1 Prologue

She opened her eyes. Slowly. Her sight clouded, her eyelids heavy, twitching. Out of breath and drenched in sweat. She was lying on the floor, flat on her belly. Her whole body hurt. Her skin prickled as if a thousand ants were marching all over her body. A headache throbbed in her ears. Her temples were pounding, her ears ringing, until they slowly deafened. She tried to move a hand, but her movements were disarticulated, her thoughts uncoordinated. Her mind empty. Foggy. Confused.

A warm string of blood trickled on her face. She painfully craned her neck, scanning her surroundings.

Where…?

She was in a dark room. With broken furniture scattered along the walls, as though something had exploded in the middle and shoved everything to the sides. Shattered pieces of wood pierced her skin. Torn sheets were spilled on the floor. She breathed in dust, wood, the acidic smell of sweat. And blood. Everywhere, blood.

As her chest heaved, hard and heavy, she gritted her teeth and propped herself on her elbows. A sharp pain in her side screamed. She winced. Reached for the burning sensation.

Blood.

She was wounded. Bleeding.

What had happened? Where was she? She knew she was supposed to do something important. Questions popped into her mind, but the answers were so slow to come. Dancing around in her mind, taunting her, but running away when she tried to grasp them.

She clenched her teeth, her hazy head weighing tons. She tried to look around, saw a dark figure lying on the floor, immobile. Distinguished legs and hands.

Who…?

Something moved on the other side of the room, swift and quiet. She froze. Listened. Caught signs of breathing. Clothes ruffling. Pieces of glass clinking as someone pushed them away. She tried to find the source of the noise, a panicked prey searching for a predator in the dim flickering light. Tried to silence her wheezing breath. Until she saw him.

A tall, lean form in a dark coat. Olive skin peeking through his sleeves. A balaclava barely showing his eyes.

And everything rushed back to her.

The mission. They were on a mission. She and her friend. They were chasing a man. They had tried to ambush him. Then, the explosion. The trap. The blackout.

The man had survived.

But what about her friend?

Her heart missed a beat. All the elements linked together. The thick smell of blood. The figure lying on the floor. The man on the other side of the room, still standing while she was crushed to the floor.

They had failed.

She hastily started crawling toward the figure on the floor. Toward her friend. Fueled by fear and despair. Ignoring her lungs that screamed for air, her heartbeats that hammered against her chest, her wounds that begged and screamed and pulsated. A broken thing swimming against the tide. Sliced apart, sobbing, miserable.

Terror increased with every centimeter closer to him. And so did the scent of blood. Coppery and rusty. The more she crawled, the more she realized how hopeless the situation was. She was wounded, unable to defend herself. Didn't know if her friend was safe. Had failed to stop their enemy.

And he was in a better shape than them.

She pushed her body to its limits, dragging her wounded body with her. Suffocating with pain. Gasping for air. Quivering with fear. Clawing at the ground. Each second was stamped on her as a second too late. Each pathetic lurch on the ground, each time her chest hit the floor and her fists trembled and her knees scratched the concrete.

How ironical was it that she, the hunter, had become the prey?

With a last effort, a last painful lurch on the ground, she reached the immobile body on the floor. Her friend.

Her hand landed in a pool of blood. Thick. Gross. Still warm.

She widened her eyes, dizzy. Used all her strengths to kneel. Focused all her balance in her legs. Wobbled. Like a broken toy.

And then, as the light flickered above her, she saw it.

The void in his chest. Hollow where his heart should be.

Shock hit her like a tidal wave. Shaking her, drowning her, flooding her with emotions. Bile rose in her throat. Her stomach churned, twisted and turned. She felt like throwing up. Her head was spinning. She was panting. She was suffocating.

Her frantic eyes coursed all over him. She caught glimpses of his face frozen in death, of the fear forever carved in his features, of the tears and the wrinkles and the tension. She whispered, whimpered, repeatedly, "no, no please," her voice cracking and dying each time.

It couldn't be.

It couldn't be.

The other man started walking. Toward her.

But she didn't hear him. She heard nothing. Nothing but her own cries. Irregular, breathy cries. Rocking back between consciousness and dizziness.

Dead. He was dead.

She was unable to process the information. Unable to accept it. It stuck to her, refused to let go, like flies on a cadaver. She hadn't been trained for that. She hadn't been trained to see her friends cold and dead, bathing in their own blood. She hadn't been trained to learn how to live with that. With the knowledge that her friend had died on her.

And that it was her fault.

The guilt. The ugly, capricious guilt. It already prowled, waited. Patiently. It had all time. It could wait forever. As long as she'd be alive, it would wait. Nudge. Poke. Bite. Snicker and hide and claw at her.

She saw it. Gleaming in his dead eyes with silent reproaches.

She couldn't take it. Couldn't take it anymore.

But the man now towered over her. Still.

She stared at him. Half-conscious.

Tried to process his presence.

Barely seeing him.

He moved.

A hand.

And—