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You were supposed to be a professional… Supposed to be. Those are the key words there.
You weren’t awful at your job, it was just getting so hard these days. You missed those first few years where people couldn’t help but post every minute of their day on social media, cheerfully broadcasting their information for everyone to see… Finding them was really easy when you could pinpoint (with a worrying amount of accuracy) as to where they were at any given moment.
People were slowly going back to being more guarded. They had learned that bad things could happen to them if they open up to the wrong people online. People like you … Well, more like people who paid you to get people like them.
You were a hitman. Sort of. Kind of. Mostly. It wasn’t something you had meant to end up in, but mercenary work was getting harder to come by, but there were always people out there who hated others enough to call you to put a bullet in their head. You had fallen into the life.
With that being said, your life went from bad to worse the day you met the Seeds. Originally, you had been on their side. John had talked to a man that talked to a man that was able to get a hold of you. These days, you weren’t the only person he had on call, but… You knew that you were one of his favorites. God only could tell you why.
You normally had a stomach nearly of steel... but the people John had paid you to point your gun towards kept getting more and more morally gray. The first person had been an obvious choice, but you kept losing more confidence the more people that he instructed you to kill.
You normally didn’t even hesitate, but with the longer you spent in the area the more you recognized that the people they were wanting you to kill weren’t for good reasons. Certainly not reasons that you should kill someone over. Intimidate, sure, but killing someone is final. You can’t undo it.
You had always known you weren't a good person... I mean, you were a murderer for god's sake. But you were better than this . So, you decided to take care of things.
You were going to try and fix this area, and you had an idea with a start.
…
You had a clean shot. It could not be more perfect . However, you were nothing if not throughout and your eyes quickly scanned for anything that would impede your escape after you took the shot.
Panic set in when you realized you'd only counted 3 Seeds on the ground below instead of 4. Unfortunately, the one missing was also the deadliest.
You looked again, eyes scanning now more frantically as you lost sight of the one person you really didn't want to lose sight of.
Then you heard the noise of shuffling behind you, and you felt cool metal touch at the back of your head before you even had a chance to react to this information.
Damn .
"Oh. Hey, Jacob." You said, pulling your hands away from your sniper rifle slowly, and lifting them up to show you weren't a danger… at least not to any of the people below. Jacob wasn't here for his own safety, you knew that.
Turning a little, you could see that it was indeed the eldest Seed that had managed to find you. For as old as he was, he had damn good eyesight.
Jacob didn't look amused. "What do you think you're doing?" He asked with a snarl.
"Would you believe me if I said I were birdwatching?" You tried weakly, a small smile crossing your face.
The response Jacob gave was but the gun pushing closer into you, reminding you of its place against your head. "Try again. Which one of us was it that you were aiming for?"
You sighed. "C'mon, we're all friends here, Jacob." You said, continuing to turn, slowly, as the gun moved with you.
It wasn't a lie. You had worked with the Seeds before you realized how morally bankrupt they were. Then again, one of your jobs for them had been to kill people - and it wasn't the first job that you said no to. Maybe you had little room to judge. Your hands were just as bloody as theirs, if not more.
By the time you were completely turned around, the barrel was looking down the middle of your eyes. "Are we really going to do this?"
Jacob silently cocked the gun, and you knew that he wasn't joking with a threat like that. He continued just staring at you, an eyebrow raised now as he waited for you to answer his question. Honestly .
"You already know the answer to that, Jacob." You finally answered his question, your faux smile falling slightly.
Jacob was well aware of who you had intended to kill. He just wanted to hear you admit it. He knew that your aversion to the cult was largely because of their actions- and the only way to change something like that is to take out a very specific person in the cult.
Jacob's jaw steeled.
It was dead silent between you two, so quiet in fact that you could hear the faint noises of the festivities below continuing on, unknowing that their leader almost ended his day with a bullet through his skull. Ignorant of the fact that Jacob just saved his life.
You were never the best at reading Jacob, but you could see a string of thoughts come over his face. You had a sneaking suspicion that he was doing some mental math on whether to keep you alive or not.
You don't think you could offer anything to better your situation, so you kept your mouth shut. Any smartass comment could tip the scales in a way that would end with you in a shallow, unmarked grave… That is, if you weren't put on display to make a point.
Another second passed and Jacob's gun pointed down. You felt the intense sting, and the quietened gunshot. He had a silencer on his gun, which was smart. A bullet pushed its way into your thigh, and you hissed at the pain.
You had been shot before, but this felt different. For a moment, you couldn't picture why Jacob would shoot you if he hadn't planned on killing you, but then you could feel it.
The edges of your vision started to blur, and you started to feel sick to your stomach. The world was starting to get hazy. Another feeling you were familiar with. It was almost like the feeling of losing too much blood too quickly, but it hits you so much faster.
"Bliss bullets." He said, a small smile on his face as you leaned back and felt your eyelids getting heavier and heavier. "Borrowed the idea from John."
You felt somewhere far off your body slip and fall to the ground from where you had been perched, aiming your gun.
"When something breaks you don't just throw it out. That's wasteful. You fix it." The voice was far away, and you have to struggle to hear the words clearly.
" We still have use for you ." Jacob's words echoed in your head as the whole world went black.