I wanted to break free and run back to my cell. Back to the safety and comfort of the waiting darkness. The daily monotonous grind and the razor sharp needle sinking into my exposed veins had become my refuge and my way of life. There was nothing out there for me but more pain and suffering, why would I ever want to go back to that hell?
“Let go,” I mumbled incoherently, still dazed and coming down from my last Heroine high.
“Shut up and hold on, the whole place is coming down on us.” My sister rasped, gripping me tighter around the waist and dragging my limp body forward. I was too tired to resist as I grimly held on to her shoulder. Already we could hear angry shouting emanating from the floors above us. The guards were about to swarm and pull us limb from limb. A deliciously decadent thought danced through my jumbled thoughts of what would happen if Fear caught me again? What would his punishment be? I wanted it to hurt, down to my very core. Just to feel something, anything again.
My sister moved like a wraith, her face lit up by the muzzle flashes of her pistol. One by one, Natalov’s guards fell at her feet, blood gushing up in sprays of scarlet where the bullets found their mark. More and more of them kept appearing as we rushed through the corridors. It became a teeming mass of flailing and rag dolling human bodies. She kept reloading firing, spent casings pirouetting almost gracefully in their air around her, their golden edge tinged with splattering’s of dark red blood. As the last shot died away, her hands moved in a blur and a thrash of silver throwing knives appeared and they found their mark with beautiful and deadly accuracy. The grabs grabbed their throats in horror as she ran down the corridor past them, carrying me safely with her. Our luck finally ran out and soon they started closing in on us, we were trapped like rats in a cage.
“Hold on!” Shouted my sister wrapped her arms around me and ran for the upstairs stained glass window. The glass shattered into a crystalline shower of shards around and the night greeted us as we stumbled to the unforgiving ground below. In the fall, she let fly with a final throwing knife from her hip. Natalov was standing at by the stair case, staring with ice cold eyes at the scene before him. He caught the knife in one hand, millimetres away from his face and calmly ran the warm blade over his skin. As my sister dragged me away into the night, I glanced back and saw the demon standing at the remnants of the window. His eyes never left mine and I swore I could see a cruel smile form on his face.
Through the dark forest we went, never stopping even for a moment. Gun shots rang out behind us as the hunters came tearing after us. She had spat in the very eye of the Bratva and they were determined to make us pay for this gravest of insults. Once or twice, I stumbled over tree roots, cold mud clinging to my tattered clothes.
“Get the hell up, we’re almost there.” She pulled me up from the muck and dragged me forward. We eventually reached a waiting Suzuki Hayabusa GSX1300R. The black and blue chromed beast snarled into life as my sister turned the key and calmly placed me on the back seat.
“If you let go, I am not scraping you off the tarmac.” Clasping my hands around her waist and placing my head on her shoulder, we sped off into the night barely making it as the guards emerged from the woods, screaming and shouting at us. A few gun shots harmlessly flew over our heads and I realized we were free and clear. By some miracle, we had escaped the dacha and Fear itself, leaving the demon behind. But was waiting for me out there? Suddenly, panic and anxiety gripped me tightly and I could feel the shadows as they flashed past me, reaching out with bony black fingers. They wanted to pull me back into the nightmare, drag my soul kicking and screaming into the miasma of the hell I had just survived. The darkness closed in and I screamed till my lungs hurt and every inch of body cried out for mercy. If my sister noticed, she said nothing; never turning her head and expertly piloting the bike between the late night traffic.
It took maybe half an hour or something like, I wasn’t sure exactly to reach the city centre of Tokyo again. The traffic had dimmed slightly
“Take me home.” I mumbled but my voice was drained out by the noise of the city and the rumbling of the bike beneath us. Eventually we slowed down as she pulled into a side alley and switched off the lights. Lifting me off the bike, she carried my carefully down a flight of steps to a basement room carefully hidden from view.
“Where are we? I don’t want to be here.” I struggled to break free and escape but it was all for naught. My sister silencing me with a hard slap through the face. I could feel the welt forming under my cheek as she looked at me with fire burning in her dark blue eyes.
“Now listen carefully, I don’t want you here nor do I want to take care of your sorry ass but someone out there seems to think you are hot shit or something. Personally, I cannot see it but who am I to judge? They want you back in the game and I am here to make sure it happens. The first thing we got to do is get that shit they pumped into you out of your system.”
“Let me go, the Yakuza…the brotherhood will take care of me.” It was a pathetic attempt at an escape and I barely made it two steps before my sister threw me to ground and locked her fingers around my throat.
“You really think those animals will welcome you back with open arms? You started a fucking war with the Russians by going to that Dacha and the local Yakuza mob is beyond pissed at you. The rumour is that the high ups were willing to negotiate with Natalov and settle on a cease fire. But you had to be little miss lady balls of steel and take on the entire Bratva yourself. Did you really think you could defeat Fear?” She looked at me with a look of derision on her face. “He is the damn bogeyman in the dark and plenty have tried to take him down. What chance did an arrogant child have against that monster? You’re lucky he didn’t rip your spine from your body when he had the chance.”
“He took Adelmar from me, he took my friend.” I tried kicking out but she held firm, not allowing me to move as much as an inch. Her long blonde hair hanging in my face.
“You killed him.” She replied coldly.
“Fuck you!” I shouted furiously, thrashing wildly to get free.
“That’s right kitten, let it all out but you might want to save some of your energy. For the next forty eight hours, you are going cold turkey till I’m satisfied you are clean again and ready to work. Even though I should strangle you were you lay, you seem to have a higher purpose and I have to get you back to the light. It’s all about the balance. Tell the demons I said hi when you see them” She tightened her grip and soon the darkness overwhelmed and carried me away. With rapidly closing eyes, I looked up at my sister and whispered barely coherently.
“Who are you?”
For the first time, she looked at me with tenderness in her eyes and I could see the pain etched behind them. It lay shallow for the entire world to see that she was hurting inside, no matter how much she tried to hide it.
“They never gave me a name, I was just a tool to them, to be used and discarded when this was all over. But you can call me Brynn. Now sleep sis, I got you.”
I got you.
