This is not my story.
I might have played a part in it, but I was just a small fragment, we all were.
There are bigger forces at play in the world, forces that pull us to different paths in life, that compel us to do things a certain way to achieve certain results.
I used to believe I was above that or that they simply wouldn't affect me.
I am commiting all of this to memory now so the ones finding this will know how the world got to be like this.
So they won't blame her.
I got the job in a rather desperate time for me. Money was tight and pretending to work daytime in a coffee shop wasn't cutting it anymore. I missed the thrill of thieving. I wasn't meant to do regular jobs, my temperament got too unstable working with people and I was afraid I would snap. I got used to being payed on the spot by fences. To stay up at night to earn my money. Do a short round up of loot and be back home to sleep and whatever other endeavors i might have. Training mostly. I was getting rusty.
I haven't really been on the market lately. Sure, my contact was still there somewhere, for those who knew how to find it, but it was all but forgotten under the miriard of offers from low lives wanting to make a quick buck.
That's why this offer was suspicious. The person either knew where to look, heard about me or my family or had connections with others who worked with me.
The thing is, my family is dead. Well...the part of it doing the same odd jobs I'm into. My aunt never wanted to have anything to do with it, always keeping her head low so people won't associate her with the rest of my family. She only took me in because I was too young, took care of me before I could fend for myself, then left me to my own devices and tried to cut all contact for her safety. I never blamed her.
My family used to be famous in certain circles. For whatever reason we became outlawed at a certain point and I was living on borrowed time. That's why I started working at the caffe. I heard rumors about certain bounty Hunter guilds resurfacing to take care of people like me. I have no doubt they helped find and capture my family. I did not want to see their best members in action after me. So I all but pulled out everything related to my thieving past, except for some traces here and there and the people I'd helped.
But people talk. Apparently there wasn't enough strange in this City already, so now they wanted me.
The pay was good, really good. In fact so good i started to wonder if it was a trap. I never saw who gave me the folded note during work, all i know is that i found it after work in one of my pokets. Which tells me the one who did this knew how I looked like even past my casual disguise (a brown bob wig and hazel contact lenses), knew where i work and what i actually did for a living. So even if it was a trap i had little choice, they could bring me in tomorrow if they wanted to, or even sooner if they wouldn't want to psychologically torment me first. Might as well go and see if at least the money bit was real. And besides... better to go prepared to the lion's den and on my own terms than have it drag me there.
The note was very vague, an address, an hour and the price, all written in beautiful cursive.
I changed my route home that night. I really wanted to sleep beforehand, but the address was all the way across town so I'd have to take the monorail and make a quick stop first.
