The Young Lady is a Reborn Assassin

A dour mood settled upon those who remained in the hall. What had started as an exuberant and exciting party for many of the students was now a nightmare, watched over by gruff men armed with deadly weapons. The only comfort they could take away from the situation was that none of them were harmed just yet, though that could change at any moment. The situation felt unstable, and the increasingly intense gunfire from the other parts of the manor put everyone on edge.

For the various members of Tee’s Gang who signed up to perform the job, the very fact that someone was still causing trouble was also cause for concern. It should have been an easy task. With every level of the manor’s security infiltrated by their members and a monopoly on force, there was meant to be nobody left on the property who could fight back.

“I thought Eidos took care of all the guards!” one of the men decried, “What the hell are they all shooting at? Don’t tell me that the police are here already!”

Samantha was also worried but for an entirely different reason. Maria left with Felipe, who was now the target of whatever scheme brought their captors to the manor. Maria was capable, but Samantha believed she was still just a young girl like she was. The truth of the matter would continue to elude her for the time being. In her eyes, Maria was in a huge amount of danger. Every second that passed without her returning piled on more and more pressure.

“What’s wrong?” Maxwell asked, “Aside from the obvious, anyway.” He cast a wary glance to the nearest gunman, who returned his glare and motioned to turn his gun in their direction. Max shied away before he found himself in a confrontation.

“I’m worried about Maria, Claude and Felipe – they’re the only people who weren’t brought back to the hall when they took over.”

All of the other guests and employees were corralled into the hall until there was barely enough space to move. They had complete control of the house and showed no signs of letting up until they got their way. It was a terrible commotion with people screaming and shouting out of fear. None of them were used to this kind of thing, they lived lives of comfort and security.

“Claude will be fine. The guy’s a fool – but he has a way of getting out of things unscathed,” Max assured her, “Maria went with Felipe, so I’m sure that she’ll scare them away before they can do anything bad to him.”

“I’m not certain that harsh words will be enough to discourage them...”

“Then she can blow them away using her magic. I saw her reading material that was months ahead of where we are in the lessons.”

Sam smiled at the image of Maria easily dispatching several of the criminals using her magical abilities, looking elegant and composed while doing so. That sounded exactly like something that Maria would do if confronted. Samantha felt her heart slow slightly as she concluded that Maria was the last person she needed to worry about. If they fired a bullet at her, it’d get scared and stop in mid-air.

“Still, I hope that the police get here soon. At least one of the Booker’s people must have gotten out of here before they took control,” Max sighed.

Aside from hushed whispers, nobody dared stand and make themselves known. The armed guards wandered back and forth to ensure that nobody did anything funny. They also pilfered the buffet and downed every drink they could get their hands on. One was placed on medical duty, keeping a close eye on the man who stumbled through the access doorway covered in blood. It was almost like he’d been mauled by some kind of wild animal, but as far as Samantha knew, Beatrice only owned a single housecat.

Samantha was no stranger to seeing blood. Her rural community would frequently suffer from injuries that left people drenched in it – and some even lost limbs, fingers or worse. Accidentally cutting oneself on a new machine was one thing, but to intentionally do it to someone else gave it more weight. It was an intimidation tactic designed to rile up their captors and put them on unsteady footing. All of this knowledge was tempered with a sense of frustration. Samantha felt completely helpless in the face of a dangerous situation. All of her personal ideals about being a grown-up now that she was living at the school were thrown into a fresh context. What was the right thing to do? What could she do if she even wanted to?

Tales of heroism were all written with the tacit acceptance that no such thing could ever happen in reality. The bold protagonist performed impossible feats that relied heavily on the incompetence of their foes. The facts were not so kind to the brave. A bullet was a bullet, and it would put down almost anyone who came into contact with it. Those hopeful speeches and instances of defiance were foolish.

She heard a scream from one of the girls.

She’d been taken by the arm and dragged to her feet by one of the uncouth hostage-takers, “You wanna’ repeat that to my face, love? I don’t think you quite realise what situation you’re in!” She must have said something that he picked up on, and now he was threatening to do something terrible. Her attempts to pull away were for nought – he was too strong for her.

“I didn’t say anything, let me go!”

“Yeah – I’m sure you didn’t. That’s how all you people operate, looking down your noses at us, making sly comments, but the moment you get confronted over it you pretend to be a little angel.”

The situation was quickly getting out of hand. The man who instigated the incident didn’t care if he heard what he did or not, he was just using it as an excuse to lash out at the first person he could get his hands on. Now that he held all the cards his worst excesses were on display. It was getting to his head. None of the other men saw fit to step in and calm him down, they didn’t care what he did.

Samantha felt her legs moving before her mind. She stood up and marched towards the struggle with a look of determination on her face, but when the snarling façade of her opponent whipped around to face her, all of that bravery was flushed away in an instant. She froze up and stared at the man as he released the girl, who hurried away to the waiting arms of her friends and family.

“You got a problem, lass?”

Samantha did have a problem, a big one in fact, but she couldn’t get the words to come from between her lips. She had so many ideas about what to say, instinctual outrage that demanded to be let out, but in the face of an armed criminal, they all fell away into nothing. It was at this moment that Samantha discovered bravery was in the doing. It was easy to believe yourself until reality came knocking. She put herself in harm’s way with no expectation of a thank you, but the fear was now hers to own.

“I asked you a question. Do you have something to say?”

He was getting closer. Samantha could almost smell his breath as he pushed himself into her personal space and stared into her eyes. She remained totally silent and stood her ground unintentionally. Even if she wanted to run, her legs wouldn’t respond to her commands.

Her rescue came from an unlikely source as another of the gang shouted at him.

“Stop picking fights with the bloody hostages, Ben.”

‘Ben’ scoffed and left Samantha standing in place. Her control resumed and she hurried back to Max’s side, who was in a panic about her standing up to one of them. “Goddess above Samantha, he could have killed you!”

“But I couldn’t just leave her to get abused by him,” she hissed back.

“You don’t know if he was going to do anything to her.”

“It’s fine, everything worked out – somehow.” Samantha didn’t believe it herself, but there was no need to relitigate the problem now that things had cooled off again. She was left thinking that there was something more that she could have done.

---

Peering through the door to the hall, there was no sign of Eidos having returned after our fight. The situation remained the same, with hundreds of people crouching down and covering themselves from potential attack. Despite the horrendous racket we made in the lobby, none of the gang members deemed it necessary to find out what was going on. I could only risk so much, so I backed away and headed towards the lobby once more.

If they dragged Felipe into the hall, I’d hear about it.

I was getting frustrated. I was missing the answers I wanted, all because someone thought they were clever and took Felipe from the hiding spot I chose. There were a lot of meddlesome kids in the manor – people like Claudius who would lose their cool in a stressful situation and go running instead of thinking things through. The bodies in the lobby remained undisturbed. My only option was to check upstairs and hope for good fortune.

Someone pounded on the door, “Sean, Bradley, what the hell is going on in there? I heard gunshots, did you get the kid?”

I pulled up my rifle and fired through the door where the sound came from, which was followed up by a hoarse scream of pain as the bullet travelled through the thick wood and struck the man on the other side. An impressive shot even by my standards. He came alone, but if he didn’t get back to his post soon others would come to check on him. I was running out of time to find Felipe and my mystery interloper.

I hiked my knees and jogged up the stairs, stepping over the two men I shot earlier. I made extra sure to check the corners and angles wherein an attacker might be lying in wait for an ambush. Their progress on the first-floor sweep was poor – they didn’t expect Felipe to make it up here, which was why the only two gang members were dead at the top. Their job was to keep people away.

A sound strategy until I gave them some new holes to breathe with.

Even without people shooting at me there was no guarantee that I could find Felipe. The house was huge enough with one floor, but there was another of equal size to worry about and dozens upon dozens of small rooms. I started the unenviable task of knocking on every door I could find and declaring my presence. Door after door after door after door. I was going for fifteen minutes before I finally received a response from one of them.

“Maria?” Felipe said, “Is that you?”

“I just said it was me. Why did you run up here?”

“I didn’t want to, it was Claudius. He came into the study and started making so much noise that I was afraid they were going to find us, so I had to come with him.”

“H-Hey, don’t pin all of this on me!” Claudius replied.

“I should have known that you had something to do with this,” I complained, “The door’s not opening, did you barricade it with something?”

“Yes. We pushed the desk and blocked it so that they can’t come inside. There are no windows either. I think we should be just fine,” Felipe explained. “Would you like to join us, we can move it out of the way and let you inside?”

I cut him off, “No. I’m fine. You two just stay here until the police arrive. They won’t be able to ignore this commotion for much longer. I’ll find somewhere else to take cover. Make sure that you stay away from the door! Put even more things in front of it if you can.”

“Okay, stay safe!”

Claudius laughed, “I think they need to hide from her.”

Happy that Felipe wasn’t in imminent danger of being murdered, I could refocus on finding Eidos and putting him down. Claudius was going to get an earful from me once this was over. Why did he have to interfere like this? The last spot they were in was perfectly fine. I moved away from their safe room before someone saw me standing beside it, but before I could get down from the upper floor I was met in the main corridor by the snarling mask of Eidos himself, now reinforced with an additional three men.

“Kill her, quick!”

Thinking fast I dived for the nearest open door and flung it open as several bullets were fired in my direction. They wasted a lot of shots hitting nothing but the walls, only stopping when the smoke cleared and they discovered that I was long gone from their line of sight.

“She’s a slippery one, I’ll give her that.”

I taunted him, “How many more of your friends must I kill before you give up?”

“Shut it! I’m going to make you pay for every drop of blood you’ve spilt.”

“I don’t see why you’re pretending to care after treating them like human shields.”

Eidos figured out what I was up to, “Don’t listen to her. It’s four on one – there’s no way she’s getting out of there without us turning her into a colander.”

“I enjoyed your little light show earlier. Perhaps you should do it again, tire yourself out, and make this easy for me.”

“Keep running your mouth, little lady, and I’ll make sure that’s slow and painful for you!”

All of this trash talk gave me time to scope out my situation. The room I stepped into was a tiny broom closet. They’d ripped a hole through the door, which opened outwards to give the janitors more space to store their equipment and tools. There was nothing inside that was deadlier than the guns I already carried. But there were a few objects that I could use to create an opportunity.

I grabbed a hefty jug of bleach from one of the shelves and gave it an underarm throw into the corridor. At the same time, I used the newly made peephole to line up my shot and fire back at the group. Their aim was trained on the bottle instead of me, and in that tiny period of distraction, I could take control of the initiative and send them running for cover. I pulled the trigger and fired, but the shot went astray and struck the wall next to Eidos.

It still gave the intended effect. He and his men scrambled to hide around the corners and protect themselves from my counter-attack. I pulled the lever and chambered the next round, firing again through the plaster and hitting one of them in the back. The velocity was blunted by the wall between him and the bullet, but he tumbled down and was forced to back away to clutch his now bleeding side.

“Crap! She got me!”

“Just stay down, we’ve got this,” Eidos barked. The entire corridor was obscured by a thick cloud of smoke. I maintained my position and carefully aimed my next attack. I couldn’t cede control back to them now that I’d played my hand. That trick only worked once. I watched closely as the group started to motion to each other, some kind of plan being hatched to try and take me out.

“Now!”

Eidos and his friend stepped out simultaneously. I fired at the goon on the left and faded away before their return shots could hit me. I chambered another round and used the hole again, firing back. The fight descended into a clownish exchange of gunfire through a narrow corridor that neither could see into. The door was getting increasingly ruined by bullets taking away the wooden panelling, one of these stray bullets would hit me eventually if they had enough of them.

I was out of rifle ammunition anyway.

I threw it away and drew the revolver. At times like these, a ballsy play was the only thing I could rely on. Their positioning was better than mine. They could peel away and command my movement without exposing themselves in the process. This broom cupboard may be the site of my last stand.

I moved away from the door and clung to the wall on the other side, firing blind shots through the smoke and keeping them pinned into place. Step back, shoot, step back, shoot. My ears were left ringing. I reached one of the junctions and slipped behind the corner to reload what I’d spent getting out of the jam. This was the worst time to have unsteady hands.

The guns fell silent.

I could hear their boots pressing against the floorboards. One of them checked the closet and found it empty, “She moved back. We’ve got her cornered.”

“Hold on, let’s try something else first,” Eidos said. A second later a smooth metal knife embedded itself into the floor by my feet. That smell was in the air again. I barely managed to get away before another thunderbolt struck the conductive object and sent sparks flying into the air. So that was Eidos’ game...

“Let me tell you girl, taking a bullet is a lot less painful than getting hit by my bolt. It makes the skin and flesh peel from your bones! I get a kick out of seeing people cling to my trousers and beg for mercy!” I snapped the chamber shut and shook my head. He was one of those people, the kind of person who accepted shady crypto donations from an obvious police plant in a supermarket parking lot.

The kind of man who took more pleasure in the act of killing than getting paid.

“Stop talking and start shooting. I don’t like it when people see my face.”