Claymore. Part II

LOCATION:  Lower Down town. Sector 127. Sub-Level 44 delta

May 11^th 901 SD

The waiting was always the worst part.

Lying there for hours doing muscle exercises to keep them from cramping, and doing it without giving away your location.

Who’d be a Sniper eh?

Well the wait was almost over because the target would be here soon, unaware of the fate that would befall them.

He tried not to ‘daydream’ on the job because that meant a loss of concentration and that in turn could result in his death, which was an occurrence he’d like to avoid.

Except this time he allowed himself to, having been hidden here for two days plus he’d had time to place all his Claymore mines, so that meant a noisy warning if someone or something came sniffing around.

And so he began to let his mind wander a little.

He couldn’t figure why he’d thought of her at first, but this Extermination Warrant had some similarity to that one.

He had been an active Operative over ten years when that Extermination Warrant got handed to him, though it certainly wasn’t the first one he had carried out.

What made it ‘special’ was that the target happened to be a Rogue Necanthrope and they were a very deadly proposition to deal with.

He was surprised at how much data access they gave him concerning the target; it should have rung some warning bells however his hatred of Necanthrope’s was well known, so they must have decided he was the right mug for the job.

The file said she had gone rogue two weeks before and for reasons unknown, and that she was last seen heading into lower down town.

That had been enough for him and he set off in pursuit of his quarry.

The Necanthrope should have ended his life four days later, when she got the drop on him in an alley way. Instead, she had grabbed him by the head and kissed him. It’s wasn’t a playful kiss either, it had been long and passionate and had left him completely stunned.

Then she smiled at him and disappeared.

A week later he had cornered her and set himself up for the shot knowing that he would only get the one chance. If he missed he would probably be dead.

The moment eventually arrived when she came round a corner three hundred metres in front of his position.

 He remembered it well, aiming at her face, waiting for the optimum moment to fire and then gently squeezing the trigger.

It was only after her head exploded in a mess of bone and brains that he remembered her looking straight at him and smiling. Like she knew he was there all along.

That memory had plagued him for weeks after, causing him to wonder why she let him kill her and it was during one of these moments that he realised who she was.

She had been the Ebon woman who had stayed at his bedside all those years ago.

He had cried for hours after.

CLaymore

He was dreaming again….

He remembered it because he had not experienced this dream in such a long time.

His father had been a drunk and a womaniser so his redeeming features were few and far between.

However one good thing he had done was teach Jeremiah how to shoot his CAF R7 Wild Boar hunting rifle. Every other day for two years they would go into the darker reaches of lower downtown and shoot rats and some of the larger creatures that lurked in the darkness.

Sometime around Jeremiah’s 13^th birthday, his father never came home.

Jeremiah knew it was different this time, this wasn’t his father out getting drunk or whoring, this was permanent.

His mother and sister seemed almost relieved that he was gone, and in truth Jeremiah felt the same way too, however he was now the money earner and that meant him finding work.

He saw his younger version working, though he can’t remember how he got the job. Every night after his shift, he’d go home, see his mother and then go out shooting.

He remembered doing this every day and by the time he was fifteen, he could shoot a man sized target in the head from 250 metres with every shot.

Jeremiah was fifteen when Skin Trade took his mother and sister, he was returning from a night of shooting when he saw the lookouts at the corner of his street.

He knew the area better than they ever would and by passed the lookouts easily, as he approached his home he could hear the screams of his sister and at once knew the reason why.

He slipped in through the back of the building and shot the first interloper through the back of the head before the ganger even knew any one was there.

After that it went very badly from there on.

His dream seems to jump erratically through his memories putting events in a totally random order; however everything that happened that night comes back to him.

The Skin Trade gangers had pounced on him like animals beating with lumps of wood; he remembers being at the point of unconsciousness when he heard the first shot and then the silhouettes of SLA Operatives.

They had saved his life but not prevented his mother and sister being taken.

They took his battered body to a medical facility and one of them even stayed with him. That operative was a female Ebon, he couldn’t remember her name but she had been the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

His dream whirled and clouded over then came back into focus as he walked into a SLA Industries recruiting office

Then he woke up