Black hole

Dressed in black. A cliche, maybe, but Terneptha prided himself on efficiency in all things, including his clothing. Black could go from the boardroom to the killing field equally well, hiding sweat and bloodstains. He wasn't like other mercenaries or assassins, carrying so much gear that they needed to be dropped in by helicopter with covering fire, or ensconced a kilometre away in a ghillie suit with a sniper rifle. Assholes like that make every job seem like a war.

Armed with his black suit, quick wit, keen observation, and more than 25 years of training, he was always lethal.

'This kid must be causing a lot of problems, or they wouldn't have sent me', Terneptha thought to himself. He scanned the area, noting the foot traffic in this fairly busy part of downtown, and sat in an open air cafe. They had been tracking him for hours, and finally he was coming into their snare.

Terneptha was aware of at least two failed attempts on this kid, and still couldn't decide if he was really lucky, or the other operators were terrible. Likely some combination of both, but luck wasn't going to help the target this time.

"Black Mamba, this is Eagle One. Target is approaching the kill box. ETA is 30 seconds." The message entered Terneptha's ear quietly and clearly through the bone conduction receiver built into his sunglasses. He tapped his jaw twice, sending a pulse back in confirmation of the message, no sense compromising his cover in the crowd. This was the sort of care that allowed him to be so invisible.

The kill box had been specially prepared for this target. Terneptha has seen some crazy shit over the years, so, even though it sounded crazy that this target could somehow avoid killshots, he prepared the box as if he could. There would be collateral damage, but that wasn't his problem.

When he was in the jungles, he was ordered to do things that even he found morally repugnant. Eventually though, he came to an almost zen like equilibrium that allowed him to live with the bloody existence he'd come to occupy. He believed that people, governments, money, talent, skills, the weather and everything are all just manifestations of energy. He was just an intstrument moving energy between states, and none of it really mattered in the macroscopic sense. It didn't mean he liked killing non-combatants, far from it, but he didn't lose sleep over it anymore.

"T minus 10 seconds Black Mamba. Target 1 is accompanied by Target 2". Terneptha smiled, then tapped his jaw twice in acknowledgement, waited and tapped 4 more times. This meant they were going ahead with scenario 4, which included the girl being there. He stood up from his seat and glanced up to the building on the left, the alley to the right, and the sedan parked in the street. Then he blended into the crowd. He could already see the beautiful woman walking towards him with an ordinary, somewhat asian looking, teenaged boy.

"I told you Ethan. Imagine the metaverse is an onion... or nesting dolls. Each doll is a universe, infinite and unknowable in all its complexity to its inhabitants. But it is surrounded by another infinite universe....", the beautiful woman said, a little exasperated, as if this is not the first time she'd said this.

"So you're saying there is an infinite number of infinitely sized nesting dolls. That's harder to believe in than the God crap you keep talking about," the boy said. Ethan.

Terneptha slipped behind them like a wraith, then tapped his jaw 3 times. Go time.

He was big without sticking out in a crowd, but the dark suit hid a warrior's musculature hardenend from combat and exteme pursuits. Terneptha swung a calculated knife hand at the side of the woman's neck, near the base of her head.

"Awkghgh," escaped her mouth even as she started to lose her footing. The boy looked shocked, and was turning back even as Terneptha scooped the woman up and dashed laterally towards the parked car and the alley just past it. He needed to be a good 10 meters into that alley before the kid. With the adrenaline, and his strength, her weight didn't slow him at all. He wasn't even looking at the kid, just laser focused on going faster. People in the street were yelling as he jostled and pushed some down in his flight, most jumped out of his way though.

He passed the yellow sedan. T minus 3 seconds. Into the alley beyond.

T minus 2 seconds as he dove behind a metal dumpster.

'BOOM'. He felt the shockwave almost as soon as he heard the explosion. He wasn't that far away after all. Debris, bricks and dust were falling in the alley, but he was protected by the bulk of building, the dumpster wasn't even necessary.

'So long kid', Terneptha thought. The 3 part snare was overkill, but he was paid for overkill on this one. He looked down at the woman. She wasn't really knocked out, just disoriented.

'Secondary objective achieved, the terrorist leader Miri was taken alive', he smiled while he thought about the bonus this meant for them. He tapped his jaw and said, "Black Mamba to Eagle One and Kong, status update"

"Eagle One here, target hit with prejudice"

"Kong here, target hit exactly on the mark. The explosion just singed a corpse."

"The explosion also serves as cover for our egress. Head to location bravo for extraction," Terneptha said as he pulled the woman back up into his arms. It looked much less suspicious to be carrying someone away after the explosion. He looked over his shoulder as he walked away, smoke still rising from just past the mouth of the alley. 'Was there an electric charge there?', he wondered, seeing something like static flashes in the smoke.

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Car thief, kidnapee, highschool student, murderer... Ethan had a lot going these last few months. Add Orphan to that list. He was still processing a lot, and these FORP guys/gals were a lot crazy. Batshit... and fucking hot. It's like they pulled Miri out of his daydreams, but, strangely, over the months she had become his closest friend... Granted, he only talked with 2 people in the organization. Was this stockholm syndrome, he wondered?

Since the last violent attack, they had moved to 3 different cities. Trying to remain a moving target, while leaving no trace. It was hard not to believe Miri and FORP when assassins keep showing up to kill him, but some blue static and a near death experience don't seem like enough for, according to Miri, multiple governments to target him.

Not to mention all the mystic shit she talked about... he liked her, but he was more interested in quantum physics, not pseudo quantum meta-physics.

"So you're saying there is an infinite number of infinitely sized nesting dolls. That's harder to believe in than the God crap you keep talking about," Ethan said.

"Awkghgh," escaped Miri's mouth. Ethan turned to look at her, shocked as a dark suited man started running with her.

'What the hell,' he thought, momentarily stunned still. Then he was trying to run through the crowd after them. He was in trouble though, the wake of people the man and Miri made had them bunching up and slowing Ethan's path through. He could see a break in the crowd ahead, near an alley that the man was running towards. 'Makes sense,' he thought. Out of the crowd, maybe an ambush or escape plan in place.

Ethan broke through the crowd, near a yellow sedan, still heading to the alley, sure that is where they ...

The world stopped. It happened more frequently lately. He didn't move his eyes to look, but suddenly he could feel everthing in his immediate vicinity, like his mind was pushing against the physical world for feedback. He was aware of the people, air currents, buildings, vehicles, a large falling building block...

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There was something beautiful about the slab of falling marble, the light of the afternoon caught on its polished surface, as it rushed towards Ethan from the sky.

Perfectly aimed, it should crush Ethan in the square root of 2 times the remaining distance of 3 meters over g. Or .78246 seconds. Almost enough time to...

The bullet touched the skin of his temple, traveling at 498.63 metres per second, significantly ahead of the gun's blast. It will travel 0.5m (or 1.64 feet) in the next millisecond.

If this all wasn't going on, Ethan might have just felt the pressure of a blast wave from the car bomb detonating behind him.

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Blink