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Chapter 5

5. Elliott Caine

Living an unpredictable life has been something I'm very well familiar with, for about a bit more than  3 years now. A life where you don't know what will come the next day, whether you will live another day or have that day as your last day— that has always been my life.

I mean, I was alone as a 16-year-old, until Fiona came along and joined my "journeys", if you will. While other kids my age (then) worried about timed online assignments, I had to worry about whether I could survive until the next day.

My days were torture. My rate of survival depended on what kind of loot I was able to get from my adventures in thievery. Until one day I was for hire and our lives practically the same until now.

More danger and risk, but a very worth  gamble.

While surprises exhilarate people, they tormented me to the point that I endlessly sought for reassurance.
As days turned to months and months turned to years, I learned to switch what I used to call fear into an entirely different word— excitement.

The Marcus Oakley and Fiona Arshavin from 2 years ago would not do or even imagine doing what we are about to do.

Mark Oakley's #1 tip in the book of survival: Don't do anything which involves gambling over life unless it's inevitable.

And here we are: trying to get involved with the perpetrator of an incident that made headline news.

"This is probably the most dangerous and risky thing you've asked me to get into, Fiona," I whisper, just because everything is silent.

"Risky, like all our missions have been and always will be." She says promptly, eyes looking up ahead.

"Risky is one thing, but what do we get out of this? Is it because you've been dying to know who will sabotage the transport?"

"Look, Mark, I know completely well that we're just tasked to finish up some people, sure they will hire an intelligence but whatever, but it helps to know some information that may save our asses later,"

"Fi, you can't be serious about this. We might just barge into their headquarters and get ourselves killed."

"We're just on a small hostage rescue mission. Apparently part of those Equalists caught a hostage in a basement near the Rust-Gem border area. There were only about 5 people tasked to do it, but one of those people is... Eli."  She explains coolly, but whispers the name carefully. She seems to hold something back as she says the name, her eyes completely devoid of any emotion.

"Eli as in Elliott Caine?"

"The one and only," Fiona nods. She pauses, "... It's another reason why I'm so insistent. I can't let go of the only chance we seem to have after all this time."

"I understand you now. We should get going," The look of sadness in Fiona's eyes is brief, yet apparent.

"Did Eli... give you that gash?" I ask, glancing at her now freshly wrapped wound.

"No. Eli is a brute as always, he wouldn't know what to do with complicated weapons. Oh and Mark, where we're going right now, we have to put our old personal feelings aside. What he did— what he's planning to do, rather, is unacceptable. Just think of him as any other criminal," The glint in her eyes are cold and menacing, but I can tell that she is merely trying to suppress the rage and sorrow that she's been keeping in.