Hidden Identity

Chapter 2: The Crimson Shadow

Maya's​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ apartment was like a shrine of frosty glass and buzzing machines. It was mall of cold places, located in a part of town where people hardly ever talked to each other and the only light that could be seen was the one coming from the glow of her top-notch decrypted servers. She took off her wet coat and made her way to the workstation, her monitors' red light shimmering in her dark, exhausted eyes.

This was the way she lived: decrypt, scrub, bury, and then collect the money via wire transfer. But Julian Vane was not just any other routine client. Simply put, he was the center of the solar system, the sun that the rest of the New York elite revolved around and yet Maya had spent years in making sure that he won't get burned.

When the decryption bar was about to reach 90%, Maya was feeling a little bit of pressure in her chest and it was very strange. Her intuition, the "Genius" trait which made her the best of the trade, was yelling at her. There was something off. There was too much data on the drive for a mere security-cam scrub. When the bar eventually reached 100%, the screen was not showing a hotel room or a girl in distress.

It was showing a police report from fifteen years ago.

Maya's breath got stuck in her throat. The hands that are usually so stable that they can be used for surgery suddenly became shaky. The paper in question, a scanned version of the file, was the night when her family's home had been set on fire and which according to the report was the tragedy that had left her an orphan and made her a ghost.

She went further down the file with her heart racing. There was a digital folder labeled 'Collateral' at the bottom of the report. There was only one, grainy photograph inside. It was a photo of her bedroom when she was a kid, the fire didn't seem to have harmed it, but a shadow was cast out over the floor. A tall, big-shouldered outline with a very distinctive, jagged profile.

The same shadow that had been thrown across the penthouse window by Julian Vane just an hour ago.

It came to her like a physical punch. Julian was not the one that merely hired her because she was the best; he kept her close on purpose so that she would never see what was behind her. The man she was protecting is the one who has destroyed her. The "Silent Guardian" is no longer just a fixer. She has become a weapon and indeed, she at last had a ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌target.