Prodigy.

January of 1993.

The world is a big place. Everyone knows that. Hundreds of countries, governments, everyday people. Millions, billions, trillions of places to hide. It would have been easy for them to slip off the radar, become invisible, but they believed they had no reason for that.

Or maybe they knew I was coming, and they thought they were prepared.

Brazil. Paraguay. Argentina. Chile. Normal missions, easy to follow. A dead diplomat here. A new business deal there. The mysterious collapse of a notorious drug cartel, obvious. Sloppy. Normal, tragic occurrences to the untrained observer. No plausible connections, no common thread. Unless you knew for a fact that your targets were in Brazil, and Paraguay, and Argentina, and Chile. Unless you caught wind of missions in the area, of a team of rising stars.

Days dragged on.

Motivation can make you do crazy things, accomplish seemingly impossible tasks. So can good training – particularly if the one training you was a certified psychopath.

I flipped through the photos outside of a gated home in Chile. A fortress, if they were taking precautions. But they weren't. The photos were drawn from a satellite, stolen from a military base that I walked right into, and right out of, like I had never been there. Each one told a story, a progression. I didn't know the name of the village, but I knew where it was. I didn't know any of the people, only that one of them was the target of several vicious diamond traders. He was probably some kind of environmental activist, an outspoken voice against them. A dissenter.

By the time I pulled the photos, the evidence of the village was almost gone. A foundation here. A smoldering pile there. It had quickly become a flattened terrain, and then a small military camp. It would be surveyed and its fate decided.

It was business as usual for the company, in most respects. But our mission had been to move the residents before violence broke out. Mateo and Jason had other plans. Just like that, the thing slid downhill. They made a deal, money was dispensed, and lives were lost. Five hundred people under fire. A single order, two greedy voices, and five hundred lives.

I set the fire in the night.

They were somewhat careless, not bothering to patrol outside, but keeping their eyes open. It was nothing to go to the house next door, to carefully lay the groundwork, to chuck it silently over the fence. Fire. An equalizer. Smoke brought all men to their knees.

I was waiting outside when they came through the front door, so focused on escaping that they forgot their training. Mateo was first in line, his eyes wild. He knew I was there. He had caught sight of me in Cuba, probably been warned that I was in the area. But he dismissed me. He knew I was young, somewhat new to the business.

But all vanity aside, I was a prodigy.

Inside I was cold, calculating, and so much like Larry that I almost shot him outright.

Jason ran out next, almost crashing into his mentor.

And there they were, hands up, scowling at me. I had them at gunpoint, maybe just the sheen of my eyes visible from the shadows. But the gun was obvious.

"Michael? Is that you?" Mateo asked, a little arrogance in his tone.

It made me bristle. But anything he said, anything he did, would make me angry right now.

"You're a traitor," Jason said evenly.

I had been waiting for this moment, pouring over it, deciding what to say. I wanted to be as cold as Larry, to say something awful, to threaten the people they loved. I wasn't even sure what I was doing here, what I wanted from them. Did I want justice? To bring them in? To maim them? Kill them? The company had breezed over the incident. Did they know the whole truth? Some of it? Did they care, as long as the end result was the same?

Who was the real enemy here?

I finally spoke, emotion making me feel weak. Like a little boy. "You killed five hundred people for a payoff. Our mission was to save them!"

"Yours maybe," Jason spat. "They were harboring a war criminal, he-"

"You don't even know who he was!" I shouted. "And you didn't care!"

"You're right," Mateo stated.

I waited for him to go on, to explain himself, to justify it, but he locked his jaw. His stony stare unnerved me. Years in this business had worn him down, carved him out. He was hollow.

Jason cast a glance at his mentor, maybe a little surprise, a little remorse, in his eyes.

But I might have imagined it.

"What now?" Jason asked.

His words were resigned, as if he knew the answer before I did.

"We just wanted-" Jason began.

He didn't finish his sentence. A bullet to the head will do that to you. He was dead before he hit the ground, and Mateo followed. He lay there, alive, dying.

Maybe two lives would balance the scales somehow, make up for what they had done. Five million dollars, five hundred people. I didn't need to hear what he had to say, how he would defend himself – if he even bothered. I knew that money was long gone, its dealers dead at the hands of my company.

I leveled the gun at Mateo, to end it.

But someone shot him before I could.

Sirens were approaching.

Suddenly, Larry was there with me. He put his hands tenderly over mine, pretending, for the moment, that he was the mentor he should have been. He skimmed over the bodies, sighing, and got his hands on me, shuffling me to a car parked just down the road.

The road was a blur, the houses nothing more than flashes of color.

Once they were dead, my head went blank. What now? It was surreal. But there was no end to the crippling guilt I was feeling. Five hundred people. I could have stopped it, if I had seen what Larry saw in those two spies. I sat there, obsessing over the details, picking nothing unusual out of their behavior. Five hundred people, because I wasn't paying attention.

"I talked it over with our mutual friends," Larry said. "Hard to believe Mateo would turn on them like that. Selling secrets." He shook his head, feigning despair.

In the rearview mirror, smoke was pouring into the night sky. Blue lights flashed. No doubt this would be a cold case. Two men murdered in cold blood outside of a rental home. Bribes would be issued. Bodies would vanish. Some cover story would be made up for their families back home.

Larry was still talking. "And to drag the kid into it… Jason had such potential."

"What are you talking about?" I finally said.

"Your alibi," Larry said. "You were protecting our interests, keeping them from communicating with the enemy. God knows who they were trying to sell to." He winked at me, the glee in his eyes a little overwhelming. "But you put a stop to that, huh? You and your patriotism. They should give you a medal."

Larry had told them I was defending the company. Taking out traitors. Not hunting fellow spies across multiple countries and putting them down like dogs.

"Proud of you, kid," Larry said. He tapped my knee, looking over. "Impressive. I mean, really impressive. Get a little anger in you, and nobody is safe, right? You gotta harness that rage more often, release the beast. We could get a lot more done."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Don't worry, this is between you and me. I'll protect you. Always have, right?"

I swallowed, suppressing my grief at that statement, hiding everything away. I tried not to think about what I had done. It all had to go away. It all had to go inside.

"Oh, shit, I almost forgot." Larry smiled over at me. "Happy birthday."