8 nights in hell [Billie Eilish]

NIGHT V.1: i'm a bad bitch you can't kill me

• pov: Mara •

It was almost familiar at this point, to walk somewhere in the middle of the night. The cloudy night sky above Prague had an orange glow to it. When I crossed the Vltava, the broad river weaving itself through the city, the countless street lights and lit up windows reflected in the water. The river bank looked like fairy lights.

I had not gone to the show today. At noon we had landed and after checking into the hotel to drop my bags off, I had told my colleagues I was sick. The rest of the day I had spent wandering around aimlessly. Prague was beautiful but I had seen none of it. It was too cold to stay outside for long so I had found a library. Somewhere in the back of the movie section I had put my earphones in, closed my eyes and tried to tune out everything around me.

Mostly I had tried to tune out last night's fight with Billie that played in my head on repeat. My phone's notifications were turned off. I did not even want to see if she was trying to contact me or not. I could not say which would be worse; that she was somewhere alone and missing me, or that she was just fine without me.

I had only checked EREBOS. I did not really have a plan but I knew that tonight I was going to do something about Ricky. How exactly I had not figured out yet. I would have to improvise.
I was done with it all, sick of everybody around me taking advantage of me. He could tell Billie whatever he wanted. She knew anyways. That it could be dangerous to confront him did not really matter, nothing mattered anymore. If I had to I was ready to throw my whole potential career into the wind if that was what it took to get away from him. There was nothing keeping me, not if Billie did not want me here.

This was going to be the last errand I did.

I was the first to arrive at the given address. I looked up and down the street but there was nothing that could help me find out what this errand was about. What the hell did a 'confidential' target mean? The level seven concerned me a little as well.
I waited a couple of minutes. To fight the chilly breeze I pulled my shoulders up and rubbed my hands together. My thoughts constantly circled back to Billie. How had the show been? Did everything go well? It was almost three in the morning, was she sleeping yet?

Ricky arrived first, then the third asset. At this point I could not even laugh at the ridiculous EREBOS names anymore. In brief we arranged that DankPunk69 was going to be the lookout.

Ricky started walking and gestured me to follow him. The location in the errand had apparently just been the meeting point. I still had no idea where we were going or what we had to do.

I caught up to him. "Why it the target confidential?"

"It's a level seven," he growled. "Only one asset knows."

"And that is you?"

He did not answer.

"What's the target?" I kept digging.