Hannah walked past the new corpse lying there. All three of them almost looked cute together. Like a family.
She was pondering the idea until the realization hit her: she'd let her only help die.
"I'm going to be here all night now. Ughhhh. Why do I keep getting stuck with stupid partners?" she whined, annoyed at her new workload on top of now having to pick up the pace.
After all, those gunshots meant someone would check on the place soon.
After calming down, Hannah stared at Arman's body even harder. She knew this time she might have completely fucked up.
Arman had been one of the last people they could assign to her. There were barely any newbies to begin with and anyone insane enough to work with what they called a "raging lunatic" was even harder to come by.
Hannah knew that the boss would make mincemeat out of her. The scars he'd already left on her body wouldn't be enough punishment this time.
She sat there trying to come up with something, anything, but all that came was slight guilt. She had let Arman die after all.
She was always too angry. At something. The world, her family, the random idiots she kept getting assigned.
The silence that followed was dreadful. It made her realize how alone she really was, physically and emotionally.
The stench of blood hung heavily in the room, just like her head.
"Blech."
She sighed, then threw both bodies over her shoulders. The truck waited outside.
She couldn't take the veteran, as he wasn't a target. Leaving him was cleaner. More believable. This could pass for a burglary gone wrong if she played it right.
She made sure to set the scene right, taking some random belongings she could sell and smashing some of the fancier decorations.
Once it looked good enough to fool someone dumb, she got to hauling.
She took the target to the back first. Unlatching the trunk, the strange machine the company installed waited for her. After all this time, they still refused to tell her what it actually was.
From what she understood, it turned a person into "pure essence," which sold for vile amounts of money on black markets. Apparently, the elites liked to use this stuff for secret experiments or something of the like.
Inside the machine, the disgusting sound of flesh and bone being crushed and processed went on for about a minute until the machine beeped and turned off.
The hatch hissed open. Inside squirmed a wet, pulsing mass. Bone, gristle, something that might've once been a ribcage. It throbbed like it still remembered how to live.
But she didn't care.
Morals didn't pay rent. Essence did.
Arman, unlike the man, didn't go into the machine. She tossed him in the backseat. His body rattled around like an action figure.
She knew she couldn't bring Arman back to HQ like this.
He lay there unnaturally; body bent in ways it shouldn't.
This poor boy wasn't meant for this life. He didn't belong.
But he also didn't deserve to become another one of the dickheads who walked into this world hoping to get rich off others' suffering.
Arman clearly was here for something else.
And whether she liked him or not…Hannah knew he deserved better.
Maybe if she brought him back, he would realize his mistake. Walk away. But they never did.
Either way, she risked getting in deep shit. Again. For failing to keep a partner alive. Whether they pissed her off or got themselves killed through sheer incompetence, it never mattered to the boss. A failure was a failure.
She reached into her center console and pulled out a tiny needle with a fleshy liquid thick and coiled, almost like intestines.
It smelled like shit, but it was made of that essence stuff.
She took one while no one was looking. That alone was enough to get her into serious trouble. But if she lost another partner, she might be fired…or worse.
She stared down at Arman. Was he really worth the cost of this?
His face flickered through her mind.
How he cried like a child being kicked around by bullies. If she hadn't wanted to do this sort of thing, would she also have cried like he did?
Punishment hung heavy on her head, but that face like a lost dog knowing it was about to meet the end made her feel weird, a mix between pity for him and disgust at herself for letting him die.
She sighed and jammed the needle in Arman's thigh, more recklessly than she meant to. Watching as his skin turned a gross red with veins pulsing, which she could only describe the sight as Arman being turned inside out.
Arman jolted, joints bending backward, bones cracking, steam hissing from his skin. His old blood turned black, then evaporated into a foul mist.
He let out a scream that didn't sound human. Half a minute of pure agony.
Then as soon as it began. It stopped.
His skin had returned to normal. And he lay there, drenched in sweat. Alive.
"Yo! You still alive after all that?" Hannah asked, masking any actual concern.
"Ughh…" was all Arman could manage as he lay slumped there.
"Well, that settles that," she said, grasping the backseat door.
"Time to get out of this joint. I took care of the cleanup while you were out, by the way. So I will be docking some of your rewards. Hope that's fine with you!"
She grinned and shut the door, leaving Arman to in whatever fresh agony had replaced his blood.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The dim glow of the streetlights lit the road as Hannah drove back toward HQ.
Arman's pain had slowly dwindled, but the agony still rattled his insides.
He stared at the window, watching as they passed desolate buildings. Now far outside the city, leaving the high-rises and luxury houses of the elites.
How am I alive?
All he remembered was pain in his head, then blackness. Then another kind of pain–worse, like fire scorching his insides. And now…here he was.
What did she do to me? It felt like dying all over again.
Hannah's voice cut through the silence:
"Hey. You doing alright back there?"
He had to think for a moment. He had no clue what exactly to say.
"Well, the pain subsided, I guess. What happened to me?" he asked, still staring at his own reflection in the window.
"I-"
Hannah stopped.
There was a long pause before she spoke.
"One of his men snuck in while you were distracted and put a bullet through your brain," she said casually. "Hesitation gets people killed. You already found that out."
Another bout of silence before she spoke again.
"You froze. You let him kill you. That's on you."
Arman's vibrant green eyes met Hannah's in the rearview mirror—almost accusatory, but also scared, like a trapped animal. He noticed her shift in her seat a little
"Hey, at least I brought you back. Most people don't come back. I don't usually bother," she said, her tone was defensive, flat.
He stole glances at her in the mirror, not sure if she'd notice.
She was built like… he couldn't place at first. Something he'd only seen in a book once. A bear. Yeah, that was it.
Her dark eyes that only showed brown under certain lighting, messy auburn hair that dangled down to her shoulders. It looked like it hadn't been washed in days and a stocky frame built for hand-to-hand combat. A plain black T-shirt, jeans, and a face scarred like someone who fought for a living.
He hadn't really gotten a good look at her until now. He was too busy looking down to really give her face any thought.
She looked like she could twist his neck off just for sneezing too loud.
Had she used that force against him? He didn't know exactly what happened before he died, just that Hannah had left to grab something... and then everything went black.
He didn't know what to say. He just knew not to piss her off again. She had brought him back... in a way far more painful than most deaths. But he was alive.
"That's true. You did bring me back. But be careful lying to the higher-ups. It isn't me you'd need forgiveness from if you screwed up."
He could hear Hannah's grip on the wheel tighten.
"I'm not lying," she snapped. "And you should be thanking me for saving your sorry ass. I could've left you to rot with that old man, but no, I decided you, for some reason!"
Arman shrank back at her tone. She sounded... honest. But he didn't have all the pieces.
"Would you at least tell me what happened, then?" he asked. "You left, and then I died. What am I supposed to assume? I can't remember it clearly. So why did I really die? And why would you bring me back if you didn't feel guilty?"
He could feel her struggling to keep calm.
"You know, you ask a lot of damn questions for someone who died several hours ago," she hissed. "But fine. I'll answer. Like I said. You got distracted staring at that stupid corpse. The guy's old-ass brother snuck up and blasted you in the head. I was in the kitchen grabbing a soda when it all went down, like I told you."
She turned her glare on him full force.
"Does THAT make you satisfied, Arman? Are you happy knowing how much of a fuck-up you are?"
Her words hit like bricks. Arman shrank into his seat. She turned her eyes back to the road. The message was clear: the conversation was over.
But Arman couldn't shake the feeling in his gut when he looked at her face.
If she didn't have all those scars, she might've looked a little like his sister.
He didn't like the thought of that.
He imagined his sister in a job like this. Forced to fight, to kill, to survive. He couldn't handle it. She would've crumbled. He imagined those scars on his sister's face, and it made him sick enough to choke.
Maybe Hannah was like him... maybe she was just surviving too.
"Hey," Arman said, hesitating. "Are you okay with... all this? The killing, I mean."
Her eyes snapped up in the mirror. Heat radiating off her gaze.
"I just mean," he continued quickly, "you've got a lot of scars. Did you get them from targets? Or maybe—"
The car screeched to a halt.
The brakes screeched and without a seatbelt Arman could feel himself flung forward into Hannah's seat.
"If this is your idea of small talk, you should quit," Hannah growled, her voice low and venomous. "I have no more patience for this."
She was breathing hard now.
"You have no clue what kind of life I've lived. I pitied you, that's why I brought you back. But when we get to HQ? You're quitting. You're going home. To whatever family you've got left."
She quieted for a second before speaking again:
"This is not a place for people like you."