The cool metal feels right in my hand, the weight now natural. It feels like home, it feels…safe. This is who I am now. I am cold, metal, death. I come without warning, hidden and consoled beneath my cloak of disguises. This is the real me. It is who I was meant to be, this is truth, this is right, and this is destiny.

This mantra is my life. It has to be, because if I let the truth start to seep through my thin enterer I couldn't do the things I do. I couldn't be this man. This man I have to be. Because without him I would be nothing, just another sad failure and everything that happened would be for nothing.

Because I am the shadows, the thing you think you see in the corner of your eye that is gone when you turn. I'm not real. Because I can't be, there is no Chuck, no Carmichael. There is only the flash before the bang. The few milliseconds when they realized what happens before the air in their lungs is gone as they hit the floor. There is only the machine.

I can barely remember that man who couldn't pull the trigger. It seems like a dream, a lie. I would laugh at that weakling he was, that poor sap, so set he could save the world without getting his hands dirty. HA! What a crack! Well that man died a long time ago, both figuratively and literally, well on paper at least. It hurt at first. But I can't be bothered now. I was a killer even then, it just hid out of sight, so deep that no light ever hit it.

I'm out of cigarettes. I don't usually smoke, but there's not much to do to pass the time here.

If I try hard I can still remember the first time I has a cigarette. The way his face looked as I stood over him. The way it felt between my fingers as I laughed. The way his eyes glassed over as the light left them. The way she stared in horror, and the way I didn't care. Because it didn't matter anymore, did it. There was no happy ending for me. It was this or nothing, and the fact I got that is the only reason I'm not six feet under like the many I've put there since.

After that there was no turning back. I died the next day. Car accident, body was so bad they had to identify it by dentals. I left before Ellie could have known. Because I don't have a sister, chuck did.

After that the deal was sealed. The deed was done; apparently they counted it as something called a red test, even if it wasn't an ordered elimination. They asked me what I wanted after that. And I couldn't tell them, just no teams, no long term covers. Just in, carnages, out. They were more than happy to oblige.

I'm ranked pretty high now I think, haven't once missed a mark, but how could I, I'm a machine. It doesn't really matter to me now. All I need it that trigger, bullets, and my mark. That's what matters now.

Speaking of it's almost time.

I set the sight, pull the trigger. The sound.
And then the best part,
the silence.

Then the phone buzzes