Assigned To Kill (Luke Hemmings)

Prologue

Four little words changed my life in such a way, I barely recognised myself. In fact, looking at me now, there were no resemblance to the little girl I once was. That thought sometimes terrified me, it showed just how much things can change in such a short amount of time. It's amazing how four words can cause you to become a completely different person, someone you no longer recognise when you look in the mirror. I remember that chilly September evening like it was yesterday, I remember everything down to the last detail and I know that I will never forget. After all, it isn't something anyone could ever forget. It was ingrained in my mind forever. Something so horrible, so terrifying happened that in turn, my life changed drastically.

You hear of bad things happening all the time, don't you? When you're watching the news, you'll hear about how someone was kidnapped, or murdered, or a home was broken into. Yet no matter how many things you hear about, you never expect them to happen to you.

You never expect to be a victim.

I was a victim of a crime so horrifying, so heartbreakingly painful at such a young age, I'm still surprised that I was able to get out of bed the next morning.

I had been sitting at home, wearing a pair of pink and white polka dotted pajamas that consisted of long trousers and a t-shirt with a fairy on it. They had been my favourite pajamas, my parents had always tried to persuade me to wear something else to bed but I never relented. I was 7 years old but I was incredibly stubborn.

I had been colouring in the brand new colouring book my parents had bought me that day because they had work to do and 'couldn't be disturbed'. That's what they had always told me. That day was different though; they had spent the entire day with me. Instead of pushing me to a babysitter, they stayed home and watched TV that was hung on the wall. I never understood why the TV was placed there when there had been a perfectly good enough table that was large enough to hold the weight of the TV, but that was my parents for you. I was always scared it would fall over whenever I walked past it and even though my parents had continuously tried their very best to reassure me that wasn't going to happen, I never listened.

Unlike most children, I never had a strong relationship with my parents. I never had that bond most had. In most cases, you'd usually hear of one parent - usually the father - being away for long periods of time, but for me, it was both my mother and my father. It was rare that I ever got to spend one whole day with them but at the time, 7 year old me was too happy to notice anything out of the ordinary.

That night was a night that will forever be etched into my memory, never to be forgotten, always there in the back of my mind, haunting me.

The four words that changed my life were spoken by a man that wore black from head to toe and had a gun in his hand, a smile on his face that scared me the second I saw it.

"Welcome to Blade Agency."

It wasn't until later that I realised what those words had meant because, for obvious reasons, at the time, I was only concentrating on the fact he held a gun. After all, I was only 7 and there was a strange man smiling at me with a gun in his hand. My parents had always taught me that guns were bad and that if I were to ever see someone holding one, I should run away as fast as I could. I didn't. I stayed rooted to the spot, eyes wide, wondering why on earth a 'bad man' was looking at me that way.