Prologue;

All I am looking for is some piece of truth.

Nothing in my life seems to be the truth anymore. There's not some concrete realism that I can believe anymore. Even the basic laws of physics, gravity and biology have been completely desecrated with the life that has been thrusted at me abruptly, leaving me confounded and befuddled. I have to let go of any sentiments or ideas that I've held ever in my life and relearn everything that I've learned since late elementary school.

Is some solid verity too much to ask for?

And the one piece of truth that keeps coming up is so disoriented and distorted that it appears to infeasible to be true. I don't want this one thing to be true, it can't be true. There's just no way. Sure enough, though, it is. How? How could the most impossible thing in the world be true when the most logical laws in the world have now just become possible concepts and whimsical ideas?

Every time I think I find the truth, I unveil yet another lie, another secret that has been hidden from me since I was a child. When I think that I find an resolution to a question, I end up with three more questions and no answers. If I were anyone else, had any other personality, I would have given it up long ago and moved on with my life. But no, I have the most obnoxiously curious and boldly speculative personality in the world. So of course, I lie in my bed at night with a searing headache, all the questions and lies swarming my mind like flies.

Soon I'm going to go insane if I don't find some answers, discover some small piece of true reality...if I'm not already insane. Maybe sanity is just another lie that the world wants you to believe.

Either way; all I am asking for is some truth.

















Chapter One

I should have listened to the guy with the gun. Everyone always listen to the guy with the gun. Who would be stupid enough to not listen to him? You’d have to be an idiot not to.

Apparently, I was that idiot.

He caught my eye among the crowd of thousands of people. The guy with the gun stuck out from everyone else, though he seemed to be utterly invisible to any of my friends. Maybe it was the way he appeared to blend in with the crowd, a hunter in camouflage among the trees and bushes. What stuck out to me, though?

The way he stuck something into that man’s neck and walked away like nothing ever happened.

The way no one else saw slip by as a throng of curious and concerned people formed around the man who was down on the ground.

Stepping away from my group of friends, I trailed in the direction that the guy headed. My bravery threshold must have been very high today if I was willing to do something that dangerous and stupid. Maybe it was a combination of that and a lack of common sense. My mom always says that I never had any common sense anyways; always going after justice no matter what was in the way.

Pushing and shoving through the crowd that always concentrated here on New Year’s Eve, I barely succeeded to keep my eye on him with his black hoodie on in the darkest part of the night. If it were a normal night, he would no doubt be out of my sight already. But the glow sticks and glowing cell phone screens mixed in with the typical city lights made the task just under impossible. He wasn't going to get away if I could help it.

On a night exactly like this, I had let my father's murderer off. I hadn't even put up a fight to see who it was. The fear was too overbearing. Now it was up to me to find the guy who had just murdered the man back there. Even though they didn't know it, the family was counting on me to make sure that this murderer was caught and punished.

He vanished from my sight for moment when he turned a corner onto 7th Avenue. Panicking, I paced myself even faster, almost breaking into a jog. Soon enough, he resurfaced into my line of sight. Vibrations in my left pocket sidetracked me from looking directly at him.


“What?” I snapped over the phone, not bothering to look at who it was. I was afraid that if I did, I would lose him again. That wasn't worth the risk.

“Where the hell are you?” A voice on the other line demanded. “We looked everywhere.”

“I don’t know, I can’t see anything,” I lied, “Let’s just meet up at my place afterwords, alright?”

“There’s still plenty of time until the ball drops,” Jackie, my best friend, implored. “Why don't you try to find us again?”

“I can’t hear you, there’s too much noise,”I lied continually, well, it wasn’t a total lie. The thousands of people in time Square murmuring amongst themselves did make it particularly difficult to have a half-way decent phone conversation.

“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t try to find you,” she said. “You shou-

I hung up. As much as I dearly loved my best friend, she always chose the most problematic times to call or text. After another block full of vibrations, I yanked the phone out of my pocket and turned the damn thing off. Phones can be useful in certain situations, but sometimes there are circumstances, such as this one, that your phone is a goddamn nuisance.

Blink once he’s there, blink twice and he’s gone.

I stretched up onto my tiptoes to see if I could catch a glimpse of him again. While not paying attention to the people around me, one of them paid attention to me. Well, one knocked into me anyways. In the moment of my free-falling, I was afraid that no one was going to see me and I would get trampled to death. I had seen those videos, where someone trips in a crowd, no one sees them and they end up getting stepped on so much that they end up dying from all of their injuries. That has to be one of the most demeaning deaths to ever exist; getting trampled to death But after all, it prooved that my fear was all melodramatic, because my body never even hit the ground.

I was caught.

My legs nearly slipped from underneath me, but they were stopped by the arms that caught me. Eyes that had been closed while bracing for impact with the cement were now opened, peering at the savior. He was smiling down on me.

“You okay?” He asked me, his arm wrapped tightly around my shoulders so that I wouldn’t fall. His eyes showed genuine concern, while he was smiling. Funny how such contradictory expressions would look atrocious on anyone else could look so perfect on this guy. No matter how ‘perfect’ he was, I had more important things that I needed to accomplish. For some reason I thought about Jackie's likely opinion on this guy.

I was still tipped in his arms when I realized why I was away from my friends in the first place. Restoring my footing, I stood up on my own again and stepped away from him.

“Yeah, thanks,” I told him gratefully, though a bit rushed.“But I have to go.”

“Wait-

I had already taken off.






***

Jaze knew that face, knew that feeling when he caught the girl, saved her from falling. He recalled where the feeling came from, but he shook it off because there was no way in hell she could still be alive...right? Even in his world, the dead don't dome back to life. That happens sometimes; you'll see someone that looks like a dead family member or a friend. You get that rush of deja vu and then the same feeling snakes underneath your skin.

Before he could even take a second look she was back up on her feel again after a muttering what must have been a thanks. For a moment, the thought of following her crossed his mind, but he quickly reminded himself that he had more important things to take care of. There were some loose ends that he was sure he was going to have to tie up tonight.

That was his job, right?

Where was Gage?






***

Gage took a deep breath while walking through the chilly December night, feeling that tugging feeling he always got after doing a kill job. The tugging feeling went away, he would have to deal with that later. That man probably wasn't the only one that he was going to kill tonight.

He had completed his first job of the night. Now he just needed to collect the money. Actually, money wasn't that big of a deal. In fact, the money didn't matter at all to Gage. A rival organization of the man he had just killed had hired Gage to go and kill this guy for ten grand. The people that were willing to pay a seventeen year old to go and kill another man weren't exactly what you would call upstanding. He just wanted to check the situation out. You know, see if the world would be better off without these guys as well. He was sure that his bosses would be happy to get rid of some threats to the city. Actually, they probably didn't care what he did as long as he kept it remotely quiet and didn't reveal his identity to anyone.


Besides, New Years was in a few minutes. The sound of shouting, cheering and fireworks would knock out the sound of any guns going off, right? Either way, it's not like the police could find him. No fingerprints were ever filed away into the government. DNA sample wouldn't do squat either.

Gage Romero doesn't exist.

It's hard to find someone that doesn't exist.







***

There was another block of ducking, jumping and running before I spotted the guy in the black hoodie. You would think that it would be infeasible for me to find him again on such a night as this, with thousands of people. The task was probably harder than finding a needle in a haystack. And yet, it was almost effortless for me.

I ducked under a dozen balloons that a twelve or thirteen year old boy was holding holding for some girl who craved her first kiss at Time Square at Midnight on New Year’s Eve. A little girl wandered in front of me, and I was forced to lightly push her out of the way because there was no other place for me to pass through.

Finally, three blocks straight and one right turn block, the crowd started wearing down to the point that there wasn’t much of anyone in the streets except for a few stragglers here and there. Otherwise, it was the black hoodie and me about a half a block away from each other. He made another right turn. I sped up so that I wouldn’t lose him yet again.

My heart stopped when I turned.

Nothing.

No one.

My eyes widened. How the hell could I lose him again? How could I be so stupid?

I started walking again, maybe he was just concealed in the shadows.

Turns out, he really was hidden in the shadows, just not in front of me. Behind me to be exact. I was just too oblivious to spot his hand before it snatched out and pulled me into the shadows along with him. His hand covered my mouth before I had an opportunity to scream out loud for help. Bringing my hands up to pull his hand off of me, I was thwarted by his free arm wrapped around my arms so that I couldn’t move them.

“You really thought that you could follow me without me noticing?” He voice was lethally quiet. No one else would be able to hear him except for me, which was the scariest part.

With all the strength that I could muster, I yanked myself out of his grasp. Whipping around, I turned to face the heartless killer. Common sense was telling me that I should be scared out of my wits, running the hell away from him. This guy had just injected a likely deadly chemical into a man in one of the most crowded places on Earth. Who knows what he would do to me when there wasn’t anyone around to witness?

“You really thought no one would see you?” I challenged, refusing to back down no matter how insidious (and boneheaded) it was.

He nodded as if he had been matched up in making plausible points.

“Let me guess, you’re one of Jones girls?” He asked me, looking me up and down, making me feel like a zoo animal on display.

My eyebrows narrowed, who the hell was ‘Jones’? He had to know, because I sure as heck didn’t have a clue.

“No.”

“You’re not supposed to be able to see me,” he stated. “No one is. Let alone some bitchy teenage girl.”

He had no room to talk about age. Eighteen, maybe, at the max. I would guess seventeen if I was really going to bet on his age. And bitchy? He was one to talk. Who had just been the one to kill someone without looking back once? Smart move would be to not argue with him, but what would be the fun in that?

“Oh, I’m the ‘bitchy’ one?” I asked. “I’m not the one that just killed an innocent without a second thought.”

He jeered at the word ‘innocent’ as if it were a joke that the man were innocent. What was with this guy? Oh, right, he didn’t give a s*** about human life at all. I had forgotten about the one little detail.

His time of playing games were over. I knew this by the look on his face, but he decided to make sure I understood his intentions by snatching me again and slamming me against the brick wall. For a fraction of a second, my eyes widened. I strained for my eyes to go back to their average size. Despite the adrenaline rushing through my veins at a hundred miles an hour, I remained calm. Something cold brushed up against my neck, a cool metal.

The barrel of his pistol.

Oh, so he also had a gun. Surprise, surprise.

The oddest thought occurred inside of my head though. He wasn't going to kill me, he couldn't kill me.

“This is a warning,” he pressed it deeper into my throat, making sure I understood. “You’re not going to follow me, or else…well, we both know what happens, don't we?”

He took his hand off the trigger and slowly put the gun in his pocket. I leaned against the wall for support for an instant, before going after him once again. As soon as I took one step in his direction, he took out the gun again and pressed it against my temple now. This time I thought he was really going to shoot me.

“What did I just tell you?” His voice elevated a tiny bit. “Do you want me to blow a hole through your head?”

“No,” I denied, “I want to know why you killed that innocent man.”

“Innocent?” He scoffed again. “You actually think that man was innocent? He was a killer, a drug dealer, he runs a child prostitute business. Tell me now, who is so innocent?”

“Two wrongs doesn’t make a right,” I insisted, quoting what my dad used to always tell me.

He rolled his eye, looking at me like I was a kindergarten teacher talking to one of her kids that had just hit another kid for stealing something.

“You should shut up and go enjoy your perfect life,” he suggested. “Don’t follow me, you got that?”

I didn’t nod, but challenged him instead. “If you don’t want me to follow you, then why don’t you just shoot me now?” I challenged.


“Maybe I should,” he agreed.

He pulled the trigger. I braced myself for impact of the bullet. My effort of following this guy just for the sake of the dead man’s family was going to be completely wasted for nothing. But the bullet never actually came. The thought occurred in my head again he can't kill you.

“Be glad that the safety was on,” he muttered before walking off, leaving me there, shaking.

I should probably listen to the guy with the gun, right?

Of course I should. But what would be the fun in doing that?






***

The girl had spunk, that was sure. Spunk that Gage was sure wasn't a human. There had to be a reason that the girl was able to see him. And yet...he could hear every single thought that she was thinking. Maybe he had just made a small mistake this time. Or she could be a Medium. Her thoughts that he heard over and over from her was something about her father's murderer. She could very well be a medium. But a medium shouldn't be able to see him if they were human.

He had tried to pull that trigger, he really did. The safety hadn't been on like he had muttered before. The bullet just didn't come out. It wasn't jammed, though, he checked. Some relief washed over him that he hadn't killed her. Though his bosses didn't care what scum he killed, Gage was fairly sure they would be upset if they found out he killed an 'innocent.' Besides, he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he turned out to be like his father. That's exactly the thing he was trying to avoid.

Good god, was the girl still following him? She really was brave. Following him after he practically threatened to kill her if he saw her again. Brave or a bit stupid. To Gage, the two things were pretty much the same. The last thing that he wanted to deal with right now was a teenage girl. He had much more important and grave things to deal with at the moment.

He'd better get this over with before she caught up with him again.






***

As I regained my sanity and breath, my vision narrowed towards him walking in the other direction.

Something moved me forward, trailing him yet again. Despite every muscle and bone fighting against the move, something else forced me to. Something of divine intervention maybe? It had to be something supernatural because I don't think even my conscience could talk myself into doing something this risky after my life had just been threatened...twice.

He turned another time, except for this time it wasn’t onto another street, it was into a parking garage. My brain was screaming at me not to go in there. On the street, I would definitely be discovered by morning, but my body might not be found in a parking garage just so soon. But I was already here, why not just go through with it? Might as well.

I entered the garage.

Dark.

Blackness.

Talking.

Where was the talking coming from?

I followed the sound, bumping into a few cars on the way there. I could literally see nothing inside, since there was no light from outside except from the entrance. And I didn’t dare bring out myself, or I might attract attention to myself.

The sound got louder and louder until it sounded as if there were more than just two people talking. I recognized the voice as the black hoodie.

“Our boss doesn’t want us to come back without confirmation that the target is dead,” another man, probably in his thirties, said.

“Watch the news, the media is all over that s***,” black hoodie told the man.

My eyes were adjusting to the light as I turned another corner and a car was giving off a little bit of light. There were three of them; black hoodie facing the other two as if he were annoyed and pissed.

“Look, you’re not getting paid until you bring the body to us,” one of them bargained.

Black hoodie shrugs. “That’s completely fine with me. At least I got the pleasure of killing that bastard. I don’t need to be paid to feel honored.”

I raised my eyebrows. This guy seemed like the type that wanted to get paid for a job that he did, no matter what. But he seemed to be happy that he just got to kill the guy. Why would you be happy just to kill someone? This guy was sick from the inside out.

My dad’s murder came back to me again.

Trigger.

Bullet.

Impact.

Dead.

I remember all of it like it was yesterday. That day had been haunting me all day, every day for the last seven years. Was that why I was so determined to catch this guy? Maybe it was my father’s killer? Of course it wasn’t, he would have only been ten or eleven at max. And yet I felt a strange connection that he had to my dad’s death. Maybe I thought that giving this guy justice would help honor my dad for the justice that he never had in his murder.

Who was I kidding?

He wasn’t my father’s killer. Giving him justice wasn’t going to change the fact that my dad’s murderer is still on the loose. That didn’t mean that I shouldn’t give up on this one. Just because doing something wasn’t going to get me a personal reward didn’t mean that I shouldn’t do it. A little something called integrity.

“I don’t think you get how this goes, kid,” the other man joked. “You get what we want or we kill you.”

“I guess I didn’t get the memo,” black hoodie joked back, but with an edge in his tone.

My eyes had adjusted enough to see that he was reaching for his gun again. That exact gun that he had pointed at me not just once, but twice.

I could hear the crowd starting to count down the seconds to New Year’s. Had it really just been ten minutes ago that I had started following him? The time had been stretched out for hours in my mind.

“Sixty,” guns were brought out by all of them, two of them pointed at black hoodie.


“Fifty,” the crowd shouted.

“There’s a common ground that we could all agree on if we just try a little,” black hoodie tried to reason with them.

“Forty.”

The two men looked hesitant on killing someone. Probably because they didn’t have to do the dirty work for their ‘boss’. Black hoodie was just the one that they hired to do the dirty work.

“Thirty.”

They all looked at each other, waiting for someone, anyone to shoot. When no one did, black hoodie started to lower his gun. The two men started towards him, trying to catch him by surprise. Why didn’t they just kill him? Maybe they wanted him to live.

But it wasn’t going to be a problem for black hoodie to fight the two men off. Through a series of hard-to-follow kicks, punches and chops to certain body parts, he had the two men on the ground in seconds. The two men were moaning and groaning in pain. I watched in horror as he circled the two men.

The crowd got louder and louder as the time to the new year became closer and closer.

“Ten.”

They tried to get up again, but stumbled and fell again.

“Five.”

He pointed the gun towards them.

“Four.”

Clicked the safety off, like he hadn’t done for me.

“Three.”


Put finger on the trigger.

“Two.”

“It was nice working with you two,” he told them.

“One.”

Pulled the trigger.

Where there was supposed to be a ratcheting of a bullet, there was none because the cry of , “Happy New Year!” was screamed by everyone else in the city.

He had chosen the perfect time to shoot the men. No one would have heard the gunshot. Just like no one had noticed him inject the poison into the man’s neck back in time square. Enough time to get the hell out of there without anyone else noticing.

The garage fell dead silent.

A dense doom fell over me as I saw him crouch down by the bodies, as if figuring out what to do with the mess. Well, it looked like this new year wasn’t exactly starting out very happy.

My phone vibrated again, bouncing off the walls as a red flag waving that I was there.

With my shaking hand, I took it out to read the caller I.D. Most likely it was my mother or Jackie. Sure enough, it was Jackie that was calling. Probably wondering where the hell I was. As I answered it, to tell someone that I was probably going to die, the phone was snatched straight out of my hands. Black hoodie had flashed in front of me without me noticing him even walking over my way.

“I thought I told you not to follow me.”