Wind cut through the sniper's hair like a scythe through wheat, a single strand breaking from his auburn locks, drifting away with the breeze. Snatched out of thin air by a leather-clad hand, ever motionless, he placed the strand into a zip lock bag while muttering to himself.
"It's fucking freezing up here."
He re-shoulders the rifle, placing his eye in front of the scope, already zooming in to almost 3 miles away, to a little fabricated playground on the outskirts of the city. From the vantage point of the 23 story tall building, it was easy to let the scope do its work tracking down the target. The sniper takes his eye off the scope.
"What the fuck? Am I…"
Looking through the scope again, he confirmed his target. Am I supposed to shoot her? A girl, couldn't be older than 8, was being slowly followed by the scopes targeting system.
"I didn't sign up to be a kid killer."
Talking to no one in particular, of course. The sniper shelters alone off the rooftop, as he has for a thousand missions before. A slow degradation of the mind, or a coping mechanism? Does it really matter? He brings out his phone, jabbing into the digits angrily with his pointer finger. He though to himself, they won't make me a monster. Not today."
"Pick up asshole…
He tapped on his rifles hand-guard impatiently. This wasn't in the details, he thought. A soft click gives it away, the call has been accepted, the speaker on the other end. "Is it dead?"
"It? It's a fucking child you sick bastard. You didn't put this in the contract."
"Would you have taken the contract if I put those details in? Did you really think we gave you that spotter-scope for something as menial as another political assassination?"
"What? What threat could a child pose?"
"Our grand machinations and predictions of what are to come are not of your business."
"Oh, they aren't?" He pulls his sniper rifle close to his body, moving it off the tripod; making a show of it to his invisible audience. He grits his teeth, talking through them, "Maybe I just won't shoot then."
An audible sigh is heard on the other end of the phone, and a mumbling of "stupid fucking mercenaries". The speaker returns to the phone, straining a calm voice. "Let me put this in a way you can understand jarhead, there is a large domino we predict to occur in some time, and this is the optimal time to prevent such an action. If you delay, lives, countries, the world is at risk. All because you arbitrarily care of the age of a target? Nonsense."
"I'm sure it must be arbitrary to you, o' great knowing one, but fate ain't set in stone. A kids life can change, for the better, or for the worse. I'm a trained killer, but I have standards, and I can see the shit you're trying to pull."
"You were hired for a simple shot. Far enough away to never see their face, with the scope you didn't even have to find information about the target for their whereabouts. We've done everything to make this comfortable for you, and you deny us?"
He spits off the roof, watching it sail down to the busy street below "Ain't nothing comfortable about shooting a child."
Silence on the other side of the phone lingers for a whole 10 seconds. The sniper draws his breath in. The back of his neck starts tingling. He flexes his wingsuit.
"In the grand scheme of things, you were nothing more than a maid to prevent a mess. We won't make that mistake again."
The sniper has already dropped the phone, taking a running start towards the playground. He doesn't know how long it may take for them to dispatch a second killer, a drone strike, or any other assortment of long range tactical equipment. All he knows is he's done being the tool.
"Guess I ain't going back to the establishment anymore, but I never really did like tea, anyway."
The sound of a childrens cartoon softly plays through the wall as the sniper is roused from his sleep. He halfway reaches for his gun under his pillow before he remembers himself. Not alone anymore, no reason to act on edge, as far as he knew.
He makes his way out of his bed, taking a short, wistful view out of his penthouse apartment, and into the bathroom. Pulling out his razor blade, he lathers up his face slowly, methodically working his blade down his face, suddenly pulling back with a grimace.
"Fu-, I mean, fiddlesticks."
A slow rivulet of blood trickles down his right cheek, as he holds the blade up as a mirror. He can see in his hands the tiny, imperceptible beginnings of tremors. Looking further up the razor blade, a smaller, even more worrying sight. He puts the blade down and rushes to the mirror, holding his hair up.
"Grey hair… already…"
He turned around and sat on the counter of his sink, staring into the wall. No more gallivanting around rooftops, jumping from one dangerous leap to the next. He was an old man now, have to take thing slow and methodic-
"Hey, you want toast with your eggs?"
He remembered himself, again, for the second time this morning. He is not alone, and his life can mean the continuation of another life.
"No sweetie, toast is empty carbs."
Rinsing off his face, the wound already fully healed, threw on his favorite white t-shirt and some sweatpants. No jobs for a couple weeks, his contact had been fresh out for a while. Still, quite a lot of money to fall back on. Nothing to worry about. He walks out to the dining room, gawking behind his poker face at the flurry in the kitchen.
"Just sit there, I'll get to you."
The girl, now 9, was no slouch. Moving around with the fury of a Michelin Star chef, she added ingredients and spices that the sniper himself didn't know he had in his kitchen, hidden in some corner of his pantry that he probably stocked up a long time ago but never used. It was a nice change, though, from fast food. A final ding of a bell, she walks over to him, handing over some black tea, and a garnished plate of eggs, almost an omelet at that point, before returning to her place on the couch.
"Oh… honey, you know I don't like that tea."
She looks over her shoulder quizzically at him, before shaking her head. "How can a man own a lifetime supply of black tea, yet hate it so much?"
"Well, it's an occupational perk."
Only a year into the adoption, though he knew most everything about her, he was not intimate like a biological father would be. How could he, after all, he kills people for a living. But it was not from a lack of trying. Something within him withheld the information that would give them a bond of trust, and compassion, whether it be to protect her from the outside, or him from potential rejection.
"H-hey sweetie? Can you come over here?"
She looked over at him, then back to the show, watching a character be comically hit with a large hammer. "After this episode." He was glad she was looking away, or else she would have seen his head hanging dejectedly, looking at the immaculate plate of eggs. All the housework was always done. Cooking was finished before he even woke up, jobs weren't coming in. In this trained killers life, this is the most useless he's ever felt.
"Alright… sure."
He picked up his plate of eggs, heading back to his room, locking the door behind him seclusion once again. He'd feel better once he cleaned his guns, he always does after he finishes. Holding his eye up to an almost invisible indent in the wall, he unlocked his cache, and looked for the dirtiest weapon. The same weapon from the failed contract. Bad memories, hadn't used this one since. All the more reason to try and wipe the metaphorical slate, and gun, clean.
He picked the gun clean apart, disassembling it to its base components, cleaning it inside and out, using liberal oil as he went. Nothing could remain unsaid, unspoken, or unturned in his cleaning. Time flew by, though his sixth sense could hear the television stop producing audio, he did not stop in his endeavor. Time passed, the ticking of the clock, and the slow sound of footsteps, attempting to mask their way into the room with the ticking of the clock. He could hear it. He just didn't want to look up, to face the music.
"You know, I always did know you were a sniper. From day one. I don't know why you tried to hide it."
He looks up, shocked, but his senses told him he already knew that from the very beginning.
"You certainly don't try to hide how you carry yourself. Instantly secluding yourself in the corners of rooms. Perfectly sitting still for hours on end, unmoving hands, unblinking eyes. Disappearing for weeks at a time on "business trips" coming back covered in the smell of gunpowder."
"Well, I wouldn't call myself, really, a sniper. Its more of a contractor sort of thing."
"Oh yes, a contractor. Are you going to build me a house next?"
"You know, for a 9 year old girl, you certainly don't talk like one."
"We all have our secrets, sniper man."
She moves closer to him, walking over the disassembled sniper parts littering the floor. She brushes her golden hair out of the way to reveal two tiny symmetrical bumps sprouting just above the sides of her temples. Any person at a glance may have taken it for an unfortunate tumor, or skin growth, and took it at face value, but the sniper was a well read man. In the anomalous, at the very least.
"Horns?"
The sniper sighed as his hands shakily looked through the scope at another target. An old man, wearing his bathrobes, in a colonial style mansion. The typical target that might get him some anomalous chewing gum. If he was lucky. A chill runs up his spine.
"You know I don't find that amusing."
A giggle erupts from behind him, a girl tracing her hands up and down his back, with lethal and lithe precision. "I just get so bored, y'know? You take so much time to take these shots, and it's not like you let me bring my phone up here."
"Yeah, phones can be traced, and you have to learn. It ain't just for the job, it's for your protection. You got them people chasing after you."
"Oh, as if you could go a day without reminding me. You're lucky I was an orphan. Any other girl?" She guffaws with laughter. "Would've called you crazy and called the police on you." She takes a sip of her black tea, reminiscing. "I was just happy to be out of that place, even if you were a crazy person that thought I was targeted by some secret organization."
"Oh harr harr. Yeah, I'm crazy; crazy to help you out in the first place. My job used to be so serene, and peaceful. I just sat up on tall buildings every day and shot a single bullet and left before anyone could even react. Now I have some petulant child biting my ankles, 11 and a half years now and you still act like we first met."
The sniper suddenly feels the retraction of her hands, and her shifting around behind him, putting them back to back, facing away from eachother. Knowing in his infinite wisdom he may have ruined the mood, he tries to focus on the job, and looks down the sniper scope at the robed man, now entering the bathroom. The opportunity for a kill that looks like an accident, maybe.
His concentration is interrupted by a sniffling, and a small heaving of the back, ticking his senses off. "Are you really sad? I didn't mean it" As he turns around to look at her, she moves her face in the opposite direction. "I don't think you're an ankle biter, it was just a phrase of speech."
"Thats not what I'm mad about." The girl says in a stiff manner.
He furrowed his brow, keeping the target in his peripheral vision. What could he have forgotten? Is there anything special about this day? He tapped the barrel of his rifle, trying to jog his memory. December the 19th… 19th. It was her 19th birthday. He cursed himself silently for his forgetfulness, this job had taken up his last week of concentration. "Your birthday. Right."
The girl jumps back around, elated and expecting of a present. "So, what'd you get me? Something as cool as that stealth bomber you got me for my 18th? Or maybe something more classic, like the bond car you got me for my 16th." She sighs wistfully. "That was a good car. It's a shame it had to be sacrificed in the getaway."
He looks around, abusing his reflex implant that he acquired a few jobs back to give him more time. He didn't have any presents due to his obsessive work over the last week, and he didn't have anything on hand that she would want. His equipment was her equipment after all. The only thing he could think of is…
His eye trailed back to the man in the bathrobe, now stripping to get into a drawn tub. Maybe the perfect excuse, and the perfect gift. He looked down at his hands, still shaking. Unless he could get a stabilizer implant pretty soon, someone would have to take up the mantle. She was big girl now, 19 to this date. Time to let her spread her wings.
"Yeah, I got a present for you." He tosses her his sniper rifle, his other baby. "It's about time you took up the family business."
An excited glint gets into her eye. "When I didn't see any planes or cars, I thought you had forgotten my birthday. But this is a present I've been waiting a long time to get."
The sniper inwardly sighs, thankful that his excuse worked.
"Who's our target?" She looks at him, questioningly, taking some experimental glances into the scope.
"Some hick blood feuder who just killed his last person. He thinks he's a big shot because he killed the daughter of his rival. Holding a party tonight, that's why he's preparing." He motions, pointing at the window where he is bathing. "It certainly would be a bad time to cut his life short." He nods in approval to her, as she takes the full brunt of the sniper close to her body and zeroes in on the target.
"Yeah, I see him. Not exactly the specimen of humanity," she chortles, "and he certainly doesn't seem to be afraid to retaliation. Window open and everything."
"The best kind of idiot," the sniper nods, "An overconfident idiot," He notices the tripod of the rifle is a bit too close to the edge, and inches her back, preventing a terrible recoil accident.
She blushes at first, but it quickly turns into an embarrassed, slightly angry face. "Thank you, but I didn't need your help. I'M going to be a trained killer in a few minutes."
As good as my training is, the sniper thought. An idea popped into his head, "And oh, by the way, if you can figure out a way to make that death look accidental, I'll give you a bonus."
"Really? If it's as good as this present, I'll try."
The sniper and the girl simultaneously scanned the window and the surrounding area for 5 whole seconds before both coming up with their ideas. The sniper turned to give his idea to the girl, but a fierce determination had already come over her, and, chuckling to himself, he sat back in his foldable chair and waited to see what she would do.
The girl takes aim, and suddenly shifts the rifle to the right, pulling the trigger. The sniper, who until this point, had full trust in her, shot up out of his chair and grabbed his binoculars, as the girl shouldered the rifle and began to walk off.
"Hey, hey hey? Where are you going? You didn't shoot him."
She looks back over her shoulder at the sniper, with a bored expression. "Yeah, I didn't, but he's dead," She trots back over to him and grabs his binoculars, positioning them at the right angle for him to see.
He looks through the binoculars, only to see the man thrashing in the tub, desperately trying to pull away from a long brown snake. On the other side of the door, his family desperately slamming their weight against to get to him, unable to unlock the now broken door handle, blown off its frame. He looks back to the girl, disappointed.
"You can't let the environment do all the work, you know. Eventually you're going to have to kill."
She looks back and flashes a fanged smile at him, eyes quickly flashing into a snakelike pupil, before returning to normal. "I'm just using the tools at my disposal. So about that present you promised me…"
He shakes his head as they both walk down from the roof access, back down onto the street, and out into the city, ignoring the sirens as they went, to collect their reward.
