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Behind a dying, wiry shrub, I stared up at an abandoned warehouse that looked straight out of a scary movie. I moved quickly towards the warehouse, eating up the distance with my legs and moving silently through the night. Once I reached one of the side windows of the building, I used my upper body strength to hoist myself up onto the ledge of a window, beginning my free climb up onto the roof. Once I made it to the roof, I perched myself on the ledge of the building, moved my night vision "sunglasses" up onto my head, held my watch out, pressed a button, and watched the display as I moved my wrist horizontally in front of me, searching the roof for any security cameras with a highly advanced technological detecting device built inside of it.

                  There weren't any cameras on the roof. Strange. The other "hideouts" had at least had abandoned security cameras.

                  I heard the low growl of a dog.

                  Lowering my night vision glasses, my breaths tightened in my chest and my thighs started trembling on the ledge as a dark shadow of an animal started viciously towards me. Subconsciously, I adjusted my dark hood further over my face and then reached my hands over my shoulder, touching the crossed katana blades strapped firmly to my back.

                  Once I knew all of my weapons were in place, I slowly unwrapped a single yellow Twinkie and threw it towards the K9. The dog caught it in its mouth, whining happily, and scurried off to the opposite side of the building.

                  Maybe it wasn't so abandoned after all.

                  "This should prove to be interesting," I said.

                  "I CAME IN LIKE A WREEEEEEEEECKING BAAAAAALL!!!!"

                  Suppressing a scream of agony, I ripped the ear piece out of my ear and almost lost my balance on the ledge of the roof. Peggo, one of Vlad's bulky bodyguards, had left his mic in front of the radio and it was loud. My ears were painfully ringing. Once I had regained my full hearing, I angrily put the spy equipment back into my ear and whipped my head over my shoulder. Down below, right in front of the warehouse in plain sght, there was a single, old white van that sat a few paces in front of me that had the spray painted words "Pervert", "Sex", and "Peanut Sucker" on the side. I hadn't noticed that on our way there.

                  How nice.

                  I pressed my fingers against my piece, activating it."What the freaking hell, Peggo?! Get your mic away from the car radio and park that piece of crap van behind a tree or something!" I half-whispered. "You're going to give us away!"

                  "Boss wanted a better look inside," Peggo said through the piece.

                  "Then tell him to knock on the front garage and maybe Smiley will let him in for a cup of tea!" I hissed, deactivating the device and watching my breath come out of my mouth in icy puffs. I then hopped off of the ledge and sprinted towards a door on the roof, pressing another button on my watch and burning a circle around the doors' lock with a tiny blue laser beam.

                  Saying that I was simply "frustrated" would be a lie.

                  You could be touching pierced nipples right now instead of freezing your little butt off, but nooooooooo, Conscious reminded me bitterly. Maybe I could prove her wrong. Was this hideout finally it? This was just one of the dozens of hideouts Vladimir had planned for me to search over the past three days. There hadn't been any sort of remains of a cold blooded killer in any of the hideouts.

                  With one katana blade in my hand, I glided down a boxy metal staircase on light feet and crept past another door into a long hallway, lit by obnoxious bluish-white florescent lights. Swinging open another door, I started down another staircase and entered a different hallway, eating up the distance, eager for a fight. In the distance, there were cries and moans of male and female voices. Great.

                  "I hear voices," I whispered so quietly I had barely heard it.

                  "She says it's occupied," I heard Peggo say to Vlad through the spy piece. "Have you taken out or spotted any guards, Pepper?"

                  "There was a dog on the roof but that's the only living thing I've physically seen. I threw it a Twinkie and it left me alone."

                  "A dog?" I heard Vlad shout from the piece. "There was a dog on the roof?"

                  And then it hit me. Maybe it hadn't been a dog.

                  On cue, I heard the echo of boots and a slightly altered, rough, deep voice. Whoever it was, their voice was masked by some sort of electronic device. "What? I'm finishing the sweep, so far there's no sign of him, just a few of his carry ons. I'm kind of in the middle of torturing them right now, so get on with it. Slow down. What do you mean you couldn't stop them? They threw you a what?" There was a pause, then a low chuckle. "I know exactly who it is. I'll handle it."

                  At that moment, blade in hand, I crept to the edge of the hallway and peered around the bend of another towards the voice. There was a man at the end of the hallway with a black leather jacket, a drapping hood, and black leather pants.

                  "It's an unfortunate day with the prey comes to the predator," the man said, without turning around. His hand reached behind him for one of his black katana's. "Won't you dance with me, hunter?"

                  I quickly plastered myself back against the wall, out of sight. There was a long, horrifying pause where all I heard was my heart pounding in my chest. It was the most terrifying, nauseating three seconds of my life.

                  "Pepper?" Peggo said into my ear. "Pepper, I picked up another voice. Who was that?"

                  Click. Click. Click. The man was slowly walking towards me. Heel, toe. Heel, toe. Heel, toe. I couldn't get up from the floor. I couldn't move I was so frightened. What had I gotten myself into? I couldn't kill anyone. I didn't have it in me. And I had a feeling whoever this man was, he was prepared to kill me.

                  Click. Click. Click. Heel, toe. Heel, toe. Heel, toe. With every click of his boots an image of one of Smiley's victims flashed in my head.

                  I pressed on a small device within my hood, that Vlad had briefly explained to me how to use, and leaped to my feet, hunting dagger in hand.

                  "Pepper?" Peggo was louder this time. "Pepper, can you hear me?"

                  "He's going to kill me," I finally whispered back, backing away from the bend in the hallway that the hooded man was about to round. I was about to face him straight on, and I didn't like the idea of that. Cowardly, I whipped around, falling into a retreat down the hallway. "He's--"

                  The man was in front of me. I stumbled back but he caught me by the arm with a strong grip and brought his hooded face close to mine, inhaling. Little did he know, Vlad had given me a handy dandy spray that didn't give off my scent. Unfortunately, it smelled a lot like horse shit.

                  He reeled backwards. "Ugh, what is that smell? I'd say it's my lucky day, but you're not the kind of slut I like following me trail. You smell bad. Nice blades, though. Mine are nicer." He cockily gestured towards the black katana blade in his hand. It was more than nice. It was really, really nice. And sparkly. I reached out to touch it and he gripped my hand, yanking me hard against his body. "You have been following me, yes?"

                  "No, I haven't." I wiggled against him. "I've been hired to bring you to someone. So get your hands off of me, Smiley." The voice modulator made my voice sound extremely deep and monotone, making the leather-clad man shake with laughter.

                  I should have read the freaking manual!

                  The man's spine straightened. "Who do you work for?"

                  "That's my business. Torture me, and my men will come in to get me and kill you." 

                  "Funny, I'm pretty sure I just heard that hunk of junk peeling out of the parking lot." He lashed out before I could blink, knocking my dagger out of my hand and then bringing the black blade to my neck. "I could always... carve it out of you."

                  "Go for it, Halloweens coming up in a few weeks anyways."

                  "Stubborn, I see. Well, whoever you work for, they can't take me anywhere because I'm not Smiley. Also, whatever horse shit you sprayed on yourself doesn't mask who you are, it just makes you smell like you and horse shit," the man said, his cynical laughter fleeted. "I'm looking for Smiley myself.. I've been looking for him for weeks. I'm the one eliminates the eliminators, you could say. This is my job, not yours. I'm sorry to tell you that following me here was the last. Straw."

                  Before I could react, the piece in my ear was aggressively ripped from my ear and crushed in a leather glove. I was picked up by the waist like a rag doll and thrown against the wall, unable to move any part of my body from the shoulders down as I crumpled to the floor. I looked down at my arm, staring down in horror at the syringe he had stabbed into my arm filled with bright yellow liquid.

                  "I did everything I could to keep you away from me. You've left me no other choice. I'm sorry that it had to end this way, although you were a thriving and intimidating bitch, you were hot as hell and I think I'm going to miss you."

                  A hooded face consumed my vision. A blade pressed against my neck and cut deeply. The man's muscular chest lay flat against my lungs, limiting my breaths as I gasped and tried to scream as blood gushed out of my neck.

                  The man pulled back his hood, watching me with an unreadable expression as I quivered on the floor, drowning in my own blood. My vision wavered with splotches of black, I tried to make out the strangers face and couldn't quite place it. Then, it hit me who he was, but I was unable to call out his name because blood flooded my mouth. "Goodbye, Pepper. Perhaps we can one day clash blades in another lifetime," he said, leaning towards me as if to...

                  With the last ounce of strength that I had, I gripped the collar of his leather jacket, bringing his unbelievably attractive face inches from mine and sputtered the blood in my mouth all over the place. "I'll remember this, Gary," I gurgled out. 

I then fell into a never-ending darkness.

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