Hide and Seek

Chapter 4: Guilt

"Guit does to the spirit, what pain does to the body." -David A. Bednar

Onyx

Char scowled at me from across the van, and I quickly dropped my gaze to my feet.

"You stupid," he growled at me. "You stupid, useless, soldier."

I stared at my feet, ashamed that I had helped her. Why couldn't I have finished what Char had begun and killed her when the possibility of her turning us in arose? Instead, I had to make sure she was alright, and unless I hadn't lied about finishing her off, I would have been dead by now, along with her. After I had made it to the car, I'd lifted the girl out to find a nasty gash on her forehead. I'd pulled out the tranquilizer and bandaged her head, then pulled out her phone and texted her friend, telling her that she was hurt by her house and was in dire need of assistance. At last, I finally opened up the back door and laid her across the seat.

I don't know why I couldn't kill her. Maybe the fact that it could've been her that was the blonde girl whose parents I'd helped kill, five months ago, and I know all about the loneliness being parentless can bring.

"Get out!" Char roughly shoved me out the open doors of the van as we pulled into K.R.M.A headquarters.

I wordlessly obliged, stumbling out of the van, not making eye contact with the man behind me or the swarm in front.

"The commander is gonna want to see you," Char added before I disappeared in a crowd working their way through The Garage.

The K.R.M.A. headquarters was made up of five different sections: The Garage where they kept all the big machinery, ammo and weaponry, the Corps Q (AKA quarters) where we sleep, the Commander's Q (Quarters)where the officials slept, The Pain which sounds menacing, but is really just the training rooms, and The Attack Center, which is basicly the room with computers lining the walls that have people micromanaging the missions from. The "commander" that Char mentioned is the man in charge of the corps, the technicians, all of us.

More accurately, the Commander was the vice president of the United States of America, who held an office not big enough to be on the news every second of the day, but high enough to discreetly begin an organization that focused on assassinating potential threats to his position and his plans.

"Hay, Arco!" A man named Petya Derrin came up behind me, slapping me on the shoulder. "How was the mission?" His voice was laced with a Russian accent, reflecting where he originated from before K.R.M.A.

"I'll tell you later, Derrin." I tell him. What I think was the strangest thing about K.R.M.A was the fact that not one of the members of the Corps were a true American. We're all foreign with the small exception of the Commander and his handpicked officials.

Like most branches of government, we called each other by our last names. Truth be told, I didn't even know next to any of my comrades first names. However unlike most military branches, we were told by the officials that names had power, and we were never to tell them to anyone. The only people authorized to know anothers first names were the officials themselves. We used the names as our passwords to access our most confidential information and records.

The only reason I knew Derrin's was because we were recruited on the same trip, and not knowing the rules, and his talkative mouth added to that, I knew everything about him and his background by the end of the flight here. Derrin wasn't one to easily oblige to the rules, so over the next few months after our arrival, he'd coxed all the information he'd wanted out of me and my then weak will. I hadn't voluntarily taken him as my friend, but he'd taken me as his although we weren't allowed to have friends or attachments. I felt that through this single rule, the officials were trying to turn us into soulless, ruthless killers that didn't feel the tiniest bit of anything, which I guess really was their goal. It is, after all, easier to control a person who doesn't have a conscience telling them what's right or wrong.

I made my way through the halls, ignoring Derrin as he, like normal, talked his head off. When we finally got to my room, I bade my friend farewell, promising that I would tell him about the mission during dinner.

"Arco," a sharp voice came from outside my door, startling me from my nap. "Get out here."

Holding back a grown, I obliged, grabbing my gloves and gun from the small table in the corner of my small, rectangular room.

"What?" I scowl at Char.

He smirked at my expression. "A corps meeting. I believe it's gonna be on loyalty."

My scowl deepened as I recognized his reference to the events earlier in the day, and I push past him, making sure to bump into him with my shoulder.

"Remember, soldiers," said the official lecturing us, "we gave you a shot at redemption, don't blow it. Dismissed. Dinner will be served in your rooms tonight in two hours. Thank you."

We saluted, and filed out of the room. The lecture had been on loyalty, just like Char had predicted, and I hated him for it. But the feeling melted away as the image of the girl slowly slid into my thoughts, and the hatred was replaced by worry and wonder. I wondered if she was alright. If she'd gotten help, or had ever gotten to wherever she'd been going. When she'd stared at me, she'd seemed so bold, like she wasn't going to let anything hurt her, although pain had flowed through her eyes. She'd already been hurt. How? I wondered. Had it been a recent break up with a boyfriend? Grades? The loss of a beloved pet? Or, could it have been the long lasting pain of losing a loved one? I knew that last look well, as I had had my turn of being the recipient of that expression, as a target's family member looked at me with horror and sadness as I took care of a subject.

Guilt tickled my stomach as my mind wandered these thoughts, a feeling that hadn't bothered me since I'd been recruited. They'd started up again five months ago, however, and didn't seem to stop. I didn't like it. The remorse was a constant companion, going wherever I went, regardless the circumstances, tucked in a pit in my stomach, waiting to jump out and attack me when I was alone, to rack my brain with all the things I'd done. "Redemption" is what the officials call this program. "Heck" is what I do. The worse part is, is the fact that I don't believe that I could leave. Even if I did, nobody would want me, especially when they found out what i'd done. They couldn't live with me having done that, and quite frankly, I couldn't either. No. My best shot was to become the best soldier I could be.

This line of thinking didn't last long, however. For while I was lying alone in bed at night, my mind was far from rest, under attack by the constant remorse living within me. Faces flashed. Targets. Family members. Even my own mother, father, and siblings, but one face in particular haunted me. The girl with the long blonde hair who I'd helped against orders, breaking my perfect record, and planting a seed of guilt within my mind.

That's when alone in the dark, mind traveling a million miles per hour, cheek bleeding from biting it to hold back the sobs of guilt, I decided to go look for the girl haunting my every thought.