1998, Kiev, Russia
In an abandoned room of a crumbling apartment complex, 20-years-old Kai watched, with an apathetic expression on his face, the raucous but slow procession taking place on the frost-slicked streets several stories below him. His long fingers, covered by a pair of worn leather gloves, idly flicked at the safety of the sniper rifle.
His target was taking his sweet time going around the block, as politicians gathering support for the next mayoral elections tended to do.
Absentmindedly, he brushed a wayward lock of his longer-than-normal hair out of his face and scratched at the bushy beard he'd been growing for a while. His fingers automatically found the jagged lines of scarring that decorated the bottom half of his face in a spiderweb-like mess of healed-over cuts. The faded marks were a permanent reminder of what he failed to do a long time ago, in that cramped and grimy concrete box that he had once called a home.
Perhaps when he was done here, he would go and get a haircut in celebration. Possibly a shave, as well. He had gone too long with both, and the extra hair had irked him slightly.
He forced his heart rate remain steady as he ground at the toothpick between his teeth and centered his focus on looking through the rifle scope. A minute passed, and the noise of the automobile his target was riding in became louder as it finally turned the corner. The din of the crowd was almost thunderous as they cheered for the finely-dressed man in the roofless car.
Through his scope, Kai saw the politician's wife, a doe-eyed woman that was ten years younger than the politician, sitting demurely at his side as the little girl in her lap, looking around six years of age, beamed sunny smiles to the crowd. The young girl was dressed in fine clothing in a style similar to the politician's wife and was missing one of her front teeth as she waved a tiny gloved hand around energetically.
Fuck.
Kai exhaled slowly, his breath coalescing into wisps of cold air. He knew the politician's face. He could spot the man out from a crowd of a hundred, perhaps even a thousand.
The politician had the same face as the man who had fucked his mother to death. The politician was the same man who had flung him out of a window all those years ago, sending a six year old child falling to face his death in the snow-piled streets of a festering ghetto. The same politician who was now campaigning to transform the impoverished ghettos into new shopping malls and amusement parks and other useless amenities for the rich to use.
The little girl caught a snowflake in her hands and turned to beam at her father. The politician smiled and affectionately patted the girl on the head. The doe-eyed wife smiled as her daughter laughed, a tinkling noise that was all but lost in the uproar of the politician's adoring fans.
Damn it.
The toothpick between Kai's teeth snapped and he spat out the pieces of wood onto the frostbitten floor. He wondered how the politician's supporters would react if faced with the knowledge that the man had raped and murdered nine innocent women and perhaps countless more? Did the guileless flock really not care about the four doll-faced female assistants that had dropped off the face of the planet after quitting within scant days of being hired by the despicable man?
The sniper rifle steadied against his shoulder and Kai took in another breath. The politician was almost in position, now.
Kai shut his eyes tightly for a moment before opening them again. His soft prayer was lost to the howling of the winter winds, "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned..."
Through the scope, Kai saw the little girl look in his direction. She looked confused, but in a moment her eyes widened and her mouth opened as if to scream...
Kai pulled the trigger once, and the politician lurched sideways onto his wife, spilling blood all over the woman's white fur coat and the little girl's maroon jacket. In the center of the man's forehead was a bloody hole that, at a closer look, showed the pinkish-gray material of the man's brain.
The man was dead.
The wife screamed and threw the body off of her, the crowd screamed and dispersed, and the bodyguards snapped into action they spread out on foot to look for the hidden sniper. The car with the politician's wife and daughter sped away, intent on keeping them safe.
Now that his work was done, and the assassin packed up what little he had brought with him. As an afterthought, Kai bent over and picked up the broken pieces of his toothpick with steady hands.
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...
Throughout the pandemonium, nobody seemed to have noticed the little girl, with her father's blood seeping through her jacket, staring in the direction where she thought she had seen a man in one of the rooms of the upper floors of a decrepit building.
The little girl would never forget the man's expressionless face the moment before he shot her father in what seemed to have been cold-blooded murder.
"Vella..." The little girl turned her head slightly at her mother's voice. Everything seemed so far away...
"Mama?" Gloved hands gently tucked her face into a bloodstained fur coat and shivering arms wrapped around her tiny body.
"Shhh, don't look. Don't look." Her mama began to shake, her tears wetting the top of Vella's head. The scent of freshly spilled blood was everywhere, metallic and harsh. She wanted her papa back, not the limp and empty-eyed corpse that bled all over the expensive carpet flooring of the car.
Vella's own eyes were red-rimmed, but dry.
