Tainted Rose

Traitor

4 years later

I walked calmly through the darkened halls of this run-down remote apartment building, the agency had sent me information earlier saying that one of our ex-technicians was about to sell information about the agency with an enemy, and he was hiding here. Before he could successfully sell the information, they sent me to annihilate him.

As I walked the halls, a bit of cold air from a broken window pierced through my thick long black high waisted leggings, making me almost shiver. Luckily, I had on a long sleeve black bodysuit to keep my upper body warm enough. I didn't have time to exactly dress up when the agency notified me, I was almost ready to go to bed when they sent me the notification around I believe to be 3:00am. That would explain the messy low bun my curly hair was in, it looked absolutely terrible, although the only person who was going to see it was the ex-technician, and he was going to be a dead man soon. I had a normal pistol in my ankle holster on my right leg and a horizontal knife sheath that held two knives on my lower back. I wanted to do this as swiftly and neatly as possible, I wanted to return to my bed early. 

Crash

I narrowed my eyes to a nearby room in the right where the sound came from, I walked over there slowly trying not to make a single sound. I gently pushed the door of the room, making sure no sound came out. A middle-aged man was on his knees shivering in what I assumed to be fear, the room was occupied by a pair of windows in a wall. The moonlight brightened up the dirty and raggedy place, showing how completely run down the room actually was. There was a broken television in the upper corner right, a broken and dusty old table on the floor with a broken flower vase, and a dusty chair; this room clearly being a living room once before. I walked calmly towards the old man, as I did, I felt danger in my lower gut. As I walked closer, something screamed in my head saying  'get away!' I stepped back quickly, away from the traitor and found a male figure covered in black running towards me with a knife from the right side of the room. Unfortunately, I moved a bit late because the man managed to cut me slightly in my right arm. The wound wasn't too deep for it to be pouring blood, but deep enough for a bit of blood to leave my body. I rapidly squeezed the cut from my right arm with my left hand and hiss in a bit of pain. I glared at the unknown man that was a few feet in front of me, the knife in his hand having a small stream of my blood, the guy displayed a pleasing and sadistic smile on his face.

"I don't know why the agency wanted to send another guy here to help me defeat you, when I clearly don't need any help in killing you," he said with a smile. "You're obviously weaker than me, so why would the agency waste a top-class S assassin like me to kill you, the agency clearly overestimated you. Tell you what, I won't use any weapons against you and just fight with my bare hands, you can use anything you want." He said as he dropped his knife on the floor, he also took a gun out of his back and slid it across the floor to the other side of the room. "Please, at least entertain me for a bit", he said before lunging at me.

He quickly tried to punch me in the face, but I slapped it with my wounded arm. Then he tried to roundhouse kick me, but I blocked it with my other arm. The smirk he had on his face quickly faded away once he noticed I had experience in hand to hand combat, I took this as an opportunity to punch him in his upper gut making him hold his stomach in pain quickly. When he raised his head to look at me, I then gave him a roundhouse kick, my black sneakers making contact with his left cheek gave me a surge of satisfaction. He tumbled to the floor and groaned loudly, I then looked at the traitor and he fell off his feet in fear, he then ran out of the room. I was about to chase after him, but then I was pulled by my shoulder to the ground. I quickly got to my feet and saw that the guy started to take this fight seriously; however, as much as I wanted to rough him up for a good while, I didn't have time to play around with him. I needed to end this quickly before the traitor escaped.

I ran up to him and swiftly punched him in the nose, blood quickly pouring out of his nose. He let out a low groan but quickly regained himself. When I was about to hit him in the jaw, he managed to block my punch and punched me in the waist. I grabbed his head with both my hands and head-butted him, he took a few steps back trying to regain his composure, before he did, I kicked him in his chest making him tumble back to the floor. He grabbed another pistol from his back and started shooting at me, I swiftly began to dodge them, only gaining a few grazes from the bullets. I took out my knife from my back sheath and ran behind him, before he was able to react, I quickly slit his throat. He began to gag and hold his neck as if that will stop the gush of blood that was leaving his body, after a few seconds his breathing began to become slower and heavier until his chest stopped rising. I cleaned the knife that was stained with his blood with a handkerchief I always carried and placed the knife in his sheath. Before I left the room to look for the traitor, I crouched towards the man's corpse and closed his eyes and did a short prayer for his soul.

"May you find peace wherever you may be", I said softly. I then left the room running everywhere to see where the traitor had run too, I knew that he hasn't left the building because if he did, I would have seen him run to the left, but he ran to the right which meant he was going up. When I was about to walk up the stairs, I heard a helicopter approaching, my eyes widen and  I ran up the stairs as fast as I could, I couldn't let him escape. 

Once I arrived at the rooftop, I saw the helicopter lowering itself for the guy to climb up, I took my pistol from my ankle holster and began shooting at the pilot. One of the men helping the traitor up the helicopter took out a gun and began shooting at me. The helicopter began to take flight once the traitor was in, and I decided to begin shooting the tail of the helicopter, a few bullets hit the tail successfully making it break and the helicopter lose control. The helicopter landed a bit farther away from the building into the small forest of trees that surrounded the building. I left the apartment and went running towards the crashed helicopter, it wasn't too high when the helicopter fell so there should be a few survivers. When I arrived where the helicopter was, there was metal scattered around, I walked up close to see if there was anyone alive. The pilot had died by a tree bark impaling his throat, and the body of the guy who shot towards me went through the glass of the helicopter, now all that was missing was the traitor. I looked at the grass of the other side of the helicopter and saw a small body trail of blood, I looked further down to see the guy dragging himself away from the helicopter. I walked towards him and looked at how he tried to drag himself away from death, it was quite a pitiful view. 

"Are you done running away", I asked him, more of a statement than a question. He flinched upon hearing my voice and tried to drag himself faster. "You know how pitiful you look right now? You knew what was going to happen to you when you decided to sell information about the agency to the enemy, did you really think you were going to escape unscathed?" I asked him sincerely, he looked at me with fear in his eyes, the number of times I've seen that emotion in people's eyes are more than I could count, you stop feeling sympathy for them after awhile.

"I had so much to live for, but I became too greedy once I was given the proposal", the traitor said in a raspy voice. He sat himself up onto a tree to make himself comfortable.

"Yeah", I said as I screwed a silencer into my pistol.

"I guess this is what I deserve for being too greedy", he said and I nodded.

"I promise this will be quick and painless", I said as I aimed the gun at his head. He gave me a small smile before I was going to pull the trigger.

"It was indeed an honor being killed by your hands Tainted Rose", he said mentioning my killer name.

"The honor is all mine", I said with a small smile before pulling the trigger. I then unscrewed the silencer from my gun and placed both of them where they belonged, I took out my phone and texted the agency reassuring them the job has been done and for them to come and clean up. Before leaving, I did a small prayer for his soul as I did to all the victims I killed and then was about to head home before I received a text.

James: Come to headquarters, boss has something very important to tell you.

"f**k me", I groaned to myself as I made my way to my car. "A girl can't get any sleep around here", I muttered lowly as I walked into my car and drove to the agency.

1 hour later

I walked into headquarters and went straight to the boss's office. The boss was in his seat as usual and James was talking to him, then I glanced to the other side of the room and saw a man I have never seen before. I mentally groaned, already knowing that I might have another task to do.

"Tainted Rose", the boss said as he saw me come in.

"Boss", I simply said with a nod. "Dark Serpent", I said referring to James; assassins aren't able to know each other's names unless you're very close and you tell them. James knows my name because he is technically my adoptive father, besides him, no one knows my name; not even the boss. 

"Are you alright?" James asked me a bit worried, I looked at the wound of my arm that had some dry blood around it.

"I'm fine, just finished a mission", I reassured him. 

"You should still get that checked out at the medical center once you're done with the meeting", the boss said.

"Will do, so why did you call me in today?" I asked him, he looked at the man beside him and so did I. "Does he have someone he wants to be eliminated?" 

"Something like that, he wants someone to protect his son when he's at school. He wants the best assassin here, which is why we contacted you", he said to me. 

'What does he mean by protecting?'