Featured image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay
No, a nexus cannot be planned or predicted. It’s the universe’s way of screwing with you for a good laugh. I was once on an OP with another mechanic that went completely sideways because someone kicked a dog. This dude could end the life of any human from elderly to infant without a moment’s hesitation or the tiniest loss of sleep or appetite. His view of the human race was that the vast majority of people in it were neither worthy nor able to actually be parents so it was best to remove their DNA from the gene pool.
All kinds of sick and twisted stuff was in his background file. Not just rumor, in his permanent file. Management had confirmed it and he never denied any of it, actually admitting to the worst of it without being provoked or prodded.
There was nothing in there about him and dogs. There were three psych evals which were supposedly comprehensive and not one of them mentioned anything about a dog. He had been with the company for five years and had three psych evals. Yeah, I knew why he was assigned to me. Nobody else could work with him and I was supposed to kill him. No, I didn’t get the order, but I knew it was coming. He had a code of life nobody could figure out. I was going to be stuck with him until told to end him. In an odd kind of way I think he knew it as well.
Some asshole kicked a stray dog. Wormy looking thing. You could see its ribs from across the street. That was the nexus. We were on recon. Days away from setting up a kill. One of the muscle for the target kicked the dog. It was just trying to get some dropped food. That was all it took. I was on the other side of the street watching the entire thing just as stunned as those around me. They knew who those people were and stayed out of their way. SUC snapped.
Sebastian Ulysses Cramer.
He was right about most people able to procreate being both unfit parents and undeserving of children. Six armed body guards in the open street of a village in Thailand. They didn’t stand a chance. The mark was just as stunned as everyone on the other side of the street. They were all entertained at first. Some wisp of a guy hollering at one of them for kicking a dog in a country where some places serve dog. The body guards all grinned thinking he was going to be a hacky sack for them to kick until it burst open spilling all its contents onto the street. You could see it in their eyes. He was an end to all of their boredom. Then that light went out, even for the mark. SUC picked up the dog and walked off. Nobody followed.
At 5’ 9” and 125 pounds dripping wet, SUC is not an imposing figure. He has had those initials all his life and never been an imposing figure, yet he is still alive and working as an assassin none-the-less.
Information, it’s an important thing.
Had even one of those body guards known just that much about SUC, they would have been grabbing for whatever weapon was handy. Had any of them known SUC entered this life at 13 after killing two football player high school seniors who bullied him, with his bare hands no less, and been field active since he was 16, they might have begged him to spare their lives, or at least made the dude apologize to the dog.
Information, it’s an important thing.
SUC is a King Cobra compressed to rattlesnake size. That reduction in size compounded his speed. Super hero movies like to show the hero flattening a group of guys so fast nobody saw the punch which took them out. There is just a flicker then everyone is either in a pile or spread all over the place. SUC really was that fast. His bony fingers could rip out a throat and be on to the next before the human eye managed to transmit the first image to the brain.
Information, it’s an important thing.
Yes, that was the primary target, but, there were 6 others which would all be at a meeting with this one in a few weeks. Well, “would” being the operative word. Management would not be pleased.
I caught up with him when he bought some food for the dog. He told me to turn the kill in as my own and report him dead, then asked for some of my operational funds. To this day I don’t know how much I gave SUC. A palm full of diamonds and a short stack of Krugerrands. Last I saw of him was on a rickety old boat with an even worse motor and the dog, headed up river.
You don’t get to choose what becomes a nexus in your life. SUC’s parents doomed him to this life when they named him. Before he left he told me what three psychologists couldn’t get with all their psych eval questioning. The only friend he ever had as a child was a stray dog his parents finally let him keep.
Someone should have found that out before sending him to a country where a segment of the population eats dog and considers them to be creatures without rights, much like a head of lettuce. Management, of course, didn’t see it as their fault. They eventually sent HR to have a chat with me about my disobeying the rules, again. Especially to curb the habit I had of telling everyone else in the company about this management fuck-up. Personally, I’m beginning to think nobody in HR gets fired, they just get sent to talk with me while management runs an ad to hire their replacement.
HR had to wait for our little meeting though. I hung around Thailand and continued to do recon. Those fools still got together. They spent close to an hour drinking and laughing in that room. Laughing about how their leader got himself killed over a dog, before they started arguing about which one would now take charge. They didn’t get a chance to finish that argument.
Snap out of it!” I screamed in my head. Why am I thinking about SUC now? That was nearly twenty years ago. Oh, right. Today I’m the guy in the rickety boat with an even worse engine heading up stream. It’s just that I’m really old and don’t have a dog. The three I have with me may well get me killed before I have a chance to find that boat and a river to float it on.
I wonder if SUC would remember me. Thailand wouldn’t be a place the company would think to look for me. Even if they did they probably would skip it if they couldn’t hire locals. They sent teams after SUC for five years every few months, just like clockwork, then they stopped. The cost of extracting their vengeance exceeded their willingness to pay.
Just let a boy and his dog live in peace.
SUC and I worked together for more than two years. I was the only partner who kept him more than six months. In the end, he chose to leave.
Information, it’s an important thing.
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