Dark Matter [Completed]

Three

* Author's Note *
As promised here's the shoutout. Congrats to grace_bixby for guessing Assassin's Creed: Black Flag! I couldn't help putting a reference in because I flipping love that game (even though I'm awful at it)!

———

Mercifully, the one part of our lives that Boris doesn't obsessively micromanage is preparing for a mission. After all these years we are capable of getting ourselves ready. Even though the situations may be different, the motions are the same. Know the target, know the cover, know the method, then do it.

Alastair Orion is by far the biggest hit I've ever had, but, in the end, he is only a man. There is nothing he can do to prepare for me. I stare at my reflection in the mirror. "What can he do prepare for a monster...?" I whisper. Because that is what I am: a monster. I can't hide from it. Every time I stand over my victim, watching the life drain out of them, it is reinforced tenfold.

I can play the victim, sure, but in the end I made the choice to be a monster. I could have refused to become Boris' puppet. I could have saved the world, and myself, a lot of suffering. Some may argue that I was a frightened child, but I'm not a child anymore. Yet I still do my master's bidding. In the end, I suppose it comes down to that I don't want to die.

I'm just as human as the next man in that respect. Deep down, I want to live, to be happy... to be loved. Perhaps I don't deserve it, after all I've done, but I want it anyway. That is why I do what I do; why I push my feelings down until I can't hear them any more. But every day it gets harder and harder to find them again. That is the only thing that truly terrifies me: losing what little remains of my humanity. Being consumed entirely by the monster inside of me.

I turn angrily away from the mirror. You have to have a heart of stone to survive in this world. That's the price you pay. Leave behind your heart and cast away. In that case, I really am a natural. God... I wish it didn't have to be this way, but I will make it, that I swear. Somehow, I will make it out of this. Whether my humanity makes it out, too... that is another question.

———

Finally, the big day arrives. The car is waiting outside to take me to the airport for my flight to Ontario. Alex is leaning casually against the banister as I come down the stairs. I twirl around. "What do you think?" I'm currently Olga Morostova, a middle-aged businesswoman on her way to her company's Canadian offices. Not my most flattering look, but Mrs. Morostova hasn't aged all that badly.

Alex laughs. "I think you missed a few gray hairs. You're losing your touch, sister."

I roll my eyes, but the effect isn't the same coming from Olga's face. "Shut up, Aleksei. Anyway, I'd like to see you do better."

He tilts his head thoughtfully. "I would love to take you up on that challenge, but I think you're running late."

"I think you're a coward."

Alex just laughs again. "Goodbye, Nat."

I let my disguise slip for a moment and give him a quick hug. "Goodbye, Alex. I'll see you in a week."

With Olga back in place, I make my way out to the car and slide into the back seat. During the long ride from Boris' estate to Moscow, I flip through the mission file again. With Boris' obsession with Orion, I know pretty much all there is to know about him.

The son of a wealthy, important British MP, he lived a life of privilege until he lost his parents to a terrorist attack. Orion swore to wipe crime off the face of the earth, or get as close as he could. He's been pretty successful at it, too. Orion's success made him fantastically rich. Not only does he have his family estate in England, he built a literal palace in upstate New York. That is where he, supposedly, spends most of his time, and it's where I'm going.

I guess it's where his family lives too, when they're not at one of his penthouses in New York City, LA, London, Paris... you get the point. The guy has more money than he knows what to do with. Anyway, Orion married Olivia Montgomery, heiress to some petrol fortune, and they had two sons: Perseus and Lucius. Obviously, Orion has a sense of dramatic flair.

About four years ago Perseus met an unfortunate end in a car wreck. Believe it, or not, but Boris had nothing to do with it. Not that he wasn't trying; someone else just got there first. Boris has never really gotten over that. Anyway, from what I understand, Perseus was the apple of his father's eye, and Orion was devastated by his eldest son's death. Lucius wasn't much of a substitute.

Orion's second son is in the news nearly as much as he is. He always seems to be being hauled in for causing a ruckus and getting into trouble somewhere. And, according to the gossip, he's left a trail of broken hearts that would stretch from one coast to the other. Not that People magazine is a very reliable source of information. I'll admit it, there's a part of me that is curious to meet this infamous playboy for myself. Just to see if he really is worth all this attention.

The car finally deposits me at the airport, and Mrs. Morostova's private jet. I wish I didn't have to make the journey in-character, or I totally would have lived it up on the built-in console system. Honestly, why install the thing if you're not going to use it?

Instead, I spend most of the flight going over Stephanie's file. Learning her history, her habits, her personality. I've learned to absorb another identity in a moment's notice so, by the end of the ridiculously long flight, I know more about who Stephanie King is than she does. If she was a real person, that is.