MAIZE 2 Years Ago

"We have another job for you." The words arrived from a call just as they always did, and she answered in the same manner.

"Who's the mark?"

She was a well-off seasoned bounty hunter—the best. Anyone who thought otherwise quickly learned why. The mantle of the name Daiyu never once lost its reputation as one of the most primal bounty hunter's in the dark underground, even after she had taken it upon herself and continued to carry on its legacy.

"Not a who. A what. We want you to blow up the competition, the Levetti family's warehouse."

"This is Z's field," she dismissed sternly. "I don't do assassination."

"You have done it before."

Once. A casino owner in Mexico who abused his daughter.

But there had been others after that hadn't there.

"This is Z's field," she repeated.

Silence for a beat. "Very well. According to our watchman, the warehouse will be empty for another gathering two days from now. You will be cleared to eliminate it without casualty if that is so what you wish."

She nodded to herself once. "Consider it done then."

* * *

She brought about the mission on her own exactly 48 hours later, under the cover of darkness.

She had infiltrated the building without difficulty. She had diffused the alarm systems so her presence would not be caught either by motion or by camera. She had set the charges among the ground levels, knowing that once she was out, all it would take was one detonation to set the rest off and collapse the building. It was a simple operation, everything about it. It should have gone smoothly.

It would have. Had she not realized there was something unexpected waiting for her just as she perched along the garage rooftop, about to leave.

A child.

A little girl, no older than seven at most, and she was holding a toy stuffed dog cradled gently within her arms as careful as if it were alive and breathing as she skipped about the grassy area below. Was smiling to the dark, carefree to the shadows around her, and the danger.

They said it would be empty.

A man in a suit marched out of the building and Maize tensed, her hand automatically placed over the hilt of the daggers rested around her thigh. He came out of the building carried a pistol in the back of his jeans without care, as if it were the most natural thing to have. She only watched, ready to react at a moment's notice as he walked up to the girl.

"What are you doing out here? It's too late for you to be out," his voice carried up to her, tinged with aggravation.

"I was walking Pico," the girl said innocently, hugging the dog tight to her chest with a small laugh. Pico was made of fluff and fabric, and yet she treated it with care.

The man sighed and took the little girl's hand. "Come on then. Back to bed."

She followed. They both returned inside the building, left oblivious to the shadow watching the entire scene over them. Maize had gone cold.

They said it would be empty.

They said she would be cleared.

Maybe they didn't know? Bad intel. Someone made a mistake.

No mistake. They always knew.

A child. A little girl. No more innocent to the surroundings she had been given as Maize herself had once been. Most likely just the young daughter of one of the guards or even the Levetti family themselves. One day, who knew what she would turn into. But for the time being she was but a victim of ignorance and innocence.

Maize held the detonator in her hand with an iron grip, only clenching tighter. In a flash, she flipped the switch.

Not the switch to detonate, but the switch to kill. The charges set were deactivated. When they were eventually found by whoever routinely swept the area, they would not go off.

She had abandoned her mission.

* * *

Maize was met with the same man as before upon her return to their organization's currently stationed headquarters; a mansion set just off the coast of the main city, surrounded by more than a few archers of free-owned land. His face was set into a terse scowl as he watched her come to a cold stop before him. "You did not complete the job." He sounded like he was fighting to keep his tone calm.

"Your intel did not hold up."

The look he gave her was disbelieving. "Impossible. The security clearances were the exact ones used to disable."

"I was talking about the child," she stated evenly, her voice like steel. "There were still people in there. You lied to me."

"It was to satisfy your conscience to get what needed to be done, done! It does not matter what the circumstances were, you were given an order! You are expected to do as told!" he roared at her.

She didn't move. Didn't flinch. Her eyes were like ice but they burned with the heat of a thousand fires.

"Don't say that like I'm meant to be some obedient dog," she said quietly. "You do not own me. You never have. I do what I want, and it and always been my choice to work for you. Do not give me a reason to change it."

It was more of a promise than a threat. That was what she thought as she turned them and had walked away, thought to be done with the matter.

They turned it into a war.

A mere promise or not—a wild card with their own agenda that did not heed to every word and command of the hierarchy was just something the syndicate could not have. Maize didn't know she would be forced to see that soon. Until then, she was merely distracted by her own means.

It was a few days later when Z, the man who should and would have carried out the mission given to her, had returned.

"I heard what happened. The ranks aren't happy with you," he had said to her among his greeting.

Her response had been to roll her eyes. "I don't care whether they are happy or not. If they think they can manipulate me so easily to do the things they want, then they're wrong, and I made sure to let them know it."

"Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do," Azeal—his true name, while she was the only one to ever call him by a nicknamed letter—said to her softly, sitting beside her on top of the rooftop where they could see the skies from afar. "Sometimes we all have to make sacrifices, even if it may seem wrong, it's for the greater good."

She scoffed.

"These people gave me a home," he murmured to her softly. "They gave you one too. A place when we were both lost, a new purpose to serve even if it might not seem like the right things to the rest of the world. Don't you trust them?"

"I trust you," she had answered as a statement, and that was the end of it.

He had smiled then, content enough. And they had just continued to sit under the skies.

Days later she was given another mission. Something to repent for her misjudgement, as they had said. She hadn't liked it, and in response had merely demanded they hurry up and tell her who her next mark would be.

Several hours later she had already located her target, a gentleman waiting in a rather empty bar. She had waited atop the roof where she always stalked her targets until they came out. But something was wrong.

The air around her felt wrong, and she knew it.

That was when they had come. A dozen men carrying guns had all burst forward from the streets to shoot up at her. Two more came from behind.

She knew she had been set up.

They didn't bother with masks—they didn't intend for her to live long enough to care if she recognized them. Men from the syndicate themselves.

Maize had survived only because they had been too cocky, because they had thought their heavy gunpowder outweighed her skill and intelligence. The miscalculation had cost them, but even she had not been left unscathed.

Ignoring the blood running down her arm from the bullet wound and another threatening immense amounts of blood loss from her left side, she stood over the last man left awake. Her gaze burned past her pain as she stomped a foot over the hand that had been trying to reach feebly for the gun just out of reach. He groaned in pain as she applied harsh pressure to the wrist, threatening to shatter the bone, she leaned down.

"Why did they send you?" She demanded quietly, her voice but a vicious whisper in the night.

The man continued to shake under the pain she forced into his arm, but somehow, he managed a smile before succumbing to unconsciousness. "It was just orders."

Since that night, Maize had not returned to the syndicate. She had not been seen by anyone who knew of her. She had gone off the radar.

Years. She had done their work for years. And finally they had decided that they could no longer stand to risk having someone that did not bend to their will involved in their ranks—someone with too much information to just let go.

They had tried to kill her.

They would try again, most likely, once they realized they had failed.

She was an idiot. Foolish. Not only should she had seen it coming—she should have opened her eyes to what the syndicate really was; nothing more than a criminal family of violence.

Well her eyes were open now. They had forced it upon her.

And she would be the one to make them see, that they would regret ever turning on her.