Stolen Light (closed)

[Scuttle Buttin']

Sexton was the only name he'd known. Taken in by The Corporation at a young age, he was an orphan with an extraordinarily limited vocabulary, and a shattered memory. Even at his age, though, there was potential in the boy. Enough for the spotters to see him, take him, and work to craft him.

His training was rigorous, viscous, grueling. One of the crematoriums operated by The Corporation ran solely to burn the bodies of those that did not make it. Of the dozens Sexton knew and trained with, three survived. Including him. Where once innocence had lived, where once a spark had glowed, all had been turned to coldness. He was a shark in human form. A predator whose life was lived on death. He operated above, outside, and around the law, a high wire act of a life that was possible only as long as his mind stayed sharp and his reflexes remained quick.

No one had any use for an old assassin.

---------​

His assignments were received through a series of innocuous signs left for him. Three signs meant he'd find a small encrypted data card waiting for him, with the information on his target, and his deadline. The Corporation always had utter deniability, instructions and contact done multiple steps removed from him. Sexton was, as he had always been, a man alone. His life belonged to them, and yet they kept their distance like he was a bomb set to go off. In too many ways, he was.

Nearly always, jobs came with a deadline. People had to be removed before damage could be done, or benefit could come to one of The Corporation's rivals. They had many. A quick job was often dirtier, the risks higher, and for it he was paid significantly more. It was the long ones, the jobs he could spend his time researching and following his targets, getting to know them, living his life alongside theirs, that he truly relished. A man could outlive his own life in any number of ways. To truly kill one, you had to salt the earth and set fire to their soul.

The definition of 'decimate' was to select by lot and kill every tenth person of.

Sexton took pride in making people wish he'd only decimated them.

-------​

Such was the case with those who found themselves in his crosshairs now. He knew only a little about why they were unfortunate enough to find their end by his hand, but the why was never truly important to him. Members, in some way, of one of the rivals of The Corporation, he had been instructed to eliminate them all. Spill their blood, and their blood's blood. A family tragedy, shared by all.

He started on the outsides, distant and displaced relatives, those who had only a vague idea they were even connected to his central and most important targets. Two poisonings, what seemed to be a mugging gone wrong, and a headshot at a remarkable distance. The sight of the man through his scope suddenly slumping over made him hard.

Cousins, aunts, uncles, they fell in quick succession, dominoes toppling on their way to the center. Three months he spent working his way towards the final four kills, those that stood first to gain from overreaching into The Corporation's territory. Another month was spent on these, watching them going to work, taking meetings, spending time at home thinking they were alone.

A week after he focused down on them, a body guard showed up outside their door at night, and Sexton almost felt sorry for them. Once protection showed up, a false sense of security was not far behind, and his job became almost easy enough that the boy at the orphanage could do it. He took his time, watching them slowly relax and grow comfortable again as days turned to weeks and no attempt was made on their lives. Even the man they hired soon grew lazy, his checks becoming less frequent, his attention less focused.

Four needed to die, but Sexton only ever saw three. It took a few days of discreet research to find that the missing daughter had tried to distance herself from the rest of the family, wanting no part of them and their business. In her mind this might mean a stay of execution for her, but Sexton was under no such illusion. Her distance meant simply that she would be the final of her number of perish.

The violence that engulfed the people within the home that night would never be truly understood by those that tried to piece together the details in a vain effort to catch the monster that had ravaged the family. The body guard was dead before he knew anything was wrong, their security blanket gone in a single bullet and a spray of blood. The family followed, the destruction quick and violent, and before the authorities such as they were could even be alerted, Sexton was gone. A ghost.

---------​

It was the next morning that he saw the reports of his handiwork on the news, a slaying that was called "tragic" and held up as "another sign of our need to take back our country." Smiling grimly at the foolish woman on screen, Sexton turned his attention to the small file he'd put together on the final piece of his puzzle. In agreeing to do this lengthy job he had demanded time off afterward, and The Corporation had been only too happy to grant it for removing this thorn in their paw. Now, this lone girl stood between him and... something. He'd not had time to even consider what he'd do with the time alloted to him.

Something would present itself, he knew.

He gave himself two weeks to scout the girl, with possibly an extra two weeks if she was smarter than the rest of her family and hired better protection. Or fled. Halfway through the first week, he found himself disappointed in the girl. Her "security" consisted of a lock on her door, and a misplaced faith in the rest of humanity. No men, no cameras, and no attempt to throw him off the trail when he'd follow her somewhere. She behaved as if she was unaware, or perhaps unwilling to accept, the world she lived in and the family she came from.

The situation gave him pause, and he took a closer look at the girl to assure himself it was not all a ruse. To his astonishment, there seemed to be nothing about her that wasn't at it appeared. Naive or stupid, he was unsure which the girl could lay claim to, but both roads ended in the same place.

As was so often the case, he waited for nightfall. Darkness shrouded him as he made quick work of the lock on her door, and once inside he moved swiftly towards her room. Pausing outside the door, he listened to the slow and steady breathing within for a short time, then pushed the door open wider and made his way in with slow, silent steps.

The gun he drew was large, made of polished metal that reflected what little light was in the room, and meant to make a second shot to kill a person unnecessary. Standing just inside the doorway to her room, he extended the hand that held the gun as his other touched the wall until his fingers found the light switch. He could see her, bits of her, laying across her bed in the silver moonlight, and while turning on the light was unnecessary for the completion of his duties, he wanted to see her up close once. Had they crossed paths under different circumstances, he'd have taken her into his bed and inflicted a violence of an entirely different kind on her. It was something of a waste. A shame.

His eyes narrowed, pupils ready for the onslaught of bright light, gun held steady and pointed in her direction.

Click.

 

[GentleValkyrie]

She went by her middle name now, Neviah, and lived close enough to the bone that most people never knew her full name, her last name, or that she was related to John Holden of Holden Enterprises. She hadn't spoken to her father in years and as far as she was concerned the best thing she ever used her trust fund for was emancipation. She had never enjoyed the games at the prep schools, everyone practicing ruthlessness and manipulation, the carrion beasts feasting at the top of a very shaky tower. She had never understood why her father insisted it was serious as life and death.

Until she learned. Her friend Lacey was kidnapped and tortured over some fine print in a contract over petrochemicals her parents eventually signed. Her father saw it as a part of life, a risk that was accepted on his way toward being a bigger fish in an ocean of sharks. She saw, all too clearly, how deeply twisted the connection between blood and business was in her world. And she longed for a different world.

She stepped off the path her parents had set for her and her brother. Not for her were manicured lawns planted above poison and civility as a cover for cruelty. She was done with it. He said she'd starve in the streets, she hoped it was the last time she'd hear from the cadre of lawyers. She did live on the streets for a while, before she gained a tiny amount of fame as an artist. Old school - oils and inks - vibrant colors and rich scenes not found in this reality or any that had come before. Humanity, honesty, emotion and beauty, said the reviews. She disturbed enough people to get shown in a gallery or two, and pleased enough to eat most days and pay the rent on her apartment.

She had ducked out of the world of the Corporation and smaller multinationals. successfully, she thought. She checked mail on public infra, lived mostly on open credits, and the chaotic clutter of her apartment would be recognizable as an artist's warren to anyone from the last couple of centuries. Works in progress, works rejected, favorite pieces actually hung on her walls, a few prized possessions. No photographs, no history. Lots of light and life.

She had seen the news. Everyone had. She found herself aching with the loss of a family she had turned her back on. Struggling with the guilty knowledge that had she not walked away, she too would have been reported as a blood smear on the expensive floors of her family home. For all of her father's threats, he had let her leave, and in the end, it was his choices that brought his end, and she had survived hers.

She ignored the mail from the lawyers. It was addressed to her old name. She didn't want any of Emily Holden's inheritance. Not of her father's money. Not of his life. Not of his problems.

She tried to ignore the feeling that she was being watched. That kind of paranoia came from her old life.

She went to galleries, she worked on paintings. The fear crept in, her new work taking on rather more blacks and reds than usual. She found herself putting a grey smudge of a person in several pieces. A ghost. She painted black pools of eyes in her ghost and stared at them, trying to figure out who they were.

There was nothing there.


--------


She woke slowly, even with the light, shielding her eyes with her fingers and stretching before focusing on the figure in her room, the gleam of the gun registering long after the depth of his eyes. Her ghost. She hadn't gotten far enough away, not for the Corporation. Even with her father dead they needed to punish him, remove his name from the world. She was too close, her blood to intertwined with their business.

Her heart sank with disappointment and she sat up, sliding the sheets over her legs, feeling exposed in the thin tank top and panties, and vaguely chagrined, like she would have dressed nicer if she had known. One quick gasped breath, then another. She was still alive. She searched his face, looking for emotion, for a hint of understanding, for a spark of humanity. She saw him then, strength of a honed sword, razor sharp, empty. She wondered if he ever felt lonely. She looked down to the weapon, still quiet as of yet, and then back up to his eyes, her face registering something like confusion.

She slid to the edge of the bed, cautiously, nervously tucking a long fallen lock of her family's characteristic red hair behind her ear. "What happens now?"

 

[Scuttle Buttin']

It was a shift of an infinitesimally small amount, the time it took only very slightly more, but his gaze slid down her body before it was hidden by the sheets. His dark eyes, narrow still against the artificial light, lifted back to her face, and outside of the slow rise and fall of his chest, he was motionless. Before any ever saw the field doing work like his, they were long past the point where taking a life excited their heart rate, and his was barely above it's resting rate as he stared at her. Time slipped past them, slowly and in it's order, and yet the girl still drew breath.

The thin black leather of his glove creaked as his hand flexed around the butt of the gun, but still he was silent in the face of her question. What happened now, what always happened now, is that the room flashed with the light of explosion that propelled bullet from gun, and the person in the bed would be discovered later by a friend, a cleaning lady, or a landlord looking for rent. What happened now was she died, an orphan now in her own right, and Sexton collected his payment, and disappeared for a time.

So why wasn't he killing her?

Unmoving in his dark suit, the thin grey pinstripes running the length of his long frame working to make him look slightly taller, slightly longer than he actually was, he stood in the same suit he'd killed so many in, those related to her and those not. Behind his eyes, he found himself not marveling at the fact that his finger sat atop the trigger yet didn't pull, nor did he attempt to justify his lack of action. Instead, it was a swirl of questions, surprising discoveries as he watched the blood-haired girl at the end of his gun continue to live in his presence.

"Stand up."

His voice was an even rumble, splitting through the uneasy silence with little effort. Bare feet found the same floor he stood on, and again his eyes slipped quickly down, across bare thighs and sloped calves, up past the swell of her breasts, and the tip of his tongue shone as it slid across his lips, wetting them.

Put some pants on, he said, in his head, and then began to marvel at the fact that he was actually considering taking this girl. To where, for what purpose, he seemed suddenly a man without compass or map, improvising where he normally planned, stillness where he should've been action.

"Take your shirt off," he said aloud instead, and he found this surprised him more than what had gone unsaid.

He had no intention of touching the girl, utterly no intention of fucking her. The Corporation could silence a lot found by authorities, but once they learned he'd left so much behind on her body, once they learned he'd actually fucked her before killing her, he'd be the one hunted. But... perhaps there was no harm in looking. Right? Seeing some light of hope in her eyes that she might live through this encounter, and then snuffing it out.

Yellow light splashed across the window behind her as someone passed by her small, absurdly colorful apartment, unaware of what transpired just feet from them. The horrible reality would be discovered soon enough, she was the period on the end of a message he had been tasked with sending, and the fact that he'd found himself without her blood on his hands yet did not change that.

 

[GentleValkyrie]

He didn't answer her question. It seemed all she had were questions, now that she didn't have an time for answers. He dressed well, for someone people didn't see. He would never have thought him to be an assassin, passing him on the street, merely someone who was dressed a bit too nicely for this neighborhood. Her mind wandered down the parallels there - she too was mostly seen by her work, her self rarely coming into any notice. But when she did have to make an appearance, she too, tried to dress for the occasion. Awareness of the stature implied by clothing was one habit of her old life she hadn't quite shaken.

"Stand up."

His voice was deep, even, calm. Like he did this every day. Maybe he did. She reluctantly obeyed, slipping from under the sheets and tentatively putting her feet on the floor, slight surprised her legs could hold her so steadily when her heart was beating so quickly. She watched him examine her, licking his lips and she looked away. He liked what he saw, most men did, long legs with a dramatic hourglass figure and her eye catching hair garnered a lot of hungry looks, but she hadn't expected the rawness of his attraction. It was stark fact, without emotion in it, sliding over her skin, cold and dank. Desire without affection and it shocked her, frightened her. Even more than the steady unblinking eye of the gun.

"Take your shirt off."

She looked at him, uncertain. Not that she had much experience with The Corporation's goons, but none of his other victims had been toyed with like this. The news had made it clear that the attack on her parents and brother had been fast, ruthless violence. Why was he telling her to do anything? What did he want from her? Why was she still alive?

A car drove by on the street and she didn't bother to hope that the driver had seen the tableau in her little room. It was almost surreal, how very separate from the world she felt. While her heart beat she was alive. She obeyed, slowly pulling the tank top up and over her head, leaving it in a pool on the bed, still warm from her sleeping body. Her nipples were hard from nerves or the cool air or both, pointing proudly from her round pale breasts. Nudity was a frame of mind for an artist, she reminded herself quietly, memories of posing for life drawing classes filtering into her movements. Setting her shoulders, letting her spine curve back, tilting her chin, posing for him.

She stepped forward, close enough to be in arm's reach, presenting herself without strictly offering. She looked at him, making connections in her mind about what kind of a person he had to be to do his job, as he did it. What kind of a man ended up in her room at this time of night with black leather gloves and the intent to kill her. She didn't understand why he was letting her live, and looking into his face, she didn't think he did either.

 

[Scuttle Buttin']

His eyes flickered quickly while her shirt was pulled over her head, taking in the side of her round breasts and the nipples that seemed to stand out almost proudly on them. His dark gaze was back on her face before the shirt hit the bed, but for a moment he was transported to the previous weeks and the hours on end he'd poured into this family in research.

The house Sexton lived in was large, old, and on the outside appeared rather run down. In a remote area west of the city known simply as The Grey Area, little grew there but old, hardened, knotted trees with an ash grey bark and leaves that struggled to make it from brown to green. The police presence in the area was rare, almost extraordinarily so, and while anyone aware enough to notice might find the man in the dark suit out of place among the strung out and unwashed, no one that spent much time in The Grey Area remained as alert for long. Seemingly, the area had been unofficially designated as the dumping grounds for anyone in the throes of addiction to The Clear, leaving Sexton able to move among them with impunity.

The inside of the large structure he called home was an entirely different matter. Clean, organized, filled with more technology than the rest of Grey put together, it was more base of operations than house. Across from where he took every meal was a large wall, and always it was filled with photos. Files photos, surveillance photos, identification photos. Anything and everything he could get his hands on so he was all but dreaming of his targets when he slept.

For months, in the center of that wall, had been a small collection of pictures of Emily Neviah Holden. Some taken from a distance with a powerful lens, some pulled from official records where she smiled directly into the camera, others snipped from underground media showing her displaying some piece of art he didn't care about. Morning and night, he'd looked at his next target, studied their face, looked into their eyes... and then looked to her.

She actually managed to find her way into his dream once, and unlike so many where he saw himself pulling the trigger or plunging in the knife, he invaded her body in a very different way. Before his avatar in the dream could finish inside her, he woke with a start and was surprised to find he was hard. Her pictures had been taken down the next morning, replaced only when she was the last target left and he had no real choice. He had hoped the time focused on the others, the family bloody spilled in his journey to her, would have washed her from his system.

Watching her now, his gun still extended, as she approached him with her body on display and no effort made to hide it - quite the opposite, it seemed - he knew she wasn't. Everything fell into place, then. Why he hadn't killed her yet, why she stood before him now in nothing more than panties, why he'd even turned the light on in the first place.

She was a curiosity to him, a girl who'd run and yet made no effort to secure herself from him, a girl who stood when told and took off her clothes when told and, perhaps most curious of all, who had not pleaded for her life, had not offered him money, or her body, or tried to reason with him like so many others had. She simply inquired what was next for her, and had not spoken a word since. Perhaps she welcomed him, a reaper she'd run from for so long finally before her in the flesh. Perhaps she was just tired of running. Staring at her then, with his fingertip caressing the curve of the trigger, Sexton found he had no answer.

He wanted her. And hated himself for it.

It was foolish, perhaps as foolish as he'd ever been, and yet it was there anyway, the urge, the need to posses her. He thought himself a creature incapable of love, even if perhaps he had been at one point he'd extinguished the light of life in too many eyes to ever expect something as simple of joyful as that to take residence in him again, and he did not expect this woman to change that, despite his desire. Killing her now, as he knew he should, would not truly fill him with sorry as much as regret at not having had her first. He felt no need to protect her. Rather to the contrary, the idea of hurting her intrigued him, made him curious at the reaction he might find when he did. Dimly, he was aware of his cock lengthening at the thought of it.

Already, unaware even to himself, calculations were being made in the back of his mind. Rain was predicted for the evening, should in fact be arriving at any point. It was why he picked tonight, the rain used to wash away any evidence of his car, his footprints, the direction he'd left in. Now, he thought it would wash away two sets of footprints. The journey from her door to his car would be a minute and a half at best, perhaps two and a half minutes if she dragged her feet. Another seven seconds to put her in the car, whether backseat or trunk. Three more to slide into the driver's seat, and start the car. Forty-five second to a minute to make it to a major thoroughfare, melt into traffic, and be one among many. From her room to making their way out of the city in less than four minutes. Just under an hour to make it out to The Grey Area.

The decision was made before he even was aware it had been.

The sound of his fingers flexing in the leather glove pierced the silence, and he shifted his weight as she stood before him, leaning closer to her. The end of the gun kissed her atop one of her cheekbones, and he ignored her exposed body entirely when he spoke again, the dark pools of his eyes never leaving her own.

"You know why I'm here, Emily. I know who you are, even if you call yourself Neviah now. I know who your father is."

He paused here, a quick twitch of his lips nearly making him smile before he corrected himself and continued on.

"Who he was, anyway. My employers don't care if you've tried to run from who you are, change your name and hide behind your art. You are a loose end, Emily, and they don't deal in loose ends. I am very good at what I do, Miss Holden. The fact that you are still alive right now is only because I allow you to be. But I saw you download the news on your way from the gallery, and I know you saw what I did to your family. So when I tell you that I could make my own art, with your blood as the medium and your walls the canvas, you don't doubt me at all, do you?"

The question was a rhetorical one, and not one he waited for her to answer.

"But I'm not going to kill you, Emily. Not just yet. How soon that happens is up to you now. Do as you're told, do exactly as you're told, and you get to keep breathing." He smiled at this, thinly, coldly, his head tipping slightly to the side.

"We're going to leave here, you and I, and go out to my car. I know how dead your street is at night, I know how bad your neighborhood is, and I know you don't want your neighbors to be the one to discover your dead, naked body laying in the road. There's just no telling what they'd do with it, is there?

"But if you try to run, Emily, that's what they'll find. I'll leave you where you fall for them to discover. Just like this."

The gun left her cheek and his wrist pivoted, sweeping down the length of her body once, though his eyes did not follow. Instead, he took a step back through the doorway of her bedroom and into the darkness outside of it, only his wrist and the polished silver of the gun left within the angled light escaping her bedroom.

"Let's go," he said, gesturing with the gun in the direction he'd come from before he'd walked through her door, shattering her life and letting the darkness leak in. "Now."

 

[GentleValkyrie]

She saw his eyes change. She saw his understanding dawn. And for the first time she felt actual icy fear freeze over her regret and resentment. He was going to let her breathe, but her stomach twisted at the desires that swam in his eyes. She saw him calculate, almost watching the simulation run while she tried to take a complete full breath and failed, again and again.

He was focused on her. Not as a target, not as a job, not as some piece of her father that needed to be wiped out. All of that she had expected. All of that she could handle. But being caught in his focus as herself she felt like an insect caught in amber, slowly turning to stone with no where to hide. In turn she focused on him, working to understand him, to understanding what drove him, what desires lurked in his haunted eyes.

She barely flinched when the cold metal of the gun pressed against her cheek, trembling as it pulled the heat from her body. It wasn't a danger to her. Maybe it never had been. The danger was in his eyes, and it desired to own her life, not her death.

"You know why I'm here, Emily. I know who you are, even if you call yourself Neviah now. I know who your father is."

Of course he called her Emily. Every bastard who wanted to control her called her Emily. The anger let her mask the warm lift of humor - he didn't know who she was. He knew her father was. He knew where to find her. But he didn't know her at all.

She breathed, not a tiny gasp, but full and deep.

Anyone who called her Emily couldn't know her. Not really. And that lack of comprehension, that curiosity, that was why he wouldn't kill her. He needed to see his victims, see through them, own them to take their lives. At least in some way. She didn't try to hide her own dawning understanding, holding his gaze and being held in it. She wondered if he'd ever even looked at her art.

"But I'm not going to kill you, Emily. Not just yet. How soon that happens is up to you now. Do as you're told, do exactly as you're told, and you get to keep breathing."

"You want me to get dressed." she said softly, not yet following him into the dark. "Even in this neighborhood, a half naked girl on the street could be remembered. I've run away before, no one will come looking if I simply run away again. Three minutes." She took his pause for permission and hurriedly dressed in the first things to come to hand, feeling awkward as she turned her back to him and tipped her head to the side, sweeping her hair out of the way to hook the closure on her bra behind her back. She changed into a long colorful skirt and a thin, tight black top, adding a large scarf in the saturated colors she loved, unable to take her focus from the ghost in the doorway. "I need shoes, unless you want me bleeding in your car." She spoke cavalierly, before truly thinking that may indeed be where his desires led and falling quiet again. She laced the well worn knee high boots with practiced speed, feeling his eyes on her, feeling no less exposed than when she woke up.

She heard the rain start to hit the street outside, distant thunder threatening. She forced her mind away from everything she was leaving and back to her breath. She was breathing. He would let her breathe. At his direction, she stepped into the dark and into the storm.

 

[Scuttle Buttin']

She was helping him, which was not entirely unexpected, but still something of a surprise. A gun in the hand of a man like Sexton made people begin promising all manner of things, from money to whores to power - one man had even offered up his twin daughters to the monster that had come for him - but always they were working an angle. Anything to placate the silent killer, buy themselves some more time so they could find a way to escape. So while it was not unexpected that she'd want to seem helpful, not wanting to be remembered as she was led to his car was... not the choice he would've made, in her situation.

Still, as the gun lowered but was not holstered and he clasped his hands in front of him, he wondered if she simply felt resigned to her fate. She had run away, clearly wanted nothing to do with her family any longer, and it had worked to at least buy her some measure of time. The change in her name, as well, and the works of art she watched her surround herself with, all designed to set her apart from them. Best laid plans, it seemed.

In the darkness just outside her room, he watched as she dressed with a quick, practiced fluidity, her colors standing out in sharp contrast to the darkness he wore, and the darkness he was. He was not entirely in uncharted territory, his job occasionally requiring him to take someone alive and transport them to a Recovery Team. They dealt with live cargo, had little taste or skill for spilling blood, and so few people seemed eager to see their loved ones taken. But to take for his own want, for his own pleasure, was entirely new. His desires were often kept at bay with fine and expensive women, bought with his own funds or supplied to him as a bonus by The Corporation, and for a job of such length and breadth as this, he had no doubt they'd fill his bed with women if he requested.

So why her? Why this?

Even as the barrel of the gun settled between her shoulder blades and he urged her forward into the steadily growing assault of rain, he didn't have an answer. He had been honed through years of training and further years of real-world experience to improvise without hesitation and think quickly on his feet, and it seemed he would be putting all of that considerable skill to use for a time.

His car was across the street from her building, the angle better to watch the comings and goings of those who lived within, and his eyes flickered one direction then the next as they crossed. Traffic was as dead here as he expected, one of the reasons he chose this time to act on his final target, and they crossed quickly and without incident.

The soft click of the car unlocking as he approached was lost in the sound of the rain, and the gun remained at her back as he reached past her and opened the back door. Straightening, he shoved her unceremoniously in, the clock in his head ticking as he timed their joint exit, already behind the schedule he'd set. It could be made up during travel, and likely no bad would come of it, but he was a man that lived on schedules and research and precision, and veering off of that made him nervous. Or compounded the nerves he already felt at his actions tonight.

Closing her door, he holstered the gun under his wet jacket and slid into the driver's seat. The engine was already running, the car whisper-silent, and in the cabin even the sound of rain was diminished to a steady thrum, the soundtrack of their journey. He was silent as he drove away from her building, silent still as he left her neighborhood, and only when he merged into the flow of traffic moving through the city did he reach up and adjust the mirror so he could see her in the back seat.

"You've been waiting for me, Emily, haven't you? You hardly seem surprised to find me in your bedroom tonight. Is that why you don't resist? You've resigned yourself to your fate? Or..." he smiled, faintly, his eyes practically challenging her as he looked at her flipped image, "Maybe you think if you bide your time, do what I tell you, you'll find a moment where you can get away?"

Quickly, the lights of the city were fading, the scenery slipping past them lit only be the bright white of lightning streaking through the sky.

"Every caged animal tries to free themselves, it is only natural that you would as well. Tell me, though, Emily. What do you know of The Grey Area?"

 

[GentleValkyrie]

She paused in the doorway, feeling awkward, she wasn't walking with him, not exactly, but fighting him, resisting him she felt was dangerous. The gun was quick to settle against her spine, driving her forward, threat and direction at once. He was an efficient man. The gun barrel nudged her across the street and to a car, dark, nondescript, and angled to watch her building.

The rain pattered down on them, cutting through the thin fabric of her top almost immediately. They wouldn't be out in it long. She turned her face up into it for the briefest of moments, seeking solace in the chaos. The gun barrel urged her forward.

In a mockery of chivalry, he opened the back door for her, his body curled around hers, not quite touching, but close enough for her to smell him. He wasn't a ghost after all, but a man, there was humanity there, under the suit, behind the weapon. She gasped as he bodily shoved her into the car, shutting the door a little too quickly after her. He was behind the wheel before she could do more than think about slipping out of the car door, his gloved hands wringing the wheel, leather creaking. Could he actually be nervous?

She folded her hands in her lap, only trembling slightly as she watched her neighborhood fade behind them, moving through the city and into late night traffic. He adjusted the mirror until their eyes met.

"You've been waiting for me, Emily, haven't you? You hardly seem surprised to find me in your bedroom tonight. Is that why you don't resist? You've resigned yourself to your fate? Or...Maybe you think if you bide your time, do what I tell you, you'll find a moment where you can get away?"

She blushed and ducked her eyes. The thought of escape was bound to occur to her eventually. She tried to find words to answer his questions, words that he would understand, but that wouldn't lead him to believe he truly understood her, that he would find nothing more novel with her, and lead her to be discarded.

"Has resisting you ever given someone a longer life than you intended?" She looked into his eyes, gently challenging him in return. "I had hoped that I had left my father far enough behind, I had hoped that I would never meet someone like you," she shrugged, paused and tried to start again, "Its not resigned to fate," she smiled softly, "Its acceptance of consequences. Its respecting the strength in choice and honesty of living, real things that were rare and confusing in my old life. I can't control your choices."

"You can't control mine," she added quietly after a pause.

She fell quiet, letting the scenery run by.

"Every caged animal tries to free themselves, it is only natural that you would as well. Tell me, though, Emily. What do you know of The Grey Area?"

She looked up to meet his eyes. People didn't really live there, from what she knew. Sure, her neighborhood had its share of drug users, but where her neighborhood had lively graffiti and the strugglingly cheerful detritus of a viable underclass, the Grey Area was a wasteland. It was unincorporated, unprofitable, unenforced, and ignored with an almost superstitious fervor by the good people of the city. It was pretty much off the gird, in many places literally. An occasional politician would try to rouse support for cleaning the whole area out, an even more occasional charity would attempt some mission or another there. She'd had friends who'd done some bleak gothic art inspired by the Grey Area. Not her style, she preferred subjects with more passion, or at least more color.

"I...I've never been there." she managed to stammer. Her heart sank as the lightning grew more frequent lighting a less and less welcoming vision. They turned off the highway and onto the ill maintained streets of the The Grey Area. The pouring rain kept her from seeing too much, or looking to hard, at the streets they past. In the center of a mostly empty block he slowed down in front of a big old house. It had all of its windows, reflecting black into the night looking more like a haunted mansion than the more common broken half walks of buildings lost to time, but it was dark, standing alone on a desolate block.

He pulled the car around to the back and executed a neat turn to back into the garage under the house, waiting until the door was shut before unlocking the car. Again, he was at her side, his gloved hand wrapped around her arm and dragging her out of the seat before she could really think about moving. She stumbled out of the vehicle and let the muzzle of the gun push her to the door to the house and up a narrow dark flight of stairs. His hands on the locks were quick, almost mechanical in their precision.

The lights came on to greet them and she gasped at the change. It was just as lifeless inside, but it was far from decrepit. It hummed with power, with automation and machinery, gleaming metal and stone. It managed to be expensive and inhuman all at once. She walked past the sterile kitchen and into the large open space that anyone else would have called a living room, but was more obviously a large cocoon for a single mind. It was where he created his kind of art. The sole wall of riotous color drew her until she realized it was pictures of her. Of her family, laid out by their locations and their status, pushed neatly to the side and labeled deceased. The center was her. Her face stared back at her from dozens of shots, some publicized, some old, the ones that made her blood chill from only days ago and with the sharp callous eye of a telephoto lens. She flushed, the room suddenly too hot and too cold altogether.

She recoiled, stepping back without thinking and finding that he had come up behind her, the unexpected contact making her jump and turn to face him, eyes wide and shaken. "Who are you? What do you want from me?"

 

[Scuttle Buttin']

Once outside the city he had pushed the car harder, spitting out miles behind them at a rapid pace. Out in the Grey Area, the lights from the city were more pollution than illumination, though there was plenty of particles of who-knew-what suspended in the air here as well. Men and women in dark and tattered clothing roamed the streets like rats, scurrying away from the harsh glare of the headlamps when caught in it, illuminated with no choice momentarily by a bright exclamation of lightning. He saw them because he knew what he was looking for, the human vermin that was his camouflage here, an army of the addicted and the sick and the dying that kept the authorities at bay. He'd been investigated once, early in his career, and when the trail led the police towards the Grey, they abruptly dropped it, and declared the two dead bodies victims of a murder-suicide. Never did they specify who was the killer and who the victim, but a story planted in the media by the Corporation drew the attention quickly away from the slaying, and little more was said of it again.

The house he brought her to was like many in the area, houses that were once large and impressive, an area of town that had been populated by the rich and powerful until the decline began. The facade on the outside was crumbling, peeling paint and dark, exposed wood that made the house look as grey as everything else in the area. All the windows were coated in a one-way blackout, hiding the light within while allowing enough sunlight inside to recharge the solar cells that sat just beneath the window frames. For his part, Sexton had little use for sunlight.

Once in the garage, he pulled her from the car much as he'd put her into it - she was lucky she didn't have a bullet in her head, so hurting her was far from a concern - and with the barrel of the gun at her spine again, led her into the house. Once inside, it became clear she was transfixed, at least momentarily, by what she found inside, and he slowed his pace to watch her.

For a brief moment, it seemed she forgot virtually all of the last hours. Her predicament, quite literally the captive of an assassin that had been sent to end her life, though it seemed he'd decided on a new fate for her now, seemed gone from her mind. Instead, she seemed fascinated with what she saw, this piece of him that very few others had seen. Whores were met in hotel rooms or safe houses provided by The Corporation, and family... well, an orphan didn't have family, did he? The Grey Area kept more than just the authorities at bay.

The moment was approaching though, and he neared her as he saw it growing closer, her head turning towards his wall. She was not dead, the smell of her hair in his nostrils as she began backing towards him attested to that fact all too well, but he considered his mission with her accomplished. Whatever happened here, he had no intention of returning her to her apartment, or her art, or her life. Either of her lives. He had planned to travel, and perhaps she would simply come with him. The lawless land that was much of Eastern Europe still saw much profit in the sex trade, and when he'd had his fill of her he could simply sell her off, make some coin, and be done with her. What happened to her after that would be of no concern to his.

For now, though, she was his.

His eyes followed her as she backed into him, then realized her unexpected proximity and spun around to face him. She was thrown, both by his closeness and by finding her own face, multiple times, from multiple years and multiple sources, tacked up on his wall, and he smiled terribly at the sight of it. The calm acceptance of her fate was an easy mask to wear when all would be over in the pull of a trigger. When the devil came and took you to hell for his own personal amusement, acceptance didn't last long once the realization set in. For the poor girl before him, the realization seemed to be setting in. Or, at the least, the realization of the horrors brought to life by the man in front of her.

The gun, still in his hand, was lifted from his side, the silver flashing in the light as he brought it to bear on her, and he extended his arm until the barrel rested against her forehead.

"I am death. I am the reaping. I am Omega. I am Charon. I have come to end your life, Emily. You may still breathe, but what you knew before is over. No more Emily. No more Neviah. No more running away. No more art."

He was almost whispering now, a low electrical hum the only other sound in the room his voice had to compete with.

"And no more streets to cross. Undress."

The gun was pulled from her head, and he slid it into a holster on his side, the worn brown leather under his jacket a contrast to the darkness of the rest of his suit. With his hands empty now, he slid the suit jacket off his shoulders and slipped it over the back of a wooden chair, then pulled the chair into the spot where he'd stood. Lowering himself into the chair, he crossed his legs and folded his hands neatly in his lap. His head tipped back a bit so he could look up into her face, and when he spoke again his tone was simple, matter-of-fact.

"Undress, now, or I put a bullet in your brain and throw you to the dogs outside."

He paused, just for a beat, long enough for a wretched smiled to slide across his lips.

"And then I make it my personal mission to hunt down every artist you know, and end them."

 

[GentleValkyrie]

"I am death. I am the reaping. I am Omega. I am Charon. I have come to end your life, Emily. You may still breathe, but what you knew before is over. No more Emily. No more Neviah. No more running away. No more art."

Fear fluttered in her belly and enveloped her seemingly in response to his call. He had her, he wanted her to be afraid, and she was. She didn't truly accept his words, if they registered at all, but she felt the threat in them, the promise, and she saw it in the depths of his eyes. In the coldness of his home.

The gun was almost ignorable, treated as an extension of him. His intent was far more powerful and disturbing than a crafted piece of metal.

"And no more streets to cross. Undress."

He seated himself with fluid grace, the chair molded to his form and his alone, for its entire existence. He belonged here, in this place, while she felt it pressing on her like a cold, alien skin. She hesitated, trying to remember how to breathe, trying to find the calm she had felt in her apartment. What had felt like a dream before felt all too real and vulnerable here.

"Undress, now, or I put a bullet in your brain and throw you to the dogs outside."

The threat barely registered. The man couldn't communicate without telling her he was going to kill her. And part of her began to wonder if that would be better or worse than what he was keeping her alive for. And then he smiled. Just as he could express desire without affection, his smile held no joy in it and the lack made her feel like she was looking at something dangerous and shameful. She looked toward the door, a dim half thought of moving toward it being considered in her hind brain.

"And then I make it my personal mission to hunt down every artist you know, and end them."

The words sunk in and hit a home she didn't think she had. She had few truly close friends, but the artist community was close knit and social and had taken her in when she had nothing, was nothing. To truly act on that mission would cut a swath of hundreds through a community of hundreds. It was one of the last sources of support for lives outside of the conglomerates, the sliver of humanity that didn't shackle itself to either the sharks in suits or the opiates of the grey masses. She understood, without wanting to accept, why her father's missteps could end the lives of his entire blood line. She stared at him in utter confusion as to why he would contemplate cutting down most of the creative minds in the city.

She didn't doubt his ability. His wall described a similar task, against far better protected people. She didn't doubt him at all.

She simply had no framework for what possible goal such a course of action could fulfill.

She found the fear swept under a wave of honest anger. Petty revenge against the helpless was part of the gear grinding horror show of the Corporation that she couldn't stand, but couldn't ignore either. Her jaw tensed and her eyes flashed but she undressed, scattering her bright clothes over the gleaming wood floor, claiming an area of chaos in his sterile environment and standing in the middle of it, outrage on display.

"They've done nothing to you and are completely inconsequential to you or the Corporation. Threatening them because you want to control me without having to kill me is thuggery that I would expect to be beneath you. Or maybe I'm alive because you're not very good at your job."

She advanced on him standing close enough to touch and wearing nothing but her mane of bright red curls.

"Stop pretending you want me dead. I think you want me to be afraid of you, fine. You're scary. You're more than a little broken. You have the greatest stalker collection of pictures of me on your wall. You're honestly a terrifying and dangerous human being, so you don't need to lie to me. Its stupid and pointless and even you deserve the freedom of honesty."

Her temper. Her temper always got her in trouble. The sarcastic streak and words that could cut like a knife flowed out of her before she could really get a handle on them, especially when she was stressed. She caught a breath as the initial adrenaline rush eased and she realized exactly what she had said and to whom. No turning back now. She set her jaw and stood, balanced on the edge of fight and flight and feeling the cold pit of fear clamor for more of her attention. She swallowed slowly, falling silent and shifting her feet.

How much of his soul did the Corporation own? Petty revenge against the helpless had already demanded he kill her, this would merely underline that for a cog in that machine. Could his desires overrule that again? Too late. Far, far too late to o more than try to remember to breathe and stay standing. It had been too late since she started speaking, since he put her in the car, since he came into her room. It had been too late since she left her father's house, really. She was who she was, under any name, and he either was the obedient hand of the Corporation or a man.

 

[Scuttle Buttin']

The dark eyes of Sexton moved over her, keen and aware, catching the glance towards the door, the faint glimmer of escape that always found it's way into their eyes at some point. Were he to examine that moment for long, he'd find himself disappointed in her. The resignation of her fate, or what she'd guessed her fate to be upon seeing him, had managed to heighten his interest in her and desire for her. This look, though, this same futile making of the exit in her mind so it would be there when the opportunity presented itself, only made him want to hit her.

That all changed when his next words landed home, though, and he watched confusion merge into anger in her face. The tightening of her jaw was noted, the fire lighting in her eyes a welcome sight, and he soaked it in. She was fierce in her passion, her body tense even as she stripped her clothing off in front of him. For a time, he found himself drawn to her face still, watching the cracks in the dam growing as she fought to hold it back. He wanted her rage, her anger, the fire he knew was burning inside her, the flames seeming to lick their way into her hair.

His intention, a decision reached shortly after pulling her from his car, had been to bring her here, fuck her, and dispose of her. She was a risk, every moment she was alive a growing threat to him, and he simply needed to have her, use her, and wash her from his system. Her reaction to him, the angry words that were flung at him now, changed all of that. She was still a threat, danger clad in bright hair and proudly pointed nipples, but he wanted more than to fuck her now. He wanted to break her. Consume her soul. He wanted to fundamentally change her, to her core.

She came closer as she threw her anger at him, and in the face of it all, he was stillness personified. Legs crossed, hands folded neatly in his lap, his chin tipped up so he could see into her face, he blinked slowly as he watched her expend herself, and her outburst gave way to a silent shifting in front of him. She was close enough to smell now, her thighs nearly touching the hem of his pants, and he at last allowed his eyes to take in her nakedness. A slow decent began, his dark gaze moving down her throat, over her collarbones, the same slow scan across the round shape of her breasts, across her belly and the flare of her hips, down to the juncture of her thighs.

Faintly, for the shortest of seconds, the movement little more than a twitch of muscle, he smiled.

A flicker of his eyes and his gaze climbed her body in a fraction of the time it took to descend, and he was back on her face again. His tongue slipped between his lips, wetting them, and then his legs uncrossed, feet settling on the floor on either side of her own. Rising from the chair, he pushed it back with his straightening legs, his hands unclasping as he rose to his full height. They stood very near to each other then, her nipples nearly brushing his shirt, his feet planted just outside of and parallel with his own.

"You are a stupid, naive girl," he said, his voice low as he looked down at her. "It is not my job, it is my very existence..."

He leaned closer, the swinging end of his tie brushing against her belly as his lips moved near the shell of her ear.

"And as far as your bloodline is concerned, Emily, you are the only thing standing between it and utter extinction. I don't need a reason to stretch that extermination to everyone you've ever met. Killing is what I exist to do."

He left a short laugh in her ear and straightened, his tie returning to his own chest as he made a small distance between them again.

"But you were right about one thing, Emily. I don't want you dead. If I truly had, you would be in your bed, waiting to be found by someone coming to collect rent. So let us..."

Twin guns lay against his rib cage in their holsters, and with a fluid and practiced efficiency he withdrew each, unchambered the round that was in it and ready to be fired, letting the bullet clatter to the floor around their feet and roll away. As each gun was emptied it was set aside on the table, polished metal that reflected the light in the room. The worn leather holsters came next, the harness set atop the discarded guns, and leaving him before her in just his dark suit, the jacket for which was still on the back of the chair behind him.

"I don't want you dead, Emily," he said when the process was complete, his body still very near to hers, "I want you on your knees."

 

[GentleValkyrie]

His eyes moved over her body and she was so on edge that she felt his gaze like a touch. She felt him examine her, Backing down now would get her nothing, even as the strength of anger ebbed from her blood she stood still. He stood up, smoothly enough that she managed not to startle. She held her ground, his body close enough to heat the air between them.

She heard his words mostly though the pauses in her beating heart. It was almost as if her heart beat in response to his voice.

"Killing is what I exist to do."

The silk of his tie was cool as it whispered over her skin and then left her. She took a breath when he stood up again, unaware that she had stopped, that she needed the additional millimeters of distance to feel comfortable resuming such a basic part of living.

She stayed still as he revealed his guns, but twitched as he emptied them and again as he divested himself of them with a thud on the table. She watched his shoulders shift as his muscles adjusted to the lack of the weight they were so accustomed to bearing. She wondered if he had spent longer in that harness, in that suit, than he had out of it. She wondered how much of who he was now laid on the table, how much was left standing in front of her.

"I don't want you dead, Emily, I want you on your knees."

She looked up at him, searching his face for a moment. The desire in him matched his words without matching the heat or affection she had seen with other men. She trembled but held her place.

"Thank you. For being honest with me."

She swallowed slowly. All she had was herself. Her own honesty. He might not understand it, or accept it, but it was all she could live with. She was still alive, for now, but worrying about that wouldn't save her. Not now, not from this man.

"I'm afraid," she smiled for a brief moment, "and my name is Neviah."

She knelt slowly, moving with all the care used around any apex predator, posing for him again. She looked up to him, her eyes flashing and bright.

"You want things that aren't death, Ghost. Does the Corporation know?"