“Cambodia. Man, that was a mother fucker. Surrounded by hostile insurgents and I’m armed with nothing but a machete. The first guy tried to take me without any gunfire. He rethought that when he jumped back, missing a hand. They all opened fire on me when their buddy fell down and started to bleed out. I was fucked, thought for sure.”

Leonard Andrew smiled at the man’s words, cigarette dangling between his fingers. He was sitting backwards in the old, wooden chair, his arms hanging over the chair’s back. Only one light source was valiantly attempting to brighten the room, but the darkness was overwhelming. Andrew brought the cigarette to his lips and drew the smoke hard into his lungs. He’d been told that cigarettes could kill you, but he knew he wouldn’t get to be that lucky.

“But you weren’t, apparently,” Len – as Leonard liked to be called, or again, so he had been told – said to his companion. The other man was soaked through with sweat, his thick beard dripping with perspiration as he went about the business of cleaning and stripping his pistol.

“By the time we hit the village,” the soldier continued, his eyes focused obsessively on the weapon in his hands, rubbing it fiercely with a rag, “there were only the four of us left. Rest of the squad had been caught by some booby-traps left by whoever had been there before us. One guy, swear to God…his head exploded with absolutely no fucking warning at all. Just, y’know…just BOOM! Instant blood shower for the rest of us, early retirement for him. But anyway, when we found…it…in the village, it changed us. We weren’t human anymore.”

Len rubbed a hand over his shaven skull, noticing himself just how hot the small room was. The sunglasses resting across his face were starting to fog, but he didn’t feel it appropriate to remove them. He didn’t want to be responsible for killing the mood just yet.

“The bullets, they passed right through me like I wasn’t there. They couldn’t touch me, and I just waded into the group, blood in the water like a shark. I was the only one alive when the fight was over, and somehow I survived the hike into ‘Nam. That’s when they picked me up, like they knew what had happened to us and were already waiting.”

“Who picked you up?” Len asked, resting his chin on his arms across the back of the chair.

“Tyrannus,” the soldier answered, “they offered me the job right there. I was half-starved, exhausted, covered in gook blood…and they offered it to me just like that. I was given a name. The Breathing Ghost. I don’t even remember my real name anymore. How sad is that?”

“Tell me,” Andrew commanded as he tossed the smoking butt to the floor, “tell me about Tyrannus.”

“They control it all, man,” the soldier replied, wiping at the sweat on his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. “They play governments off one another like a kid with his fucking toys. There’s no such thing as “terrorists” on this planet, son. Tyrannus does it all; striking out at whichever superpower they think is getting too big for its britches. They fuckin’ thrive on the chaos, placing their agents inside every potential power base. Hell, I hear they’ve controlled the U.S. Postal Department for over a decade. No clue why…just ‘cause they can, I guess.”

“And you’re their assassin?” Len asked as he stood up and pulled the chair across the room, returning it to the small table from which it came.

“# 1 killer in the field,” he said with pride, smiling as he snapped the clip into the pistol, “perfect record of wetwork. I’m on assignment right now, actually. Something escaped from their tech-labs a few weeks ago, and they want it taken care of quietly. That’s me, alright…invisible when I want, intangible when I want. I kill and fade away. The perfect machine.”

“It was called Project: ORB,” Len said as he picked up his jacket from the bed, sliding the leather across his arms as he prepared to leave, “that’s what the last assassin told me before he died. I want to thank you, soldier. You’ve been more knowledgeable than anyone else, so far.”

“I aim to please,” the Breathing Ghost said as he finally looked at the man with whom he’d been conversing, “so what do I do now?”

Andrew turned and looked the man in the eyes. He pulled the sunglasses down the bridge of his nose, exposing the pulsing, glowing red that had been hidden behind the lenses. The Breathing Ghost stared into Leonard’s eyes and felt his will slip away even further. “You’re going to forget we had this talk,” Len said slowly, the pitch of his voice almost hypnotic. “You’re going to wait thirty seconds after I walk out that door, and then you’re going to discharge a bullet from that revolver into your temple.”

The assassin was close to drooling on himself as Len turned away, glasses returned to cover his crimson eyes. He opened the door, flooding the hotel room with the soft lighting of the hallway, and stepped outside. The door closed behind him, and he walked toward the elevator. He began to hum as he walked, a tune whose name he couldn’t remember.

He pushed the button that called the elevator. As the doors opened and he stepped inside, he heard the gunshot coming from room 432. He couldn’t help but smile at the sound.

Anthology Two Presents…
The ORB:
“Eye Contact”
Written and Created by Chris Munn

TYRANNUS File 0001001709 / For Level 11 Eyes Only

Subject: Leonard “Len” Andrew
Code Identity:

The ORB (Optical Radiance Breaker)

Subject Specs: Agent ORB has been outfitted with a prototype of the
experimental Skullduggery Project; frontal lobe and greater skull
area have been replaced with cybernetic equivalents. Agent possesses
unparalleled thought speed due to micro-processor installed in brain;
hypnotic abilities due to subliminal message pulse sent via light
spectrum; illusion-casting software that projects 3-D real-time
scenarios limited only by agent’s imagination. Agent can also
infiltrate any computer system via data port installed behind left
ear.

Current Status: Agent ORB is to be considered AWOL after an
unsuccessful infiltration of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Agent’s programming has been compromised; worst-case-scenario
procedure indicates that agent will seek out contacts in life prior
to joining TYRANNUS. !WARNING! Subject should be considered
extremely hostile. No TYRANNUS agent is to approach subject alone,
for fear of falling under mental domination.

END FILE.

She tapped her pen repeatedly on the metal desk, nervously reading the file open on her desktop computer. Her name was Courtney Frost, and she was the second-in-command of the most powerful organization in the history of the world: Tyrannus. Nothing escaped her notice, and she had been personally responsible for events as important as the assassination of world leaders to ones as trivial as what movies won Oscars in a given year.

And for the first time in a decade, what she was reading was causing her to break into a cold sweat.

“The Breathing Ghost is dead,” her advisor said from his position in front of her, standing a few feet away from her desk, “we recovered his body from a D.C. hotel room. Self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head; he apparently committed suicide.”

“Like hell he did, Neal,” Frost replied, her fingers rubbing her eyes beneath her black-rimmed glasses, her vision strained from too much time spent staring at the computer monitor, “Andrew killed him…controlled him into killing himself, rather. Tell me, why the fuck wasn’t I told about any of this?”

“The Skullduggery heads thought they could contain the subject’s escape without alerting their superiors,” Neal Trapper answered, his fingers punching up information from his handled PDA, “suffice it to say, the men responsible have been given their severance pay with extreme prejudice.”

“God help us all if Calypso finds out about this,” Courtney whispered, her eyes again reading over the secured file on the monitor. “At least Andrew didn’t get captured by the Agency. Is there anything else about this nightmare that I should be made aware of?”

“Oh, yes,” her aide said with a sigh, “it would appear that the Breathing Ghost was the second of three operatives that Skullduggery sent after the ORB.”

Frost lifted her eyes in Trapper’s direction.

“The Orphan is in the field,” he continued, “and has been ordered to terminate the subject by any means necessary. Attempts to contact him have met with failure, I’m afraid to say.”

“If the Orphan’s after him,” Frost stated as she rose from her chair, tying her lengthy black hair back into a ponytail, “then it’s clear what we have to do. We have to find Leonard Andrew’s family before anyone else does.”

***

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Washington, D.C.

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“Do you need help with anything, sir?”

Len looked over the lenses of his sunglasses, his eyes narrowed at the young girl in the tight blouse that conformed snugly to her ample bust. “Alyssa,” he answered, reading her name from the nametag affixed to her right breast, “look at me.”

He ever-so-slightly pulled the glasses down onto the bridge of his nose, exposing the fiber-optic lenses that had replaced his human eyes. The pulses of light burrowed into the girl’s higher brain functions, bending her to his will. Her brain was a piece of code that he was overwriting with his own commands. “I’d like a cup of coffee, black as midnight. After you fetch it, you’re going to forget about me. If I need you again, I’ll give the command word.”

“Of course, sir,” she replied, the smile starting to slip slightly on her vacant face.

“Oh, one more thing,” he said just before she turned away, “write down your phone number for me when you come back. I may need some relaxation later.”

Alyssa Gold nodded in acknowledgement and then walked toward the back of the café. The sunglasses pushed back to cover his eyes, Len shook his head. Why did he do things like that when he knew they were morally wrong? It was like he had another force compelling him at times, making him abuse his cursed abilities to harm and manipulate innocent people.

Shaking the thoughts from his mind, he reached around to the back of the computer that sat at his table and plugged a cable into the machine’s USB port. After a quick glance to make sure no one was watching him, he pulled the other end of the cable to the back of his ear. Peeling back a small flap of synthetic skin from his neck, he exposed a data-port built into his head. With a little push, he plugged himself into the computer.

Len sat back in his chair, his hands removed from the keyboard and the monitor turned off to black. The Internet came to life in his left eye, the screen displayed on his retinas as he mentally gave the computer’s operating system dozens of unspoken commands. Screenshots flew past his gaze, moving with the speed of thought as he searched for what he was looking for. Tyrannus had eluded him, the organization having covered their tracks so thoroughly that he had no idea where to even start looking. But while his memories may have been fractured and his sense of personal identity a complete cipher, he did have at least one avenue of approach.

The log-in screen for the Central Intelligence Agency database opened before him, and with another set of unspoken commands he had access. He had been sent to infiltrate the CIA, the first memories of his new life, and it was during the mission that he had gained freedom. Independence brought on by the butt of a pistol, new life gained by a blow to the back of the head. His fight-or-flight response had allowed him to escape without being captured, acting on instinct more than rational thought. But now he was clear-headed enough to start researching the man he’d been sent to enthrall: Special Agent Dwayne Taylor.

The agent’s history and records flew past his eyes, his enhanced memory chips allowing him to record and process the information as quickly as it passed by his vision. In less than a moment, the man called the ORB knew everything he needed to know about his target, with one exception. Why had he been marked by Tyrannus in the first place?

“Your coffee, sir,” Alyssa said, interrupting his train of thought as she placed the cup of liquid in front of him, “and my phone number.”

“Thanks, doll,” he answered with a smile, “now get lost.”

He closed his eyes again, returning to his task at hand. He should’ve done this earlier, after he’d regained his bearings, but by then the assassins were on his trail. The Bengal and the Ghost, both agents of Tyrannus, determined to kill him for his insubordination. Luckily, both men had made the same mistake – they got too close to him. But now it was time for answers he decided as he opened up a secure e-mail account, created with ease by his computerized brain. His thoughts were typed out into the body of the e-mail, addressed directly to the in-box of Agent Dwayne Taylor.

Subj: Tyrannus
From: skullfuck007@freehost.com
To: dtaylor@cia.gov

Agent Turner,

This is the man who escaped from the Agency three weeks ago. I am currently on the run from Tyrannus, and I have reason to believe you can assist me in finding out what I need to know about this organization. We will meet at the Lincoln Memorial tonight at 1:00 A.M. I mean you no personal harm, and you will come alone. Tyrannus was desperate to bring you under control, and with your cooperation I believe I can find out why.

Sincerely,
The ORB

***

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The Pine Barrens Gated Community
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

He watched from the back of the van while the old man puttered about in his front lawn. Cameras, placed strategically around the area, recorded the elderly man’s actions from every conceivable angle; capturing his life and sending it directly back into the watcher’s laptop. The neighborhood was picture-perfect, like out of a Rockwell painting, oblivious to the crime-infested city that sat looming over its shoulder to the north.

The watcher was called the Orphan, for more reason than one. It had been simple for him to track down the parents of his target, every aspect of Leonard Andrew’s life made available to him by the handlers of Project Skullduggery. Now all he had to do was wait for the “Optical Radiance Breaker” to catch up with him, which was a certain inevitability. This had not been the first AWOL Tyrannus agent that the Orphan had been sent to retrieve – or sanction, providing on the order – and they all followed the same path, as if there were rules written in some book given to terrorist superspies on the run from their bosses. Eventually, the Andrew family’s only son would come wandering up their front step, hoping that the people that birthed him into this world would harbor him in his flight from justice.

The Orphan smiled in the back of the darkened van, his face bathed in the digital light from his laptop monitor. The kill would be fun, of course, but he sometimes believed that he enjoyed the watching just as much, if not more. The lives of little people fascinated him.

It felt good to have a job he could still enjoy after all these years.

***

Several Hours Later
The Lincoln Memorial
Washington, D.C.

Dwayne Taylor, section chief for the Central Intelligence Agency, gripped onto the collar of his coat and pulled, wrapping it tighter around his body to shield him from the chilling wind that was howling through the open monument. He’d arrived long before the requested meet-time of 1:00, casing out the area for over an hour before making his presence known. The man that he was meeting (if indeed it was the same man and not another clandestine plot by his unknown enemy) had given him nightmares during their last encounter. Every night since the incident, Taylor had awakened in his sweat-covered bed, convinced that someone had stolen his mind. Every night he awoke thinking his attacker had made him do something unspeakably evil. He could never remember the specifics of the dreams, but he knew one thing: the CIA did evil shit on an hourly basis, so whatever had been implanted in his brain must have been some sick business indeed.

“So we meet again,” Andrew said from the shadow of Lincoln, causing an involuntary shudder to run down Taylor’s spine. Dwayne turned slowly, wondering if he’d be fast enough to pull his gun if the fucker attacked. Leonard flashed a smile instead of a piece when he emerged from the dark corner. “Or do we? I remember your name, of course, but I could swear I’ve never seen your face.”

“I certainly remember yours,” Agent Taylor answered, the two men slowly circling around one another, “kind of hard to forget someone that breaks into your office and tries to turn your skull inside-out.”

“I, ah, apologize Dead Poets Society move for that,” Andrew said as he slowly removed a cigarette from the inside of his coat pocket, his other hand raised in a gesture of caution, to keep his contact from overreacting. “You could say I wasn’t really in my right mind that day.”

“That so?” Taylor replied, cocking an inquisitive eyebrow. Len flipped open his pack of smokes yet again, gesturing one towards the other man. “Don’t smoke.”

“I think I do,” Andrew stated with a slight laugh, “some things just feel natural, you know? Reflex memories are all I have left now, apparently. That’s why I contacted you, Mr. Taylor. Tyrannus erased me, transformed me into a monster, and then sent me after you. Why would they do that?”

“I’m the head of the Agency’s investigation into Tyrannus,” Taylor explained, “coordinating efforts between us and Interpol. Your group are some seriously nasty boys, and I haven’t even scratched the surface yet. I assumed – correctly, it appears – that your attack on me was to get me to step in line. Regardless of your failure, Tyrannus has some major players in high places of power across the world, all of them now stepping in to keep me in check.”

“I’m going to kill them all, Mr. Taylor,” Leonard said with an exhale of smoke, “but I’m going to bring their organization toppling down around them first. I need to know who their leader is, the man in charge of it all.”

“All we’ve come up with,” the spy answered, “is an alias: Calypso.”

“Thank you,” Andrew said as he started to walk toward the steps that exited the monument, “I just wish you’d have come alone like I asked.”

“Fuck, he’s made us,” Taylor shouted as one hand tapped on the radio piece in his ear and the other drew his pistol, “swarm now, god damn it!”

The men with guns emerged at the base of the stone steps as he descended down, his gait slow and confident. He raised his hands into the air, cigarette still nestled between the fingers on his right hand. As his left hand ascended, he grabbed the frame of his sunglasses and lifted them along with his arms. “I’ll try to end this with as little amount of blood as possible,” the ORB said to the fifteen heavily-armed Agency operatives in front of him, his pulsing a bright crimson glow, “but I make no promises.”

Andrew flicked the lit cigarette into the air then turned toward the agent closest to him. Before the man could fire, Leonard’s fist crashed violently into the bridge of his nose, while a kick to the side of his knee brought him hard to the concrete. The other agents trained their weapons and began to fire, just as the cigarette – so casually tossed into the air – hit the ground amidst them. The cigarette, impossibly, exploded in a burst of flame as it struck the ground, catching three of them alight with fire. All three fell to their knees and then their stomachs, patting frantically at their clothes to put out the flames that were consuming them.

The other eleven men hesitated for only a moment, but that was all the time the ORB needed. He pulled the trigger on the pistol taken from the agent he’d downed, and six shots struck their mark on six different agents. No wound was lethal, a miracle brought forth by the unerring aim provided by Andrew’s cybernetic eyes, and after only thirty seconds the arresting force was down to five.

“Take that fucker down,” Agent Taylor said as he scrambled down the steps, having lost sight of the target amidst the chaos that had erupted. When he made it down to the base of the monument, he was immediately stopped by five guns pointed at his face.

“Target is secure!” one of the agents yelled.

“What the fuck are you idiots doing?” Turner asked as he placed his own gun down on the ground, confused and angry at the same time.

Suddenly, reality seemed to rewrite itself magically, and what the assembled men had seen was impossibly different. The fire was gone as if it had never happened, the three burned men inexplicably sitting up with nary a mark on them. The men that had been shot were not as lucky, all of them still lying on the ground from their wounds, but none of them were more shocked than the five men who had thought they’d captured their suspect.

“Uh, sir?” one of the agents asked as they lowered their weapons, suddenly confronted with their boss instead of the man they’d apprehended.

“God damn it,” Taylor mumbled, his eyes closed in disbelief, “the bastard got away again.”

***

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The Hyatt Regency Hotel
Downtown Washington, D. C.

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Calypso.

The name burned across his mind, the answer to a question he had no idea how to ask. Leonard didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, but hearing that name scared him into leaving the Monument. He cursed his lack of memory, the cause of the seemingly irrational fear that he was feeling. Who was Calypso?

“I didn’t tell you to stop,” he said, his tone thick with harshness while he lowered his eyes to look down. After a moment, he returned to his gaze at the ceiling. The room had been easy to acquire, the hotel’s computers logging him in as having paid for his stay under a false name and anonymous credit card account pulled from another guest. If there was any upside to his current situation, it was that he could never be denied anything he wanted ever again. But even that wasn’t enough to bring a smile to his face as he lay on the large, rectangular bed, his hands folded up behind his head.

“What if I told you,” he said while continuing his upward stare, “that I bent your will to mine, that I’m making you do this right now? I can make you love me, and it would feel like the most natural thing in the world.”

Alyssa Gold, the waitress from the cafe, raised her head from his lap, a slight smile on her lips. “I’d say you were full of shit,” she answered.

“That was the plan, initially,” he said, again allowing his eyes to drift down to meet her, “but I’m glad it didn’t have to come to that. You’re quite the manipulative little minx yourself, aren’t you?”

“I try,” she replied as she crawled up the bed on her hands knees, finally stopping for a rest when she was beside him. He sighed as she wrapped her toned leg around his and nuzzled her face against his neck.

“What if something happened to you,” he asked, his hand hesitating for a moment before beginning to run fingers through her long hair, “that took your memory away? If you were a tabula rasa, where would you turn to start to piece the puzzle back together?”

“Well,” she said in a sultry whisper, almost a purr, “I’d go to my family. No one knows me better than my parents, and who better to act as a touch stone for my life?”

“Family,” Len repeated, “is it possible I have one out there?”

“Everyone has a family, stupid,” Alyssa replied, raising her head to rest her chin on his chest, “why shouldn’t you?”

“Seems you’re wise beyond your years, babe,” he said as he reached down to kiss her. “Now let’s see what we can do about making you lose all those irritating inhibitions that people accumulate.”

***

The Next Evening
The Pine Barrens Gated Community
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

As one spent butt fell to the ground, joining the accumulating pile, he lifted another cigarette to his lips. Leonard had been standing in front of the house for going on an hour, running through his options over and over. A few steps forward and a knock at the door would reunite him with people who loved him, people he couldn’t remember: his parents.

He’d spent the better part of the day doing electronic research, running down people with his last name through online phone directories. That gave him a list of about 700 along the northern seaboard, forcing him to narrow his potentials. Age was a factor, of course, cross-matched with birth record files on children born approximately around the same time as him. He didn’t remember his birthday, but he at least had a rough sense of how old he was.

When it came time to pick the most likely one, it fell down to simple instinct. Norman and Patricia Andrew gave birth to a child in 1969, a child that had seemingly been erased from every database that Len accessed. A newspaper wedding announcement provided him with a picture of his possible parents from 1967, and the resemblance – if only slight – was there. He knew that it could simply be a case of him seeing what he wanted to see instead of what was really there, but he at least had to try. He owed his parents that much at least, to let them know he was still alive.

So he walked up the sidewalk, finding the courage to go through with his mission. His finger lingered on the doorbell as he pressed it down, letting it ring until he heard footsteps coming toward the door. “Jesus Christ,” the old man, balding with a substantial amount of weight around his middle, said as he threw open the door, “how many times do I have to tell you people that I don’t want The Breed psp They Live by Night hd The Siege move the fucking Watchtower.”

“Um, I’m sorry to bother you,” Len stammered out, “but, well, I think I might be…”

“My God,” the old man interrupted, his eyes large with realization, “Lenny? Is that really you?”

Norman Andrew didn’t even allow his son to answer before grabbing him in a desperate hug, pulling him inside the house so quickly that he was afraid he’d disappear. Len returned the gesture of affection, content that his search for this part of his life was over, even if he felt no connection to the man that was his father. Finally, after a few long moments, Norman released his hold on the younger man and closed the front door behind them.

“We thought you were dead,” Norman said as he led his son into the den, “killed while you were off working that damn government job you got a few years ago. Where have you been, son?”

“Uh, well, it’s a little complicated,” Len replied, rubbing the back of his neck nervously as he spoke. “To be honest, things are pretty bad for me right now. I’ve lost my memory, Dad…it took me a lot of time to track you down because I don’t remember

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you anymore.”

“Lenny,” his father said, “what did they do to you?”

An uncomfortable silence hung in the air after the question was asked, neither man truly knowing what to say to the other. “Well,” Norman said, breaking the silence, “your mother’s gone to the market for a bit. She should be back soon…please tell me you’re going to wait for her. If she knew you left without seeing her…it’d kill her, son.”

“Yeah, I’ll stay,” Leonard agreed. “Say, where’s the restroom at? I could fill up a hydrant, feels like.”

“You grew up in this house,” Norman said, forgetting what he’d just been told. An apologetic look from his son brought the memory back, and he pointed toward the hallway. “First door on the left.”

Len stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, his face wet from the splash of water he’d hit himself with. What the fuck was he doing there, trying to reconnect to a past that was no longer his? These people, he thought, would have been better off thinking me dead.

He left the bathroom to find the house plunged into darkness, the light that was previously coming from the living room now extinguished. He walked easily through the pitch dark, his enhanced eyes providing him with the equivalent of night vision goggles even through his black sunglasses. Something was wrong, something had happened during his time in the bathroom. How much time had even gone by? Len had no idea.

“Norman?” he asked in the dark den, the room in which he’d left his father. No answer came; the room was empty.

He turned to his right and slowly pushed open the door to the next room, which he correctly assumed to be the kitchen. That room, too, was dark, but he still saw the grisly sight that waited him in the far corner. Two bodies laid piled atop one another, their blood having drained out onto the linoleum tiled floor. He crept forward, then stopped to bend down onto his haunches in front of the bodies.

Norman and Patricia Andrew were dead…and they’d been dead for a while, at least a day.

“I thought about killing you the moment you stepped inside the front door,” he heard his “father” say behind him, the words followed by the cocking of a pistol, “but where would the sport be in that?”

Len turned slowly as he stood up, his hands raised into the air at his side. “Who are you?” he asked the man still disguised as Norman, prompting a smile from the murderer.

“You can call me the Orphan,” he answered as he ripped the prosthetic mask from his face, eliminating the features of the older man, “and I kill families. Looks like I can call you “orphan” now, too, eh?”

“Tyrannus, right?” Len asked as the Orphan moved closer to him, his gun still trained on his target.

“That’s right, boy,” the assassin answered as he approached, “and I’m here to teach you a lesson.” He raised the gun to the ORB’s head, the barrel only a few inches from his face. “Don’t fuck with the big dogs.”

The Orphan pulled the trigger on his gun, and Leonard flew backward as the bullet struck him in the temple, his own quick reflexes just enough to keep the shot from hitting him square between the eyes. The ORB landed hard atop the bodies of his parents, blood flying across the wall behind him from the wound to his head. The Orphan kept the gun at the ready as the smoke cleared, wanting to confirm his kill.

“Oh my god, we’re too late” a woman’s voice said from the door to the kitchen, causing the hired killer to spin on his heels, ready to shoot whoever it was that had entered. Courtney Frost raised her hands into the air, while her assistant, Neal, flicked on the light switch beside him. The unexpected blast of light startled everyone in the room, and the Orphan again pulled the trigger on his gun. Neal Tapper fell to the floor a second later, dying from a gunshot wound to his throat.

“You stupid fuck,” Courtney said as she fell to her knees, trying futilely to help her aide, “we’re your god damn employers, Orphan!”

“Tyrannus?” the Orphan said after a rapid succession of confused eye blinks. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry.”

“Calypso is going to have your head on a fucking pike for this, you bastard,” Frost said as Tapper died in her arms. She looked up at the assassin, her eyes swimming with anger. She gasped when she saw who was standing behind the Orphan, her changed expression clueing the killer in on what was happening.

The villain turned back around, but his movement was stopped by a hard punch to his jaw, knocking him off balance. His gun left his hand and slid across the slick tile toward Courtney, who promptly picked the weapon up and raised it at the man that had just seemingly returned from the dead. Leonard Andrew stood over the man that had killed his parents, his head bloody from the gunshot, very much alive after all.

“My skull is reinforced with steel, shit for brains,” he said as he kicked the Orphan in the face with the heel of his boot, keeping him on the ground. The ORB pulled his sunglasses off his face and bent down, grabbing his hated foe’s head by both ears to force a face-to-face stare. The Orphan’s will slipped away, unable to fight Andrew’s hypnotic power. When he was certain the other man was enthralled, he released his grasp on his head and stood back up. “Break your own neck.”

With not a word of protest, the Orphan placed one palm on his chin and grabbed the back of his head with his other hand. With a wet snap, the murderer committed suicide, cracking his spine in two places, twisting his own head nearly 180 degrees around.

“Stay back!” Courtney shouted, the pistol shaking in her hands. Leonard’s eyes pulsed rhythmically, and despite her attempts to not look at his face, she felt her will begin to fade away, to bend toward his thrall.

“You work for Tyrannus,” the ORB stated as the woman lowered the gun against her wishes, “and you’re going to clear up all of the questions I have in this head of mine. What did you people do to me? Who am I?”

“Please, I can’t tell you,” Frost said, her eyes beginning to well up with tears, “please.”

“Answer me!” Leonard shouted. “Who is Calypso?”

Courtney breathed heavily before answering. “You are…”

“…what?” Leonard stuttered.

“Project ORB was your way to gain superhuman abilities,” Courtney explained from her spot on the floor, next to Neal’s body, “a way for you to scratch an itch for taking an active part in Tyrannus activities. You’d built the most dangerous organization on the planet, but you didn’t enjoy sitting behind a desk. So we implanted the enhancements and buried you under a false identity, in case you were caught and it took us time to retrieve you. We just didn’t anticipate things going quite as wrong as they did.”

“You’re lying!” Len yelled, knowing the statement was incorrect. No one had been able to resist his hypnotic power, and he knew she was telling the truth. He just couldn’t accept it.

“Leonard Andrew didn’t exist until the moment we created him,” Frost continued. “Those people you thought were your parents were just people picked at random for our fake file on you. Had you reached them before the Orphan, they would have had no idea who you were.”

“I’m not Calypso,” Len said, refusing to believe what he was being told, “it can’t be possible. If I’m really the leader of Tyrannus, why did you people keep sending assassins after me? It doesn’t make any sense!”

“I’m the only one who knows who Calypso really is,” Courtney said. “I created the Calypso identity with you; I’m your go-between in the organization. By the time I found out what had happened to you, the department that grafted your enhancements had already put the target on your head.”

He felt like crying as he placed his face in his open palms, his whole world crashing down around him. “No, fuck this,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what you say. I’m not Calypso…not anymore.”

“Andrew, please…” Courtney pleaded.

“You’re going to forget what you’ve just told me,” Len continued. “I killed Calypso, that is what your mind knows now. You’ll think that until I come back for you, after I’ve brought Tyrannus down for what they’ve done. When I have the gun placed against your head, that’s when you’ll remember who I really am and what you’ve done to me.”

“Don’t do this,” she whispered as her memories melted and changed to what he wished them to be. Finally, as he walked past her, he kicked his foot forward, connecting the toe against her chin. She fell to the floor, unconscious, and when she awakened her entire life would be different.

And then he left the house, still trying very hard not to cry.

***

Several Hours Later
The Hyatt Regency Hotel
Downtown Washington, D.C.

“What if you found out something about yourself that you didn’t like,” Len asked as he lay across the king-sized bed, “something that would haunt you until the day you died?’

“Your past can kill you, if you let it,” Alyssa said from beside him, the thin white sheet covering her naked body.

“Tonight I learned that I’m a monster, babe,” he explained. “Can a monster turn himself into someone good? Is that even possible, to atone for a lifetime of sins you can’t even remember?”

“I have faith in you,” she said between kisses on his neck, “you just need to have faith in yourself, too.”

“If only it were that easy,” he said softly.

THE END