Carnage by Sarah Bailey

Prologue

SCARLETT

The last memory I had of the life I lived before was of four boys. The way the sunlight glinted off their hair as our laughter rang through the trees. Of the heat of summer in Richmond Park. The smell of dry grass. And the haze of the London skyline in the distance. The world seemed so vast back when I was innocent and free.

A freedom cruelly ripped away from me by those who say they seek to keep me safe. Chains tether me to my new reality. One of loneliness and seclusion. It left me clinging to memories from so long ago; I forget they’re only in my imagination. I forget I can’t remember who I was before all of this happened to me.

Hours melded into days. Days into weeks. And weeks soon became years. Years since I’d laid eyes on anything outside of the four walls of the place I call my prison.

The life I’d been sentenced to weighed heavily on my heart. It kept me from experiencing everything the world had to offer. It kept me ‘safe’.

But what is safety when you cannot see anything beyond your cage?

What is life when you cannot live it?

I thought I was destined to live in solitude forever. Then one day I was released from the castle I’d grown up in and given one simple task.

To seek, infiltrate and destroy by whatever means necessary.

I returned to the city I could barely remember.

I returned to find them.

To seek.

To infiltrate.

To destroy.

I will stop at nothing to fulfil my goal. To give them their heart’s desire. Then I can finally experience the freedom I so desperately crave.

I will bring them the heads of the men known as the Four Horsemen.

Or die trying.