Three Months Later

The wind whipped across the gunpowder black sand of the beach. Tossing stinging grains in to Maria's face as she stood on the dunes, watching the slowly rolling waves. Something wheeled and cried out above the surf under the alien sky.

Maria held her hands out, feeling the bitter wind numb them. She knew that it would never be enough to take away the sensations that lived on in her mind. The feeling of the knife vanishing into her ‘father's’ gut or the stroke of a pen that sent thirteen women into the screaming void. Somehow the fact that she had never had to look them in the eye only made it worse.

She closed her hands, turning away from the inky black ocean and towards the squat concrete structure that sat nestled in the dunes. This place was a training facility for people like her. After everything that had happened the powers that be had decided to give her a break from field work. She could hardly complain, this was better than the usual reprieve they gave to field agents. She would not have any new scars after this one at least.

As she made her way down the dunes she thought for what felt like the millionth time about the one eyed woman. She had spent what little free time she had had trying to figure out what she had been. With only a assumed country of origin and the power to shapeshift she had been able to narrow it down to a Goddess of celtic legend. Although that made no sense, Gods as old as she must be rarely left the homeland and if they did it was usually due to being **** out.

She knew in her bones that they would meet again, although she knew not when or where. For now she could only console herself with the small victories that could be found in the training room of this place.

The interior of the building was a sterile as the outside, a breakwater built by the US during the cold war. A place for VIPs to flee if someone pressed the big red button back on our world. Luckily that never happened and now it was a place to train those who no longer existed.

Maria had been brought to a place like this when she was young.

Opening the door to the training room she looked on the faces of the few who remained. Those who had come through the hell of that building and retained something. Each of them had the cold eyes of killers as they looked at Maria. When they returned to the world they would have new names, new histories and new jobs. Maria tried to recall the words she had been told on her first day, as she had sat shaking in her chair. Her wounds barely healed.

“Welcome,” Maria began. “To the final chapter of your lives.”