*originally posted @ Cradle of Cicadas (my Creative Writiing blog @ wordpress)*

We are the enemy. The enemy is us.

A mother shrieked the dawn, running hard, not because of her son, but because her daughter was war now.

"Stay back, Tanya! Stay back, don't come any closer!"

The guards grabbed the sobbing, screaming woman out of the air she swifted in on and it took both of them to hold her back. Tanya clawed out.

"Stop them! Stop them! Persius--stop 'em!"

He couldn't afford to be distracted, not while C.I.'s latest assassin was slicing through what was left of their guards. A point on bullet from Cally's gun knocked the short sword out of her grasp.

So she started tearing through them, the strength of three of their most competent and burly guards in her hands. She would've left them for dead, but those dead brown eyes were pinned on him. She settled for cutting a swath through the guards, breaking limbs and blowing them in the chest with fist and palm.

Damn! was written all over Percy's face as he backed up. This ain't right. This ain't natural, that look said in wide-eyed fear underneath all that still steady calm. But calm can crack and Percy and a few other people were meeting their limit.

"Stay back, Tanya!" Rochelle yelled. She held a knife in one hand and lead pipe in the other one. She gave Persius a sympathetic glance. The assassin was going to have to get pretty close to him for the kill, unless laser beams shot out of her eyes. Then Rochelle would make her move. If none of their people could make the shot, then she'd do it for them. Mostly for Percy, seeing as how this one was going for him this time.

"Rochelle!" Tanya screamed, straining. "Don't let 'em kill my baby! That's my Kayla!"

The shot rang out. The only one who would remember the sound in the silence more vividly than anyone else was the guard who fired it.

The bullet struck Tanya's child in the forehead without exit. She stumbled forward gaze still locked on Persius. She took a few forced steps before dropping to the ground. She did not move again lying there looking like the child she was rather than the assassin they had to put down.

Her entire body jerking as if the bullet had hit her, Tanya snapped and wailed raggedly falling to her knees and taking the guards with her. She cried out for her child, maybe to God, asking why wordlessly.

Morning had been coming the whole time. The camp was waking up, as if Tanya's voice called their souls from sleep where all the noise had not. All across the dirt road slums that was a fading expanse of what had once been city, people appeared from their beds, from the security of their dwellings.

Lowering the knife and the pipe, Rochelle came out of fighting stance.

They had succeeded in ending one life today even if it wasn't the one they wanted. They could've gotten their target.

The only mistake  they made was in assuming dick was the leader around here.