A/N: Totally on page 280 of Bejerot's Diagnosis, and I still have 220 KB of the original file to edit. It's gonna be so long XD!

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When Jackson came back to school in January without Melissa, tonnes of rumours began circulating. During his absence, it was well known that he'd had a nervous breakdown and was in a psychiatric hospital, but there were also murmurings that Jackson was the father of Melissa's baby despite the fact that people knew that Melissa's fiancé was a legal assistant who lived up in Pensacola. Wherever Jackson went, people would whisper noticeably, looking at him with either pity or anger. Each reminder of the fact that the organisation went behind his back so terribly just upset him more, making him more and more stoic, and pretty soon he'd managed to alienate the few friends that he shared with his former roommate.

Before February even arrived, Jackson was planning for his spring break. Whilst many other people were planning to go to Gulf Shores or across the state to places along the Emerald Coast, Jackson was making complex travel arrangements that took him to Paraguay in the last week of March and then Niger a few days later before returning to Florida for classes the next Monday. His twenty-second birthday came and went with nothing but a card from Robert that had a picture of Melissa holding the baby and a little note inside apologising for leaving without telling him. In a fit of anger, he ripped the entire thing to pieces and spent his evening at a sleazy bar down the street from campus.

In late March, Jackson boarded a plane bound for São Paolo and onto Asunción with Ian several rows behind and to the left of him. The plan he had in store for the assassination of Luis María Argaña didn't have nearly as much finesse as the Abacha project; everyone knew the job would be done and would work well for the area of the world in which the murder took place. Upon arrival in Paraguay, Jackson presented his Peruvian passport to the customs officers and had a short conversation with them about the current political affairs of Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori as he watched Ian go quickly to the oversized baggage claim. Just a couple of days earlier, Jackson had contacted the South American headquarters of the organisation to assure that Ian's firearms would make it easily from São Paolo to Asuncíon, and as soon as he saw Ian lug his weapons from the claim area, he bid farewell to the officer and headed out to the curb.

Ian boarded a bus to a car rental place, not making eye contact with Jackson as he went by. Jackson took a shuttle to a hotel close to the airport where he slept for the night, but the next morning awoke before the sun. He packed his toiletries and wiped down the entire bathroom. At dawn, he left the room hailed a cab into downtown Asuncíon where he sat at a café drinking coffee until Ian appeared an hour and a half later. They chatted for a short while about nothing in particular until Jackson's watch beeped, at which time they paid their tab and went to the car Ian had rented. They crossed the city with the radio tuned into a jazz station and sat with the car idling across the street from Argaña's house. Shortly before nine o'clock, Ian crawled into the back of the car and began putting together the gun he'd chosen after studying the site.

Jackson moved over to the driver's seat and watched Argaña's house intently. A large SUV was parked in the front, and from what he'd gathered in his first solo research project, Argaña used that vehicle every morning to drive off to work as the vice president of the Latin American nation. The back of the car popped open and Ian slipped off into the bushes, so Jackson drove away slowly, watching Argaña walked out with his retinue to the car. Once Jackson turned off of the street and began his way to the next block, he heard the sounds of Ian's AK-47, and within thirty seconds, Ian was calmly crossing through someone's yard to get in the car with Jackson. He removed his leather gloves and looked at the younger man.

'Clorinda then?'

With a nod, Jackson pressed the gas pedal and headed out of the city, concentrating only on getting over the Argentine border before the country's borders were closed. The smooth jazz continued, and within twenty minutes, Jackson had dropped Ian in Clorinda and was making his way very quickly in a stolen car to Formosa, where he had a flight to Paris scheduled for only two hours later. Something like this had the possibility of closing down the surrounding areas and he wanted to be certain he'd be able to leave the continent before things got too out of hand. Until he shed the persona of the Peruvian Julio Bendelek and became Christian Poulain, the artist son of the leader of the World Society, Jackson had a sick feeling in his stomach that he refused to let surface on his face. Comfortably cushioned in his aeroplane seat only thirty minutes after his arrival in Formosa, he watched the plane fill with chatting French tourists and stone-faced businessmen on their way back to Europe.

The person sitting next to him turned out to be a French high school student from a small city just outside of Geneva called Bonne. They talked about the Geneva area and griped about tourists until the ocean appeared under them and Jackson apologised that he was going to go ahead and sleep until they arrived in Paris. The boy put his headphones on and Jackson was asleep within a half hour.

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In Paris, a World Society employee who identified herself as Poulain's personal secretary met Jackson at the terminal. She took him back to headquarters for a shower and a fresh change of clothes before taking dictation from him regarding the timings of the events in the Argaña assassination to be submitted to the customer. Once finished, she presented him with a file on a new project that was to take place in Massachusetts later that year and encouraged him to look at it as they drove back to Charles de Gaulle International.

'Another Kennedy?' Jackson asked as he thumbed through it.

'I don't read the files, Monsieur Rippner,' she admitted as she turned onto the road leading up to the airport. 'I just deliver them.'

He looked at the back of her head as they got up to the airport. After taking his bags to the curb, she smiled at him broadly.

'I'll be sure to send your gift to your father, Monsieur Poulain. It is a lovely painting,' she cooed. 'I'm sure he would have loved to have seen you in person, but he's always so busy with business, you know.'

'Of course,' Jackson smiled back at her. 'Merci beaucoup, mademoiselle. J'espère que vous avez un bon jour.'

'Et avez-vous un bon vol, s'il vous plaît.'

'Merci,' he said and she walked away to the other side of the car.

After slipping the new file into his briefcase, he picked up his bags and entered the airport. He checked in at the ticket counter as Christian Poulain before being pointed towards the departure terminal, a beautiful glass-roofed structure, by a ticket agent. He made it to the gate area quickly and sat at a coffee shop across from the gate to work on the new project whilst having breakfast. By the time his row was called for boarding, Jackson had a general mental sketch of what he'd be doing in Massachusetts later that year. Once he got on the plane, he quickly found his way back to his notes and worked on fleshing out his ideas.

Despite the odd glances of the person next to him (after all, how often was it that an obviously completely Caucasian man took all of his notes in Arabic?), he was able to plan out a rough idea of what to do and it involved such exciting things as forcing planes out of the sky and big explosions. Sure, it was standard to just assassinate people in the regular execution style, but Jackson enjoyed a little pizzazz. If anything, pizzazz kept him working alone and Lyna simmering back in Europe or at least bothering someone else. That was one positive thing—she could never complain to him about not being placed on jobs because she wasn't only contracted to the World Society like he was. The woman just enjoyed killing, so she made herself available for whatever or whoever came up.

'Are you from the Middle East?' asked the man sitting next to Jackson and he looked up with a start.

'No,' he answered shortly. 'Switzerland.'

'Oh. Do you translate for a job?'

For a second, Jackson thought the man was speaking in code, but then he realised that he was just prying. 'That's my business, not yours.'

The man gave him a vaguely complaining look before picking up his in-flight magazine and flipping through it hastily. As he went back to his work, Jackson made a mental note to begin requesting two seats on flights where he'd be working. People were just nosy enough to make him vaguely uncomfortable, and if he aroused enough suspicion through his actions, he was certain the flight attendants and other close passengers would start connecting the dots regarding the timing of his flights and certain high-profile deaths. Laying his arm over the documents on his tray table, Jackson went back to work and continued until the flight attendant reached over to tap his shoulder and tell him that he had to put his tray table up for landing.

They landed in Niamey very late that evening. He'd never been to Niger before and quite honestly could admit he'd never even considered coming back to the region after the Abacha assignment. He wandered around the airport lobby for a little while before seeing a man in a chauffeur's outfit holding a small sign for 'Poulain.' The man escorted him to a simple black car with heavily tinted windows, opening the door so that Jackson could slip in and sit next to the customer. They sat in silence as the chauffeur drove away from the airport, but as they merged into traffic, Jackson spoke, not looking at the man as he did so.

'Bonjour, Monsieur Wanké. Je m'appelle Jackson Rippner.'

'Ouais, je sais,' said the man gruffly in response. 'You have our plans?'

'Yes,' Jackson said, opening his briefcase and producing a file. 'With an impending coup d'état, Maïnassara will attempt to leave the country, and because of the geographic location of the country, he will most likely try to escape by air from the Niamey airport.'

'How can you be so sure?'

'I've already made arrangements with Geneva to offer him asylum.'

'Very good,' said Wanké as they drove along the streets of Niamey.

'Now, once he arrives in the airport, your men will surround him,' said Jackson, pulling out the plans for the Niamey airport. 'It will need to take place in this exact area or there's the chance that your men could be injured by the airport security officers.'

Wanké took the paper from him and looked at it, nodding. Jackson gave him the rest of the papers and the man read in silence until they arrived at a non-descript office building on the outskirts of the city at which point Jackson realised that despite having an entire meeting, the two never looked directly into each other's faces. Wanké, looking out at the building, very carefully rearranged the papers and put them into a silver, padlocked briefcase that had been by his feet. His assistant, who had been sitting in the passenger's seat, opened the customer's door and Wanké began getting out. Jackson made a move to get out when Wanké did, but the man stopped him.

'You're leaving the country now.'

Jackson looked at him oddly, but the man just slammed his door and the driver sped off before Jackson could do anything. 'Where are we going?'

'Ouagadougou,' the man replied. 'Mr Wanké doesn't want you in the country during the coup.'

'That's… very kind of him,' Jackson said with a bit of a questioning tone.

'Don't think of it that way,' the driver said gruffly. 'Mr Wanké has a very close relationship with your organisation and it was requested that you be taken out of the country before the coup to assure your safety. If something were to happen to you, Mr Poulain assured Mr Wanké that the consequences would be dire.'