Hitman Damnation

SEVENTEEN



It was my first night in the studio apartment at Greenhill. The middle of the night, actually. Usually I had no problem sleeping, but tonight I couldn’t. Not sure why.

Everything had gone according to plan. I’d established a believable cover. I’d made friends with someone on the inside. Now I had to wait until the Agency told me I could go ahead and kill Charlie Wilkins.

How long would I have to wait? The election was in less than a month.

A window in my apartment faced the Main Street area of the compound. I parted the drapes and looked outside. All was dark. Streetlamps cast a dull glow on the “street.” Not a soul was about. Did everyone go to sleep at night? Was the place that disciplined? I’d never known of any area occupied by people who followed routine hours. It’s a fact that some humans are night people, others are morning people. Surely somewhere in the compound there was someone who was awake like me. I wondered if that person might be Helen. My friend.

It was ironic that I’d had a “dinner date” with her. Me. A dinner date.

It was strange, this feeling of having a friend. Even though it was all deceit, there was something genuine in the attraction between us. Of course, the person I presented to her was not really me.

I wasn’t sure who the real me was. I was never sure.

I suppose I’d always thought of myself as a kind of machine. A “thing” that does what I do without any feeling. But I did have flesh and blood. I did have nerve endings on my skin. I did have internal organs and a brain and a heart. I may have been created in a laboratory, but I was a human—I supposed.

So why didn’t I have the feelings that other humans had? I didn’t know.

Sometimes, though, I did feel as if feelings were straining to get out. As if some kind of barrier prevented them from bubbling to the surface.

Take the hit on Dana Linder. She was not a bad person, from what I could tell. Shouldn’t I have felt some kind of remorse or guilt for that hit? “Normal” people would. Sometimes I wondered if there was a way I could allow myself to feel those things. Was there a button I could push? A trigger?

Today I felt something when I talked to Helen. I’d never really spoken to a woman as a friend before. Diana was the closest I’d ever come to having a female friend. That didn’t turn out so well.

How long could I keep up the subterfuge with Helen? Where was this all going?

I didn’t know, but I would do whatever I had to do.


I was in Millennium Park in Chicago.

The baby stroller. Dressed as a woman. Sniper rifle in hand. Dana Linder was onstage. I was about to raise the gun, put her within the crosshairs, and squeeze the trigger.

But there was no one else in the park. It was just her and me. Dead silence. Not even wind or birds.

I put my eye to the scope. And the figure wasn’t Dana Linder at all. It was the shadow. The Faceless One. Death.

And suddenly I was not in Chicago. I was no longer pointing the rifle at Death on the stage of the pavilion.

I was back on that mountain in the Himalayas. The snow and ice beneath my feet were crumbling.

Death was watching me with anticipation.


I woke up in a sweat. Another nightmare. Hadn’t had one for a while. Odd that it would happen now. I wondered what it meant.

The clock said it was nearly five in the morning. I must have eventually fallen asleep.

I shook the remains of the dream from my head and got out of bed. Went to the bathroom, found my bottle of pills, and took two.

And my thoughts went back to that fateful day in Nepal.…