The One

Prologue

The tip of the black sniper sneaks its way through the branches, careful not to be seen out the other way. A piercing blue eye levels itself to the scope of the gun, unwavering. She places a finger on the trigger, her hands still, her breathing shallow. Through the scope, she sees the man: tall, lean, black hair tousled. He sits on a bench, reading a book, well away from the tree Anastasiya was crouched in. That bastard.

She breathes in, preparing for the shot.

She angles the gun, making sure the bullet would go straight through his head.

She pulls the trigger without hesitation. And bam. The man is dead. 

In her defense, the man was dead the moment he killed a whole family a few months ago.

Sitting there reading his book, casual after what he had done. 

Ana had gotten a call a month ago from a relative of the Wilkinson's family saying that they had been murdered by a man by the name of Charles Royet. Ana had tracked the man down, had his regular schedule memorized, and picked a day to kill him in under four weeks. On the afternoon of July 21st, Charles Richard Royet was dead, a bullet to the head. 

Straight through, the police had said. A sort of signature mark left by an unknown assassin they called Headshot. If they hadn't left so many dead bodies in their trial, one could think that the assassin was not even real. Their gender, age, and name were unknown. They left no fingerprints, no hairs, no clues that they were even there except for the dead victim, with a bullet to the head. 

Or piercing some sort of important vein Ana doesn't have time to remember, letting the victim bleed out, dying a slow painful death, upon request. Of course, that would mean an extra payment. Assassinating people isn't easy, but it is an easy way to make money. Desperate people come, their spouses, relatives,  or friends murdered, begging people like Ana to track the killer and take them out. The predator becomes the prey, she likes to say. 

This is what the world had become after a genocide murder of the people of Glassvale, a whole country. Only a few Glass people were left in the world and the ones that were not brutally injured became assassins.

Ana was one of them.  

Assassins and bounty hunters rose up, not just from Glassvale, making organizations and cults to kill anyone who was involved in the killing. The main source of the murderers was from an opposing country, that they had been fighting with for years: Rellion. The Rells, now called the Rebels, bombed and burned Glassvale until it was a crisp, buildings and bodies askew everywhere.

Most people stopped after killing almost all the perpetrators who massacred the country's population but Ana didn't. She secretly loved the killing, loved revenge and vengeance. She never told anyone this. Granted she had no one to tell, but if she did she wouldn't have said anything about it. Her family, friends, and lover were all killed and even after most of the people responsible were dead she still could not move on. 

No matter how many people she killed, how many lives she destroyed, that hole in her heart, the emptiness, could never be filled.