Strange

Prologue

You've been selected, Little Strange. It's always been you; you're meant to be one of us.

Ryder Strange was but a little girl the day her life changed forever. She woke from her usual nightmare without panic, she'd grown used to it. Her feet shuffled across the wooden floor of her cabin as she exited her room.

"Momma?" Her voice was as small as she was. "Poppa?" She turned the corner to the kitchen and her heart dropped. There stood three men in assassin gear. She knew. "No, I don't wanna go..."

"You've been selected, Little Strange." The same words from her nightmare rang through her ears like sirens as one of the men spoke.

"I'm so sorry, baby." Her mother's voice came out as a sob. Ryder turned to her father, but he only stood there silently, the heartbreak written all over his face.

Ryder ran to her mother and father and hugged them tightly. She knew this would be the last time she ever saw them. Sobs echoed through the kitchen as the little family held each other.

"I apologize, but it is time that we leave." One of the men spoke.

"We love you, sweetheart." Those were the last words she ever heard from her parents.

In Raguard, they were known for their female assassins. Taken from their parents as a child, they trained hard for years. They were to have no contact with their old life. Once they graduated, they would be given a communication device with a program to find and accept jobs and a handheld teleportation device. They weren't regular assassins, they were able to travel universes. Nobody was safe. Especially not from Ryder Strange.

Ryder trained hard as a child, she took beatings she never expected to have to take. They took care of her, but she had to fall in line. If she didn't, she'd be thrown off the cliff and into the water below. So she became the best, the top of the class. Ruthless, is what they'd call her. Her emotions were tucked deep down in her heart, under lock and key. Not even she knew what could access them.

She was nineteen now, the youngest to graduate with full permissions to go on jobs. Everything about her had changed, even her looks. She stood about five feet five inches tall, her hair black hair was so long that it reached the top of her thighs. Her left eye, once golden, was no scarred and icy blue. She was thin and her skin was tanned from all the time training in the sun. She was beautifully rough around the edges.