MARCUS

Marcus steps out of the car and walks through the front door of the hotel, nodding at the doorman like he normally does when he is called back from a job. He goes through the lobby and makes his way towards the elevator. He pressed the up button and the doors slid open. Marcus took out his identification card; pressed it against the sensor and pressed the button that goes to floor eight. Before he had gotten there that evening he was told to go to floor eight which holds only conference rooms, but he does not deny an order from his boss.

The elevator doors opened up and he stepped out. Marcus could see that one of the rooms was active and there were people there. He walked over, opened the door, and to his surprise he saw Daniel and his family sitting at the large conference table; he knew exactly why they were all there.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, shame on you Daniel. I am highly disappointed in you. You sold to our Competitor again didn’t you?” Marcus asked. “And before you say anything, I want you to think long and hard about what you are about to say,” he said shooting him a glare reminding him of what happened the last time they saw each other.

“ Yes. I did sell to them, but with good reason, they didn’t give me any choice. They told me they’d kill then kill my family if I stopped selling to the Organization and started selling to them again. They even sent men to my farm to… persuade me.” Daniel said to Marcus scared. Marcus looked down at the middle-aged man and his family. He thought long and hard about what the consequences for Daniel’s actions should be. Then a switch flipped in his mind with an idea. Marcus looked at one of the men standing behind him and stuck out his hand. The guard handed Marcus a gun, a neatly cleaned pistol, and he set it down on the table in front of Daniel. He looked up at Marcus with terror in his eyes, thinking that this was the moment he and his family were going to die.

“I’m not going to kill you, Daniel. Or your family.” Marcus said. Daniel breathed a sigh of relief. “You are.” Daniel looked up at Marcus with confusion and fear in his eyes by what he just heard. “You’re punishment for selling to the Competitor, is that you have to kill all but one out of the four of them” and he motioned to Daniel’s wife, two sons, and his daughter...Emma.

Daniel looked down at the gun, then at his wife and children, then back at Marcus.

“You can’t be serious. You can’t expect me to kill three of my family members?” he exclaimed to Marcus.

“I am quite serious Daniel. Either three of them… or I shoot you in front of them.” he said in a low, angry voice. “It’s up to you. But you can only choose one person to live. There is one bullet in the chamber and two in the magazine, me and my men are going to leave the room and if we don’t hear three gunshots five minutes after the door closes… you die.” Marcus turned and began to leave, the guard nearest the door opened it for him and then one by one all the guards exited the conference room single file. As soon as the last guard was out, he closed and locked the door.

One of the guards looked down at his watch and said that the five minutes was almost up. Marcus remained focus on the conference room. Then he saw Daniel’s silhouette pull the trigger and heard three gunshots, and saw that only one body remain. Marcus told one of the guards to unlock the door and he did as ordered. He pressed a button on his watch that unlocked the door to the conference room and Marcus watched as Daniel and his wife emerged from the room in tears. Daniel was telling her that everything was going to be alright, that he had to do it. That he didn’t want one of the kids to grow up without another parent. His wife looked at him and continued to cry and through the tears and sobbing, she said that they could always start over to which Daniel agreed. Marcus walked over and stood in front of the two of them and said to Daniel that he knows it was a hard decision, but it had to be done.

Daniel and his wife started to walk towards the elevator and passed Marcus. Marcus put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder quickly turning him around so that they were face to face then landed a powerful blow directly to his nose. Daniel stumbled backward clutching his face, blood gushing, down his nostrils. He looked back up at Marcus and just as their eyes met Marcus’s heel was straight into Daniel’s abdomen, he felt searing pain to his stomach, and all the air rush out of him. He clutched his stomach gasping for breath as he fell to his knees and finally into the fetal position.

“Hold him down. Make sure you get his legs too.” Marcus instructed the men surrounding him who were just as shocked as Daniel was.

“What are you doing!? I Did what you asked!?” Daniel yelled at Marcus, face beet red, nose longer bleeding. “I KILLED ALL BUT ONE OF MY FAMILY! I KILLED MY CHILDREN! WHAT KIND OF MONSTER WOULD ASK A MAN TO KILL HIS CHILDREN?!”

Marcus knelt down atop Daniel, casting a shadow over him.

“You’re right. I did ask you to kill three of your family members….but I never said you had to kill all three of your children. Regardless of whether or not you killed your wife, I would have made sure whichever child you chose to spare was taken care of. I would’ve made sure both of you were,” he said in a low voice, “I’m not the monster here, you are. And your wife is right, the two of you could start over, except it’d be a little hard.”

Daniel confused began to feel his belt being undone and jeans being unzipped. He began to struggle, twist, and turn trying to get free of four men holding him down but they were all brutes of men. Marcus looked up at Daniel with a smile on his face as he pulled down Daniel’s pants and underwear.

“You sicko! What the hell do you think you’re doing!” Daniel yelled. Marcus grabbed onto Daniel’s penis, reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out his knife. Marcus flipped the blade of the knife out. Daniel began to freak out and curse at Marcus.

“Get that fucking thing away from me!”

Marcus got close to Daniel’s ear and whispered into it.

“What kind of father would kill his little girl, when clearly I wouldn’t.” And with a swift motion, Marcus squeezed, pulled and sliced off Daniel’s penis. Marcus stood up tossed the dismembered male appendage to the closest guard, then proceeded to take out a handkerchief to wipe off the blood on the blade. He told the men holding Daniel down to get him out of there and to take his wife someplace remote and make sure he got back to work for the Organization and to keep an eye on him in case the Competitor comes to the farm. Marcus turned his back to Daniel as he was being dragged away to talk more specifics to one of the security guards. Then Daniel started to yell other things at Marcus. Marcus turned around to face him.

“You idiot there is no competitor! It was just a lie to keep everyone in line! Specifically YOU! It’s all a front for the Organization to make more money; make it seem like there’s a competing company so that they can steal their own product back, burn down their own property and collect the insurance money!

“They played us all for fools and you fell for it! Just wait until I tell-” BANG! Daniel stood there with a bullet hole in his head, blood slowly running down his face.  Marcus stood there, mouth ajar, wide-eyed at what just happened. He turned around to see one of the guards, arm extended with smoke coming out of the barrel. The two guards holding him released their grip and let his lifeless body drop to the floor. Daniel’s wife screamed for the loss of her husband and the same guard nodded to another guard who put a bullet into her skull. The wife fell to the floor and landed with a thud. The head guard told two others to dispose of the bodies and to get the cleaners up there to take care of the mess. Marcus, angry, pushed the head guard up into a corner and shouted at him.

“What the hell was that!? What was Daniel talking about the Organization and the Competitor being one and the same!?”

“Look, Marcus, Daniel was clearly under duress from murdering his kids, and you cutting off his penis. When people are under that kind of stress they do and say crazy things.” The guard calmly said to the angry Marcus.

“You know what, maybe you’re right,” Marcus replied. Marcus paused and looked at the older guard,  “Hold on, how do you know my name is Marcus? For as long as I have worked for the Organization, no one has ever known who I am. Who are you?” he asked.

“*sigh* Fuck.” the guard pulls out of his pocket a syringe and attempts to inject Marcus with whatever is in it. The guard goes to inject Marcus with the strange liquid but he is quickly stopped by Marcus who grabs his wrist and with a swift motion, Marcus moves his free arm upwards towards the guard’s trapped arm and connects his hand with the bottom of the guard's elbow; then with a large amount of speed and pressure, he pushes up and breaks the guard's arm putting it into a ninety-degree angle. The guard yelled out in pain as he dropped the syringe and it broke against the hard floor. The guard dropped to the floor clutching his broken arm yelled to his men commanding them to open fire on Marcus. Before the closest guard could make could get his gun pointed into Marcus’s direction, Marcus turned around and threw a knife at the guard. Striking him in the forehead it caused the guard to press down on the trigger of his gun and fire an array of bullets all over the room. Some of the other guards were able to find cover but others were caught in the crossfire.

When they knew it was clear, one guard popped out from behind a bullet-riddled pillar only to see Marcus coming straight for him. He started to aim at him but Marcus ducked and landed a powerful blow to the guard’s stomach. The guard dropped his weapon for a moment to catch his breath and then started to engage in a fistfight with Marcus. Every punch, kick or lunge the guard made towards Marcus was unsuccessful only to have the same done to him, but swifter and more powerful. Marcus turned and roundhouse kicked the guard to the face disorienting him giving Marcus time to grab another knife from his jacket flip it out and downward stab the guard in the thigh and then upward several times into his gut.

Marcus looked over his shoulder and noticed the commanding guard whose arm he had broken moments ago standing up with a gun in hand. Knife still lodged in his current victim, Marcus turned the guard around just as the commander raised his arm and began firing at him. Marcus used the now dead guard’s body as a shield to protect him from an onslaught of bullets. Once he could not hear the sound of the gun off anymore and only the clicking of the firing pin, he pulled his knife from the crimson swiss cheese of a body and let it fall to the ground.

Marcus stepped over the body and picked up a gun still in one of the dead guards holsters. The commander began to walk towards him but Marcus fired the gun and the commander dropped to the floor yelling, screaming cursing at Marcus in agonizing pain clutching his left knee. Marcus, stone-faced, pulled the trigger firing the gun again and shot the guard’s other knee. Marcus knelt down to get closer to the guard who then tried to punch him, But Marcus dodged it; punched the guard in the face, took the gun, and shot the guard’s hand.

“You son of a bitch. You’re going to pay for this. Just you wait.” said the bleeding guard.

“And who is going to make me pay? You? You won’t be alive for much longer.” Marcus took the crimson-colored blade in his hand and started to wipe it off on the guard’s sleeve just above his broken elbow. The guard yelled out in agony. Then Marcus took out his lighter to sterilize the blade.

“Oh, what are you going to do? Use me to cool down the blade so that it doesn’t hurt as much when you cut me?” exclaimed the guard coughing up his own blood.

When he pulled the flame away, the blade was glowing orange, the heat radiating off of it and when the guard started to speak again with surgical-like precision, Marcus directs the glowing blade into the guard’s trachea. Marcus stared straight and met the guard’s gaze, and pressed the knife harder into his throat. He listened as the guard started to choke on his own blood. Marcus started to pull the knife out but instead glided the knife out of the guard's throat spraying his blood across the wall. Marcus stood up and looked down at him: he smiled.

                                          

Knowing more guards would eventually come, Marcus ran over to the elevator and pressed the down button. When the doors opened he stepped inside and he pressed the button for the lobby. But instead of going down….the elevator started to go up. Marcus continued to press the lobby button but soon gave up. He accepted that no matter what he did he was not going down, so he just rode the elevator until it ended.

The elevator stopped abruptly; Marcus looked up and it was at the eighteenth floor. He knew exactly where he was. The doors opened and he cautiously stepped out, gun in hand looking around every corner. He noticed the lights were on in the Boss’s office. He knew all the security guards were waiting for him in there. He knew that if he went in there it was a death sentence, but he needed answers to questions he had. He needed to know the truth about everything that was going on, especially with what Daniel said, that the Organization and the Competition were the same. Marcus pondered about that, when he got to the boss’s office Marcus stood outside and looked inside the office he had visited numerous times before. He had questions he needed answered, questions only his boss could answer and if he refused, Marcus would make him answer. Marcus, holding one of the guns he took off one of the guards he killed only moments before kicked in the doors to the boss’s office and got into firing position. But to Marcus’ surprise, there were no guards present. He looked forward at the boss’s desk: the back of the chair was facing him.

“I have questions. Questions that only you can answer.” Marcus said slowly inching towards his boss. “You have been keeping things from me. Why? What is really going on with the Organization and our competitors? Why am I like I am? Who am I?” he continued to ask. Marcus got no response to his questions.

He finally got to the edge of the desk and walked around to face him.

“ANSWER ME GODDAMMIT!!!” he yelled and turned the chair around to face him. What he saw was not what he was expecting to see. The man he saw when he turned the chair around looked like his boss but was completely different. Apart from the worn-down clothes, he had unkempt hair, smelled like a sewer mixed with a bar, and was barefoot. Also, he had a needle sticking out of his arm. The man’s head was tilted back and eyes were rolled to the back of his head. Marcus put his fingers to this man’s neck to check for a pulse: there was not one. He was taken aback by his discovery and then a voice came over a loudspeaker and startled him.

“It’s so difficult to find good help these days you know. You promise these homeless people the opportunity of a better life, also the benefit of getting alcohol and drugs, but they still end up killing themselves after about a year.” the voice said to him. Marcus began to look up and looked around the room to find out where the voice was coming from. Suddenly a panel opened to his left and Marcus turned around instantly and went on the defensive. The voice told him to enter through it. Marcus clutching the gun cautiously entered. After he did the panel shut immediately and lights turned on. Marcus was in another office. He saw standing in front of a window a tall broad-shouldered man. He moved forward to the man who turned around and faced him.

“Hello, Marcus. Nice to see you again. It’s been a while.” the man said as he smiled at Marcus.

“Who are you?” Marcus replied to this man confused. “Who are you and-”

“Who am I? Well to answer that first I have to ask, who are you Marcus?” the man exclaimed interrupting Marcus. Marcus looked at him even more confused and kept his gun aimed at this man in front of him. “Who are you, Marcus? And why are you here?”

“I..I... My name is Marcus. I am a specialist for the Organization. And right now, I am here for answers. And I will get them… by any means necessary.” he says as he points the gun at the man. He pulls the trigger but nothing happens. Marcus continues to pull the trigger but he gets the same result. He releases the magazine to check to see if there are any bullets. To his surprise there still are.

“As soon as you stepped through the doorway the gun automatically shut off. The gun stalls. One of the safety precautions we try to take when you run a company like ours. The reason being we had a mishap a few years back with one of our other agents shot one of the executives and she bled out. Tragic really, but live and learn you know.” the man said to Marcus. Marcus dropped the gun and took out his knife. The man looked at Marcus and told him that was not necessary, that he should just put the knife away. “You have questions that need answering. I can answer them. All you need to do is sit.” and the man pulled up a chair for Marcus to sit in. Marcus walked over and sat down in the chair. The man sat down behind the desk opposite to Marcus. The two men started to talk and Marcus asked his questions.

“Who am I? Is my name really Marcus?” he asked.

“Yes. Your name is actually Marcus. That is the one thing from your past that we let you keep. I mean, haven’t you ever wondered about the last name? Your parents. Where you grew up?” the man asked Marcus. Marcus began to think about these things. He had never thought about it before. He never thought about what his last name was never given any thought to family or his childhood.

“Marcus. You didn’t have a family when we found you. You were a runaway. You ran away from home and you somehow were able to pick the pockets of one of our best agents. That’s how you came into our possession.”

“What about my parents? What happened to them? Do they even exist?” Marcus asked.

“Oh they do, rather, they did. They’re dead. Murdered actually.”

Marcus looked at him with an open mouth shocked. He went to speak but was interrupted.

“You remember the elderly couple who we sent you after a couple years ago, saying that they were hired by our competitors to sabotage our business.” Marcus looked at the man and nodded in confusion and shock, “well, that was them. They weren’t saboteurs. You murdered your own parents.” Marcus thought back to that moment when he killed that elderly couple. He knew at the time something seemed off about them; the way they looked at him and the way that they cried out to him as they were on the ground begging for their lives. Calling him son. Just as Marcus was killing them, delivering the fatal blow with gunshots to the heads for both of them.

“And the heavy woman who we said was a spy? The one we told you to kill by stomach wounds.” the man explained to Marcus that she was not a spy, but a simple accountant who saw the wrong files for the wrong accounts. And the reason she was so large was that she was just a month from giving birth.

“That’s right Marcus. We had you kill an innocent woman who was about to give birth to her first child. Her husband was so devastated when he found out, we told him our guards found her body stashed in an alley not too far from the building she worked in. The alley we had you place her body in. We completely compensated him for what her pension would have been after retirement.  As I understand it he's remarried and has three kids oldest is a girl he named after his ‘deceased’ wife.”

“What about what Daniel said? That the Organization and the Competition are the same?” Marcus asked the man. The man chuckled and told him that Daniel was not supposed to figure that one out, but for one of the many simple farmers that were employed, he was indeed the smartest. Marcus asked the man if it was true and the man said yes. That all of the Competition’s warehouses and warehouse workers Marcus burned down and murdered, belonged to the Organization.

“Do you really think that we would let there be any competition for the empire we’ve built? How many corners we cut and deals we’ve made with all of the cartels to gain all of this power? We had to create the notion there were several different companies going after each other’s spot for top drug empire, while all along it was us. Just pulling the strings. With you as the Organizations enforcer, we were able to make so much money off of the warehouse insurance. Granted we had to pay the families of the workers you killed and burned alive. But hey, a small price to pay to rise to the top. In the sixty years, the Organization has been around We have never had an asset quite like you Marcus.”

Marcus was appalled by all of this information he was receiving. But he still had more questions that needed to be answered. Marcus remembered the small puncture marks he saw on his body and asked about those.

“I noticed small puncture marks on my body. Marks I have never noticed before. Where did they come from? Too small to be bullet wounds. What are they?”

“Ah, those. Well… it’s our way of keeping you under control. Keeping you in line.” the man said. Marcus just looked at him confused and kept asking.

“What do you mean to keep me under control? I’ve been with the Organization for the past ten years. I’ve only been doing this for eight of those years.” Marcus exclaimed, confused. The man pushed a button and all of the walls in the room, the windows, became mirrors. Marcus looked into them and was shocked by what he saw. He saw a middle-aged man, well into what he thought was his fifties. Blackish hair turning grey with a grey goatee, crow’s feet forming around the eyes. Bags underneath his eyes from the countless long nights and excessive rushes of adrenaline. Marcus thought he was in his mid to late twenties, possibly early thirties. But never thought he would be in his fifties. He touched his face and ran his fingers through his hair at the astonishment of everything.

“What have you done to me?” Marcus asked.

“We have done nothing. Like I said the elderly couple we had you kill were your parents. Normally they wouldn’t be your parents unless you were almost fifty. And those puncture marks, needle injections from each time you’ve gone off-reservation and figured out our little secret.” Marcus looked up at the man quickly mouth gaping. “That’s right my friend. This isn’t the first time you’ve found out the truth and that you’ve murdered innocent people. Or people we just needed to have taken off the board. Each time is different. And each time you end up in this spot with myself, or someone else from the Organization’s Board of Directors explaining everything to you. Although, this time around you were much more violent. The past few times you didn’t kill your handler. I have to say, this time around, you were more ruthless, and we are impressed.”

“But you see Marcus, we own your ass. We have you copyrighted down to your very core. We plan on keeping you around for a very long time. You are the best asset we have ever had. There was no way in hell that we were going to let you leave us.”

Marcus looked at the man, and then looked down. Then he looked back up to his reflection in all the mirrors. He got a good look into the eyes of the reflection looking back at him and saw nothing but a tired man who wanted to just rest. Marcus got up out of the chair and started to walk away from the desk where the man sat. Marcus had his head hung low, defeated. Everything he knew was a lie. His very existence, his very being was a lie. He was forced to kill innocent people, all for a cause and for a company that was using him. The man stood up and yelled at him to stop. He told Marcus that he was not going anywhere, that the Organization still had use of him. Marcus told the man to fuck off and stuck up his middle finger. The man got angry, put his right hand in the air, and snapped his fingers. Several armed guards crashed through the walls and blocked Marcus’s exit. Marcus tried to fight his way through, Slashing at some of the guards. He was able to slit some of their throats causing them to drop to the floor and choke on their own blood, he stabbed a couple of them in the chest numerous times but finally, he was subdued. The guards were able to knock the knife from his hand and hold his arms behind his back.

The man opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a syringe. He started to walk towards the guards holding Marcus with all of their strength. It was taking several of them to restrain him. The man flicked the syringe and pushed it a little to get all of the excess air out of the canister. As he got to Marcus he grabbed his hair and tilted his head to the side holding it there and holding it very still. Marcus with fear and anger in his eyes began to yell out for someone to help him.

“Shh. No one is coming to help you, Marcus. Now just try to keep still. This will all be over before you know it. I just need to reset you.” the man told Marcus as he gently pushed the needle into Marcus’s neck.

“YOU SONOFABITCH YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF!” Marcus began to yell just as the man injected him with the serum. Marcus kicked the man away and thrusts the guards forward into the ground. Marcus took his knife out and stabbed one of the guards in the chest. He grabbed a gun from another guard and shot two of the other guards and started to back away slowly through the doorway towards a private elevator all while pointing the gun at the man. Marcus without looking stumbles to press the down button. When the elevator finally arrives Marcus walks backward slowly gun still aimed forward; he presses the lobby button and as soon as the elevator door closes, everything goes dark.

M

The sound of an alarm goes off. A man turns over on his side to turn it off. He gets up and sits on the side of his bed. He stands up, stretches out his arms, and lets out a great big yawn. He walks over into the kitchen of his apartment where there is coffee already waiting for him in the pot. He makes himself a cup, walks over and looks out the window of his high-rise New York City apartment. The man finishes his cup of coffee and goes to the bathroom to take a shower. When he gets out of the shower he goes into his room and gets dressed. Puts on a nice button-down dress shirt, nicely pressed pants and a sleek black sports jacket. He puts on comfortable dress socks and a nice pair of dress shoes. He then goes back into the kitchen to get another cup of coffee and hears a noise. Ding. He goes over to the table where his laptop resides. He opens it up and sees he has a message. He opens it and notices it is from his employer. The email reads:

We have another job for you to do. Details will be sent via text message. Car coming to pick you up in thirty minutes.

Sincerely,

The Organization

The man closed the laptop and a minute later he got a text with all the information that he needed to know and all that was required of him. Then a second text message came in after it.

If at all necessary, leave no witnesses. Do not fail us, Marcus.

END