Bart leaned back in his chair, spine cracking as he stretched and rubbed his tired eyes. He took a gulp of his now cold coffee and grimaced – it was disgusting. But anything with caffeine was welcome at the moment. The hour was fast approaching two in the morning, and yet his work was far from over. Unlike the last time when he had been at the office at such an hour, this time it was the usual bustle of movement common to its daytime hours despite the time of night, but he could see that everyone was beginning to flag. Onyx had been running them ragged in the past couple of months, moving through various parts of the world and killing off politicians left and right, there was talk of war, there was talk of terrorism, the world was in chaos, which was exactly what they wanted. No amount of security, no amount of precaution was enough to stand in their way.
All Onyx agents were highly trained, and the most dangerous and powerful of them all, was that same assassin who had appeared during the assassination of Taylor Berkley. Despite the passing of time and the many shots they had managed to grab of him, they were no closer to determining his identity, nor were they making any progress in determining his striking patterns, thus, ambush was impossible. It seemed that the assassin also had access to their databases, as all pictures of him would be gone within twenty four hours of appearing on their servers, no matter where they hid them. It was just dead end after dead end.
Sighing, Bart focused on his computer screen again, on it he had opened all of the cases where Onyx involvement was suspected, once more trying to find a pattern. It was a useless endeavour really, for the most part they couldn’t really discern between Onyx assassinations and just regular political plots. The only concrete case they had managed to pull had been the one with Berkley and another a week after it, both of which featured the same assassin. After the second time, however, the assassin had found out that we could track him over cameras, and after deleting our pictures of him, had not appeared visibly again. The assassinations now would happen through poison, fatal accidents, and the like. Every time, all security footage proved useless, there was no man wearing black on the scene, or even a man that somewhat matched the build they assumed the assassin possessed.
Bart also had the suspicion that some of the killings were to throw off any of the USASS’s attempts at patterning them, thus making his task even more useless. But, the management needed to see that there was work being done, and despite the ridiculousness of the endeavour, Bart had to sit there, looking at the computer screen until he came up with something to talk about in the debriefing tomorrow morning – well, more like later today. A steaming hot cup of coffee was placed in front of him, and Bart blearily looked up to see that Rayman, looking as tired as he felt, had brought him the glorious beverage. He smiled at him, and Rayman patted his shoulder and moved back to his office, where he was trying to smooth things over with the irate head office, which was beyond pissed that USASS hadn’t been able to do anything about Onyx yet.
The coffee burned its way down his esophagus and settled warmly in his stomach, but even that couldn’t do anything for his headache. His eyes felt like dry stones in their sockets, and his back was aching in protest for holding the same position for too long; he was pretty sure his legs were numb too. Fuck, if there was only a way to predict these things they could send someone undercover so that they could try and spot the murder as it happened first hand, and send someone to follow the suspect assassin without attacking and thus ending up dead. Taking a deep breath, Bart began to go through the list of assassinations possibly connected with Onyx when he suddenly perked up.
Huh. He was pretty sure that that connection hadn’t been there a minute ago. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the screen again, and there it was, as if surrounded by a halo of light – the connection between the cases. He quickly gathered his files and bolted for Rayman’s office -- he knew their next target.
