The Target on the Move: Prologue

My hands shook as I struggled to strap my daggers against my back, over the jacket. Even though my clothes were thick and I wore mitts, it was still cold. I half-wished the Dispatchers threw on the heaters tonight.

Outside the small glass and fenced-in window of my cell-like room, snow drifted down from a dark sky. I glanced out to see no moon despite the sky being clear. It was good, though, in this far-off location surrounded by trees and bushland.

That the moon isn't out tonight means the forest would be darker, too. The room I was in was not built in a way to handle winter: large, with black glass floors and walls that reflected me in them, which does not insulate the place from the cold. There was a table on one wall filled with books and papers and a single screen propped up on a stand. One of the walls was lined with target boards. And then the warmest place in the room: a capsule that was also my bed, which I'm locked out of until bedtime.

Tonight was no bedtime. I would be missing sleep, but instead staying up for twenty-four hours. A weekly occurrence.

Get out. I will get out.

I tightened the straps of my daggers, just as I sensed a presence outside my door. Moving fast, I snatched up my screen and stuffed it into a pocket in my jacket.

The door flew open. "Good evening, Dragon! it's time for your session!"

A tall man in a pale brown suit that smelled of smoke and gunpowder entered. He didn't have much of a distinguished face, so no matter how I try to recall what he looked like, I would come up with a blank face. Even if he smiled, even if he glared. Unlike his voice: clear, brisk, and energetic, in the way that anyone would know whose it belonged to. Those who might have died by the Light Master's hand might have whatever he said as the last thing they heard, and they might even remember it as ghosts.

Here, he was smiling - or in my memory, I vaguely remember the smile in his words, on in his face. "You've already prepared! I'm impressed."

I didn't reply.

"Come now, it wouldn't hurt to explain how you kept track of what your weekly timetables are, three weeks after I changed it!" The Light Master said as if he was singing. He sounded cheerful; perhaps today would be a good day? Maybe today's targets will be droids?

"It's cold," I said instead.

"That's something you've got to endure. You couldn't become an Assassin unless you can handle all sorts of weather. You have to be able to survive in whatever weather you are put into by your master. This is a lesson we discussed last week already, didn't we? Now come, let's move on and begin our usual training."

Reluctantly, I dragged myself out after him. Outside my cell would be a white path, contrasting my all-reflective room, so it was a relief to not see myself looking back at me wherever I go. Two broad-shouldered men with identical faces and sharp features for faces moved behind me as I followed behind the Light Master.

Get out! Get out!

I hold an inexplicable hatred towards the Light Master. A searing spike in the chest that I do not understand, which grows every time I hear his voice - hearing it, only, because I really can't take whatever his face looks like to my memory.

The plan has been laid out already! Just follow it!

I looked up to see a window. There was one along this corridor that we passed by, looking out into the snow-covered sky. Two meters in height, too high for me. A cold breeze wafted in through that, too, but it was always open. I don't know why it's like that. A human couldn't fit through it.

But I should say, an adult human.

Emanating electricity from my left foot, I jumped as high as I could and landed the heel into one of the two Dispatchers. From there, I rebounded into the other one, unsheathing a dagger and bringing into one of its eyes. As the first one hit the ground with a thud louder than the average human would have, I sent a second current of electricity into the second Dispatcher. They had to be the first to go down, and it all had to happen in a flash.

According to the plan. The Version 2.0 caretaker types like these two, whose functions are to guard and track Assassins, are easier to take down, and they were the weakest of all the other Versions.

Even though I move fast, the Light Master, no matter how human his body must be, was able to catch up. A backhand sent me crumpling into a wall and I felt the air in my lungs leave me that I choked, and my vision blurred.

Briefly. I pushed myself away as the Light Master's presence came at me, and I felt a second backhand miss me by a few centimeters.

"You little-!" the Light Master's voice shouted, as my vision cleared and I could breathe properly.

The worst enemy of the plan.

I drew on my electricity and let it pulse in my arms that sparks began to flicker around me.

"Don't you dare touch me with that. You are aware that you will die?"

I froze, stopped moving. This voice the Light Master used was not the tone he always had. Not cheerful, not brisk, not musical. It was as cold as the air outside. For a second, I wondered if this person was an obstacle far bigger than I previously imagined as I prepared my plans to escape.

"Stop moving, and retract your ability," said the Light Master in a sharp, steel-toned voice.

I found myself obeying, as my hands began to shake again. Only this time, it wasn't because it was cold, but because it was out of fear.

Footsteps approached, and I sensed the Light Master coming closer.

I calculated him to be a foot in front of me when I moved again; pulling back my electricity into my arms, I lunged at the Light Master and shot enough power into him to hear him cry out in pain. Just as quickly, I jumped back and saw the man in the suit collapse to the ground, twitching.

"Don't stop me," I heard myself say, but it was in a shaky voice, a whisper.

More presences were running towards me, people I could sense within a forty-foot radius, and I could see them now, coming around a bend. Something must have alerted them. Maybe the electrocuted Dispatchers.

The window was still, admittedly, a little too high for me to reach without a ladder. But the walls were concrete and my shoes could grip on them for a split second, enough for me to move.

I ran straight towards the wall underneath the window, jumped up against it, then jumped off to the wall across the corridor. Then back again, at a height where I could grab the will of the window. Relief and exhilaration running through my veins, I swung my legs out first, then slipped through.

Into a heap of snow.

All that was left to do was to run toward the forest. I've been out here a few times, with the Dispatchers, on walks. And alone. I sprinted for the longest time I've ever run in my lifetime up until now, without stopping. I didn't notice either that I had torn shreds into my combat jacket until I reached a tall brick wall embedded with wires that pulsed with the same energy I carried in my body.

Bolts of light flew at me out of the darkness of the cold forest - must be the Dispatchers that guard the barriers. The 3.3 Vers., the type programmed to locate living things by the thermal heat we give out. I ran; thinking sanely, you don't try to battle the bullets of powerful guns unless you wore bulletproof vests. Which are not what my combat suit is made of, nor my head.

Standing behind a tree trunk, I drew out my daggers and stabbed them into the brick wall. The current didn't affect me; I controlled the element of electricity and lightning, after all. The bolts raining on the tree soon had it collapsing from holes drilled my them, and by that time, I was perched on the wall.

I jumped around the wall, the last of the glowing eyes in the frozen forest disappearing from my sight as I went.