milo o'riley - d3 - fin

No one chooses this life.

Sometimes you're just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. You put your faith in the wrong people, or a good deal goes bad, or you see something you shouldn't. Next thing you know, you're facing down the barrel of a gun, waiting for infinity to reach out claim you. Your only two choices are death, or work for them. There's no in-between, and there's certainly no way out.

I sit at the riverfront, under an arching metal bridge that connects two quays together. Here, with the reeds and the bream, I sit and wait with an M39 Enhanced Marksman Rifle sitting lightly across my folded legs. The sounds of the tide lapping at the stone walls keep my heart rate slow and my breathing steady.

I was fifteen. For me, it was my parents fault. We were pretty rich, lived a good life of comfort and relative luxury. My asshole dad was high up in a renewable energy firm, same contractors who worked on the hydroelectric dams in District Five. He wasn't an inventor, or a technical or anything like that, just someone who was good at attracting investors, stimulating business, and sealing deals. Mom never had to work, and despite all her spare time she never made the time to raise me properly. Always too busy, always going somewhere.

I was distant from both of them. Maybe they deserved what happened.

A bad deal was made. My old man wasn't happy with the fortune he'd already assembled. He got greedy, and started looking underground for more ways to make money. I've never been told the details, but a shipment went missing and the cartel lost a lot of money.

They killed both of them.

And now I'm left picking up the pieces of my stupid father's greed-ridden endeavours.

I make the most of the situation I'm in, and in many ways it's more exciting than sitting around in an empty twelve-bedroom house on the top of a lonely hill. They're not bad people, they're just people like me who have fallen between the cracks. Everyone who works hard gets their fair dues, and we all live in relative comfort, scattered across Three as informants and hitmen. Me? Sometimes 'm a messenger, which suits me just fine - no one ever shoots the messenger. Other times they ask me to pull a trigger.

I've killed a lot of people. Most deserved to die. Some didn't.

I don't let it rest on my conscience for too long, try to see myself as a means to an end rather than a person making a choice. Because I don't have a choice. Free will is the only luxury I left behind in that burned down mansion. It's not me who kills people, it's the cartel. I'm no different to the sniper rifle resting on my lap.

A fellow brother meets me, and silently passes me an envelope. I take it and nod for him to leave. Sometimes it's me giving the names, next week it could be him with the gun and me someplace else. I run my thumb along the rim and take out the piece of paper, reading the name of my next target. Just a name, no other information or location or picture. A name.

Matty Haemer.

I get to work.