I’m pretty nervous. I twiddle my fingers, shuffle my feet; and I don’t really know why, but I gotta bad feeling. Jason, my partner and long time friend, seems to feel a bit giddier about this particular mission. But that’s how he always is.
“What’s got you all worked up, bro?” Jason asks me while he fiddles with his colt .45 stashed in his inner coat pocket.
“I’m not sure,” I tell him, “I don’t see why we gotta do this. I especially don’t see why we gotta stick around close to the Popos.”
Jason steps forward, opening the Mark-It-Low labeled door for me, as if saying ‘Shut up, and let’s get this done.’ I step in, my shoes clapping on the marble floor as I walk, and look around at the crowd of people that I expected, which seems to be in shortage today.
“I don’t know, man. Don’t ask questions. That’s all I can really say.” Jason tells me, staring straight at our destination.
We set out towards the main desk, clad in our black and white suits, our eyes hidden behind our shades.
“By saying that, do you imply that you have an explanation but can’t tell me?” I ask him, standing in front of a woman with thick silver framed glasses consuming most of her face.
“No, I’m implying that even if I could offer you an explanation, you shouldn’t have to hear it to justify your acceptance of an order.” Jason says, leaning against the ebony desk.
“May I help you?” She begins to ask, interrupted by me after I think for a moment.
“So you mean to tell me that you wouldn’t tell me if you knew?” I ask sharply.
Jason cuts his eyes at me, annoyed, which I can’t see but I can tell by the way his mouth twists.
“Yeah. Basically.” He says, and then turns his attention to the lady behind the desk.
Surprised, I don’t say much more and halfway ignore what the lady and Jason discuss. He tells her that he has urgent business with Evan Malkier, who is the target. She sends us to an elaborately decorated elevator, which we thank her for and stand in in silence, both of our arms straight to our sides like businessmen. Because that’s what we are. Right?
The elevator stops and the doors slide open with a ding. My stomach lurches with our sudden halt, and I begin to feel the nervousness that I did outside, despite the fact that Jason had himself explained my importance of carrying out orders. We step out into the hallway, walking down the hall in a synchronized fashion.
“One step closer.” I tell myself aloud.
We rush down the hallway and I keep glancing at Jason to see the look on his face. I can’t help but think that there’s something up, but I’m not going to dare mention it. We reach a corner with a coke machine and a fire exit on the long end of one hallway when Jason puts his hand up in the air to signal a stop.
“He’s in that room. You pull the alarm.” He says, brandishing his gun and walking briskly to a brown door which has the target’s name engraved on a plaque.
I walk over to the alarm calmly and pull my gun from my pocket, pulling the lever on the red fire alarm, which triggers the loud alarm to buzz constantly and loudly through the building.
My ears ring, but I adjust to it quickly, and turn to see Jason catch a large, nicely dressed man and push him back into his office. My trigger finger’s shaking, and I can feel my face whiten as the blood rushes from it. I realize that I’ve got my gun pointed out straight at the back of my friend.
The bad feeling that I had earlier comes back to me. The boss said to do this, but Jason himself reinforced it. If only he knew what he had actually convinced me of. I pull the trigger and there’s a mini explosion of forces within my gun, sending one .45 mm round into Jason’s neck. A moment of complete silence seems to pry into my ears and act like a gauze in my brain, blocking some sort of chemical that would naturally connect what I had done with the fact that Jason will never be around again.
I step forward into the room, ignoring the blood and the target’s panicking, and most of all, Jason’s limp body that’s spewed a red coat over just about everything. Shutting the door, I raise my .45 again and send a round into the target. That is, despite what the boss said.
Evan was a connection between the two leading mafias around here. So the boss wanted him alive. He wanted Jason gone because they knew that Jason was messing around with some girl that was related to the boss of the other side. I know that’s the truth, because I met her, and they tried to fake some sort of identity that made almost no sense at all. Even so, she was a nice girl.
I pull out my Zippo and pass a flame from its golden case to a paper white tissue and toss it next to one of the curtains nearby. And with that, I leave. I close the door behind me, walk calmly out of the fire exit, down a ladder, and arrive in a back alley where Jason parked his car. I can’t help but think that he should be jumping down from some high spot of the building after me, telling me to wait up, but I know he won’t be. And he won’t be at the bar, either. Neither will he show up to his date tonight, and neither will he ever go on a mission with me again.

Three months later
I’m sitting in the same bar that Jason and I have spent so many nights in, and I’m feeling a little better about my mistake, considering that he’s not here with me. I down a liquid that burns my throat and set it back down loudly, and then see a figure I recognize come walking through the door.
It’s a girl that looks at me with surprise and rushes in a blurry fashion over to the other side of the seat. She sits down quickly and begins talking in a panic that I can’t so much understand.
“Have you seen Jason?” She asks in coherent tongue.
I look at her closely and realize who it is. It’s the reason that Jason had to be taken out. It’s the spoiled girl under her big boss father’s name.
“I,” I say groggily, “Have absolutely no idea.”
She looks at me in a strange way.
“That’s not true.” She says hastily. “You know exactly where he is. You know exactly what happened to him, and you know why, and…” She begins to weep loudly, choking on her next words.
“I killed him.” I say in a plain sober voice.

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