NOVEL WEB Chapter 1: New Beginnings. (Part One.)
Chapter 1: New Beginnings. (Part One.)
This is a completely and wholly empty void… Well, at least I think it’s completely empty. And since I am the only one present in said endless void, my opinion is the only one that matter’s here.
Rambling aside and back to the matter at hand, currently, all I see is deep darkness surrounding me on all sides. To be fair, I can’t open my eyes at all so, this void as I like to call it, could be just because I can’t see anything but, it feels far different from just having my eyes closed.
Is this what it feels like to be in your mother’s womb? If so then, I have to praise unborn babies for their bravery since this dark void feels comforting as well as absolutely terrifying, to say the least.
I don’t know how long that I have been stuck in this empty void so, I decided to think about what happened to me before I ended up in this “place” if you could even call such a void a place.
I don’t think this place even exists since, to my knowledge I should have long been dead already. Huh? How did I die you ask? Well, imaginary person in my head whom I created to stave off me going insane from the loneliness, I’ll tell you exactly how I met my “end” or at least one of my ends.
My life was pretty plain all things considered, at least up until a decision that I made. Before I made said decision, I was a rich kid. I was an only child but, I never did receive love from my parents.
The only one ever always present in my life was my father. No woman of his would ever stick around for more than a few weeks. Thankfully, he wasn’t an abusive man to me or any of the women whom he had flings with.
When he met a beautiful woman, he would say to them that they were destined to be together. I've heard basically the same story from every one of them.
That always ended up being a lie since he would tire of them and their bodies after only a week or two. He would send them off with enough money that they would never have to work again in their lives as payment or maybe some kind of sweet but twisted recompense.
With how cold he was to his lovers, it’s obvious that I received no love from him at all. All I got was his money, granted it was a lot of money. He was a hedge fund manager or more accurately he managed a lot of hedge funds. He was practically always swimming in money.
For a reason that I never did understand, I was never allowed friends. The only people that I could talk to was his temp lovers at the time. I did have maids to tend to me but, they were told not to get close to me at all.
I can only assume that due to this corrupted form of child rearing, it made me a really cold and closed off person.
I spent 17 years living my life exactly how he wanted me to, completely alone and closed off from the wider world outside of our luxurious house that was far too big to house a family of two and 10 servants.
During those 17 years, I never once went against him or acted out but, when I turned 18, I had gone behind his back and joined the US military.
Perhaps I did it to try to get his attention or at least his ire but instead of getting mad at me, he just agreed to me joining the military in a cold tone like always.
Maybe he was happy to not have his daughter get in the way of him wooing a new woman every week, or something like that.
At that time, I think that I wanted him to tell me not to go and that he would miss me but, although I was already an adult at that point I still expected too much from the cold man whose coldness is so very similar to my own.
The last thing I heard him say before I left was what my name was. Damn nearly 18 years without a name. I was always just called “My lady” by the maids. I was aware that me not having something as basic as a name was odd but, I never questioned my father about it.
As for the name he gave me, I think that he came up with it on the spot. Lilith was the name that he so graciously gave me. I pretended not to notice that his last lover was also named Lilith, and “thanked” him without any enthusiasm at all, then I left. I didn't have to head to boot camp so early but, I just wanted to get away from him at all costs.
I was far too prideful to just back out of joining so, that’s exactly what I did. Boot camp was laughably easy, I finished it in only 12 days. Boot camp usually takes a little over two months to either pass or fail it.
I was passed with flying colors and immediately sent off to my assigned post. Although I wasn’t ever informed who it was but, some higher up ended my boot camp early since in their words “It would be a waste to not have in the field.” Is what I was informed that they said.
The post that I was assigned isn’t important since it also did not last long at all. It lasted four months to be exact.
I was reassigned to a special group. It was the last ever post that I took. This group that I was a part of was a special black ops unit in the US military.
It was so secret even I didn’t know what the name of the unit even was. Hell, I doubt even the leader knew the name either. As for me, I was the best of the best in the unit, I could have easily taken the leader position but, I drastically preferred fieldwork.
Because of that, I was always given the hardest and craziest assignments available all over the world and, I, of course, always completed every one of them perfectly.
One such assignment or more accurately the last assignment I ever did, landed me in some barren and unnamed part of Africa.
The assignment was the assassination of an African warlord who had gotten his blood stained hands on some nukes. I did say he had blood stained hands but, to be fair, my hands are stained in blood as well.
Actually, they were basically drenched in blood. I probably have more blood on my hands than he did but, at least I didn’t turn children into soldiers and killed the children who didn’t want to become a disposable child soldier. Plus, I haven’t ever killed anyone who could be considered good anyway.
Though how he got those nukes, I never did figure out but, his compound wasn’t that guarded at all. Only 30 practically untrained soldiers waving around cheap off brand AKs.
There were eight child soldiers in the base but, killing children is the one thing I would never do, I mean, I might have been basically a hired killer for the US government but, those children were between 4 and 9 years old. Practically babies barely out of their diapers.
They are far too young for me to even consider killing them at all. Some of them were even fielding guns that were bigger than themselves.
How they expected these kids to even fight like that, I have no idea. Maybe it was just a deterrent? Regardless I’m done rambling, due to the fact that most of them were drugged by the gunpowder that those bastard soldiers hid in their food, it was a cakewalk to quietly disarm and knock them out since, because of the drugs, they were basically mindless drones.
I could look a man dead in the eyes and kill him without feeling a thing at all but, having to hurt children truly pained my heart. At least it’s far better than killing them, though.
Since the children were out of the way, I was able to end the stealth portion of the operation. It only took me 15 minutes to kill all of the soldiers guarding the base.
The oddity of such a small guard detail that was supposed to be protecting nukes wasn’t lost on me so, I was even more focused than usual. I had made my way to the location where the intel said the nukes were located at.
In a room just as shabby as the rest of the compound, there were just two weapons grade cases on a table which I assumed was containing the nukes. As I approached the cases, 12 masked me broke through the walls, and stormed my position, immediately raining fire at me.
Unlike those guards outside, these 12 were pretty skilled. I say “were” because it only took me six minutes to kill them all, though, I lost one of my eyes in return.
Perhaps due to my success rate and how I’ve never been injured this badly before, I didn’t take any medical supplies with me. I had gotten far too overconfident it seemed.
I went to a few of the bathrooms and luckily there was an old but unopened medkit. I used some gauze to cover my eye that I took from it as well as chugged down some painkillers.
Then I went back to the room with the nukes, picked them up, and left the compound. I didn’t properly treat my wound because I had a nagging feeling that it would be pointless even if I did. I mean, there wasn’t even a warlord here in the first place. Lots of my intel was completely wrong too.
I had left the area on a getaway boat fortunately, I had a driver to take me back to base otherwise, it’d be pretty hard to drive the boat with just one eye. I know it’s possible but, I didn’t get the chance to get used to having half of my vision missing. The driver insisted on treating my wound but, I brushed him off and ordered him to drive.
After I got back to base and carefully “dropped” off the nukes, I was informed that the leader of my unit wanted to see me.
I made my way to his office with a heavy heart since, I had a feeling something not fun was going to happen. My wound hurting like hell certainly didn’t help either. As I made my way there, I notice the lack of other military personnel the closer that I got to his office.
My birthday was the day before that assignment. I turned 34, I spent so many years of my life in this secret unit, I honestly can barely remember not being a soldier.
Although I wasn’t much of a normal civilian in the first place. Never once did my father ever call me. Not once. I’m a very spiteful person so, even if I die today, I’d like to lay a trap for the one who killed me so, I did something that I haven’t done in years. I called my father.
Lilith: “Father? It’s me, Lilith.” I say in a deadpan tone.
Father: “Who?… Ah, I did have a daughter with that name.” The man said in a similar deadpan tone.
Lilith: “That’s right. I joined the military a decent number of years ago.” I say with a continued deadpan tone.
Father: “I know that I am a cold man but, it honestly just slipped my mind. Please don’t take it to heart. I did try to contact you to no avail. From my investigation, you joined a black ops group in the military, right?” He said with no real emotion in his voice.
Lilith: “Also correct.” I say with a cold tone.
Father: “And? What have you called me for? I do hope it’s important.” He said with a slightly annoyed tone. Maybe I interrupted a “comfort” session with a lover of his?
Lilith: “It’s nothing special father but, it won’t take long.” I say with a sigh.
Father: “Then speak.” He says with a gruff.
Lilith: “I was set up. In my last assignment, I was supposed to die but, I didn’t. The one who I think is responsible just called me into his office. I can only assume that he will finish the job and I can’t be bothered to stop him.” I said with an angry tone.
Father: “You’ve never asked me for anything at all. Not even a name. And yet, the first thing you have asked me to give you is for me to avenge you?” He said with an uncharacteristic sad tone.
Lilith: “Is that a no then? I wasn’t holding on too much hope that you would but, I at least wanted to say goodbye.” I say with a slightly sad tone.
Father: “It… It shall be done. No matter how much money I have to spend, your killer will suffer until their final breath.” He said with an angry tone.
Lilith: “That’s all I ask for. Goodbye, Father.” I say in a slightly happy tone before hanging up the phone.
I don’t love him but, nor do I hate him. I had a feeling that he was going to try to plead with me to survive which was very unlike him.
I couldn’t let that happen, he can’t act like a father at the last minute. Besides, I don’t want to live much longer anyway. I’ve never really had a reason to live in the first place after all.
Rather than knocking on the door and waiting for the leader to say that I could come in, I just opened the door and went straight in because I couldn’t be fucked to care anymore. Not like I haven't been disrespectful before. My successes practically shielded me from any criticism.
Now that I am here, I regret not saying goodbye to the only friend I had in this life. She was in the same spec ops group as me. Her codename was Holt but, I knew her real name since she told me it. Her real name is Sara. As such, from now, I will permanently bury my memories of her. Otherwise, I won’t be able to go through with this.
The leader of our unit was standing and looking out of his window before he turned around and looked at me. I won’t tell you about his appearance because it doesn’t matter anymore at all. As for his name, everyone in the unit used codenames, his codename was just leader since he was the leader of the unit. The US military sure is original after all.
Leader: “Alpha, I heard that you were successful in completing your assignment.” He said in a deadpan voice.
Alpha: “Yes, that’s correct.” I say returning his deadpan back at him.
Leader: “It’s not even the end of the year and yet, you’ve successfully completed over 80 assignments that were all called impossible. Maybe you should take a vacation?” He said with an evil smile.
Alpha: “A vacation sounds nice. I did lose one of my eyes so, I have to get used to it.” I say while putting one of my hands over my missing eye and ignoring his smile.
The eye that I lost was unfortunately my dominant eye, it being my right eye. I wouldn’t have been so upset about losing one of my eyes if it wasn’t my dominant one. Due to losing it, I would have to retrain my remaining eye so I could return to my original sharpshooting level of skill. Ah, right. Not like it matters now.
Leader: “I see. Well, I won’t keep you any longer. Dismissed.” He said with an evil tone.
Alpha: “Sure.” I say disrespecting him before I turned around and walked to the door.
*BANG!*
*BANG!*
*BANG!*
I didn’t even bother turning around to look at my killer. After I had turned around to leave and started to walk away, Leader pulled out his handgun and shot me three times in my back, directly center of mass.
I completely expected that this would happen. The 12 that ambushed me were probably from another black op unit under Leader’s control. Hell, they might have even been in this unit which is why I didn’t look at any of their faces. I was absolutely right, that assignment was supposed to be where I died but, I just so happened to live. Lucky me!
As I reached down to my stomach and looked at how much blood was covering my hands while doing so, the last thing I thought about before I succumbed to my wound and died was, why’d he even want me dead? Was it because I never showed him any respect? I did that to practically everyone so, he wasn’t special in that regard.
All of the assumptions that I could think of didn’t really matter since, I ended up dying before I could even figure out why he did it. I just hope that my father killed Leader after I died. My father lost his only daughter and Leader got killed. Truly the perfect end for those two. At least that’s what my spiteful heart says.
Back to the void, nothing has changed at all. After another 15 minutes of trying to open my eyes, I gave up again. I decided to think about my regrets. I don’t have many.
Besides the killing, I lived a life I could be and was proud of. The only real thing that I regret is that I never had a lover. There weren’t any other women in my unit and since I was always on the move, I never really had the chance to meet a woman and fall in love with her.
My other regret, albeit a small regret. It was that I didn’t really have any hobbies. It couldn’t be helped honestly. I was pretty much always on an assignment for my entire military service of 16 years.
Unfortunately, I usually only had 2 to 4 hours to myself during those 16 years. Most of that time I spent either cleaning my guns and knives or sleeping.
Now that I think about it, is this Hell? If Hell is just endless nothingness where you just slowly lose your mind due to boredom and loneliness, then it’s truly living up to its premise because, I am definitely close to losing my mind.
It could also be Limbo, though, I think it's more likely to be Hell due to the immense number of sins that I had racked up during my life.
When I first got “here” I had started a game of counting the hours by but, I stopped counting when I got to the 500th hour.
One can only count so many hours before they get bored and once I got bored I lost track of time completely. Easily failing the first step in retaining your sanity in such a situation as the one I currently am in.
Just as I was about to lose my mind, I saw a light in the distance. I said “saw” but again, I can’t open my eyes at all. It’s more like I felt a light or maybe a “warmth” in the distance.
They say that you should never go into the light but, I’m dead already anyway and, I’d prefer my existence to end over staying in this void any longer. I mean, I don't really have anything to lose at this point…