Okay, here goes. As you may or may not have noticed, a fairly significant rewrite- some plot, some technical things- has been done, and you'll want to at least reread the first and fourth chapters of the story, some significant thematic changes have been made.

I keep changing the plan, due to plot bunnies, but, here it goes!

Saint Petersburg, 2036

The "old man" climbed in the van that was waiting for him out the back of the Winter Palace, a van lined with red and with a fairly telling symbol on the back wall: the Global Justice logo. He ripped off his disguise, and stood there in his gleaming and pristine black GJ uniform.

After the destruction of HQ and the death of Betty Director in prison, the new director- Will Du- had ordered everyone black uniforms with the red GJ logo as a memorial to those who'd died.

Will Du, the man stepping out of the disguise, wished his body had fared the years since the destruction of HQ as well as his uniform. Every wound was a story. His prematurely greying hair was the first, chronologically, but right now, the least on his mind.

Charleston 2033

The greying hair had come when he'd first sat down in GJ's backup HQ in Charleston, South Carolina. GJ had chosen that city for several reasons: Number one, it's on a peninsula, and highly defensible in case of siege. And two, Fort Jackson, the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base- newly reactivated after the CVB attack on New York City in 2032- and the Charleston Naval Center put all of the branches of the armed forces within an hour's drive. He was sitting down, and opened the desk drawers, looking for Dr. Director's list of passwords, profiles, and intel.

In the top drawer, he found hair dye, matching Dr. Director's hair color exactly. At first he laughed that off. Then he opened the bottom drawer of her desk. He saw a tiny sheet of paper, that read "List of Codes," with building, room, and door codes to locate it. He wondered if that was all there was. Out of curiosity, he tracked down the first number- which read "PRSNL-1"

He went underground, the first level, and when the elevator door opened, he entered the listed code. He emerged into a brightly lit, wall-to-wall, series of filing cabinets. They were up against the walls, five deep, and the room could've held a football field. He looked in one filing cabinet, and realized: This entire vault was one month's personnel reports that Dr. Director had to have handled personally.

The Library of Congress wishes it had the morass of paperwork that GJ's vaults held. The personnel reports alone occupied Giant's stadium, and the Intel could've filled the whole bowl that New Orleans rested in- if everything past one year wasn't filed on Blu-Ray disk. Even on that high-capacity format, everything still filled a room the size of a football field.

He was responsible for dishing out a group of paperwork the size of the Library of Congress's whole archive each day. Most of it was automatic, but he still had to manage some aspects, like the personnel reports, or approval to distribute top secret intel to whichever agent needed it. His hair began graying almost immediately. Doctors estimated his hair would be white by the time he hit forty, if he lived that long. There was a reason Global Justice never had any old directors.

The next wound he received was his eyepatch. He had been working later than usual- it was four A.M.- and was about to pull out his sleeping bag and get an hour of sleep before work, when he'd heard a noise, just a slight hiss of burning wire. Will made sure he had his bulletproof vest on and his gun with him. He headed up to the main hall, where he heard the sound coming from. The quarter mile long hall- he saw a cat burglar, dressed in dark, dark green, and black, fleeing the scene. He pulled out his Beretta, and closed his right eye to aim. As he was about to pull the trigger, a dark, demonically black-green spike hit him right in the eye.

Will Du lay there bleeding, and as he was recovering in the hospital room, he discovered that the operative- the camera had caught her face and clothes- was Jenine Standard, of the CVB. And he could never use his left eye again. If he'd had both eyes open, he'd be blind. They'd stolen only one thing: GJ intel on Islamic Nation nukes.

After Beijing, he realized why they'd done that. But by that time, his hatred of GJ was as white-hot as it would ever get, because of his final wound, the reason he didn't need to wear a cup anymore, and why he wasn't married.

Hawaii, 2035

The theft and the assumption of control were a few years in the past for him. The GJ crew had told him there was an urgent mission, and he was needed on-site, immediately.

He got in the airplane, and eventually parachuted down onto Oahu.

He had a welcoming committee waiting for him, who stripped his uniform off, and gave him a complimentary Hawaiian shirt, and loose khaki shorts. They body-surfed him up the stairs of the hotel, and into his penthouse suite. The soldiers had used all their collective savings to book him the whole hotel and it's activities. This whole 'island', for the week, was dedicated to pleasing him. He at first resisted. But he had a drink or two in the hotel's nicest bar on the first night, and then he saw her. Blonde, toned muscles and tanned skin, and hazel eyes that showed there was more to her than looks. Although the look he was getting was pleasant.

He went over there, and asked, "Is this seat taken?"

"Who wants to know?"

Her subtle grin told Will she was interested.

"Just a guy who can see you're easy on the eyes."

"Well, I guess I can't refuse someone that nice, whoever he is."

He laughed and sat down on the other side of her. He started off the conversation.

"So, what's your job?"

"I'm a stockbroker/stock consultant, I work from home."

"Really?"

"I'm impressed that you didn't sneer. People always sneer when they hear that part. The sneer gets wiped off, however, when they discover that the directors of Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowes entrust me with handling their stock investments. They ran me through a yearlong simulation. With no warning and a simulated total collapse of the world economy, I was able to save fifty percent of their money. The best anyone else was able to do was five."

"Wow."

"They then decided to let me manage their investments in hardware, software, and other technologies. Every time, I made a good call. Those companies would've been annihilated in the bombing of New York if it hadn't been for me."

"And now they're virtually the ONLY companies. Wow."

She was obviously a very, very smart woman. She could match wits with him, she was interested in him, and she was attractive. In short, guys would fall over each other begging for a chance with her. And she was not afraid to take the initiative.

"I can cook better than these hotel morons. Want to come back to my room and taste it for yourself?"

So for supper, they went back to her room. She wasn't lying. She was a world class chef. The risotto was delicious, and the mozzarella burrito (with marinara) was an awesome side-dish. But the odd combination prompted him to ask, "Who taught you to cook?"

"My dad. He was the only one who could ever teach me to cook a dish. I haven't been able to learn from anyone else since he passed away."

"I'm sorry. I've lost someone too. She wasn't my mother, but for all she did for me, despite her workload, she definitely earned the title. She did one act of compassion too many and that's what killed her. And to think criminals like the CVB are still breathing while she passed away."

"The same thing happened with my father. He saved lives for a living, and it was his profession that stressed him to death."

"So we have something in common- we both have parents who were noble people and their nobility killed them. Thank God. You're the first person I have ever met who can possibly comprehend the frustration that you can't do anything to help them, the anger at what killed them, and the grief that you'll never see them again."

They hugged, and a more powerful friendship- one could even say love- couldn't have been formed. They slept in the same bed, cradling each other, drained by spilling out their souls, but nothing physical happened. Just two souls finding their opposite halves.

Over the next week, they shared cute moments- wiping pizza sauce off each other's lips, personal moments- Will Du revealed his masochistic tendency, and Melody revealed her painkiller addiction- and funny moments- dunking the hotel owner in the slime tank, for one.

On the next to last day he was scheduled to be there, he bought an engagement ring, with six month's salary- a gold band with a single diamond, he couldn't afford any more. He was going to marry this woman- she was one of a kind. That night, he said he had a surprise for her in the morning.

At midnight exactly, she had a knife. She couldn't do it. She couldn't kill him. Despite her constant comparisons of every man to her father- Will and every other man fell short in that department- she had found something unique in him: she had found compassion in him. But he was Global Justice, he was the enemy. So she did the next best thing. She walked away with his manhood.

He was awoken by a sharp pain and a note.

Dear Will

My orders were to kill you- I couldn't kill such a compassionate man, such a common soul. I might, given time, have even married you. But you work for GJ. That's a shutdown in my book. If you don't bleed to death, you should survive. But do you want to?

Love,

Melody Stoppable

His screams brought in the hotel staff. He barely noticed the pain in his groin for the pain in his heart.

For the next month he was in the hospital on suicide watch. After that, no one forced him to take a vacation ever again. He never took another day off. Weekends were normal days, he never went home. He only slept when he had to. Sleeping brought dreams- nightmares because they involved her. He carried the ring he'd bought with him, so that when she was buried, he could put it into the coffin with her. He couldn't rest until CVB were all hanged- and she was out of his mind at last.