The room she worked in was covered in sheets of clear, somewhat cloudy plastic. Bits and bobs of splattered paint and colours were dotted around the room, adorned like little drops of colour into a colourless world. Art easels and canvas was set up all over the room, some surrounding a modelling stand, others, overlooking the city of Vale, all of them had one simple trait. Beautiful, uncompromising art. Each one told a different story, a different tale of woe, of fear, of happiness, and of serenity.
Just one shape disrupted this. On the balcony, there was a dark skinned, smoking woman, leaning on the metal rails, and taking draws from a small ciggarette, admiring the lights of the city, and the view that was given. This woman, was Hazel McAllister, known to her students and everybody else as Ijeska Lanaford, an amiable, quiet woman with an unfathomable talent and precision for art, whether it was painting, sketching, or digital, no miniscule detail was left out.
But she had a darker side to her, one hidden ion the underbelly of hundreds of murder and destruction cases, all of which came under one name, 'Stoker'.
She was the hunter in the concrete forest, the watcher on the bench, and the unwavering stroke of a round through the head. An indomitable assassin, void of humanity when on contract, but a kind, motherly lady in work.
But today, even through her hundreds of layers of security and walls she'd placed so carefully, someone had come, someone had come for her. Who, or why, it was unknown, but she could see the girl, through the cameras she'd set up, and through the reflections in the glass of the windowed building as little flashes of colour that were not meant to be, melded through. She could hear her, through the bugs on the stairwell, and she could predict her.
She'd set up traps already, the moment that someone had come up the place, going past places she shouldn't have. Only her students, and others she'd trusted dearly came up to see her, and she never arranged anything without communication.
The door was unlocked, and errily opened as the girl from the stairs reached her door. Now, Hazel could smell her, the sweat, the floaty smell of her shampoo, and the sting of the girl's bodywash. Hazel took the ciggaratte she'd been smoking, and tapped the ash off, before finally flicking it off of the balcony, turning slowly to peer at her uninvited guest.
"Now, before you take one more step. As a fellow human being, I am obliged to tell you that it will blow both you and this building sky high. With the formalities out of the way, you are to give me a simple answer, in the form of a name, and your purpose here."
"Who. Are. You."