CLEANERS

Prologue

"Come on Cassie focus!" My adopted father Harvey said to me as he stood aside coaching me to hit the punching bag.

"I am focus." I panted trying to keep my eyes on the bag to land some punches.

"That's not focusing, you're barely hitting the bag." He responded. "Focus! Come on, tighten your fist! More effort. Hit it harder!"

"I don't want to do this anymore!" I screamed throwing my hands up in frustration as I quit punching the bag. "I'm tired. I don't get why it's so important for me to learn how to punch a stupid bag anyway."

"It is important that you learn to punch that bag because one day it's going to be apart of your job, you need to learn how to fight. You have to learn how to do this for when you're old enough to start going on missions " Harvey said to me.

"But why?" I asked him pouting. "Why is it so important that I have to learn all these things and do the same works you do? What about what I want? What if I don't want to be a cleaner's double agent or whatever when I get older?"

"Have you forgotten the real reason you're here Cassie?" Harvey asked me. "What have they taught all of you here?"

"That we're here to make a difference in society." I recited the line I've been hearing for the past ten years of my life.

"What else?" Harvey pushed.

"We weren't as fortunate as normal kids that were born to both parents by choice and out of love. We are products and victims of the wickedness and cruelty of mankind. Our mothers were victims of crime- human trafficking and it's our job to make sure the same thing doesn't continue to happen. It's our job to try get rid of all the persons who organized and support these group of criminals, we're to always try to protect the innocents and make our country a better place." I recited the mission statement we've been told ever since we could understand what words are.

The Cleaners organization was somewhat like a home for us and a boarding school. Most of us who were being trained here are children who were rescued from being with drug addict parents, sold illegally or were products of women who had been trafficked as sex slaves; I was one of those kids.

My mother was trafficked when she was 18 years old by some mob, she has been sold into prostitution and by the time she was twenty she got pregnant with me. She was sold into a form of slavery so she hadn't any contact with the outside world to seek any help for years, but somehow she had managed to get in contact with her sister Laura-my now adopted mother- and informed her about me and her whereabouts. By the time help had came and law enforcers had the building surrounded, there was a shoot out and some persons were caught in the cross fires.

Unfortunately, my mother was one of the persons who had gotten shot. She was seven months pregnant with me at the time and by the time they got the chance to rush her to get medical attention, she was already in extremely critical conditions. They had performed an emergency c-section to see if they could save me and tried to operate on her as well to save her but it was too late, she died while I was lucky enough to survive.

Being born premature, I was in an incubator for two months before I was placed in the care of my family. It was just Laura- my mother's younger sister- and my grandma, they adopted me and I grew calling both my aunt and grandma, mom.

As a result of what had happened, Laura and my grandma joined the newly formed secret organization called The cleaners in order to help make sure that nothing like this would happen again. The organization recruited persons who had been victims and lost love ones due to criminal activities as well as human trafficking. Orphans who had also been thrown away had been rescued and brought here. Most of the members were employed as Police, CIA, FBI, bodyguards and securities as a disguise. Others such as the teens and young adults were used as agents who gathered information-spies. Cleaner's organization was disguised as a home or boarding school for underprivileged children of all ages. They taught us all we needed to know just like a normal public school would but the difference was that we were also trained to be fighters, spies and every other skills we needed to officially become a Cleaner. Because I was the family of cleaners' members and staff, I was fortunate to be allowed to grow up at home with mom (Laura) and my grandmother (Rosina) unlike others who lived and grew up at the organization home. However, once I was six years old they had me officially enrolled and boarded here to start my training.