Misted (Team Zero #5) by Rina Kent

“Want help?” Flame’s detached voice drifts from behind the sofa. I stare at his dispassionate expression with my own.

Flame’s favours usually have a high price, but I won’t exclude him yet.

I lift a shoulder and stand up. He shrugs back and returns to sleep.

Scar stares at me. “Where are you going?”

“A stroll.”

“You better return,” she says in a fake stern tone.

I step out of the office and Le Salon. When the fresh night air hits my face, I breathe in freedom. Confined spaces were never my thing, but after being locked up, they became a fucking nightmare.

My place isn’t on the ground anyway.

I cross the street to a building that’s under construction. In fact, all constructions are paused since I made sure they found fault in its architectural planning. This is the perfect place and height to keep an eye on Le Salon from afar.

I hop the asphalt stairs and head to the roof then I pull out a stone behind which I hid my case. I retrieve my sniper gear and position my silver AWM rifle between the half-built railings so nothing is visible.

The whispers and the ache in my left hand return with a vengeance whenever I hold my sniper rifle. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and forge through.

On Le Salon’s roof, she stands like a proud hyena. She’s always on the roof, probably because it’s prohibited access to everyone else.

Mist’s shorts and tank top stick to her body like a second skin. Her hair is still in that damn knot while she hits a boxing bag dangling from a metal pole.

Kick. Punch. Kick. Kick. Punch.

Her love for Muay Thai kickboxing didn’t change.

Why have one when it can be both? She used to say when she was hellion. My hellion.

But Hellion is gone and so is the fool who held her where he shouldn’t.

All this fucking time, I’ve been watching from afar, waiting for the moment to sneak back into her life.

She wants to save Ink? Well, guess fucking what, Mist? Ink will never come out. I’ll make it my mission that Poison leaves that hell. I owe him one for saving my life a decade ago in a tag sniper operation in the Middle East. I was never distracted enough to miss a shot, but because of her, I almost died a million fucking times.

I stare at her through the lens.

I’m done watching.

Done fucking waiting.

It’s time she pays the price.





4





Hawk





I was ready for it all to end until you came along like warmth in a long freezing winter.



Past,

I’m done.

It’s over.

I can’t take this anymore. Tonight I’ll put an end to all this.

My breathing is shallow and strangled. I try to keep my eyes open, but the brightness surrounding me causes my vision to double, triple, and blur into nothingness.

I shake my head. Once. Twice. The bright white walls surrounding me come into focus. Ten other kids huddle on the freezing tiles in the room. Some weep. Others whimper. One of them throws blows at the wall, over and over, until his knuckles burst open and the white tiles are painted in smudges of red. The look on his face is haunted like he isn’t feeling what he’s doing.

He probably doesn’t. I sure don’t when I’m at that phase. I’ve been here for… months? I don’t know how long exactly. I barely remember I’m thirteen or… is it fourteen?

I run a hand on my face. The skin burns. Right. I busted my lip in a sparring match earlier. I don’t even remember it. My opponent’s face and the man who injected me with the drug are like an unreachable fog.

It’s… nothingness.

Some of the kids here are barely ten, and yet all of us were forced to take at least one life already. I took three — or four. I don’t remember them or their faces or what the fuck they are. I just recall the need to kill and that’s it.

The other kids around me whisper to each other or to themselves.

Their names.

They keep carving and repeating their names, hoping they’ll remember it. I already forgot mine. They call me Hawk here and that’s all.

I forgot Mum and Dad’s faces, too. Their names. Everything. I recall an accident then I was here and that’s… it.

Now I’m done.

I feel nothing anymore. One of the boys cries, the other howls, another vomits all over the room. But all I feel is frost. Icy, solid frost.

The moment I killed that third – or fourth man, I decided I’m done. I managed to steal a blade from training today. I need to do this before the guards take us to our separate cells and do the obligatory body check.

My gaze slowly trails to the corners. There are cameras, though. The other day, one of the girls tried to kill herself with a fork she stole from the canteen, the guards came in no time and took her. We never saw her again. We don’t see many again.

Last week we woke up to find a boy drowning in his own vomit mixed with blood and mucus. Omega drug’s side effects. I hoped those would hit me and finish me, too, but they never did.

I finger my knife hidden at the waistband of my trousers. Killing myself with a knife is harder than with a gun. If I stab myself, I’ll bleed out, but won’t be able to die immediately. If I attempt to slice my own throat, I can miss the artery. I’ll torture myself and not die. The guards will find me and take me to a worse place where that girl went.