"Hundreds"
June 22, 2008 Jaime's apartment, Virginia 2357 hours He held her tightly in the darkness. The last one had been intense. Not quite as intense as the first, but almost. This was a side of Paige that he hadn't seen before; a side that he didn't know the origin of. He wasn't sure what he thought of this new side of her, but what he could say for sure was that she was no longer his girl, or anyone's girl for that matter. The girl inside Paige had been twisted, and what had emerged was something else completely. But he still loved her, and that was the reason why they were here, in his bed in Virginia, making plans to kill people. "Hundreds..." Hundreds. As in over one hundred, multiples of a hundred. Over one hundred people that he, along with Paige, was going to kill. Hundreds. Although vague, the plurality of the word implied the enormity of it. She had told him they would be dealing with the people involved in Stratus – he shivered mentally just at the thought of the experience – but he realized that there couldn't possibly be hundreds of people just involved in that one operation. What did this mean? Killing the people who tortured him, tortured Paige and others of his team, they deserved to die. No question. But hundreds of others? He was sure there were reasons. They would be people who threatened the safety of the world, of civilization, people who put families in jeopardy and whose depravations could not be allowed to continue. He sighed, "we have a lot of work to do then." And with that he surrendered to her. The following morning, plans were laid out for the first of the duo's hits. He was another Red Cell leader, greenlisted by Section of course, but that no longer mattered. What mattered was doing the right thing. This guy deserved his fate, regardless of whether the people at Section thought he was more 'useful' alive. With all things planned and ready to go, Jaime and Paige said their goodbyes and headed back to their respective 'normal' lives. On the way back to the headquarters that was his current assignment, Jaime thought over the things he had agreed to be a party to. If he hadn't already been classified as such, he was now, at least in his own estimations, an assassin. Some may even say a murderer; at least they would once the first Red Cell honcho fell with a bullet in his head shot from Jaime's gun. That morning at the range, he took Paige's suggestion and just had the trainees shoot at some targets while he tanked up on caffeine and some light food. It wasn't a bad way to start off a day of work really, and the trainees were at a stage where they knew the routine well enough to need minimal direction. Following the regular target practice he put them through an exercise he particularly enjoyed, that of Sniper Poker, where each trainee had 5 shots to try and get the best poker hand out of the cards displayed on a board 500m in the distance. Each recruit would take 1 shot, followed by the next recruit on down the line until they had all had 1 shot, at which point the first recruit would take his second shot. It was both a lesson in accuracy – playing cards aren't exactly large targets – and in target selection. Jaime sat in his deck chair, feet up with a pair of binoculars in his hand as the third trainee of the group, Hanson, took his second shot. "That looks like the two of diamonds to me, going for a flush there Hanson?" Jaime commented, then looked up as a figure blocked the sun. "Everything under control here?" Agent Banks asked. "Yeah, it's all good. Got `em playing poker at half a click at the moment. Probably move on to some moving targets after lunch, then maybe some stealth tactics." "Good, good. Can you spare a minute? There's a call for you on Line 4." "Sure thing," he stood from his chair, placing the binocs on the seat, "ok guys, take a break I'll be back soon." Jaime went into the office as Banks went back to whatever he was doing before coming down to see him and picked up the phone, pressing the button for Line 4. "Warner speaking. Yeah, hi. Right. I'll be there." Jaime hung up and shook his head. "What now, Michael?" Return