Chapter 1
"Come on Kemi, I know you can hit harder than that." Said my brother, Danny.
"You try it." I said to him, wiping my forehead with my arm, "Yeah, take off that padded suit and see how hard I can hit."
I sunk down onto the padded mat in the huge house I lived in with the rest of... My friends.
I was sweating. Hard. Danny had just been 'coaching' me in the art of hand to hand combat, and his padded suit was too protective for my liking. So many hits and so little bruises. Not that I wanted to hurt my little brother, but I didn't think that a few hits would hurt him beyond repair.
"Get up Kemi. God, your stamina is terrible." He said.
"Shut up! We've been going at it for half an hour!" I got up and grabbed a bottle of water off the table in the basement.
In our house, we used the basement to train and practise. We needed to be at the top of our game.
After all, being a fugitive was tiring work.
Let's just stop there before you get the wrong idea. We didn't do anything wrong. Do you really need an explanation?
We all had a skill. A special skill that someone important wanted. Mine, for example, was hacking. Give me a computer and time and I could hack anything you wanted me to, might take a while if security was good, but I could do it. Cleanly too - no one would ever know they'd been hacked until it was too late. But what was the use of being a hacker when all it did was attract too much of the wrong attention and get me in tight spot after tight spot?
Danny was good with weapons, too good in some respects. Give him a peanut and he'd be able to turn it into a hand grenade. Not literally. Well maybe, we never tried. He was good with weapons, which made him a valuable asset in the wrong hands.
Then there was my sister, Lucia. She was perhaps one of the most valuable assets of all. Hey, a thirteen year old who excelled in weapons combat was hard to come by. She was wanted by everyone, good or bad. She looked all innocent until she pulled a gun out on you. It was a shock to whoever saw it, I can assure you. It would have been a brilliant skill if we hadn't had to spend 99% of the time running for our lives.
Then there were the others. So many skills in one place.
And then there was Smith.
Our sworn enemy and pet of the Italian's. He tracked down people like us just for fun, and then once we were where he wanted us, he'd pounce and take us for our skills. He'd use us like a tissue and then ship us off to the Italians for killing. It was like a business. And we were his most evasive targets.
Try as he might. He couldn't catch us. Trust me, he'd tried.
"Are you gonna hit or are we done here?" he asked.
"We're done." I grabbed a towel and wrapped it round my shoulders. I went upstairs and looked in the fridge. Empty.
I sighed
That was a big downside of being a fugitive.
"Who's going out for food?" I shouted.
"You." said Kris, in a bored tone.
Kris was the idiot of the group, continuously moaning and whining and groaning and complaining and threatening. He didn't know Smith like I did.
But Kris didn't like me. Or anyone else for that matter.
"Why don't you go get of your fat ass and go?" I asked.
"Because I went last time. Your turn. Get your brother to go with you if you're scared."
