Look out for the <>!

I held a gun in my hand. It felt heavy, like it was weighing me down. I turned it around in my hand absent mindedly as I walked down an empty hall. I was looking for something important or at least my boss told me so. I turned down another hall. I heard a noise from behind me and I pulled my gun up to shoulder length, ready to defend myself at a moments notice, as if the gun would defend me. I looked behind myself to see nothing. My mind was playing tricks on me. It had been doing that more often recently. I knew that no one was down this hall at 7:30 AM except me. 

I stopped in front of a shelf with a barcode and let my finger hit the trigger. The gun shot out a red laser as it made a loud beeping noise signaling that the item on the shelf had been scanned. Item found. I picked up the bagged shirt and stuffed it into my bag, ready to go on my next assignment.

I had been working at the warehouse for a total of two weeks and I already hated it. I had to make friends, listen to people boss me around that couldn't even do their own job right, and be cheerful without talking back. I hated every second I spent here.

"Hey Mila!" a girl said from down the hall.

I knew that voice. I hated her the most. I turned to face her with a fake smile. Here we go again. It was only 7:30 and I already wanted to go home. "Hey Kelly!"

This was one of the girls that could be related to the people that confronted me in the alley. Mycroft said that it was my job to find out if she really was related or working for Moriarty. I hadn't had time to really get to know here but I couldn't stand her when I was around her. She walked around like she owned this place, and I was less than she was. 

She walked over to me, her face filled with so many piercings it was hard to count them all. She smiled at me but it looked almost like a grimace. She pulled up her selves of her shirt to reveal just as many tattoos as piercings. "Paula told me that you had to train me today with what you are doing." She said to me, slightly out of breath. She was really trying to catch up with me.  She was not that fit, I wasn't walking fast.

I just prayed that I didn't loose it in front of her. Maybe today was the day I would get information from her. Maybe today was my last day here on the job. If that was the case I could keep it together. "Oh she did?" I asked as I put another item into the bag that was draped across my shoulder.

"Yeah, I don't know what do to with this," she said and held up her gun, almost dropping it in the process.

I held back a frown that was threatening to show. It was going to be a long day. "Ok, I'll show you what to do." I dove into conversation about how to work the gun and what to do if the item you wanted to get was not there. As she caught on I had time to talk to her.

I leaned on a shelf casually as I watched her attempt to scan the gun. It was clear that she had never held a gun before, not even an expert could fake her stupidity. "What time do you wake up in the morning?" I asked as she looked for an item that was far back on the shelf.

"I wake up at 3:30."

I yawned, just thinking about it made me tired. "That is awful. Why so early?" I asked, trying to find out more about her. I knew she had a boyfriend that worked here but she also spent a lot of time with one of the supervisors. I knew they were friends, but I wanted to find out more about the whole thing.

"Because I get a ride to work and my ride needs to be here by 4:30 instead of 5."

"Oh you do? What does your ride do?"

She smiled at me as if it was a funny joke. "I can't tell because of a probability of losing my job and hers."

She wasn't going to spill that easy. I should have figured that. She must come to work with the supervisor she seems to hang around. But I needed to make sure. "Cool. Well I don't think I could come to work that early. That's why I'm not going to become a supervisor here." Talking to her here made it clear that she was not smart enough to work for Moriarty. She was barely smart enough to work here. But what was her connection to the person in the alley?

"You know leads have to go in that early as well."

I raised my eyebrows at her. She was giving me a well of information and she wasn't even aware of it. This ride was not a supervisor, they were a lead. I thought back to all the leads that I saw her talk to. One stood out in my mind, she was a red hair, like me. I didn't know her name but she always smelt heavy of smoke but then again Kelly always did as well. "How long have you known this lead?"

She smiled again. This was all a joke to her. I felt like shouting at her and telling her the truth in why I need to know this information. Mycroft told me I couldn't say anything so I kept my mouth shut. "I can't say that either."

I frowned at her. "Well, have you known her for a long time or a short time?"

"A long time."

"Like how long? Grade school long?"

She smiled again at me. "Let's just stop there."

So longer than that. They had to be family friends or family. I needed to act like this was a normal conversation, but I felt my heart racing. In just a few minutes I had found out so much. "So do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"I have a brother and sister."

"Are you guys close?"

"I am close to my sister. I would like to say I am close to my brother but that is a lie. He is always traveling. It's hard to make time to catch up," she said and shrugged. "I still see him at family gatherings but my sister is closer to him than I am. He thinks I'm a black sheep of the family, from the way I look."

Well, I'm not surprised there. If the red haired lady and here were sister, she looked pretty different than her sister. I thought about the red haired lady and paid attention to her face features. I shook my head, I couldn't picture her at this moment. I frowned, how could I be so stupid? Loosing Kale made me sloppy. I was missing the small details in everything now.

At Mycroft's office when he gave me this job, something flipped off in me. I knew that to go farther I had to dull my senses so I wasn't constantly crushed by the memory of Kale. But that made me blind. I was starting to see it now. I was the problem, I was the reason why I had been working here so long. I wasn't finding out the information like I should.

I was silent for a few minutes until I looked at the clock on the wall. I picked up my gun that I put on a shelf and said, "Ready to go back upstairs? It's almost break."

"Yeah, sure," she shrugged and followed me out of the hall back to upstairs to get our lunch.

When we got back up I looked at the ginger woman. I looked harder at her then I ever had in the past. There was something missing from picture. How could they be related, one had black hair and the other red. Maybe cousins. I watched Kelly walk up to this girl and they smiled about something. And just like that my switch got flipped back on. Their smiles were the same, the same shape of head was the same. They looked completely different but they also looked so much alike. They were sisters.

I pulled out my phone to tell Mycroft this news but someone distracted me. "Hey, you ready for lunch?" a girl asked as she came up to me. She smiled brightly at me as if there was nothing in the world that could go wrong. For some reason she picked me to befriend out of everyone here. I had no idea why, after all I wasn't the most friendliest person. But I enjoyed her friendship. Her smile made me believe that everything was still alright in the world.

I smiled at her. "Of course," I said as I put my phone back into my pocket. This call could wait a little longer. I followed her to the break room so ready for some lunch that Sherlock made me the night before.

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"Kelly and the red head are sisters. They are immigrants from eastern Europe and I think they lived in America for a while. That's why you do not have much information on them. They also have a brother. I saw of photo of him today and I know that is the one that held me up in the alley," I said over the phone to Mycroft.

"How sure are you?"

"90%" I said as I walked at a fast pace to get back home. It was cold and rainy and my green sneakers were now soaked. I just wanted to change and have a cup of hot tea. "I want to know what Moriarty has to do with them, why did he hire them?"

"They are random, not connected at all to him."

I rolled my eyes. That was a lie. Why would he want me to follow them if they were not connected? I wasn't that stupid. "Do you think they know where he is?"

"I'm going to find out one way or another. Just do not make any rash decisions," Mycroft said to me.

"I'll try not to," I said and hung up the phone.

"Aurora, I think it's time to meet face to face again," a voice said from behind me that made my skin crawl. As if I could forget it. Moriarty. I turned to face him. He was wearing a ball cap that had some American baseball team on it to shield him from the street cameras.

Fear shook over me as I remembered holding Kale in the warehouse. He looked so amused as I cried over his dead body. He was a monster. "Don't touch me," I threatened him as I took a step back from him. I held my hands in a fist ready to attack at a moment's notice.

He laughed as if something was funny. "You know, dear Rori, it's time to use you in my plan. Ever wondered why I kept you alive?" He quickly took something from his pocket and jabbed it into my arm. Before I could react, I was out.