Can You Feel It?

00.

|ARTEMIS|
🏹

"Memorize it." A file slid onto the glass table in front of me. "It's your new identity."

To be honest, I had no identity but Artemis Crawford was my given name and so I heard it sometimes.

Because most other times, I was someone else. Not that I had a say in it or that I minded.

I glanced down momentarily.

NAME: Kaya Brady Skeats

AGE: 27

PROFESSION: Professional Forensic Photographer-

I looked back up at Marcello as he slid into his seat across from me. The cruel gleam in his eyes was one I'd come to recognize soon after I'd learnt to walk.

Quite the statement for a girl with alexythemia but nevertheless it was the truth.

"And this-"

He slid a picture towards me, my eyes following the movement of the polaroid over the transparent table.

"-is your target." He finished.

I picked up the photograph of the man with a pair of blue eyes and an olive skin tone.

Raven hair fell in messy waves over his forehead in the candid picture and I could see the appeal of his sharp jawline as he grinned at something distractedly.

He was handsome, I suppose. By the standards of the society.

And young.

Much younger than all my targets so far.

"Attractive, don't you think?" Marcello stared at me and I met his dark eyes.

I couldn't feel attracted, had never experienced what they described as attraction so I didn't know how it would feel to seduce and ruin someone like him.

However, my purpose and mission would remain the same and Marcello was more than aware of that.

With my expression naturally blank, I replied: "I wouldn't know."

I often think he derived sick pleasure in confirming that, yes I was still unable to feel.

I'd long since stopped trying to explain to him that my condition didn't mean I was incapable of entirely feeling. More like I struggled to identify emotions I'd experience. He cared as long as he got his desired response from me.

He chuckled, a familiar darkness in his eyes. "Of course not."

Then he leaned forward and his smile slipped.

"That's Special Agent Erex Di Castillo. Although he goes by the name Rex." He thumbed the file in his hands and took out another picture of Erex from it.

I kept my gaze on him, waiting for him to tell me what exactly I was supposed to do.

Leaning back, Marcello folded his arms across his muscular chest. His suit was still crisp and pressed and had it not been for the three drops of blood on his pristinely white shirt and the lifetime I'd spent under his thumb, I'd have been fooled into believing him to be a dignified businessman.

"We need someone on the inside. Everything has already been arranged and you'll be joining the FBI branch of Chicago as a verified Forensic Photographer. My perfect spy. By his side. Reporting on his actions." He drummed his fingers on the table, eyes affixed on Erex's file.