Chosen From Fear

Chapter 1

Balance was difficult to achieve in life when, one minute, you were trying to explain to your little sister that if she didn't put the bread in the bread container, it would go stale, while then trying to polish off the pieces of an old L115A3 long range rifle, hoping it could be put to good use to end the life of another predator. But balance was but a word, and in action, was the hardest challenge of them all.

I never thought I'd have to fight as hard as I did to ensure my little sister not only understood the importance of food preservation but also realized that the stale bread was going to be eaten either way, whether she liked it or not. That, sadly for her, was a point I refused to budge on, simple as that. It was either that, or we went hungry. And no amount of dull soup or boiled broth was going to make up for that fact, but hey, what did she know? Better put, she thought she knew, but she didn't.

Besides, I had murdered a man for that bread, technically. I was going to make damn sure she gobbled up every last crumb until the tedium of it drove her insane. Sooner or later, hunger would drive her to do it anyway. I didn't know why we bothered with the constant charades we played about the subject.

I looked up at the roof, thin and flimsy, a good storm would ruin the rest of what remained of it. We had a hole in the kitchen that, through some twist of fate, dribbled directly into the shabby sink, rusted and past the point of no return for the most part.

This place I remembered all too well couldn't be considered a home. It was a flat, if nothing else, one of many, in another rundown neighbourhood which was, again, one of many, many, many of the same.

Balance was the objective. I had tried to strike that awful game with a headstrong attempt at first, but my little sister? She was stubborn. Far more than I could ever be. But just enough that when my stubbornness met hers, well, it was a war in the making.

In my bedroom—because we were lucky enough to have separate bedrooms, though technically I slept in the equivalent of a large closet, and she got the actual bedroom this place had to offer. Tiny, still, but enough for one little girl to live out her life without me, her sister, breathing down her neck about the fact that we were far too poor to somehow have this many cushions! It was insane. Maddening. I didn't know where she got them. Did she find them? Buy them? With what money? She had never found my private stash. I was out of the house enough for her to have an air of mystery around her sometimes, and in truth, she wasn't that little given she was my little sister. No matter how much taller, or older, she got, she would always be this stubborn little princess in my eyes.

I loved her. I loved her with all my heart. Nothing would ever change that. I'd die for her. I already killed for her. Not that she wanted that or liked to show she was aware of it. As far as I knew.

In my small bedroom—closet—I prepared, removing the usual attire of the accepted equivalent of a human street rat, and donned the black suit, the shirt, the uniform of someone who was one of two things: a bodyguard or a businessman. I was neither. I was an assassin. A killer. Though this suit was creased, old, and needed a few stitches in places, it got the job done, one of few things given to me by my superiors.

When my radio crackled, I leaped at it, nearly banging my head on the wall—probably through it if I had dived any harder—I received my latest contract. The world was a breeze to me, then. I didn't remember a thing. All I got was a name, a location, and the rest were up to me to decide and see through within a given timeframe.

This contract was...due today. I did not get my opportunity to get argumentative or make a point. Taking a stand about the unfairness of this particular contract would get me nowhere. No one liked a complainer, and besides, it would end up being given away to another assassin, and I needed the money if my sister and I were going to have the same argument about stale bread next week.