– Jason –
"We get him tonight. No questions," I ordered, sick of waiting for so long. He had been the bane of my existence for far too long, and I would put a stop to it as soon as I possibly could. In my mind, he didn't deserve to be out in the world any longer if he was working against us. He was too much of a threat.
"Boss? How do we get him? The security system at that pace is state of the art; no one's ever been able to beat it."
I adjusted the sleeves of my white button-down shirt by the cuff links, pulling them out from under my black sport coat. I sarcastically turned my head ever-so-slowly, making my point that it was below me to deal with such incompetence.
"You are a highly trained individual for this exact purpose, and you're telling me that you cannot do it," I deadpanned, adjusting my shirt collar and checking my Rolex watch all without looking at him. He began stammering, trying to explain himself, so I held up a hand to silence him. My time was valuable. I stood from my black leather desk chair and stared him as directly in the eye as I could.
"This is not my job, got that? My job is to make sure you make me as rich as I can get while stopping at nothing to do it. I don't get my hands dirty in this business, but I control the hands that get dirty. Now, those dirty hands have to be yours. I don't care how you get him, but you get him. Stop at nothing, got it?"
He nodded furiously, swallowing hard as I sidestepped him and left the room. The door slammed behind me as I strode briskly down the hall, trying to make it to a meeting on time. My phone rang in my pocket and I fished to find it, pulling it out and answering it.
"Lombardi. Where are you? We've been waiting for five minutes, five minutes too long."
Upon my exit from my old lifestyle of fighting pointless monsters and working for gods that couldn't care less, I changed my last name to get rid of any acquaintance to my past. I was known as Jason Lombardi to my "coworkers" or, rather, as I liked to call them, my inferiors.
"I'm on my way, Jack. Have you forgotten who's in charge here? The Lombardi Building is mine, and I pay you to wait for me. The meeting can't even start without me, so wait or I'll resort to other methods of getting you to cooperate."
I hung up the call, shoving my phone into my pocket and turning the corner into the hallway where my meeting was, my black polished shoes swishing against the carpet. I flung open one of the two double doors and slammed it behind me, taking my place at the head of the long oval table.
"Quarter projections," I demanded, motioning to the man supposed to give it to me.
"Boss, with our operations all over the city and elsewhere, we're scheduled to profit seventy-five percent, totaling a billion dollars for the year."
My jaw ticked as I listened, unable to get the imbecile from my office out of my mind. I had a sinking feeling that he would screw up the simple task I had given him, and if it failed then we would lose.
"A billion. Good," I answered, feigning interest. I showed no emotion in my response. I sat through the meeting, frustrated and showing it. My hands stayed firmly clasped below the table as small flashes of lightning passed between my palms.
My attention drifted from the others in the room to my thoughts about matters out of my control.
"Boss? Boss, to conclude, do you approve of these projections?"
Even though I had no idea how long had passed since I'd zoned out, I nodded efficiently to end the meeting and stood from the polished mahogany table.
I wasn't a nervous man; I was cool under pressure. It was where I thrived.
I began the walk down the gray-carpeted hallway and thought of everything awaiting me when I got back into my office.
The only thought that quelled my anger and settled me down was that I had made nearly fifteen hundred dollars in the forty-five seconds it had taken me to walk down that hallway. Numbers were a strong suit of mine, one reason I had moved as high in this business as I had. Albeit my business was a dangerous one, the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks.
I hung my jacket on the hook behind my desk, rolling up my sleeves and leaning back against my chair; giving myself to make a hundred and seventy-two grand while I slept.
I folded my hands behind my head and closed my eyes, settling into the deepest sleep that I could for the time I had.
Precisely ninety minutes later, I awoke just as I did each day. The clock on the wall read one thirty; an hour before the team was scheduled to make their move. I cracked my neck against my fist and rolled out my shoulders to loosen my upper body.
I was becoming too anxious about the deadline, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and do something about it. I picked up my phone from the cradle and punched in the ten-digit number.
"Thorin. Let the rest know that I'm coming with you in an hour. When I say an hour, I mean that tires are moving. Got it? One hour," I said, hanging up before waiting to hear a response. I strode briskly across my office, turning the gold lock in the mahogany door and opening the closet in the corner.
I scanned the shelves and hangers up and down, trying to find attire fitting to carry out the capture. Come to think of it, nothing I could have worn would have been sufficient. It should have been an easy capture and return, but nothing could have braced me for what we would encounter.
At precisely two twenty-five, I made my way down to the lobby to catch the black bulletproof sedan before it departed for the mission. By two twenty-seven I was seated in the driver's seat of the car and waiting on the other three men. At two twenty-nine the three of them sauntered out, taking their time as a group of senior citizens on their way to bingo would. In terms of a civilian, their gait must have seemed brisk; to a man such as myself with a "company" to run, they were painfully slow.
The doors opened in turn, the door behind me a little later because of the extra step required to get to it.
"Gentlemen," I acknowledged them with an efficient nod. Seatbelts were buckled as I slowly nosed out of the armored garage that housed dozens of luxury cars.
In a surprisingly short time, we were in front of the exact building we needed to be and parked at the back of the lot amongst a group of civilian cars. We were perfectly disguised to the common eye.
Sure enough, as my sources had predicted, my target left the building at two forty-five; only a ten-minute wait.
But there was something different.
He wasn't alone as I thought he would be. I had always perceived him as a go-it-alone person, preferring to tackle things by himself for efficiency purposes.
The man with him was on the brink of gargantuan; slightly over six feet, which made him taller than anyone in my car. He seemed like the type of person that could put up a good fight with his hands tied behind his back.
The fighter opened the driver's door of a blue sports car, sitting inside and closing the door behind him. Nothing seemed particularly special about the car, other than that it cost more than most civilians could afford. I eased out of the parking lot before the car and drove to where they had been predicted to go. If my sources turned out to be incorrect, they would pay the price.
I backed the black car tail-first onto the gravel path between two trees and immediately became engulfed in a forest. On my left-hand side, there was a small grassy clearing out of sight of the opening of the trail. I backed the car into the grass next to the path with the hood about a foot off the edge of the gravel.
The four of us waited in silence, per usual. Kane Thorin, my right-hand man, sat behind me making the only noise in the car; the loading of a tranquilizer gun. He exited the car and climbed to the top of a tree about five yards behind us, giving him a perfect angle to fire through the passenger window if need be. Thorin never missed.
But if he did, on the very off chance that he did, I would see to it that he wouldn't live to see another opportunity to miss again.
Sure enough, the blue car eased around the corner with the top down, just as the sources informed us it would be. Thorin took a well-aimed shot right to the passenger seat, the seat that held our target. The fighter pulled off a pair of sunglasses right as Thorin shot a dart into the right side of his chest.
The plan was flawless, except for one issue: the fighter didn't go down immediately. He did the exact opposite; the fighter pulled the dart out of his chest and noticed the black car, giving us no options but to get out and confront him.
The three occupied doors of the sedan opened, including mine, as we stepped out to collect our unconscious target. The fighter had jumped the door and stood to meet us.
"Those darts annoy me," he commented, tossing it into the driver's seat of his car.
Thorin had abandoned his post in the tree, coming to stand with the three of us. I calculated my advantages and weighed my options.
He noticed me looking because he grinned. A grin that I read as enjoyment in the nervous looks on the faces of my comrades.
"Who are you?" I questioned, making his jaw tick.
"Because I'm going to tell you," he retorted sarcastically.
"Fair enough. If you won't tell us who you are, then at least tell us how you're standing here and talking to us. That dart had enough tranquilizer serum to render five grown men unconscious," Thorin snapped. The fighter stuck a hand in his pocket triggering us to draw out guns. He just glanced at us, seemingly weighing his chances against all of us at once.
"Now if I did that, I might as well tell you my name," he finally answered, after what felt like an eternity of silence. I scoffed, my gun aimed unwaveringly at the center of his forehead. The only sound outside of our conversation was the infrequent chirps of birds and a burbling stream somewhere in near proximity. I could see the beginning of a concentrated expression on the fighter's face as if he was deep in thought about something other than the confrontation at hand. The four of us lowered our guns, watching him concentrate. He planted a hand against his car door and leaned on it.
My stomach dropped at the prospect that he could, in fact, know my name. He could have known me as Lombardi, as most did, but with how cryptic and secretive he was being the chances were detrimentally slim.
"Of course you do. Everyone knows who I am, just not for the right things."
He laughed humorlessly after having studied my face for a few moments.
"But I know you for your uncanny ability to attract bricks. Unable to defend yourself, relying on a team to do it for you? This isn't working for you too well, now is it?"
I felt as if the very earth had come out from under me as he mentioned the life I had left behind years ago.
"Bricks?" John Vincent inquired from behind me.
"Shut it," I snapped, which effectively shut him up. I wasn't sure what the fighter had in mind; he looked like a loose cannon that could fire at any moment.
And at that moment, the loose cannon fired. But not the fighter's loose cannon.
Kane Thorin pulled his gun from his pocket and fired, shooting the fighter right above the knee. He didn't go down, but there was a bullet wound.
"Ow. Could you at least not shoot me? Pulling a bullet out of your leg is a minor annoyance, you realize," he sarcastically pointed out. He ripped a gaping hole in his jeans above the knee and inserted his thumb and index finger into the bullet hole. After a few seconds, he pulled out Thorin's bullet and inspected it.
"Nine millimeters?" he guessed, but his tone had an air of confidence about it. I didn't interpret it as cocky, per se, but rather rhetorically. He was right and he knew it so he glanced around at us, waiting for someone to answer. No one ever did.
We also never noticed that he was about to make a move.
He jumped the hood of his car off of one leg without leaving a scratch, advancing on us. He had brought hand-to-hand skills to a gunfight, and the odds were still in his favor; albeit his right leg had a bullet hole in it. When we tried to fight him off, the four of us soon realized that we weren't going to win. So Thorin took it upon himself to shoot the fighter in his left leg, taking him down as the bullet ripped through muscles and tendons and other vital structures.
"You won't get away with this," he threatened, sitting against the tire of his car. I laughed mirthlessly and shook my head. I knelt down next to him, dirtying the knee of my designer jeans and getting about a foot from his face.
"Too late, son of Poseidon. I already have."
I stood and reached into the car, lifting our target out of the seat. I dumped him into the passenger seat of my car and got back in the driver's seat, driving away from the sports car and the fighter.
I had no qualms about leaving him sitting in the dirt next to his sports car, but something in the back of my mind told me that something was off. It shouldn't have been that easy to take him out; he looked to be too muscular and intelligent.
Our target began to awaken, sitting up and looking around cautiously.
"Did you have to kill him?" he asked, the slightest tremor detectable in his voice. The tremor could have been perceived in numerous ways; he was afraid, he didn't want the fighter to die, he was still waking up, or he was second-guessing himself.
None of which were acceptable.
I scoffed, turning to him as I nosed back into the parking lot of the Lombardi Building. "That's the least of your concern. But no, he wasn't dead when we left. I hope he doesn't die because he seems like he has friends in high places. Not as high as me, of course."
He became small in the passenger seat, shrinking in on himself and falling silent.
"Lombardi men aren't small," I reprimanded him, and he sat up straighter without saying a word. Internally, I smiled a sadistic smile. He was going to become our paramount asset without even realizing it, and I could sit back and wait for the benefits.
He was the final piece of the Code Blue project, a project that would begin that night.
His own office was adjacent to mine, since he was becoming my right-hand man in the business. We would become renowned together, working almost side-by-side.
When the five of us swaggered into the Lombardi Building, we were greeted by the lobby secretary and went our separate ways. I stayed with our "recruit", handing him an all-access key card as we walked down a particularly long hallway toward an elevator. Only a small population of employees had a card that worked on that elevator; those who worked on the Code Blue project full time, and of course, I had one.
Now, he had a card that opened every door in the Lombardi Building. The power he held was insurmountable, and he didn't even know how much he was being entrusted with.
I held my card to the scanner outside the elevator, instantly opening the doors since the elevator was rarely in use. The two of us stepped in and the door closed immediately after us for security purposes. No one was to even see the inside of this elevator.
The carpet was midnight blue, as opposed to the gray everywhere else in the building.
After less than a minute in the elevator, the doors reopened and allowed us to leave, spilling out into the massive basement that housed everything in relation to the Code Blue project. Information, files, a virtually unlimited weapons arsenal, and a group of people at his every beck and call to fix any problems he could have.
"What do you think, new guy? Definitely a change in speed from what we used to do," I joked, or as close to joking as I had gotten in years. The corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly, nearly undetectable. He shook his head.
"'Change in speed' doesn't begin to suffice," he replied, looking around at the immense amount of space solely dedicated to his creation.
"The base information you need about this entire floor is this: this is the 'forbidden' basement, home of the Code Blue project. Code Blue is our most feared assassin, and I believe you'll grow to know him quite well in the time to come."
His face contorted into a kind of twisted looking grin that reminded me of myself.
"When do I meet him?"
My lips contorted into the same terrible grin, a certain satisfaction in my knowledge coming to the surface.
"Tonight."