Johan was closing in on his target. She was an information broker named Maria. He had successfully isolated her near the top of the building, but she had been proving remarkably resourceful.

He walked forward cautiously. She was a good shot and was probably waiting in ambush in one of the rooms ahead.

Before he started his attack, he had memorized the layout of the floor in extensive detail. He considered it basic diligence.

If it were him... He silently walked into another room and shot through the wall multiple times.

The short—quickly muffled—shout of pain told him he had probably been right.

Then he was behind her, gun leveled at the back of her head. It was a different one than what he used to shoot through the walls. Those were... a bit messier than he liked, at this range. She heard the click, froze and raised her hands, then slowly turned around. Watching carefully, he let her. It would be good to first verify that she was the target.

For the first time, he got a good look at her.

He already knew from her file, but now that he was seeing her in person, it was more striking. She was young, barely eighteen—around the same age as him. Some of his bullets had hit, non-fatally, but enough that she was bleeding.

And she was gorgeous. Johan had never seen such a beautiful woman.

She wasn't like Ares, with her perfect face and naturally well-proportioned figure.

What made her beautiful was that she was practically blazing with courage and the will to live.

Her dark skin was scarred. Her muscles had clearly seen a lot of use. Every second of her life had probably been won with her pain and her blood.

Even now, her eyes darted everywhere, looking for opportunities

For a moment, he wished he didn't have to kill her. It would be a shame.

The moment passed. He had never liked killing, but had always done it anyway. He would simply be doing it again.

"Please... Don't," she said.

Johan couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed. He had thought she would be the sort to die with dignity. It wouldn't be the first time an initial impression was wrong, he supposed. He sighed.

"I'm sorry about this. If it were up to me, I'd rather not. But it isn't."

He didn't know why he was wasting time talking with her. He wondered if it was because it was his first time murdering someone who was young, beautiful, relatively innocent, and begging for her life, in cold blood.

She had already put down her gun. It was a good move. If she had tried to aim it at him, she would've been dead before she hit the ground. Unfortunately for her, he hadn't been given a "capture alive" option.

She was more innocent than most, but what did it matter? He had always been told that innocence was just another form of weakness. Not that he really cared what they said, but if he told it to himself enough, it might make this easier.

Besides, she wasn't as strong as he'd thought. She was begging for her life to a killer that wouldn't listen. Pathetic.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

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Maria was surprised. She had expected the assassin to finish her off immediately, yet for some reason, he seemed to be hesitating. He had even responded to her plea for mercy.

But now, she could see the look in his eyes darkening. She had, at most, seconds. He was being forced into this, that much she could tell. They were similar, in that way.

"I have a little sister. If I die here, they'll kill her," she said honestly.

If he had been a bit surprised and disappointed before, now he was shaken.

"If I let you go, they'll kill me," he replied.

Maria nodded. She understood. Sometimes, this was just how it happened.

He pulled the trigger.

Maria felt a stinging at the top of her ear. For an instant, she was confused. From the way he dealt with the others, he should've been a much better shot than this... Then she realized he was letting her go.

She could almost hear the message.

Get out of here before I change my mind.

She grabbed some papers off the table behind her, slipped a card on top of them, and threw them at his face. He was transmitting a video feed, so she had to be discreet. She had angled it so that the camera wouldn't catch it. Hopefully he'd understand what she meant.

Then, while he was temporarily 'distracted' by the papers blocking his vision, she made a run for it.

He took a few more shots at her. All of them carefully missed. In the end, she managed to make her way to an uncompromised safe house.

She needed to get whoever it was that sent the assassin off her tail first and secure her sister's safety. Then she'd look into the man himself. Hopefully, he would be able to find some way to survive the consequences of leaving her alive.

Maria was a woman who repaid her debts.

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Solomon had done something, Johan could tell. That was why they weren't killing him immediately.

He could also tell that his brother was extremely angry at him. He should've expected it. There was no way Solomon would accept him dying, even if it was a consequence of his own actions.

He would survive the torture. So would his brother. That was how they were engineered. But that wasn't the point.

Their punishment this time was a warning. Next time he acted up, it wouldn't be only his neck on the line.

He thought it would end with his death, but he was wrong. Unlike Maria's sister, he thought Solomon would have no trouble surviving without him. When he made that decision that his life of endless murder wasn't worth continuing, it had been true. Now, if he wanted to fail, it was a very different choice he would have to make.

He would never be able to show mercy again.

He wondered if Solomon had done it on purpose. He probably had.

Johan wasn't particularly upset at him. That was just how his brother was.

But if he ever got the opportunity, he would skin Ares alive. And if an opportunity didn't present himself, he would make one.

There was a card with an address on it in the pile of papers Maria had thrown at him. When he had originally looked at the pile, it hadn't had any cards on top. It had probably been a last second effort, so he doubted it was a particularly safe place, but it would be worth visiting, at least.

It took him some time to arrange an inconspicuous way to visit.

The address was a clothing store. When he came in, one of the clerics seemed to look at him for a moment longer than normal. Then, while offering to help him with his clothing selection, that cleric came up to him and handed him a note with another location written on it and a date.

This time, when he went to the new location, Maria was there, waiting for him.

"Icarus, of the Ares Initiative?" She asked.

Johan nodded.

"My sister and I owe you our lives. We shouldn't spent too much time here, so I'll cut to the chase: those bombs they've implanted in you are what stop you from escaping, right?"

"Yes. How did you find out? I thought our security was relatively good."

"It is. It's some of the best I've ever encountered. But not all your employees are infallible. I didn't manage to dig up the core secrets, but I didn't get nothing."

"Why am I here? Surely, you understand how unsafe this is."

"I want to repay you. I'll help you figure out how to disable the implants. But it will be a lot more effective if I have a man on the inside."

Johan considered for a moment. He had read Maria's file; she had quite the track record. And she seemed sincere.

It would be a risk, but they couldn't keep living by the whims of a monster, especially now that the monster finally decided to use his greatest weakness to control him almost completely. He had to destroy Ares, but at this rate, his head would get blown off before he even got through her doorway. This might just be the advantage he was looking for.

"I'm interested," he said, "tell me more."