Hide and Seek

Chapter 2: Murder

"Guilt is the source of sorrows, the  avenging fiend that follows us behind with whips and stings." -Nicholas Rowe

Onyx

¨Let's get going,¨ said Char, a brick wall of a man, tossing each of us a small hand pistol and a sniper, both semi-automatic. My black leather gloved hand curled around the handle of the larger gun, the other already in its holster, bouncing it lightly to test the balance before sliding it into its hidden sleeve inside the back of my shirt.

Lights flickered outside the one-way window of our van, briefly illuminating my colleagues faces. A blonde man sits to my left, Tanner, and a brunette to my right, Josh.

My nerves had begun to do a little dance when we'd packed up, and their routine had only intensified as we grew nearer to our destination, like they always do when I'm on the job. The nervousness floods through every inch of my body, but I push it away. Doubt, nervousness and fear are three of some of the emotions the Corps are never allowed to have. I count, it's what keeps me sane on these long, dark nights, on the way to the human whose life we will soon cut short. I count the number of bumps of the car goes over, the number of seconds I can hold my breath, the number of times I can see the people around me through the rare flashes of light.

Between numbers, my brain began to wander to my past. It's not a pretty thing by far. When I was thirteen, my father was killed in the collapsing of the mine he was in, collecting coal. It was a job that didn't pay well, leaving my mother, five younger siblings, and I in the homeless shelters in Paris, Italy. Once my father died, it was like a punch to the stomach. Nightmares every night. Flashbacks in the day that would leave me curled on the ground, my body being wracked with sobs. I quit school, and took up the job of feeding my family. It wasn't easy, but I found a man, willing to pay someone to clean up broken glass in a perfume factory. The job didn't pay well, and I was always looking for a new one, but for the time being, that one sufficed.

It was a Wednesday when I was jailed. The wife of the local baker had always snuck me small goodies to take back family. She must have felt sorry for us, she did, after all, have six children of her own to care for. However, I guess she had never bothered to inform her husband of her actions, for on that wonderful day, the baker called the cops on me when he saw me leaving, a couple of unpaid burnt cookies in my pockets.

Soon after I'd been taken to the local jail-house, a group of men in black suits, sunglasses, and holding briefcases came, and had the prison guards line up me as, well as all the others being held there, against a wall. They'd walked down the line, carefully examining each of us, and occasionally asking the guard questions about the man they were currently in front of. When one of the men stopped in front of me, my throat closed up in fear, and my fingers curled into tight fists, my fingernails cutting into my palms. The man, like all the others, had rigid posture, close cropped hair and his mouth was in a hard line.

"How'd you get here, Runt?" He'd asked in English, and I'd nearly jumped out of my own skin at his low, booming voice.

"Thievery, is me told." I said in choppy english, having only learned what little I did from a friend, before hurriedly adding on, "Sir."

"And what did you steal?"

"I did steal no thing." I stated, palms sweating.

His hard lips had suddenly taken on a ghost of a smile.

"I want this one." He turned to the guard pointing at me.

The next day I had been on a plane to the United States of America.

"Onyx," Char snapped, startling out of my thinking.

"Sir?" I looked around to see that the rest of the men had already filed out.