La Femme Bella

La Femme Bella


Prologue


First there was nothing. No sight, no sound, no feel…not even a sense of existing. I was trapped in a black void, unaware of my entrapment. Later, of course, I would understand that I was as trapped as any living being could ever be, without any hope of escape.

Well, maybe in death, but I had discovered that the “survival instinct” of man was stronger than his conscience, or his wish for happiness or even a bearable existence.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First there was nothing, but when the nothingness ended, it ended with a bang.



I could feel a slight sting in my arm and I thought that it was what had awoken me. I tried to rub the pain away with my other hand but my hand wouldn’t comply.

My head felt fuzzy, as if suffused in cotton balls. I slowly forced my eyes open and looked around myself.

I was laying strapped in a hospital bunk in a small white room. The walls were lined with tiles and the floor was bare with a drain roughly in the middle of the room. Not exactly heaven despite the colouring. In fact, something about the room yelled “slaughterhouse” to me. Very easy to keep clean no matter what one did here…to women strapped in a bunk.

I shook my head, trying desperately to clear it and to get rid of the dark, twisted scenarios I was thinking.

Next to me, with an empty syringe still in his hand was a young man, not yet thirty in my admittedly hazy estimation. He was dressed in a black, semi-formal suit. Even his shirt was black. His hair, I noticed, was coppery and sticking out unlike anything else in his very proper attire. He had beautiful green eyes, but they were cold and scary in their lack of emotion.

“Good morning.” he said in a gentle voice while starting to open my restraints.

I closed my eyes again, swallowing the bile that was rising to my throat. “What is this place? “ I croaked.

“To the outside world you are dead, suicide. This is your grave. Row eight, plot thirty.”

I reopened my eyes and took the picture he was holding out for me. There were some flowers and a small tombstone with my name, Isabella Marie Swan.

“We’ve decided to give you a chance.” he continued, “This is where you’ll train. This is where you’ll learn. If after two years everything goes well, you will work for us.”

“Why me?”

“A woman with your looks who can kill in cold blood..”

“But I didn’t! I didn’t kill anyone!” I screamed. He was already at the door, and I was enraged enough to attack him although I knew it was quite useless.

It wasn’t just useless to attack this man, it was inane. Deadly. In three seconds flat he had me pinned on the floor, laying on top of me and restraining my arms. My stomach hurt from the punch he’d effortlessly thrown in.

“Next time you attack someone from behind, go for the kidneys. Consider that your first lesson.” he got off me as gracefully as the predator he was.

“I don’t want any lessons from you!”

“We start tomorrow morning, 5 am. And if you feel less than cooperative, row eight, plot thirty.”

He left the room without looking back to the corner where I had retreated to, shaking and trying to contain my sobs.




(A/N: This Prologue contains dialogue from the first episode of La Femme Nikita. I will not need to use as much dialogue in the further chapters but I didn't want to mess with the perfection of the set up.)