I wish I took my own advice, because I got caught. Besides having a target turn around and kill you, getting caught was the second worst thing to happen to an assassin.

This time I got lucky.

I'm the type of person who hates to delay things to the last minute. I'm not a procrastinator, much to the dismay of my entire generation who can involuntarily procrastinate because it's second nature to them.

The day after hitting the branding center in Washington Park, I decided to rip the band-aid off and disable the Royden branding center.

Multiple doubts plagued my brain. As Ashton noted, the Royden Hive was respected because of its size, the number of members it had, and the core beliefs that linked back to Newton Brockton's vision of a gang that protected the most vulnerable in Chicago's society. It was one of the most powerful hives in Chicago, and I wasn't sure if I could handle it.

The other doubt that plagued me was the nightmare I had. I felt like my brother was really there. Noa was telling me something very clear to me. I was weak because I killed. A strong person found ways to solve problems without resorting to animalistic violence. My brother believed that I could become the strongest person in my family by shielding me from this life.

Yet here I was, the day after watching twenty plus people drop dead by my own actions, clamoring to do the same thing again.

It's just a dream Zay, I tried to convince myself. Dreams mean nothing.

In the end, the threat of the repercussions of my parents, particularly my father, if I didn't carry through with the project was the moving force in my decision that brought me on the suburban bus to Royden, south of downtown Chicago.

As the bus entered the neighborhood's depot, I was hit with the grittiness of the area. Abandoned buildings spray painted with illegible bubbly symbols that marked the gang's territory, weeds tearing up cracks in the sidewalk, the rusty skeletons of cars that had been the only remains of car bombings, the streets devoid of people saved for the occasional group of threatening muscle heads playing cards while sitting on milk crates or the lone police car stalking through the neighborhood. For everything Ashton told me, I pictured this hive to have diamond streets, children holding hands and laughing in the park, and people pushing their dogs in strollers. Was this what was left of the Locusts' social service past?

I drew less eyes than when I was in Washington Park. The community here in Royden was a bit more diversified over the years. Poor people of all shapes and colors lived here, showing that poverty doesn't distinguish based on the tint of your skin. Either way, I wore my disguise I usually do for jobs, distorting my face in such a way that people couldn't identify me as the suspicious person who entered a building moments before one of its tenets tragically died.

This time around I was disguised as a boy.

My father warned me in the details he sent in the group chat that some branding centers are separated by gender. The one here in Royden conducted branding initiations for each gender at different times. Today were the guys, and for some reason I found it easier to complete contracts on men. They're supposed to be "stronger" than me. If they died at the hands of a twelve-year-old girl, few people would believe such a headline in the morning news.

For this I wrapped my hair around my head like a whirlpool. A curly wig covered the top like a winter hat. Puberty hadn't infected me with pimples, body hair, and boobs yet. Either that or I was doomed to be flat-chested for my entire life. I guess it didn't matter anyway. Who would ever fall in love with an assassin?

Dressing up like a guy wasn't hard. A t-shirt and some jeans and I was good to go. I made my way to the branding center, which was in an abandoned steel factory on the edge of the neighborhood. Dust stained windows, rusty walls, rats in the courtyard, the place looked deserted.

I walked through the front door with such ease I knew something was up. One does not simply walk into a gang stronghold without seeing some muscle men with weapons. My hand rubbed my neck, flinching towards the handle of my sword.

I examined the open floor of the factory. It looked like no one had occupied the area since before I was born. Weeds had grown inside the building, and some animals even called the place home. I spotted a stray cat, a family of raccoons, and even a coyote sleeping behind a mini weed forest.

My father must've gotten the wrong intel. This place couldn't be the branding location.

I felt something prick my neck. Suddenly it went numb, followed by my arms, and legs. I collapsed to the ground; my whole body was paralyzed. I could still see and hear everything, but I couldn't move no matter how hard I tried.

The sound of a generator turned on. Doors pried open. Wheels squeaked over the grass and broken glass. The wheels grew louder as it reached me. I felt someone lift me up like a sack of flour and push me against a chair. The person's face was covered. He pushed me forward on a wheelchair and towards an open door I hadn't noticed before.

Once across the threshold, I was in a brown box of death. The person pushing the chair pressed something and the doors screeched shut behind and the box started to move. I was in an elevator and it screamed like the tires of a car coming to an abrupt stop. We were descending below the factory.

If I could feel my heart, it'd be racing. I had only been caught once in my life, and Noa died because of it. This time, Noa wasn't here to save me. I was on my own.

Then the elevator door cracked open, giving way to the sound of children laughing, adults gossiping, live music blasting. When my captor spun my chair around, I saw a hallway that was the size of a subway tunnel. It was lit by lights along the walls covered in unremovable grime. The tunnel went onward and branched off like a plus sign in various directions. Filling the tunnels was the street life that the surface neighborhood was devoid of. I saw children playing tag, adults receiving food at stands carved into the sides of the tunnel, and even musicians strumming away at guitars, beat-boxing with nothing but their lips, and serenading the dank tunnels with the smooth jazz from a saxophone.

As I passed through the tunnels, few people paid me any mind. A couple of kids looked at me with smiles, especially those my age who wondered if I was the new student in their school. Everyone was clothed in similar attire. The boys wore olive polos and black pants. The girls wore olive blouses and black skirts.

We passed by the front of a clinic with a massive medical plus symbol carved into an emergency exit sign. We funneled through a tunnel that was boarded up with a wooden wall. We bypassed a Graffitied door with the name L.P.S. 27, followed by images of textbooks, children with book bags, chemical bonds, and math symbols.

My mouth would probably be hanging on its sockets if I could control it. This underground abandoned subway tunnel was an underground city.

My captor pulled me up a wooden ramp onto a station platform guarded by many muscle men and women dressed in the same olive clothing as the rest of the people down here, but pinned with a badge that read, "L.S.D." My immediate thought was that they were drug dealers. They had the handguns and shotguns to match it. But they also had belts loaded with taser guns, batons, and handcuffs.

My captor brought me to the front of a ticket booth where an armed guard stood behind glass on the brink of shattering had it not been for the duct tape holding it together.

The man behind the glass spoke between the cracks. "Inductee or Inmate?"

My captor's voice was muffled from his mask as he spoke from behind me. "Guest."

The guard raised an eyebrow. I would too if I could. If this is how they treated their guest, I didn't want to see how they treated their enemies.

Then again, "guest" could be a codename for "torture victim." Either way, I wasn't feeling like I was being given the star treatment. If this numbness ever wore off, I would use all my strength to fight my way out of here.

The guard behind the glass pushed aside a moldy shower curtain that acted as a partition from the booth to the gate with its black paint chipping off on its edges. He pushed open a door that said, "For Emergency Use Only: Failure to Pay Entry will Result in a Fine or Jail Time."

"She's almost done initiating the new batch," the guard informed my captor.

"Perfect," my captor spoke, again his voice muffled from behind his dark mask. I had no clue what my captor looked like. Was he big and strong? Weak but well-armed? A woman or a man? I assumed he was a dude, but that's just my default move to label assholes in general.

Once he wheeled me past the gate, he wheeled me up another wooden ramp that curved up two floors and emerged into a wide-open space bustling with people. I saw people training in olive clothing, led by LSD marked men and women. I saw shops surrounding the outer walls—a barber shop, a grocery store, a home improvement shop, and even a small movie theater.

One of the many shops was a tattoo parlor, guarded by two LSD members. The guards standing at the front greeted my captor.

"Welcome sir."

My captor didn't respond back. He wheeled me into the parlor, where a group of boys stood crowded in front of a small stage made of stepladders. All the boys were shaved bald, and fresh upon their red skin laid the mark of the single locust. The boys were young, in their teens and early twenties.

Their attention was on a woman who stood atop the stage of stepladders. She had the most beautiful curls of brown hair that matched her dark skin. She was plump but had curves that would make any girl jealous. Her eyes were chocolate brown, and her lips popped with glossy black lipstick. She wore a tank top shirt that seemed to squeeze around her chest. Her black dress crinkled like curtains, and she bore a tattoo of a locust upon her left upper arm that showed a single Locust with a royal crown made of gold and emeralds placed upon its small head.

"You are all down the path to becoming a member of our society," the woman spoke with confidence upon the stage. Yet she had just a touch of motherly affection with the smile she bore, and the way she would occasionally step off the stage and hug the candidates, crushing them in her mighty bosom.

"Although you have been granted the passport to our society, you must all conduct travels to keep it. The first of eight stages of this initiation process, dating back to our founder, is not over yet. You must now acquire $5,000 within 24 hours and contribute it to the Locusts' Vault. Failure to do so will bar you from joining the society."

The boys gulped as they looked at each other. I saw fear in their eyes. They all knew they neither had that money, nor knew anyone who did. For some of them, especially the younger ones, $5,000 was the amount of money they would make in a year.

"How you go about obtaining the $5,000 is up to you. Objects valued at a total of $5,000 will be acceptable." The lady looked at her watch and then back at her audience. "I suggest you get started. You have 23 hours and 58 minutes now."

You might as well have yelled that the principal was coming in a school hallway where bullying was happening. Those boys formed a sea around me as they raced out of the parlor.

The woman stepped down from the makeshift podium, opening her arms as my captor appeared before me wearing a long sleeve olive shirt and black pants. He wasn't the muscleman type. He looked skinny and young, no older than a teen, which made my capture all the more embarrassing.

The two embraced and the lady smiled, "Come give old Auntie some sugar baby."

Then she ripped off the guy's mask and slapped him across the face. "What'd I tell you about wearing these ski-masks boy? We got a reputation for that stuff already and we ain't gonna live up to it."

I only saw the back of his head and the base of his neck. His skin was brown and cracking from dryness that made him appear silver at times. His hair was black, and glossy.

"Sorry Auntie, I didn't want to spoil the surprise."

That voice.

Auntie gave me a glance-over with her eyes. She wasn't impressed. "So this the girl you've been yapping about? Why she dressed like a tom-boy?"

Ouch, I thought.

"I think she's disguising herself because she was sent here to kill all the boys that just left."

It's definitely him. That little traitor. Once I get my hands around him...

"That little thing was supposed to kill my children," Auntie said with her voice dripping with sass. "You playing yourself."

"I'm not Auntie," the boy pointed at me. "She's responsible for what went down in Washington Park. She's a member of the Reaper Core. Her name's Zaslay Mata, and..."

He turned around to flash me that devilish grin I wanted to slice right off his face. "We go to school together."