The Killing Bind

Chapter 1: Broken Protocols

The one-shot was just needed. That had done it. The person was dead. One down, three to go, he thought. He had done it so effortlessly. The person was dead before he even knew what was coming. He was cold after the day that changed his life. Changed won't come close. That wasn't the correct word. Altered. That was the word. Completely changed. Lost all connections to the real world. Which gained him a new world. The Ghostland. His job was to kill. He was trained to do so. He was not an FBI agent. Not CIA. DEA. NSA. DIA. He was none of those. He was also not the army, marine nor navy. The man was a part of a clandestine agency only which the president of the nation and the department of defense knows about. When a new president gets elected, the former ones will be made to sign a document that certifies their death if spoken about them. The same goes for the latter. That was the rule. He was just twenty-one and yet, he already had a higher kill count than most of his colleagues. Fifty-nine. He had killed fifty-nine people. All of them deserved it.

He saw another man coming out from the metal door through his scope. He crouched down even more than he already was behind the half-open wall of the top level of a parking lot and aimed the sniper rifle at the man's face while looking through a scope. The gun was a Mk 13 Mod 7, extends sniper range, and was lethal through a combination of factors. It fired a .300 Winchester Magnum round as opposed to the 7.62 mm of the M40. The .300 Win Mag pushes ranges beyond 1,000 yards. He had made some modifications on the weapon, and with the Night force Advanced Tactical Riflescope, it was the best killing machine. Others disagreed. He didn't care about others' thoughts or opinions. It was not how he had always been though. Things had changed.

The man on the ground walked around, frantic. The man aiming the sniper was still calm. His hands steady, his inhales proportional to the exhales. He closed his eyes and opened them back. With one single shot, the other man was dead.

60.

A new milestone.

He smiled at the thought. The smile faded just as it came up as he saw two other people running down to check up on the corpse that lay on the ground.

They didn't come running when the first person was shot. He thought. Then it suddenly hit him like a brick. The other man was a decoy. It was not four. It was always three.

His mission was to kill a group of serial rapists who does what they do together. Ganging up on them and then killing them off. He had received intel that there were three of them. Each of the three killers had a signature. All of them different. And just before he hunted them down, he had received intel that there were four. That meant he had killed an innocent. An innocent that was threatened to be killed. It wouldn't make much of a difference though. In the end, they always end up dead. Nonetheless, he broke protocol one.

Never kill an innocent.

He had broken protocols before but never killed an innocent. His face though remained passive. He wouldn't kill the rest of the two yet. He could, but wouldn't. He looked through the rifle scope and moved his sniper rifle following the two men who were gathered around the body he had shot. Not the decoy. The one he had shot second. The two men began turning their heads hastily left and right, with worried faces. One of the men ran inside the door while the other still kept looking. This was the chance.

He focused the scope on the man and aimed it at a single place. His head would soon reach where the gun was aimed. It did and he took the shot. The man fell back, hitting his head on the ground. Right then and there the one that had entered the building came out, worry in his face, crystal clear. This was an easy shot. One-shot. That is what he did. With that, he killed the last man. His part was done. Now the FBI would rescue those girls inside the building they were in.