A/N: Ok, here's the next section. Once again thanks to everyone who left a review.
-Thursday, December 11, 2008 8:57pm Langley, Virginia-
Mission 1: Target is Agent Michael Rivers of the CIA. No wife, no children. Currently on vacation after a 3 month assignment in Moscow, Russia. Eats dinner every night at 7pm. Watches ESPN for an hour in the living room. Finishes the night in his study at a desk next to the north side window. Reads the newspaper before going to sleep. The Virginia Railway Express should arrive in 10 minutes.
The business end of a McMillan Tac-50 sniper rifle slowly appeared out of the bushes on a mountain side. On the other end of the rifle lay a man dressed in a ghillie suit, perfectly camouflaged with pieces of the surrounding shrubbery. Following lessons learned from his training, he had stayed in that position for the last three days, observing his target and learning his habits. In his world information is life, or death in this matter. Now, from what he observed from Rivers, he chose the best spot and time to take him out.
At 9:07pm the train traveled down the rail directly below the sniper. A few seconds later a single shot from the sniper rifle was fired but unheard due to the noise of the passing train. The bullet looked to be heading in the wrong direction at first but had now reached its apex and was arcing down towards its intended target within Rivers' library. It passed effortlessly through the window and before the shards of glass hit the ground, it went through the back of the black leather desk chair. Michael Rivers was shot through the back and now was laying face down on his desk, dead without even knowing it.
-Wednesday, January 28, 2009 10:06pm New York, New York-
Mission 4: Target is Agent John Rogan of the CIA. Currently undercover in as an executive in a foreign business trying to find ties between it and an international terrorist group. Sorry but your association to Fulcrum outweighs your work for the greater good. Should be leaving work in 5 minutes and head towards his car, a white Mercedes Benz C300, parked in level 4. That should be as good as time as any.
As Rogan left the elevator on his way to his car parked in the far corner of the garage, a dark figure appeared from the shadows. Once again, his training took over which at this point became more like instinct. It had taught him how not to be seen; where to hide, how to follow the target without them noticing, how to blend into the background. In essence, how to be a ghost.
The impressive abilities of the unknown man showed; despite his training in the CIA, Rogan did not notice the figure stalking him down the corridor and was slowly catching up to him. The man stepped silently, steering clear of Rogan's peripheral vision and making sure of the locations of the light sources as to not cast a shadow. Then, in one quick motion, Rogan's throat was cut and he was left sprawled out on the garage floor to bleed out.
-Sunday, March 15, 2009 4:04pm San Diego, California-
Mission 9: Target is CIA analyst Jason Bremer. Currently working out of the San Diego office. Has fairly high security clearance which he has been using to leak information about future agency operations against Fulcrum. His involvement has cost the CIA dozens good agents who were ambushed by the rogue organization. Likes taking motorcycle rides up to Julian, deep in the Cuyamaca Mountains. This should be fairly easy.
Bremer walked out of his home in La Jolla, California. It was time for his weekly bike ride up to the city of Julian. He had always loved the ride up there and usually stopped to watch the sunset.
As he drove down the windy trail coming down the mountain, he didn't seem to notice a black Ford Mustang following him. The next part of the road was especially tricky, consisting of severe turns and s-curves. For less experienced riders it would be scary, but Bremer had rode down this same road many times before and actually enjoyed it. Unfortunately this would be the last time he enjoyed it, or anything for that matter.
The man in the Mustang pressed a little red button on a radio remote. Unknown to Bremer, the remote triggered a device which cut the brake lines to his bike. As he came up fast to the next s-curve, he squeezed the brakes but felt no slowing. Now alarmed, he squeezed harder and still no slowing. Bremer never had the chance to try the brake again as his motorcycle slammed hard onto the guard rail and sent him flying over the barricade and into the deep canyon below.
The Mustang paused for a second at the scene of the accident before speeding off.
-Sunday, August 23, 2009 3:05am Austin, Texas-
Mission 27: Target is CIA agents Melissa Silver and Jeremy Walters, as well as a corrupt NSA agent. All currently inbetween missions. Silver and Walters are partners, recently finishing a 3 month operation in Pakistan. Tsk tsk, here I thought that the CIA and the NSA don't like playing nice. Must be getting paranoid as well; meeting the other half of the Fulcrum command structure by teleconference? Are you guys afraid that I'll take all of you out at once? You should be.
Three monitors lit up the empty warehouse with faces of additional Fulcrum members; each at a different location within the city.
Silver stepped forward and asked "Is this necessary? I understand the need for safety but having each of us in different locations is quite excessive I believe."
Unbeknownst to them, the assassin was already in the warehouse and was observing them from afar. He had known of this clandestine meeting for a while and unfortunately for them, came prepared for this exact scenario.
"For now, this is how we'll do things. Who ever the CIA has sent knows who we are, where we live, even our cover stories. Until we eliminate this threat we must take all precautions" the voice said from one of the monitors. "So do we know how they are getting their intel?"
Walters spoke up, "We're unsure sir. The attacker had inside knowledge like you said but with the Intersect out of the picture, it's has to be a mole within Fulcrum."
"Are we sure that the Intersect has been taken care of? Do they have a back up one available?"
"Yes according to our contact near Director Graham's office, the assassination of Special Agent Charles Bartowski had completely rendered the Intersect useless. We are still unsure to what capacity Bartowski was involved with the project, but its safe to assume his elimination also removed the threat of the Intersect. Also the attempts for a beta Intersect proved futile. According to reports, they weren't able to achieve the level of results as with the first machine."
"I see, so that just leaves a mole within the organi..."
Before the sentence was finished, Silver and the others heard an explosion in the background of the monitor before noise filled the screen. In sequence, explosions were heard in the other two monitors before they lost signal as well.
Silver ran forward, screaming "What the hell is going on? How could he have gotten all three of them?"
"I don't know, I don't know. We need to get out of here now and reorganize."
Just then a masked man ran into the warehouse from the shadows. Before the agents could react he fired three shots, all hitting their intended targets. Silver, Walters, and the NSA agent fell to the ground each shot through the head. The assailant stood over the bodies and dropped a piece of paper.
It's now been almost a year since Chuck's death. Life has moved on and, reluctantly, Sarah has moved on too, career-wise that is. A few months ago Sarah was reassigned as assistant director under Graham. He felt it was necessary to have someone he trusted near him since anyone in the organization could be Fulcrum.
For Sarah it was bittersweet; it was nice to be able to visit her family in Los Angeles on a regular basis but she also missed the action and the thrill of the fight. She was now a desk jockey, coordinating missions and deciding which leads to follow through on.
One benefit of her new position was that higher security clearance; she was now able to view all files on Fulcrum and the agency's plans against them. She sat at her desk and closed the doors and shut the blinds in order to have complete privacy. Sarah sat down in her leather executive chair and brought the files over.
She opened the file FULCRUM and on top was a sheet of paper suspecting their involvement in Charles Bartowski's death. Sarah turned her head away and skipped all those pages, not wanting to relieve the day the love of her life was taken from her.
Sarah reached some files involving actions against the rogue organization. First occurred December of last year where Agent Michael Rivers was killed by a sniper while at his desk at home. CIA forensics lab traced back the shot to a bush on a mountainside, almost 1.7 miles away. Sarah was surprised; she knew that a shot from that distance was extremely difficult. Even the military trained snipers have trouble past a mile. The person who took the shot must've been extremely well trained. The paper also showed that the sniper left some evidence at the scene: the bullet casing with no fingerprints of course and a piece of paper with one word typed onto it. 'Fulcrum' it read.
Next Sarah saw Rivers' personal file. The CIA did some digging and found that he was involved in recruiting newly sworn in agents into Fulcrum. Most knew what they were getting into; but some thought they were part of a government sanctioned secret organization. Sarah read on through the other documents which showed the assassination of agents connected to Rivers, who they suspected where part of his Fulcrum team. The assassin was not only cutting off the head, they were also cutting the legs out of the rogue group.
As Sarah read on, she saw other Fulcrum agents were being taken out as well and not low level grunts either. These were high level, decision making members who thought they had anonymity. Whoever it was that was taking Fulcrum head on now had them running scared. The report showed that the assassin attacked them in their homes, at work, and even at supposed secret meetings. They were now disorganized and on the defensive, no longer able to execute smooth running missions like before and were now looking to be slightly paranoid.
What intrigued her most was the fact that some of those who were killed were not known to be Fulcrum at the time, the link was only found after their deaths. This meant the person had to know inside information on the group. With Chuck and the information of the Intersect now gone, there was only one person who would know the inner workings of Fulcrum. Bryce Larkin.
Sarah deduced that Bryce must have broken orders for recon only and decided to take out the group himself. She looked out into nowhere and thought, Is this your way of atoning for bringing Chuck into our world, Bryce? Do you feel guilt for sending that email? Are you now taking revenge against those who took your one and only best friend away?
Sarah shook her head and hoped he would be ok; although she didn't love him anymore she did know that Chuck still cared for him. He still worried if he was alive and if he would ever regain some sort of normalcy in his life. When Sarah first heard Chuck say that, she laughed and knew only Chuck would be able to forgive someone that easily.
Give them hell, Bryce.
Sarah looked up at the clock and realized that she had a red-eye flight from D.C. to Los Angeles later. Tomorrow would be the first anniversary of Chuck's death and nothing would keep her from her surrogate family.