Five more days of the same old same old and I reached one month of being lost to the world. It was May. My classmates had graduated, without me. Gone to prom, without me. Yet, of course that was the least of my concerns. I was hanging upside down from a ceiling trying not to breathe as Ade distracted guards at yet another warehouse. Through the smallest earphone in existence attached to the bottom of my eardrum, I listened for my cue from the smallest microphone in existence attached to Ade's collar. Once I heard it, I jumped down swinging my leg around the last guard's neck. Any other day I would land with precision, forcing his head down and making him topple to the ground. Unfortunately, X's beating was still taking a toll on me, and that's not what happened. Instead he threw me from his shoulders and I landed in a corner somewhere struggling to breathe. Would this have hurt a bunch even without the ass beating I just got? Yes. But the ass beating sure didn't help. Ade told me this would happen, as he always does. Did I listen? No. I ignored him as I always do. Despite my injuries, we had continued monitoring finances, collecting evidence, helping the trafficking victims situate their lives, and helped add to the drug charges facing X's subordinates. I still insisted that we started field tasks again as soon as possible. This was as soon as possible. He insisted that I wasn't ready, and I told him he was wrong, but of course, he was right. Things that I could do with ease before put me in excruciating pain now. The swelling on my face had for the most part gone down and there was no more noticeable limping, but walking is one thing, flipping from the metal bars of an old warehouse onto the shoulders of a man who weighs about a hundred pounds more than you and trying to choke him out silently is another. Would it have even been a challenge a week before? No. But now it seemed impossible. I'd fucked up half the mission considering I was supposed to take him out, retrieve what we needed, and leave silently. This was going to be very far from silent now. I pulled myself up from the ground, ignoring the pain, and jump kicked him in the stomach as he rushed towards me. He finally toppled and I pressed his cheek to the floor with my knee as I held his arm in such a way that I could dislocate his shoulder with little effort.
"Whew. That was unnecessarily annoying." I gasped
"Bitch what do you want."
"I want the location records. And I suggest you give them to me. Disrespecting the person in control of whether your arm remains in its socket is not a good move."
"Fucking with things you know nothing about is a bad move, little girl."
"If you got jumped by a little girl, at a certain point you have to just acknowledge your own uselessness. Y'all make everything so difficult." I pulled my gun from my waist band and pressed it to his temple. "I'm not in a good mood today, don't test me."
"This is not Lara Croft. Leave before you get hurt."
I took off the safety. "Either you know where it is or you don't. If you don't, your life is of no use to me. Say your prayers in hopes you might get promoted to a level of hell with slightly less hellfire. "
"I tell you, I die. I don't, and supposedly, I die. I'd much rather take my chances with you than with them."
"Really?" With a roll of my eyes and slight pull, I dislocated his shoulder and rammed my knee into his balls. "I told you I'm in a bad fucking mood. To be frank, if you tell me, I don't give a fuck what happens to you. But don't tell me, and I promise your worst nightmares wont hold a candle to me. Don't you have kids George?" His eyes widened. "Oh yes, I know. But they don't. A way I can hurt you that they can't touch. Would your kids be proud? To know you assist in the kidnapping, exploitation, trafficking, rape, and abuse of kids their age? It could be them. I mean, I think that's a fair punishment. You don't help me end the bullshit you allow, I kill you and allow your kids to experience the shit you put other people's kids through. What price do you think your youngest would go for?" I never could've done it, but he didn't know that.
"Fine! The map isn't something I can just give you access to! It's not a physical map you dumb bitch. Trafficking locations must move constantly. Do you really think information so sensitive would be left here? On a piece of fucking paper? This isn't high school."
I put down my gun and he sighed, relieved for a split second before punched him in the gut and knocked him unconscious with the butt of the gun. Just for calling me a bitch. I must've looked like the craziest hoe in the world because I laughed as I stood over him. Little did he know that a physical map was not what I was here for, all I needed was the confirmation that it was digital. I stepped over him and padded across the warehouse until I found what I was looking for. It was in the same place it was in every warehouse before it. The bottom corner of a wall behind a box or desk. It reminded me of those notifier things you get from the cheesecake factory to tell you when your table's ready, except sleeker. It was a sleek, matte, black, and thin rectangle that could also be mistaken for a power bank from far away except it was much thinner and smaller, like a piece of black glass. On the shorter side facing the ceiling, there was a tiny red dot flashing but not bright enough to see it from afar. I clipped on a button Ade told me would disable any possible location tracker and slid it into my back pocket. I almost walked past George before backtracking. He knew too much, and he abused his kids anyways. I considered leaving him to burn alive. He deserved to burn, but what if he crawled away last minute? I didn't do loose ends. Everything I had seen made me ruthless. I put a bullet through his skull before climbing up a bar and sliding in and out of the vent I used to get in. There was a rope waiting for me on the other side and I climbed down right onto a motorcycle. Ade told me to leave as soon as I got what we needed and meet him at the house but of course I wasn't going to do that. I went to check for him and almost had a heart attack as I bumped into him. We pulled off our masks and I put down the knife I was holding to his throat as he put away the gun he held to my temple.
"I swear I must have intense fever dreams or something because I always remember telling you explicitly not to do something and each and every time you do it." He spoke as he wiped blood off of his hands with a cloth. I took his hand to check if he was injured before he snatched his hand away.
" Is this your blood?" I asked
"Barely. A few split knuckles, bruises, stab wounds, etcetera. " he muttered wincing as he saw my face.
" Did you just say stab wounds?"
"Damn its getting late...we should go now."
"This conversation isn't over. Anyways I came to find you because I'm burning it down first."
"We love burning shit too much."
"And what about it?" I pulled a lighter out of the deep pocket of my black cargo pants and held it to the wooden part of the building till i saw it really catching. To add literal fuel to the fire I threw on some travel size flammable hairspray. I climbed onto the motorcycle behind Ade and we sped off as I heard the building go up in flames behind us.