In their own unique design they were eight elite commandos with each one possessing a very particular skill. Collectively, they were a deadly ensemble of skilled assassins better known to the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the Force Elite.
They were spread across the room, one soldier a facsimile of the other with waxy faces and stone-cold deadness in their eyes.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
Their military issue was black adornment with unpolished boots and a black beret bearing the team’s insignia of two crossing tantos serving as crossbones beneath a grinning skull wearing the same assigned beret.
My children…
Once the lightning died off, the Pieces of Eight became one with the darkness.
“How can you do this to me?” The senator took a step back as an act of self-preservation. “I created you! I created all of you!”
Outside, a loud report of thunder sounded off, which soon melted away to an awkward silence that seemed to last countless moments.
And then with the bravado of an all-powerful senator, Cartwright said, “I demand you answer me!”
The louvered blinds did little to block out the light as lightning once again lit up the study with a spectacular burst that was ethereal in its effects. In that brief moment the senator saw his assassin’s face inches from his own — could feel the shallowness of the man’s breath graze against his flesh and instantly noted the profound hollowness within his eyes.
He never heard the assassin approach, nor did he hear the others leave the room.
He was alone with his killer.
“Where have the others gone?” he mustered, his head searching his surroundings. Was it possible for the Pieces of Eight to move so quickly, so quietly, and so fluidly without leaving so much as a trace that they had been there at all?
“You know protocol,” the assassin told him. “No one is to be left behind.”
“Then they’ll be disappointed,” he answered, “because there’s nobody else here.”
“There is the boy.” The assassin proffered this so coldly and without feeling or remorse, the senator knew they would complete their mission with unbiased obligation and kill anyone under executive order, even a child.
“My grandson is not here,” he reported too quickly.
Another stroke of lightning, the starburst moment providing a glimpse of the face of the man that held nothing more than indifference. His features were young and seamless, his skin tight over angular cheek bones and an even firmer jaw line; he was tall, standing six four with a physique engineered in the weight room with arms, chest and shoulders defined by long hours in the gym. He was also a prodigy in a line of killers, and the most junior of his team.
“Please,” the senator whispered. “I created you. I created the entire team. Without me the Force Elite would be nothing.”
In the darkness the senator could hear the slow draw of a combat knife being pulled from its scabbard.
“You overstepped your boundaries, Senator.”
“So now you see it fit to be my assassin?”
“I’m simply following orders from a higher command. You know that… And you know why.”
The senator backpedaled with his hands held up in front of him in supplication. “Please don’t hurt my grandson,” he pleaded in earnest. “All I ask of you is to let him be.”
“If I did that, then I would be remiss in my duties.”
“He’s a six-year-old boy, dammit!”
“He’s also a threat.”
The room flared up once again. In the assassin’s hand was a KA-BAR knife, a keen edge on one side of the blade, a serrated sharpness on the other.
“I found you — made you what you are today,” the senator said. “Will you destroy the one who made you the very heart of the Pieces of Eight and the lead commander of the Force Elite?”
The assassin said nothing. He merely edged closer, the blade poised to strike, to slash, to kill. Then, “As a courtesy to you, Senator, I’ll make this a quick kill.” With that he swept the KA-BAR in a horizontal arc and cut the senator’s throat, a deep gash that parted like a second horrible grin, the blood a pronounced color of red in the subsequent flashes of lightning as the senator brought a gnarled hand to his neck in eagle-clawed fashion. The other hand swept the darkness for the purchase of the desk’s edge, his world spiraling in a maelstrom of pooling shadows with a greater gloom meeting him from the depths.
Just as he found the edge, the senator fell to his knees and drew his bloodied hand across the panel. It was his last act before dying, the mark a final score as a tenured politician.
The moment the senator’s life bled out at the feet of his assassin, the killer began his search of the study.
Those dossiers, he knew, had to be here somewhere.
The child had heard the exchange from his seated position within the cabinet space beneath the library bookshelves — had heard his grandfather plead for his life. And then he heard the horrible sound of a man trying to breathe through the wetness of his fount that arced through the ruin of his throat.
Soon thereafter the silence became terrifying to the young child, the idea of not knowing what was going on beyond the cabinet door bringing a need to cry out to his grandfather, despite the old man’s warning.
And then the footsteps: soft, light and weightless across the carpeted floor, the footfalls coming closer to the bookshelves, toward the cabinet door.
Grandpapa?
Surrounding doors opened and closed, encouraging the child to bring his knees up into acute angles and flush to his chest. And then he folded his arms across his legs to draw himself into a tighter mass. The act, however, was not just an exercise of self-preservation; it was also a futile measure as the door to the cabinet opened.
The child looked over his kneecaps, his cheeks wet with coursing tears, his tiny chest heaving and pitching with silent sobbing.
The assassin looked at him pensively for a long moment, their eyes meeting.
In the whitewash of a lightning that lit the study, the boy saw his grandfather propped idle against the side of the desk with his eyes at half-mast, and the front of his shirt glistening with the redness of candied apple. Following the child’s gaze, the assassin noted that the boy’s sight was alighting upon the senator. And then he returned his focus back to the child.
As the assassin looked in, as the child looked out, lightning strokes engaged in swordplay that seemed to light up the area longer than usual. In the assassin’s hand was the knife, which the boy directed his attention on. And then he understood: the knife, the senator’s blood-stained shirt, the man wielding the weapon.
And then the boy shook his head violently from side to side in a gesture of ‘no-no-no-no-no.’
In that moment the assassin reached into the recess, placed a soothing hand on top of the child’s head, then swept it downward into a gentle caress along the boy’s cheek. Without saying a word, the assassin withdrew his hand and softly closed the door, leaving the boy to wonder.
The boy was allowed to live.
Several hours after the storm subsided, with the morning sky the color of slate gray and filled with the promise of more rain, the child emerged from the cubbyhole of the cabinet and crawled his way toward his grandfather, who lay against the blood-streaked desk.
“Grandpapa?”
The child grabbed the old man’s arm, felt the stiffness of rigor settling in.
“Oh, Grandpapa.” And then he began to weep, feeling entirely alone.
After the child cried himself emotionless, he noted the blood stain across the desk panel which had become his hiding place so many times he and his grandfather played games of hide and seek. It was the panel of secrets.