The Girl With Metal Claws

Warmth

ELLIOTT

The night had already dawned and soon it'll be sunrise again.

Whatever he was doing, going wherever she was taking him, felt wrong. It leaves a bitter taste of betrayal in his mouth. He shouldn't be the only one knowing her like that.

Home.

He thought of all the possibilities of what she could mean with that word. But he was too conceited. He dreaded the thought of someone like her having a place to call home, somewhere to go back to after everything she had done. All the lives she had ruined, a place welcomes her back.

Elliott stared at the back of Asami's head as she walked in front, taking the lead. Even if he deep down expected her to take him somewhere abandoned and out of sight from everyone. But, she was walking and he was following her.

Tall buildings, the lights didn't go out yet and the occasional voices of people. They were walking through a residential area. Elliott felt his skin crawl with the anxiety of what she might do if someone came by and saw her. Would she prey on someone in front of Elliott?

He, subconsciously enough, put himself out of her targets, if she had any. He wanted to reach out to her and stop her, pull her away. But she kept on walking, her pace was quick and unfaltering. Could she not sense him anymore? Or read his mind?

Suddenly, around the corner, footsteps sounded. A woman entered the street from the nearby alley. She held her phone to her ears, speaking in whispers. She had brown hair and fat-rimmed glasses. Her body language looked alert to what she might face. And she was right in doing so because as Elliott watched her walk head-on to a miserable fate, he couldn't do anything.

He looked at Asami who already had her eyes set on the woman. Her eyes were shaking on the floor as she kept pacing towards him and Asami. He felt a sudden urge to save the woman, mostly because he didn't want to see someone else die in front of his eyes.

Just as the woman walked past Asami, he watched her eyes snap up to look at Elliott. Her eyes looked shocked and terrified in those split seconds. He looked ahead to see Asami's smile grow and the woman stumble. He closed his eyes shut, his feet frozen. She would do it. She would prey on someone in front of him. She would try to show him what he was missing. She would try to show him why he should join her instead.

A long minute passed, and no voices came. Everything sounded as silent as it was. He forced himself to open his eyes. He stared in front of him, at the long empty street with one faint streetlight, he looked behind him, at a similar sight.

He could hear a soft scraping noise. He looked to his side to see Asami sitting on the footpath, her fingers digging through the rough ground. She looked up at him with a calm face.

"Are you done?" She asked because he had been frozen in his place with fear for quite some time. He frowned at her, not saying a word. He didn't want to misunderstand.

"What did you-"

"I didn't," she said. Then she got up and started walking.

"Why?"

"I can't show you yet," Asami said, exhilarating. A shiver ran down Elliott's spine at the mere thought of the day she'd want to show it to him. How would he escape that day?

Asami took a turn and entered the path on their left, Elliott followed. But as soon as he got into the street, he noticed a lot of people spilling out of the bars and clubs near that area as Joseph Street was most popular for that purpose. His feet froze and he dragged himself to keep following. Asami kept walking, her head straight in front.

The people kept turning to look at Elliott and his hooded disguise but no one said a thing. He looked around at the people to see everyone either minding their business or staring at him. No one seemed to notice Asami, who walked in front.

"They can't see you, can they?" Elliott asked in a low voice, knowing it was audible enough for her to hear.

"Do you want them to see me?" She said, slightly glancing back at him. Elliott pondered over the question for some time and shook his head.

"You're a peculiar sight," he confessed. He watched her shoulders rise and fall like they did when she laughed.

Suddenly, the numerous pairs of eyes around him turned and fixated on a similar area. Everyone looked back at Asami. Murmurs, gasps and remarks spread around the street. She stood out, more than Elliott imagined she would.

Elliott didn't put much thought into it but the only thing that worried him was the guards posted at every corner of Joseph Street. They see to everything they found suspicious and if word of a hooded boy and a girl in hospital clothes got around, there would be no way out.

After a few more steps, Asami seeped into an alley and Elliott cautiously followed her. In the empty alleyway, Elliott turned and glared at her.

"Never do that again," he said, feeling a little pathetic admitting to being scared. She shot him her blank expression.

"Why does it matter?" She asked, leaning against the wall.

"You'll disappear whenever you feel like it. You'll turn your back on me when I will be of no use," Elliott let out, sighing. He felt himself wanting clarity because it was no use blaming her anyway. She turned to him and slowly placed her rough and freezing hand on his cheek. Her fingertips felt harsh, needling his skin.

"Elliott, you were useless to me anyway," her eyes looked compelling as if it was trying to push their way into his mind, and let their image get carved deep into the core of his brain.

"We're going nowhere with this..", Elliott said, quietly backing off to shake her hand off his face. "I've already said no to you and your offer. You can't convince me and neither do I need your help."

Suddenly, a shrill laugh erupted from behind him as he started walking away. He turned around to see Asami laughing like a maniac, holding her stomach and crouching down. Her white hair stuck to her face when she looked up at him.

"So you do believe that those rusty books and that dying old woman will help you get anywhere near me?" Her voice had mockery and self-appraisal in them.

"But I'm looking right at you, aren't I?" Elliott challenged back.

"You won't see me if I don't want you to," Asami stood up straight and once again, her walk started. Elliott kept on watching her too, speechless. "We still haven't got there."

She called out. And as if a string was bound somewhere inside him, he picked up his bag from the floor and started following her again. Into the night, deeper into the alley.

~

Asami stopped in front of a tall apartment building. It was the colour of bricks and looked suffocating because of its small and closed windows. Anyone would think of it as a closed-down apartment from the outside. Elliott was a little taken aback by how freely she was roaming around the streets, let alone walking inside an apartment in a residential area.

But once he entered through the small door and started climbing up the stairs, he could understand why she had chosen it specifically. The soundless building which made his footsteps echo gave him an eerie feeling. The place looked dead.

As he passed through the corridor, he heard one of the doors open and a person peeked out only to grab the newspaper thrown at the doorstep. His eyes were stuck on Elliott as he passed by, scared and suspicious. He took the newspaper and shut the door, noiselessly. What were they afraid of?

Then he looked in front of him. He knew what they were afraid of.

The tiresome climb stopped at the top floor of the building, in front of a plain brown door. Asami pushed the door open and entered.

Elliott had unconsciously hoped that door to be Hell's gate but once he stepped inside, he felt underwhelmed. A room, smaller than his dreadful room, greeted him. The room was all grey and white and it smelled like a hospital. He had never expected her to live worse off than himself.

A rusted iron bed, a table supported by bricks, two chairs and a window. The window was the only thing that kept the room livable. The wallpaper was scraped with scratches that dug deep into the wall, a small door that was meant to be for the bathroom and no sign of a couch.

"If I were you, I would rather steal money than murder people," he remarked.

Elliott looked down, realising how wrong he was. She had no home. She just had a sorry dim and cold place to welcome her where she could engulf herself in her darkness. No one was ever by her side.

He knew that feeling. They were too different but bitterly similar.

Asami climbed up the window sill and let out a deep breath, clouding the glass pane. Elliott stood at a distance, watching her. Her eyes gleamed, like a rare sight. Her white hair flowed in the melancholic winds and her face reminded him of a feeling that something wasn't sitting right.

And for the first time since he had known of her disastrous existence, her face resembled something else. Something far purer than she'll ever be.

"After this ends, what're you going to do to me?" He asked, distracting himself.

"You'll kill me and save humanity," Asami smirked viciously. She was too prude to even consider her defeat.

"Wouldn't you consider killing me? I would be knowing too much by then," he said, overstepping what he stood for. She stood up. "Don't you think about it?"

"I think about it all the time. I think about how your face would look, the reaction of your eyes, the curves of your mouth... when I s***h your neck with my fingers and look at the shock in your face. The pain, the hatred, the helplessness, how can I not think about it?" Elliott backed away, shivering pain shooting up his spine. He was getting ahead of himself, trying to find warmth behind her dead eyes and luring smirk. He was not safe. He couldn't be.

Asami leaned in, enough to make her whispers audible.

"Get out," she said. Even if he was startled, it was enough to make him move. He backed away from her and left the room, shutting the door behind him with a loud thud. The thud was enough to echo in every corner of the building, riling up the already scared people hiding behind closed doors.

~

Elliott sat on the edge of his bed, hopelessly pointing the remote at the TV and pressing its buttons. But the TV remained black. He needed to get his head off of things.

He walked over to it and struck his palm on the top of the electronic twice. On the third time, the TV screen flickered on but a hazy grey layer was on top of it. The news played on repeat on the channel.

"Cassandra Lauren, a 32-year-old woman has been found dead on the streets of Joseph Street. The method of the crime is the same as the past cases, using a sharp object, suspicions lie on it being metal claws-"

Elliott stared at the picture of the woman with brown hair and fat-rimmed glasses with a phone lying by her side. He knew her.

Even for a split second, he knew her.