“I’m gonna get you this time old man!” Dessa Kelly shouted as she ran down the middle of a hallway in an abandoned hotel. Her auburn hair flowing wildly behind her, her green eyes were alert and ever ready. “Impromptu training grounds” Chance had called them. It was someplace that they could train and fight, pretty much destroy the whole building and no one would notice or even care. She skid to a stop at a cross section of the hallway, she moved slowly, not making a sound as she crept past the intersection. Her feet were adorned with dance shoes, the soles worn down so much that they left no distinguishable markings. The pants she wore were skin tight but the material was made to breath and stretch so they wouldn’t impede her movement. She wore a shirt with some heavy metal band on it, the print was faded so much so that she couldn’t even tell who it was anymore.
Dessa was so intent on her taunting that she didn’t even see her target slipping from behind one door to follow her. The slender figure set an imposing visage as he stalked her. Making not a sound, he crept close to her and even brushed his hand over the back of her hair before vanishing again.
Dessa whirled around expecting to see her mentor standing there, a stern and disappointed look on his face once again at the fact that she was so cocky, but she saw nothing but gloom. A chill ran down her spine, the breeze that lifted her hair was disturbing. Her gut told her it wasn’t wind, but death itself. She was half right. She turned to move down the hall again and ran headlong into her mentor. She fell back onto the ground and looked up at him from her butt. She rubbed it softly, her tender backside not the only thing that was hurting.
“You talk too much. It lets your target know where you are," His voice was soft yet stern, and she felt her cheeks going red.
“You don’t talk enough!” She countered, knowing it was just so he wouldn’t get the last word.
She pushed herself up and dusted herself off, setting her gaze on her mentor, looking him up and down as she always did, and smiled. He always looked so alert, as if the world was going to attack him at any moment. His black pupil-less eyes were pools of pure darkness, yet she was drawn to them every time she gazed at him. His angular chin was slightly pink, but his cheeks were as black as his eyes, scarred skin almost, and moved from his cheeks down under the collar of his shirt. His hair was always so red, like fire was sitting atop his head, that she more than once wondered how he could stay so hidden with such an obvious tell. There was a patch of hair though that seemed to rebel against the bright red color. His bangs were black, as black as his eyes, as black as his cheeks, as black as his name. “Suicide” was what he was called by street punks, gang leaders, and drug lords, but she knew his real name; she knew the real him. His name was Chance De’Graveoux, and he was her mentor, friend, confidant, and even though he would never admit it; her target of affection.
“You need to keep quiet until the last moment, when you have your mark making rash decisions and panicked. If you taunt them any sooner there is a good chance that they will have a gun ready for you when you finally do show up," Chance said sternly.
“I know, but it’s just you. You’re not going to kill me," Dessa laughed, but it quickly died in her throat as she looked at Chance again. “You’re not going to kill me!? Are you?”
Chance smiled and he saw Dessa visibly relax. “No, I’m not going to kill you. Not today anyway.”
Dessa started as soon as the words left his mouth, but just as quickly she realized he was just teasing her. He had been telling her that there might come a time when they weren’t on the same side and would indeed be enemies some day. She knew he was telling the truth, and knew that he felt the same as she did, hoping that day would never come.
“When do I get to go on a job with you?” Dessa asked breaking the silence.
Chance looked at her and frowned slightly. “You are only sixteen Dessa, why are you so eager to learn this trade?”
Dessa chewed her bottom lip softly; this was a question Chance had asked her time and time again. “Why do you want to learn to kill?”, “Do you think it will be easy?”, and “Do you think you are ready to?” were just some of the variations of the same question. She knew she was ready, she knew she could handle it, but something in the tone of Chance’s voice made her second guess herself.
“That is why you aren’t ready," Chance said bluntly, reading her conflicting expression perfectly.
“I am so!” Dessa shouted at him and then blushed furiously as she heard her voice echo down the empty halls.
“You aren’t," Chance said softly.
“Why do you always feel that you have to protect me?” Dessa huffed. “I’m sixteen! I can make decisions for myself you know?”
“Because I have to," He was about to say but thought better of it. He placed one hand to his chin and looked at Dessa in that way that made her feel as if he was looking right through her.
“You wanted to learn how to do this job. How to kill someone. I found you two years ago hiding in your closet, both of your parents murdered. You told me that you wanted to get back at the people who did it. Against my better judgment I told you that I would teach you. So here we are, mentor and apprentice, teacher and student, professional and amateur. Yet for some reason you seem to think you know better than I do. You aren’t ready Dessa. Not now, but soon," He finished and turned to move down the hall.
Dessa moved to follow, her hand reaching toward the man who was supposed to teach her all he knew. She could feel the rough texture of his shirt, the warmth of his skin. She grabbed his arm and turned him around. Chance’s eyes bore down on her in an angry glare glowing red! His mouth opening wide to engulf her. She tried to pull away but couldn’t get free. She screamed as the enlarged mouth came down over her!
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Dessa sat straight up in bed, her breaths coming in short panicked gasps, her body glimmering in the moonlight from a sheen of cold sweat, her sheets pulled tightly around her body as if she were thrashing. It was a dream, she told herself. It had to be, the conversation was different those years ago. Chance had agreed she was ready, took her out the very next week and taught her how to track a mark. Dessa swallowed hard and turned to the clock on the nightstand of the hotel room she was staying in and frowned. It was four o’clock in the morning. She looked over at the prone shadowed form in the second twin bed and sighed. Chance was still asleep. Dessa moved to the bathroom and quickly splashed her face with cold water; she didn’t turn the light on, trying not to disturb the assassin’s slumber.
After wiping her face and calming down some, she took a drink of water and moved back over to the bed. The relationship between the two of them had changed over the last five months. It started with them being close, lovers on the road together. Enjoying each others company and just happy being with one another, but something changed drastically about two months ago. They were on a fact finding mission in Utah when they had pushed one of the local gangs too hard for information. The ensuing fire fight made headlines all over the country and Chance had been shot trying to keep herself out of harms way. The next night, when they had checked into a small hotel off the beaten path, Chance had asked for a room with two double beds. Dessa figured it was to get him the space he needed to heal the grievous wound, but the next hotel stay it was the same thing, and every one after that. He had stopped touching her, looking at her, he had pulled himself away from the budding relationship; and Dessa was unsure of what she should do or how she should feel about what the situation had become.
She wanted to give Chance space, let him sort out what he was thinking and hoped it would lead him back to her. But how he had been acting lately; she didn’t know if the end of that internal road would lead the Chimera back to her welcomed arms.
Something else that was bothering her was the nightmares that seemed to be plaguing her on almost a nightly basis. They always involved Chance in one way or another. One was him attacking her, torturing her with those weapons of his; The Eyes of Sorrow, until she had begged for death. Another was more similar to the one she had tonight. The events of her past had been altered and ended with him attacking her, swallowing her up somehow. The nightmares started a few days after she got out of the hospital, the injuries caused at the hand of Kenneth Kain had healed and the doctor’s gave her a clean bill of health, she figured it was a bad reaction to the pain medication she was taking. Yet even after she had stopped taking them, they kept coming.
Dessa lay herself back down on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, she wondered if they were a warning somehow. The myth of women’s intuition was something she knew to be truth. It was instinct; any good tracker had it, knowing when something was not right. The smallest thing out of place causing the hairs on her neck to stand on end. That intuition had pulled her out of more close calls than she cared to remember. Now it seemed that the hairs on her neck were always on end, especially around the Chimera that lay sleeping in the next bed over.
She sighed loudly and forcefully fluffed her pillow and then flopped back down onto it. The damn things were always so flat and uncomfortable.
“They are coming more frequently.”
Dessa nearly jumped out of her skin as Chance spoke.
“It’s… It’s nothing. Just a bad dream is all. Nightmares can’t hurt you," She reasoned as she once again had to catch her breath. “When did you wake up anyway, you were sound asleep last I checked.”
“I’ve been awake since you screamed," He said as if it were normal conversation.
Chance sat up slowly and got up out of bed. Dessa watched him out of the corner of her eye. He was lean and muscular, his entire body looked like it was an instrument of perfection, not an inch of fat clung to his frame. These were the moments that Dessa missed; since they had moved to separate beds Chance had hidden his body from her. She missed seeing the blackened skin that reached down from his cheeks to stop just above his naval, he didn’t know it but that black skin covered his back as well and most of the back of his legs. She had once though of mentioning that it looked as if the skin made the impression of a tail, but kept it as a silent joke to herself.
“So what is our next move?” She asked, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice.
“What do you mean?” Chance asked as he pulled on a pair of black jeans.
“I mean” Dessa sat up quickly and turned on the light, the harsh change in illumination causing her to squint. “You have been pulling me all over hell and back and you haven’t told me a damned thing.”
“I never asked you to come with me Dessa," Chance said dismissively.
Dessa’s mouth dropped. He might as well have slapped her for all it was worth. It was the first time Chance had said anything close to resembling a statement that told her he didn’t want or need her there.
“But; if you must know," Chance said, not even looking up from tying his shoes. “There is a medical lab not far from here that was supposedly opened by one of the German scientists that were part of the ‘Chimera Project’ and we are going to pay it a visit.”
Chance stood up and looked at Dessa, his expression perplexed as he saw her sitting there, mouth agape and looking very hurt.
“What?” He asked honestly, not sure what had just happened.
Dessa closed her mouth and forced herself to calm down. No, Chance had not asked her to come with, but nor did he turn her away when she told him that she was coming. “Why are you obsessed with this ‘Chimera Project’? You are who you make yourself, not what some scientist put into you.”
“You wouldn’t understand," Chance said as he pulled on his shirt.
“Try me," Dessa said coolly.
“Alright," Chance sighed “How would you feel if you never knew why you always felt like there was something inside you, inside your head, which was telling you that you were different? Then come to find out that not only are you different, but not even human? I need to find out why they did what they did to my grandmother. I need to know if there are others.”
“Besides Kain," Chance added as he saw Dessa about to interrupt.
“Well, what do we know about the project so far?” She asked a little more agitated than she meant to sound.
“That the facility was hidden to all but who worked there, even Hitler didn’t know about it. We know that the scientists, butchers if you ask me, were using experimental techniques on unsuspecting women. And we know that Alpha is a part of what ever secrets that place holds," Chance finished as he pulled on a new black trench that he had picked up in the last state they were in.
“So we know pretty much…” Dessa paused for dramatic effect. “Bubkiss!”
“Pretty much," Chance said with a slight chuckle. “But that is why we are going to go pay a visit to this lab. It’s in Whitefish Montana. A day’s drive. Check out the medical history and see if there was any connection to a Doctor Hienzen.”
“Hienzen? Sounds like something you’d find in the grocery store with the condiments," Dessa giggled.
Chance chuckled along with her as he started packing his suitcase. “Yeah, he was one of the few scientists slash doctors that were ever named, or even found to work in this facility outside Munich.”
“So Montana huh?”
“Yup," Chance said flatly. “Whitefish Montana, a place called North Valley Hospital. To be honest, it looks more like a ski resort than a hospital, but that is where we are headed.”
“Oh? So you actually want me coming this time?” Dessa said sarcastically.
“What?” Chance said confused.
“Nothing," Dessa sighed as she shook her head. “Give me a few minutes to pack, and then we can leave.”
* * *
A computer monitor flickered to life in the pitch black office, bathing the cubical in a soft blue light as well as the man sitting in front of it. He cropped blond hair was slicked back as his ice blue eyes scanned the screen intently. He was looking for something, not quite sure what, but he’d know once he saw it.
“Alpha! Sir!” A young looking gentleman moved swiftly through the maze of cubicles to get to his destination.
“What is it Beta?” The man at the cubicle asked sternly, it was obvious that he didn’t want to be disturbed.
“Suicide’s on the move again sir," Beta said quickly.
“Are you sure this time, not another false alarm?” Alpha’s eyes never once leaving the scene.
“No sir. Delta confirms that they are on the move.”
“Delta!?” Alpha finally looked at Beta. “Delta was supposed to keep radio silence! Why did they break silence?”
“Delta said it was important to the mission sir. That Suicide is moving north, not east like we thought he would.”
Alpha turned back toward the screen, his face screwed up in a mix of frustration and resignation. “Tell Delta to continue radio silence, until Suicide reaches his destination. It seems we have more important things to worry about than one single Chimera.”
Beta looked shocked, his commanding officer was one that stuck to protocol, even if it meant forgoing one target for another, but blowing off a major problem like Suicide was unheard of. “Sir?” He asked skeptically.
Alpha turned the computer screen towards Beta, and what Beta saw made his eyes pop open so wide Alpha thought they would roll right out of his head. There, on the screen in a media player was Suicide. His body lit up like the fourth of July, holding onto a jungle gym in the middle of a supposedly deserted park! His body sparking and arcs of electricity jumping from his body and into the metal! “This is going to be played on the five o’clock news all over the country, and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it!”
“What does this mean sir?” beta asked, not able to tear his eyes away from the computer screen.
Alpha stood up and took a deep steadying breath. “It means that we have to activate every Grendel we still have. Things just got a lot tougher to deal with.”
“Yes sir!” beta saluted and practically scrambled out of the office.
Alpha turned back to the screen and frowned. "I hope you know what you are doing Delta, because I sure as hell don’t.”
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