All 86 - A Tribute to Project 86

All 86

Twenty-three. This guy has killed twenty-three people. It started off casual, like any tasteless butcher who tries to settle his own psychological issues with a nine millimeter instead of a shrink. But it got worse over time; we've got three body bags from December alone. And this guy isn't a terrorist with a molotov or a mobster fitting people with cement shoes; he's cold and calculated like a chess player moving bullets. He doesn't target the patriots, the star players, the slaves to liberty, no; he targets the complacent, those who value solace over a compliment. Basically, if you're a bottom feeder, you're at risk. But it's not just the low-tier members of society he goes after, it's the unmemorable. He wouldn't touch the one-armed man with two glass eyes. Why? Because you take pity on that guy, you'd take notice if he was mysteriously killed. And it's brilliant, if I can applaud a spectacle of fearsome acts without being spurned, because it's gone on so long under the radar. We don't notice a pattern if we miss most of the sequence. We finally saw the connections in this whole bleed season, this rampage, when the guy broke his MO and killed one of our best agents, call sign: Cyclonus. That's when he made himself known; that's when he gave us a name: Ichabod.

Why me? Isn't it the human tendency to ask that question? The simple answer is that another human tendency is to shuffle responsibility. When a frantic search finds only a fruitless end, ever hoping for the perpetrator to slip up somewhere, when completing your mission becomes a pipe dream, you hand it off to someone else. I work for the Syndicate of Multinational Counterintelligence. I'm not a suave agent with an accent and a necktie, remedy to the prurience of exotic women. I'm not a burly member of some black brigade that busts down doors and storms in like it's Normandy. I'm the guy who sits in a room lit only by a laptop and fantasizes that he's the vanquisher of evil, a chorus of resistance in the silent decay of justice, in order to find meaning in his work. I'm the guy who studies words, pictures, expressions, names, and the ways people employ them, the circuitry of the offenders. I can spend two hours staring at a John Hancock. With the safety off, other agents are out there bringing down terrorists, drug lords, and infiltrators to brighten your day and help you sleep at night. Me? I'm the one who tells those heroes where to point their guns and just how willing the perps will be to break a stalemate. I'm like the desk clerk of counterespionage. But my work doesn't always set me up for mockery and exclusion.

After my efforts led to the capture of a Syrian agent plotting "The Great Golden Gate Disaster", my wordsmith legacy got around and people in the CI sector started calling me "The Spy Hunter." I rather like it; but we all like playing as something we can't be. That's why we dream. Agents around S.M.C even started requesting the Spy Hunter for their ops. I think that's when my career really opened to chapter 2, when I did a toast to my former self and started a new era. In the following years, I helped to bring down a radical organization called the Six Sirens and an international serial killer calling himself Caveman; jam a murderous psychopath into a cell block and tell me how that feels. It's indescribable. Somehow, when darkness reigns, leads run dry, and everyone else gives up, the truth seems to pull me closer. Violent Dancer was another operation that demonstrated this, when I figured out a spy's location just by analyzing the Anglo-Saxon roots of the codename he'd chosen. A name is important; it can tell me how literate you are, if you believe in little green men, if you intend to start a war, and even if you prefer the sanctuary hum to the metalcore band. You give me a name, a title, a call sign and I'll give you the breakdown; in ¾ of a day I'll have a bio on your guy and the rest will follow. I am, of course, the Spy Hunter.

But then I came upon this Ichabod case. My principal field operative for this one was a guy named Stein. He requested me personally, and when I accepted this case he said it was going to take all of me, all of my experience and thought. Apparently, Stein's theme was to go in guns blazing and tip a secretary to wade through the paperwork afterward. He was part of Team Black, an elite squad that's known for that sort of thing, so this was an interesting pairing from the start.