The sun beat down hard, but none of its efforts could be vouched for from the alley where I, Rose Gleeson, was stood.

      I always took the back streets home from school. It was habit now, feet knowing where I was before my head.

      There was a certain safety about the shadows that people like me clung to.

      Passing between my feet were the same stone tiles with the same chips in the corners or cracks through the middle. Every square of grey was unique, but I knew them all. Some of them, I knew to the grain, because I'd had the pleasure of seeing them from multiple angles - hanging upside down above them by my ankles; lying face down on top of them; crouched low over them, blood dripping from my mouth.

      There was always something happening in the alleyways, which was perhaps my favourite thing about them.

      Today was no different.

      Everyone had their favourite passages, so knowing who was going to be where, and when, came pretty easily. Especially to someone who had motive to learn. For example, Cora MacRory took the street perpendicular to the one I was crouched in every Tuesday between two pm and five minutes past, reaching the space ahead of me, where hers crossed mine, between two thirty pm and two thirty-five.

      I glanced at my watch - two twenty - my body already itching to move. Ten minutes, I told myself, control yourself for just ten more minutes.

      I always made an effort to be early, and yet I never knew how to pass the time.

      Perhaps you find that funny, how I suppose I caused my own suffering. It was no light amount of suffering, either, to remain still for so long with anticipation crawling up your body and scratching to get out from beneath your skin.

      As the seconds ticked by, I started to wonder if I had been wrong to turn down The Crimson Masquerader's offer of partnership. It would have been interesting, certainly, but I worked alone.

      I had time, so I double checked the alley to make sure all tracks were hidden - though of course they were - and search once more for anything that my help.

      The most surprising part of my search was that I actually found something I hadn't seen the first time round. A box.

      Such a silly little thing to get distracted by, right? Wrong. Very, very wrong. In my line of work, you notice everything or you potentially allow someone to notice you, which can prove deadly.

      Take Matilda O'Hea for example; a young girl brought into the craft from birth, full head to toe with hard training and expert skill. The story goes that one day, the people after her planted a pebble camera in each of her most visited passes, moving them along the path they tracked weekly until they had the exact location of her living quarters. By the next morning, she was dead.

      Bedtime horror stories were my favourite. They always told you exactly what not to do, and when put together, showed you exactly what to do.

      Stepping closer to the box, I was careful not to touch it as I placed one knee down on the grey tiles and one hand against the rough brick wall beside me. For a moment, I thought it must have been the work of The Crimson Masquerader - a joke to see if I'll trip - because the box is one I recognised.

      I knew everything about that hollow box with holes of different shapes in five sides, a lid and handle on the sixth. I was familiar with the crack running alongside the duck shaped hole and the chip in the corner between the lid, the numbers, and the regular shapes.

      A child's toy, by any other name. Except that time, the child had been me.

      An amateur would be caught off guard. I was simply momentarily confused. I had time to investigate, so I picked up the toy with loose fingers at arm's length, as though it was an animal of strong scent. There was no denying it was the same one from my past, that the hollow plastic pieces lining the wall were the same ones my chubby little hands had spent hours pushing through the holes.

      For old times' sake, I suppose, I picked up the one closest to me. The yellow duck sat in my hand as though it had never left. I allowed myself a small smile at the memory of simpler times, before pushing it through the matching hole in the box and watching it sit in the middle, trapped until someone opened the lid.

      I told myself it was only because I had time to spare, but soon I had followed their line along the base of the wall and each of them resided within the box that taunted them with so many ways out that they just couldn't fit through.

      Last, but not least, was the blue diamond. As soon as it passed into the box, the edges of every hole glowed blue.

      That had never happened during my childhood.

      Shadows cast with halos of blue light moved along the wall. It didn't scare me though; the only problem was the beacon of my whereabouts that it was emitting.

      Everything I loved was shadows.

      The sun was still beating down hard from above, still fighting its way into the alley that I trusted would forever reject it.

      Soft, padding footsteps floated down the passage towards me from behind. I was hidden enough behind a stack of old palettes that I didn't panic. Fur black as night, the cat's yellow eyes glowed in the cover of darkness.

      My eyes tracked the waving tail until it disappeared behind the corner ahead of me. And that was when I saw the second shadow sharing my alley.

      "Rose."

      I froze. That voice belonged to nightmares. I stayed hidden to begin with, assuming it had been a guess that I'd be there and little more. If The Shadow Killer couldn't see me, I wasn't there.

      "I know you're there."

      A commonly used bluff. I hadn't fallen for it before nor would I fall for it then.

      "Thank you for tidying up after me. My Dad tells me I was always leaving my toys lying around like that."

      Stupid. I'd been so stupid. Of course it had been part of the plan. 'Never serve your curiosity', wasn't that what Crown had spent the last ten years teaching me? I owed so much of my existence to Crown that, in that moment, I felt my heart collapse. I'd failed.

      "Cora's not coming."

      That was the final straw. Pushing my thin, shapeless body behind the stack of palettes, I snuck across the wall, feeling for the clip in my sleeve, flicking it open and grabbing the hilt of the knife that slid down my forearm.

      "How did you know?" My voice shook but no one would ever find out. He wouldn't live long enough to tell anyone.

      It was a pleasure to have the chance to take down The Shadow Killer.

      "You told me." Not the response I'd expected. "Don't act like I betrayed you or ruined your life - I just saved hers. Now I'm offering you a chance to have your own soul saved."

      I stayed in the shadows, biding my time, working closer. Taking a second to peek through the slits in the wood, my eyes swallow the image of the blonde angel with eyes like a summer sky.

      "You've used other identities before. You can do that today. Leave Rose Gleason behind and become someone else. Your soul deserves it."

      The blue glow of the childhood toy mocks me from halfway back down the alley, pictures of black painted on the walls, flickering, edges drawn in blue.

      "Does Cora deserve to die? Or are you just following orders?"

      Of course she deserved to die! That was why I'd been given the orders. Crown didn't make mistakes. Crown was never wrong. If Crown decided Cora was bad news, then she was. She was a rookie with a twisted heart, believing she could change the world one pebble camera at a time.

      Whatever Crown's reasons, word on the street said she honestly believed dreams really could come true if only you worked for them and had faith.

      Faith had abandoned me.

      Power and control raised me from nothing to everything.

      Girls like Cora McRory were too stubborn to be retaught right from wrong. So they were taken out.

      "You don't have to follow orders anymore. I can give you a way out."

      I didn't have to? Of course I had to. There was no 'way out' even if I had once wanted such a thing.

      "You don't have to hide in the shadows anymore. You can be who you are at school."

      School was different. At school, everyone judged everyone so it didn't matter who I was. I could be me, I could be my opposite, I was always going to be a student in a class in a year group and therefore a target. Life wasn't like school. School kept the lights on. Life was real.

      Besides, I rather liked the shadows.

      "I'm offering you freedom. You don't need to keep hiding anymore."

      But I wasn't just hiding. In my alleyways, I had complete control over every possible scenario. I was never scared in the backstreets with a knife up my sleeve.

      "Come out of the shadows, Rose."

      He didn't understand. I wasn't just in the shadows. I was a shadow.

      Everyone Crown had trained and gifted to the world was a shadow. The Shadow Killer didn't even understand his own name. He didn't understand what he was up against. Being the light in the darkness, the angel with the blue glow in his eyes, was not a strength.

      Weak shadows were burnt away with light. Strong shadows swallowed the light whole.

      "Or should I call you Saorise? Siobhan maybe? You've been through enough names now. It's time to settle down."

      Settling down was not my style.

      "Keren came with us."

      Breathe.
     
      Keren had been my role model since I was a child. She'd been the best assassin those streets had ever known. Anyone who crossed paths with her was found dead moments later and anyone who tried to find her had better luck chasing a ghost.

      One day, she'd vanished. Completely. No one on Aenoxis had any clue as to her location.

      Eventually, word got around that The Shadow Killer had cut her through and buried her. A body not found was a body to keep an eye out for, but two years off the grid had everyone letting their guard down.

      Keren was dead. Simple.

      "I don't kill people. I rehabilitate them. Give them a shot at a new life."

      I didn't want a new life. I loved the life I had. If Keren really had switched sides then she was weaker than I thought.

      And then I was behind him, staring at the tidy blonde mop the Cleaners would use to soak up his blood from the tiles.

      "Rose, please. Come with me."

      "No." And then I struck forward, my knife finding his heart through the back of his ribcage.

•~~~•~~~•~~~•

      Crown greeted me in person that night. The next, Cora McRory was found dead beside Little Boy Blue with the golden hair.