A Hired Man

I stood beneath the awning of the Casa del Sueño – the “house of sleep”. I’d stepped into the hostel’s bar as a lightning storm had descended. Now it was just raining. I saw the lightning storm which as it passed squeeze its way between the skyscrapers of Carranza Nuevo, a last few bolts meeting the heights. For a moment the clouds parted and I caught a glimpse of that baby blue sky, before it was swallowed up once again by those impenetrable sky- coverers. I finished my last cigarette and dropped it on the water saturated concrete. It wasn’t a good sign, starting a new job with no cigarettes, especially one like this.

I’d been awoken that morning in a haze of nicotine and whiskey from a knock at the door of my office and apartment. I stole a quick glance through the spy hole to see the shadow of a woman standing there – she was silhouetted, her features blacked, by the hanging lights of the hallway behind her. I slid the bolt and opened the door as far as the brass chain would allow.

“What?” The word had come out sharper than I’d intended. I blamed it on the whiskey.

“Mr. Temple?” Her voice was strange. It reminded me of electricity, or gunpowder.

“He’s not here.”

I tried to close the door, but she put out a hand with surprising strength and held the door open a fraction of an inch, and said, “Mr. Temple, my husband’s been murdered. He told me to seek you out.”

This gave me, as it should anyone, pause. “A dead man told you to find me?”

“With his dying breath,” that electric voice said with a spark.

I shut the door, undid the chain, and let her in. Once inside I could make out her features in greater detail – olive colored skin and black hair, an Etruscan face and spring green eyes. She stared into my face unblinkingly; haughty, dignified, and on a mission. As stunning as she was, I knew I had never seen her before.

“Well,” I began, leaning against my desk. Hangovers have always destroyed my bedside manner,

“Why should your husband have sent you to me?”

“I believe he was a friend of yours.”

I tried to stifle the little jump my heart made against my ribs. I’d had enough friends die already. “And who would that be?”

“Emilio Settimo.”

She was right, Emilio had been a friend.

And so, with an empty pack of cigarettes, I walked across the street to the doors of the Segnale Building, where Emilio had worked.

Roof 3

“We’re always early. I don’t know why you seem to get so nervous”, said the Spartan.
“Not nervous. Anxious. Death is waiting for them, and I do not wish to keep him waiting”, replied the Whip.

The Spartan knew this already but he always liked to test his compatriot. It had been years since they first paired on a mission, long before they had installed his bionics. Back then, he was just another punk on the street, living in the filth and working small jobs to stay alive.

“Your arm. Is it ready,” asked the Whip.
“Well, aside from this little red light that keeps blinking I think I remembered to charge up...”

A sharp look from the Whip put a wry smile on the Spartan’s face. He enjoyed toying with the man not out of spite, simply because his dry speech belied his true nature.
“We must be prepared. Overconfidence is failure.” Dry and monotone, he spoke only in fragments. His speech, like his killing style, was efficient and included only what was necessary.
“Oh come on... I haven’t forgotten a thing since that first mission and yet you alw-“

Another look from the slender man, this one nothing more than a question and an answer wrapped in a single piercing glance.

“Your efficiency is going to be the death of me”, quipped the Spartan.
“Possible.”

Still, the Spartan didn’t want undermine the man’s confidence. He could be killed just as quickly and silently as the Spartan could take down the Whip, perhaps even faster. In a straight fight it would be burly power against deft agility. It would be a draw. They would probably both fall simultaneously. But it would never truly come to that, they were too close and the pair worked too perfectly together.

“It is ready, my friend. After this many missions together I would never let you down.”
“Nor I you. Anxious. Ready to kill.”
“Soon. We’ll be in the air soon. After that, I’ll enjoy seeing you take them down. I always look forward to seeing your creative mind in motion.”

Nearly an hour passed when the pair received their signal to begin. Without a word the Spartan stood and approached the Whip, both of them now standing at the edge of the roof. They stood for a moment and then, without hesitation and in complete unison, they jumped off. From the roof there was complete silence, no trace was left behind, no sign the pair had ever occupied the roof.

Bathed in the green hue of infrared, the pair glided through the city's stale air toward their target building. A lone figure stepped from the shadows of the now empty roof top, surveying their progress through bionic eyes and the detailed view screen of a helmet that had done its job on numerous occasions.

Confident they would not see or hear him, the bounty hunter stepped to the edge of the roof, activated his small rocket pack and jetted toward the same target building. The company's glowing blue logo atop the superstructure loomed larger by the second.

Roof, cont'd

Their occupation would have been obvious to any passerby – not that any passerby would have lived long enough to inform the police that there were two highly trained killers relaxing on a rooftop. They were clothed, not in black, but dark grey jumpsuits. Grey blends more easily into the background, their teacher had always told them. Their teacher had also advised them against any armor – their only protection was to be their speed, their agility. Armor is an attempt to protect the flesh, so they had been instructed, and any desire to save one’s own skin was an act of vanity. The only vanity they had ever been allowed was in the succinctness of their knives.

Their temperaments were readily apparent. One of the killers – and make no mistake, these were men-killers – was full of a nervous energy. He paced between the stairwell which had led to the roof and the roof’s edge, beyond which the sky plunged over one hundred stories to the fetid city streets below. This first killer was thin, sinewy, like a whip. The other sat back on his heels, tranquil before their excursion which would have them smirking at Death once again. He was large, built like a Spartan; his voice, gravelly, “Patience.”

Roof

Their presence here was unknown, if known disregarded and conveniently ignored for the right price. The city, a vast network of light and sound, hope and reality, vision and perception, stretched out before them. From here, the thoroughfares seemed to crawl with brightly colored centipedes, milling through the city in bright colors, flowing like water from one intersection to the next. While soothing to watch from this height, the centipedes were a poisonous beauty hiding a network of cancerous organizations, viral societies and plagued companies.


Five hundred meters ahead of them stood the dramatic roof of The Corporation. Inside, behind the glass, lay a maze of security devices and traps designed to eliminate intruders without hesitation. By soundlessly eliminating their targets, the pair planned to slip in and out of the compound without detection. Only days later, after the ceremony, would anyone discover the truth. And by then, it would be too late to change history. A canvass for their art, the city was awaiting the paint of change from their arsenal of political intrigue and deception.