Innocence Forsaken

Ch 20. Partnership

For days the thought of those people remained in her mind, the thought that after all these years, and after their deaths they'd thought they would have easy  access back into their lives, but no, they couldn't. Eve-Anne couldn't… wouldn't allow that.
Anyway, her mission was clear to her now, much clearer than it had ever been. The ones that called themselves her parents didn't matter anymore.
Eve-Anne sat at a desk, twirling her knife around, almost dropping it into her leg at one point.
She put the knife down, and pulled her bandage up her arm, before shoving the knife back into her pocket.
"Miss Corley?" The lowlife that stood behind her asked.
Eve-Anne nodded in response, a small smile gracing her face, before she caught it and put a stop to it.
"Miss Maynard is ready to see you now."
She stood up, and followed the lowlife into a room on the side.
As soon as she entered she was hit the musty stench, and a wave of off-putting smoke clouded her eyes.
She resisted the urge to flinch from the assaults on her senses from the various sets of vagrants, and criminals.
There were men and women there that Eve-Anne had never met before, even walking down the street to drop their kids off at school or heading on their way to work.
Many of them wore rugged clothes, except the criminal who saw her into the room, who wore more of a second hand suit.
Eyes turned to Eve-Anne before they went back to whatever scheming they were doing before.
"Nice to see you again." It was the woman from the warehouse. She had her short hair tied into a tight ponytail.
"You too." Eve-Anne couldn't help but frown a little. The finger didn't matter much, but that didn't mean it wasn't an annoyance.
"You can go, Victor." She said, waving a hand in dismissal.
"Okay, Lieutenant." Victor nodded, and left to join a group at a table.
"I'm Det." She paused to look at her watch quickly, "Myra said she'd love to talk to you but she's busy at the moment."
"It's okay. I can wait." Eve-Anne replied.
"She knows. Come on." She pushed her way through the rabble of people gently, yet pushing them quite far.
Eve-Anne went through the newly created path, up to an old door which had paint chipping off it.
Det gripped the handle softly, nearly pulling it off, and the door creaked open.
Groans echoed from a corner, as a man gripped his leg, wide and red eyed.
"I told you to clean this up, we have a guest." She rolled her eyes, and the injured man jolted in fear.
"Y-yes…" Another stuttered as he grabbed  his colleague, kicking with his healthy leg and screaming.
The echo of his internal screams of help rang throughout her mind. She looked away and tried to distract herself from it, but that was too much. That screaming mess, that was it. Such loud screaming.
Thankfully, the pleas were silenced with a loud snap, yet still sobbing from other parties outside the room.
"Sorry 'bout that." Det smiled. "It's not everyday we get visitors down here."
She eyed Eve-Anne' s hand, and nodded.
"Scared?" She questioned, as Eve-Anne looked down.
Her fingers gripped the inside of her shirt, leaving little indents on her delicate palm. Her hand fell limp for a bit, before finding its way into a pocket.
"No."
"Good."
A silence befall the room. Eve-Anne scanned Det quickly. She was abnormally tall, and had a thin amulet draped around her neck. Something that she hadn't spotted before.
It was strange, it's engraving down the sides of the outside circle were in some kind of foreign language that she hadn't seen before. There was a malformed star in the middle, with a dark red circular gem shimmering in the middle.
It shone like it was new, but some of the engravings had scuffed leaving some of the letters unreadable.
"Miss Myra?" Det turned around. She was behind them. "As usual…" She muttered.
"Mornin'" She said. Her whole atmosphere had changed. Her accent. The tint in her eyes was dark, black almost, and she wore an air of malevolence, no, more like evil.
The dim light fought the presence of the freckles climbing up the bridge of her nose and spreading across her forehead.
Her hands sat in her pockets lazily, and she smiled at the sight of Eve-Anne.
"I'm happy you made it." She said, one of her hands leaving the pocket for a second to form a small gesture.
Eve-Anne eyed her.
"I'm sorry about Susanna." She said quickly, "In my defence, we had no idea the USB was bugged."
"That's not why I'm here." She half scowled. It wasn't that bad, at least she wasn't dead.
Myra looked back with confusion gracing her face.
She hesitated for a second, "Why are you here?"
"One of my contacts need some help."
"I didn't know you were still doing that." There was a silence, "Which one?"
"A new one. The one on the front of the newspaper recently, do you know them?" Eve-Anne asked.
Myra's eyed widened for a split second.
"What are you playing at?" Myra half yelled, "The Ripper is dangerous--"
Eve-Anne waves her hand a little.
"Try not to worry about it." Eve-Anne paused, "Plus they don't like that name."
"What do they want?" She said begrudgingly.
"Just a bit more PR." Eve-Anne shrugged.
"And that's a good idea?"
"Why not?"
Myra rubbed the side of her pale face, and sighed.
"More media coverage means more fear from the public, which in turn means more focus on capture." She said as if reading from a dictionary.
"Fear is the point."