----

With a dozen deep breaths, the young woman finishes her run. Running around Central Park in NYC is her daily workout, making her run just around 6 miles(~10 km).

The trees around her shake gently in the wind. Their leaves lay, stripped from their wooden homes, along the grass of the park. The leaves come from just over twenty thousand different trees, the majority being various types of oak trees. The grass, where the leaves lay, abandoned, is a sickly green, one of the few places that such foliage can be seen in the city. This time of year, it is even a surprise that the grass can be seen. Usually, the entire place would be smothered in snow.

The woman, Mercy, stands in the shade of one of the trees near the path. She breathes in deeply, finally catching her breath. Once her breath is captured, she stretches silently under the tree, popping her stressed bones a few times.

While she stretches, she garners the attention of several people, both male and female, passing by. They stop and stare at her. Mercy’s unusual characteristics are already an attention thief, but with her actions, she unwittingly shows off her body. Her assets are fairly well sized, but what really the men really look at is her well toned body, built up from the ground through hard training.

As the people watch, they don’t fail to notice the scar tissue criss crossing over her nearly white body that gleams in the morning sunlight peeking through the dark clouds that seem to alway lurk above NYC. They peak just slightly over her clothes. Some of them think about how they got there, but nobody questions it. Surprisingly, the scars add to her attractiveness in the eyes of some of the people watching. The scars give them a sense that the woman is a tortured beauty.

As their eyes trace her body through her workout outfit, a simple tank top and sweats with a hoodie wrapped around her waist, they finally reach her face. Her face is sharp, like the elves often depicted in pop culture. Mercy’s platinum blonde hair, slightly clumped together due to the sweat, trails down to her lower back. Some of the people look at her hair while some others observe the rest of her face.

The subtle curves of her pink lips draw in many of the men’s attention, but most continue to look past her facial feature and into her eyes. Her eyes are like nothing most of them have seen before. Instead of being brown like some expected, her eyes are a deep shade of marron. A few of them put her skin, hair, and eye color together and realize that she has albinism.

As soon as their eyes meet, most of the people lose their nerve and continue walking, like nothing ever happened. Though they can’t explain it, her eyes seem to be itching for a fight, begging someone to challenge her. They aren’t the eyes of a normal person. Just from a fraction of a second, almost everyone with the ability to sense the mood are terrified. She gives off overwhelming pressure, like she's seen things that no human should ever see.

Mercy continues her stretches. After she is done, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small tube of sunscreen. Because of her albinism, she has to reapply sunscreen often so that she doesn’t burn. The scars don’t help at all, considering that they burn more easily then normal tissue. Fortunately, she lives in NYC, so the sun is usually blocked by tall skyscrapers and clouds in the early mornings.

After the application of sunscreen, Mercy continues her journey. Usually she would continue, heading to her next location. This was typically the gym, a restaurant, or a martial arts dojo that she frequents. Today, since she has been feeling a little under the weather, Mercy decides to go home instead.

As she walks out of the park, Mercy throws on her hoodie. It is a simple black piece without any adornments. She always takes it with her, no matter where she goes. Most of the time Mercy has it on while walking around, covering as much of her skin as she can. Not only to block the sun, but also to hide her scars. The only times she doesn’t wear it is when she is inside or during her daily exercises. Between her hoodie and sweatpants that she always seems to wear, one would think she gets hot frequently, but because she lives in New York, where the highest the temperature gets is ~90 degrees fahrenheit(~32 degrees celsius), she rarely gets hot enough for it to be a problem.

Mercy thinks walking down the streets is always interesting in NYC. No two days are the same because of how many people pass by and how diverse the cultures throughout the city are. For example, Little Italy is a small part of NYC, but if you pass through the thirty or so blocks that comprise it, you enter a entirely different place filled with a different culture, this being ChinaTown. Both are so close, but so very diverse at the same time. Almost the entirety of New York City is like this.

As if to prove Mercy’s point, one of the cars stuck in the neverending traffic catches the pedestrian’s attention. In the back of the truck, which is quite rare itself considering the amount of taxis, a dinosaur is playing a piano. The person in the dinosaur costume plays one of those peppy songs that are growing in fame these days. Mercy doesn’t really know which one since she doesn’t follow the trends of the world.

She continues on, walking the dozens of streets to her home in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It isn’t long before she stands in front of an apartment building, one of the just under a million that are in Manhattan. She walks up to the door, one of the hundreds of people to pass by the building, but the doorman instantly spots her.

He has a green uniform, like what she would see a marching band member wear. It has the jacket and pants along with a small green hat. The front of the jacket has a criss crossing pattern of brass buttons zipping around it. His face isn’t necessarily handsome, but he isn’t ugly by any means. From the shape of his face, she can easily see that he is of a hispanic descent. It isn’t a single feature that tells her this, it’s just more of a gut feeling.

He opens the door for her, giving her a bow, and speaks with a heavy cuban accent, “Welcome back Miss Mercy. Have you had another eventful workout?” For the year that Mercy has lived in the apartment building, Esteban, the doorman, had always worked here. She doesn’t remember one time that he hasn’t been at the door.

“Yes, I did. I’m feeling a little down though. I might have caught a cold again.” Mercy answers. Her voice is like a smooth silk with hints of a gravely undercurrent. Esteban has heard her voice be gravely only a few times that she has lived in the apartment building. He doesn’t know why her voice is sometimes gravely, but he has noticed it is usually so when she is cold. His eyes can’t help but glance at the scar tissue at her throat. He thinks it might have something to do with the scars he has seen all over her body, but he hasn’t had the nerve to ask.

Esteban does his job and asks more questions to fulfill his role at being courteous for the apartment dwellers. Usually he doesn’t actually care about the people that live here, since most of them are people that were born with a silver spoon, but there are a very few that he does. One of these being Mercy. He likes that she, like a few of the people living here, has had to work her way up, not be given everything from birth.

They go back and forth with the questions, like usual, before Mercy reaches the elevator. With a quick press on the button that says 16, which is actually the fifteenth floor, but the thirteenth floor was skipped, the elevator doors start to close.

Just before the can squeeze all the way shut, a hand sticks out into the elevator doors, stopping its progress. Mercy gets depressed once she sees who is boarding the elevator with her. It is one of the inhabitants of the fifteenth floor, Ms. Becker.

Ms. Becker boards the elevator with a pompous air about her. From her purse that costs a couple thousand to her premium fox fur jacket, everything about her screams rich. Even her plastic surgery to lift her face, and breast surgery must have cost more than a small village earns in a year. Her white hair matches perfectly with the yappy little dog that she always carries around with her.

Mercy sighs as the ‘yappy little dog’ starts yapping at her. If she could just make the dog disappear… maybe make it look like an accident. That dog is the most annoying thing about this entire apartment building, right next to Ms. Becker herself.

Ms. Becker finally looks down her surgerized nose at Mercy, “If it isn't Scarface. Why, if I could pay someone to have surgery, I would dump millions onto fixing you, dear.” Ms. Becker is careful to end her words with dear, a habit Mercy has noticed she does when she says something rude. It's almost like it will make up for the passive aggressive tone she always uses.

Mercy gives a wide smile, making sure she shows her teeth, “Ms. Becker, it's a pleasure, as never. Haven’t I told you before? You best be careful with your words, lest the apartment staff find you after you have had an accident in your old age. Who knows? They might find you at the bottom of an elevator shaft because you didn’t see the elevator wasn’t there in your old age.” The 70 year old Ms. Becker’s pompous expression quickly turns to fear.

Mercy hasn’t told anyone how she got her scars, but she has heard the rumours enough to take advantage of people’s imagination. The biggest theory is that she is a hitman for the mafia, retired after her years of service. The idea is reinforced by the fact that Mercy seemingly never runs out of money, but never goes to work. Using this ill conceived rumour, anytime she mentions killing anybody, most people in her apartment building leave her alone in fear. Sadly, the real reason behind the scars is much darker than just homicide for money.

Mercy finally arrives at the top floor of her apartment building, a penthouse suit that she owns. The entirety of the floor is the penthouse. It is an extravagant place, but Mercy doesn’t really like all the expensive stuff like the gold plated piano. The elevator lets out into her living room. Luckily, she doesn’t have to worry about burglary as much since the doorman has to allow entry into the sixteenth floor. Though, if a burglar were to break in and steal the gold plated things, Mercy wouldn’t really care. To her, the penthouse is only a place to sleep and watch TV.

Walking out of the elevator, she passes through the living room and into the kitchen. The living room has a massive gold plated piano next to the elevator. There is a massive crystal chandelier that dangles from the ceiling. Mercy would be a liar if she said she hasn’t thought of tearing it down a few times just to see it shatter. Every time, she has talked herself out of it since she would have to pay to fix it. A pristine white couch takes up the majority of the floor room, allowing up to ten people to sit on it comfortably. In front of the couch is an enormous flatscreen TV. Mercy faintly remembers that it cost something like fifty thousand dollars. The entire room is made out of mahogany wood and some sort of white stone. In fact, the entire penthouse follows the theme of mahogany, gold, and white. The whole place was built to scream extravagance as much as it can.

Mercy walks through the kitchen, the only simple place in the penthouse. The place is made of some sort of oak and stone, although it is simple, that is only in consideration to the rest of the house. The kitchen probably also cost a small fortune to make. Mercy grabs one of the dozens of glass cups and fills it with water from her fridge, downs it in one go, and then leaves the kitchen. Aside from holding water, Mercy almost never uses the kitchen. Instead, she often eats out, appreciating the food without having to cook herself.

Once she leaves the kitchen, she quickly heads to the bathroom and takes a quick shower, washing the sweat off of her body. Once out of the shower, Mercy heads to her bedroom and falls asleep on her king sized bed…

------

Mercy lays against the stone walls of a cellar, crying silently to herself. There is no door out, the entire room being filled in by solid stone walls. The room is fairly small, almost like a storm shelter. Inside the room is a stack of water bottles, laid up against the wall. The entire room is hot, extremely hot. There are no holes for air to flow in, so the room is dry too.

In front of her lies a corpse. Her father is dead, his throat sliced open crudely. The massive pool of his blood reeks of alcohol. The pool extends all the way from his throat to underneath where she sits. His body is slightly decomposed, the flesh dipping in, releasing a terrible stench that just doesn’t seem to go away.

Next to Mercy lies a couple dozen water bottles, each drained of all they have. Each one of them have bloody handprints all over, smothering the clear plastic with deep red.

A woman walks out of the shadows on the far side of the room. She has black hair that covers her face and deep tanned skin. Her hair is covered in… something. Her clothes are soaked with splatters of blood, changing the once white clothes to red.

The hair flicks out of her face, revealing a smile stretched across. Mercy shutters as she peers at the unnaturally large smile plastered on the black haired woman. Her face is completely wrinkle free, showing off her youth.On top of her head is a large cut, with pieces of glass still in it.

The woman walks forward more, revealing her hands that were once hidden by shadows. In one hand, the woman holds an empty bottle. In the other, she has a large butcher's knife, soaked with blood.

The woman’s face does something impossible… the smile stretches wider as she walks towards the cowering Mercy. And then a cracked, hoarse voice escapes her lips, “What have you done! I always knew you were a demon. No be a good girl and hold still! Staayyyyy ssstttiiiiiilllllllll…” As the woman talks more, her words get more and more drawn out.

Then the woman starts to walk towards Mercy, knife held at the ready. Mercy, still cowering against the wall, tries to hide, but there is nowhere to go. The woman slowly stalks forward until she is right in front of Mercy. Right as she takes another step to slice up Mercy, she trips over the corpse’s leg.

In a flash, the knife plunges wickedly into her own heart. The woman drops to the floor, dead. As Mercy watches in horror, the once youthful body starts to decompose rapidly until there is just skin and bones. The smile is still on her face...

The woman, now dead, grins inhumanly wider, and starts to talk in a crickety, broken voice as she crawls towards Mercy, “Jjjjooooiiinnnnn... uuuussssss... wwwweeeee... mmmmiiiisssssss... yyyoooouuuuu~...”

Just before the decomposed woman reaches Mercy, a bright light flashes throughout the cellar…

-------

Mercy jolts awake, panting and gasping as terror races through her. It takes a few minutes, but eventually her heart calms down, quietly thumping in her chest. She glances at the clock and sees that it is completely off. ‘Damn thing must be broken again.’ Judging from the darkness outside her window, she estimates it must be near ten or eleven o’clock.

From her bedroom, Mercy hears a sound. A small sound, coming from outside her room. Drip! Plink! She throws off her sheats and walks to her door, opening it. Outside is a completely black hallway. Mercy walks down before arriving in her living room. The TV is on, showing static, casting a shadow across the room. She sighs and walks to it, turning it off. ‘Must’ve forgotten to turn it off again’. With the TV off, she hears a creaking behind her. Still fearful because of her nightmare, she jerks around sharply. Thankfully, Mercy does not see anything behind her.

Drip! Plink! The dripping sound from before sounds out from the kitchen. Mercy makes her way into the kitchen, seeing that her faucet is dripping. She maneuvers over to it in the dark, twisting the handle to fully turn it off.

Drip! Plink! With a startled expression, she turns around and sees that the sound was originating from her fridge, not the faucet. She slowly creeps over to, seeing a pool of some sort of liquid at the base. Steeling herself, she opens the fridge, what lurks inside is pure horror. A chopped up corpse sits in her fridge, blood splattered everywhere. The stench of Alcohol fills the room as the blood drips out. Mercy looks at all of the body parts before stopping on the decapitated head. ‘Father’. The heads eye shoot open and start glaring at her. Mercy jumps back in a fright, thankfully, catching herself on the person behind her.

Wait… Mercy turns quickly and sees a decomposed woman with black hair smiling at her. In the next second, the woman jumps at her with a knife, shrieking, “Join us!!!”. Just before the knife hits, a sharp pain wracks her head…

-----

Mercy jolts awake for a second time, this time with a killer headache. She glances around her room, and sees that it is real this time. Golden sunlight streams in from the window, revealing that it is still day time. She looks at her clock, ‘It's three? I guess I slept a long time.’

Mercy rubs her head, feeling something wet. She pulls her hand back and sees that it is coated in a thin layer of head. She looks around confused, wondering what happened. The cause of her situation reveals itself. The corner of her nightstand is covered in blood.

Mercy walks to the bathroom and cleans up her head. From enough practice, she has gotten quite good at quickly patching herself up. She looks at the mirror and grimaces. Her face is reflected back, but there are streaks of blood across it. Her platinum blonde hair is now a cherry red color, and it isn’t done through hair dye. She takes another shower, cleaning her head and hair.

Once showered and dressed, she heads out of her room, passing by her living room, and into the kitchen. She hears a sound as she enters. Drip! Plink! With a start, she realizes that the faucet is slightly on, releasing small drops of water every couple of seconds.

She follows what she did in her dream and turns off the faucet. She realizes that she must’ve subconsciously registered it when she was getting water, thus it showing in her dream. Making sure that another subconscious suggestion is false, Mercy opens up her fridge. A sigh of relief escapes her lips as she sees that it is almost completely empty.

Mercy calls the elevator, needing to get out of the apartment. As she goes down the flights of stories in complete silence, the realization that she doesn’t feel bad anymore hits her. ‘I guess I just needed more sleep’.

Ding! The doors of the elevator open up. Mercy walks out into the lobby and sees Estabon behind the desk. He notices her at the same time, “Ah! Are you feeling better Miss Mercy?”

She nods her head

“Do you need a chauffeur? My four o’clock replacement is here, so I could go with you.” Estaban asks cheerfully. ‘That’s right,’ Mercy remembers, ‘Estaban is the night crew. He world from twelve to twelve every night.’

Mercy politely refuses, “No thank you. I’m heading out to take care of some personal business.”

Estaban looks slightly down before a smirk appears on his face, “I know the perfect place to hide a corpse, so I could help you if it's with work.”

Mercy gets caught off guard at his reply. With an incredulous expression, she replies in the only way a person could, “Really? You too. You do know that I’m not the Mafia’s hitman, right?”

Estaban makes an overly exaggerated nod with his head, “Don’t worry Miss Mercy, I definitely know. The offer still stands though.” If Mercy didn’t know the doorman better, she would've been aggravated. Since she does know him better, she can tell that he is kidding around in reality. The main reason she knows this is because he has to go to his second job that starts at four, an hour from now.

“All right, cya Estaban,” Mercy waves goodbye and heads out of the door of the apartment building. As she does, she quickly glances at the big neon sign attached to the building. The sign is a mixture of red and gold neon colors, reading “Royal Road Apartment Complex”.

Mercy walks out onto the street. Heading towards her desired location. After nearly forty minutes of walking, she finally reaches the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It would’ve taken longer if she hadn’t cut across Central Park, so overall, she is very happy with her time. She’s visited the museum a few times.

Standing outside of the museum, she sees the usual sight of how the museum entrance appears. Outside of it, by the road, two hot dog stands are competing with each other. Each one offers 'special deals’ if you buy one now. In reality, it is a trick on tourists. The two guys are in cahoots with each other.. They make it seem like they are competing because people are more willing to buy things that are ‘special’ or ‘for sale’.

Along the dozens of steps leading to the grand entrance of the museum, tourists sit. They treat the stairs like it is free sitting, taking advantage of how large each step is. There are also the other types of tourists, the picture takers. Each one holds a camera as they position their family into the perfect location to take a picture. These types usually forget they took the picture the next time they come across something cool or fun.

Mercy pulls the hood tighter around her head, making sure it covers her face and hair. Along the way, she had gotten tired of the stares, so she put on her hoodie and covered her face with the hood. Most people won’t snoop underneath someone's hood, so she usually gets away from the stares by doing so.

Mercy climbs the dozen or so steps and enters the museum. Nothin quite catches her eye as she passes by exhibit after exhibit. The various art pieces, each having hundreds of different meanings, are passed over. Mercy doesn’t care much for the paintings. Yeah, they are cool, but she likes the sculptures and more physical art pieces better.

She eventually makes her way into a traveling exhibit. Only five other people are in the exhibition room with her. ‘I guess this one isn’t very popular.’ She takes a gander around the room and sees that the entirety of the place is filled with art relating to the greek gods. Most of them are weapons, forged hundreds of years ago. The exhibit she likes the most is a white bow that seems to be made out of some type of ivory. RIght below where the arrow would be slotted, a gleaming ruby lays. The ruby seems to glint with history as she watches it.

All of the sudden, Mercy hears a voice in her head, “Let's get this party started! You have three minutes to pick a class. Choose wisely!”

A large blue screen pops up before her vision. If she had to call it anything, she would say it looks like one of those holograms that are seen in various sci fi movies. She turns her head… and fails. She tries various things, trying to move her body, but nothing works. It's like she is paralysed or something.

The blue screen shows an hourglass on the top of it with numbers underneath. The numbers are 2:13. Mercy realizes that this must be the three minutes that the voice talked about. With nothing else to do, she focuses her attention on the blue screen.

The screen has thirty boxes on it, each filled with a different picture. On one of them, a person wielding a sword and a large shield is depicted. On another, a cloaked person with two daggers. On the bottom of each box is a set of stars. The sword and cloaked boxes both have one star on the bottom of their depictions. ‘Is this like an indicator on how good each box is? Then I should want the one with the most stars, right?’

Going with her thoughts, Mercy looks at the bottom of the set of thirty boxes. There are two with seven stars filled in. One of them shows a person in white armor riding what can only be described as a dragon. It’s scales gleam like fresh snow as its eyes seem to be able to cook anything with their sheer intensity. The other shows a person in a black robe wielding a large staff. One either side of the person are two totems, like what Mercy has seen in cowboy vs indian movies from the past.

Looking back up at the hour glass, the time says 1:24. ‘Should I choose the first or second one? The first one looks like some kind of dragon rider. The second looks like some kind of shaman or something. I’m going with the dragon rider. That depiction looks pretty sick.’

She tries to select the dragon rider, but she can’t move her hands. Next she tries to select it with her mind. After a few seconds, she succeeds. All of the boxes disappear, leaving the one Mercy selected. The box grows until it fits the entire screen. Then, the entire box disappears, like it was never there. The only thing that would suggest it ever existed is the time indicator, which is still counting down. Unable to move still, Mercy decides to wait until the timer reaches 0. She distracts herself by appreciating the bow again.

1:22

1:21

…

…

…

0:05

0:04

0:03

0:02

0:01

0:00

The voice comes back into her head, “Let the games begin! Good luck contestants!”