Chicago, Illinois
“Chicago Police Department!” Verdict shouted. “I order you to stop!”
The girl he had been trying to track down ignored him, and continued running. With a curse, Verdict began to run too, trying to catch up with her. However, the girl was extremely fast and knew Chicago way better that he did.
The girl was tall, about six feet even, but was all skin and bones, emaciated. She had long, waist-length, brown hair that was a tangled, dirty mess and looked like it hadn’t been brushed or washed in years. The girl herself was covered in grime. Her clothes were threadbare, rags; definitely not warm enough for the harsh weather that was Chicago winter.
As he chased after the girl, it began to snow, falling down quickly and furiously, obscuring Verdict’s vision. The freezing cold wind seemed to pierce right through his thick layers of clothing and touch his very bones. It bit at the exposed parts of flesh on his face, making the skin blister and turn red. His lips were cracked and peeling from the cold; he hated this weather. As he ran, he also had to be careful not to slip on the layer of ice that already covered the ground.
“Hey, wait up! I just want to talk to you!”
The girl, for all her height, was actually quite agile and strong. Her emerald eyes flecked with silver ticked every which way as she ran, like a cat, alert and ready for anything. Anytime their was a particularly nasty patch of black ice, the girl would take a jump and fly through the air, landing safely and easily on one foot, before taking off once more.
She led him all through a maze of streets and alleys in downtown Chicago. He huffed and puffed much of the way, wishing he’d been prepared for this much strenuous exercise. She halted, fleetingly, at the precipice of an alleyway with a thick, slick layer of ice along it, which made the path unable to be trod upon.
With a quick glance back at the mouth of the alley where he would appear any minute, the girl leapt at the brick wall of the back of a skyscraping office building, which made up one wall of the alley. Her hands found purchase in the snow and ice covered brick and her nails acted like claws. Her jump had taken her a good forty or fifty feet into the air before she’d grabbed onto the building. With a look down at the alley below, she saw the man enter the mouth of the alley and look around wildly for her. Scared, determined, and confused as to why he was chasing her, she began to quickly scale the side of the building. A few stories up, she could see an open window. The girl grabbed onto the window ledge and swung herself up and into the office. She glanced back out the window and discovered that the man swathed all in black was gone. She heaved a sigh of relief.
A high-pitched scream interrupted her thoughts. She turned her head to see a woman sitting at a desk facing the window she’d just climbed into. She swore; there was yet another person to deal with.
“Calm down, lady. Chill.”
“D-did you c-climb up the b-b-building?” The woman stammered.
“Yeah, what of it?”
The woman picked up her phone, presumably dialing security. Knowing she had to get out of there before the cops came, she climbed back onto the window ledge. She heaved herself out of it; the woman began to scream again.
Instead of dropping to the ground as she would have ordinarily done, she climbed back up the building’s exterior, braving the elements. Her aim was to get to the roof; there she could see if that guy was still following her and could formulate some semblance of a plan for her safety. It didn’t take her much longer to scale the rest of the building, only a few minutes. She was glad when she had finally pulled her body up and over the building’s side, onto the roof.
She was standing on the edge of the roof, looking down at the snow-blanketed city, when she heard the voice that sent her a chill worse that the freezing wind.
“There you are! I finally caught up with you!”
She whirled around, hair flying, and saw that man dressed all in black.
“You are a hard girl to find!”
“Don’t come any closer!” She forced the tremor out of her voice.
“Are you Trystanny Carthage?”
“Are you stalking me or something?”
“Please, answer me.”
“Yeah, you got me. It’s Tryst. But I haven’t done anything illegal, Five-oh.”
“Five-oh?”
“Yeah, you’re a cop, right? That’s what you said.”
“Sort of.”
Tryst’ face crinkled in confusion. “Say what?”
“I just need to ask you some questions. Would you follow me please?”
“Fuck that.” Tryst said, her emerald eyes flaring suddenly, the specks of silver in them gleaming.
A silver light seemed to come from inside her very skin, illuminating her. It sparked once, then blared outwards, blinding Verdict for an instant. He blinked, and that fast, Tryst was gone, taking a quick, running jump off of the roof, and landing easily on the next rooftop over.
Tryst had continued running for at least ten minutes through the streets of Chicago, when she finally thought she had lost the Five-oh. She found herself in the slums, the dirty, crime-filled area where she lived. She herself had taken solace among a gang, they had given her food and shelter when she’d first been left in Chicago, when she was a child. She didn’t fight in the gang or anything like that, not at all, she’d never done anything illegal, she just provided a service they were sorely lacking: medical care. She had always had a fascination with humans, more particularly their insides, all that blood and intestines and interesting stuff. After all, she’d seen her first dead body at age three, though she had never told a living soul that.
For some weird reason beyond Tryst’s comprehension, she always knew what to do when people were injured. A day after being stranded in Chicago, at age ten, she had saved the life of one of the gang’s most influential members, a guy they called Serrate for the long, jagged knife blade he used and the way the skin of the person on the receiving end of his knife looked after he was done with them. When Tryst had scaled the fence into the park so she’d have a place to sleep for the night, she come across Serrate, lying in the middle of a bike path, bleeding out from bullet wounds in his chest.
Tryst had ripped up the warm coat she’d been wearing at the time to use as bandages. Serrate was immobilized by his wounds and couldn’t protest when Tryst had pulled his blade from a strap on waist and had used it to dig out the bullets. He hadn’t even shouted because of the pain, which Tryst could only imagine had to have been excruciating.
She had stayed with him for what must have been hours, willing help to come, when a few of his friends snuck into the park, looking for him. She had explained what had happened and they had managed to take Serrate back to the abandoned factory their whole gang lived in. She discovered their gang was made up of about equal parts girls and boys of all ages, ranging from about six to twenty something. The gang’s members had been grateful for Tryst’s life-saving techniques and had offered her an honorary membership if she would continue to use her techniques to keep them alive, which she had gladly taken them up on, having nowhere else to go. They had given her the nickname of ‘Blood’, not because she participated in the bloodshed the rival gangs reaped on each other, but because she stopped it, she could staunch the blood flows.
She had remained on good terms with Serrate, who was now the leader of the gang, and had found a best friend in Serrate’s younger sister, Calynthia. Serrate still claimed he was indebted to her, even though she told him he wasn’t. She had saved many of the gang members in her few years with them, and actually kind of enjoyed having a family of sorts, for once. That was why it hit her so hard when she came jogging down a snow-covered street to find practically every member of the gang out in plain sight, clustered in small groups up and down a six block radius, shouting to each other in frantic tones.
“What happened?” Tryst cried out, running across the icy streets, to the scene. “Who was shot?”
“A lot of our people!” A young, dark-haired and skinned kid of about fourteen responded. He held a handkerchief to his shoulder. The handkerchief, which had once been white, was now being stained scarlet by his blood. “Lynth was, from what I heard.”
“Oh God, please tell me you’re not serious, Raze.”
The boy, Raze, shook his head sadly. “’Fraid not, Blood. She’s down there, somewhere.”
“Are you OK here?”
“No, I got shot! But, I’ll live. Go, help Lynth.”
“What’s Ser doing?”
“He’s hunting them down, I think. Blood, they came out of nowhere. I tried to fight back, but they hit me before I could get them.”
“I know. Keep pressure on it, and I’ll be back, OK?” She ripped a sleeve from her threadbare jacket and gave it to him to add to his wound. “Someone come fix a damn tourniquet for him!” She roared, before taking off down the line of carnage.
Pushing past the dozens of gang members as she ran, as well as stepping over some wounded children, she halted a few yards away from where she’d found Raze. There was a large crowd of the oldest and most important members of the gang, assembled in a circle. She pushed her way through the crowd, towards its center. Recognizing her, many of the gang members moved back and allowed her passage.
Lying on her back on the snow was her best friend, Calynthia. Underneath her, the fresh, normally white, snow was crimson. Tryst let out a cry and dropped to her knees beside her best friend, the only real friend she had ever had. Calynthia was moaning and her eyes were closed. She was gasping, trying desperately to pull the cold December air into her lungs. Calynthia’s eyes were tightly closed and the eyelids twitched. Her fingers and toes twitched spasmodically, as well.
A few of the other gang members were also on their knees in the snow, holding scraps of cloth ripped from their shirts and jackets to bleeding wounds. Tryst placed both her hands on Calynthia’s chest and closed her eyes. In her mind’s eye a vivid, 3-D image of Calynthia’s insides appeared. She could see all of the bullet entrance wounds, six in all, all but two of the wounds still with the bullet inside. Tryst could see the blood leaving her friend’s body, leaking out onto the ground, and she could see the injuries to her friend’s body caused by the bullets, most importantly, her friend’s one already collapsed lung and the lung about to collapse. Tryst opened her eyes abruptly and began barking orders.
“Six bullets total hit her, two are gone; four need to be removed! Left side of the head, right shoulder, middle of upper chest, middle of chest, stomach, right side near ribs. Let’s get some bandages and tourniquets there, people! I also need something rounded and sharp…anyone have a ballpoint pen? Oh, and a plastic bag or pouch or something and some wire or string? NOW!”
Kids began shouting to one another, racing to get supplies. Someone produced a pen from the pocket of his or her jeans, another a plastic bag from a convenience store. Many of the teens dropped pieces of string a wires at her feet. Still others ripped their clothing to make more bandages and a few even surrendered knives for tourniquets.
“All of you who aren’t holding bandages or extracting bullets; get back! Go help the others!” Tryst roared over the howling of the wind.
She snatched up the pen and in one quick, strong motion, jabbed it into Calynthia’s neck. Tryst heard people scream and demand to know what she was doing. Truthfully, Tryst didn’t know what she was doing, something, some instinct was telling her what to do. She grabbed a piece of wire in one hand, holding the pen still with the other, and ripped the wire down the center, took one of the pieces, and entwined one end around the pen and the other end to the handles of the plastic bag. She snapped at one of the gang members to hold the pen still, and got to work on the back of Calynthia’s head, which was a bloody mess.
Using a knife given to her by one of the gang members, Tryst had just extracted the bullet from Calythina’s head, and luckily, it wasn’t buried too deep. She had taken bundles of cloth that the gang members had ripped off of their own clothing and dropped beside her and had pressed them against the back of Calynthia’s head, to staunch the bleeding. In an attempt to sterilize that wound, as well as the others on Calynthia’s body, she had rubbed some freshly dropped snow into them, figuring with the limited supplies at her disposal, it would have to do as a cleaning agent.
“Yo, Rider!” She shouted to a gang member a few feet away.
Rider turned around to face her. Eighteen, with crème colored skin, wide blue eyes, and curly black hair, he was many a girl’s idea of cute. He was tall, over six feet, and muscular. He wore a blood-spattered white, wife-beater and baggy jeans, even though it was less than thirty degrees outside with the temperature rapidly dropping.
“Whaddayawant?” He responded, in one breath. He was hunched over a fallen friend, using a long, thin blade to dig out a bullet in his friend’s leg.
“Your gum.” Tryst responded.
He looked at her like she was crazy but knew better than to argue with her when she was in life-saving mode. He grabbed a young kid of about nine who loitered around behind him, staring down at the person splayed on the ground. Rider grabbed the kid’s hand and spat his gum into it.
“Give it to Blood.”
The kid stared down at the gum with a mixture of confusion and disgust.
“Be a runner, go.” Rider shoved the kid away, towards Tryst. His push left bloody handprints on the kid’s light blue windbreaker.
The kid scampered over, holding out his hand. Tryst snatched the gum and stretched it out, then stuck it against the bandages, using it to attach the bandages to Calynthia’s head. The kid watched her, eyes wide with awe.
“I got a job for ya’ but it’s not at all glamorous.”
“That’s ‘K.” The kid said in a small voice.
“Go around to everyone and get their gum, ‘cause we’re gonna’ need to keep these bandages in place and string isn’t gonna’ do it.”
The kid frowned for a second, before nodding. “’K.”
“Oh and give me your windbreaker.”
The kid immediately took his jacket off and handed it to Tryst, then ran off to do her bidding. Tryst slid the jacket under Calynthia’s head, covering the wound and bandages over it. She took the sleeves and tied them in a bow, making a light knot on Calynthia’s neck, just under her chin.
Calynthia’s head moved slightly and she let out a low, almost inaudible moan. She was rousing from unconsciousness. Tryst so did not want that to happen; it would mean Calynthia would be able to feel everything happening to her, all the pain. Tryst couldn’t let her friend have to go through that.
“Anyone have liquor with them, now?” Tryst shouted.
There was a chorus of yeses.
“I mean hard liquor, not beer.”
“Vodka, work?” Rider asked.
“Vodka will do. Get someone to bring it here and give it to Lynth.”
Rider nodded and withdrew a small, plastic water bottle from where it was tucked into his baggy jeans, at the small of his back. “I gotta keep it incog, y’know, in case the cops try to pull me over or some shit.” He passed the bottle over to a young runner, who rushed it to Tryst.
“Make her drink some.” Tryst ordered, carefully lifting Calynthia’s head slightly. Calynthia’s eyelids fluttered.
“Hey I got this thing out!” A cry of triumph came from one of the gang members working on the wounds on Calynthia’s chest, a seventeen-year-old named Spike, for his green hair that stood up at all ends. Spike held aloft a bullet stained crimson. He deposited the bullet on the ground and then ripped a wide strip of cloth from his muscle T-shirt. He put the strip over the open wound.
“Ah, fuck that.” Spike muttered, the pulled his whole shirt off over his head and pressed it against Calynthia’s body to stop the bleeding. “Much better.”
“Do they any help down there at the stomach?” Tryst asked.
Spike glanced over. “Yeah, they can’t get the damn lead out. Move aside.” He shoved one of his fellow crewmembers out of the way and took her place. “Just clean up after me.” He ordered the girl. She nodded and went to finish dressing the wound Spike had just finished removing the bullet from.
All of the sudden, the sound of feet slapping the ice and loud shouts rang out, silencing everyone. Serrate, along with a group of the eldest gang members, turned a corner and ran towards the site of the bloodshed. All of them had guns raised, pointed at the corner they’d just come from.
“Ser, what’s going on?” Tryst demanded.
Serrate turned and glanced at her. “How’s Lynth?”
“It’s too soon to tell. Now, tell me what the hell’s going on!”
“We’re under attack.” He replied simply.
“GET DOWN!” Serrate’s right hand man, Berg, shouted.
That was when the gunfire rang out. A large, sleek, silver car careened around the corner Serrate and the others had come from. The car’s windows were down and guns pointed out of them. All of the gang members who had been caring for the injured who had guns withdrew them and began to fire. Tryst flattened herself on the ground next to Calynthia.
Los Angeles, California
She huddled in her room, the shades drawn, her room a dark abyss. Her hand shook slightly as she finished the picture. She had to finish it or they would get her. They would find her and take her and there would be blood…she knew it, she just knew it. She couldn’t stop, not until it was complete. If she got off the bed, the light would get her, it would swallow her whole, even if she promised to finish. If she just didn’t finish, then they would get her, all the bad would happen, and she wouldn’t be able to stop it.
They were already in her head; she heard them every day, hour, second. She fought them and fought them, they couldn’t get control of her; she wouldn’t let them. She was weakening though, had been since before she could remember. She was weak; that was all she was. Weak and afraid and…no…that was just them trying to infect her. She had to show them all! She was the boss!
The trembling of her hand increased, but she was almost down. Just that stroke on the nose, that shading under the eyes, the extra stand of hair…and she was finished! She looked down at the picture and she shivered. The picture was like looking into a black and white photo; the attention to detail was perfect. It was definitely knew this person all right, that was the face she kept seeing!
She jumped up from the bed and the tremors hit her, taking over her body. She dropped to the floor, unable to stop. But she had done what they said! She had drawn the picture exactly as how she had seen it, exactly as they had shown her! Why were they doing this?
Abruptly, a thought hit her: she knew would make the shaking stop! The little crystals, so tiny no one could see their true form, except her, but everyone wanted them. The crystals were white as snow and as fluffy as it, too, but only if you believed. She remembered the sound it made when she would walk in the snow, before…before everything. Crunch, crunch; crystals under her boot heels. But then it was all gone in a second, leaving only the sun, the sun with its light and burning tendrils that would cook you alive and explode your eyeballs in their sockets. That was common knowledge, why else did people protect themselves with dark shards of glass and yellowish liquid in the little bottles with a putrid smell? She had to reach the crystals, the crystals were her friends, and the crystals would help her, protect her from them.
Her eyes began to hurt, but not just from the salt falling out of them. She liked salt but her eyes didn’t. Maybe it was the sun; maybe its tendrils had reached her! She managed to move her head and realized that the shades were still drawn. That was wrong! It was all wrong…so wrong! A bright light winked into existence, getting brighter, blinding her. Where they coming? Were they not satisfied? She let out a scream, but tried to cut it off in the same breath, so she only managed a high-pitched squeak. She felt a fierce wind on her exposed skin, whipping through the air, but it felt nice…calming.
The wind blew over towards her desk, hidden by the darkness, and then blew back towards her. There was the slight, almost inaudible sound of something small smacking the ground near her head. The wind and the light disappeared. Her body had stopped shaking, all accept for one hand, her writing hand. That hand groped along the floorboards, feeling for the thing the wind had dropped. Her fingers touched plastic, and they snatched up the little bag and the straw next to her. The wind had brought her the crystals!
Her hand trembling, she managed to open the bag. She poured the contents into the palm of her stable hand. With her still-shaking hand, she put one end of the straw into her nose and put the other end in the middle of the little mountain of powder now in her other hand. She inhaled deeply, feeling the powder sucked up into her nostrils. When nothing happened for a moment, she inhaled the rest, the entire mini-mountain. Instantly, she felt a calm wash over her; she was safe, they couldn’t get her now. Thanks to those nice little crystals.
Her hand had stopped shaking, she noticed with pleasure. A feeling of euphoria slowly spread over her, blocking out the haunting sounds and the jumbles of thoughts from her brain. She recalled reading about how in Egypt they used to pull your brain out through your nose when you were dead, and for a split second, she wondered if she could do that to herself, pull out her brain so her thoughts would stop bothering her. She giggled, feeling giddy, but that feeling only lasted momentarily and a deep feeling of dread rose from the put of her stomach and she felt bile rise in her throat.
It was all because of that picture! Damn that picture! In front of her eyes she now saw the subject of that picture, only the person was a picture no longer; they were real. The crystals had deceived her! They were supposed to block out that…that face! That face that had now changed in her mind’s eye, so that it was covered with blood. She shook her head, desperately trying to rid herself of that image!
Suddenly, her body gave a quick, unexpected shudder. She gave a scream of pain, unsure of what was happening. Everything went black; she was sucked into the darkness.
Odessa, Russia
Alina Natalia Romanov leaped high into the air, forcing her body to twirl as she did so. When she alit, she landed on one foot and her blade scraped the surface, sending up little ice chunks and water. She spun rapidly on her right foot, threw her hands up, then kicked her left foot forward and let her body flow with the momentum. She flew hand over feet, executing a perfect summersault, and landed solidly on her left foot. She stopped herself and straightened, turning towards her coach and smiling as she did so.
“You want a compliment, is that it, Alina Natalia?” Her coach shouted to her from across the rink, in heavily accented Russian.
“No, no sir.” She responded in the same language, her native language.
“Good. Stop smiling!” Alina obeyed. “This is not a joke nor is it a game, child.”
“I know, sir.”
“Act like it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now get off the ice immediately. You’re ballet class starts in fifteen minutes.”
“But I like skating.” Alina protested.
“Are you arguing, Miss Romanov?”
“No, no of course not, sir.”
“I should hope not. As a child you do as your parents dictate.”
“I know, sir.”
“Your parents want a child gifted with athleticism, one worthy of the gold as well as one worthy of the money and prestige associated with the art of the dance, and they are rightly entitled. You are a Romanov!”
“So are many people.” Alina muttered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Yes, many people have the surname of Romanov, but they are not related to the Romanovs, as you well know. You have the blood and the riches to back up your claim, unlike the commoners. You have a duty to your family, understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Suddenly, her coach’s sever expression softened. “I know you like to skate, but there are other things you must learn and excel at. I promise you, however, that after your class you may skate as long as you wish.”
“Honestly, sir?”
“I do not tell lies, Alina Natalia. Now go, get ready.”
“Yes, sir.” Alina skated to the edge of her private rink and stepped off the ice, regretfully.
Alina Natalia Romanov stepped inside the spacious, sprawling estate belonging to her parents. She immediately ascended the long, sprawling staircase in the foyer, going to her room. Her room was as large as about eight living rooms in a normal house. The only child of Ilia and Ekaterina Romanov, she was the heiress to the family fortune and had an entire floor of the mansion for her own devices.
Alina brushed her short, chin length black hair quickly, and affixed two golden hairpins to keep her bags out of her eyes. She placed her top-of-the-line ice-skates on the stand she’d had built for them. Next, she quickly changed out of her ice-skating clothes into a pair of white tights and a black leotard. She put her black ballet slippers onto her feet, snatched her white toe shoes from the floor by her bed, and ran out of the room, up and up the staircase, to her dance studio, located two floors above the floor her room was situated on.
Her cousins, Svetlana and Mischa, were already there. They were staying at the Romanov house for a week, before their boarding school started up once more. Svetlana and Mischa were both better dancers than she, Alina believed. She paled dreadfully in comparison to them. Not only did they love ballet more than Alina ever could, they were petite and naturally thin, ideal specimens of humankind, according to their parents and hers. They were blond, blue-eyed and beautiful, all fair, flawless skin and rosy cheeks.
Alina, on the other hand, was tall, 5’10”, dark haired and eyed, with tanned skin, coarse in some parts from spending so much time outdoors. She also had pronounced muscle that in accordance with her height, added to her weight, which according to Mrs. Romanov, was much, much too high. Alina used to think that 148.5 pounds for a girl of sixteen of her height and build was a good, average weight, but that belief was long shattered. Mrs. Romanov weighed Alina every Tuesday and Friday of every week, and Alina always got berated, every single weigh-in, like clockwork. That was, she had been berated until about a month ago, when she had solved her weight problem.
She had stopped eating regularly, pushing her plate away at meals, and had received a rare smile from her mother. She had also taken up a habit she despised, smoking, because it suppressed her stomach’s irritating urges for food. She smoked at least ten packs a day, however, because sometimes the hunger pangs were so strong. She chewed gum, however, trying to make a bargain with her overenthusiastic, needy, stomach. Her mother was now pleased with her weight, “a suitable 98” she called it, and many of the Romanov’s staff complemented her on her dramatic weight loss. However, when Alina looked in the mirror, she still saw fat all over, ugly, undignified, body fat. That was another reason she hated ballet class: she had to look at herself in the mirror.
“Alina Natalia Romanov!” Her ballet instructor barked. “Are you paying attention?”
“Y-yes, sir!” Alina responded, jerked out of her thoughts of self-loathing.
“Keep your thoughts on this class! Do you understand me or have you gone deaf?”
“I-I understand.”
“Then show me a tour jeté!”
Alina nodded. She got into proper stance and position and started the move. She had just taken off from the ground, when she felt a strong wave of nausea and a strong aching in her stomach and head at the same time. Distracted, she fell clumsily out of her leap, and tumbled to the ground. She cried out and willed the pain to go away. When it didn’t, she tried to ignore it and get to her feet. She was almost standing up when the second wave of nausea and pain hit her, stronger than before. She collapsed. She could hear her instructor yelling at her as she was pulled into unconsciousness.
Tel Aviv, Israel
“Your boots aren’t regulation!” The girl barked, in English.
The boy she spoke to, a boy of about fifteen, looked up at her challengingly. “I don’t have to take orders from some girl.” The boy responded in Hebrew, and spat on the ground.
“I am of higher rank than you, boy. That means you listen to me, female or not.” The girl responded in the same language.
“What are you going to do?” The boy scoffed. “Cry?”
The girl lashed out with her fist, decking the boy in one swift, hard, blow. The boy landed on his back on the ground and looked up at her, a mixture of anger and fear in his eyes. The girl kicked him once in the ribs, once in the head, and then placed one boot heel on his chest, which rose and fell heavily. She exerted a little pressure with her foot and he cried out. Throughout her quick, sure beating of the boy, the girl remained impassive, her eyes expressionless. She pressed down harder on the boy’s sternum, stopping only when she heard a satisfying crunch.
“You will address me from now on by my proper title, Sergeant Rossenberg. Got that?”
The boy nodded, his face contorted in pain, his eyes filled with tears.
“Good. For another thing, I do not cry. I did not cry when my family was killed before my eyes and I will not cry over some pathetic child such as you.”
The boy’s eyes widened.
“Doctor!” Sergeant Rossenberg shouted in Hebrew. “Man down over here!”
After she had drawn the attention of the on-duty field doctor, she walked away from the boy, back to inspect the rest of her troop, machine gun slung across her back.
Tzeitel Avrel Rossenberg entered the tent set up at the edge of the battlefield for she and two other high-ranking female military members. Tzeitel was only sixteen and it was almost unheard of for a girl that age to be in the Israeli military, let alone for one to have the rank she did. Tzeitel had enlisted at age eleven for military training, after her entire family had been killed in a suicide bombing at her older brother’s Bar Mitzvah. She had been injured; she still had the jagged scars across her back and arms to prove it, and had been the only one out of her family to survive. Her family had been quite rich, leaving her with a small fortune, but she chose to enlist anyway.
After years of training, she was now a dangerous weapon. She also had an uncanny ability to know when they were about to be attacked. Since she was such a diligent worker with such an allegiance to the army, she was soon promoted.
She had quite an aptitude for war; she had a mind for strategy and the ability to learn quickly. Out of the teenage troops, she was easily the one with the best aim and the stealthiest. She had to admit, however, that one of the things she most liked about the army was her power to keep her troops under control at any cost. She loved being able to put a haughty boy in his place with a quick punch or a smack in the head with the butt of a gun. She liked that power, a lot.
Tzeitel was 5’4”, about average female height, but wiry, slightly thin in part from malnutrition, yet with pronounced leg, arm, and back muscles from daily exercise. She had short, raggedly shorn, dark brown hair. It was badly cut because it had once been quite long, until one day, tired with it being so hot and annoying, she had taken a knife to her hair, chopping it off. She was much happier with it being out of her eyes and out of the way.
Tzeitel’s eyes were hazel and widely set in her small, lean face. Her eyes rarely, if ever, revealed what she thought or felt, she kept her emotions in check almost always. Her skin was tanned from always being out in the sun, and was coarse from constant work.
Tzeitel smoothed out a map of Iraq on a folding table. She placed her palms flat on the table and hunched over the map, hoping for some inspiration to come to her, which she could report to her superiors. No idea came to her. She wanted to move her troops forward towards the Iraqi border; she was itching for a good fight. She ran a finger over the map, tracing the outlines of cities and land formations.
Suddenly, her eyes felt like they were burning. She blinked rapidly. A pinprick of light became apparent, growing until it obscured everything around her with a bright, white glow. She couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face. She had a sensation that something was tugging at her stomach and she started to feel nauseous; she squeezed her eyes shut. When the nausea faded, she opened her eyes and gasped.
She was in the middle of the desert. The sun beat down on her, sweat rolled off of her body. All of her senses were more acute; she could hear each crunch of sand under her foot as she moved and the sound was so loud it was like thunder. She smelled something familiar…it was hard to explain but it smelled to her like guns. She thought she could also detect knife steel, sweat, and the overpowering odor of blood. She got that odd yet good feeling in the pit of her stomach that she always got before a fight.
Suddenly, everything sped up, like she was watching the scene around her in fast forward. She saw barren desert, more desert…and then, an encampment, near an oasis. Wandering around the encampment were Iraqi soldiers. Some cleaned machine guns, some set up tents, some consulted maps.
As quickly as it came upon her, the images faded. She found herself gripping the folding table with both hands while sweat ran down her face and into her eyes. She could still feel the intense heat of the desert sun bearing down on her…but that was impossible, wasn’t it? She’d been here, in her tent, the entire time!
One part of her mind told her that all of that had just been an illusion, sent by her stomach to tell her to get her to eat and drink. However, another part of mind told her that it was something else entirely, something that shouldn’t be dismissed entirely. Had she really seen where the Iraqi troops were camped?
All things considered, it really wasn’t that farfetched of an idea. Could she—? No, she shouldn’t think like that. She couldn’t have magic. That would be impossible. She remembered her father had hired Magic-Detectors to come to her house when she was younger, to test all of the Rossenberg children. None of them had been discovered to have even trace amounts of magic. Still, she had seen the encampment, so to be on the safe side, she should tell her superiors.
Tzeitel exited her tent at a run.
Southampton, New York
“I hate you mother, I wish you were dead!” The girl shouted over the roar of the storm outside of the spacious mansion where the girl, her mother and father, and the staff lived.
“Oh shut up, Alixondria! I’m sick of your childish tantrums. You’re going right back to that school this instant and I hope they beat that sass out of you!”
“Great parenting!” Alixondria replied, her voice dripping sarcasm.
“It’s excellent parenting, and you will soon see that, Alixondria Providence Decanter.”
“You’re crazy, y’know that?” Alixondria practically screeched, her voice rising in pitch.
“Enough with the mood swings, Alixondria and act your age and status! No one wants to hear all about your teenage angst. If only I blessed deaf so I would not have to listen to you and your problems! You have far more than most people, which is why you are being sent to Prentice Prep in the first place. Sometimes I think we gave you too much, maybe that’s why you are such a little brat. No matter though, boarding school will get rid of your insolence. I hope they still use corporal punishment there.”
Alixondria felt a sudden wave of nausea come over her. At the same time, her head began to pound; feeling like a hammer was repeatedly being smashed into her skull. She sunk to her knees as her legs gave out under her. The air in the room seemed to change, bringing with it a feeling of oppression and frayed nerves.
“What? Are you playing sick now? You better hope that’s real pain or else I’ll make you feel some long-lasting injuries. I told your father we shouldn’t have hired that healer for you when you were six! I knew then that you would be nothing but trouble!”
Alixondria cried out in pain as the ache spread up and down her body, into her very bones. A feeling of energy gathered inside her, threatening to explode. She felt like she couldn’t breathe, like her throat was constricting, making it unable to take in air. She felt like she was choking to death. Pressure built around her lungs and it hurt more than any injury she had ever had before.
“If you’d been mage-born, that would be a different story. All of your abnormalities and brashness would have been tolerated. You would have actually been productive for you father and I! We had the best Magic-Detectors money could buy in here all the time when you were a child. But no, you had nothing at all; you were worthless! You could have made us limitless wealth, been one of the select few, but no, you are just an insecure little child with an attitude problem!”
Suddenly, Alixondria couldn’t hold in the energy anymore. Her body convulsed, once, and all of the energy exploded out of her skin. Her eyes burned and she screamed. A blinding light flashed, and she thought for a second that she had died.
She felt something cold and wet touch her skin, with such forced that it actually hurt.
The pain jarred her back from what she assumed but have been momentary unconsciousness. When she opened her eyes, she discovered that it was raining…inside the room! Rain came down from nowhere, fast and hard. Lightening flashed inside the room as well. Alixondria’s mouth dropped open.
“What’s going on?” Her mother demanded, her voice wavering as if she was afraid.
Alixondria couldn’t answer; she didn’t know what was happening, herself. The rain drenched her in seconds, smearing her mascara and the thick amounts of kohl she had applied to her eyes. The rain began to feel colder, more solid, and Alixondria realized it had turned to sleet. The hailstones came down furiously, leaving welts on the skin that they touched. Her mother screamed in panic and pain as the hail fell upon her, making her face and arms bruised and bloody. She screeched for Alixondria’s father and was about to run from the room when a bolt of lightning came from out of nowhere and hit her. She fell to the ground.
Alixondria was too stunned to move to check on if her mother was OK. Actually, part of her didn’t care that her mother was unmoving, a part of her was actually happy. So, she lay, sprawled on the floor, watching the hail fall. She reached out a hand, the normally pale skin red and raw, and grabbed a few of the stones, staring at them in amazement.
“I take it you are Alixondria Decanter?” A deep male voice shouted over the sound of the hail striking various objects in the room, shattering lamps and the like.
Alixondria glanced over at the door and saw a man dressed all in black standing in the doorway. “Yeah, but who’re you?”
The man dropped to his knees and felt her mother’s wrist for her pulse. “She’s alive,” The stranger announced. “But barely.”
“Damn.” Alixondria replied, suddenly feeling disappointed.
The man lifted up her mother and started to exit the room. “Come along, child, I need to discuss something with you.”
Alixondria glanced at him, then at the hailstones in her hand. “But I don’t know who you are. Why should I come with you? Maybe you’re a murderer or a robber or something. I'm surprised that the staff didn’t stop you.”
“My name is Verdict. Do you think if I was a criminal that I would be trying to help you and your mother? And as for the staff, they don’t know that I am here. I teleported.”
“You what?”
“Teleported. Now come on.”
Alixondria slowly, shakily got to her feet. “But—the hail?”
“It’ll stop when you calm down. Now come along because I am starting to exhaust my supply of patience.”
“Now you’re staring to sound like a criminal.”
“Now, please!”
Alixondria dropped the hail and reluctantly followed him from the room. Something told her she should trust him. Plus, she didn’t want to make him any angrier because something was…off about him.