*Author’s Note. From a series of interviews I did with the child. Gianna hated me far less than most anyone I’ve ever met, circumstances included. Bit of a weird one. For someone like myself who has witnessed every facet of human nature, she presented some unique challenges.

The plane jostled something awful. As awful as any plane could. Small planes tended to do that.

They had departed northern Seriah twelve hours ago. A single pilot, an assassin, and Gianna. Gianna was, by the definition of the word, also an assassin, but the girl didn’t seem to think of herself in those terms.

Up until her capture, severance from the organization, and pending execution, she would have considered the Dark Element family and her existence as one of a child of that violent family.

Gianna’s mother gave birth in the Dark Element’s Serian H.Q., not five miles from the Mainal. She was a middling Syche and died when Gianna was around five. She left her daughter nothing-- not a picture, not the memory of her face.

*Author’s Note. We’re going off of what her immediate superior told her. As this was before the Brothers ascendancy, the Serian synod of the Dark Element would have followed protocol and broken up tight units of family or friends for better personnel control.

Both Gianna and her compatriot were being transferred to the Oceanic synod, of which Tyré was most certainly not the headquarters. Along the trans-polar flight, neither said a word.

In a small duffel bag she kept viced between her legs, Gianna carried all of her worldly possessions. To include: three pairs of clothes, three completely filled notebooks, an ζ80 roll of Serian paper money, and a couple of snacks that she had spent the rest of her meager pay on. The notebooks were of particular note. Without any formal education, Gianna had taught herself to both read and write. The sum total of her education was transcribed within those 478 pages.

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The plane touched down on a deserted permafrost runway with an audible sigh of relief from both the others aboard, but not Gianna. She had known actual fear and even the airplane in freefall wouldn’t have been it.

Gianna and the assassin sat down on a split tree that functioned as the airfield’s only bench. The small grey-bricked building was reserved for personnel only.

They waited, just as they were instructed to do.

The man shivered as Gianna emptily looked around, stared at the sun for a bit too long. He kept shaking so she offered, “I could get this log on fire if that helps.”

He scowled in a way that the middle point between his eyes and his nose got a bit wrinkly and then looked away. “Don’t even know why I’m here,” he started mumbling. “I shouldn’t be here. I need to get out.”

As the chittered words left his lips, his eyes grew wide as he looked at Gianna. “I didn’t say that okay? I didn’t mean it.”

Of course he did; Gianna understood. Seriah had become the lap of luxury in the Dark Element since the Brothers took over. Beatings were down, blood prices had been eliminated. The horror stories from new transfers confirmed their paradise. Why did people think she couldn’t understand them?

So she decided to console him.

“It’s okay. I’m right there with you.”

The man refused to look at Gianna straight on and she felt she had somehow bungled the human interaction further. He slowly canvassed around, eyeballed the brick wall behind them keenly.

“Do you really mean that?” he said.

Gianna tilted her head and approximated a human smile. “Of course.” She was going to make a friend, she just knew it.

He held out a hand. “Name is Maeda.”

Before the black SUV came to take them away to a marine biology facility of all places, Maeda instructed her not to let on that they were friends (not the actual word he used; Gianna filled in the blanks). As long as they were in public together, they wouldn’t know each other. Only when they were alone, absolutely sure they were alone, would they ever speak of this conversation again.

Gianna wrung her hands in excitement. She had never had a secret friend before.

*Author’s note. She had not made a friend.