Souls, shadows, and coffee

1

CHAPTER ONE

Silver fixed her make up in the car. Her black face paint was running out, she noted as she pressed a small cosmetic sponge into the pallet before pressing the paint firmly against her already pale skin.

Beside her, Isaac, her handler, was sitting looking down at his tablet. The bright white of his dress shirt brushed the heavy black fabric of her cloak as she lifted up the small hand mirror and squinted to see if she had missed anywhere. "The Target has just made contact." He said, both to Silver, and to the voice beyond her ear-piece. "They're inside the building. Sending men to surround the perimeter."

"Discreetly." Said the voice that wasnt in the car with them.

"Of course, sir." Isaac said instantly. His fingers flew across the tablet, sending out the message, and a moment later, he saw it had been received. "Silver, are you ready?"

"Almost."

"You know if you didn't bother with any of that, you'd already be ready."

"Did you know that you're a --"

"I want this done quickly." Interrupted the disembodied voice.

"Yesir." Mumbled Silver, snapped the mirror closed and glancing over to Isaac's tablet. He was connected directly to the street cameras and security networks across the city, able to hack into almost any recording device he wanted. Currently he was watching four separate live feeds, all pointed at the same location featuring a number of S-agents lurking in the shadows nearby armed with both firearms and steel.

"The plan hasn't changed?" She asked, casting her eyes to the darkness beyond the car window. She did not need to watch the building through the tablet, she'd be there soon enough.

"No."

"How are their windows?"

Isaac tapped a few times on his tablet, zooming in on one of the cameras, then said, "Closed."

"Brave." Silver said. "But that does make this easy."

Easy Targets didn't stop the churn of her stomach. The hesitation in her bones. Just because it was easy, swift, didn't mean she wanted to do it.

Kill him.

It was that hesitation, that desire to not kill, that separated her from the rest of her kind, and the same reason that she was crowned The Reaper of Nightshade City. Of course, she wasn't the only Reaper but she was the one the people knew best.

"I'm ready." She said, forcing the word out past her lips.

"Here's fine." He told the driver, a old man who never speaks. It was always the same driver to take her out of her cage, and he always had the same sad eyes. The car slowed to a stop and Isaac pressed a hand to his ear piece. "All units, the weapon is being released." He said, and words were a rope tightening around her neck. "I repeat, the weapon is being released. Allow the Weapon to pass and wait for my signal."

Silver, henceforth known as The Weapon, unbuckled her seatbelt and put down her paint in the pocket of the back of the seat in front of her, took a breath, and opened the door.

The night rushed into her and in an instant she allowed herself to be lost in shadow. To Isaac it would have looked like she vanished, but she hadnt even moved a muscle not yet.

"And remember to close the dam door this time." Isaac muttered into his tablet.

She slammed it closed with her boot, and became the night itself.