Jeremy Robinson - MirrorWorld

I scan the street, looking for my target, who should be easy to spot, despite the fact that all I can see are heads. And motorcycles. Cars won’t fit up the narrow street with all the people, so the vehicle of choice in this part of the city is of the two-wheeled variety. Except for the black BMW parked across the street from the used-instruments shop. It sticks out as obviously as my target will.

“There you are,” I whisper, as a blond woman steps out of the music shop. She has an edge to her. A seriousness that, despite her age and aquiline beauty, says she’s not someone with whom to trifle. Too bad for her; trifling is kind of my job.

I put her head in my crosshairs as she speaks to someone still in the shop.

The dossier I received said she runs a human-trafficking ring, smuggling women out of India and into the Middle East. But she recently expanded her business and now smuggles arms to a variety of terror organizations. Bad career move.

It’s a hard shot. Her head, while squarely focused at the center of my crosshairs, is occasionally blocked by a passerby. I could pull the trigger only to have someone step in front of the bullet.

But this doesn’t frighten me. If the bullet does strike someone else first, the high-caliber round will pass straight through the unfortunate’s head and still find its target. Ignoring everything but my target, I slip my finger behind the trigger, exhale, and squeeze.

“Do you, Josef Shiloh, take Maya Lyons to be your lawfully wedded wife, promising to love and cherish, through joy and sorrow, sickness and health, and whatever challenges you may face, for as long as you both shall live?”

“I do,” I say.

The words come fast. Fearless. I love the woman standing across from me. She’s perfect, and I make the promise with no concern about later breaking it.

The minister turns to Maya and smiles. Who couldn’t smile at a woman like this? She’s strong and sharp, like a sword, but also soft and gentle in a way I’ve never experienced. Her black hair, spilling from a bun in curly loops, looks even darker against the stark white of her wedding gown. She smiles at me, and I want this day to be over so the night can begin.

“Do you, Maya Lyons, take Josef Shiloh to be your lawfully wedded husband, promising to love and cherish, through joy and sorrow, sickness and health, and whatever challenges you may face, for as long as you both shall—”

“I do,” she says.

“She can’t even wait for me to finish the question,” the minister jokes, getting a laugh out of the full church. I glance to my parents. My mother’s tears are matched only by those of Aunt Allenby. They hold hands, sisters-in-law who seem more like two halves of the same soul.

Uncle Hugh gives me a thumbs-up, a far less traditional man than my father. Speaking of my father, he actually looks proud, wearing his black kippah hat emblazoned with the Star of David so everyone knows the gentile woman is marrying a Jew. He will welcome religious arguments after the ceremony, but for now he’s happy to be happy.

I clap my hands together and rub them in anticipation. “Okay, who’s got the rings?”

Hanging upside down for any length of time is a fairly uncomfortable affair. Hanging upside down for four hours, inside the ventilation system of a penthouse, sixty-eight stories above Ramat Gan, Israel, is nearly unbearable. But I do it in silence, waiting patiently for the whores in the bedroom below to finish their job. My target lies between them, moaning like a wounded mule.

And then, he’s done. Wants nothing more to do with the women. Shoos them out of the room like he never asked them there in the first place.

I don’t know much about the man, other than that he has close associations within Al-Qaeda, and someone in the company wants him dead, immediately, and disappeared for three days. I don’t know why. I don’t care.

The man stumbles around, mumbling about the whores’ lack of abilities and attractiveness. I nearly laugh when I realize he’s speaking to his own nether regions, which apparently hadn’t performed as hoped. All that mewling was a show, but for whom? The women are no doubt having a good laugh at his expense right about now.

He wanders around the room, clearly drunk and pouring himself another glass. For a man with ties to Al-Qaeda, he’s the worst example of a good Muslim I’ve ever seen. He curses toward the door, his accusatory hand sloshing the drink.

He gasps. Stands suddenly still.

Has he detected me? The air-conditioning flowing past me shouldn’t carry a scent. I’m too careful for that.

No, I decide, it’s them . They’re here. Making my final job a little more difficult. I never had a problem with what I do, or keeping the details a secret from Maya. But in the year since the birth of my son, I’ve had an increasingly difficult time believing that being an assassin, government sanctioned or not, is an acceptable job choice for a father.

So I’m taking care of this last job, retiring from my life as a killer, and joining Neuro Inc., Lyons’s CIA-funded black organization, to help study the creatures I suspect are currently in the room below.

I’m not going in with blinders on. I’ve been part of enough black ops before. Lyons—whose military background and employment at DARPA have been covered up well enough that even my friends in the CIA couldn’t find anything substantial—has given me a way out of this line of work, and I appreciate it. More than that, I’m convinced, like Lyons, that the Dread are a greater and growing threat that needs to be addressed. For the first time since Maya and I married, her father and I have a common interest beyond fishing.

The trick is that the Dread also seem to be interested in me. Lyons thinks it’s because they have no effect on me. Whether or not he’s right, I do see their influence while working. Sometimes they go after my target. Sometimes they disrupt the scene. Sometimes they reveal themselves to me, trying their damnedest to get my knees quivering. This should probably unnerve me, but Lyons believes it gives us a better shot of studying them. My new job description might as well be “bait.”

A shadow flits through the room. My target spins with a yelp as the Dread work him up. Assholes, I think. They’re going to draw attention and delay the op or, worse, send him out the window.

The man drops his glass and bends to pick it up.

A monster flickers in and out of reality, hovering on wings, its four red eyes locked onto the man. When he turns around, my op will be ruined.

What are you? I think, and then drop.

The square ceiling vent clangs open. The man snaps to attention, not thinking to look up. As I descend behind him, I position a noose above his head with one hand and flip off the monster with my other, which is also holding the pulley system’s remote. The Dread flickers and disappears. I slip the noose around the man’s neck and push a button on the remote.

The noose snaps tight as the line is yanked up by the pulley bolted to the inside of the air duct. While the man gurgles and kicks, just two feet from the floor, I unclip from the carabiners holding me upside down and take out a hundred-foot-long roll of plastic wrap. Like a spider, I spin the dying man around, wrapping him in layer upon layer of clear plastic.

In the time it takes him to die, I’ve got him fully wrapped in plastic, head to toe. When he’s done wriggling, I push a button on the remote. The man is lifted into the vent. Once he and the line that had been holding me are inside the ceiling, a thin line attached to the vent cover retracts, pulling it back into place.

Dead and disappeared. That’s how it’s done.