The assailant steadied themselves after their failed attempt at taking my life. Failure was obviously not part of the plan and seeing how the assassination attempt has failed, the assassin needed a way to escape which was obvious by the way they looked towards the window in hopes of an easy getaway. They quickly twisted their entire body bursting forwards in an attempt to leave through the window. Noticing the retreat, I knew I had to stop the assailant to figure out who is after me, with this thought on my mind I stomped my foot onto the cold hard floor board launching myself past the assassin as my hand grabs their throat picking them up a few feet off the ground before slamming them on the ground with a loud “BANG”.

Due to the loud sounds during the brief scuffle, Erica barged into the room with a pistol in hand. When Erica entered the room she had a surprised face due to immediately walking into the room with me on top of the assassin using one hand to wrap around their throat while also pinning them down with my legs over their arms stopping the person from having any free rein. When Erica entered sounds of the door banging open and footsteps attracted my attention, having my attention focused elsewhere the assailant opened their mouth spitting out a small thin needle from under their tongue. Barely managing to dodge the needle I put pressure into my wrist and arm choking them until they fell unconscious.

“Niko, what’s going on?”

“... Apparently, someone seems to be unhappy with my stay here….”

“WHAT! There is no way this would be the doing of our village!”

“Who else knows of my current location? On top of the fact that some of the council were unhappy about my stay, only agreeing out of respect for the chief….”

“Hmm… let’s lock him up, then in the morning we'll get the council all together to figure this all out.”

“Sure….”

Erica and I tie up the assassin before we escorted them to a jail cell located in the back area of the village, afterwards the two of us went back to Erica’s house retiring once again for the night. Come morning Erica had called for an urgent meeting to discuss the events of the previous night. Once someone was sent to get the prisoner for questioning they were found already dead, last night someone paid our prisoner a visit to keep them silent. Without the prisoner to question the meeting turned quiet but, the tension could be felt. The tense feeling increased when the identity of the prisoner came to light, he was a member of the village, a farmer who was active in the community. In a small village like this, the community is very close knit which caused me to think back to my conversation within my dream from the other night, Harvey must be involved in this, that must be what my older self-meant by “keep an eye out”. Instead, I am gonna go one step further, I am gonna kill Harvey before he gets a chance to do anything to me, but, first I gotta figure out which one is Harvey and how I am gonna get to him. I am also curious as to what his plan is and why he is coming after me. Is it just the fact that I come from Ailiven? Or is there another reason as well, my stay in this village so far has been nothing but strange from the way the villagers have treated me all the way to the assassination attempt last night. My older self-said Erica and Katie can be trusted so I have no reason to doubt them but I also need to keep an eye on them since it might give some leads.

I continued to think about my plan, trying to analyze everyone on the council as well as the guards who attended the meeting making sure no unwanted guests intruded on the meeting. Some of the members on the council were appalled at the actions of the man from last night as where some of the others faked their shock which was obvious to me, maybe it was due to having no emotional attachments to these people being at the point where everyone is a suspect so I am attempting a clear reading without any care. Part of the logical side of me keeps saying to just leave the village, to not even bother with whatever fuckery is going on here, but, something inside of me welcomed the challenge, welcomed any type of conflict. I felt my body flush with excitement the more heated the council's debate got my cheeks became rosy as sweat beads slowly developed I could feel a wide smile spread across my face, my heart began to race... I was ready, ready to take on the enemies hiding in the shadows coming after my life.

I guess this is just a part of who I am... I’ll never be able to escape it, ready for confrontation, ready to face endless battle. I wonder if the Niko I met the other night is the same, I wonder if his life consistently revolves around conflicts and he openly welcomes it, I wonder if this is just how we were built... As my mind continued down the rabbit hole further...and further, eventually Erica grabbed my hand looking down at me while asking if I was okay with a worried look on her face. Hearing her voice snapped me back to reality where I stared into her eyes before telling her “I don't know”, the look of worry intensified as she clutched my hand tighter.

“Niko, I won't let anything else happen to you, I am not gonna allow the bad things from your past ever affect your future again, nor will I let any new enemies ever harm you! You are your own person no longer bound to Ailiven or the life of a soldier”

Part of me was surprised that she would bring this up… I never knew that I could be viewed this way, to some of the people here I am just a child forced into a life of turmoil, trained into a child soldier. I wonder if those thoughts would change into fear and horror if they knew the truth, the truth that I am not a normal child at all instead, I am a tool created in a lab for the purpose of war so they wouldn't need to bother with subpar soldiers. Instead, they decided to just create the ideal soldier training them to do as instructed without any emotion.

Even though I was created this way, part of me feels weird when Erica shows that she cares. Not knowing what the feeling meant I ignored it and instead opened my mouth to talk to Erica but before I could reply to what she said a man barged into the room with a loud “BANG” as the door slammed open gaining the attention of everyone in the room.