A Death in the Night

Chapter I – the Contract

Agent 47 was looking at himself in the mirror. A white jacket and pants, as well as a white button-up shirt and undershirt with shiny black shoes and a red tie adorned his muscular, highly conditioned body. It was the same suit he had worn just two years ago at his own funeral. He hadn't picked it out, of course, though he had kept it after killing all those foolish enough to attend his funeral…except for Diana, but that was a problem that had sorted itself out. 47 was confident that the Franchise was gone and that Diana had merely done what she could to keep 47 alive. That he returned to life in the middle of his own funeral testified to that fact.

He had decided to keep the suit. Usually he still wore his signature black suit with a stripped white shirt, but sometimes he chose to wear his new white suit. Mostly he would put it on only to stare at himself in the mirror, as a reminder that he too was able to die. The thought often crept into his cold, calculating mind that perhaps the suit was instead a sign that he was invulnerable to death, that having escaped death in such an impossible situation that he could surely escape death in other, even more dangerous, situations. He quickly forced those thoughts aside, dismissing them as irrational.

Stepping to the right he began unbuttoning the jacket. He folded it neatly and set it carefully into a compartment of his brief-case. The rest of the suit followed, and he put his usual suit back on.

He heard a knock at the door and slipped a Silverballer out of the holster under his jacket. Quietly he walked up to the door and looked through the peep-hole. The individual standing on the other side of the door was wearing a black shirt with some sort of red and white emblem on the left breast; a black hat he was wearing appeared to carry the same emblem. Faintly he could detect the scent of cheese and sausage.

"Just the pizza-boy," he sighed as he slipped the pistol back into its holster and fished a wad of cash out of his pocket. He opened the door and when the deliverer handed the pizza over, 47 set it on a nearby table. He gave the man eighteen dollars to cover the cost of the pizza and his tip. Tipping the man who brings you food was not only a good 'moral' thing to do, but it also made practical sense. A pizza-boy with a decent-sized tip would be less inclined to give out information about you to your enemies.

Normally he wouldn't eat pizza, he preferred finer foods. Unfortunately, although he had plenty of money to spare – though most of that went towards new killing-devices – he couldn't afford to eat out at an actual restaurant. It would attract too much unwanted attention. The FBI didn't like their directors being killed at the funerals of missing assassins. And, frankly, 47 didn't like wearing a disguise all the time. He thought about leaving the country, but it would be difficult to find a place where an angered FBI couldn't find him. He sat down and tried to enjoy the greasy pizza as best he could, though after months of eating pizza and other 'common' foods like it, 47 found he was actually developing a taste for it.

Half an hour later he was sitting at the only table in his small abode, cleaning his signature Silverballer .45 ACP pistols when the small laptop on the table's corner gave out a quite, though audible, chirp. 47 glanced over and saw that he had received a message from the Agency. The assassin put his weapons in their holsters and pulled the small computer over so that it would be sitting in front of him. He punched in a password. A large image of a middle-aged man appeared on the screen, the dome of his scalp was plainly visible due to a receding hairline. The page automatically scrolled up, the image was already burned into his memory.

NAME: Samuel Vincent Brown

AGE: 47

HEIGHT: 5"9'

WEIGHT: 205 lbs.

LOCATION: Houston, Texas

OBJECTIVES: kill Brown; retrieve external hard-disk in his bedroom safe

FEE: $650,000 USD

47 made a few telephone calls, arranging a flight to Dallas and a rental car. One thing the Franchise had taught the assassin was to be very careful. No longer did he fly directly to a target city, he flew to a nearby city and then drove. The flight and car were booked under entirely different aliases, requiring different disguises. Then he put his first disguise on and packed other items into his brief case.