The Spaces Between Coordinates

Chapter One

Like the calm before a storm, an alarm clock slowly ticked to its allotted time to rouse its owner. It was a miniature statue of Master Yoda holding a light sabre.

Red lights flashed the time as 04:00 am. It was heavily silent, till Master Yoda spoke. "Get up you must and the day seize, for of the essence is time".

Long black curly hair covered the pillow of its sleeper and trailed to the floor on both sides of the bed. Anastasia opened one eye groggily and groaned as she heard Master Yoda's wake up sequence.

'And I was having such a wonderful dream', she thought sarcastically as her hand raised out of the prison of blankets and, with practised ease, formed a fist that came down upon Master Yoda's head to turn him off.

Master Yoda's decimation of sentence construction was no reason to get out of bed. Neither was it because the alarm was set for 04:00 am. Once Master Yoda's head was pressed, his sensors began a count-down sequence.

If his sensors detected the sleeper was still in bed after the count-down, he would take out his light sabre and proceed to stab you with it. The light emitted from the sabre was actually a concentrated UV ray that burned hair upon contact. Run a few simulations of someone practising with a sword in Yoda's program and you have an alarm clock that gives you free hair removal.

The moment Anastasia sat up she knew she wasn't getting out unscathed. Master Yoda launched himself off his charger deck and leaped on her forehead, giving her a perfect cut on her left eyebrow before she jumped off the bed.

Usually she would have been out of bed before the count down ended. But that night, she pulled an all nighter and for the first time, she decided to stay in bed longer. Her stinging eyebrow would be a new reminder to never ignore the alarm again.

She threw him off her face to the corner close to her bathroom. Facing her from the opposite corner as he landed, he started running towards her. Anastasia smirked as she took a running start and flipping over his head. Whilst in mid-air, she stretched her hand and pressed a button on his back, landing in a crouch as he deactivated.

"Well that's one way to start the first day of school.", she said whilst brushing off imaginary dust. Her bedroom was painted a dark grey with wooden floor boards. To the right of the room there was a small table and above it was an arrangement of papers stuck all over on a board with a layout of a town with pins and strings linking them to one another.

Some of the papers had pictures of random people covered in red circles or crosses and others had pieces or writing and pictures of places. There was an assortment of stationery with various guns and knives arranged in an open briefcase. Her bed with a bedtable next to it was in the middle of the room with a black rug at the foot of the bed. Doors leading to the bathroom and the corridor were on the left.

Hair-removing alarm clock and stalker vibes aside, Anastasia was normal. As normal as a teenager could be for an assassin. She was tall for her age and coupled with her cool exterior, a number of her peers assumed her to be an adult. A big green adult.

Her skin, akin to fresh grass in the spring, had no blemish except for the dark brown freckles skittered across her pert nose. Faint scars covered her lean built body. Hard training tended to do that. Her small waist accentuated her hips and bottom and her hair brushed her ankles in wild bushy tangles of curls as she stretched.

To top it off, a delicate mouth with plump lips that showed her dazzling white teeth if she smiled. Light purple eyes that were decorated with thick long lashes and of course the new addition to her left eyebrow. Anastasia walked to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. Her head tilted slightly as she thought about her mother.

Before she moved into her current apartment, both her and her mother lived in a small house in the outskirts of their town Stasis Breach. It was a simple enough town with enough hospitals, education that ended at secondary level. Low crime rate, gas prices that barely fluctuated and a mayor that was diligent with his post.

However, in the outskirts it was a whole new world altogether. Anastasia's mother was a professional assassin who belonged to a secret mercenary corporation called the Gray Leagues. Ever since she could remember, Anastasia was trained relentlessly by her mother without her ever explaining why till the day she was sent into the corporation.

All the blood, sweat, tears she endured bore fruit. The ammunition to fight for her life. She endured more ruthless training from her superiors and she was one of many children that were enrolled there.

The Gray Leagues only train females and not a single working position is done by a man. All the girls she met on her first day were imprinted in her memory because after the first six months of training, she had killed twenty-eight girls to survive.

Funnily enough, their superiors never discouraged them from making friends with each other or hating each other. In her first month, Anastasia realised that they were teaching them the value of networking. You could have plenty of friends or enemies if you liked, but establishing a network would bring countless opportunities if you did it well enough.

Truthfully Anastasia did not regret killing the twenty-eight girls she met for she had already decided that she would be better off being the best of the best and use that as her basis for networking. By the end of the eight years of training and taking out targets, she and fifteen other girls had been dubbed as the best the corporation had in a long while.

She would be sent on missions with several of her superiors and quite a few with her own mother. 'It has been a while since I thought about her.' she wondered as she took off her pyjamas and stepped into the shower to wash her hair. She had moved out of their house to settle closer in the town.

Her superiors only let her move because Anastasia was handed a consecutive bunch of targets and she needed to gather intel before commencing her mission.  The real reason Anastasia moved to her own apartment was because her mother died on a job they were working on together. She shook her head slightly. No sense in dwelling on the past.

She rinsed out the conditioner in her hair and began to wash her body. 'Hmm. School for the gifted. I stopped taking those pills ages ago and I haven't shown any symptoms since. Why is she sending me there?'she wondered. The school in question was called Rangers School for the Gifted.

This school was the last place her mother instructed her to go to in form of a letter. A letter that only arrived after her death. There's a motto they had in the corporation. Only victors come out alive. Strive to always win.

Anastasia finished her shower and stepped out of it to tie and braid her wet inky strands. Within ten minutes, she finished which was admirable considering her hair swept the floor when left on its own. Walking back into her room, she dried off and began the slow thorough task of moisturising her skin.

One of the intimate and gentle times with her mother was bath time. The only time she would see the older woman genuinely smile as they laughed over washing her ridiculously long hair. Cutting it was out of the question. It was one similarity she shared with her mother that she wanted to keep.

She then put on her clothes which consisted of black skinny jeans, an off the shoulder woollen beige sweater and white sneakers. She glanced briefly at the briefcase and went to hide it in the floor. Pressing one of the wooden floor boards, a hole opened up. It was filled with stuffing.

She threw the briefcase in and closed the hole. A few stomps on it confirmed what she wanted. Silence.
She made her way downstairs towards the kitchen unit. It was moderately small and grey was its overall theme. The wall clock hands indicated she had 15 minutes till the hour of seven.

Grabbing a sandwich from the kitchen counter in one hand and throwing a backpack over her shoulder with the other, she walked out locking the door to her apartment. The cold morning air and smell of dew covered grass pierced her nose as she walked down the pavement and rushed to the bus stop.

A/N: If you're reading this story anywhere else apart from Wattpad, it has likely been stolen. I have not give any permission for anyone to use my story in any way or form.

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