Chapter 1

Lost

My name is Kristen, I'm 19 years old, and I'm a sweeper or bounty hunter. And that's all I pretty much know. I don't know how and I don't know why, but I can't remember who I am.

All I can pretty much remember is waking up on the side of train tracks somewhere in Thunder Mountain a year ago. I was soaking wet from the cold night rain and I was covered in mud. But the oddest thing is that I didn't have a scratch on me. My clothes were ripped so I guess I fell or jumped off of a train, but how was I not hurt? I was dizzy, but that was pretty much it.

I walked back up the train tracks; the rain was so heavy that I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of my face. The rain soaked through my black trench coat and black jeans. I kept tripping over my feet. I was so tired, but I didn't dare stop walking.

Who am I? I thought. My name is…. What is my name? I can't remember!

I don't remember how long I was walking but after I finally reached the main road, I finally tripped into a puddle and couldn't get up. I must be dying, right? But I guess I'm ok with it, so I closed my eyes, and waited silently for death.

"Hey?" A male's voice broke the sound of rain and thunder. "Are you ok?" A hand shook me lightly on the shoulder.

I pried open my eyes and saw a man. He had green hair, an eye patch over his left eye and his right eye was brown. He wore a white fedora and a white suit and was smoking a cigarette.

"I… I don't know… why?" I said. Surprisingly, my voice was rather sturdy considering that I was dying in the rain.

The man looked worried. "I was worried, you were just lying in the middle of the road and I thought you were dead." He helped me stand up. I nearly fell over, but he helped steady me. "Are you ok?"

"I'm ok… I think…" I said.

"What's your name?" The man asked. "My name is Sven Vollfied."

"I…" I tried to remember. "I don't remember my name."

"You mean you have amnesia?" Sven asked.

"I guess so…" I said.

Sven looked worried. "Well, I can't leave you alone in the middle of nowhere. I'll give you a ride to town, is that ok?"

I thought about it; I didn't know this man, and something in me didn't trust him. But I was out of options; I didn't know who I was or what I was going to do. So I had no other choice. "Sure, thanks." I heard my voice say.

Sven smiled, it was a nice smile, even with a cigarette in his mouth. "Great, my truck is right behind us." He led me to his truck and I climbed into the passenger's seat and Sven drove us to the nearest town.

Thunder Mountain is on the outskirts of a town called McCall. It was a cozy town really, very quaint. A drug store filled with books and toys, an ice rink for skating and ice hockey, a lake with its own version of the Scotland monster named 'Sharley' and many cute restaurants. We parked at a small restaurant with a wooden door.

"We'll get something to eat here, ok?" Sven stated.

"Sure," I said. The smell of pizza's and bread made my mouth water. I was starving, and I don't know how long it's been since I've last eaten.

"How old are you?" Sven asked as we walked across the parking lot, with an umbrella over our heads. "Do you remember how old you are?"
I thought, I think I did remember. "Eighteen…" I said. "I'm eighteen."

"Hmm…" Sven opened the door for me. "At least that gives us something to work with." We sat at a table and ordered steak, potatoes, and hot coffee even though it was about ten at night. It all tasted like heaven. Even the coffee, well, it tasted like mud, but it felt like heaven.

"So…" Sven began. "What do you remember?"

"I think I might've taken a train to Thunder Mountain." I said. "But I might've gotten kicked off or I jumped off or something."

"But if you did jump off of a train, you seem perfectly fine." Sven said. "There isn't so much as a scratch on you; does your head hurt?"

"I felt a bit dizzy but that was it." I said. "But I have to ask about you; who are you exactly?"

Sven took a sip of coffee. "I'm a sweeper."

"A sweeper, what's that; a professional house cleaner?" I asked.

Sven grinned, as if it was funny, maybe it was. "No, 'sweeper' is a slang word for bounty hunter."

"Oh…" I said. I thought for a moment, maybe I did know what a sweeper was. "You arrest people and get paid for it, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, how do you know?" Sven asked. "Are you a sweeper?" My head started throbbing, so I put a hand over my forehead. "Hey, are you ok?" Sven asked.

"Y-yeah," I said. "I guess it sort of rings a bell. But I'm pretty sure I'm not a sweeper."

Sven thought for a moment. "Do you have some sort of ID in your jacket, maybe a wallet or a driver's license?"

I emptied out my pockets and what I found was a few sticks of gum, a passport, a disposable phone, a watch, a lighter, and a wallet. I checked inside; only my driver's license, a few credit cards, about two hundred dollars in cash, and a ripped photo; I saw… me I guess. I checked my hair color, black while in the photo I had blonde hair and blue eyes. I was smiling, a hand was on my shoulder but whose hand it was wasn't visible. The photo was horribly water stained, so only a blur of a person.

I checked the driver's licenses and passports, but I had five different driver's licenses and passports, all with different names and faces; Rebecca Tyler, a girl with brown hair and brown eyes for the Middle East, Samantha Coil, red hair with gray eyes for Africa, Charlotte Black, a girl with bleach white hair and green eyes for Europe, Loran Prate, a girl with auburn hair and bi-colored eyes for South America, and finally, Kirsten Lusk, a girl with black hair and blue eyes.

Kirsten Lusk, age 18, birthday August 17th 1995, height 6'0, weight 166 lb, Ethnicity European, half Japanese. I didn't know if this was the real me or a fake, but I decided to go by it.

"You must be some sort of spy or thief." Sven suggested. "I can't think of any other reason on why you'd have so many ID's."

"But, who am I really?" I asked. I was scared; I could be anyone of these people.

"Let me see…" Sven examined all of the ID's and passports. "I think you're Kirsten Lusk. I mean the passport for Kirsten Lusk is the one that has been recently stamped. Today's date is March 18th and this passport was recently stamped two days ago."

"Where was I last?" I asked.

Sven checked. "Uh… you were last in Japan."

I thought back to anything involving Japan… nothing. I shook my head. "But I don't know what I'm going to do now." I said. I put my head in my hands. "What am I going to do?"

"Hey, don't give up." Sven assured me. "It's not the end of the world."

"But what am I going to do?" I asked, trying not to fall into despair.

"Well, I can't let you wander the world all alone." Sven said. "I'll help you. It's my job to help people as a sweeper and a gentleman."

"That's very kind of you Mr. Vollfied." I said. "But I don't want to be a bother to you."

"You're not bothering me." Sven said. "And call me Sven,"

"Ok, Sven," I said. "What use can I be?"

Sven took a few posters out of his coat and set them on the table. "You can help me come up with a plan on how I'm going to catch these guys." I examined the posters; they listed names for several people. They were drug dealers, and each had a bounty on them.

"I see, you're currently on a job, right?"

"Yeah, I'm tracking down a couple of nasty drug dealers." Sven said. "They're somewhere in this town, but I have no idea where they are."

Suddenly, the door burst open and five guys came in.

"Yo!" One yelled at the woman at the counter; he had a video camera for some reason. "Get us a table and a pack of White Russian for the boys!" The woman was shocked, and the man was getting annoyed. "Come on baby! We're starving here!" Another man grabbed was holding a baseball bat. "You keep us waiting and we're gonna have to get rough."

Sven stood up. "You sit tight, ok?"

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"Just sit tight." Sven walked over to the men and told them to knock off. The men laughed and one tried to punch him, but Sven caught it. In a flash it turned into huge fight. Sven was a good fighter, but there were five guys and they easily overpowered him.

I jumped up walked towards them. "Hey, leave him alone before you get hurt!"

"Oooh!" One said. "Lookie lookie, it seems that he has a girlfriend!" The guy turned his camera on me. "Now then, what are we going to do about her?" The guy with a baseball bat came up. "Give it to her rough!"

"You leave her alone!" Sven tried to get close to defend me, but one guy grabbed him and pinned him to the wall.

The baseball bat swung at me, and in that moment, the world seemed to move in slow motion, as he charged at me, my hands involuntarily flew forward, getting the man in the face. He fell over, dropping the bat. The others seemed shocked, then furious. Two of them got in ready positions to fight I loosened my shoulders, parted my feet and got ready. As if I knew what to do, but that was it, it all came so naturally to me.

The guy on my left swung his right fist at me; I caught it in an open fist. The guy on my right was pulling his foot back to kick me, but I beat him to it. The guy whose fist I had in my hand was swinging his left fist back to hit me but I moved my body to the side and blocked it with my shoulder. I released his fist and punched him over the head and pulled him in front of me in time to block a punch from the second guy. I shoved the guy I was holding to the ground. The guy with the baseball bat had recovered enough to stand and was swinging back his arm to swing, but I caught the baseball bat with two hands, swung the man around me and shoved him to the ground, releasing the bat.

Two other guys advanced, one swinging a glass bottle, which I blocked the arm with my shoulder. But the other guy grabbed my left arm from behind and dragged me backwards. The other guy grabbed my other arm, pulling me back to a wall.

"Kirsten!" Sven cried. He was trying to fight back.

A baseball bat swung towards me, but I used my foot to kick the guy's arm, stopping the assault. The guy on my right was about to kick me but I pulled my knee up and blocked it. The guy with the baseball bat turned it sideways and held it against my throat, in an attempt to choke me. But I managed to knock him back by using my shoulders to throw him back as well as the guy holding my right arm, but the guy on my left managed to punch me in the face, temporarily dazing me, but I refused to give up so I shoved him against the wall and punched him in the face.

The others were getting tired, but the man with the bat tried again to swing, but this time I grabbed the bat and twisted it out of his grip, throwing the man into the wall. Then they all came at me with every intention to punch me to death. But I had a baseball bat, and I used it to knock anyone who tried to get to close.

Only two were left, the guy with the video camera and the one holding Sven, and all three of them were staring at me with their jaws open, Sven's cigarette fell out of his mouth. Sven, recovering first, managed to overpower the guy holding him back and knocked him out with a choke hold.

"Holy shit…" the guy with the camera whispered. Sven snuck up behind him and tackled him to the ground.

"Hey you," I looked at the woman, who was amazed by what she had witnessed. "Call the cops, now." She snapped out of her amazement and called the police.

A few minutes later, the police had arrived and Sven got rewarded with at least fifty thousand dollars. Sven lit a fresh cigarette, looked at me and gapped.

"How did you do that?" He asked. "There were four guys, four guys, where'd you learn to fight like that?!"

I thought back, and my first memory resurfaced. "I learned how to fight at a military school, I don't remember what school, but I was training for some sort of agency."

"Well, at least that gives us something to work with." Sven said, and then he laughed. "I can't believe you were able to fight off four guys!"

"Thanks," I said, rather embarrassed. "But that doesn't really help me find any real memories that will help me. I mean, I don't exactly know what other uses I have besides being able to kick the crap out of someone."

Sven looked at me with a sort of forlorn expression. He thought about something, and then he asked. "You know, it gets kind of lonely being on the road all the time, and you've definitely got the potential, so… do you want to be a Sweeper?"

I blinked. "Really? Me? Become a Sweeper?"

"Yeah, but it's totally up to you." He said. "Obviously we'll have to get you a license to become a Sweeper, it's a difficult test, but I think you'll be able to pass."

I thought about it for a moment; I have no clue telling me who I am or where I came from… but I think being a Sweeper would be something I can use to help me find out who I am. If I truly am an agent or a thief, maybe I'll come across my name.

"Alright, but I have a few standards." I said.

Sven sighed. "What are they?"

"Well, I hope I can get some dry clothes." I said. My damp jeans and shirt began to cling to my skin. "And I'll need some form of gun, and…" I looked at the cigarette pack in his hand. "You'll need to lighten up on the smoking, or at least keep the windows rolled down."

Sven laughed. "I thought it'd be something terrible, girls are usually very demanding." He walked over to our table and picked up the lighter that was in my pocket. It had an emblem of a planet with a moon orbiting around it. "And I think that this will have to do until we can get you a proper gun."

"Great, I can burn people." I said sarcastically.

Sven smiled a bit. "Did you push the button?" He saw my confused look and pushed the emblem. It was apparently some kind of button that opened the lighter. But then, he pushed one side of the lighter down, as if it was on some kind of panel, then another side, and turned the whole thing sideways. He clicked the panels into place, and a trigger popped out.

"That thing is a gun?!" I asked, amazed. It was a tiny gun, about the size of a, well, lighter. But it had the shape of a revolver.

"Yeah, I used to own one of these things." He said. "These things hold .01 caliber bullets." Sven rearranged the gun back into the lighter, and handed it back to me. "These things are good to have around, but you're right, we'll have to get you some kind of a gun. Although we are a bit tight on money, so we'll have to wait."

"Well, we'll just have to work hard on getting extra cash." I say. "But first I'll need to take that test, right?"

"Yeah, but first…" Sven held out his hand, his face was very serious. "We're partners, so that means we have to work together. Can we trust each other?"

That suspicion I felt came back with a vengeance. I guess that it's only natural… but I trust Sven. Because, right now, he's all I have. He's probably the only way I can find out who I am.

I took his hand into mine and shook. "Alright, it's a deal; I'll be your partner."

Sven grinned again, but it was a sort of sad grin. Then I felt a sort of cold feeling, and I heard a voice in my head, a scream, a man screaming someone's name but it was so fast that I didn't register. One word, a name, and an image of a cat flashed into my mind for a split second, only it's eyes lingered in my memories…

"You ok, Kirsten?" Sven asked.

I shook it off. "Yeah, I'm ok."

"Well then," Sven turned around. "Check please!"

I managed to pass the test to become a Sweeper, and began my work of being a Sweeper. I used my small lighter gun, but if it turned into a gun fight I was to take cover. But throughout all the time I worked with Sven, I never recovered any memories of who I am. So many questions piled up; who am I? What did I used to do? How was I able to hear that voice when I held Sven's hand?

Nothing could prepare me for what I had to face next… And it all started... on a early summer's afternoon