Dedicated to Paige_06!!! She's given me some future ideas, she's posting comments to help me along and generally being awesome! (You should check out her stuff, she's a great writer!) So thank you! And Happy Reading! (well as much as you can in an action story!) :D Love you guys! xxx

I sit next to the Christmas tree, in front of the fire with a hot chocolate. The smell of the tree is overpowering, but I need anything to take my mind off what just happened. Apart from the fact, Alex got shot, I almost died and I had to knock him out, we had to kill an 18 year old girl for revenge on her parents. Does that seem fair to you? How would you like it if you did something wrong at work and your boss killed your family? Bit extreme, you think, but that’s basically what it is. She died for nothing. It’s this kind of time I’m wondering if I regret doing this job, albeit I’m 300k richer… I can hear someone stomping down the hallway and the door swings open. I don’t look away from the fire; I love how the flames move on their own, as if they’re doing a dance to entice you.

“What the hell happened out there?” Alex shouts across the room. I carry on watching these dancing flames swirl, twist and shake. “Ally? Alyssa?” I slowly turn my head towards where he’s standing with his arms crossed.

“I almost died? Or is that not the bit you’re talking about?” I say, turning straight back to the flames. He storms up to me, grabs me by the shoulders and stands me up.

“Alyssa, I’m being serious here! How did we managed to get gunned down?” He stares into my eyes. He looks like he’s watching a game of tennis as his gaze bounces from one eye to the other.

“How do I know? I was sitting in the car waiting for you to kill the girl and suddenly…” I pause for a second and see blood running down his arm. “You’re bleeding!”

“Yes, I know, but-” he just doesn’t get it does he?!

“No Alex, you’re actually bleeding, like, right now!” I say, pointing to his left shoulder.

“Ah shit! I didn’t realise it was that bad, I thought it was a graze!” he said. I grab him by the right arm and push him onto the sofa, rushing to the cupboard by the fire and grabbing the first aid box.

“I-I don’t really know what to do! This was Gail’s job!”

“Just do something! It hurts!” he shouts.

“Oh yeah, hurts now you’ve seen it!” I say rudely. I grab an antibacterial wipe and clean it, he breathes in deeply and scrunches his face when it hurts. I then grab a needle and whatever thread stuff we’ve shoved in this box over the years and try and sew up the cut.

“You’re meant to numb it!!” He screeches as I stick the sewing needle in his arm.

“Shit! Sorry!” I say, pulling an embarrassed face and shrugging. I didn’t know what I was doing, and to make him feel no better I failed textiles at school. I complete sewing it up and put a gauze over the top of it. “Is that ok?” I say, no idea if I’d made it better or worse.

“Just… Get… Me… Something to numb the PAIN!” He shouts the last bit, snapping me into reality and I grab the nearest bottle of alcohol in a blind panic and throwing it into his grasp. “Thanks!” He smiled and opens the bottle of whisky, drinking it like it was water for a few seconds.

“Was I that bad?” I say raising an eyebrow.

“I’ll sew your arm without numbing it and see how you feel!” He laughed, but then turned serious. “Wait, how’s your bullet wound?”

“Yeah not too bad thanks! I fixed myself though!” I said shrugging.

“Where’d you get shot?”

“Well if you can’t tell, I did a bang up job!” I smiled and winked at him.

He smiled back. “Look, I’m sorry for leaving you to deal with five guys…” He said. Part of me wanted to scream and shout and say ‘well yeah, you owe me my life’ but the other was fine with it cos I’m still alive!

“Hey, Alex, don’t worry about it… Just don’t do it again. I’m not going through that ever again!” I say, sitting back over by the tree, what’s left of my hot chocolate now a rancid lukewarm. I pause as I see presents sitting under the tree. “Alex?”

“Yeah hun?” He says as he admires my sewing skills on his shoulder. He is drunk now, downing half a bottle to compensate the pain. Oops!

“Did you put presents under the tree?” I ask, my voice going higher at the end of the sentence.

“Nah, no one did! We decorated it so it looked nice but me and Pete hated present shopping!” he said, taking another sip. “Why?”

“There’s two presents under the tree…” I say, pulling them to the front of the tree so Alex could see them. “They’re addressed to us!” Alex stumbles over to me and sits on the floor.

“You wanna open your one?” he said, tipping his head to the side.

“Doesn’t say who it’s from!” I exclaim as I throw Alex’s one at him. I open mine and there is a letter stuck to the box.

“What’s the letter say?”

“It says; I’m Sorry!” I say, looking puzzled. Alex rips his open and his has a different letter attached.

“Mine says; You’ve been great. Don’t give up!” Alex says. “Wait… Can you hear something?” I lean in closer to my present and hear a strange noise, immediately panicking and throwing it across the room. The whirring got louder.

“Alex?” I say, hoping he’d comfort me.

“RUN!!!” He screams and grabs my arm, running to the furthest part of the room away from the gift and tipping a table over in front of us.

“Alex? What the hell is-” Without being able to finish my sentence, my innocent present hums and clicks before it explodes. Alex pushes me to the floor as shrapnel from the machine and any furniture near it go flying round the room and hitting the table we are hiding behind. I look over to Alex, who’s on his phone.

“Des! What the fuck, man? We almost got blown up! Who put these presents here? Ally’s one blew up! No, I’ve not opened mine…” He looks over at me worriedly and I rip the lid off the box, revealing a gas mask. “What do you mean…? Des? Fuck!” He chucks his phone against the table before picking it up to check it wasn’t broken. It always made me laugh when people did that.

“So?” I say, wondering why he hadn’t already told me what Des had said.

“He said one present can kill both, or none. But the other will be the way to save only one.” This cryptic shit always got me.

“What does that mean?” I say, Alex opens his mouth to answer but I put my finger up to his mouth to quieten him. “Can you hear that?” We go silent and hear a low hissing. I look up over the table and a small canister is letting out some sort of gas. I grab the mask and shove it on Alex’s face. “Go then!” I shout, pushing him away from the table.

“Nah, we can make it together!” he said moving back towards me.

“Oh yeah, how? One gas mask, two people!” I say pointing out the obvious.

“We’ll take turns. One holds their breath while the other one breathes into the mask!” He says, getting ready to go.

“What if it’s a gas that makes you go blind? Or anything that’s not just solely to affect breathing? Come on Alex, you’ve been doing this longer than me!” I say, getting stressed.

“Would you rather die?” He knew what my answer was before he’d asked that question. I tut and stand up, he grabs my hand and I take a huge breath in, ready to run. “Ok, let’s go!” He holds the mask on with his right hand and pulls me along with his left hand. As we begin to rush, I suddenly notice how big the urge to breathe in is and try and get past it, shutting my eyes and focussing. It feels like I’ve not breathed in for ages, I feel like I’m gonna die. Eyes shut and concentrate, come one Alyssa!!! I kick something in front of me and automatically open my eyes  to check what it is. The gas stings my eyes like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I cry out and double over, clutching at my eyes with my left hand, still gripping onto Alex’s left hand as tightly as I can.

“Come on, you can do this!” I hear Alex’s voice through the mask. I look up to him and notice him moving the mask away from his face but I push it back onto his face.

Since I cried out in pain, I had to take a breath in. I feel like my lungs are burning. I don’t want us both to die so I shake my head and hold the mask on his face. Alex yanks harder at my hand and we finally make it outside into the fresh air. The feeling of fresh air hitting my face was the only reason I knew we’d got outside.

“My eyes! Ah it burns so much!” I say, wanting to claw my eyes out. I’ve never felt a pain like it.

“Shit! Shit! SHIT!” I hear Alex saying. I hear a smash, so I assume he threw something at a window and made it smash. I hear footsteps disappearing at a quick pace, and a minute later appearing at a quicker pace. I feel Alex yank one of my eyes open, but I can’t see anything. I feel liquid being poured into one eye, then the other. He won’t let me move my head.

“Get off!” I say, pushing at where I think Alex is and rolling onto my stomach. I blink over and over again and my sight begins to come back, although blurry. “Alex, I can kinda see! It worked!” I sound overjoyed, but he just pins me back down and pours more liquid into my eyes. After a few more blinks, I am greeted with the sight of Alex’s face inches from mine.

“You can see me, yeah?”

“How can I not? You’re so close!” I giggle. Alex holds his hand out, and I take it and stand up.

“What’s wrong with you?!” He suddenly shouts, grabbing hold of my shoulders and shaking me.

“What?”

“You were holding the mask on my face! I thought we were sharing?” he said, looking almost sad. Which is impossible, Alex doesn’t have feelings; that’s why he’s Des’ Number One.

“Sharing through the gas that stung my eyes? So then we both wouldn’t have been able to see… Sounds like a plan!” I say sarcastically. Alex’s phone beeps.

From: Unknown.

3 Miles East. Park Lodge Hotel. Room 5. Instructions await.

“He’s just text me a job!” Alex sounds shocked yet angry. “After I just rang him that we almost got blown up! No such thing as sick pay here!”

“But my phone didn’t go beep…” I say suspiciously.

“Well, I’m sure there’s an explanation!” he smiled. “Come on then!!” he pulled me towards the car and we got in, ready for the next job. “Hey, we can pop straight into the room, grab the papers and scope out the place today to make it easier if you can handle it?” As long as it’s not another 18 year old…