"Murderer's aren't monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them." –Alice Sebold

Brooklyn Waterfront, New York City-

Inside one of a dozens of half abandoned warehouses that dotted the waterfront of the

decaying Brooklyn shoreline, a madman was at work;

Doctor Anton Sevarius carefully poured the contents of two small test tubes into a glass beaker, then smiled as he noted their reaction.

"Excellent…" he said to himself, before sliding his chair across to a desk with a laptop sitting on it. Sevarius flipped it open and began to enter his observations from the experiment into a text file, after using a small remote control to turn on a CD player.

As the strains of Wagner's Rienzi filled the room, Sevarius began to talk aloud as he typed,

"As I previously suspected, the chemical compounds of CC-117 and ADG-2148 proved to be quite toxic when mixed, making the weapons applications of this chemical nearly limitless…"

Sevarius paused for a moment,

"…and the fact that both of these chemical are readily available, would make this weapon particularly valuable to certain..." Sevarius chuckled darkly, "…interested parties. It's quite possible that…"

The doctors neck erupted in pain when the garrote bit into it.

He quickly tried to grab unto the wire and pull it away from his throat, but it was firmly held in place by its wielder. Servarius tried to call out for help, but all that came out of his throat was a wet gahk he tried to flail his legs, tried to get away, tried anything he could think of, but the killer held firm. Finally, his struggle ended, and Sevarius went still.

The killer held the wire in place for a moment, making sure that Sevarius was dead, and then he unwound the wire from around the good doctor's neck, carefully wound it around the plastic handles attached to it and but the weapon back under his black suit coat.

The killer flexed his black leather gloved hands, then after a moment's contemplation, closed the laptop on the table, tucked it under his arm, and left. As he slipped put of Sevarius' improvised laboratory, the florescent lights overhead shone down on a tattoo on the back of his completely bare head…a barcode with the number sequence 640509-040147…

In the same laboratory two days later, Anton Sevarius was being zipped into a black rubber body bag while two New York Police Department homicide detectives looked on and sipped coffee from Styrofoam cups.

"Well…think we're gonna catch this guy?"

"No."

"Just no, Anderson?"

"Yep."

"That's great…"

"Well, ell-tee, what do you expect me to say? Sure, as soon as we dust this place for prints we're not gonna find, then have forensics sweep it for fibers or whatever, and they come up with nothing, I'm sure by some miracle whoever did this is going to show up at the precinct and confess? Ell-tee, however did this was a professional, and we aren't gonna have squat in the way of leads. Let's just stop wastin' our time now and try and catch some bad guys we have a hope in hell of finding."

"You never know sergeant, we might get lucky."

"Yeah, well don't hold your breath."

Across town, in an abandoned subway station, the assassin known only as "47" was sitting on a splintery wooden table and inserting a data chip into a small fold open PDA.

He had been in New York to cut one of the final leads to Ortmeir's clone operation; Anton Sevarius. The doctor's advice to Ortmeir on the cloning process that had created the super assassin had been essential but it had been kept secret; 47 had only found out about recently, and had decided that since he was in New York anyway, it wouldn't hurt to tie up a possible loose end. Finding Sevarius had been easy, killing him even more so, and now it was back to business.

"47, we have a bit of a challenge for you…" Diana's smooth upper class english voice purred from the PDA's speakers, "The target is a local multi billionaire, one David Xanatos…"

47 listened as Dianna continued on, flipping through the attached floor plans of Xanatos' residence as he did so. This was going to be quite a challenge…not that it mattered. Once 47 had been paid for a contract, nothing could stop him. Nothing.

End of chapter 1…more too come, depending on your reactions to this short bit I've written here.