Number: 63 Title: A Cold Night Type: Original fiction Plot: ---------- A tale... that's a normal tale. Think of it like a movie; I'll treat it as such. No huge epic, no overly-explanatory descriptions. The meat of the story surrounds Mr. Saint. He alone knows enough about a mysterious group of assassins known as "The Twelve" to stop them. Framed for murder, he comes face to face with Drake Hanton, leader of SEAL Team 9, an ultra-secret SEAL squad looking for three of the assassins Steven Saints is trying to kill. The squad and Saint take refuge in a busy mid- town New York hospital, calling in favors and twisting arms to find out who has framed them and what they can do to save themselves. An action-soaked battle between the twelve most dangerous men and woman on earth pitted against the most highly trained, most highly decorated, most experienced military unit on earth in no-holds-barred showdown in a busy New York hospital. Characters: ---------- Lance Eriks - Homely doctor of amazing skill. Works as Liberty West Hospital. Respected by his peers and calm in the face of chaos; friendly and outgoing, the only thing Lance is missing is his family. They seem to be doing fine without him, but they've been on his mind a lot lately. Drake Hanton - Experienced leader of SEAL Team 9, Drake is a life-long soldier who swallowed the Navy SEAL's most sacred whole. He doesn't buckled under pressure, his natural skills as a leader demonstrate themselves early and often. Helena Mathews - Floor Warden for the ER at Liberty West. Her personal life is a train wreck, her professional life is a spotless list of success after success; Helena Mathews _lives_ her work. Unfortunately, both are about to come clean apart, straddled on top of one another, no less. Joey Targe - Street-smart Janitor and drug dealer in Liberty West. Wise for a janitor, Joey works here because people don't watch him too hard and the pay is good. A little dealing on the side is something he does mostly for amusement's sake. Once a respected wrestler, he's not someone you want to mess with. On occasion, he's done double-duty as a guard for particularly unruly patients and his co-workers claim he might just as easily ended up as a cop. Steven Saint - A trainer of the little known mutli-national special forces group known as Blue Force. A man who's past is a twisted mess that he doesn't talk about and no one delves into (think misspent youth as a nihilist). Said to subsist entirely on a steady diet of nails and human babies, Saint is a self-taught fighter--a natural whose skill is put to work training people to protect rather than kill. The only person who knows who The Twelve really are and what they are trying to do, Saint has been framed for several cases of murder while on vacation. His only way out is over the dead bodies of his enemies. The Twelve - Twelve assassins, ten of which are listed by Interpol as the ten most sought assassins in the world. All are Jane/John Does with zero records to tie to faces, fingerprints, etc. They know Saint and Saint knows them. The how is a little tricky, but he was once offered a position as one of The Twelve. When he found out that they were a single, well-organized and well-financed operation, he changed his ways. The Twelve have left him alone until now, expecting to find a soft and frightened man seven years later. They couldn't be more wrong. Liberty West Hospital - A busy mid-town New York hospital on the East side of Manhattan, Liberty West is home to a hundred dramas on a slow night. Eight floors, spanning four city blocks, it has been declared a war zone by The Twelve. Adrian - A walking enigma, virtually nothing is known about this young man except that is exceptionally dangerous an incalculably violent. He and Steven have a past, and a score to settle... Scenes & Notes: ---------- Opening scene is of the newspaper dude. He's watching TV and bored. He grabs a pack of cigarettes and lights up. He sets down his lighter, picks up his remote, and gasps as he sees the other figure in the room. The second man is an assassin, holding a gun to the back of the newspaper man's head. The man opens his mouth, but before so much as a sound comes out, the assassin pulls the trigger. Cut away at the moment of the gunshot. Steven Saint getting off the subway. He looks a little bit lost, like he's been here a few years ago and knew the place well, and he needs to get his bearings. He stop at the bathroom. As he comes out, a tall (really tall) lanky black guy offers him some drugs. Saint starts talking with the guy in a polite but acusitory manner. The black guys gets worked up, but walks away without starting anything. Without moving his head, Saint makes eye contact with two transit police at the other end of the subway plaza. He goes up to street level and calls a Taxi. Liberty West; a busy evening (sun has gone down, overcast day, kinda grey and dreary outside). Helena is on the phone in the middle of ER Admittance, leaving a message to someone she doesn't walk to talk to today. Lance walks up and asks her about an incoming with cardiac problems. Helena assigns a room number and has dispatch take care of directing the ambulance, then goes to her office. A note is waiting for her from the hospital Chief of Staff. Drake Hanton is on a street corner trying to page a teammate. He's doing a nice little monologue while he's at it. He has been staking out an apartment, like he's a spy or something (certainly not in his line of work). He's quite tired of standing outside in the cold (its threatening snow), and needs a partner to go in. The page fails to get a response. Hell, it's been half of an hour. He pulls out his special authorization letter and checks the date, the walks purposefully to the apartment building. In the stairwell of said apartment building is Saint. He glances at Drake from the third floor, through the window at the 3rd floor landing. He continues to six, not even winded, then goes to number 603, nervous. After a moment, he pulls out a key for the room and looks at the door again. He focuses, then unlocks the door. Nothing happens. He puts his hand on the knob. Nothing happens, he opens the door and ducks aside, bullets missing his head by inches. Someone has been waiting for him, lightly armed, but still lethal. The two fight, with Saint eventually pinning the assassin's face onto the apartment's gas stove a little roasting and he pulls the man away to see that the guy is missing half of his tongue. The other half is on the floor, and a timer in the guy's coat reads 00:17 and counting down. Saint charges out of the apartment, almost casually grabbing a freaked out Drake on the way and going down the stairwell. Saint covers his ears. Drake does the same, though he wants to hold his gun on this strange asshole who knows how to fight Navy SEALs like he does it everyday before breakfast. The apartment is rendered flaming kindling. Scenes: ---------- "Adrian... I thought you were dead." "I thought you were alive, Steven. You never write." "You never call." "You never e-mail." "You never page." "You never message." "You never sign for it." "Still the same predilection for irrelevency." "Still the same obsession with shallow accusations." "Still the same amoral, uncaring sadist?" "Still the same psychotic, animal-raping, murder machine?" "Cute." "Funny." "You look half dead." "You look half alive." "You say that as if I had a choice in the matter." "It takes one to know one, Adrian. What's with the three ring circus?" "Well, you know. I missed New York. Loved the ballet, Broadway, Wallstreet, the market, the people...." "The crime, the murder, the mugging, the corruption...." "That's your problem, Steven, always thinking small." "And you're always biting off more than you can chew. I assume coming back from the dead is some kind of hackneyed 'take over the world' plot?" "Hardly hackney, hardly a plot. But I think the whole 'hero's friend coming back from the dead but turning out to be a bad guy' is drenched in awesome mythos. I couldn't resist." "Old myths are beginning to piss me off today, Adrian, you came at a bad time." "Steven, my old friend. How much longer can you hold that arm up? I'm fresh, while you look like you've gone fifteen rounds with a mutant sewer rat." "Trust me, I've got enough left." ----------