Early April 2012
AAAAHHHH!
*pant pant pant*
I grip the klaive beside me in the bed. Eyes wildly checking shadows, corners. Ears straining for any foreign sounds. Klaive in one hand, dagger from under my pillow in the other, I cautiously check under the bed. I had long since got rid of any mirrors... just in case. I know I can block anyone from stepping from the umbra... the otherworld... into my den. The mirrors just had to go. The bathroom got smashed last time i tried to shave around the scars. A monster just seemed to be looking back at me... my scarred reflection.Nothing was under the bed. It was stupid. It was just another nightmare. I hacked the legs off the bed this morning though. If there is no under the bed, there is not chance of something being under it. I'll have to remember not to step on the bedside sword that usually sits under the bed's edge.
The adrenalin wears off, leaving my hands shaking again. I just sit with the klaive. Wait for it to pass.
Sometimes I feel lost. I am lost. So used to taking orders, I am not wholly sure what my role is now. Rogue... also means leaderless. What now? I glare at the klaive and demand of it, WHAT NOW!? I run my hands through my sweat soaked hair. What now?
Now... coffee. Then workout... then meditate. then shower.... Then....
2 hours later...
I have a third mission to gather intel from within a governmental building. No one gave me this mission. I gave it to myself. I am looking for answers. I find a shit load of secrets and stuff that leads to more questions... but never the answers to who really chose that mission with GhorraPawz. Never answers to the reasons why Fahr knew to bring his whole pack and got them all onto the mission list. I don't even know if they were all working for MI-5. No answers to why... why... WHY... the whole Silent Strider pack got wiped out. Every single one of them.... like those... things... knew exactly where each team member was. This is why I am more and more certain every day that it was a set-up. I don't think they expected even me to show up for the rendezvous point.
I shake my head. The memories are too painful. My hands start to shake again. Maybe Patrick has something for this... to settle the nerves.
I still feel mostly directionless. Purposeless. No... that's not true. I have one purpose. Find this klaive's true owner. That owner is somewhere here... somewhere in Chicago. I am not sure why I know that. It is like a feeling. Maybe the klaive has decided to speak empathically to me.
Why do I feel so on edge? I feel watched. Like every hair is on end this morning. I spend the day preparing for my mission, moving through some extra bladework, using the climbing wall I build in this loft... but that edgy feeling won't go away. I double check the loft's roof escape. It's clear. I open the curtain to the front window a crack for the 11th time today. That van is still there. The guy in it just lit his cigarette.
I'm compromised!
Time to go....
I grab the laptop and pry it open with a blade, rip all the components out. I tear the notes off the fridge and burn them in the cast iron frying pan on the stove. The magnets that held them to the fridge get dropped onto each piece of the laptop that might hold any memory. The EM pulse wiped out most functionality of most of my electronics, but this had been protected in a case. The radio and TV... offer very sketchy service. They all get wiped down. Everything does.
All fridge contents get dumped down the drains or toilet. Bleach gets poured down after them. the climbing gear gets tossed to the middle of the room with my duffle. Some clothes. Food rations. Thin thermal blanket. Compact first aid kit and field medical kit.
Blades... shit. I cannot take them all. The klaive. The katana and wakasashi. Three daggers. My favorite dirk. Field survival knife. Ten throwing knives. Flatpack of 8 stars. I look at the rest of the collection, blades from various places in the world, collected from missions. I can't take them. Maybe I can come back for them. But I might not be able to. I can leave them. I have the criticals.
I pull us a floorboard and grab the cash I have kept there before that fiasco of a bloodbath mission and from the black market missions. I kick the board back down into place and stamp it hard. then yank the brick from the wall by the bed and grab the bag within. Passports for USA & UK, along with currency and four keys and a stone. Keys for lockers where other contents are secured. The stone... all I have left from my last visit to Fahr's cairn.
Cairn... my Den. Damn. I don't have time to do the rite to undo the cat magic in here. Ancestors forgive me. I'll back if I can. I debate stepping through the umbra here to disappear. But if things were waiting on that mission... what if they are here too, with those men lurking outside. I refuse to be an easy meal. Into the vent escape route to the roof it will be then.
Gear strapped into place. Boots on and hood up. Duffle shoved into vent. I pull the old crank fan into place. there is a bag... of dust... inside the vent. I crank the fan and let it suck the contents of the back of months of dust collection. Last survey of the room.... now with a thin layer of dust as if I had not been there in months.
Time to go.
Patrick had suggested a place to me once... if I needed to disappear.
The Privy.
Now I feel even more lost and more like no one.
Now I have no safe place to call home.
Figures with a dark moon coming...
I grip the klaive and climbing gear and disappear into the night... adrift in the world.
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