Look at them. Stupid sheep herded along to their next assigned destination, fighting for table scraps from their masters who laugh as they scramble in dutiful obedience like abused children clinging to their abusers. Suckers looking to lottery wins as their only hope because each day is the same, stuck in the same rut until death, celebrating a life that never was. They don't care. They don't know how to care. This world gets colder by the day.
Asset 47 walked away from the window in disgust. He'd read about the poisoning of the Flint, Michigan water, a crime so vile and incomprehensible it should be an outrage heard around the world.
But it's not.
Because sheep don't care what you do to them. Especially in the name of the money god. Asset 47 was fully aware of the vile actions the government is capable of doing. He knew the secret spectator thrill the sheep got from looking the other way as evil is committed in their name, thinking that same evil would never attack them. The evildoers delight in this, knowing the rot it causes in the sheep's souls, guilt disabling them from fighting back. That's what gives the evildoers their edge: they know no guilt.
The more he saw of the world, the more Asset 47 took comfort in his path. You can't fight the government. You can't expect the sheep to fight - ever - even if their own lives are on the line. The game is rigged from top to bottom, from puppet peasants to puppet Presidents. But he was going to be on the winning side. Fuck the people. Fuck the assholes he worked for. They deserve each other. By burrowing so deeply inside the system, by being willing to do what others wouldn't, he had the power of the world working for him, not against him.
What exactly was everyone else thinking?
Asset 47 didn't know and didn't care. He got to live the Glorious Lie. Lying for a purpose is sweet. The Invisible Man. He was out of the sewer of poisoned politics, leeching layoffs, and the rest of the insanity careening ever further out of control. His fortress was impregnable. All of society would have to fall before his turn came to pass. The wrongs he committed were desperately denied by everyone but a few disregarded radicals.
Who is left to live? The Nazism of corporations silently creeps through soul after soul like the Angel of Death. At last, a holocaust no one will declare unholy! "Can this be true? Can it really be happening?" Thoughts too horrible for a sheep to bear. The bad shepherds have led the sheep astray from the lush lands until life is nothing more but a mad scramble for survival. That way no one notices the betrayal of the shepherds who are still hailed as good even as the flock dies.
To make his way of life work, Asset 47 knew he could have no vulnerabilities. No family, no pets, no dreams. Nothing outside himself to be used against him. Wholly self-contained. Half the world is trying to save the world from itself. Other half trying to destroy it. No one trying to save their soul. No, that would require stepping out from the pack, finding your own way, a life apart. And that's exactly where Asset 47 wanted to be, looking outside the window a man on the inside.
In movies, to create more interesting conflict, assassins are sent after each other quite often. In real life, it happens so rarely as to be negligible. They are a brotherhood in a club that values its aloof culture above all. Taking out a fellow member would be most distasteful. Even with the scarcity of contact, your fellow assassin is the nearest to family you have - and that need stays regardless of choices to the contrary.
Asset 47 had sweat stained dreams of which he would never speak. He knew his brothers in killing had those same unspeakable dreams. That was their bond. You could see it in their eyes. Asset 47 never forgot those faraway looks he glanced. The recognition. The sense of so many parallel lives kept him alive in the middle of the night screams. Every asset grasps onto those same lifelines.
But now they were to be broken.
Asset 47 never feared an attack from within. He was apolitical, apathetic, and unapologetic. Play games, he did not. But his masters were not so quite religious on those points. While loving and cherishing their assassin toys, the idea of feeling beholden rankled them on occasion, causing that rare order to go out: destroy a toy. A proper pretext was dutifully found, a necessary evil, no choice; their hands were bound. But really, it came down to the simple desire to kill and feed the insecurity to feel in control.
Asset 47 always thought if he were to be killed the most perfect time would be during his weekly walk in the countryside. But his calculating mind also figured that since that was so obvious, no one would dare take that chance lest they fall into a trap. Sometimes a psychological barrier is the most impenetrable. But this one he overvalued.
The first shotgun blast did not kill him. Wasn't meant to. Asset 47 saw his own blood for the first time. His killer was chosen for his quiet ruthless cruelty, one who wouldn't hesitate to rip the fabric of the fraternity; cold to the core. But every living creature has its appetite and the Cold One fed on the fear of his victims: maim first.
In Asset 47 he found a gold mine of dread.
"No! No! Don't do it! Don't kill me!" The totality of terror of a wasted life hit Asset 47 in thundering avalanche. "I lied! I've been lying. I don't want to die like this!"
The Cold One could not repress the smirk that came to his lips. Stupid fool thinking of life! How pathetic. The idiot has done everything he could to sabotage his life. What was he expecting? A dream come true? Naw, man. Only thing you got coming is the nightmares you been hidin'. You really thought you could escape? Dumb ass bitch.
"You don't understand! She's not coming back. She's never coming back...Oh, God, this can't be happening to me!" This is turning into a mercy killing. Too late for love. How big a lie you been livin'? Time to die. "I don't want to die. Help me to live! Somebody please help me? There's nothing for me now. She won't talk to me. I can't live with this! I can't go on. I can't...I can't...," Asset 47 sobbed.
"You don't have to," informed the Cold One, finishing the job, more grateful than ever that his turn had not come.
But come it did - as he too entered the long line of Fatal Futile Men finding out too late what they really wanted in life.
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