Page 70 of Eternal
In minutes, she had her weapons packed while I was still finishing my burger, the transformation was quick and really unsettling.
“We leave in ten minutes,” she said without looking at me.
I wiped my hands on the nearest napkin, my eyes lingering on her. I wasn’t used to being the one following orders. “Where’s the meet, again?” I asked, grabbing my gear.
“Industrial district. Neutral ground,” she said, adjusting the strap on her chest holster. “Nikolai’s men will cover the exit.”
“You’re quick,” I said, leaning back and rolling up my sleeves.
She didn’t slow, didn’t spare me more than a glance. “And you’re slow. Get up.”
A laugh rumbled low in my chest as I stood, grabbing my jacket, I slid my weapons from my bag, checking the clip of my gun.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught her looking at me, or rather, at the tattoos snaking across my forearms. Her gaze was quick, assessing, before flicking back to her gear, it was subtle, but I saw it.
“What?” I asked, smiling too proudly. “Like what you see?”
She tightened the strap on her holster and smiled. “It kind of seems ironic, all that ink makes you easy to identify.”
“Maybe. But I’m not the only one wearing long sleeves year-round, hiding God-knows-what under there.”
Her hands stilled briefly before she slid another knife into a sheath on her thigh. “No one’s going to ID me because no one knows who I am, including you.” Her voice was calm, but the honesty in her words made me stop what I was doing and stare at her. “I existed before the tattoos, and I’ll exist after them if it comes to that. Because in between both, I won’t have a name.”
Before the tattoos. After. In between:nothing.
That in-between is what interests me, because no one becomes nothing by accident, that’s conditioning, that’s detachment. She didn’t go off-grid, she erased herself voluntarily.
I nodded, pulling on my long-sleeve shirt over the fitted black base layer. “There. Better?”
Her lips twitched, not quite a smile, but close. “Marginally.” She grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder, already moving toward the door. “Let’s go, partner.”
I followed, the ghost of a grin tugging at my mouth, she didn’t glance back, and I didn’t expect her to.
Whatever she was, whoever she was, she had walls built so high, they disappeared into the clouds, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me.
22
DAMIR
“Should Have Known Better” by Sufjan Stevens
Present
The car glided calmly through the streets, the radio low, Sufjan Stevens’ “Should Have Known Better” drifting out in the air. I could feel her presence in the seat beside me, tense and restless. She didn’t speak, but the subtle shifts in her posture told me she was on edge, like always, alert, maybe too alert.
I stole a quick glance at her, trying to focus on the road and not the way her knee bounced up and down, restless like she was waiting for something, anything. Her eyes were unfocused, but I could see the tension pulsing in her, feel it in the way her fingers tapped in time with her foot, like she was overthinking something.
I turned my head slightly, watching her, her eyes flicked out the window, but the movement didn’t stop, it was a quiet anxiety I hadn’t seen before. This woman, cold-blooded killer, assassin,all of it... and yet here she was, restless, her mind clearly somewhere else.
I shifted my grip on the steering wheel, my knuckles tightening as my mind wandered.
What if one mission goes wrong? Only this one, the one where I need to stop her from doing whatever she’s doing for whatever reasons.
Because I knew she had a story behind it all.
She wasn’t born with the need to kill, she wasn’t born cold, stressed or anxious.
People are people even when they’re monsters.
