The hour of my death was quickly approaching, although I wasn't supposed to know this. I was supposed to feel hunted, lurking around in the shadows, running to save my own life, as opposed to ending someone else's. I wasn't supposed to be the prey, completely unaware of its fate as it stares down the barrel of a cold gun. But, I guess, fate sometimes intervenes when we're misbehaving, and teaches us a lesson we are never to forget.

"Uh, Todd?" My partner had startled me, as my mind had started to wander. "Dude, don't space out on me. This is tres important, and if we screw it up because you're on the moon thinking about Anya..."

The very mention of her name set my heart palpitating. I reached for the Icelandic rune that hung around my nect, and smiled to myself. Six months ago, Anya gave me this rune. Etched on one side on the stone was an arrow pointing straight up, and on the other the word 'warrior'. I always considered myself a warrior, even though I never said it aloud. But Anya told me that the rune reminded her of me. She said that runes held mystical powers; magic for the one who possessed the rune, and she told me that her life energy had been transposed into that rune by a wiccan she met when she was in Manhattan. I said I always wanted a son named Rune, like that skateboarder Rune Glifberg. That was the first time we kissed...

"Todd!" I felt a slap across my arm. "What the hell is wrong with you!?"

I rubbed my arm where it had just recently been slapped. "I, uh, I haven't been sleeping," I casually replied. Which was very true. I hadn't been sleeping. I was spending my nights watching Anya -- I knew some high-powered people had her on their list, but I also knew that they were going to have to go through me to get to her, and anyone is this business knew that that would be damn near impossible.

My partner and I climbed out of the obsidian Volkswagen Jetta we had recently "acquired", and walked at a normal pace into the somewhat dark alley. We never crept along, we always walked at a normal pace. People rarely suspected that you were up to something if you walked at normal pace. It was definitely an art one had to master -- I referred to it as "a tool of the trade"; Anya called it "controlling the nerves" -- and I had it down to a science.

This alley was unusually well-lit. Normally you could barely see -- another sense that had to be finely calibrated -- but this was...somehow different. A few paces into the alleyway and we encountered another colleague, someone I had recognized from my past. An older man, who would have looked like Santa Claus if it weren't for the fact that he was almost gangly. "Ah, little Todd. I am glad to see you," the old man commented. The was usually when he held out his hand, waiting for his "young apprentice" to shake and obey. "It has been...a while, to say the least, no?"

"Not since Stockholm," I thought to myself. I only smirked in response. Rarely did I speak in response to this man, only because responding to him has scorned me before. I absently looked down at the ground, but immediately caught myself, and shifted my glance upward. The old man barked at my partner in Russian, and timidly, my partner responded. Everything they did was in Russian, and since I only knew three or four words (like 'baby' and 'slower' -- Anya spoke Russian, too), I was pretty much just a spectator.

After two or three minutes the Russian ceased, and both the old man and my partner turned and looked at me. The look they both gave me was more than partially disturbing, and I swallowed what could have been a lump in my throat. "Ready Todd?" my partner asked.

I grinned. "As always," I answered. The old man smiled, and opened the door from which he had emerged into the alley. Darkness, as I had figured would be the case, was all I could see. I followed the old man into the room, my partner not far behind, and saw a very faint light at the other end of this extremely large room. A desk, and one metal chair, sat underneath the solitary light bulb, which swung gently. My partner and I slowly approached the barely lit corner, and for the first time in a dreadfully long time, I started to get nervous. Usually when I got nervous it was a very bad sign, especially when I was picking up bad vibes from my partner. "Nervous?" my partner asked, slowing his own pace.

I ticked my head to the side. "Nah, Pascal. Not at all," I said, lying right to my best friend. Not only was Pascal my best friend, he was also Anya's half-brother, which gave me all the more reason to trust him, if only a little bit.

The old man looked back at me, as we all stood in front of the table. Smoke billowed out of the shadow, as the old man who lef Pascal and myself to the table shot us both a look, mumbled something in Russian, and disappeared. "Well," a smokey voice began. "Todd and Pascal. Petrov has told me...great things, about both of you." I heard soft footstpes in the background, walking around in this vast warehouse-like room. "Do you know...why you're here?" the old man asked, putting out his cigarette.

I didn't want to say anything. I didn't want to speak because I really didn't know. No one told me why I was going, they rarely did nowadays. At first they told me everything, every particular, almost as a step-by-step instruction manual for me to commit to memory. But after several dozen jobs, the quote-unquote instructions became monotonous, almost habitual.

Pascal spoke instead. "Well, I'm here to kill someone," he said very matter-of-factly. He was extremely jittery, and I saw his fingers inch closer and closer to his well-hidden gun. "Someone who wronged me. Someone who definitely deserves getting shot right in..." Pascal didn't finish his thought, but nervously tapped his forehead right between his eyes.

"Feel like killing someone tonight, eh Pascal?" I joked, elbowing him.

Something in the pit of my stomach told me that I shouldn't have poked him. Pascal was an extremely volatile person, with an almost non-existent fuse attached to his temper. For someone to have bothered him this deeply? I wonder what they did...

"Calm, Pascal. I...know you're itching to get this over with, but..." The man stepped out of the shadow, revealing his face for the first time. A lump quickly formed in my throat, as the realization of who this man was slowly started to sink in.

Stockholm, 1996. A routine job. Drop the package, collect the money, get the hell out of there before you're caught. This time they were caught. It wasn't my fault, not entirely my fault. I didn't want to be in this anymore, and I was offered a way out. All I had to to was snitch. So I did, the old man was shot several times, and presumeably left for dead.

The told me he could never trace it back to me.