The Soldier of Summer: Book 1

Chapter 9

We had just been given a mission, Clara and I. We were to kill a potential threat to Hydra. His name was Rivers Curtis, and he had a supernatural ability that was quickly growing out of control. We didn't know much about him, and we weren't allowed to ask, so we just went with it.
We arrived at the given address, preparing for an epic battle. That was one thing Clara and I never minded about Hydra, the fighting. We were doing what we were made to do, we were made to kill. It satisfied that part of us that craved blood, that part of us that was a killer.
We were sled dogs. Sled dogs were specially bred to want to run around and pull sleds. When true sled dogs are shown a harness, they are supposed to go nuts with excitement. When Clara and I were given a chance to fight, we went nuts because we were born assassins. We were bred to want to fight and kill.
And so we did. We were excited to fight Rivers Curtis. At least until we found out that Rivers Curtis was 8 years old. We barged into a house in a normal, homey-looking neighborhood, and what we found was a normal family having dinner at the dining table. They were eating spaghetti, the four of them. Rivers, his little sister, his mom, and his dad. His sister was only five years old, and seeing the two strange teenagers holding guns in her house caused her to start screaming and crying.
It was the most ear splitting sound, the screaming. The super hearing that I had didn't really help either. The mother jumped up and shielded her baby from us, sobbing and screaming at her husband to call the police. Rivers's dad picked up his fork and threw it at Clara, who caught it just before the prongs hit her face.
The woman started frantically throwing anything she could grab and hurled it at us, screaming and crying. Dodging the plates and spaghetti proved difficult for me, and at one point, the woman grabbed the pot where the rest of the pasta was, and I got a face full of marinara sauce.
A shot rang out in my ears, and the woman's screaming stopped, and while I was trying to get tomatoes out of my eyes, Clara left my side to go take care of the father. It turns out that tomato sauce really sticks to your eyes, because I think I was stuck there for a while before I was flung through a wall. Luckily there was a bed on the other side of that wall that I landed on.
I jumped up, and ran to the kitchen, stumbling over debris. Both kinds were nowhere in sight, but I could still hear the girl screaming.
"Clara!"
"What?" She came into the room, hands covered in blood.
"Where's the boy? Did you get him?" I asked, looking around, cursing that screaming baby.
"No, I didn't get-" she was suddenly lifted off the ground and crushed into the ceiling. As soon as I thought that she was going to break through it, she fell. Someone started sobbing behind me. I turned around, gun at the ready, to see Rivers Curtis.
We had never been assigned a child before. If he were an adult, I would have taken care of him immediately. But there was something about this kid that made me hesitate about pulling the trigger. This child was on his knees, hunched over his mother, and I couldn't tell whether or she was covered in blood or marinara sauce.
"What do you want to do about it?" Clara came up next to me.
"What do you mean what do I want to do? You know what we have to do," I told her. She gave me a disbelieving look. "We've never done this before, Auri. That over there is a child. One whose parents I just killed. He doesn't deserve this."
"Clara, none of the people we've killed deserved it! But we did anyway, we can't stop now. We're so close."
She started to approach the boy cautiously. "Rivers," she started. The boy looked up and threw his body over his mom, trying to protect her. "Rivers, I know this is scary-"
The kid started screaming more, and some debris from the wall I crashed through earlier started levitating. "Clara?"
"I know. I see it." Clara stalked towards Rivers. " I'm not going to kill you."
"You're not?" Rivers and I said in unison, one of us shocked, and the other one crying. Clara looked back at me and rolled her eyes.
"No, I'm not."
The kid sniffled. "But you killed my mom and dad. Where's my sister?"
That damn baby was still screaming somewhere. "She's certainly not dead," I muttered.
"Auri, go find the baby!" Clara said.
"No! Don't kill her!" Rivers yelled, and a bit of drywall was hurled at me by an unseen force. I turned and protected myself with my metal arm, but the momentum of the blow sent me flying into a couch. I jumped up off the ground, covered in couch guts.
"Get the baby, Auri!"
"Gladly." I ran to find that screeching nightmare. I ran out the front door towards the sound. She was down the road, running away. I chased after her, not caring who could see me through the windows. Jeez, what kind of lung capacity did this little girl have?
"Go away!" she screamed, almost inaudibly. She tripped and fell in the middle of the road. I caught up to her quickly, and picked her up by her arm. "Let me go!" she dragged on the "go" for about 10 seconds as I ran back to her house so I could make sure Clara wouldn't do anything stupid.
Running into the front door holding the girl, someone hit me in the head with a plate, and everything went blurry. "I'm sorry Auri, I can't kill this kid," Clara said as my vision came back.
"Why?" I asked through the two kids' screaming together.
"Because he's a kid! He's got a whole life ahead of him! So does this little girl."
"Why should that stop us? We've killed a ton of teenagers who've had their futures ahead of them and you had no problem with it, what makes you stop now? Clara, we're so close to getting out, we can't jeopardize our chances now."
Rivers was standing behind her, cowering from me. The girl tried to break away again, and I switched her from my flesh arm to my metal arm, so I wouldn't have to be aware of my grip.
"Clara we are going to kill these kids-" I was cut off by the screaming and crying that ensued. I covered the girl's mouth with my flesh hand, muffling the sound.
"Clara, think about it. Take two lives to save thousands more."
She stopped, considering all our options. We stood there for a few minutes, Rivers not daring to move, and my hand getting wet because his sister would not stop crying.
Finally she sighed and turned to the boy. He looked up at her and soiled himself. Clara grabbed Rivers' throat, and before he could scream, his spine cracked and he fell to the ground. And before his sister's voice broke the windows, she was dead too.
Silence.