Chapter 48– Czar

Chapter 48– Czar
On some days you don't really wake. Rather, you're violently ripped from what you foolishly thought was sleep– no hands, no noise, just a compulsion as potent as a gun to your head.

Nightmares.

Mine had started since the night I first left for Rome, but that evening– Day 23 in Shadeau’s Miami Base, 4:15 p.m. to be exact– the blow from my lucid tormentor seemed to hit differently. When my eyes finally opened, it felt as if I was staring through oil. For a while I couldn't hear, think or see. And then I got up and sent the items closest to me crashing to the floor– ceramic plates that had previously contained a light lunch– yet the clatter of destruction did nothing to calm me down.

As expected… because what I had experienced had been no ordinary bad dream. My subconscious had practically laid on a platter the origin of my collision course with my current life. I saw everything from the CCTV footage that had been the cornerstone of my investigations into my parents’ murders down to the grand act that led to my extinguishing three– or four? The numbers blur after a while– lives. Prior to that moment, these people used to be members of my parents’ party, allies, associates… but they had wronged me, killed the only people who mattered to my existence over some petty political rivalry. They deserved no pity and their end was earned. So the question I remember asking myself was why the fuck were they back to haunt me?

Maybe it was the suddenness– ghosts hardly ever find rest when they go so fast; they're said to wander. But then again, it could have as well been the brutality, custommade for them– torture as creative as it was enduring and then a most gruesome death for each of the bastards. Any ghost would be pissed. Was that why I kept reliving the process over and over again, surprised at my own capacity for malevolence? My brain must have been trying to come to terms with it.

It showed.

Earlier that morning I had gone with Rosiel and Midnight on an assassination operation for Shadeau and someone had slipped through my fingers– the housekeeper of the foreign ambassador that was our target. I had let her go in a moment of pity and an assessment of the fact that she was only a minimal risk… but that had not been part of the plan because as a rule, leaving any witnesses alive isn't a business practice that Shadeau engaged in.

I'd been thinking about the whole thing since we arrived from San Francisco where we had gone for the mission, and an hour of napping later, it was still on my mind... But apparently, not just my memories, even Shadeau wasn't going to let me live it down. No sooner had I destroyed the table next to me in my annoyance did the computerised voice from the speakers in the facility begin to chant: “Czar Blackbird, report to the Interrogation Room. Czar Blackbird, report to the Interrogation Room…”

I knew at once that I had been ratted out.

By whom? Teacher’s Pet, of course. Rosiel.

I was already beginning to hate how much she was featuring in my life. Meddling with it was just unacceptable. There was something in the way she was so hung up on my case, like whatever her problem was, it was beyond the resentment she felt at my quick and steady rise up the ladder in a secret organization that crushed dreams and souls, or the fact that I was specially sought out by said place on a full negotiation basis– a recruitment that she was party to. Yes, it went deeper than all of that. There was something in her eyes when she stared in my direction and I definitely knew what it was. I tried to convince myself that I didn't want it, that I hated her.

But then what else is new?

On my way to answer my summons, I met her standing leisurely by the doors to the Interrogation Room as though she'd been waiting for me… or an order to go fetch me herself– almost a month in, everyone knew how erratic I could be but El? She was of the opinion that she was the one who could handle me. Bold, I'll give her that.

“You finally made it,” she announced as I neared her position. "Thought I would have to break into your apartment again."

The night she did that I had opened my eyes to silky black tresses falling on the sides of my face and a knife to my throat– she planned to eliminate me. I? I would have shot her before she even got a chance to breathe a word out but then Shadeau would just use it against me, extending my years of service, so I had let her go with a warning. Heaven knows that had the Institute not been blackmailing me, forget conforming to the rules, I would have blown the whole place up in my first week.

El knew. She was very much aware of the fact that I was a living hazard. Her mistake was thinking I was just a threat to her “star student” status. Smart, beautiful yet so fucking self-absorbed, she had cocked her brow at me, throwing a once-over my way, daring me to just walk past her.

I didn't.

“If it isn't the bane of my existence." My voice had been level, a little tired yet alert as ever as I watched her, trying to convince myself that I didn't find her audacity a wee bit attractive. "Is it so strange that I want your blood on my hands badly?”