Torrance, Fall Present, 3067.
After fumbling for the latch, Jimmy Clavell finally got the car door opened and stepped out onto the curve. It was a bright, cheerful morning in downtown Kiverson City but he did not share in its happy mood. Having been pulled out of bed while nursing a terrible hangover was the least of his problems. His head felt like an industrial nail had been pounded into it and the rest of his body still ached from the debauchery the night before.
His head still spinning, Clavell slammed the car door shut and faced the man who brought him out here. "What the hell are we supposed to do here again?"
"As I've told you for the nth time," The Monk said. "I received a call from Ethan but it was immediately terminated; I got over to the base but couldn't find him and his office was smashed up. Then I get another frantic call from Kieran McGavin saying something is up. That's why we are here."
"Smashed up? Ethan's gone?" Clavell could barely focus his thoughts.
"We did a thorough search of the entire base. Ethan was nowhere to be found. And from my experience, from the way his office looked, there seemed to have been a struggle." The Monk explained.
"Are you telling me somebody attacked him in his office?" Clavell said. "Why would anyone want to do that?"
"I don't have all the answers yet, but this is as good a place as any to start." The Monk said.
"We're in front of a government building in downtown. What could we possibly find here?"
"Captain Kerensky and Major Durant are inside that building and should be coming out of their closed door meeting soon. I want to talk to her about something that Kieran told me."
"What did Kieran tell you?" Clavell asked.
"Something about that new guy that the Captain is dating."
"Pennington? What about him?"
The Monk kept adjusting his comm. unit. "Dammit. I keep getting interference. I can't seem to get in touch with anyone."
"You too?" Clavell was trying his communicator as well. "I'm getting the same interference."
"Unless-" The Monk's eyes widened in horror at his realization that something terrible had was about to begin. "Something's going down now!"
Clavell shook his head as he saw the Monk pull out a pair of rangefinder binoculars from his jacket and began scanning the surrounding buildings, his head still hurt. "What's going down?" He said nonchalantly.
"There!" The Monk narrowed his focus on an office building still under construction on the opposite side of the street. It had a perfect vantage point of the nearby government building. "Let's go!" He said as he ran towards it.
Clavell sighed and started running after him. He didn't fully understand what was going on but if there was going to be any action, he wanted to be right in the middle of it.
When it comes to sniping, an absolute stillness of the shooters body is a must. Snipers strive for pinpoint accuracy, so consequently, the slightest breath; the slightest nervous twitch in one's body must be minimized at all cost lest the bullet miss the intended target. Many of the best snipers would actually fall into a trance as they zeroed their sights upon the heads of their targets, being calm as still water.
The morning breeze helped him somewhat as it cooled the open ledge that he was lying in. It was fortunate that there was a building under construction that had a perfect view on the government building that Natasha was currently having a meeting in. All he had to do was wait until she came out of the front doors and he would pull the trigger on his bolt-action sniper rifle and that would be the end of it. He could go home in triumph.
But something was bothering Joshua even as he kept performing minute adjustments on his scope. It was a gnawing thing that kept at the back of his mind even as his skills and conditioning tried to push it aside. It was taking all his mental discipline just to keep it at bay and he felt that he might lose the battle anytime and fail the mission. It must be the effect, he thought. The phenomenon was beginning to affect him. That was why he couldn't perform the kill up close or while she was asleep in his bed the night before. Joshua needed to make it as impersonal as possible or otherwise he might just hesitate, and that would have fatal consequences for him.
As he saw the front doors of the building open, he knew that it was time. Flipping off the safety catch, Joshua peered into his scope and tried to calm his mind as much as possible before he would fire.
The Monk ran as fast as he could but Clavell's natural speed got the better of him as the former Wolf's Dragoon ran past him and moved up rapidly on the emergency stairwell. He hoped that they would not be too late as he kept trying to contact Natasha on his communicator. If they had tried to get to the government building to warn her, then the assassin would have gotten advance warning and slip away and he did not want that. The Monk started running up the steps of the stair well as Clavell was already two floors ahead of him.
As the red-haired form of Natasha at last strode out of the doors from the opposite building, Joshua immediately zeroed in on her forehead. The subsonic bullet would be virtually silent to the point of impact.
Clavell began to tire from pushing himself as he skipped every other step on the stair well but it felt like he wasn't going to get there in time. But he would not give up; he dared not to. The Monk was at least a floor behind him as they both kept pushing their bodies to the limits of their endurance.
As Joshua rested his finger on the trigger he felt a slight twitch in his arm. Was it the effect again? Joshua silently cursed as he tried to calm his body down but it seemed that he couldn't sight the Black Widow's head properly as she started walking to her vehicle. Wiping the sweat that was distracting him on his forehead, he tried sighting again. Joshua had killed many people this way but this was the first time that every little thing distracted him. The doubts began to form at the back of his mind.
"Come on!" Clavell shouted down to his comrade as he ran up another flight of stairs. He was almost to the top floor as he drew the dual customized Sternsnacht heavy pistols from the folds of his overcoat.
Just as he was about to pull the trigger, his left forearm trembled and threw his aim off once again. Joshua was beginning to feel real angry about himself as he heard a noise from the stairwell behind him. Were his senses playing tricks on him?
As Clavell got to the top stairwell, there seemed to be a solid steel fire door ahead of him, as he tried to push his way through it seemed stuck. Clavell then kicked it with his boot as the lock broke and the door swung open. He ran in without a moment's hesitation.
Joshua threw a quick glance behind him as the door to the stairwell burst open with a loud crash and Clavell staggered inside the half-constructed floor. The former Wolf's Dragoon was still catching his breath as he saw a man lying on the edge of an open ledge on a foam mattress, a scoped rifle in his arms.
Clavell brought up his pistols and began to level them at Joshua. The assassin in turn swung his loaded rifle for a snap shot at Clavell's exposed body. Both fired simultaneously.
The first shot from Clavell's pistol hit Joshua in the shoulder while the second shot from his left gun missed and ricocheted off a concrete support. Because Clavell used dum-dums for bullets that could cause massive tissue damage when they ballooned like pancakes when they struck a person's body but had no armor-piercing capability, the bullet failed to penetrate Joshua's Kevlar vest. It did however, cause a massive bruise on Joshua's shoulder that he dropped the rifle.
Joshua's subsonic round created a small entry wound as it entered Clavell's chest one inch above his right nipple and nearly two inches to its left at the fourth rib space.
As it continued its devastating path, the assassin's bullet pierced the chest wall, smashed the front of the fourth rib which then combined it with bone fragments- divided the fourth intercostals artery, vein and neurovascular bundle. Fragments of Clavell's shattered rib became embedded in the right lung and the round sliced right through it, damaging minor pulmonary arteries and veins. Having narrowly missed the trachea, it went slightly lateral to the esophagus and grazed the skin of the heart, then continued to the right of the aorta and entered the posterior chest wall. But its path wasn't finished yet as it drove downward, then smashed the back of the fifth rib, went to the right of the spine and exited out of the upper left side of Clavell's back, creating a large exit wound.
Clavell made a slight hissing noise as the air left his lungs and fell over to his side. Joshua felt a painful numbness on his shoulder, despite the fact that Clavell's bullet failed to penetrate his vest it was still very painful. As Joshua pulled himself upright, the Monk ran in firing his laser pistol at him. The assassin managed to dodge the first shot as he threw himself off the ledge, his safety rope trailing after him.
The Monk was panting as he leaned over the ledge as he fired another shot as Joshua had landed on an unused scaffolding on an adjacent building and began to rappel downwards. His other shot missed the assassin as well due to his extreme fatigue then he lost sight of Joshua as the assassin disengaged the rope and started to weave his way among the crowd below. Natasha immediately noticed what had happened as a figure rappelling from the side of the building caught her eye and she quickly started running to the scene. Within a few minutes she had made it to the top ledge where the Monk was. She saw him kneeling over the fallen Clavell.
"What happened?" Natasha said as she saw that Clavell had lost a massive amount of blood that was pooling on the dusty concrete floor of the unfinished building.
"It was Joshua Pennington." The Monk said as he began cutting through Clavell's clothes with a knife. "He was going to shoot you with a sniper rifle."
"Guess…I.. got.. my wish." Clavell's voice was soft, almost a whisper, his face was turning blue. It was clear that he was dying. "W-went up. against.. pro." He peeped.
"Don't talk, Jimmy." Natasha said as she cradled Clavell's head, then she turned to face the Monk. "Can you take care of him?"
"Yes. Seems that Joshua was carrying some personal ECM scrambler but since he is gone, my comm. unit is now working and I called for a medivac chopper. Should be here soon." The Monk said.
"Okay. Stay with him." The Black Widow said as she got up and ran over to where Joshua's safety line had been tied. She quickly grasped it and rappelled downwards using her gloved hands. Her mind had at last grasped the ramifications of all that she was feeling and who Joshua really was. She had to put a stop to him now.
As he ran down the street and into the subway entrance, Joshua began to take off his Kevlar vest. Dressed in black shirt and trousers, he looked innocuous enough but the vest made him look too conspicuous. Ignoring the startled looks of some pedestrians as he pushed them aside, Joshua ran down the descending escalators and then dumped his vest into a nearby trashcan.
When Natasha reached the entrance leading into the subway she saw Dominic Durant and a squad of uniformed police officers. It was apparent that they were screening people coming to and fro from the entrance. The police were wearing full battle gear and had laser rifles on the ready; they were taking no chances.
"Captain, I've sealed off the subway." Dominic said. "No trains will be coming in and none will be leaving. He should be trapped in there."
"I wouldn't be too sure." Natasha countered as she began her descent into the subway. "I'm going in."
Dominic shouted after her. "Wait, I've got backup in fifteen minutes."
Natasha kept going. She had a feeling that something terrible was about to happen and she needed to stop Joshua before it was too late.
Wiping the sweat off his face and trying to look calm, Joshua cursed silently as the MAGLEV subway train that he was riding in still did not move after almost twenty minutes. People were milling about, confused and bewildered; some were shouting and cussing, wondering why the train doors did not close shut and the train get going. It was then that Joshua realized the awful truth; they knew he was here, and they were going to get to him. As the combination of desperation and anger began to boil within him, Joshua got up and began to walk back out into the terminal.
As Natasha hurried through the crowd, she noticed someone getting out of a subway car just less than a hundred feet away. The face and walk patterns were all too familiar. Instinctively, she broke out into a sprint. She hoped that she would get there in time.
Just as he got out of the door, Joshua bumped into a brown-haired youth trying to get inside. "Excuse me." The youth said.
The boy's voice seemed faintly familiar as Joshua turned and both their eyes met. It was the same deep brown eyes that he had seen in a dossier among the personnel of the Black Widows. As he instantly went on guard, the youth's eyes opened wide with horror and surprise.
"Joshua!" Kieran McGavin said as he began to pull out the communicator from his pocket.
With the speed of a thunderclap, Joshua instantly took out a knife from his wrist sheath and drove it at an upward angle into the youth's stomach.
Kieran screamed as Joshua pulled away from him and began running towards the subway tunnel. If he could get into an emergency access way in the darkness, Joshua could slip away from the rapidly closing gauntlet around him.
"Freeze!" A uniformed subway policeman shouted at Joshua as he aimed his pistol at him. Without breaking his stride, Joshua flicked his arm as if he was about to put his hands up in surrender but it was in fact a throwing motion as his bloody knife flew and impaled itself onto the cop's throat. The policeman fell over backwards and began to gurgle as he chocked in his own blood. People screamed and pandemonium reigned as bystanders began scrambling for the exits.
As Natasha got to the subway car entrance she noticed Kieran was sitting down on the concrete platform while leaning against the train. There was a crimson pool forming around him and he was clutching his stomach and shaking uncontrollably. She instantly realized what had happened. For a brief moment, time seemed to stand still as all her other senses blotted out the chaos that was going on around her. Tears flowed from her cheeks as she knelt down beside the boy.
"Kieran, don't move, help is on the way." Natasha said softly as she tried to pry away his hands from his stomach to try to get a better look at the wound. Kieran weakly acquiesced and she could see that the wound was very deep indeed, the blood gushed like a fountain from the severed arteries.
The boy looked up at her with sad eyes. It was as if he wanted to say something so badly but was afraid that he couldn't find the words. Natasha smiled meekly as if to say that everything was all right despite the dire situation but the gesture fooled no one.
"Don't talk, Kieran. Save your strength." Natasha said as she cradled the boy's head in her arms.
Kieran smiled faintly at her. It was a supreme effort because of the pain but he felt that he needed to do it.
"Nasty," The youth's voice was a high-pitched croak.
"Kieran, I said don't talk."
"T-take care of Duncan for m-me, p-please." The youth said and then his eyes glazed over and he finally stopped shaking.
"I will, Kieran. I promise." Natasha was crying uncontrollably as she held him for as long as she could.
In the darkness of the tunnel, Joshua could see faint glows of reddish tracking lights along the sides that served as guide beacons for him as he continued to run deeper into the tube. If the trains were running he would be in danger of being run over but fortunately they had been stopped. It was quite obvious that they were going to try and corner him; he couldn't and wouldn't be taken alive, that was for sure. His lungs aching from the running, Joshua continued along the twilit tunnel, he had been reviewing the urban maps several nights before, just in case he needed a getaway and he was certain that an emergency access way lay several hundred meters ahead of him. If he could enter that access corridor and make his way out into the city streets, he could disappear. What he was going to do afterwards was not in his thoughts, he was focused on the present, nothing else should have been on his mind. That's what they taught him.
But something else was bothering him. He should have forced those thoughts away and concentrated on his task but they kept returning, like persistent furies that tormented his mind, forever harrying him, always snapping at his heels. He felt his soul ready to explode from the suffocating pressure, his resolve was weakening and he was afraid of the consequences. New vistas of despair began to manifest themselves and no matter how hard he tried in fending them away, they kept coming back a thousand fold, each worse than before. His body rapidly grew tired not because of his lack of physical conditioning, but of the tortures of his soul.
Joshua was breathing orally now, globs of spit coming out of his mouth as he sucked in each gulp of oxygen deeply. It was almost as if he was suffocating on air. His body was in peak physical condition and this should have been an easy sprint for him, but his mind wasn't in order and so therefore it brought an additional, physical, burden that was almost unbearable. He had never felt this way before. All of his previous operations ran like clockwork; he had never failed. But it seemed now that the specter of defeat was very real; the question was whether he could recover from this debacle and live on to fight once more.
Suddenly, he was bathed in an incandescent, almost blinding white light that seemed to be everywhere. Joshua squinted his eyes and waited until his pupils readjusted. He finally stopped and tried to catch his breath. There was no sense in continuing to run. They got him.
As his eyes readjusted to the now seemingly well-lit surroundings, he realized that he was still in the tunnel. It was apparent that the emergency lights had activated and he could clearly see the concave, white tiled roof of the tunnel that he was running inside of, looking like the shining scales of a giant white snake as it glittered in the light. Joshua half expected himself to be surrounded by a police SWAT team, automatic weapons and lasers on the ready but there was no one there, just him. He seemed alone in a well-lit tunnel.
After going through a momentary lapse in confusion, Joshua began to sprint once more hoping that the emergency lights that were activated throughout the entire subway was just a stab in the dark, a minor distraction to confuse him because they did not know where he really was. If that was the case, then he still had a chance. As he rounded a bend in the tunnel, Joshua realized how wrong he was.
Standing in front of him was Natasha Kerensky. She lay in the center of the tunnel, standing in the gap between the MAGLEV tracks that would normally carry the subway trains. Her red hair was matted with sweat and she looked like hell, but even then, there was still a beauty there.
Joshua could barely catch his breath. "How?"
"Emergency access way." Natasha's voice was barely a whisper. "You're not the only one who prepared for this contingency. All I had to do was think like you."
"Tasha." Joshua said as he put his hands up halfway till it was level with his shoulders; it was a strange gesture of peace coming from a killer. "I always knew you were the best. That was why I couldn't bring myself to kill you."
A tear slid down Natasha's right cheek. "No, you couldn't bring yourself to kill me; instead you killed everyone I love." She said softly.
Joshua looked downcast then looked straight back into her eyes again. "I didn't mean to, they were in my path. But can't you see? I really couldn't kill you, no matter how hard I tried; my body would just seem to stop me."
Natasha didn't answer back.
"I realize now why I couldn't kill you, it was because I always loved you; even though you were my target, I couldn't bring myself to do it." Joshua continued. "We were lovers once in our past lives and it seems that it has once again become our destiny. That's why I will not harm you."
Natasha's voice was full of rage. "What about Kieran? Ethan? Clavell? Who speaks for them?"
"Tasha, I love you." Joshua spoke softly. " We can be together again. Just like it was in our past lives. It shouldn't have to be repeated as another tragedy. The Bounty Hunter gave us another chance at life. We were meant to be together."
Natasha didn't answer. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Tasha, it doesn't have to end like this!" Joshua voice picked up a notch. "Join us in our cause, we owe it to he who breathed life into us once more. We can be together again; with you, nothing can stand up against us. Let us continue on what the first Black Widow and the first Joshua Wolf failed to do. Let us live again!"
"Joshua Wolf died a long time ago, in New Delos." Natasha said through clenched teeth as the tears kept coming. "You and I, we are nothing but ghosts of the dead. And we should have stayed dead." With that, the Black Widow pulled out a large pistol from behind her jacket and aimed it at him.
It was one of Jimmy Clavell's Sternsnacht heavy pistols. And its blast was deafening.