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defectiveImmediately
In-Training
Thunder for Mayor, Tyc for Attorney General, Necris for Congressman.
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Post by defectiveImmediately on Jan 12, 2014 12:39:45 GMT
Introduction
Horizons
’Evil brings men together.’ – Aristotle
So, just where were we at in this whole masquerade of bullshit and slaughter? Last entry I remember writing was about the recruitment phase into the organisation. Well... first things first, time-frame; let’s skip forwards a few years. I’d say, around three. Ripe old month of February; after all, it’s probably best we leave the fluff, filler, and general crap behind. Nothing too exciting happened in those three years that can’t be summed up with a simple training montage and a paragraph or two. I trained for a few months, worked with Kai on a job or two, and finally prepared my team. After that, well... things became routine. I played assistant, collector, enforcer, and occasionally trigger man, when worst came to worst. Nothing spectacular. A few gruesome murders here, a few intelligent fast-paced moments of analysis and response there... Now... now for the lead-up. The introduction to this second segment of the triumvirate isn’t nearly as spectacularly ambiguous as its predecessor. In those past three years, things have gotten less and less pure and simple black-and-white, and more now just... bland old differing shades of grey. ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ mean no more to me than they do to a child. They’re fantasised, fabricated by fools who try to simplify everything. Superheroes and villains. Polar opposites, and extremes along the end of a rather convoluted meter. In a sense, I can’t align myself with either of these values. Things are never simple: the world is no computer, and it doesn’t function on binary values, unfortunately enough. Schemes never sit perfectly on one or zero; there’s a fence between the pair, and, hell, that fence takes up a vast majority of this aforementioned chequered moral chessboard. Good is not right, evil is not wrong, and justice is twisted. Who the ‘bad guy’ is simply depends on perspective. ‘One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter’. Truer words never spoken. I guess, if these changes that I’ve made need some form of definition, they should not be of a moral typing but instead of this persona I’ve chosen to undertake and become deeply engrossed in. I could now be described as a sociopath, very much a modern Machiavellian character. Said descriptor would most likely become the recipient of a single .22 round to the cranium, but, it’s a perfectly valid fact indeed. I am no longer a worker, a slave to a world where I was contented in my own blissful delirium and ignorance; I am a creator, an inspirer. A figurehead, striking up morale in my troops and fear in my enemies. I am an unholy finger of the Broker’s powerful fist, curled inwards and knuckle bracing for impact. I am a hammer of his own personal brand of vendetta and justice; I am a paid-for vigilante at his disposal. I dispatch those who have become a nuisance to our cause. I ensure that a junkie doesn’t do an ounce of smack without someone in our little elite cabal knowing about it. And our cause is not one driven by prophets, beacons, other-worldly messages, a grim alien foreboding, or a warning from a spirit whose time has been eons past; no, our cause is something far simpler. Materialistic, savage, primal, human desire. We want not to save the world, but to control and enthral it, for it to become putty in our hands. Altogether, this may seem like an odd way of describing such a simple prospect... but we have truly revolutionised the way that such an operation should be described. Our cause feels so much greater than a plain desire for a domination of all that is worldly and material; our justice suits our own needs. Perspective once more, bringing this spiel full circle. I no longer feel a pang of guilt upon being branded ‘an evil man’ or a ‘traitor to all things human’. Dark words such as ‘terrible’, ‘horrific’, and ‘manipulative’ no longer bear negative connotations, unless we’re discussing the amount of figures at the end of our paycheck. Allies, borders, and boundaries shift, and change; allegiances to petty causes gestate and mutate all via time’s brutal passage. None can escape it; change is natural, and has struck me above all and anyone else. The slight euphoria I gain from... enforcing, now, could perhaps cause warning flags to crop up in a psychoanalyst’s little black book. However, everyone yearns for release at the end of the day, and most people find pleasure in things vastly different from the person adjacent. I have human desires as much as the next guy – drink, sleep, eat, fu ck – but ‘kill’ seems to be one rejected by most people, generally. I don’t see why. Most of the people I take care of, I have a reason to; even I have boundaries when it comes to this. I’m careful, oh so very careful where my dancing, twirling finger of justice trails and lies. It’s a precarious thing, tweaking and pruning the chrysanthemum of society. Everything seems, however... somewhat... surreal. It’s like I’ve been play-acting all this time. I can be volatile, racing from hot to cold and back again in a second. I can shift sporadically and crazily, mutate rapidly at the simplest and most complex of triggers. I’d even say that I am the very epitome of change, if that wasn’t egotistic and solipsistic to an extent. Not that I give two shits about judgement – whoever’s reading this, or, anyone, for that matter. Fear is perhaps another issue to bring up. But, really? Really? Is there that much to say on the matter? Fear is non-existent to me. Most people in the food chain are always deathly afraid of the seemingly-mammoth creature above them, and this self-perpetuating cycle of survival of the fittest seemingly never ends... but with me, it does. I don’t look up to anyone. The Broker isn’t my boss. He’s my client. I am indebted to him, and I respect him, and whilst I probably should due to his supposed omnipotence, I don’t fear him. He is a man. He is but flesh and blood. And if it bleeds, I can kill it. The time has not yet arisen – who knows if it ever will? – but I know that even the Broker in his perpetual state of power can be toppled. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Some would argue that ‘with fear, comes rationality’. I’d respond by shaking my head and brandishing my bread and butter; pistols. Synthetic creations forged only of metal. They’re a perfect example of my current ascended state; steel is both brittle and strong. It can snap in seconds or outlast the world’s very touch for years. Rust will come to it eventually, as age does to man; but dependent on a state of maintenance, tactical application, and the mind behind the trigger, pistols can be in it for either the long haul or the short haul. It’s a simple concept to grasp and understand. I think I’m better off. Course unimpeded by pesky human obstacles that some call values, fear no longer a factor... it certainly sounds like a path to nothing but success. Coupled with my sharp wit and analytical potential – smoke being blown up my ass aside – there are very few instances on this Earth which could prove to be even slightly problematic. I’m not quite at the state of apathy that I yearn to be, but... it’s in sight yet. Perfection is close. I can touch it, feel it, taste it. My ultimate state of stasis is coming closer by the second, as I inch forwards and home in on its signal. Countdowns everywhere ticking down to that one fateful moment which will change not just my life, but hopefully this entire world, unleash all that pent-up effort in a single fell swoop. Perfection... perfection is on the horizon.
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defectiveImmediately
In-Training
Thunder for Mayor, Tyc for Attorney General, Necris for Congressman.
Posts: 0
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Post by defectiveImmediately on Jan 12, 2014 12:41:35 GMT
Chapter One
Fried Eggs and Spent Shells
I woke with a start. The smell of grease and oil hung strong in the air coupled with the desperate crackling and fizzling of spitting, boiling olive oil upon a pan. I took a long, deep draw of this pleasant stench, before throwing my legs off the bed, having realised many a year ago that the longer I stayed static convincing myself that I’d move in the next few moments, the more affixed to the mattress I actually became. Probably some odd branching of Murphy’s law implemented somewhere. My palms rubbed the collected deposits of dust and grit from the corners of my eyes; slowly, fingers broke away, leaving naught but the smallest of the five siblings on each hand to vigorously run themselves up and down in an almost-ritualistic pattern along my tear ducts. I did this every morning. Although, my house-guest usually didn’t. I’d moved, in the past few years, to a fairly upmarket apartment. I’d spent a few days furnishing and painting over it with Lewis, then moved what little decor I’d decided to keep from that decrepit, wrecked crime-scene of a hovel that I lived and worked in. It was near-horrific now; the bar had been raised so high in just three years, standards had increased tenfold. I couldn’t go back to the way I was living then. Luxury had become lifestyle. I quickly scanned the room as an automatic defense mechanism to ensure this wasn’t some bizarre kidnapping situation and that I was, infact, at home. Everything lined up perfectly, and the floods of last night’s cloudy memories slowly pieced themselves together in my head. I widened my eyes for but a moment, mouth still straight, flat, and plain, in a perfectly apathetic position. What had I done? Working through yesterday backwards, I’d fallen asleep, indulged some of my more... primal desires with the occupant of the other room, had dinner, returned from a long day of work, worked, eaten lunch, worked, eaten breakfast, and woken up in a manner not too dissimilar to this. I smirked at just how routinely acceptable my life was becoming, but the wrinkles and creases on my face soon settled back into naught but a plush, lightly-tanned complexion, and once more, my visage bore a look of total and perfect neutrality. I checked the clock. It was a few minutes past eight; my internal alarm had functioned near-perfectly. I never woke up exactly on time; it was always five or six minutes either side of the benchmark. Some saw even a second of lateness as wasting time; I hadn’t ever really found myself to care. Life had followed a strict regimen and agenda for these past few months, no matter the day; I’d generally found myself not exactly getting the recommended amount of sleep for a developed adult of my age. Four hours tended to suffice. For a particularly big operation, I’d usually lie dormant for almost days in advance. Elevated you to a further state of... raised awareness; not that a cup of coffee and a holstered .45 at your waist didn’t in the former case, but, still... I took another glance about the room. It was a simple bedroom; four walls painted white, a ceiling of a similar matte colour, a single window left around three inches ajar for the sounds of the busy, bustling streets ninety floors below to seep in through, an entry-way to the bathroom, and another door through which the aforementioned smells snaked in with their lusciously overpowering tendrils of hot grease and egg. A pair of silver nightstands, two cream, tall, and perfectly cuboid dressers, alongside a grand armoire filled with various jackets and clothes. A silver mirror, a light-switch, and a lamp; a slightly irregular raised panel on the wall which nevertheless followed a strict pattern of wallpaper. A few notebooks hidden away inside a locked drawer in the nightstand; and, finally, a king-sized double bed, with a white base, mattress, sheet, duvet, blanket, and pair of pillows. Despite seeming, upon first glance, innocent and simple, this room was a lot deeper than it appeared to be, and had a goldmine of criminal evidence and goods just inches beneath the surface. All it took was a little scratching... I was just incredibly adept at ensuring that this looked like the most seemly and typical bedroom for a stylish and sleek couple such as myself and- I had heard the footsteps, but my subconscious had chosen to disregard them. The door burst open, and I jumped to my feet, startled, eyes wide open, pupils thin and shrinking ever further at the speed of a bullet. The body that the feminine hand clasping the bronze door handle belonged to almost quivered for but a moment; but I suppressed everything, all that adrenaline backed up and shooting through me, all that readiness to respond and strike due to my foolish delving too far into my own psychoanalysis of the way I’d presented the room. A single command had disengaged the very reflexive system which made me a killing machine: ‘stop’. It was necessary to exercise a degree of caution from time to time. A welcoming, warm smile slipped onto my face, false as it was, with an ever-so-slightly flirty curl at the end of my lip. The body’s shivering and trembling ceased, and the pair of us were both set at ease too; finally, my eyes rose and fell on her face. Ingrid. Rolling, curled locks of blonde hair, that fair complexion, those perfectly straight and pearl-white teeth, telltale signs of her being an ex-model. The defined neck and jawline I’d committed to memory time and time again. She wore a simple nightdress; silk, silver, with a few frills around the edges. It hung to her perfectly proportionate frame almost without error; I had been dead-on with my measurements, as always. It’d been a surprise Valentine’s gift for a few weeks ago; it was coming into early March, again. The last specks of snow were fading from the sidewalks below. The morning chill had now turned to a welcomed neutrality and absence of neither heat nor cold, just... pleasant, tolerable, temperate breezes, occasionally brushing a little uncomfortably against the side of your face. Nothing that couldn’t be dealt with or worked around; unlike veritable blizzards and thunderstorms, which offered less-than-helpful impediments, generally, to my rather swift style of navigating through the city’s labyrinthine streets, especially on a bustling Saturday like this. The day, as time went by, became increasingly irrelevant and less and less of importance. I worked when the Broker asked me to. It was as simple and straight-forwards as that. And, today, I had work... but not for at least another couple of hours. I was safe, for now. Large, oval emerald eyes sat atop a nose just a few millimetres too small. She didn’t quite tick all the boxes necessary for perfection, the measurements were maybe out by a decimal place or two... but she was damned close. Ingrid was one that I’d told myself I’d try not to screw up with; I had, at that point, too many errors, ink blots across the page already in my various crusades for perfection. It had come to the moment where actually convincing was all a matter of exercising basic charismatic techniques; simply putting on a brave face and indulging and inserting yourself totally and completely into the facade. Whereas some lesser men would suffer from crises struggling to manage so many separate personae at once... I... I lie for a living. I communicate for a living. It’s important to tailor your image so it’s exactly what people want it to see – even more so in my line of work. Rising through the industry was hard, but some tips and tricks I’d picked up on when working with the subordinates had gained me a large basis of support. And... well, that speaks for itself when it comes to promotions. Especially in an honour and respect-based hierarchy similar to that which the organisation’s foundations take root in. “I made your favourite...” A sly, coy sentence from the woman, followed by a giggle, and she raised one leg onto the toes, gyrating the heel in small arcs through the air and biting her bottom lip gently. She definitely knew how to manipulate the aura of allure she simply projected. Even the hardiest of men couldn’t be immune to something like this; Ingrid was a former model. As typically cliché as it was, she was pretty much a Swedish blonde bombshell through and through, a perfect textbook example. The faint traces of a second-generation accent and ten years in Sweden some time ago hung gently upon her quiet voice, but only a gifted linguist or language analyst would be able to tell. She stepped forwards, and her hands rose, slipping upwards to my neck. They were warm; lined with a thin film of condensed liquid, presumably from some form of washing or evaporation. She trailed the index of the left up to the base of my chin, then drew a snake-like path back down to my collarbone, seemingly in awe at how unaffected I chose to be by her advances. Most men would’ve been at her feet and licking her boots months ago. I, however, was different. An anomaly. I had never fallen under the category of ‘most men’. A burning desire to stray from the norm had been latent within me since my childhood, and only truly come full circle three years ago. Ingrid bucked forwards and began to press her form against mine. The hand that had previously rested on my collarbone began to trail down my chest, brush past the faded muscular outline of my abdomen, and moved to gently tug at the elastic my rather comfortable black boxer shorts. With that, however, I broke into a dry, tired chuckle, and immediately ducked out of her grip. Leaving her absolutely startled in my wake, eyes wide and pose frozen, I darted for the bathroom. In an instant, she realised just what I’d done, and lumbered after me, hormones surging through her and making her actions sluggish and cumbersome. She’d put her everything into those advances, and had ensured herself that I would respond. Well, I had. Just not in the way she was hoping. In a singular, fluid motion, I had thrown myself into the bathroom, crossed the threshold, and spun the door lock simply with a flick of my wrist. She dropped to her knees outside and made a faux whining noise, pounding twice on the door with sluggish, balled-up, gentle fists never meant for violence. I shed the boxers and hopped quickly into the shower, pulling the door shut with a clunk, before finally shouting my response, my first words of the morning. “Go make breakfast!” A twist of the dial; water jets shot from sixty different pores of the showerhead a split-second later, slamming relentlessly against my form, and immediately causing steam to begin rising over the adorned, frosted glass plates that made up the shower’s two walls, backed against, otherwise, similar structures formed of stone and tiles. From the sheer heat – which was, at worst, uncomfortable – most would have yelped or shouted some form of expletive, but I simply raised my hand and twisted the dial, maybe a little agitated. Another second or two of tweaking, and the temperature was absolutely fine. I was content, and finished off my sentence, before concentrating on washing, and hearing Ingrid raise to her feet, mutter a sombre, tired acknowledgement of compromise, giggle, and head off once more: “We’ll continue this after I’m done in here!”
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defectiveImmediately
In-Training
Thunder for Mayor, Tyc for Attorney General, Necris for Congressman.
Posts: 0
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Post by defectiveImmediately on Jan 12, 2014 12:42:13 GMT
Chapter Two
Impediments
Thud.My foot hit the floor and I wrenched the shower’s dial forwards, the various jets of water pulled to a halt with a simple flick of my wrist. The heat slowly faded from my reddened body as I grasped a towel, and wrapped it around my figure at the waist; the echoes of the numerous heated streams pounding against the floor of the shower soon disappeared from the canals of my inner ear, and were replaced with three quick, solid knocks on the door. I prayed to whatever god there was out there that Ingrid wouldn’t open the door for a change, but I knew she would anyway. And with a click and a number of slotting noises, the chain fell free, and the door burst open. Curiosity killed the cat. The frying pans still hissed and crackled with the sounds of olive oil boiling in the background as she inquired, in a rather perplexed manner, quietly as to the nature of my visitor’s – or, indeed, visitors’ – intentions. I isolated two sets of footsteps, two inaudible sentences, and, most importantly of all, two voices I didn’t recognise. I heard the traditional good-cop voice, calm, and level-headed, and the typical bad-cop voice, irritable and sounding a little too much like Joe Pesci for my tastes. It was amazing what you could ascertain through listening to someone speak without even being able to discern the words. I could have probably pulled up a few likely-to-be-correct analyses on their backgrounds, personalities, service histories, et cetera, if I were to waste a few more moments on it. I didn’t bother. My eyes flicked to three focal points in the room as Ingrid luckily enough asked them to take a seat and if they wanted coffee. ”Thank fuck for caffeine addiction,” I smiled to myself, and outlined the three separate junctures in the room that I had isolated earlier. Sink, bathtub, and mirror cabinet. Beneath the innards of the bathtub, I always kept a little something for home defence, usually a shotgun of some variety. The mirror-cabinet contained a concealed revolver within the piping system behind. And the sink itself was home to a compact sub-machine gun. The former two would take too much time to get out, and suspicion would arise. The machine pistol was a safer bet, but it would be considerably more... messy. Suspicion was... bad, especially in this situation, confronted with two presumably trigger-happy and irritated cops, not worried to get their hands dirty and note in the report that I’d ‘opened fire on them initially’ if I walked out of the room with a candlestick in my hands. I was going to have to play my hand quickly. As for the operation being messy... well, it was always inevitable; it was just always about certain degrees of control over the chaos that would undoubtedly unfold. Each cartridge casing shed was another margin for fu ck-up, another line back to the Broker’s arms dealer, another man imprisoned that would make our operations that little bit more difficult to execute. “Fraser?” And there, the shout came. A call through from the kitchen, a little muffled, but as clear as day. I smiled to myself, and rigorously ran the towel through my hair, flicking the lock counter-clockwise and wrenching the door handle down, before moving quietly back into my bedroom. The bathroom fan whirred behind me, and as I pushed the door open, billows of steam, akin to clouds of smoke after an explosion, seemed to chase after me, erupting at either side and around every inch of my visage. I grinned, flicked the light and the fan off, and pushed the door shut, before getting dressed once more. “I’ll only be a minute or so, Ingrid.” It was, indeed, another minute or so until I actually moved back into the kitchen proper, having donned a pair of black slacks, a white work-shirt, open-collar, with the sleeves rolled up, and some simple black socks, a leather longcoat and a tie under my arm. I beamed at Ingrid initially, then a look of falsified confusion crept onto my face as I ‘spotted’ the two policemen, garbed in their rough dark-brown leather coats, one clutching a lit cigarette, the other chewing gum and scowling in my direction. The latter was shorter, too, and had an arguably larger frame, whilst the former appeared to be somewhat more slender, as well as being fairly tall. “To what do I owe the pleasure, gentlemen?” Ingrid burst in, seemingly rather upset by the entire ordeal, before either of them could properly reply. “F-Fraser,” My head snapped towards her, and I almost grimaced. I needed to act dumb, and making quick, fluid movements like that wouldn’t do anything but further arise their suspicion, when I truly needed to alleviate it to set the plan in progress. “What’s... what’s happening?” “I don’t know, Ingrid,” I frowned initially, once more, an expression with no truth to it whatsoever, before turning to the cops. “I’m sure these two fine members of the police force have an adequate reason for interrupting our breakfast,” “Shut it, asshole,” The shorter of the two yapped initially, an Italian-American twang to his voice. I arched an eyebrow in ‘surprise’, and he simply began to chew his gum that little extra bit more vigorously, sufficiently proud of himself that he’d gotten one jab in. One jab? Hah. It was pathetic. Before long, I’d leave the pair of them comparatively beaten and broken on the side of the road, clutching victory between my teeth. The taller of the two unfolded a few crumpled sheets of paper, and slid them along the table in my direction. “Mr. Goldstone,” His voice was closer to a drone, with a more ambiguous, smooth tone to it. A few of the hairs on his fringe seemed to be greying; his face was furrowed with wrinkles, and small scars. He was a learned policeman, alright. “We’re not here to arrest you; we’d simply like to just talk to you about... uh...” He snatched the page back up again, and read triumphantly from it. “...’irregularities in your paying taxes’.” He slid the page back over once more, and I let my face drop further into stone-cold confusion, gave him a taste of victory, let him sit there smugly, and allowed his partner to chuckle. The audacity of it all. Who was I? Al Capone? The guy who murdered his way through the Prohibition and got brought down by the smallest of things in the end? Not in my line of work. “Ah,” Was my response, tailored perfectly to the situation. Ingrid looked even more confused than she had a moment ago. I smiled, and skirted around a counter, grasping a chopping board and a knife, beginning to slice mushrooms that she’d so impeccably prepared. I hummed quietly as I prepared a response, letting little trembles escape my form every now and then, to keep the illusion, the image, as real as I possibly could. This wasn’t standard operating procedure. Hell, I knew standard operating procedure. They wouldn’t make a bust like this for evading taxes. They wouldn’t discuss as they were now. They wouldn’t blackmail or threaten. They’d come in, and they’d slam the cuffs on me, and take me away. These two were waiting for something else. They wanted a reaction. Half of the police force knew who I was, and a large majority of them had been paid to look the other way. But working as an enforcer and an underboss for a syndicate that thrives partially upon organised crime and its continuation... one of the occupational hazards is pissing people off. Luckily, I’m always well-prepared for these sorts of encounters. My brain had long ago kicked into drive, and as I’d always been taught and told, time and time again, I recited the creed to myself mentally. ‘Stay two steps ahead’. It’s how you survive. It’s how you win. It’s how you emerge at the top of the pile, spattered with blood and clutching a knife in your hand. It’s how you’re successful. You have to predict the board, and you have to understand that there is any number of possible outcomes, dependent on your opponent. You have to predict these as accurately as you can, in order to wrench success from your opponent’s cold, stiff, and dead hands. Chess and mass murder went hand in hand, surprisingly enough. My tactics and stratagems were unmatched, even subconsciously. Lesser Fraser had been suppressed, and I’d come out to play. This was how I’d gotten the position as the Broker’s right hand, the swift and easily-aggravated single-unit response team and enforcer clumped together. I was a one-man genocide. If brains could beat like hearts, I’d be in neurological cardiac arrest. Already I’d been thinking of ways to get the jump on them, and the mushrooms had been the perfect resort. Across this counter alone, I kept three pistols. And, Ingrid, bless her, had aligned the chopping board near-perfectly. With each cut, I inched closer and closer to the centre of three drawers. The one on the left contained a Glock. And on the right, a .38 Colt Detective Special. Back to the events at hand, however. They wanted to detain me, but they had no evidence. Every shell casing or fingerprint that I’d left in my earlier days had been unluckily enough, misplaced. With a track record of supposed and implicated murder, despite nothing concrete, and nothing to even tie me to court in any way, shape, or form, my name reverberated around some of the grimier halls of the city if you listened hard enough. They wanted to spur me into action, to arrest me for something real. Assault against officers of the law? The gavel would come down hard on me, then, or so they thought. “Well, Mr. Goldstone? Do you have anything to say for yourself?” That smug, self-righteous asshole. Or, even better, they wanted to kill me in action, get that medal pinned to their lapels, and have my cold, lifeless body go down in history as the one unnamed criminal that couldn’t be tied to anything else. But, alas, it wasn’t my day, not today. They’d underestimated me, severely. And that was... unlucky, really. “...or are we just gonna have ta’ take ya’ away, pal?” See, it didn’t matter that they thought they could make the bust. Hell, for all the world cared, they could have been super-heroes, and I could have been standing there, red-handed, ready to be unmasked, spandex and all. For all the world cares, you can be Time Magazine’s person of the year ten times running – when it really comes down to it, what are you but flesh, blood, and whatever you do in the heat of the moment? The pistol wasn’t pinned in place. It was kept hooked up to a small metal pin from which it could be detached from easily. Under the pretense of looking for a new type of cooking implement, as the policemen railed on with their questions, looking quizzically at me, I smiled, and looked up at them, for once this morning, a true, real, honest, and one-hundred percent genuine expression upon my face. A single, smug curling of the lips. A smile. I’d won before the game had even started. The suppressed thwunk of a nine-millimetre round carving its way through a specially-fitted balsa-wood and plastic edge of the worktop. The round sheared its way through the chest of the first detective, the tall, aged, and calm individual, before either could register or comprehend what was happening. Blood spattered onto the table, and splashed out upon the room in a beautiful butterfly-esque spread pattern, specks of crimson dotting the refrigerator, the oven, the pots and pans lined up neatly upon the opposite counter, and a few globules of blood even found their way into the yolks of the eggs that Ingrid had been cooking. The detective slumped onto the table immediately, arms vibrating and tapping spasmodically, wheezing and coughing, blood dripping from and welling up at his chest. Again, he’d never predicted this. The pair of them had been cocky enough to think that, no matter how many people the Broker had paid off, they could take me on alone. They didn’t need back-up. They could stay alert and respond before I even pulled a pistol – and I definitely wouldn’t have one hidden at hand, especially not in the kitchen. Amateurs. Sometimes, rookie instincts were what saved your life, when other police-force veterans criticised the junior members for going on a hunch. The second let the gum drop straight from his mouth as he stood up, screaming, hand flying to the .38 standard-issue revolver in his shoulder holster. The smug grin had long since faded from my face, replaced now simply with a cold, hard look of determination. Business as usual. Another day at the office. The same, bland, repetitive occupation of murder and slaughter that I’d become so accustomed to, that it even occasionally followed me home. His muscle-work was sloppy, and with that much puppy fat, I could have even allowed him another couple of seconds and still cut him down fast enough. In an instant, however, I removed the suppressed Beretta 92 from the tray, and snapped my wrist back and forth, out of the drawer, and then back over the counter. Another two shots as his hand just about wrapped around the hilt of the revolver; more blood sprayed across the room, the ambience of Ingrid’s hysterical screams now fading back into reality. Whenever I killed, everything else just became background noise. It wasn’t even something I had to concentrate on. It was just something I liked to do. An activity, a hobby, if you will. Some people draw, others write, a few perhaps paint or listen to music. I shoot people. The room was now decorated with as much red as there was that foul cream colour that I so despised. I sighed, and held the pistol at my side, clutching the coat and tie under my arm once more. I edged closer to Ingrid, as she kicked and punched at the air around me, screaming every manner of Swedish curse possible at me through her hysterical sobs. I never really understood why people react so badly to murder, especially if it’s people you don’t even know. Maybe it’s just such a foreign change which disrupts some people, splits them apart. Something they’re not used to, brushing aside and invading their life so fleetingly, gone as soon as it’s come. I was always a little more flexible than that. I held my hands up – funnily enough, Beretta still grasped – and shot her a calm look, letting all that emotion and excitement flood into my irises, dilated now with the thrill of the kill. I smiled as pleasantly as I could, and let three words escape my lips, offering a single hand outstretched to her, which, trembling, sobbing, mascara running down her face in black, liquid form, she looked up to me, and grasped, interlocking her fingers with my own. “It’ll be alright,” Her knees weak, and ready to buckle, she rose to her bare feet, and I pulled her into an embrace, pressing her head over my shoulder and kissing her cheek. I repeated the words, over and over again, as she sobbed into my shoulder, the noise muffled by the expensive Italian fabric of the shirt as she wiped black streaks across it with her mourning for men she’d only just met. I took a long, deep sniff of her smell; faded perfume, intermingled with sweat from last night’s festivities. She hadn’t showered, yet; I presumed she was waiting for me to get out so we could have breakfast, first, before she finally washed herself. A shame. Something she’d never get a chance to do again. I pressed the end of the suppressor, still warm and blackened with the residue of the gunpowder from the last round fired, against the base of her head, pressing at the bottom and aiming up. Before she could even register or respond this new presence, and do anything to fight against it, I pulled the trigger. The round tore through bone and brain matter indiscriminately, shearing through and leaving the top of that once-beautiful model’s face of hers marred with a bloody hole of an exit wound. The round carved into one of the construction beams, leaving a path of pink mist and shredded flesh, blood, and bone shards in its wake. I pulled away from her as not to let the blood run all over my shirt, letting her dirty it even more, and her limp, lifeless, and yet still warm frame, with the blood that had only just stopped pumping, slumped to the floor, the deep red liquid welling up about her. Casually enough, I sighed, digging into my pockets for a disposable cellphone and tapping three buttons to engage the speed dial system. I placed the speaker to my ear, and the receiver to my mouth. As soon as I heard the line connect, I spoke calmly, collectedly, and left no gap for a response between any of my words. “This is the Right Hand. I need a clean-up crew at Safehouse C in ten minutes.” With that, I let my finger press against another button, cutting the line off, and tossed the phone aside carelessly, letting it slam against the counter and fall to the floor. I shrugged on the longcoat, and let the tie hang limp about my collar, slipping on shoes prepared and left by the door. I straightened myself up, and, before leaving, pressed the muzzle of the pistol to the first detective’s head – his wheezing hadn’t escaped my attention, not yet. He was unconscious, but still very much alive. I pumped one last round into the base of his head and let the pistol fall to the ground, pulling open the door, slipping out, and shutting it behind me. With that little hiccup aside, it was time to get to work.
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defectiveImmediately
In-Training
Thunder for Mayor, Tyc for Attorney General, Necris for Congressman.
Posts: 0
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Post by defectiveImmediately on Jan 12, 2014 12:42:51 GMT
Chapter Three
Raul
My eyes flickered to the dancing pixels upon the television screen above the counter. The ambience of kettles hissing and middle-aged women nattering as I stood impatiently in the seemingly endless queue washed over me, and I mused upon the day’s business for a while. What would my boss, perchance, have me do today? Would I be conducting a little business of my usual sort? Ensuring a promise of silence was kept? Or applying a modicum of violence and murder to paint this bleak and grey city with a few more drops of crimson? Rustling a few loose, crisp dollar bills between thumb and forefinger, my eyes moved from the miniature TV above the counter to the typical chain-type knock-off coffee shop menu. Each one had their different Italian names for ‘small’, ‘medium’, and ‘large’, and each one had their different bullshit claims to fame in ‘the way the beans are picked’, or ‘the way our coffee’s roasted’. Coffee was coffee; and no matter what changed around me, I was fine with a cup of instant, filter, percolated... whatever, so long as I just got my damn caffeine fix. The TV was focusing on a report that initially meant nothing to me, but a name in the cacophony of useless, fear-fed bullshit made my ears prick and my hairs stand on end. ”...an anonymous 9-1-1 caller from a downtown phonebox gave the authorities the exact location of one Ms. Ingrid Ana-Svensson’s body...” Beneath my concealed veil, sat in line, I smirked to myself, musing on just how fast the Broker’s clean-up operatives had worked. She’d been found on the outskirts of the city, in a ditch, with one of the detectives’ semen more than likely rubbed about her vaginal walls; a little bruising, too, to make it look like rape, and then he’d killed her with a single gunshot to the head. ”...Ms. Svensson, a former Swedish model, is a divorcée, and it’s believed that the murder is in some way possibly sexual, or a crime of passion, with her ex-husband, who’s also in the city, being detained for questioning as we speak. Back to you in the studio, Jack.” The report faded out, and after remarking on how awful Ingrid’s murder was, that made-for-TV clichéd smile illuminated the daytime reports on talking monkeys, or chimpanzees playing a Deep Purple solo, or something along those lines. How swiftly the news ignored its own reports, an oxymoron in its entire existence, and how ignorant the puppet presenters placed at the helm of it all were, Brylcreem and Botox, glistening grey hair, and a slightly rotund midriff, as he made suggestive comments about his co-worker, likely involved in some form of ‘romantic’ affair. I grinned once more, and heard a voice from behind me, just as I had almost entirely drifted back into my camouflaged inner-city silence, wanting to simply wait for my coffee, and little else. “Terrible, isn’t it, hombre?” I couldn’t place the voice immediately, but it struck a familiar key in the symphony of my mind’s journey, somewhere away. Three years old, this particular bar; one long-forgotten, filed away in a library, in a series of events and accidents all put down to ‘learning experience’ and ‘career-building’. Curiosity would have killed the cat if this man possessed any lethality, but it appeared he was just as unwitting as I, my head pivoting over my shoulder with an eyebrow arched as I analysed the contours of his tanned, olive complexion and matched them up with a name in a microsecond. Raul Guardez. “Just awful,” I grinned in response to the man, memories of old Saturday-morning band practices flooding my head once more. Pale green Brazilian irises lit up with emerald wildfire as he too recognised me, taking noticeably longer. Raul was a cracking bassist, and wasn’t without a sense of humour, if a touch irritable. “Raul Guardez,” I concluded, just hoping I’d gotten the right person, after all. “Fraser Goldstone,” Was his retort, bringing the grin on my face ever-wider. “Sh it, man, how have you been?”
We collected our coffees respectively, the small talk building up to an almost unbearable breaking point, before, finally, we sidled off to a table in the humble bar, the ambience of everything else turned down. I was anxious to see how Raul, and, more importantly, this older part of my life, relative ancient history, had functioned with my mysterious, shrouded disappearance into realms unknown. “So, I take it you’re in business, now?” Raul spoke with an offhand gesture towards my attire, and I nodded, sipping the Styrofoam-cupped cappuccino eagerly. I pushed down a wince as the heated coffee washed over my tongue and singed it, and managed to suck it up – despite the heat, it was still good, sating the urge, for now. “Administrative department, inner-city stuff,” I spoke casually; it was my usual career report, and more or less what I’d told my parents in one of a throng of earlier voicemails. I hadn’t spoken to them in two-and-a-half years, either; they’d started to get infuriating, in all honesty, babbling about matters that made no sense to me at all. “It’s pointless, and a little stale, but, hey, it’s work,” I looked back to Raul, scratching the back of my head as I analysed his attire. It hadn’t... really changed. Off-brown leather jacket, stained grey tee with some snarky message embossed on it, then, finally, baggy cargo pants and sneakers. He looked the same as always, with three years of age laid on thick onto his face, and the gruff makings of a beard. Raul had been two years my junior, and it had always felt odd. Hispanic heritage made sure his hair was thick, and he grew stubble fairly quickly. Coupled with his lanky frame, he had always seemed to be one of the oldest of our merry little rag-tag band of musicians, despite barely being older than Frankie. I snarled and chuckled mentally simultaneously at the memories of that kid. Thinking of infuriating... god, he had succeeded that, and then some. Exasperating, was more like it. Or just plain, black-and-white, simple-as-hell, fucking annoying. “What about you?” I responded; the more questions I asked, the more time he spent talking. The more time he spent talking, the more time I wasn’t. The more I wasn’t, the less of a chance he’d find out. The less of a chance he’d find out, one more person I didn’t have to kill. “I work at a convenience store just down the road from my apartment, but that’s part-time,” He explained. “I’m still playing bass, still wanna hit it big some day, y’know?” I nodded humbly and silently, sipping my coffee – which had since cooled dramatically, thank fu ck. “Fu ck, Fraser, man,” He continued. My ears pricked, and I listened as intently as I could... the man was starting to bore me with continuous, simplistic, plebeian mulch. “After you left... the band... it just... stopped,” I rose once more. “You were everything holding it together, y’know? As weird as it sounds...” I tried my best to nod in an understanding manner... but that life was so far away from me, now. It had been three years on... chords had changed to kills, notes to executions, TAB music sheets to jobs, and vocal pattern and lyrics to the style, the sinew and glue that held everything up. My mind had been reformatted and repurposed by the Broker; I wasn’t that Fraser any more. Raul continued regardless. “It fell apart,” He had a sombre, regretful tone in his voice... part of me wanted to feel bad, and wanted to go back and try things again. But I’d killed that part of me, I’d wrested control from it and rose above it, superior... three years ago. “But, I found a new group. They’re pretty rad,” He admitted. God, his use of outdated lingo was killing me; I almost cringed alone from his saying ‘rad’. “And, hopefully, I can make something of it, ya’ know?” I nodded, but, really, I didn’t know. I’d long-since forgotten. Petty aspirations of the starving, inspired, clichéd up-and-coming musician stereotype had been cast into the gutter like possessions from an old life, simply thrown away into the fire. That version of me was gone, outdated, upgraded for something new, updated, flexible, powerful... I was a machine. A gem in the rough turned to a diamond of purest sheen in an instant, light glimmering and radiating from me. Raul wouldn’t make me regret or feel petty human guilt, no matter whether he tried or not. “Well, I’m sorry, man,” I feigned true regret, and analysed his speech patterns, re-aligning my own to fit. “But, it just... happened. I had a calling, I guess,” The white light of the two-dollar coffee-shop industrial bulbs twinkled along my iris, something dangerous flashing there. I didn’t throw a hand up to block it, just endured it as the light refracted back a moment later. “Part of me changed... goals, desires, wants... needs... everything,” The conclusion came not a second after that pause hung in limbo. “I’m a new person, now,” Bingo. There was the truth, and hopefully the clincher that would get Raul to back off. He nodded quietly, his off-colour jacket crumpling beneath the movements of his neck, and he sank back into the chair, coffee clutched in one hand and crumpled receipt in the other. An awkward silence hung over us, my posture impeccable as he slouched in response, our images complete antitheses of one another. “Well,” He was the first to speak up after a momentary eternity of silence. “I’d best be going,” He faked a look at his watch; far too quick to be genuine. Things were getting... awkward. Strange. He didn’t trust me like he’d used to. He believed me on one account and one account alone – I had changed. I inclined my head slowly, and Raul rose, flashing me a curt smile, and abruptly slipping away, slaloming back through the labyrinthine, bustling coffee shop, and disappearing back into the deathly network of the city that I’d grown to know so well in these past three years. He left me with one last line, a total falsity, a line, a facade to keep up the bullshit, unnecessary pleasantries: “It was nice talking to you.” The gun hung heavy in my holster at my side, and I sighed, allowing myself to relax and grasp the coffee once more, mulling over what I’d taken from the conversation, before I discarded it all into the informational abyss. Nothing of it mattered, in the long run. Introduce slaughter, fraud, and thievery as priorities in your life, and everything else, social interaction, cares of awkwardness and friendship, simple relationships... they all became background noise. I took another slurp from the cup – the coffee was still warm. Well, maybe that was one constant. At least I couldn’t leave the caffeine behind. I released a second sigh, and finally slipped into the chair proper, allowing my frame to absorb it, engulf it, one shape to overlap over the other, until I finally had comfort appropriate, checking a simple, balsa wood and plastic clock on the wall for the time; it was still before 9AM, and I had time aplenty to get to headquarters and get my objective for the day, these two little morning events aside. It had been a refreshing change of pace to see Raul once more, but one I’d respectfully declined. I’d spent twenty years stagnating in that old, useless shell of a life, the one where I’d thought everything that meant something, everything that made sense, every constant I could rely on to keep me safe at night had mattered... and it had been nice to get a taste of it again, just so I could spit it back out and chuckle at it, rejecting it a second time, just to rub the salt in the wound. I’d thrust myself into chaos willingly, and I was bathing in it, washing myself in the pains and deaths of others. I loved this power, this seat that I’d taken beside a man who controlled a city with words. And whilst all of this was well and good, whilst it had been interesting to engage in mock pleasantries for a moment with a man who no longer meant anything, and whilst it had been fun to mentally bemuse and belittle him, even if I did have it in copious quantities, time was of the essence, and couldn’t be wasted. After all... I did have people to kill.
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defectiveImmediately
In-Training
Thunder for Mayor, Tyc for Attorney General, Necris for Congressman.
Posts: 0
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Post by defectiveImmediately on Jan 12, 2014 12:49:12 GMT
Chapter Four
Home, Sweet Home The vibrating ringtone of a disposable phone whined in my pocket. BZZT. BZZT. I always had my phone set to vibrate. It had a tendency to go off at the most inappropriate times; the Broker or Kai certainly didn’t appreciate phone calls mid-meeting. Saw it as unprofessional. And in this line of work... “unprofessional” meant “unfit for business”. “Unfit for business” meant you ended up in a dumpster scalped, teeth removed, soaked in ammonia, and an exit wound for a face. BZZT. BZZT.Soft layers of snow crunched underneath my boots as I slipped my hand into a coat pocket, removed it quickly enough, and snapped it open, placing the phone against my ear. “Goldstone.” The exhalation of my surname came as a white hissing breath out onto the crisp February morning. The longcoat wreathed around my visage served as a protectorate measure against the harsh, vicious American cold. The reply came crackling through, but still very much clear, typical phone distortion aside. ”Fraser. We’re at the warehouse now.” I rose my head slowly and looked up into the distance. A snow-topped behemoth of corrugated iron and tarpaulin sheets greeted my plane of vision, barely five-hundred metres away. An adequate goalpost on the horizon; the warehouse in question, nothing less, nothing more. “I had a delay. I’ll be there in 10.” Snapping the phone shut with no further dancing around the point, I slipped it back into the waiting scabbard of my pocket, shoving my hand in afterwards and continuing to walk. A cold breeze rushed through my hair and I hissed out breath once more as a pale-white jet of steam quickly dissipating back into the atmosphere, an angry rhinoceros snorting as it readied itself to charge. The remainder of the journey up was uneventful; I mused on my three comrades eagerly awaiting my arrival. We were here for a routine operation. This was our home away from home; base camp, for the team. It was in the middle of nowhere. Registered to a number of bullsh it corporate fronts. Technically abandoned and unused, and empty for all intents and purposes, but, of course, we knew far better than that. The Broker had “given” the warehouse to my team and I barely a year ago. For that year since, it had served more-than-adequately as an armoury, storage room, and anything else we wanted it to be. When you couldn’t have five kilograms of plastic explosive for “industrial means” delivered to your front door? You shipped it to the warehouse. When you couldn’t have six-thousand hollow-point rifle rounds being sifted through by an eager other half? You shipped it to the warehouse. When you couldn’t have three faceless, nameless, identity-less corpses lugged all the way across the city in the back of a car you were going to torch anyway? You shipped them to the fucking warehouse. It was that simple. Everything you could ever need for any op from knocking over a convenience store to rappelling in through the windows of the Pentagon and stealing blueprints for the newest stealth bomber was kept at the warehouse. Various other teams working for the organisation had various other warehouses, but even I didn’t know specifically about the location of those. The less people knew, the less chance there was of leaks. The organisation had been founded on a need-to-know basis, and the Broker and Kai had kept things that way for years – and now I was part of this triad of enforcers, too. So, in short, the warehouse was the go-to place for just about anything. It was far enough out of town that most beat cops slipped a bundle of hundred-dollar notes could ignore it for routine inspections, and close enough to town that you could actually make it in on time and on schedule for any sort of operation you needed to. And luckily for you, readers, just one of these operations is coming up right now. Pushing open the door with a welcome creak of rusty metal availed my nostrils to the musty stench of cordite, sweat, and dried blood. Home sweet home. Of all the safehouses, supply containers, and apartments I had around the city, none of them gave me quite the same chill surging through my veins like the warehouse did. And, as the phone call had lead me to expect, my three teammates were ready and waiting. Shutting the door behind me, I took a quick scan of the room. The first I saw was Caleb, or Mr. Black, as Kai and the Broker affectionately referred to him. Caleb stood around six feet, solid, with a black-haired buzzcut and a primitive goatee formed out of stubble. He was standing by a workbench with a welder’s mask in one hand and a blowtorch in the other. Caleb was our technician. He had an engineering degree out of MIT and three years of field experience as a Technical Sergeant in Afghanistan. Caleb worked well under pressure, had a cool head at the worst of times, and was just about the best mechanic and gunsmith you could find in the state. He could strip an M16 down to the bone faster than some veteran marines, fix a pistol up with a soldering so it only jammed for one in every fifty-thousand rounds, and, best of all, he still needed to pay off his student loan somehow. The engineer inclined his head gently towards me, and didn’t say a word, before firing up the blowtorch and getting to work on whatever fresh invention he’d conjured up out of nowhere. I swivelled my head to the left and was promptly greeted by one Vittorio D’Angelo standing there, extending his hand. In response, I grasped it, promptly shook it up and down once, then released. D’Angelo took on a number of nicknames, anywhere from “Vito” to “The Italian”. Vito stood taller than all of us at around six-foot-four. He had long, black hair, and was in his early twenties, with an athletic build. Vito was son of a local mafia caporegime, Salvatore D’Angelo; as an extension of good faith between the organisation and the mafia, Vito’s services had been offered. The man had begun doing hits for the mob at sixteen, and had told us on multiple occasions that his grip was never stiller than when he was holding a pistol. No-one had really wanted to challenge that. Vito was personable, usually, if a touch macabre when it came to the bodies of his victims. His speciality was the wet work side of things. To boot, I’d met him a few times before, when he’d come to pick up his younger brother, Frankie, from our band practices. A sharp whistle brought my head back around to an all-too-familiar face sitting atop a cargo container. Daryl Alexander. A smile slowly stretched onto my face. Daryl and I went further back than I could remember. I’d formed the band that had gotten me into all this with Daryl when we were fresh out of high school. Daryl stood shorter than all of us at five-foot-ten, but he was a fast little bast ard, to use a technical term, possessing a full head cropped, spiky rich, hazelnut hair. Daryl had begun life as a national athletics prospect, but decided that music was his calling, instead. A man of many talents, I recruited him into the team first, knowing now that with his minor criminal background, despite it having already gotten into me a whole new world of mess, was going to be of at least assistance. That alongside the fact that Daryl felt guilty enough that Jakob had ended up riddled with nine-millimetre rounds and dead on the floor amongst nameless Latvian criminals had managed to bend him into coming along for the ride. Daryl had small, beady eyes; as teenagers, we’d always been a tag-team. As adults... we were a slightly more... lethal combination. “Took your time, Fraser,” Daryl always liked to attempt to fruitlessly convince us that he was here as the “comic relief” of the team. Unsurprisingly, that wasn’t the case. Daryl Alexander was nothing short of a master thief. With over a hundred separate counts of larceny over fifteen years, in four states, and six major cities, with his fingerprints and DNA still very much out of the police’s system, and the fact that he was still alive to tell the tale... Daryl was a phantom on the petty thievery business. Over the past three years, I’d done my best to convert him, but he still had... relapses. I didn’t argue, provided he didn’t get caught. “Not the time for bullsh it, Daryl.” The bottom line? If it existed, Daryl Alexander could steal it. And if it didn’t? There was a pretty good chance he could, too. Swatting my old friend away quickly enough, I swiftly made for a set of rusty lockers bolted into the wall, not too far away from where Vito was setting up his weaponry. I shrugged off my coat like a snake shedding its skin, and flung the locker open. Within were two black duffel bags, propped lengthways, one on top of another. Yanking them out with a grin and tossing my coat in to reveal the work-shirt and trousers I’d donned earlier, I took a deep breath, and unzipped both of the bags. “Boss...” Caleb had lifted his welder’s mask and switched off the blowtorch. Daryl dropped down from the top of the cargo container to look towards me, simply leaning against it. Vito set one of his menagerie of high-calibre pistols back down upon his bench, and propped himself alongside it – he was the one speaking. “...what’s the job?” I didn’t bother answering immediately. Instead, I slowly crouched, and unzipped both bags, before shoving my respective hands in with a smile. A few tugs with each arm, and, slowly, inside the glinting black maelstrom of silencers, fresh magazines, and weaponry, I pulled out four vests, two in each hand. Kevlar, flattened so they’d fit inside. Rapping the knuckles of my right hand against the vests in my left, I nodded; the dull thud I got in return was assurance enough that these would do the trick. Daryl’s eyes slowly widened as he saw the vests. “No.” He spoke immediately. “I am not getting into this sh it again. The last time you pulled us here for a job and gave us vests, I ended up with that hooker pepper spraying me straight in the-“ The thief stopped the moment he saw me raising his fingers, sighing, shaking his head, and returning to his original position against the container. “Relax.” I said, before tossing one of the vests over towards Daryl, then another to Caleb. The pair of them caught them both with ease; the engineer set his mask and torch back down with a grunt, and went to slip on the vest, whereas the thief simply looked at it with anguish and despair. I gestured to Vito, knowing full well there was a good chance he had his own Kevlar bodysuit, as opposed to just a vest; but it seemed, today, he was happy enough to leech off of the organisation’s funds. I didn’t mind, and promptly tossed the third vest over to him, and unclipped the fourth, slipping it around my body. “Leopold Douglas.” I finished, with a sigh. The look I received in response from Daryl wasn’t quite as bad as I was expecting, but his jaw didn’t shatter on the floor, so it was still a minor success. “Yes, before you ask. That Leopold Douglas. Arms dealer, Leopold Douglas. Merchant of death, Leopold Douglas.” Even Caleb froze at that. Vito wasn’t quite as fettered by it all, and continued to click away with his weapons, fetching fresh clips and tweaking with holsters, as was to be expected of the professional assassin. Daryl responded first. “Are you fu ckin’ KIDDING me?!” Shaking his head, the man quickly sank to the floor and knocked his head back against the corrugated metal. “Leopold Douglas. The Broker wants us to take on Leopold Douglas. A four-man espionage team against the state’s biggest arms dealer?” Daryl grunted. “I think we may have just signed our own death certificates.” I made a swift rebuttal. “Actually, the Broker was going to give this one to Kai’s team.” Slowly, the semblance of a grin stretched onto my face. Daryl was going to hate me even more for this, but it was interesting to fu ck with the guy and see how he responded. Childlike malice swelled up within. We were society’s rejects, the criminals that lurked in the shadows, and the very group that intelligence agencies feared... yet we still found time to have our own fun. “See, Douglas hasn’t really been living up to the “merchant of death” title, and he owes the Broker the tidy sum of half a million.” What I wasn’t telling the team was this. Half a million was peanuts. The Broker controlled enough assets to sweep that in over half an hour if he wanted to; investments were good. But Douglas was a loose cannon, and the Broker had doctored some reports and boxed the man in so that he could replace the city’s arms contact with a personal favourite, who would give the Broker discount rates and ultimately boost his investment in the city’s arms department well over twofold. I had no problems with this; it was corporate espionage at its finest, if a touch more twisted than the norm. “So, instead,” I thought it a ripe time to continue my little spiel. “We’re going to deliver his money, with Douglas’ body and a crate of rifles as interest.” Daryl turned back towards me, dumbstruck, but I rose a finger and shook my head, a stern frown creeping onto my face. “I don’t want your bullsh it, Daryl. You get ready or get out. You know the drill.” And so the thief did. But leaving the team meant betraying the organisation. And that, in turn, meant another nameless, ammonia-soaked body that the local coroner would spend a few hours digging scraps of lead out of. Daryl might not have been stupid enough to take on an arms dealer, with the catch of possible death, but the incentive of certain death was certainly going to make the man leap from the fire back into the frying pan. And here, the contrast was a little stronger; from the wildfire of the entire Amazon back into a sauna was possibly a better metaphor. Inciting the rage of a local arms dealer was a bad idea: but when you knew that the Broker was going to kill you if you didn’t, there weren’t any two ways about it. And Daryl didn’t feel like a closed-casket funeral. Not this early in his life, anyway, especially if there wouldn’t be anything else left of his face. “Besides,” I continued. Caleb and Vito had already been swung. Daryl was simply grumbling and swatting at flies on the floor indiscriminately. “The Broker’s paid off half of Douglas’ men, and the other half are on the tail-end of a twenty-seven hour shift. We’re talking opening fire on a stack of wet tissue paper, boys.” The last word of the sentence triggered memories. That great Irish giant, swatting his huge meaty hands around, ginger hair and all. I almost missed him; then I realised all the pain the bast ard had put me through, and just how many times he’d inadvertently almost killed me, and figured the score was about neutral. Having left the rest of my weapons back at the safehouse for the clean-up crew, I’d been essentially unarmed for the past couple of hours. I didn’t really mind, to be honest; I was far more reliant on my body in day-to-day life than any contraption of simple steel and plastic, and any mugger with a snub-nosed who figured he could take me was in for a shock. I knew just about every martial arts disarm technique in the book, courtesy of Kai. Krav Maga, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, MMA... I was safe, for the most part, without a gun. But that wasn’t to say that fact would remain the same during the assault on Douglas’ place. I hadn’t lied about the twenty-seven hour shift, but these guys were ex-Mossad. A little bit of exhaustion wasn’t going to cripple them. My eyes narrowed and a low growl began to stem at the bottom of my throat as I looked back towards the lockers, yanking the next one along open, and staring at possibly the single most beautiful sight in the world. The M1911A1 pistols I had, once upon a time, fought Kai with. They were my bread and butter. I didn’t leave this warehouse without them. I didn’t go on an operation without them. I didn’t go to the fu cking range without them. My hands felt awkward without the weight of those twin automatics at the end of my wrists; they were a welcome extension to my body. A gentle chuckle of familiarity escaped from my mouth as I lifted them from the rails within the locker, and the shoulder-holsters below. Strapping myself up was a routine exercise; and before I knew it, I was done, cradling the pistols and screwing a pair of suppressors on. I knew every inch of these firearms better than I had Ingrid’s body. I sheathed them in their appropriate black leather scabbards; my twin blades were at my side, but my great claymore still laid within the locker. A grin, and I turned back towards it. The repurposed Serbu Super-Shorty twin-round shotgun. It was a beast at close-range, compact, and lightweight, to boot. Slinging it over my shoulders and nodding at the others, I made my way swiftly around the cargo containers to where the team’s fine steed awaited. Her name was Bessie; and she was a Jeep. A black-painted 2010 Wrangler with tinted windows. Blacked-out registration plates. The keys hung on the wall of the containers nearby; for the most part, they were hollow, but contained some unscrupulous items for further operations. Aiming the key towards the car, I pressed inwards on the unlock button once, slowly opened the door, and sidled into the driver seat, before slipping it shut once more. I opened the glove compartment with a neutral expression and pulled a slim pair of black gloves, slipping them back onto my fingers. Prints were the undoing of any petty criminal. As much as I tried to retain a professional element and resist, the makings of a grin slipped onto my face, subtle, and serpentine. For the first time in the entire morning, truthfully, I let base emotion shimmer through, and let the smile pass as the others readied their equipment with a series of click, clunk, and thud noises, dulled and muffled by the distance between us. With my hands tapping eagerly against the steering wheel, one simple sentiment resounded through my mind. Now it was just time to wait.
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defectiveImmediately
In-Training
Thunder for Mayor, Tyc for Attorney General, Necris for Congressman.
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Post by defectiveImmediately on Jan 12, 2014 12:50:28 GMT
Chapter Five
The One, The Only, The Incompetent Merchant of Death I’d already scoped out the place prior to our arrival. The Broker had his ways and I had mine; regardless, reliable intelligence had left me at this: Douglas’ compound was an abandoned airfield with several large warehouses scattered around, with smaller ones interconnecting them, and a number of bomb shelters underneath acting as tunnels. During the day, the entire thing was locked up tight courtesy of thirty-plus ex-Mossad men patrolling with illegally-shipped Kalashnikov rifles or even surplus American military weaponry. However, tonight, this Thursday night, when business had been statistically known to be at a low point, a grand total of only thirteen were patrolling. Six of whom had “taken ill” as soon as the black Wrangler pulled into the complex’s driveway. Which left seven. Four on seven by any other means was close enough to suicide – and considering the team’s nature of executing objectives flawlessly with no casualties, it was even closer – but four on seven with the element of surprise would make things a whole lot easier. The complex had no gates, only an outpost near the edge, unmanned for a thirty minute window in shifts, during which the Wrangler had made its entrance. Weeks of careful surveillance and planning had lead to this: a four-man team taking advantage of every tiny mistake the so-called ‘merchant of death’ ever made. And, by god, did he make a lot. The Wrangler’s humming quietened to a gentle throb near the first of three warehouses in a row. The sound of growling Hebrew from above and steel-toed boots crashing noisily against the shoddy catwalks drowned out the smooth, simultaneous click noises as the car’s twin back doors opened. From the left exited Caleb, garbed in the vest I’d given him, and clutching his great cannonade of a shotgun, the Franchi SPAS-15, giving a subtle salute and nodding towards me. From the right, Vito silently moved into the fray, dressed entirely in black with his own, battered, beaten Kevlar vest sitting over his chest, as well as elbow and knee pads. Vito specialised with automatic weaponry, and so the team had deemed it appropriate to give him a sub-machine gun. A suppressed Intratec TEC-9 machine pistol. The pièce de résistance of eighties crime, the Intratec machine pistol had made itself famous in numerous gangland slayings, and with its use in several brutal school massacres across the country, not least of all, Columbine. The engineer grasped a small black duffel bag from the middle seat of the back row, then the back doors shut and the Wrangler slowly trundled along past the next warehouse, grinding to a halt beside the third. I looked to Daryl and gave a slow nod – from here, we knew the plan of action. We’d gone over it whilst in transit. Understanding in silence between the pair of is. The thief flashed a cocky grin and I yanked the keys to the right, cutting the engine off entirely, before leaving the ring swaying gently, still in the ignition. I didn’t have to worry about anyone stealing the Jeep. In a few minutes, there wouldn’t be anybody left to. Finally, I grasped an identical duffel bag to the one Caleb had liberated from the front, turned on my heel, and shut the door behind me with a low sigh, exhaling the white smoke that was my warm breath into the frigid February night with a grim grin upon my face. The echoes of crickets chattering beneath the muffled Israeli grunts from above was a welcome ambience. The square beams of off-yellow light piercing the night provided as much illumination as we could ever need, a deathly beacon signalling our point of entry. The warehouses had roofs that sloped downwards to barely ten feet above ground, made of corrugated iron which had rusted significantly since their construction numerous decades ago. However, whilst maybe looking worse for wear for it, the metal roofing would still support the pair’s weight. Daryl produced a suppressed FN Five-seveN from his pocket, and I felt the familiar, welcome weight of the Colt pistols in their appropriate holsters beneath my arms, over the calloused, black surface of the vest. Daryl and I found our point of entry at what was more or less the middle of the roof’s length, maybe ten feet apart. I set the bag down between us, and, immediately, the larcenist moved down onto one knee and unzipped it with surprising vigour. In a few moments, he produced a pair of strong, nylon-sheathed climbing cables, with appropriate karabiners attached to the end of each. Looping the cable around my shoulder, a split-second ahead of the thief, I jumped upwards and grasped the edge of the roof, exerting as much of my upper body strength as possible in an attempt to heave my weight up and clamber atop it. A few seconds later, and my labours bore fruit as I managed to move upon, looking to my side to find that the nimble thief had found no real obstacle in mimicking my actions. So far, things were all going to plan – but this was only the first step. When we finished our steady ascent up the roof, we’d reach the second phase. Douglas was smart enough to hire help, but paranoid enough that he wouldn’t let his men patrol either outside or alone. They all worked in three-man groups, in a number of warehouses. Looking to the warehouse further along, another two figures, black-clad and nigh-on invisible amidst the shadowy backdrop of the abandoned strip, seemed to be making a similar ascent up their respective warehouse’s roof. Our teammates, moving slow, and moving steady. The clattering of walking books against metal wasn’t really a great idea for the stealth side of things. It wasn’t long before our efforts were rewarded, and we found ourselves near the top of the warehouse’s roof, just able to peer through the windows and scan for the guards. All three, luckily enough, had placed themselves on the top floor of this specific structure, and all bunched together, lazily cutting through a pack of cigarettes each, and clutching various battered ancient carbines with names and Hebrew characters etched onto the frames. I grinned to myself. Ex-Mossad? I’d thought that maybe they’d have posed at least a bit of a challenge. Daryl snarled underneath his breath. “I can take them all from here, boss.” He hissed. “I’ve got three clean shots. Each one of these assholes could have the air whistling through fresh holes in their head before the first body hit the floor.” As he finished talking, I responded with a simple, universal gesture, a shaking of my own head. “No.” The answer was steadfast, steely, and cold. “We have a plan. We stick to it.” Regimen and order was the only way we’d get through this. Ex-Mossad meant we weren’t dealing with usual thugs or gangbangers. The kiddie gloves had long-since been cast aside. We had to play this carefully. Between the warehouse windows and the roof was a single railing, barely inches between it and the glass. This rather odd architectural feature was one we’d accounted for heavily, and it had been a blessing in our planning this attack. Considering the rather uncomfortable gradient of the roof itself, and the way the guardsmen had placed themselves, it seemed this would be easier than predicted. The first of the men was aligned almost perfectly with Daryl, standing guard in front of the window directly ahead of him, and gazing out over the floor. He was short and plump, with a shaven head and a calloused face. The second stood stalwart next to him, taller and seemingly built far stockier, cradling his AK-74u barely a foot in front of the window ahead of me. The third was the only real problem – a witness, eagerly patrolling the catwalk on the opposite wall, making what appeared to be laps of the warehouse’s upper level, and heading up towards his comrades, barely at pistol range. “Ready?” I hissed under my breath, apparently catching Daryl by surprise; he arched an eyebrow, but nodded after he registered the fact, his brow furrowing as he gazed up towards his target. The thief aimed his pistol up towards the window, and I smiled, knowing full well that the momentum of the metal karabiner I was swinging in a relaxed and fluid circle would do the job with far less expenditure. Dropping back a touch, I felt my heels begin to strain as gravity, as cruel a mistress as she was, slowly pulled me back down. I tensed my ankles and readied myself to run, I felt the blood surging within me prime itself like fuel inside the tank of an F16. I tightened my grip on the length of taut cabling between my hands and spun the karabiner ever faster, wary of its path with every circle growing wider. I furrowed my brow and snarled. Then I let it all loose. Sprinting up, I vaulted swiftly over the railing, the dull thwunk of Daryl’s repeated shots and the crash of the glass he shattered, letting the echoes of the Hebrew grumbles filter out into the night air. I threw my weight feet first, holding the karabiner above my head and casting it into the window at the last second, cracking the flimsy, ancient glass straight through the middle and arriving on the other side relatively unharmed – but I’d just launched myself from the frying pan into the fire. Perhaps a more appropriate metaphor was from a cigarette lighter into a forest inferno. Drawing the left-holstered M1911A1 into my right hand with ferocious speed as I held the karabiner in my left, I eased back the hammer and fired two shots off into the Israeli’s hand before he could even finish spinning around. The gun clattered to the floor and he yelped, his other hand flocking towards it, but it was too late; I let my pistol fall, and looped the nylon cabling straight around his thick, muscular neck, snapping the auto-locking karabiner into place around the railing, returning and coiling another good metre or two around the man’s neck as I watched Daryl mirror my moves almost exactly. This wasn’t a copycat act. This was practice, plain and simple. This was animal instinct, honed to perfection, and then a little further. The Israeli began to choke and splutter as his only unharmed comrade finally took the liberty of letting the cigarette fall from his mouth, fumbling with his carbine, and trying to flick off the safety. Squeezing off the first couple of rounds, they simply sent dust and grit flying as Daryl and I ducked behind the safety of our respective human shields, the man wielding the rifle simply firing wide. Finally, I looped the end of the cabling through and pulled it tight; just as the last man released a concentrated burst of fire, most of the rounds slamming straight into my shield’s gut, causing an oxygen-deprived splutter, a few globules of blood trickling out as an added bonus. The force of the rounds had jarred me and caught me off-guard, but I only staggered for a split-second before bracing myself – falling down with the bleeding pig of an Israeli upon me would be game over. I gave a primal snarl in response, letting the demon within siphon off some of his endless anger and rage so it would be at least of some use, before I scooped down to grasp my pistol, in spite of the relative danger, pulling the shield with me with every movement. Blood trickled from him and I felt his breathing slow, his life waning. The man I was holding prisoner wasn’t long for this world – the cruel irony of it that this wasn’t the first time I’d ever been the executioner in such a dire situation. Not in this occupation. Death was a commodity, a tool, something to instil fear and keep the customers loyal. Fear and loyalty worked in tandem. The former was possibly the greatest trick in the Broker’s arsenal. Luckily, the storm of rounds had since focused upon Daryl, giving me a window to aim haphazardly around the man I clutched and squeeze off another three rounds. Firing from the hip – quite literally – wasn’t effective, but I knew my accuracy well enough, and I knew the weight of this gun as well as I knew the limits of my own body. Adjusting it appropriately, and, whilst the first two shots missed by inches, the third found its target with a thud and a squelch, a crimson spray spattering the bland, off-beige colour of the Israeli’s jacket. He stumbled back and dropped the rifle, his hands going straight to the deep, jagged red mess of flesh and torn clothing. I grinned. Perfect. With that, Daryl and I had found our opportunities, turning around almost simultaneously, and heaving the huge men through the frames of the window to fall down onto the corrugated roof. That had been what the rope and the karabiners were for all along – sometimes, even bullets were unreliable. But as the twin sequential snap sounds of breaking necks resonated through the night, the echoes of gunfire fading, there was something oddly satisfying about it that provided more closure than any amount of bullets could. No-one hanging by their neck from the edge of a warehouse in the ass-end of nowhere was going to survive, ever. And even if he did – there wasn’t much chance of him wriggling free of those binds with a broken spine. It was a cruel fate, but a just one, and a threat these men had welcomed in this business, just as I knew that my life expectancy had been shortened considerably as soon as I’d taken this job on. My line of work was not clean. It was not safe. It was dangerous, and messy. But it was lucrative, and, at the end of the day... it felt just like it was what I’d been cut out to do. Right from the start. With that, I sighed, dusted off my hands, grimaced at the bloodstains on my shirt, and walked over to the panting Israeli as Daryl re-adjusted himself, grunting in an unhappy manner thanks to his load being considerably heavier than mine had been. A trembling, hairy hand reached for the reliable rifle down on the floor – a rifle that had never failed the ex-Mossad member before. But, now, with the assistance of my boot sending it skidding twenty feet across the room, it could be the most reliable gun in the world – but the Israeli wouldn’t get his hands on it. With that, he lay back, and, trembling, made his peace with his god, shutting his eyes for a moment. I let him say his prayers, advancing slowly, an impending death sentence carrying a single, sleek, black pistol. When he opened his eyes, this man knew one thing. It didn’t matter whether he was going to Heaven, or Hell. Whether there was an afterlife, a paradise, or anything waiting for him beyond. Just the fear in his eyes as his pupils dilated and his lips trembled, before I raised the pistol to his head and released the last round of the magazine right between his eyes.
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defectiveImmediately
In-Training
Thunder for Mayor, Tyc for Attorney General, Necris for Congressman.
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Post by defectiveImmediately on Jan 12, 2014 12:51:07 GMT
Chapter Six
Remember Leopold Douglas was a man of about fifty-five. He stood shorter than most, at about five feet and six inches, with a lifetime of “luxury” having earned him a calloused face and a wrinkled brow, not to mention a receding black hairline flecked with lines of grey. He had wide, brown eyes, and a small mouth, with a pudgy chin, to say nothing of a pot belly and a penguin-like waddle. The arms dealer heard the familiar crack-crack-crack burst from a carbine he knew all too well. The AK-74u. Variant of the traditional Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947, or the AK-47, as it was more commonly known. And it wasn’t from the time he’d spent in the Middle East dealing surplus Soviet rifles to children three decades ago where this weapon’s cracks, pops, squeaks, and clicks had become a fitting ambience to the turmoil, nor was it because he’d cradled it many a time at the firing range and emptied entire magazines into ragdolls that, probably, didn’t deserve it. No. The reason Leopold Douglas knew this particular sound so well, to such an acute degree, is because that was one of his guns. Halfway through signing off on his ledgers, blissfully ignorant of the four intruders, glasses scraping down against the bridge of his nose, the resonating sound interrupted him. The guard lethargically clutching a cigarette with his back against the wall froze mid-motion. Douglas’ arm stayed perfectly still, pen poised like a knife, the sharp nib against the air as if it were ready to shear through with inhuman precision. There wasn’t any cargo nearby, and the range was halfway across the strip. Not only that, but a wayward glance towards an ancient clock confirmed the fact that they were making headway into the early hours of the morning. No-one was around to even consider heading all the way over there in the bitter February cold. Which narrowed it down to a single possibility. One of his guards had discharged their weaponry. And even the most incompetent of them knew not to do that unless there was a very real threat. Cordite, plus cartridge casings, plus ballistics digging slugs out of the wall, plus impact craters... everything left a mess, and a messy workplace was an obvious workplace, something which wasn’t particularly helpful when Douglas was trying to slip an illegal arms smuggling operation under the police’s radar. So, of course, that meant, hypothetically, there were intruders. But the shards of doubt still remained in the arms dealer’s mind. He held his left, free hand up to signal the ninth guard leaning against the wall, Avram, the best of them, to be absolutely still and quiet. The man obliged, his hawk-like beady eyes focused on the entrance from the walkway on the left. The pair were on the higher floor of the second warehouse, between the two – and thus far, there hadn’t been much noise from the right, aside from the usual clattering. Thwunk.That was a suppressed pistol round if he’d ever heard one. A soft thud, and then there was only silence, and muffled footsteps. What little doubt the pair had previously held was completely gone. Douglas stood up and went straight for his waistband, brandishing his SIG. Avram leaned down and plucked his RPK support machine gun from atop a nearby crate, cradling the goliath weapon into his beefy, hairy arms, sleeves of his bowling shirt rolled back past the elbows, battered flak jacket sitting over a heavy-set chest. The Israeli growled like a wolf and raised his weapon, making towards the right – but the arms dealer, greedy as he was, was not so eager to leave thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise behind for the police to uncover. Easing back the hammer on the SIG and flicking off the safety, hurriedly, the man piled ledgers and burlap sacks into an open wheel-on suitcase he kept nearby as a contingency. Waiting all the while for the left-side door to open, anxiously doubling back over his shoulder to check, again and again, Douglas finally haphazardly zipped the hefty case up, pulled out the handle, and mopped the brow below his receding hairline. Ironically enough, wondering why it’d been so long and the mystery interlopers still hadn’t broken down the door, he gestured for Avram to lead the way, and began to pound his feet against the rickety catwalk towards the right side. The burly Israeli’s hand was barely three inches from the handle, still training the machine gun upon the door to the opposite walkway, single, bulky arm straining and trembling beneath the weight, when it swung open and beat him to it, the blood-soaked barrel of a Franchi SPAS-15 poking through behind him and pressing against the base of his skull, before the room lit up with another muzzle flash, and Avram’s head was swiftly replaced by a cloud of bloody mist and a spray of indiscriminate chunks of bone, flesh, and brain. ***** I swung the door from our side of the central warehouse open barely a minute later, greeted with the after-effects of Caleb’s being particularly trigger-happy. Avram’s headless body slumped to the floor, and the last wisps of gunsmoke faded from the end of the Franchi shotgun’s barrel. Spattered with blood and relapsing into shock, Douglas froze for a moment before twisting, his glare moving from the remains of his dead bodyguard up towards the man who’d shot him – and his hand, still clutching the SIG, moving with it. The cavalry came too fast, however. The scene played before mine and Daryl’s eyes, leaving us to only be an unwitting audience as we ground to a halt before the railing, and Vito charged in with his machine pistol, bringing his leg up in a furious arc and sending the sleek pistol flying through the air, before plummeting down in the great void between the two sides of the catwalk, and distantly clattering on the floor below. Douglas released a choking gasp and grabbed his hand instinctively, presumably fairly sore and possibly strained – the Italian’s kick was nothing to be shirked quite so quickly. Caleb inclined his head in silent thanks, and the engineer and the Italian quickly stood away from the defeated, blood-spattered wreck of a man as I advanced, a cocky smirk on my face, and Daryl trailing behind me. “Leo, Leo, Leo...” I looked from side to side with a sigh, and a dry chuckle. Paint was peeling off the walls. Coats of metal primer had long since been scraped away from every other inch of the catwalk. The lights flickered intermittently, and, when they didn’t, provided a light giving the wide, square, box of a room a sour yellow tint. It smelt of cordite, sweat, and cigarette smoke. So many deals had gone down here, over such a long period of time. “I really like what you’ve done with the place.” The crisp sentence was the only thing possible that could have brought Douglas out of his trance-like state. The man’s head swivelled: and his large brown eyes bore only one emotion above all else, pupils now only black pinpricks amidst a hazel sea. “Y-you...” He whispered. Suddenly, now, it all made sense. The fluidity of movement. The bond between each team member. The subtle professionalism. The regard for one another’s abilities. These were no thugs looking to rip him off. It took Douglas a few moments to fully regard me as anything other than a spectre or a phantom. To him, I was a ghost – and the man I represented even more so. My presence only heralded one thing: displeasure. And displeasing the Broker was a very bad idea. “I-I promise! I’ll g-get the Broker a-anything! W-whatever he wants!“ This recognition had history. Eighteen months ago, almost precisely, I’d been the ambassador for the relationship between Douglas and the Broker. We’d put him in power not at all long ago, dipping the organisation’s collective feet, seeing how the water was. And slowly, Douglas had not pleased the Broker. Thus, he was to be dealt with. I released a gentle, falsified sigh. “Too little, too late, Leo...” I murmured, pulling back a switch on the M1911 I still held and letting the empty clip clatter to the ground, drawing a new one from my pocket and sliding it in. “You owe the Broker money. You tried to rip him off.” Clap. Clap. Clap. I made my advance. Caleb, Daryl, and even Vito stood back and watched, behind Douglas. This was my speciality. It was time for me to play the crown role in this little show. Slowly, the sleek, black cylinder that was the pistol’s suppressor lowered in a deadly, impending arc, the cold metal finding its place upon Douglas’ forehead. The frequency and weight of the man’s panting increased twofold, and he shut his eyes, wrinkling them tight, hoping to God all of this was just a dream. “Tell me where the money is. Save me and my crew some trouble. And I’ll kill you quickly.” A fast end was the best fate Douglas could hope for in this. But when it’s death against death, for some people, the lens tends to become blurred. Douglas considered his options. His breathing slowed by a minuscule amount. I furrowed my brow. Immediate compliance wasn’t clear. I decided to provide him a little incentive, lowering the pistol to his thigh, sighing, and pulling the trigger once before he could even register the absence of the silencer against his face. Thwunk. Another silenced shot, followed by the squelch of ripping flesh. For a split-second, all was quiet. Then Douglas fell onto his side, clutching his leg, and squealing like a pig with a knife in its gut, as his own blood begun to pool beneath him. I grumbled to myself. If he didn’t comply, then we were going to have to spend at least a couple of hours looking for Douglas’ stash – he definitely had one, and we weren’t going back to the Broker empty-handed. “You...” He whispered through the oozing and the wheezing. “YOU SHOT ME!” The hoarse shout came in incredulous tones and I rolled my eyes. Ten points to Captain Obvious. Rolling Douglas onto his back with my shoe and pinning him to the floor with my boot, I growled. “Look. You’re an asshole.” No more ‘Leo’. No more playing about. He was starting to piss me off. “You’re not getting out of here alive. But you’ve got a chance to make a few funeral arrangements before you go.” I aimed the pistol down towards his face and watched the slow look of horror mix in with the primal expression of pain. “Point-four-five ACP. Makes a hell of an exit wound.” I paused to let it sink in appropriately. The throbbing, sharp flares of pain in Douglas’ leg made his shoe drum spasmodically against the catwalk, creating one hell of a noise and giving me a major headache. Then came the coldest snarl of all. “You want closed-casket or not, Douglas?” Suddenly, Leopold Douglas froze. He wasn’t dead; it wasn’t rigor mortis taking hold just yet. No, he was still very much alive; but in his last moments, Douglas crunched thoughts of his brother. His little sister. His frail, old, demented mother. All of whom he hadn’t seen in two decades. But all of whom would still come to his funeral. And all of whom deserved to see his face, one more time. “T-there’s... two-hundred grand... in the case...” He pointed, his finger bloody and trembling, towards the suitcase he’d prepared. “A-and a-another four-hundred in the c-crate... on... the right...” He was wheezing now, trying to catch his breath – the bullet wouldn’t be fatal, but the shock definitely could be. “B-beneath... the first... t-tray of rifles-“ Thwunk. Douglas was cut off by another silenced shot replacing his mouth, and the first few inches of throat that connected it, with a shredded red mound. Brains and bone erupted out in a fountainous, circular spray. A light speckling of warm blood hit me along the cheek. I’d pulled the trigger. I’d shot him in the face. Seemed like it’d be closed-casket after all. Slowly, I lifted myself up, thumbed the hammer back down with a gentle click, and holstered the smoking pistol, scratching my neck before shrugging apathetically. “Well, would you look at that...?” I smiled towards my team with an overdramatic wave through the air. “I guess my finger slipped.” Daryl and Caleb chuckled brusquely, and even Vito let a smile pierce that eternal glum facade. The trio dispersed, and I dusted myself off, heading towards the crate Douglas had gestured to, leaving the motionless body of the now-faceless arms dealer sitting there on the catwalk as blood dripped down through the slats and onto the floor below. This was the organisation. We lied. We stole. We killed. We didn’t honour the final wishes of dying men. We held no emotion. Only cold remorse out of a personal sense of professionalism. I shot Leopold Douglas in the face to eliminate any possible chance of survival, and as a deterrent, not least of all to keep my reputation with my team – couldn’t have them thinking I was getting soft, now. People say there’s no honour among thieves, but even burglars have trouble directly going against the last requests of a man who’s accepted his death. We were never thieves. We were never murderers. We didn’t need to kill. We didn’t need to rob. We didn’t need to burn. We were businessmen. We could function in an office or on a battlefield. We were four of the world’s great elite.
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defectiveImmediately
In-Training
Thunder for Mayor, Tyc for Attorney General, Necris for Congressman.
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Post by defectiveImmediately on Jan 12, 2014 12:53:03 GMT
Chapter Seven
The Name Game It was barely minutes before we started tearing through Douglas’ aftermarket stock in search of money, high-class weaponry, or the greatest gem of all, information. My squad and I were particularly useful at rifling through a single set like this, looking for whatever we could dig up. The suitcase that Douglas had stuffed full of ledgers, documents, and cash in a rather hurried and impromptu manner served to be the biggest gold mine of all, making up the bulk of what we needed. Emptying out the remainder of the military surplus was child’s play, and before long, we were greeted by stack upon stack of wads of cash, each wad bound with a pretty little stack with the bold imprint of ‘$5000’ upon it. Towers of cash, enough to make any regular working man squeal at the very sight of it. The money really wasn’t what the Broker cared about. It was the principle, and the territorial advantage he gained by displacing Douglas. Half a million dollars was chump change, and the team knew this – all of the late dealer’s books would simply help the organisation’s replacement integrate into the market far more smoothly, and possibly even retain members of Douglas’ old security detail. Looking at the headless Avram, however, I arched an eyebrow and figured that they perhaps... weren’t the best. With that in mind, I tossed a few more sacks filled with cash into the crate and stuffed every last paper, file, envelope, and ringbinder into the suitcase I could, zipping it up with considerable vigour and setting it by the door which we’d end up making our exit through. The last item on the list before covering our tracks was the fate of the poor, arms-dealing moron with an exit wound where his brain should be lying in a pool of his own blood, rigor mortis finally having set in. The team convened in a circle around the liberally-sized pool, and I scratched the back of my head with a sigh. “Broker wants proof of death.” Immediately, Vito’s hand went to the back of his waist, reaching for... something. The Italian’s ways of making a corpse easier to handle were messy, and whilst I wasn’t the squeamish type, there was no need to make this an even bloodier ordeal. Professionalism. I rose up my arm in response and shook my head; begrudgingly, silently, the black-haired assassin let his fall slack and looked back down to the corpse. Caleb interjected with a grunt. “Could always stick his head in an icebox or something.” Macabre, but far less bloody than the organ jamboree Vito had insinuated by reaching for his ambiguous cutting tool. The Italian nodded at this. I shrugged. The idea was good... the equipment side of things was where we fell a bit short. “I didn’t bring one. You know how he is. He prefers the full body.” I shot another look towards Vito. “All limbs attached.” The Italian recoiled, knowing his place, but it wasn’t long before Daryl added his two cents. “What about the crate?” He jerked a thumb towards the large, wheeled arms crate, filled with piles and stacks of cash. Immediately, I made the instinctive response to shoot the thief’s idea down, as they were usually hastily-conceived and tended to fall apart at the first pickings of logic... but I stopped myself and looked to him, then to Caleb, and to Vito. It was the only option we seemed to have, and it was... half-decent. A few minutes later, the bloody cadaver of Leopold Douglas rolled onto the surface of his ill-gotten financial gains with a thud, the corpse still seeping the warm crimson liquid as Caleb and Daryl slammed the lid shut and engaged the locks. I smirked to myself. The sadistic irony of it all was rich enough. Even the Broker would appreciate it. He’d asked for the money that the arms dealer owed him. Blood money. He was getting it – quite literally. After wheeling the crate and suitcase out, the final thing to do was the organisation’s prime specialty. Remaining undetected. These warehouses were faulty. The gas main systems broke, cracked, and leaked almost everywhere. So we had a reason. We had plausible deniability. We had a motive. And above all, we had thirty gallons of kerosene, conveniently stocked in a warehouse that one of Douglas’ paid-off men had offloaded from an inconspicuously parked truck a few days ago. Only I had the key to the lock on the dilapidated shed’s door, and with a jerry-can in each hand, each of us made multiple trips to and from the little white box back to the three towering warehouses, making sure and taking extra care that each of them was absolutely soaked with the stuff. Slugging it liberally over every body, every blood stain, every door, every window, and every footstep we’d taken, each of us silently knew that nothing would remain, except for the faded scenario of a fight. When they found the piles of burnt and charred Kalashnikovs, and the reasonable pile of money we’d left stacked up by the side of a body – curiously enough scalped and missing his teeth – slumped in Douglas’ chair, the authorities would put two and two together. They’d bump it up the chain of command to the FBI, where the forensic investigation would go on for a few months. Once they uncovered all the “facts” to be found at the crime scene, by logic of Occam’s razor, they’d simply conclude one thing: this was an arms deal that had gone wrong. Nothing more, nothing less. We were a team of phantoms. “Light.” I growled underneath my breath. None of us smoked. But we always had lighters. Holding out a gloved hand, Daryl slammed a closed, simple, brushed Zippo into it. I rolled the wheel a couple of times, and it struck the splint and sparks flew as if it were blade clashing against blade. Then on the third, with an aggressive foom, a flame erupted from the guard and I haphazardly tossed it towards the entrance of the right-most warehouse. There was no explosion at once. Simply a great choking sound as the kerosene, ignited, greedily huffed in all the air, and pulled it into itself, pushing it higher and higher until it finally erupted into a great orange funnel of a flame. There was no great crash, simply an abundance of heat as the four of us turned on our heels and walked towards the Wrangler, parked conveniently as far away from the flaming wreckage as possible. The Wrangler’s back seats had been pushed down in an effort to allow enough space for the crate. Given that I also needed to deliver the Broker not only his cargo, but a report, I’d tossed the suitcase into the front passenger seat, too, and gestured over towards the other side of the airfield with a grin. “Good work, gentlemen.” The archetypical congratulation. “Take Douglas’ sedan. It’s over the other side of the airfield, a few minutes’ off.” I let them see a minor smirk as I settled into the driver seat of the Wrangler and yanked the ignition. “Not like he’ll be needing it any more, anyway.” With a low grumble and a squeal of rubber against the paved side of the airfield, Bessie pulled herself into action and launched herself towards the double-functioning entrance and exit of the complex. The flames rose and rose inside the buildings, continually getting higher and eating away at the warehouses’ very skeletons. It wasn’t until they finally reached the top, lapping and tugging at the flesh of Avram and the other nameless Israeli guards, that they breached the very epicentre of the building and struck another crate, scorching the ground and slicing through the wood of Douglas’ desk as it went. This crate, untouched by the kerosene, and reinforced, the fire slowly devouring the outside and shearing small, smoking holes in the side as the material crackled and sizzled beneath the unrelenting heat. However, this one contained neither money nor rifles. It was simply filled with trays stacked atop one another, filled solid with ammunition, loose or not, and pound upon pound of compressed gunpowder. The inferno had but merely to scrape them before a great plume of orange-yellow flame rose above the rest and tore away a huge chunk of the roofing with a thunderous explosion. ***** My appointment with the Broker wasn’t until sunrise, and the clock still read 3AM. Pulled over a dozen miles from the site of the explosion, in a wooded lay-by of the freeway leading out of the city, I had decided to catch up on my reading, and flick through Douglas’ ledgers, see if there was anyone of interest he’d been dealing to. A few known associates of terrorist groups, and a couple of private wet work men and investigators known to be hired by various city politicians, but no-one overtly important. Scanning the messy book, row upon row, was an eager scrawling in a different colour of pen each time. It appeared the arms dealer didn’t keep his books and papers tidy. Perhaps that would have been his downfall in the end, had I not intervened. Flicking through pages dotted with coffee stains and the odd splodge of ink, nothing seemed to be out of order. But that all changed when I turned the next and tossed through, rifling along from entry to entry. I saw it, and my entire body froze stiff. My eyes opened wider than they had in years, trembling at the very core and shaking with tumultuous tremors I couldn’t control. It was a name. One I could recognise, and one that yet meant nothing to me. One that I knew to the point of familiarity, but one that I couldn’t acknowledge in the slightest. A terrible, racking, searing heat shot through every alley and avenue of my mind. A bead of sweat formed on my forehead. I clutched at my chest, spluttering for breath. My vision spiked. What... what was happening to me? I rocked back and forth in delirium. Was my mind this strong? I flashed another look – NO. Neither my mind, nor my body could register it; I winced. It simply burned to look at it again. To accept such a horrific concept, one which through my whole world off-balance and tore my understanding apart, ripped my comprehension to shreds. Something which spun me around and pushed me, blind, into the forest by which I eagerly awaited. Whatever this ledger was, it was too stressful to bear with me as a constant reminder of the name within the first field. The headache was still throbbing, clawing at the backs of my eyes, trying desperately to carve holes in my retinas, slashing at everything and anything it could find, sharp and intense, like a million knives pushed into a single millimetre of space. I swung the car door open and my stomach heaved; with a pathetic toss, I launched the thing down the bank of the lay-by and into the ditch, where the muddy, algae-clogged water took hold of it, and the ledger simply... sunk. Bile shot forth from the pit of my stomach, and I retched into the ditch after the book for a solid few minutes, before finally vomiting. A hacking sound reinforced every throe and heave, the most unhealthy kind of vomit there was. It wasn’t to expel an illness, or an attempt to purge my body of a virus. My body and mind were sealed and traumatised, and this... name... had drove a knife straight into that. I stayed there on my knees for a few minutes as my vision stabilised and my head stopped pounding, before clambering back into my car and fumbling for a packet of tissues in the glove compartment, ripping a few away from the bulk and matting at my face, throwing them down into the ditch for good measure, too. I re-aligned myself and slumped back into the driver’s seat, before reaching for the mirror, and pulling it down to check- The mirror. Fastened to it was a sheet of paper. Torn haphazardly from the same paper as each of Douglas’ ledgers. I felt the vomit rise within. Suddenly the gravity became all the more real. As much as I’d thought from the name in the ledger that this was something different, something I couldn’t comprehend, something beyond my reach – the note brought the thudding reality down upon my head like the blow of a club. ‘Check left jacket pocket’, it read. My hands instinctively went to my chest; but I wasn’t wearing a jacket. I’d left mine back at the warehouse – no-one had known that. The only three people that were in that warehouse with me were Daryl, Caleb, and Vito, all of whom knew that fu cking with me like this was not going to bring about good consequences. This page wasn’t old, either. If it was torn from a page from one of Douglas’ ledgers, then that meant one thing: someone else had been there at the warehouses. Someone who had been waiting for them to arrive. And by that process of reasoning – it wasn’t his jacket pocket that this anonymous writer wanted me to check. I don’t know why I opened the boot and opened up the crate on the middle of a freeway. Perhaps I thought there was some great fortune in it for me. Or maybe it would bring solace and health to the horror the name in the ledger had brought me, my stomach still uneasy. For all I knew, there could have been a tripwire, a grenade wired up to when I yanked open the jacket; undoing the clips and heaving the lid open, the stench of blood and death greeted me, intermingled with the fresh smell of newly-printed cash. Patting Douglas down as best I could lead me to the conclusion that whoever had done this hadn’t left such an elaborate trap. Left jacket pocket. I pressed against Douglas’ pudgy chest, the left side of his torso, and tried to move into the inside of his outer jacket pocket, but it was still sewn up – with that, I pulled open the jacket, and took the deepest breath I could of the bloody, murderous air, and dove in, greedy hands and fingers ready to pull forth more clues, feeling like the best-trained detective in all of America. And lo and behold, I grasped another single scrap of paper. Same handwriting. Block capitals. Not a name, this time. An address. I held it up in the moonlight to make sure I could see clearly – but it was another lead. A low growl inadvertently stemmed from my throat as I realised the nature of this. Someone was trying to frustrate me, yank me about. Or perhaps it was a tip-off. Douglas had dealt with the name in the ledger. And this next name was a lead. The only one I had. That name in the ledger, whatever it had been, was a weakness to me. And as I’d stated before, the organisation did not count for weakness. But the scrawling on this page was one of the most unexpected yet, but it was still a lead. It was an address. One in the middle of the city – right on the edge of the street. Topped off by a single line: “Office 37, accounting floor, KBL”. KBL. Karmine Banks Limited. Another lead. An executive for KBL. Perhaps he would have answers. Perhaps he would tell me what the name in the ledger meant. Perhaps he was the name in the ledger. For now, I didn’t know. I wheeled the crate back in and returned to Bessie’s driver seat with a sigh, yanking the keys around the ignition as the engine chugged back to life, before I set back off into the city, eager to leave this lay-by, the memories, and the leather-bound book sinking in the ditch far behind.
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defectiveImmediately
In-Training
Thunder for Mayor, Tyc for Attorney General, Necris for Congressman.
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Post by defectiveImmediately on Jan 12, 2014 12:53:43 GMT
Chapter Eight
Congregation An idle finger traced again and again loops around the edge of a glass. A glass so ornate, made so intricately, hand-crafted by some poor child in a third-world country just to be shipped out to the American mid-West and purchased from a browser by someone such menial things are delegated to. Glasses which hum gently as a finger, tweaked at just the right speed, traces over, again and again. Glasses which can be described as the pinnacle, complete perfection. This one was half-filled with water. The riddle of the optimist and the pessimist. The Broker saw himself as neither, raising the hand from the glass to his chin and slowly rubbing the calloused intricacies of his knuckle against the stubble on his neck, shaven and gentle, as the hood spilled over his eyes and the robe over his figure. No, the Broker knew that he, himself, was an opportunist. Within that glass of water was the potential for so much more; so much more than simple satisfaction for someone parched and thirsty. That glass of water could be used or viewed in such an abstract manner. For that glass of water, the possibilities were not limitless – even a mind as great as his could not do impossible things with a simple, absolute structure – but still extensive. That idle finger grasped the glass, coiling around the edge like a serpent. Soon, three more joined it, and on the other side, a thumb, until the criminal legend’s vice-grip held his chalice almost completely, and raised it upwards until it was empty save for a single drop of water, which he let trickle out as he moved the glass from his mouth, forming a splatter upon the floor. Beneath the hood, two eyes of the palest grey flickered to a screen which rose with a slick, mechanical whir from the side of his granite throne, indicating that he had arrivals. A smirk. Two of them. Presumably his operatives. Agents Kai and Goldstone. His top lieutenants. And, hopefully, they would come bearing good news. With a fluid, singular movement, the Broker raised the glass high above his head, and in a downward, left arc, swept it across, in front of him, diagonally, and cast it out into the edges and fringes of the room. It met the stone wall of the circular enclave, the man’s own personal fortress, and it shattered, crumbling into hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces, not far off from a fine, crystal dust. And with that, the Broker was reminded, once more, of, despite the opportunities that a fixture, a concept, or even an absolute object or being can possess... each, with the right assault, from the right angle... ...can still be destroyed. ***** Over the three years I’d been working for the Broker, Kai and I had formed an odd relationship with a sense of rivalry and camaraderie. He respected my skills, I respected his, and I knew that he was unofficially my senior in spite of our positions being the same; but in a sense, there was an undertone of jealousy, ever-present, courtesy of the fact that I had ascended from nobody to somebody with far less work than it had taken him. Many times he had recalled his slow, steady ascent through the organisation over a gruelling eight years, devoting a large portion of his life to it just so he could reach this position – and I’d earned a position parallel to his, inadvertently, in just shy of three days. In tandem and parallel we walked, side-by-side, through the hissing series of hydraulic doors, whirring mechanically and automatically as we approached. Only a haunting violin refrain was left to make us the image of an evil pair. We had been silent since entering the Daedalus; the Broker’s enclave was, of course, at the safest place imaginable: ever-moving about the bay of a great lake near the city’s heart. Furrowed with state-of-the-art technology and an unimaginably large labyrinthine maze of bleached white corridors, it was safe to say that it... suited our employer. “I heard about the Douglas assignment.” Kai retorted dryly with a smile. “Who’d have thought that such a ‘successful’ empire would end going up in flames?” The puns were almost painful; but even in my current state of concern for my own wellbeing and the mysteries surrounding the name in Douglas’ ledger, I let a short, forced chuckle through. “Your jokes get worse and worse by the day, Kai,” I hissed in response. “Perhaps something else to work on alongside your usefulness to the organisation?” Making Kai doubt his competence, even jokingly, was the only angle I had – the Korean-American essentially lived to serve the Broker and his every whim. It was an understandable relationship, and one beyond lucrative, but the man was almost too subservient for my liking. The final set of gates hissed open and we stood at the entrance of that huge, half-spherical, circular room, with the raised platform at the centre and the colossal granite throne upon which he sat. Our employer. Our lord. Our god, by any other name. The centre of every iota of information that passed through this wretched city. Deathly silence reverberated from every sloped wall and bump. Neither of us spoke unless we were spoken to. Then his smooth tones resounded through every curvature of the room, booming and echoing. “Tell me, Operative Goldstone,” His words were slow, but not honeyed; he was difficult to listen to, but his voice still commanded attention beyond that of any monarch. “What is my relationship to this city?” A question as open-ended and cryptic as that obviously held further meaning. For a single moment, my heart’s beats’ sped up to the point that I felt it’d explode in some bloody haze; but then, I realised, if he wished to murder or punish me, I wouldn’t be standing here. It was probably some convoluted message; the Broker never dealt in slaps on the wrist or humiliation. Not with his own agents. So, I gave an answer as standardised and addressing my employer’s nature as honestly as I could. “You rule the city, sir.” Silence once more for but a moment, before the fabric of the Broker’s ominous hood shifted, and he shook his head slowly from one side to the other. “I rule the city?” Again, he shook his head, and below that cowl, whilst most of his facial features were obscured by shadow, I could just about make out the corners of calloused, defined lips turning upwards into a smile. “No... I am the city. A flesh and blood incarnation of the gritty, seedy spirit that looms over and beneath this community simultaneously.” I pondered the metaphor for a moment, and then the truth behind it. Without the Broker, the world had fallen apart. However many years ago – for all I knew, the ‘man’ was immortal – he’d come into this city, fought his way down into the core, and connected himself to everything. It wasn’t just crime. Politics. Music. Film. Celebrities. And without him, the city would cease to function. It hadn’t needed the Broker to begin with, but now their symbiotic relationship was so very important that without that single man in the granite throne, simply rewiring information, selling it to the highest bidder... the city would crumble and fall into the basest sort of chaos and anarchy. “Anyway...” The Broker brushed swiftly on. “I heard about your success in...” He chose his words carefully, dancing around them with fine, textbook etiquette. Never did he dirty his mouth with words such as ‘kill’ or ‘murder’. Far too brusque for a refined lord like himself. “...disposing of Leopold Douglas.” Allusions and hints were more than enough for a man who thrived upon and had built his entire life’s work upon insinuation and implication. “The amount of funds agreed prior have been transferred to your account. As have they to your team’s.” I nodded. I received a monthly cut, thirty percent of which was wired to a city account, and the other seventy to an offshore account in Dubai, then for every intricate job which required... a more delicate hand, I was given another large lump sum, divided the same. It meant I always had income on hand, but was storing the capital away for... well, let’s say, retirement plans. I interjected then before he could move to Kai. The name in the ledger and Victor Cox’s significance in all this had been nagging at me – but I knew that explaining this to the Broker would only lead to his viewing me as weak. Breakdowns? Inexplicable headaches? It was a chink in my otherwise nigh-impenetrable armour. It was a crack in the invulnerability that he had bestowed upon me. If he so much as got an inkling that my use was waning and his training me had been wasted, then I was dead without a second thought. So I had to conjure up another reason for striking out at Cox, for moving over KBL. And this much was simple: it was a mob bank, and the only major branch in the city that wasn’t under the organisation’s thumb fully. Of course, we still had major links to it, but it was the last true bank in the city that the Broker hadn’t seized in entirety. In truth, it was being shaped and melded into place, carefully worked with until it was ripe enough for the taking. This would just be an anxious lieutenant’s suggestion to move along. “Before anything else, sir,” I stepped forward, exchanging a quick glance with Kai. “I’d like to make a request to move the KBL job ahead of schedule and take it over the next couple of weeks.” Another glare at Kai – he’d expressed desire to take this one. “Personally.” And here would come the questions – each of which I’d pre-prepared an answer to. Not only that, but I had motive and reason, too. I had ideas, and leads. I bolstered myself, mentally, and allowed my fingers to intertwine behind my back, awaiting an answer. “And just why would that be, Operative Goldstone?” “Glad you asked, sir.” With that, I leant into the inner left pocket of my jacket. Normally I only carried a disposable cellphone and little else – for someone of my stature, words were as powerful as bullets – but my proof had to be made presentable. I opened the piece of paper and pressed a finger against the scrawled handwriting of whoever had written the note I’d found on Douglas’ body – the same handwriting of the directive in my mirror and the name in the ledger – and spoke as coolly as I could. “Victor Cox. He’s a KBL executive.” Folding the note back up, I sighed. “I found this note on the arms dealer’s body. I can only presume he was heading there to make a deal of some sort.” Kai’s eyes glinted and he stared at the floor, his hands similarly interlocked behind his back. I tucked the paper back into my inside pocket. “If we’re in the business of tying up loose ends at the moment, we may as well kill two birds with one stone.” I explained as best I could – the idea had taken a few hours’ steady working over, thinking of the deep intricacies of underworld politics. “Raid the bank and take out the mob contacts to send a message that only the mafia will understand. This would allow us to plant our own staff, and at the same time make a hit on Cox look like an accident.” I paused, returned to my idle stance, and waited for the Broker to respond. Gently, slowly, he inclined his head. “Good, good...” He murmured. “Once again you have proved me right in your promotion, Goldstone. You’ve taken the initiative and investigated this. We may have otherwise missed the importance of Cox...” I smiled; a little pride was always good. Even pseudo-immortal lieutenants of so fabled an organisation like ours could display pride. “Assemble the team and strike as soon as you are ready.” I turned on my heel, nodded, and made straight for the door with a grin hiding bitter paranoia for my actions behind it. As well as this had turned out, once you began lying to the Broker, you never stopped. And whilst the best lies are forged from a basis of half-truth, and practiced to the point of impossibility, betraying the man who controlled everything and knew even more... for some reason, it struck me as a less-than-intelligent move. ***** The doors hissed shut behind Fraser Goldstone, and the Broker looked to his other lieutenant. The Korean-American spoke swiftly, dwelling momentarily on the nature of the other’s ‘presentation’. “With all due respect, you know as well as I do that the handwriting of that note wasn’t Douglas’.” Whilst he considered Fraser a comrade, he more considered his loyalty to the Broker of paramount importance, and not raising an issue like this was almost criminal. The devil laid in the details, or so they said. “Yes.” The simple response only perplexed the man more. “And... yet-“ “I know, Kai, that there is something Mr. Goldstone is not telling us.” He paused, sighed, and slowly drummed the calloused fingers of one hand against the cold, stone arm of his throne, leaning down onto the bunched-up fist of the other. “He is just as analytical as you or I, and mistaking this for stupidity would be idiocy in itself.” The fingers stopped drumming, and with a slow hum of consideration, the kingpin raised them to his chin, gently brushing it once more against the basis of a layer of black-grey stubble. “But we will not persecute for simple omission. Not in this case.” Kai arched an eyebrow. This was... unlike his employer. “What do we do, then, sir?” Waiting for some answer, some command, some signal. The Broker’s lip curled upwards beneath that shadowed visage into the most wicked smile yet. Fraser Goldstone had considered himself good enough to slip one past the man, but he in the throne was not concerned with this petty betrayal. It may have been for sex. It may have been for money. Neither of those he really cared about. Even if it was for power, he knew the operative was not stupid enough to long for a mantle higher than one he held now – that only belonged to him. No, what he was concerned about was motive. The reason why. Sheer morbid curiosity. “We watch, Operative Kai.” He half-whispered onto the air, the room and the acoustics within carrying his voice softly and gently to the ears of the suit-clad Korean-American. “We watch.”
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