The Nexus

Prologue: The Light

[Copyright note: This is a Wattpad book written by @fallbomb and is fully protected by All Rights Reserved Copy.  If you are reading this anywhere else, it has been taken and I/Wattpad can take legal action.]

The gentle rocking of the boat hypnotized her as she stared out at the stars reflecting in the water. She was in a trance remembering the past 48 hours.

The assignment she had been given was simple. There was nothing unusual about it and she never had a problem carrying out commands. Kill some political figure or plant a bomb on a bus loaded with someone that was making waves. None of it mattered to her. What did she care? She didn't follow politics and placed no value on anyone but herself. As long as she got paid, then the job got done.

Now she was dead. At least according to the agency that she worked for and it had taken a lot of impromptu thinking on her part to make it all happen. She had not planned for this per se, but she never trusted anyone as a rule and, therefore, was always prepared for a moment like this. All she planned to do now was get to the Cayman Islands and access one of her bank accounts to start her new life. She would get there even if she had to walk there, or, as was the present scenario, hide on a cargo ship.

The ship she was on now would carry her across the Mediterranean to Spain, she knew this because she had waited three days at a Turkish port listening to conversations until she found the right boat. In Spain she would be able to get money from a safety deposit box using a key she had buried outside a restaurant near the bank. There was another key hidden in the overhang of a hotel six blocks from the bank, just in case.

But it wasn't the future that was running through her mind at that moment. It was the thing that had made her run. What she had seen had burned into her mind and yet, if anyone were to ask her to explain what it was she wouldn't be able to.

She had opened the door to where she believed her target was and had been blinded by a light that penetrated her soul. There was no name for that light, and the fact that she had a soul had come as a surprise to her. Before that moment she had operated on automatic pilot. Before that moment she was a trained assassin strictly because there was no conscience in the back of her mind, telling her right from wrong. It wasn't like she didn't know what was technically right and technically wrong, she just never cared.

The light had pushed her away and into the deserted, nighttime streets of Penza, Russia. She had run through the darkness with the shadows gripping her like a glove. She always wore the darkness well because she was one with it; it was her nature. There wasn't anyone chasing her, but the light was now in her. It had entered her through her eyes and she knew she would never escape it.

At that moment she realized that she would have to fake her own death and disappear. She would never be an assassin again.

She had arranged for it to look like her body had been burned in a dumpster outside of Elista. The agency would find the computer chip they had implanted in her neck in the neck of the victim and that would have to do. She knew it might not be enough to convince them, but she also knew that they would've had no clue that she was about to defect. She had been the model agent for the past fifteen years and that would be the only thing that might have them wondering. They would wonder how someone with her skills would possibly ever become a victim herself. It was her dedication to the agency that would convince them that she would never leave and give her plenty of time to completely vanish.

After the initial shock of seeing the light, she had started to calm down. As she arranged for her fake death, she grew even calmer. It was as if she were coming back to her old self. This didn't mean that she was not going to go through with her own demise (once the thought hit her there was no going back, besides, she began to like the challenge of being able to fool the agency) it just meant that she was starting to detach herself again. She was, again, alone in the world without worries or cares. She could come and go out of any scene as she pleased and not be noticed. She started to feel comfortable again.

Thinking about everything she needed to do to be dead and then invisible, kept her mind from focusing on anything that might have changed in her. But now, on the bobbing sea, there was only time to think.

It was possible for her to sleep. She had found a wonderfully hidden place on the upper deck, in between giant cargo crates, where she could surround herself in stolen tarp that she used for blankets and peer out onto the sea. In fact, she had slept all day, which is why she was staring out into the night at that moment.

Her old self was back, she knew it, but there was something else now going on. A little voice that spoke up every once in a while, trying to instill doubt in her actions. Questioning her. She did not dare answer the little voice and it would gradually go away for a while then peep up again here and there. She knew it had come in with the light and was now buried deep inside her.

She had a mild fear that this thing could possibly drive her insane, but holding on to sanity wasn't anything that worried her much. One thing that did worry her was why she had been sent to kill the person who had led her to the light. She wondered if he had led her there on purpose to cause this turmoil to start to build in her. Was he her target because he possessed this light?

She cared about the answer, but not enough to seek it out. Now her biggest problem was going to be how to live among regular people. The logistics were easy to figure out: get to money, use the money to buy a new identity, or create one, then find a place to live, and stay there. Her worry was that she had been so far removed from humanity for so long that she would be found out somehow for what she was. That people would be able to read her if she was around them too long and then they would make sure she paid. Self-preservation was important to her, though she really didn't know why.

'Oh well,' she thought and she lay down in her tarp-blankets. There really was no point in thinking about anything at that moment. Getting to Spain was the next goal and if that meant she just had to sit there with this little glow deep inside her and a voice that might speak up once in a while so be it. She was off to live her new life.