Kill or be Killed

Talon realized with a start that, if she had been born with any other name but Talon, she could no longer remember. She couldn’t begin to fathom why the thought had crossed her mind, especially when she was guarding the perverted man from any attempt on his life by the Raven Corps, but it had. And Talon also couldn’t begin to fathom why they would have changed her name, so surely Talon was her real name. However she tried to convince herself that this was so, she could not escape the thought. If her name really wasn’t Talon, how was she to know that she really was an orphan? What if she’d had family who had been missing her for all those long years she spent training to be an assassin?

The young brunette shook her head and focused once more on pacing, fingers drumming unconcernedly but readily on the gun in the holster at her side. The man behind her tried yet again to get her to talk, but she just snapped, kind of irritably, for him to shut his fat mouth. He did so with a snap, remembering the threat from her first night here, about how she would do Jade’s job for her. Talon then resumed her pacing, satisfied she’d silenced the creepy man for just that much longer. She was already sick of this guard job, but he kept requesting her, despite her cold attitude toward him, and her company rarely refused such a well-paying client. Even though she constantly complained about him to her superiors.

Finally, at long last, her shift as the man’s guard ended and she left with the feeling of a weight being lifted from her chest. She grumbled to herself and pushed up her long sleeves and pulling the slightly long button-up dress shirt from its tucked in position, letting it fall on the outside to hide the gun and holster as she walked on the street. The skirt she wore couldn’t be made any more comfortable, nor could the modestly heeled shoes, but it was no matter. She’d grown used to having to look professional to show up for guard duty at the estate. The heels were no longer the huge matter of disgust and discomfort they had been before her job truly picked up. Lately, hearing of the success of the young but honored D.R.A.I.N. assassin and guard, other high-ranking officials were hiring her to guard their meetings and important visitors and the like. It was becoming second nature to her.

At nineteen, she thought, she should have been attending college, meeting the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, and going to parties. She shouldn’t have been guarding people from assassins, sometimes being hired to be the assassin, or anything of the sort. But here she was, and she could do nothing to change it. It was annoying beyond belief, and the girl wanted nothing more than to disappear, go undercover, do anything to get her away from this lifestyle. She knew that they’d find her if she did, though, so she didn’t even try. She’d learned that things would never go her way in life from an early age.

“Hey, baby, what’re you doing out so late?” a voice came, punctuated by drunken slurs and a hiccup. At the faintest touch of his hand on the back of her neck, she whirled around and punched him across the face.

“Don’t,” she said fiercely to the inert form on the ground, “ever touch me again.”

It wasn’t as thought he could hear her, she told herself, but it made her feel better to say it, even if the person it was addressed to was laying unconscious on the ground.

She turned on her heel then and stalked off down the street, wishing that she herself was old enough to legally go get a drink, but knowing that doing so would also be foolish. She was trained to be aware at all times, and one thing they drilled into the minds of all young assassins in training was that alcohol dimmed that awareness and only to consume it lightly and rarely. She let out a frustrated sigh, not for the first time that night, and turned the next corner.

The man trailing her thought she didn’t know he was there, but he was wrong. He was right in thinking, however, that she didn’t know there were three others that lay in wait just around the corner she had turned.

Out of the corner of her eye, Talon caught sight of a glimmer in the light from the streetlight nearby, and, with catlike reflexes, turned and hit the shining gun from the unsuspecting man’s hand. A click came from her left and she dropped down and swung her leg around to bring him down, the gun hitting the sidewalk and skidding away as his head cracked against the cement and he was rendered unconscious. As the first man charged her again, a knife in his hand, she spotted the insignia of a raven on his otherwise unadorned shirt, and knew he worked for the same company as Jade. All of these men must.

Frowning, Talon knocked his hand up and brought her heel up in between his legs, effectively taking him out of the fight as she kicked his dropped gun and knife farther out of his reach. The third man was aiming his already cocked gun at her, and she whipped out her own in a second, barely took the time to aim, and let off a shot. The silencer was a big help, but as with all things, it didn’t silence the entire sound. There was an echo of a light crack sound around her, and she let her frown grow even as she brought her elbow up behind her, catching the man who thought to creep up on her unawares under the chin. He was out cold by the time he hit the ground, and she turned and continued walking, intent on getting far enough away that she wouldn’t be stopped. She took a shortcut through an alleyway, and walked down that street a little ways until she came to the place, seven blocks from the fat businessman’s federal fortress, where her motorcycle was parked. Even in a skirt as she was, she got on and started it up, taking a brief minute to put on her helmet before roaring off into the night, back to headquarters to report in and report the assassination attempt on she, herself.

The papers the next morning would have nothing about the murdered man, for the Raven Corporation knew better than to let their dead be found with the insignia and weapons. The others had undoubtedly awoken and moved the body, also cleaning up the blood that had spilled from where Talon’s bullet had hit squarely between his eyes.