An off-planet hitman with a grudge tracks down his latest target.
Image generated with OpenAIThere is a gun to my left temple, but my thoughts are far from my own life, my own death. I think only of my mother. When my mother died – when she was murdered – it was not so much the sense of loss that galvanized me, but the sense of finality. With her passing, a line was drawn across my life. That line separated who I was from who I was determined to become. Before that line I was anxious, ruminative – careful. After that line…
My head jerks into the gun – the one direction these payroll thugs never anticipate. Metal cuts into my temple, knocking the goggles off my face, but the weapon is now flat against my forehead, barrel pointed toward the ceiling. With one hand I keep the gun pressed hard against my head. With my other hand I side-punch my assailant in the ear. It is an unexpected move, more painful than you’d imagine. (Speaking from experience.) His surprise lasts only a moment, but that is all the time I need: I remove my knife from his chest as his body slumps to the floor.
I need to be on the 96th floor. I am on the 48th. I reaffix my goggles, putting the building’s blueprints in the HUD of my left eye as I slink down the hallway toward the elevators. The entire floor is empty, unfinished. Exposed steel columns run across the ceiling. The floor is covered in a fine patina of dust. I surmise I’ve studied this building’s schematics more than anyone but its architects. There are eight passenger elevators, two freight. The bottom ten floors are fortified against ground assault. The top of the building is fortified against air assault. But the defenses for the middle of the building are soft. And so that is where I entered.
This hit job is prestigious, straight from the office of Connor Sadar. Many in my business won’t work for Sadar, fearful of his retribution should a job go wrong. I do not share this fear for two reasons: One, death seems only slightly less desirable than life. And two, my jobs don’t go wrong.
But fear of Sadar is warranted – I am not claiming otherwise. No sane person would cross the Butcher of Salus. Such a man would do better to put a bullet in his own head, rather than allow Sadar a chance to get inventive.
A story about Connor Sadar: Not long after Sadar took over from his predecessor, Tommy Blades, a rival gang kidnapped Sadar’s younger sister, Lindsey. The gang told Sadar they’d send Lindsey back one pound at a time until he left the city. Connor, no more than 35 at the time, hired a guy – not me – to deal with the situation. Connor Sadar’s man infiltrated the rival gang’s compound, and put two bullets into… Lindsey Sadar. You see, Connor Sadar was showing the city he would not be intimidated; that there was nothing in the galaxy that could be used as leverage against him. And so he killed his own sister – the mother of his adoring nephews – rather than look weak. That gang no longer exists, by the way. They were, you could say, dismantled.
So yes, you would have to be insane to go up against Connor Sadar.
My target for tonight’s job is less dangerous. Indeed, he is just eleven years old – the same age I was when my mother died. Even though I did not choose the target, I feel for him. The kid had the misfortune of being born on this particular planet, during this particular time, into his particular family – a rival syndicate. I’ve worked for Sadar before, but this is the first time my mark is a kid. That’s not to say that going after kids is unheard of for these gangs; we’ve all seen the news. All the same, I don’t have to tell you that these children are not a threat to anyone – not yet, at least. Such savagery is purely an attempt to terrorize those at the top – to wring pain from the stone hearts who control our backwater system.
Despite the floor being inundated with motion detection lasers, I make it to the elevator bank undetected. Stealth suit – very useful. My tech came free, but not easy – a story for another time. It should be enough to tell you that it is Ralkonian, the real deal, manufactured on Earth. I’ve never been to Earth. Probably never will go. But their technology is a decade ahead of anything they have here on Salus.
Using the suit’s heat sensor, I do a thermal scan of the entire building. As anticipated, most of the tower’s hundred floors are empty – the building is a two-thousand-foot trophy. There are a couple dozen people spread across the first two floors, a scattering of people between floors two through 96, then another dozen in the penthouse. I simply got unlucky gliding into a floor with a sentry. The guy heard me cutting through the window; a stealth suit won’t help you there. I did a thermal scan on approach, clearly, but the building’s exterior blocked it from penetrating. Lucky for me, the guy was more curious than alarmed; he certainly didn’t anticipate an enemy combatant climbing through a window at one thousand feet. No bother – the situation has been handled. I’m where I need to be. More importantly, my presence remains undetected.
The blueprints say the freight elevator goes straight to the penthouse. With the elevator door wedged open, I climb into the shaft, clipping my ascender onto the elevator cable. I can’t tell if the elevator car is currently all the way up or all the way down, but it’s nowhere near me. After another thermal sweep – no unusual movement; good – I begin my ascent. I figure I have a few minutes before they notice one of their guys has gone cold.
The ascent is slow, deliberate. No need to get flashy. This job is ten times more complex than my first hit, but somehow easier at the same time. My first job was one I assigned to myself: my mark was my mother’s killer. The guy was a nobody – just another payroll thug for a gang that no longer exists. (Most gangs on Salus no longer exist.) Even so, I investigated him as though he was Connor Sadar himself. I tracked him for well over a year, learned what bars he visited, what brothels. By the time I took him out I felt as if we knew each other, even though he only saw my face once, at the very end, for about one second. I was 13 years old.
There are more lasers inside the elevator shaft, and the placement appears random. Without my tech this job would be nearly impossible. I’d probably have needed to hack into the building’s systems – a nightmare. Beyond the lasers, there are cameras at every floor, above the elevator doors, but they all face into the hallways. Before heading any higher, I drop a charge down the shaft. I consider dropping a second, but I don’t want to bring the whole building down.
I reach the top of the elevator shaft. No car – it must be at ground level. I pry open the doors, fully expecting to be met by a small army. Instead… nothing. One thing I’ve learned: You always think you are being louder than you are. Think of all the noises a building makes – any building. Just take a moment and listen.
Once safely outside of the shaft, I hit a button on my wrist. A distant roar. I can feel the dull vibrations through the floor. Alarms blare. Within seconds, three men with assault weapons round the corner. Their eagerness makes them easy pickings, two bullets for each. That leaves nine in the penthouse. Manageable.
Unlike the other floors, the penthouse level is finished. The style is Edwardian. I know this only because my mother was an English professor and all-around Anglophile. I was named after Christopher Marlowe, believe it or not. To those who were not raised by an English professor, Christopher Marlowe was a contemporary of Shakespeare. But where Shakespeare enjoyed fame and fortune in his lifetime, Marlowe was knifed to death in a bar fight before his thirtieth birthday. Sometimes I wonder if my life would have turned out different had I been named William – had my namesake been a romantic, and not a lush. But love is deadly, too. My mother was killed by love. That is to say, she loved the wrong man. Or the right man, but on the wrong planet.
I move cautiously down the hall, using my feet to separate the fallen bodies from their guns. I arrive at the entrance to the penthouse, only to find it blocked off by steel blast doors. At that very moment they are readying the helicopters, I’m sure of it. Good thing I stopped off at the roof before entering the building. Another tap on my wrist and the building shakes again, this time from above.
Following the explosion, I wait a full two minutes. I am rewarded for my patience: the blast doors open, and a handful of men pour out, along with a suffocating cloud of smoke. Half the men are down before the smoke clears. The other half retreat back into the penthouse. I must look like a ghost as I follow them, emerging bug-eyed from the billowing haze.
When he came for my mother, I hid beneath my bed.
She needed me then.
And I hid.
The guards shoot at me, but they are shooting at the past – a holographic projection of my image, courtesy of my friends on Earth. Over the next minute, the men in the room drop regularly, one at a time, until none are left but one – a shadow kneeling behind an intricately carved wooden desk.
Following the bloodshed, the shadow stands, his arms spread wide, fingers splayed. If he is expecting mercy, he is quickly disappointed: Two bullets leave my gun. One hits the target in the chest, the other in the neck. The body falls to the ground. I walk around the desk, kneeling next to him. I remove the goggles of my stealth suit. It is not the body of a child at my knee, but the body of a man. A man named Connor Sadar.
Sadar looks younger than I expected, but there is no confusing him for someone else. Sure, they could cut a person to look like him, but why would that facsimile be on hand for what should have been a quiet night in his penthouse? No, this is the guy, in the flesh.
Sadar has never seen my face – no one has – but I recognize the surprise in his eyes as he realizes who I am, processes my betrayal. He says nothing – the bullet in his neck prevents it. But as his surprise turns to rage, his hand reaches into his coat pocket. It is a futile gesture – instinct, mostly – and I put a bullet through both the hand and the pocket from a foot away before he can pull anything out.
As his eyes glaze over, a question forms on Sadar’s bloodied lips – no sound, only movement, but I recognize it as, “Why?”
I look him square in the eyes. “I don’t kill children,” I say, before squeezing a bullet into his left temple.
Within seconds I am out on the balcony and into the nighttime air, gliding away on the same breeze I glided in on, the towering headquarters of the Sadar syndicate burning orange behind me.
My mother named me Marlowe.
