Chapter Seven: Shattered
His trusted pilot was awaiting him when he approached the sleek jet propped upon the runway of the small private airport located a few dozen miles outside of the city. Owning his own jet was a necessity. It was more private, secure. Public airline services, even first class, were far too crowded, there was too much security, too many opportunities to be noticed. Even with his realistic prosthetic mask hybrid, he did not manage to avoid every quizzical stare. Thus, he made the costly choice to own his own jet capable of international travel. He could travel anywhere in the world on it, so long as the proper refueling stops were made along the way.
"Ready for take-off when you are." His pilot informed him. The man was nothing, if not professional, paid handsomely to tolerate the mad whim of someone as unpredictable as Erik. They had flown to countless destinations together, while speaking very little to one another. Friends were not a luxury that a man like Erik was entitled to, not even like-minded individuals who also preferred a life of anonymity.
Daroga tried to insert himself into the role of a friend, Erik wasn't quite sure why. What could the Daroga possibly gain from a friendship with someone as cold and ruthless as he? Over the years, Erik had felt a slight softening towards the Iranian who had displayed the upmost loyalty and dedication. Together, the two had weathered a great many storms, walked through gunfire, escaped impossible situations and experienced near death with one another. If he truly thought too hard about the subject, he would have to begrudgingly admit the Daroga was indeed a friend. Is not a friend someone who will stand by you during the darkest of nights, the most arduous of trials?
When he had informed Christine of his trip, he felt the nagging inkling of some terrible premonition. What if she required him? What if she encountered trouble while he was away? It was baffling how this woman had become tethered to him. It was difficult to decide whether she was a blessing or a cancer, there to heal him or make him ill.
'I'm going away for three days,' he had told her that morning.
'What will you be doing?', she had asked with sincere interest.
'I cannot tell you.', he had calmy replied.
'Are you a spy or something?', She teased, but he could hear the small threads of a serious question in her query.
'Do I look like a man who blends in well?', He had asked with mock levity. He had handed her a new phone, 'This is a prepaid phone, you may use it to contact me if you require anything.' He had also handed her a prepaid credit card for use at a hotel. 'Get a room somewhere nice, not one of those bedbug infested crack dens, understand?'
She had tried to give it back to him, insisting she did not need any of it, but he refused to take the items back. 'Why are you helping me?' She asked helplessly.
'I do not know.', he muttered the himself was unsure of his motivations, of the reasons he felt so inclined to open his door for her repeatedly, to let her into his private space. The feelings he had the night in the alley were the product of madness, nothing more, he was sure of it. Why, then, did he feel possessive, needy, hungry for this woman?
Thirty thousand feet in the air, he sat in the empty cabin of his modern jet staring at the fluffy, ruffled white clouds below. His hands reached up and removed his mask and he leaned his face towards the window to allow the sun to shine in upon his skin. For a moment, this indulgence allowed him the pleasure of feeling as a man who did not have the need to hide. At times he wondered if his face was not his greatest flaw, but rather his lifestyle he had built as a result.
He shook his head to clear the brew of thoughts. Stop psychoanalyzing yourself, you know you will loath what you discover.
The jet touched down to its destination several hours later, the wheels making contact on the other side of the country. His car was waiting for him when he arrived, a black Mercedes Sprinter van with the back customized to his specifications. A virtual home on wheels with nothing more than a desk and a hard cot in which to lay upon.
Thirty minutes later, he was parking in an underground parking structure across the street from the residence of his mark. Ducking into the back of the van, he began to set up shop in the windowless confines of the vehicle. The hard carry-on suitcase he brought with him was unzipped to reveal the three laptops and surveillance equipment required for this job. One other item was placed within the suitcase, a t-shirt left behind by Christine at his apartment. He placed it against his face and breathed in. It smelled like her sweat, but it was sweetest thing he had ever inhaled.
He began work, hopping and skipping from network to network seamlessly as he began his task of accessing the surveillance system of the expensive residential building his target lived within. He had designed a custom program which allowed him to piggyback on wireless networks, jumping from one to the other randomly, essentially leaving an untraceable trail. He was a digital ghost.
The fruitful gains of his hack displayed on his screen, the feed from the security cameras of the target's building, most importantly the camera within his hallway.
Martin Vernard was an affluent philanthropist who held a large swath of the stock in a major biotech company which specialized in advancements in gene therapies for diseases. On the outside, Mr. Vernard was a cultured, well-respected, prominent member of the community. He operated a foundation which aided in helping sick underprivileged children in need of organ transplants receive the organs they needed.
The community heralded him as a hero, but Mr. Vernard was a wolf in saint's clothing.
Martin Vernard had been involved in a despicable underground operation which robbed organs from undocumented immigrants who had entered the country in the hopes of fleeing their war-torn countries, but sometimes they also lifted unsuspecting citizens off the street. Most of the organs were placed on the black market for profit, while some went to children in his foundation to maintain his nice, shiny charitable front. It was the sort of duplicity which Erik could not stand.
The job had come through from Nadir, who had been originally hired to find a missing girl. Nadir was an excellent locator, when the bereaved father sought to find where his daughter had disappeared, Nadir followed the nearly impossible trail back to Mr. Vernard. Once he had informed the father of his findings, he recommended Erik's services. It was assigned to Erik to seek the vengeance on behalf of the client.
Unfortunately for Mr. Vernard, his operation had murdered and looted the organs of the wrong individual, the daughter of a prominent member of a Russian cartel with money to burn. Erik had no qualms accepting the money from a group who received their money through illegal means. They were often the safest jobs to accept, for who would trust the word of criminals? Even if the law picked up his scent, he had foolproof escape routes for nearly every scenario, not only for himself, but Nadir as well.
Erik sat and patiently monitored Mr. Vernard's movement for nearly twenty-four hours, listening in on his phone calls, receiving copies of his text messages, watching his online activity in real time and keeping watch on his residential activity. It was essential to have a clear picture of a target's schedule to avoid any surprises. Typically, Erik allowed himself a week of surveillance before finishing the job, sitting low in the grass like a rattlesnake watching a mouse until the proper time to strike. This trip, he did not allow himself the extra time, he was far too anxious to return back to his own city.
Perhaps she is making you careless, he thought, you are allowing this woman to make you weak, reckless. You cannot afford to grow emotionally attached.
The moment came the next evening, after the sun had dipped far below the horizon and the few stars in the sky that could be seen past the haze of light pollution had come out to shine. Jamming the security feed for the entire building with a virus that would take days to irradicate, he made his move to enter the luxury modern loft of Mr. Vernard, picking the lock with casual finesse, and waiting for his mark to return home.
Mr. Vernard had the worst taste in art and furniture, as though he could not decide on a proper motif for design. Erik was not sure what crime was worse, the abduction and theft of the organs of innocents or this obvious bad taste.
He sat in the ugliest chair in the world, sitting like stone in the dark, awaiting his prey to walk through the door. An exceptionally boring couple of hours passed by at a crawl before he heard the sound of a key unlocking the front door. The man he waited for entered the room as expected, but what he did not expect was the inebriated, dark haired woman hanging on his arm. Mr. Vernard, it seemed, had made a stop by a bar or club and had brought a woman home with him.
This is why you surveil for a week, he reminded himself, this could have been avoided had you not been so foolish.
The woman was a severe complication in his assignment, a proverbial monkey wrench in his plan. Never before had he willingly killed a woman, he held a code and stuck by it. Perhaps he was far old fashioned and antiquated in that particular respect, woman could be capable of evil just as well as men. Regardless, he certainly was not going to start by contributing to the death of an innocent woman.
There were only seconds to formulate his strategic attack, one that would minimize noise and time. One fortunate fact in this situation was the quality of the building in which Mr. Vernard lived. His loft took up the entirety of the floor and the walls were impeccably thick, offering a great deal of privacy.
Before the tipsy couple noticed his presence, he sprung from the ugly, black designer chair like he was forcefully and gracefully catapulted from its seat. The thin, slinky catgut with a hooked and weighted end flew from under his sleeve, wrapping neatly around the neck of Mr. Vernard to form a lasso which could be tightened. There was a time when he was a magician performing entertaining sleight of hand for curious onlookers, but when his enterprise turned more deadly, he came to understand how to incorporate some of those skills into the art of death. This was merely one of his many lethal tricks. With a sharp jerk, he snapped the neck of Mr. Vernard. The force of the bone cracking reverberated via vibration up the length of the taut catgut held in his skeletal grip.
The woman let out a yelp, almost too surprised to scream. Erik needed to quickly deescalate the situation. He had no intention of harming the woman. He could'nt use the lasso, the risk of hurting her was too great and he merely wished to incapacitate her.
Lunging forward, he gripped the startled woman and spun her around with her back facing towards him, he would cover her nose and mouth until she passed out, then he would quickly make his exit. The woman began to desperately claw out like a frantic cat in water, flailing her arms about and clawing at his face with her long acrylic nails. The edge of her fingers managed to grab the prosthetic and it flew off his face, falling to the ground. She screamed and he quickly held her tight, putting his hand firmly over her mouth which she immediately bit into. If he had a moment to think, he would have been impressed with her fighting abilities, but the moment was lost for her leg kicked up backward and struck him hard in the groin with her spiked stiletto heel. The pain was so startling that he loosened his grip and she squirmed out of his arms, turning around to punch him.
She halted, her fist never collided with him, for she was now seeing the full horror of his true face. The curve of her full, glossed lips made the shape of a capitol O and her dark eyes widened with a look of terror he was all too familiar with. Turning towards a sliding glass door accessing the balcony four feet away, she flew to the handle and slid the door open.
"No!" Erik cried as he watched her leap over the balcony railing. Mindless with fear, she had not considered the drop below, so terrified she was of his face. There was a short scream and then silence.
Erik ran to the railing of the balcony to see the body of the woman laying five stories below in a pool of her own blood. What have I done? he asked himself. For a moment, his mind flashed the image of Christine laying down on that ground, dead as a result from the terror of his face.
There was no time to waste, it was only a matter of time before police arrived. Someone would have heard her as she fell to her death. His eyes roved the floor looking for his prosthetic, only to discover with great frustration that it had been stepped on during the struggle and the firm interior beneath the lifelike silicone had been broken in several places. His skeletal fingers quickly gathered the bits and tucked them into his jacket pocket.
It was only when he made it back into the confines of his rented Mercedes Sprinter that he felt the full weight of the circumstances crash upon him. She had not meant to kill herself, he knew that, but he could not shake the despair in knowing his face had caused the woman to unknowingly plunge to her own death. He must have appeared like a monster who had come for her in that moment, he had just killed her date and she must have felt she needed to flee by any means necessary. Tears threatened at the corner of his eyes as he realized the reality that Christine would never be capable of accepting the ghastly appearance of his face.
His finger retrieved the broken bits of the prosthetic and placed them upon the table before him. The silicone had been torn and twisted, most likely under the stiletto of the woman's shoe. All in all, the thing was thoroughly irreparable, even by someone as clever as he.
The doctor who had made the prosthetic was one of the best in the world, an expert in plastic surgery and prosthetic building. When the doctor saw Erik's face for the first time, Erik saw something in his eyes that made his gut sink. After the humiliating and invasive process of making scans, imaging and molds of his face had been completed, the doctor had asked Erik if he would give permission to publish his unique case in public medical journals. Not only was his face unlike anything the medical world had seen, but his eyes as well.
'Absolutely not.', Erik told the doctor with unmistakable anger for the audacity of the request. 'I wish to have my records destroyed.'
'I understand. Very, well you have my word I will keep this confidential.', the doctor had replied, but Erik could read faces, he saw the micro expressions that indicated dishonesty.
He had kept tabs on the digital behavior of the doctor and was not surprised when I found the doctor was ready to submit a full manuscript along with all the images of his face. The doctor was preparing to expose Erik to the entire world after he had expressly forbidden it. It was a betrayal so complete that he could feel it in his very bones.
So, he killed the doctor and scrubbed every digital trace that he could find that tied to his face.
There were other methods of obscuring his face. Glued prosthetics with makeup were always an option, but the glue irritated his thin skin, and he found the constant removal and reapplication to be quite terrible. He had developed an infection once by using them too often.
He sighed. Back to that odious mask.
It was time to get out of this god forsaken city and return home.