– Code Blue –

I was sent for a mission. My first. I had to prove myself to the entire Lombardi Building by completing the mission with flying colors.

I was dressed discreetly in all black to conceal myself since I would be out on the streets of New York City at midnight. Two handguns, 9 millimeters, were tucked neatly into the waistband of my jeans hidden by a bulky, black jacket. Secretly, under the jacket, I was wearing a shirt I swore to myself that I'd throw away as soon as I got into the new business. But as I dressed for my mission, I couldn't bear to part with it. It showed weakness, and that's why Lombardi never found out. He didn't allow weakness in his building, because he was a hardened man that had no time for the weak.

I walked briskly through an asphalt alley, brick walls on either side of me. The cold rain kept me sharp and awake, even in the early morning hours.

My shoes, all black high-tops, were sloshing water from the puddles forming in depressions in the asphalt. I crept along more slowly, lifting my feet slightly higher to prevent the possibly incriminating noise.

I saw a rusted, not-so-sturdy fire escape and decided to try my luck. I jumped, grasping onto the lowest rung of the ladder and pulling myself up to climb onto the platform of the same rusted color. I was blending in perfectly, wearing all black and hiding about fifteen feet off the ground of the alley. On either side of the alley, two blue Dumpsters sat, full. They could be helpful later.

I stayed in the same crouched position, unmoving, for an hour. At one o'clock in the morning, the cold rain was still pouring consistently.

And then I saw them.

Two shadows walked into the alley, standing ten feet further into the narrow pathway than I was. The men stood next to each other, silent for a few seconds before they uttered a word.

"They have five minutes and I'm leaving. I refuse to wait around for this."

"We have to wait. We have to watch and wait."

The two of them waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Five minutes blew by, stretching into ten, fifteen, thirty.

And then one more figure showed at the end of the alley. He walked toward the other two men, and the new one stood with his back to me.

"Do you have it?"

"Yes. Waterproof, even. Checked the forecast." The man with his back to me spoke in a British accent.

"Good."

"You owe me," the Australian countered. Money exchanged hands as I watched, clicking the silencer into place over the barrel of my first gun. The other was to be covered in one of their prints and disposed of in an obvious place.

I pulled the hood of my jacket further over my head, nearly hiding my eyes. I crept down from the fire escape and hid behind the Dumpster, waiting for someone to leave. When the Australian walked away, I pulled the trigger and downed him in a single shot. I heard the sounds of confusion from the other men, and, as I had hoped, raced over to recollect their money. I killed the others in two more shots, leaving a mass of bodies stacked on top of each other.

I'd have to clean this up because I had been sloppy.

First, I put canvas gloves over my rubber ones so they could be bloodied and used as evidence against someone that wasn't me. I moved the two bodies away from the Australian to collect his money, then I searched the pockets of the other men for the main purpose of the mission; a slip of paper. I found the laminated slip of paper in an interior pocket of the tallest man's coat. I took it without reading it, zipping the man's pocket again after sliding the paper into my jacket. I pulled the tallest man up as high as I could, careful to keep my clothes bloodless. If I slipped up, I could still burn them. It would be less of a hassle, though, to keep them clean. I gently placed his body in the bottom of the Dumpster, making it look like a sloppy cleanup job by an imbecile.

I lifted the other man into the Dumpster on top of the other, getting both men's blood on the canvas gloves.

Then, finally, the Australian.

The Australian would be the most difficult. I had to plant his DNA on the gun and get him away without being seen by anyone. I pulled the canvas gloves off and placed them over the Australian's hands. The man wasn't very big; about five feet eight inches, and skinny. With the rubber gloves covering my hands, I grabbed the hood of his coat and dragged him along the alley with it, looking around once I got to the edge to make sure no one was watching. I didn't see anyone around, and I saw a car sitting a mere few feet away. I didn't recognize it, so I hustled over to it and prayed that it was unlocked.

It was.

I lifted the trunk open and dumped the Australian inside, placing the gun in his hands and therefore covering it in his prints. I closed the trunk and ducked back into the alley. By now, it was about two in the morning, so in total, I had only been gone for a little over an hour. I climbed back up into the fire escape, taking the flashlight out of my pocket and inspecting my clothes. Everything was black, which helped, but I wasn't about to blow my first mission. When I found my clothes to be clean, I jumped down and walked over toward the place where the bodies had been piled. There was no blood on the ground, so it must have been washed away by the rain. The storm drain in the center of the alley would take care of that problem for me.

I began the walk back to the Lombardi Building in silence, looking around at my surroundings before I even dared pull the slip of paper from my pocket.

I unzipped my interior jacket pocket and grasped the plastic-coated paper, easing it out of my pocket.

I turned the paper over and began to read, and I have never been so disappointed in all my life.

I almost threw it into a trash can, but then I remembered that it was quite valuable. I made the trip back to the Lombardi Building in a simmering silence. I flung open the front door, making a beeline for Lombardi. I slapped my identification card against the scanner on his office door and it lit up green, so I pushed the handles of the enormous French doors down and threw them wide open.

His office was empty.

The only time it was empty was when he was in a meeting, and normally he cuts his meetings off after four in the afternoon. Maybe today was different for some reason.

I jogged down to his executive conference room, hoping that no one of high importance was going to see me. Just in case, though, I pulled my hood lower and zipped my jacket higher.

And then I remembered Lombardi's words.

I was never to open those doors if the light on the keypad was orange. It was orange now.

I strode quickly away from the room, but Lombardi called me back.

I nearly ran back up to his office to sit and wait, because his meeting couldn't be much longer now.

Sure enough, I was right. He opened both French doors and saw me at his desk, sitting down in his leather chair across from me.

"Did you get it done?"

"Your garbage 'mission'? Yeah, I got it done, and I figured out that it's a load of crap."

I tossed the laminated paper across the table, uncareful of where it landed.

"Watch your words with me."

"Or what, you'll kill me? You can't do anything to me, because if you don't have me then your project is dead in the water."

"You think that, Blue. You think that and you let it help you sleep at night. Just know, the moment you screw up, the moment you sneeze wrong, I will know about it. And when I find out about it, there will be a price to pay for you."

I sat at the desk, staring him down as he picked up the paper from the edge of the desk. He glanced over it and grinned evilly.

"The freaking Coca-Cola recipe?! I could've died for that?!"

Lombardi laughed, leaning back in his chair. He cracked his knuckles, interlacing his fingers and pushing them away from his body.

"Yes. You could have. But it showed your dedication to us even though you didn't know what you were going after. A good soldier will go after a target even if he doesn't know exactly what's waiting for him, and you passed. I just hope that this is real. If it's not, then we just took out three of the people that know the recipe, which is more than half but not elimination. That means that there are still people around to sue us if they figure out what happened."

I scoffed, rolling my eyes in disbelief.

"If you get sued, it's not going to touch your bank account."

I stood up, scraping my chair across the floor and staring him dead in the eyes as I turned around, flinging his doors open and letting them slam with a resounding slam.

I walked over to my office, which doubled as my living space, and I nearly threw myself into my desk chair. I scrolled through the news, looking through numerous pages of articles to see if even the smallest recognition of my crimes had surfaced yet. The internet was clear, but they were still fresh.

Their bodies probably hadn't cooled yet.

I pushed the copy of The Hobbit into the shelf, swinging the door to my living quarters wide open. Lombardi had asked me what book I wanted to use for my door "key" and I had given him that specific one because I loved Tolkien. Lord of the Rings was amongst my favorite books of all time.

I was in no way, shape, or form ready to sleep. Albeit I had been up for an obscene amount of time and definitely should have slept, I couldn't find it in me. I stayed up for hours, thinking of the changes that I had made to myself and what my past few hours had entailed. I wasn't in shock, because I had seen it so many times before, but I wasn't exactly to the point where I could smile and laugh like I had done nothing at all. It weighed on me, made me think that I was beginning to go crazy. I wasn't sure where to turn next because if I went to anyone in the building it would be seen as a weakness. I couldn't go to the one person that I normally would have gone to with these issues, because he was gone. He was gone and he was never coming back, and it had been my fault.

I paced the length of my room, releasing energy and thinking as I did it.

I climbed the ladder built into the wall, hoping that it didn't just go to some useless storage closet. At the top, I discovered a door to the roof. I barely smiled to myself and opened the door, inviting the pouring rain to soak through every piece of clothing on my body. I lowered myself onto the edge of the roof, six stories off the ground. I enjoyed heights; they always gave me a nice rush of adrenaline.

Not this time, though.

This time, it gave me a sense of nostalgia and euphoria. I wanted nothing more to be on a different roof, in a different part of town, away from Lombardi and his building. Code Blue nearly broke me at that point. I knew that I would become a monster, so I recognized that I had no other option but to accept it and move on. I had made my decision, I had allied with Lombardi, and there I was. No turning back, no getting out. I was up a creek without a paddle and forced to fight the current.

"If you're out there," I whispered into the dead of night, the rainfall drowning me out, "I need some help. I mean, it can't be direct, but you probably know what I mean. I'm drowning, and right now you seem like the ignorant lifeguard on his phone."

I sat in the rain, letting it comfort me, letting myself get soaked and shiver. I welcomed it, enjoyed it, even relished it.

After a while, after I could see the sun trying to push its way above the horizon, I decided to go inside. I was still soaked; I had to wring water out of every article of clothing that I had been wearing, which made my hands cold and chapped. They fit the profile of an assassin, so I didn't bother to do anything about them.

Lombardi called at six, informing me that there was a meeting he had set up for me to meet one of the higher-ups in the Code Blue project.

"Be there. Seven sharp, or else the doors lock and we're not letting you in."

"I have a key, idiot," I replied, tossing the plastic card in my hand as I fired back.

"Watch your mouth. Just because we work closely doesn't give you the right to treat me like your equal or your inferior, because we both know who calls the shots around here."

I rolled my eyes, hoping that he didn't have a way to know that I had done something as "insubordinate" as that small action. I hung up on him, an act that I was sure to be reprimanded for later.

I searched through my closet to find something suitable to wear for a meeting. I found a suit that seemed suitable…

Bad pun.

I'm sorry.

Anyway, I found an outfit that I figured Lombardi would find acceptable and put it on. I styled my hair quickly, spritzed on a bit of cologne, and overall looked and felt better than I had in the chafing wet outfit I had been wearing just moments ago.

Briskly, I strode down to the meeting room. I still had ten minutes to arrive, but I had chosen to be forced to sit with Lombardi in an uncomfortable silence than yelled at for being late.

And there was always the possibility that I would be stopped in a corridor and forced to talk to someone, which I wasn't eager to do.

I opened the door for myself, glancing down the long table to Lombardi where he sat at the head as per usual.

But the man beside him startled me.

He was even more punctual than me, which was a rarity. I didn't look at him too closely, which was a custom for the men in the Lombardi Building. Don't look like you care too much about the man across the table, because he could end up trying to kill you after seeing that as a chink in your armor.

I moved to the chair across from him, shaking his hand.

His hand.

I recognized that hand.

I looked up from his hand, trailing my eyes up to his jacket-clad arm. I met his face and my heart nearly stopped.

It couldn't be.

This business had been my outlet of escape, escape from anyone that cared about me.

"Is there a problem?"

"No," I replied coldly, my tone sharper than a knife.

I sat down, never breaking eye contact with the man across from me.

"So. I recruited him to share your workload a little bit. He does more of the work here, rather than outside. Can we agree, gentlemen?"

Both of us nodded, not daring to argue with Lombardi.

Even though both of us could have killed him if we had wanted to.

I wanted to go hug the man across the table, just let him tell me that everything was okay, and go home.

But Lombardi had made it exceedingly clear that once you were in this business, the only way out was death; very possible in my line of work.

We discussed the terms of our working together and then were dismissed, and Lombardi allowed us to go into the basement, home of the project, to "acquaint" ourselves.

Maybe he knew that we had a history, maybe he didn't.

"What is wrong with you?" he spat through gritted teeth. He seemed cool, calm, and collected to anyone passing by, but his voice was filled with fire and venom.

"A lot."

We continued to walk, his pace quickening nearly by the stride. I kept up with him, pushing my legs out further and moving faster.

He pressed his thumb against the elevator keypad, allowing the doors to open.

"That's not true and you know it. You can come home right now and we can put all of this behind us."

I scoffed, not even bothering to look at him.

"I can't. You don't know the rules of this place."

He grinned, a humorless grin devoid of happiness.

"I know more about it than you do, I guarantee it."

"How?"

"I worked here for thirty years ago, under the original man. Bolovschi. He was worth more than Grace will ever be."

"We'll see about that. Whatever helps you sleep at night," I replied coldly. The elevator doors opened, releasing us into the heart of "our" project.

"Where's Code Blue? I kind of have to know the guy to be able to be in charge of him."

"You're not in charge of Code Blue."

"According to Grace, I am."

"Don't call him that," I reprimanded him.

"Lombardi. On anyone else but Vince, like the Superbowl trophy guy, the name sounds like pasta at a knockoff Italian restaurant."

I walked through the project floor with him, turning heads with the six-foot man beside me.

"Where's Code Blue?"

"You've been talking to him for the past half hour, idiot."

His face fell and then filled with anger, and he pulled me into a secluded corner.

"What is wrong with you, Percy?! You're above this, better than this. Look at what happened to me after I got out of the business I was in. That's what's going to happen to you if you keep doing this. You'll end up with no way to deal with it because you've shut everyone out that cares about you. Why?"

"Don't pretend to care. You just pretended to because I was young and didn't have parents. I'm doing this because there's no other way out of it."

He looked hurt, and I didn't want him to feel that way, but I knew that's how it had to be if I wanted to get out.

"Percy, there is! There is another way out."

I shook my head, refusing to listen to his reasoning.

"Percy, you're my brother. I can't sit by and watch this happen to you and let you do this to yourself. Brother to brother, let me help you."

I turned away from him, letting his words roll off me like rain off a jacket. I stared into his eyes, my glare full of intensity.

"You're dead to me."

I sidestepped him and walked away, not looking back once.