Nothing was normal in my job and I didn’t want that anymore. I wanted something regular, I wanted my wife not looking like she was about to dress for a funeral every time I was going out for a mission. And now I am in it again. And I am in too deep not to care and not to kill again.

I think about Marshall, his face blue and swollen. His features twisted by beating and death and blood, I think about his family and the fact that they didn’t know that he’s dead, yet, and I feel sick. And right then I know that somebody’s going to die tonight, somebody is going to pay for messing with our lives and it won’t be Tash, or Al, or Shane or Cassandra or Carmen.

Maybe I will die. I don’t know. I don’t care. I should be thinking about my son, but right now I know that I don’t have to think about anything else but the right clampdown for those people. I need to think as I used to think long ago. Flawless and detached.

I am ready. To kill, to die if necessary. Not to lose a beat, anyway. And I smile to myself, bitterly. This is what I’ve been trained for. Fourteen years of my life. A very long time. It must be destiny. You finish just the way you started.

”You’re the only one who can hold your head up high,
Shake your fists at the gates saying:
"I’ve come home now!
Fetch me the spirit, the son, and the father.
Tell them their pillar of faith has ascended.
It’s time now!
My time now!
Give me my, give me my wings!
You are the light and way that they will only read about.
Set as I am in my ways and my arrogance,
(With the) burden of proof tossed upon the believers.
You were my witness, my eyes, my evidence,
Judith Marie, unconditional one”

I think about the first time I met Cassandra. I was in a hurry and I don’t remember the reason anymore, I was running down the stairs of the subway, in Milan, trying to catch the last train of the night. The doors were about to close with that quick, typical “puff”.

Cassandra had fallen asleep on her seat. She had woken up just in time to notice that the train was leaving her station. She had jumped off her seat and had reached for the doors. The same doors I was running through.