Nevermore (Prologue)
#1 of Nevermore
I don't hate my life, I hate myself. The first thing that they tell you when you get to Central City is that you will have to make some tough choices if you want to survive. What they don't tell you, is you have to live with them. They fail to mention the guilt, depression, self loathing, laying awake all night cause you can't get the voices of the innocent out of your head, their memory clawing at the inside of your skull till you scream. I came to this hell-hole at age 16. The war killed my family, slaughtered my father and brother, raped my mother and sister. I'll never forget the look in her 10 year old eyes as she cried and bled, when she mouthed the word "Run". In a way she saved my life. I ran and walked the 300 miles to Central. The day I got here, I thought my troubles were over. I had been within city limits two hours when a man forced me into an alley and raped me. You learn rule number one in Central City fast, don't feel a thing, if you do, you won't last long. Laying there in the alley, in the oil, filth, and garbage; violated and shattered, I let my emotions die. Of all people to help me up, a homeless man walked by and found me, beaten and half naked. He put his smelly, but warm coat around me, and walked me the mile to a homeless shelter. They gave me food and a bed to sleep in, not that I used it. I laid awake all night, keeping watch for anyone to try to have at me again.
It wasn't but three days later that I killed someone for the first time. I stood there over the man, he wouldn't just hand over the money. I looked down at the blood on my hands, shive still embedded in his eye-socket. I wanted to feel ashamed, scared, worried, anything, but instead I just took his wallet. I opened it up and the first thing I saw was a the man with is wife and two cubs, all gathered around a Christmas tree, smiling. I still felt nothing for this man, for his children that would never see daddy again, for the mother that would now have to raise them on her own. I felt nothing. I left the man there, don't know what happened to him.
After a year of hell, clawing my way up from starvation only to fall back into it, a man named Joshua gave me a hand up. He passed me sitting on a park bench, and after getting my attention asked me one question, "You hungry?" I looked him right in the eyes, he was so much stronger than I was, he could have killed me easily, but I still dared him, and didn't respond. He told me later that it was because of the hollow shell that those eyes revealed, that he knew I was right for this job. I've been with the Ravens ever since, we kill, steal, whatever the job is. Whatever it is that you need we can get it done, as long as you have the coin to cover it that is. My name is Tessa, I have no soul, it died long ago, and I'm better off without it.