Ragnarök Ch. I: No Angel Born In Hell

Ragnarök

I

Chapter 1: No Angel Born in Hell

    Alex Rin walked casually up the streets of downtown Los Angeles, doing his best to blend in. His face pointed forward and his head remained level with each step. But behind the dark-tinted sunglasses, his eyes were darting here and there, taking in every detail of his surroundings, taking mental pictures of every face he passed and looking every person up and down in search of concealed weapons.
    Those who didn’t know him might have thought him over-the-top, but it was this kind of obsessive paranoia that had seen him to his present rank alive. What was his rank? Oh, that was a closely-guarded secret of his. He was one of the rare few who knew. That information was – for most operatives – kept strictly guarded by the Bosses. And when the Bosses didn’t want you to know something, you didn’t go looking for it. Of course, Alex kept a sharp eye and keen ear out for any scraps he could find; every bit of information he could gather was a benefit in his job – the kind of job where you couldn’t trust anybody, but had to trust everybody. But then again, he couldn’t have told you for certain what his job even was. He simply followed orders. As best as he could figure, from random leaks and some private research (of the kind that was responsible for the “disappearances” of quite a few people), the project he worked for, codenamed Ragnarök, was a global intelligence agency. The sort of “intelligence” they were gathering, however, went far beyond what most could easily comprehend. According to the Bosses, they were working undercover for the fate of the world. The Bosses’ true motives were known only to them, however. Agents speculated of course, but nobody knew for certain – it was a running joke among field operatives that anybody who came too close to the truth was killed before they had the chance to spread their ideas.
    The organization was kept under wraps, its nature held from even its own most trusted agents. Alex knew very little of his own standing. He might be excelling and rising to the top. Or he might be judged hazardous and shot in the street tomorrow. He knew how they dealt. The Bosses would not hesitate to terminate anyone whom they saw as a threat to the organization’s security. Alex had seen it happen many times. For about three months, early on in his career, he had been Ragnarök’s headsman. Now he was higher in rank. He didn’t know exactly how high. But he knew he was high enough to be regarded. Alex Rin was War. Traditionally shown on a fiery red horse and wielding a greatsword, War was the second Horseman of the Apocalypse – an incarnation of pure rage, given power to take all peace from the world. In preparation for Judgment Day he would ride over the earth, mercilessly cutting down every poor soul in his path, and everyone who was left would turn on each other; and so the world would be destroyed in order to be rebuilt. Alex was the supernatural hitman of the gods, or so the Bosses would have him believe. He wasn’t sure he believed in all that stuff, and so never knew any reason to kill the way he did. It didn’t matter though. He was required to kill so he killed, and his ridiculous salary was justification enough for that.
    His target today was one of those big-shot corporate leaders, a slave driver of a boss: the kind of guy people tolerated for the sole purpose of becoming outstandingly wealthy. Judging from the extensive personality profile, Alex was surprised this guy hadn’t caught a bullet to the head years ago. But business is business, as they say – and right then, Alex’s business was to pay this man an impromptu visit from the devil himself.
    Alex kept walking, headed in the direction of a large office complex. It was just after two o’clock, and Alex wanted to catch him in the middle of as many people as possible. There was a board meeting scheduled for two thirty that day. If he hurried, Alex might be able to catch it.
    It was two twenty-five when Alex walked up to the front of the building, scanning the windows for the man’s office. Twelfth floor, third room on the right... There. Alex looked around; he was surrounded by people, all running to and fro from place to place. Alex turned back to the building. The more witnesses, the merrier. With a look of grim satisfaction on his face, he reached his hand into his jacket and took out a beast of a gun: Taurus’ Raging Bull chambered in .454 Casull – the kind of round a brave man might use to bring down an African elephant.
    Alex walked through the revolving doors, gun in hand, and put a single bullet through the first two men he saw, who were, conveniently enough, standing one behind the other. The second round caught an unlucky desk attendant between the eyes, splattering the wall behind her with gore. Three and four bored clean holes through the kneecaps of the first (and only) rent-a-cop SoB stupid enough to say “Freeze.” The guard, separated from his gun, fell onto the floor and began screaming and frantically clutching at his legs, both of which were bent at sickening angles. Then he caught Alex’s eye, and the howling ceased to the tune of number five and a reload.
    Alex’s left hand reached into his pocket and fingered five fresh rounds. Alex’s right hand released its grip and the gun fell, but his fingers caught it delicately by the release and with a practiced flick of the wrist the cylinder was opened and the spent cartridges were whiplashed out of their holes. Alex tossed the five live shells behind his back and then caught the empty ones in his free hand, placing them in his pocket as he brought the gun behind his back, catching the bullets perfectly in the chambers and flipping the cylinder back into position without a hitch. He slid his finger into the trigger guard and flipped the gun up into firing position, thumbed the hammer back – he despised double-action triggers – and turned to the other side of the room, where a janitor was trying to lock down the elevators. He saw Alex looking at him, and panicked.  Alex pumped two into him as he ran away. He hated runners. Alex walked forward, fired a blind shot behind him as someone coughed, and wrenched the doors open. Stepping inside, he pressed the button for the twelfth floor. Nobody had had the balls to set off the alarm, thankfully. One woman had crawled behind a desk and was reaching for the phone. Alex rolled his eyes and glanced down. Two rounds left. The first one cut the cord as she picked the phone up. The second one went through her neck and planted itself in the wall behind. Alex reloaded once more as the doors shut in front of him, and he smiled a little at the carnage outside.
    On the third floor, the elevator came to an unprecedented stop. Alex sighed and put his gun away: he couldn’t risk a gunshot in a container hanging by a cord three stories above the ground. Before the doors opened, he stepped into the front corner, so that from the room outside he wasn’t visible. Two men walked in, both oblivious to his presence as he slid around the wall behind them, making sure their backs were turned to him. As the doors closed, he stepped forward and snapped the first man’s neck effortlessly. The second man looked around, and a look of pure terror built inside him. It started in his gut and moved slowly up, and after seconds of staring that seemed like an eternity it rose in his throat; but the man’s scream was choked off as suddenly as it came as Alex wrapped his hand around his throat and literally squeezed the life out of him. The man’s last words were something of a gagging sound followed by spluttering and a few incoherent gasps, and finally a soft sigh as he slumped to the ground; Alex drove his knee forcefully into the nerve cluster behind the man’s right ear to make sure he stayed that way.
    The elevator resumed its journey upward and Alex leaned back against the rail and took a small round object from his coat pocket, hooking his finger through the metal loop near the top. As soon as he reached the twelfth floor, he stood up and braced himself. He watched the doors open. Once they had, he just stood there for a second. Then he reached over and pressed the “Close” button. They started sliding shut. Alex drew back, pitched the object as far into the room as he could, and began counting. Three. The doors closed fully, and Alex flattened himself against the back wall. Two. Some screams from the room outside. One. Running footsteps in the direction of his elevator. Zero. An explosion rocked the room outside. The elevator shuddered. Something heavy hit the doors. There were thuds, more screams, an alarm somewhere off in the distance, and the steady pat-pat-pat of water as the sprinklers came on. Alex half-smiled. Sweet music. He jabbed the “Open” button, and the doors rolled back again. A man, bloodied, burned, and half-dead, lay on the ground in front of him. Alex glanced back at the elevator as the doors closed again; the metal appeared to have been freshly painted a very disgusting color. Alex stepped over the body and walked across the room, idly twirling the grenade pin on his finger. There were some groans from behind him. Alex shuffle-stepped, whirled around, and flicked his wrist out. The pin left his hand and buried itself in the right eye of the only other man standing. Alex had a split-second to look over the remaining half of the man’s face and watch the blood start to pool in the creases there; then the man screamed in pain and went down, clutching his eye. He didn’t get back up.
    Alex turned back toward the door at the end of the room and kept on walking, oblivious to the destruction he had wreaked and the lives he had taken. To him, it was completely impersonal. To him, it was all just part of the job.
He opened the door and walked into a spacious hallway. Heading straight down, he paused at the doors to the meeting room. Something wasn’t right. There were many people in there, all of them discussing some piece of business or another, but there was this odd feeling that was telling Alex to just go left. For the first time in a long time he actually hesitated, unsure whether to trust logic or his instincts. After several seconds of furious debate, Alex veered off to the side and pushed through another set of doors and into his target’s office. Once again, that strange yet somehow familiar buzzing started up and Alex wheeled around to meet the butt of a pistol in a blow unlike any he had felt before. Alex stepped back, his head reeling and blood pouring from his nose and mouth. His target stood there, gun leveled, laughing in his face. Alex charged in wildly, not even thinking. His target stepped to the side and put an arm out. Alex, unable to stop himself, was clotheslined and landed hard on his back on the ground. His target brought the gun up and shot seven rounds into Alex’s chest. Wave after wave of searing pain flowed over Alex, and his vision became a white blur. His head fell as white became red and red slowly faded into black. Alex struggled for breath, unable to see or hear anything but that maddening laughter which seemed to come from miles away. He began to feel a numbness which started in his toes and worked its way up his body, stopping at the base of his neck until all he could feel was his head throbbing with every beat of his dying heart. He struggled to get some grasp on things, and with the last ounce of his strength he sat partway up, letting out a soft scream that sounded more like a whine as his chest was compressed. His target, with one round left in the chamber, pulled the trigger. The last bullet hit Alex in the shoulder, slamming him back onto the floor, and he felt consciousness start to slip away.
    He didn’t sleep long; Alex came to just in time to feel his skull caved in by the man’s foot.
    Who puts steel toes in dress shoes?
    He barely had time to register the blinding pain when he opened his eyes and saw the man’s foot again, this time directly above his face and on its way swiftly down. Alex drew in a sharp breath (damn it that hurt, had the bullets pierced his lungs?) and rolled over onto his stomach. The man’s foot disappeared in a cloud of debris as the floor cracked and gave way under his kick. Alex paled to think of his head there. His thoughts were interrupted by a fresh wave of pain and he almost passed out again there on the floor. He caught himself though, and was able to stay awake for most of what happened next.
    It happened in a flash; Alex wouldn’t be able to remember all of the details. Only the man’s maniacal laughter and the constant pain ripping through every square inch of his body stood out clear against the haze. Alex remembered rolling around on the floor some more, his body convulsed in agony and his eyes screwed up in anticipation of the death that he knew he would be powerless to stop. But it didn’t come. He rolled until he hit the wall, and that jarred him awake enough to get some kind of grasp on his surroundings. He had lost his jacket over by the door, and his gun had fallen out of its holster and slid across the floor. It was sitting next to a table, unnoticed by either of them. Alex tried to make his way towards it in a way that wouldn’t draw the man’s attention. He rolled around some more, slid across the floor a little ways, let out a few very real screams of pain, and eventually the man was watching him roll to what seemed to be the relative protection of a small table. Alex was careful to cover his gun with his body, concealing it from the man’s view. The man began walking slowly toward Alex, cracking his knuckles menacingly – he had long since discarded his own empty weapon. Alex, in a moment of sheer desperation, rolled over and emptied the cylinder: three rounds into the man’s chest, one clean through his neck, and one right between the eyes. The man spewed like a geyser and fell back onto the carpet, now soaked with the blood of them both.

    Alex breathed a sigh of relief. Mission accomplished.