It's the long nights that Jim likes best. Wintertime nights where the stars are covered by clouds and pollution, when the lights of London are the only stars that anyone can see. The universe becomes small, and so the looming city, with all its stones and pipes and years of seeing too many people, seems that much more immense. The alleyways are dark and unguarded, opening into the streets like a hundred thousand cold mouths filled with trash and vermin and the stench of history and gasoline. Jim goes on walks in the dark. The Moriartys don't know how quietly it is possible to descend a fire escape.
Jim hates the idea that anyone could think his life sterile. He is a part of the big smouldering greedy underworld, with all its fluids and odors and guilt and scars. The danger is his bitter, hot, coffee which wakes him from vacancy and dreams. So he walks, in the dark, and talks to people, and memorizes the streets until he knows all of his neighborhood and the surrounding area as well as any cabbie. He tries his hand at small petty break-ins, a few times, always being careful to choose places without security cameras, always being careful to leave no traces. He wears gloves and uses the back door, and keeps none of what he takes. Jim always gets home by dawn.
Jim is sixteen. He isn't a child anymore, no longer such an astounding prodigy. He is disappointed in himself for not expanding his reach further while he had the element of surprise. It's only a few more years before he could legally be tried as an adult, and before people start giving him funny looks. He is odd, and an odd adult is watched more cautiously than an odd little boy. His double life grows more and more contrasting. The bosses in their seedy dens now offer him alcohol, and though Jim never drinks what they give him (a thousand ways to poison someone, more than a hundred ways with no odor, no taste) he feels that they look at him more appraisingly, sizing him up, wondering if they could take him. He witnesses his first murders in person, that year, men shot right in front of him. If you'd asked him, and if he were being truthful, he would have told you that he expected more. Humans die so easily, with no more fanfare than a squashed worm oozing liquid and organs onto a wet sidewalk. The eyes roll and they foam at the mouth and make noise. Sometimes some blood comes out, but that's really all. It really is unnerving, the gangsters and cartel bosses think, as they watch Jim's face when someone dies, that he never has the slightest sign of emotion, not even joy. He watches like a person looking at the telly, about to change the channel.
His adopted parents have managed to have a child of their own, and the small baby, as it grows into a dull little child, reminds Jim far too much of Carl. He wants to leave for university as quickly as he can, and so he does.
His adopted mother is hit by a car. His adopted father disappears soon after, and suicide is suspected by the neighbors. An investigation is instructed to look into , but it's closed down and eventually erased from the databases and removed from the material records. The baby is placed in foster care, but if you try to find out where it ended up, in which house, with which family, it's impossible to say. Jim is free.
It's a late night in early January of 1996 when Jim is sitting in his swank hotel suite, funded by the Swiss account he's never gotten to use so much before now. He's had tea sent up, but he finished the whole pot long ago and can't be bothered to make more hot water. The bag sits in the bottom of his cup like a dead thing. His legs are resting in front of him, on the antique wooden table. The hotel is an old one, and there aren't many windows in his suite. Most people like windows, but after seeing snipers at work, Jim has come to realize that they are a liability. He's increasingly aware that, while there isn't a police-sanctioned price on his head just yet, lots of people all over the world would like to kill Jim Moriarty. Which is why Moriarty has invited Mr. Sebastian Moran to join him at his suite.
Moran isn't like Jim. He is tough and practical and he kills for vengeance rather than because of boredom, taking a gross pleasure in death that nauseates Jim and also excites him. He is a colonel, or he was before he was investigated for the unjustified death of nearly twenty civilians, back in 1992. Moran is twenty-seven, and was a prodigy in his own way, once. Nobody's heard about the trial-Moran's family, whose name isn't really Moran, is as old as the English law and rich enough to keep everyone involved silent-but Moran has been obliged to return quietly to London. He's been working as a killer-for-hire ever since. Jim wants him to be his bodyguard. So far the negotiations are going well, and Moran seems well to Jim's liking, more than he had expected from a military man.
It's when Sebastian has pocketed the advance that Jim gave him that he grabs Jim around the neck with an elbow and holds the gun to Jim's head. Jim smiles and chuckles under his breath in a way that does not seem to convey the idea of a sixteen-year-old boy at all.
"Have you ever had to clean up a body, Moran?" Jim asks, turning his head and waggling his dark eyebrows. "From what I understand, you've never shot at close range before. Always using rifles. There's more blood than you'd expect. It gets everywhere, under your nails and all over your clothes. I sure hope you brought some of you own with you to change into once you've killed me."
Moran hisses and holds Jim's neck in such a way that Jim finds it difficult to breathe. He coughs.
"I'm not stupid, though," Jim whispers, in a low, strangled voice, with the little air he has left. He is exhilarated at the pain that accompanies the elbow in his throat, but he's becoming aware that he has little time before he passes out. "I've notified many in my network about this meeting, and I have a correspondent with the police that'll track you down in an instant if I am murdered." Jim is bullshitting-his police associate is all but useless-but Moran's grip slackens for an instant, and that's all Jim needs. He drives the penknife that was up his sleeve into Moran's leg. Moran gasps, grits his teeth in pain, and leans heavily on Jim, allowing Jim to loosen the grip around his neck and push the other man onto the floor, grabbing the gun. Jim's never used firearms, but he knows from books how they work. This one appears to have been modified-some sort of muffler to disguise the sound. Jim spins round to Moran again, who is stumbling to his feet, and experimentally fires a bullet into the wall by his head. The gun snaps back with the discharge, startling Jim and jarring his wrist, but it only takes a moment for him to regain control and point the gun with both hands at Moran.
"Who's paying you?"
Moran lurches forward with all the determination of a veteran soldier. Jim tightens his finger on the trigger, but instead of firing he uses his left hand to fumble out the other hidden knife, the last one, and jam it into Moran's shoulder. He knows where the veins are in a human being, and from the positioning he's fairly sure he's severed at least a couple. Moran is bleeding profusely, and he falls to the floor, breathing hard.
Jim kicks the other man over and puts a knee into the back of his neck. "You were hired by a third party, weren't you? There's no benefit to killing me if you weren't."
Sebastian Moran wheezes, and names an American crime family. Jim scoffs.
"Even if you're telling the truth, they're broke. They couldn't possibly pay you even as much as the advance I just gave you. Who is it. I can hurt you more if I need to. Plenty of knives and poisons all over this wretched suite."
Moran whispers the name of one of the richest men in the world. This man isn't on any of the Ten Richest Men list, and very few people have ever heard his name attached to anything meaningful. Jim recognizes it, and gets up, moving the gun away from the assassin's head. Moran is nearly unconscious, so Jim calls someone to come and fix him up. He turns back to the wounded man just as his eyes begin to roll back into his head.
"Mr. Moran, let it be understood that you work for me now."