open the superconductor. “Nice, the core’s missing. That fuckface! Let’s go!”