I usually had nightmares. Most of the time they involved the tables being turned and someone coming to kill me in my most vulnerable moment. That was the reason many assassins slept with a weapon close at hand. I had a gun beneath my pillow, a sword mounted above my bed stand, and multiple knives in my bedside drawer.

But none of those weapons could help me in my nightmares. And the one I had the night after the branding center was the most vivid.

I was back in the branding center, alone and unarmed. I had on a frilly silk nightgown that was practically a wedding veil spread across my body. Around me were the dead from the brawl, but not just them. I saw the eighteen-year-old boy who fell from his death from the tightrope failure. I saw the restaurant waitress who drowned in Lake Michigan after I took her out deep into the water and allowed her an attempt at option three: swim back to shore alive. I saw the amputee who lost his foot at his job and whom I took his other foot from him after he tried to resist being killed—and many other previous contracts.

But the person I least wanted to see there was my brother.

He looked just as I last saw him, the hole in his chest from where he was shot. No blood flowed from it. His spiked hair rose upward like the summits of the Rockies. He had naturally tanned skin that would make you think he wasn't a part of the family. His eyes were the color of washed up green grapes and they always saw past you whilst in deep somber thought. He had a scar across his left cheek that nearly connected to the corner of his lip—a scar I was responsible for too.

Seeing him as he stood in front of the group of mangled souls, all revitalized in the states I left them in...it made me want to collapse to the ground and cry. Out of everyone in my family, my older brother Noastir was the only one I loved. To me, he was the only member of my family.

But he's dead, and it was all my fault.

"I tried to save you from this life Zay," he spoke with the same voice he would whenever he was disappointed in me. Usually behind that voice was also a pitch of hope. With each disappointed muse, he would sigh as if all was forgiven.

This time, I didn't hear that release of breath that unlocked the knot in my chest. "You killed me for trying to save you."

My tongue had tied itself. My knees wobbled. I couldn't support this guilt any longer. I wanted it all to end; and who better than the only person in the world I would allow to take my life.

I fell to my knees, my neck hung down ready for its deliverance from my body.

I wasn't worthy of such an end.

"Soon the check of all this chaos will be cashed in a most painful manner," my brother spoke. I peered upward and saw him gesturing to the room around him. All the expressions of those I've murdered stared at me with complete loathing. And the few who lacked faces to express such anger had other ways of flipping me off.

"Noa," I hiccupped. I couldn't look at his face. The hole in his chest made the memories too much to bear. "I'm sorry," I blinked back tears. An assassin never cries, my mother once told me. "I didn't mean to get you killed."

That's when I felt his hand cup my chin with the soft touch he specialized in whenever he bandaged my wrist after fracturing it from a poorly angled strike, or the dab of an alcoholic cloth on a skid knee. "Zay, your weakness got me killed. Had you done the job like you were supposed to, I wouldn't be in your head."

He smiled, but it was most certainly forced, like most of the grins he displayed in front of others. Much like myself, Noa hated this life. He hated the family he was born into. He tried to keep me away from this life. He argued to spare me from becoming an assassin.

And I remember my father slashing his cheek for even suggesting such a thing.

"I'm not weak anymore Noa," I said with a bit more confidence. "Look around you. I did all of this. I'm strong," I fought back. I slapped away his hand and stood up. I turned my back on him. "Stronger than you were."

My brother chuckled. Around me the walls of the branding center started to melt like candle wax. I turned back towards my brother who gestured once more to the melting souls around him. "You're not strong Zay. If you were, this room would've been empty."

His words were a shot of adrenaline that woke me up with a fit in the middle of the night. I instinctually had my hand wrapped around my handgun, pointing it at the empty space in front of me.

No one was there.

My heart was racing. My eyes started blurring. I cried into my hands, coating my pistol with tears.

Assassins weren't supposed to cry, but this assassin does.

***

Ashton was great to have as a distraction from my life. He gave me someone to talk to about normal things like T.V. shows, movies, music, horrible school subjects, etc. But the one thing I hated was his constant need to bring up the Locusts. I know he was a fanboy of this gang for some odd reason, which made me disappointed that he was my only friend; but I was also curious as to why he was so attracted to this lifestyle.

"Where do I begin," he spoke at recess. Kids were scattered across multiple fields, playing tag, football, kickball, basketball, or just simply gossiping. "I guess I'd start with the founder, Newton Brockton. He originally founded the Locusts with a group of friends here in Chicago during the Rout, which was around forty something years ago. He was tired of the way the rich and powerful were being bailed out because of the economic crisis while the poor and working classes were told to handle the disaster themselves with no help. Hospitals in poorer parts of the city were being closed, working class people were laid off while top executives kept their normal pay. Protests were unleashed, but they were quickly stifled and some even died in the process."

He pulled out his tablet and searched for a picture of the Locusts founder, Newton Brockton. He was a black man who in all of his photos, wore a simple polo with jeans. He had glasses, and a look that invited you to trust in him.

"They were originally called the Hornets, but as the gang grew, he felt the name was too aggressive. As thousands flocked to his cause, he felt swarmed by the influx of members. That's when he changed the name to the Locusts, but many terms from the days when it was the Hornets remain, like the hives, or divisions of the gang, in various neighborhoods, led by the Queen."

He pulled up images of something I would never associate with a gang. I saw field hospitals, food trucks handing out meals to children, even buses that transported citizens called "Locust Express."

"This guy created his own little government," I said, a bit surprised.

"Exactly!" Ashton was gleaming at the recognition of this. "They even set up schools that rivaled the underfunded public schools in poor areas. They established scholarships to top universities, and even provided top-quality legal aid to poor citizens charged for petty crimes. At a time where poor neighborhoods were feeling the brunt end of the Rout, he was mustering community support to provide stuff the city typically provided to people inside the Loop."

I was impressed, but at the same time, I was wondering what exactly made this group a gang if they did all these community services. "And they were considered a gang at that time?"

Ash nodded and pulled up another photo of guys dressed in olive muscle shirts and black jeans holding weapons soldiers would carry for war. "They formed a police force to stop violent gangs from terrorizing the neighborhood. But," Ashton's voice dipped in tone, "the real police didn't like that."

He pulled up other photos, photos of dead Locust members in the street, laying bullet-riddled in front of injured police officers in riot gear. "The city government labeled the Locusts a vigilante gang and ordered them to cease their policing. Newton refused. The mayor at the time, Mayor Hampton, declared the group a domestic terrorist group after an incident involving the murder of a police officer who had murdered an entire black family in a traffic stop. Newton moved his armed members from focusing on stopping crime to stopping police brutality."

Silent videos of police brandishing batons and beating civilians outside their cars, their homes, their stores, made me feel like I was watching something from a century ago during the Civil Rights Era. But it had occurred within my own parent's lifetime.

"That's when their rivalry with the Reapers started to flare up." Ash pulled up the picture of Newton, once posed for leadership, plastered lifeless on concrete. "They killed him," Ash sighed. "Then the Locusts started to fall apart."

He pulled up an image of a light-skinned woman with ruby hair, blue eyes, and a vicious smile that said "you're going down."

"His daughter, Tilda Brockton, took over the gang and sought to avenge her father's death. She sought to increase the gang's funds, and the way she saw this was sadly through the things that gangs resort to in order to make boatloads of money."

Images of pills, dance clubs, and skimpy men and women standing on sidewalks appeared. "The gang cut some of its community services. The Locust Express, the medical centers, the scholarships, all wiped clean. She gained more members with the till of her voice that people said sounded like church bells calling the believers to her. War broke out and Chicago became bloody. Both the Reapers and Locusts were killing members, politicians who represented either side, and many innocent people got caught in its way."

Ashton turned off his tablet and tapped his fingers on the back of it. "Things have died down in the last twenty years ever since leadership on both sides changed. But the Locusts haven't been the same since."

A loud buzzer went off signaling the end of recess. Ash nodded over to the middle school building across the track field. "But there are still hives that keep to Newton's original cause, to give power to the powerless, like the Royden Hive." He paused for a second and laughed awkwardly. "But I bet you already knew all of this considering your family has connections to the gang. I bet I was a real motormouth right there."

I shook my head. "No, my family doesn't tell me much about the gang." And that was true. My father simply depicts them as thieves who seek to steal from the hard-working people in society.

"Then consider yourself enlightened," Ashton said like a chauffeur to a billionaire. "Now, perhaps you could maybe spot me some answers on the Spanish quiz we have next."

He had a naughty smile because he knew my response. "Only if you don't get caught."