A figure approaches a
dark wooden door in a stone passageway. He
is clad in a dark purple suit, and though we can only see him from the back, we can see
that he is baldong, to the point of appearing tonsured like a monk, although it is clear
that the ravages of time, not the scissors of a barber, have shorn his head. His thoughts
appear to us, as he takes one last look around. His hand, in white shirtsleeves under the
jacket, turns the iron handle to the dark wood door. His thoughts turn to Kreutz. This was
not what he wanted, in fact, we are told, he thought this whole thing a security risk.
But, he thinks as the door swings back, revealing
dark wooden pews in a large stone walled room, this was his home for years. This building,
he thinks as his eyes sweep the walls. This body, he thinks as for the first time we see
his face. It is not quite the jolly face of the monk that we expected. Within this face
there is something harder than iron, harder than diamond, and it peers at the world
through half moon spectacles. We see the man framed in the doorway, and somehow, he fits.
Almost as if the place were designed to hold him, almost as if this life were designed for
him. As he walks into the quiet room, he tells himself he can at least say goodbye, can't
he? The quiet of the room is suddenly broken. A blonde head appears in our field of
vision, breaking both the silence and the man's reverie with his abrupt 'excuse me?'
The figure is
one we know, and one the man thinks he recognises. He introduces himself as John Pearson.
John tells the older man that he is in danger. The man asks what does he mean, when at the
back of his mind the question is not 'what do you mean?' but 'how much do you know?'. John
reveals some of what he knows, lessening his burden of guilt and knowledge, telling the
man that an assassin is coming for him. Suddenly, the pieces seem to fit. The man knows who he is looking at. His stance becomes at ease,
a smile appears on his face, although not for anything we would find funny, and he tells
John that he knows. He points his finger, and says 'I know you too...' and John's eyes,
like ours, are drawn into the shockingly blue eyes of this man, and they see, behind the
iris, behind the retina, the pinpricks of cold light, as if reflected off the surface of a
gem. The man, the gem, this creature that stands before John, finishes the sentence he had
begun, calling John 'Little dreamer'. Then John knows. He knows what he faces, and he
knows what an appalling catastrophic mistake he has made by coming here. Somehow the quiet
'oh god' that slips from his lips does not feel like enough.
The tableau of
John's terror and the Gem's hunger could have hung for moments or been
snapped in a mayfly second, but suddenly it was broken. Broken like the splendour of the
stained glass window behind the two, as the
beaten form of the Assassin is thrown through it by hands unseen.
[SUMMARY OF PAGES 100, 101, 102
AND 103] Ago/03/01
The assassin's body
crashes into a small altar with bone crunching force. As he falls to the floor, the wind seems to have been knocked completely out of him, and he is unable
to do anything but lie where he is. Kreutz emerges, stepping through the shattered panes
of the stained glass window, a malicious grin on his deathly-white skin. He asks the
Assassin if he is in pain, and when no answer is forthcoming but a low moan, he tells him
this is nothing compared to what is going to happen to him. A swift vicious boot to the
gut increases both the Assassin's pain and Kreutz' pleasure. Suddenly, a voice behind
Kreutz asks what the hell he thinks he is doing. Kreutz turns in shock.
Kreutz finds
himself looking at the gem, who seems furious with this turn of events. Kreutz asks what
he is doing here, and the gem yells 'I live here, idiot!'. The argument between Kreutz and
the gem rages about whether Kreutz has compromised security and lost the Gem a
Dreamwalker, or whether the Gem is risking his own safety being seen in public like this. Meanwhile, the argument is giving the Assassin the
few seconds he needs to recover. He hears voices arguing above him. The voice of his
tormentor, and another one, familiar somehow. Someone he has seen before, although not
like this, maybe not even wearing this face. Suddenly it clicks and he knows who this is.
The Assassin finds himself staring up at the indignant features of his target.
Kreutz is
increasingly worried by this turn of events, and begs the Gem to get back to the secure
room. As he does so, the Assassin gears himself up for the assault, and charges Kreutz,
hitting him in the stomach with almost all his remaining force. As he lines up an elbow to
Kreutz' face, Kreutz tells the Gem to run, and then fights back with a swift left hook to
the Assassin's jaw before being brought up himself with a knee to the throat. As the
Assassin tries to close in on him, he executes a dropkick, taking his weight with his
hands and bringing both feet up to the Assassin's jaw. For a moment, both men are down. As
he draws his gun, Kreutz asks the Assassin if he has any more
tricks up his sleeve. As the Assassin sweeps his legs groom under him, and the gun goes
flying, he realises that this man may have more resources than he knew.
Having grounded
Kreutz, the Assassin makes for the shadows, to recover his strength and regroup. He seems
battered and exhausted and blood is dripping from a number of cuts and grazes on his body.
As he gains the few seconds he needs to catch his breath, he knows he is in trouble. Not for his own life, in which he
places little value, but because if he messes up this close to the target then this has
all been for nothing, and that would be unbearable. He pulls his back up gun from his
boot, and wonders what to do next. The voice of Kreutz closes on him, shouting 'you can't
hide forever, Assassin!'. From one pocket, he pulls a handful of coin-sized flares. He has
run out of the knockout and poison varieties, so this is his only chance. He dons his
sunglasses/goggles and launches the flares
at Kreutz.
[SUMMARY OF PAGES 104, 105, 106
AND 107] Ago/17/01
The light blinds
Kreutz, and he fires, blinded, into the yellow smoke, missing the Assassin by several metres. The Assassin
returns fire, and, with the aid of his glasses, has better aim than Kreutz, landing a shot
through Kreutz' shoulder, effectively disabling him, as the Assassin seeks higher ground,
although the effects of the fight are all to obvious by his battered features.
Kreutz is still
on his knees where he fell, his left arm virtually useless. He seems almost delirious with
the pain and curses himself for underestimating the Assassin. He tells himself that to win
here he has to think like a killer, find the Assassin's weak point, and at the moment that
weak point is that he thinks Kreutz is blinded. Kreutz stumbles through the Church like he is
blinded, but heading purposefully for one point. As he reaches it, he draws his gun,
points it at his target and exclaims 'got you!' in triumph
The smoke
clears, revealing the dark figure that Kreutz was aiming at to be a statue of the Madonna
and child. Kreutz has time for one expression of dismay before he is jumped by the
Assassin, who knocks him to the floor and hits him hard enough to knock him unconscious.
As the Assassin makes a break for it, he decides he needs to make sure Kreutz is out of
action, so he doesn't have to keep watching his back when he is heading for the target. He
takes stock of the weaponry he has to hand. It doesn't look good. One knife, one nearly
empty gun, and a few more flares.
Suddenly the
Assassin spots it. Out in the open, easily grabbable, the gun Kreutz dropped earlier. The Assassin figures this has to be a trap, but trap or not, that
gun could be his only method of defeating Kreutz and getting to the target. The Assassin's
image fades into darkness as he steps back into the shadows, and his shadow moves forward.
[SUMMARY OF PAGES 108, 109, 110
AND 111] Ago/31/01
A hand, no more visible
than a shadow, grabs the gun from the floor,
and the Assassin finds himself armed and dangerous again. As he moves forward to take offensive action,
however, he hears a telltale click from somewhere nearby, and realises this was a trap.
Relying on instinct, he drops as a bullet whizzes past him and returns fire with both
guns, leaping out of the way of Kreutz' spray of bullets.
A bullet ricochets off the pillar the Assassin dives behind. The Assassin realises that he
is in a standoff, and that the best armed will survive, and sadly right now that's not
him. On the other side of the room, Kreutz, with one arm in a tourniquet, surveys the trap
he has lured the Assassin into. He is better armed than the Assassin, but he is losing
blood from his arm and has been seriously weakened. He needs to finish this quickly. In an attempt to goad the
Assassin, he yells to him that there is no way out. The Assassin, trying the same thing,
yells back that Kreutz should have killed him when he had the chance. Kreutz, aiming with
his good arm, vows not to make the same mistake again.
Before the Assassin can move or act, Kreutz fires, hitting the Assassin in the arm. The
Assassin drops, this final would seeming to prove too much for someone already pushed to the limits of his endurance. Or so it seems. Kreutz, a man suspicious by
nature, heads over with a gun trained on the Assassin in case he is playing possum, and to
make sure the Assassin won't rise to his feet again, he puts his gun to the back of the
assassin's head and begins squeezing the trigger...
A cry of 'NO' splits the already abused air of the cathedral, and before Kreutz can pull
the trigger, a bolt of blue energy shoots from the black jacketed
arms of a new entrant into the room, hitting Kreutz square in the chest, and knocking him
through a pew. The camera moves back to show Kreutz' new attacker to be none other than...
...Michael, who surveys the scene, and the
attack he just perpetrated with a comment of 'I HATE doing that.'
Michael bends over reaching the
fallen body of the Assassin. He asks if
he’s all right. The Assassin can barely move but he answers with irony that a 9
mm. bullet has just passed through his shoulder. Michael helps him to get on his feet. The
Assassin removes his glasses and we can see how beaten up he is. He wants to know how
Michael got there. Michael explains that communications were out suddenly and he feared
the worse, so, knowing the whereabouts of the battle, he showed himself through the door
after noticing the broken window. The wound in Assassin’s arm is bleeding a lot.
Assassin
smiles at Michael showing his secret knife device in his wrist and says, ‘I had a
plan, but thanks’. Now is the time of the answers. Michael explains also that the
prone body of his attacker is the one of Joseph Kreutz, head of the Kreutz Syndicate by
day, and security consultant of the Gem by night. Kreutz lies out cold over
the broken pews, his mouth open, blood staining the shirt and part of the wood. Assassin
extracts the knife and asks if he should finish the job. Michael replies that there’s
no need, that he already has an energy web over him and it should put the businessman to
sleep for the next fifteen hours.
The
Assassin seems to snif the air, looking for the Gem. He says to Michael that Kreutz may have set him up, almost killing him,
but he’s sure the Gem was right there. Michael starts to put a bandage over the
wounded shoulder while he’s interested to know if the Gem knew who the Assassin was.
Assassin’s not sure. Is clear that his arm it hurts a lot, but he’s making his
best effort to not showing this. The wound is safe now. Michael asks where the Gem is now.
‘Hang on’ says the Assassin.
No
glasses, No scanners on. We’re seeing through the eyes of the Assassin. He has the
ability of see things in different thermal shades, going from red to white. He carefully searches around and he starts detecting the fallen
bodies of the soldiers he vanquished earlier. Suddenly he points a place and yells a loud
‘There!’. A beam of green light pours out of his hand marking the way through
the Gem’s location. Michael dives out avoiding the energy ray. He’s surprised of
the new talent of his operative friend.
‘How the
hell did you do that?’ asks him later. The Assassin is surprised as well, then he
points out the right direction to follow. A heavy
door framed by stone pillars. Both men run through this corridor, everything happens fast.
They finally arrive to a familiar place, the Gem’s room. The Assassin just says
‘This is it’, and he kicks the door.
His face
changed and his features show confusion. The Gem is there, as well as John. Assassin and Michael found themselves
looking at the Gem who’s holding a Walter pistol directly into John’s head,
locking it captive with his other arm. He smiles devilishly and he greets the men with a
extremely calmed good evening. The Gem also
says he’s glad they’ve found the way into the room.
back, revealing
dark wooden pews in a large stone walled room, this was his home for years. This building,
he thinks as his eyes sweep the walls. This body, he thinks as for the first time we see
his face. It is not quite the jolly face of the monk that we expected. Within this face
there is something harder than iron, harder than diamond, and it peers at the world
through half moon spectacles. We see the man framed in the doorway, and somehow, he fits.
Almost as if the place were designed to hold him, almost as if this life were designed for
him. As he walks into the quiet room, he tells himself he can at least say goodbye, can't
he? The quiet of the room is suddenly broken. A blonde head appears in our field of
vision, breaking both the silence and the man's reverie with his abrupt 'excuse me?'
The figure is
one we know, and one the man thinks he recognises. He introduces himself as John Pearson.
John tells the older man that he is in danger. The man asks what does he mean, when at the
back of his mind the question is not 'what do you mean?' but 'how much do you know?'. John
reveals some of what he knows, lessening his burden of guilt and knowledge, telling the
man that an assassin is coming for him. Suddenly, the pieces seem to fit.
The man knows who he is looking at. His stance becomes at ease,
a smile appears on his face, although not for anything we would find funny, and he tells
John that he knows. He points his finger, and says 'I know you too...' and John's eyes,
like ours, are drawn into the shockingly blue eyes of this man, and they see, behind the
iris, behind the retina, the pinpricks of cold light, as if reflected off the surface of a
gem. The man, the gem, this creature that stands before John, finishes the sentence he had
begun, calling John 'Little dreamer'. Then John knows. He knows what he faces, and he
knows what an appalling catastrophic mistake he has made by coming here. Somehow the quiet
'oh god' that slips from his lips does not feel like enough.
The tableau of
John's terror and the Gem's hunger
could have hung for moments or been
snapped in a mayfly second, but suddenly it was broken. Broken like the splendour of the
stained glass window behind the two, as the
beaten form of the Assassin is thrown through it by hands unseen.
knocked completely out of him, and he is unable
to do anything but lie where he is. Kreutz emerges, stepping through the shattered panes
of the stained glass window, a malicious grin on his deathly-white skin. He asks the
Assassin if he is in pain, and when no answer is forthcoming but a low moan, he tells him
this is nothing compared to what is going to happen to him. A swift vicious boot to the
gut increases both the Assassin's pain and Kreutz' pleasure. Suddenly, a voice behind
Kreutz asks what the hell he thinks he is doing. Kreutz turns in shock.
Kreutz finds
himself looking at the gem, who seems furious with this turn of events. Kreutz asks what
he is doing here, and the gem yells 'I live here, idiot!'. The argument between Kreutz and
the gem rages about whether Kreutz has compromised security and lost the Gem a
Dreamwalker, or whether the Gem is risking his own safety being seen in public like this. 
Meanwhile, the argument is giving the Assassin the
few seconds he needs to recover. He hears voices arguing above him. The voice of his
tormentor, and another one, familiar somehow. Someone he has seen before, although not
like this, maybe not even wearing this face. Suddenly it clicks and he knows who this is.
The Assassin finds himself staring up at the indignant features of his target.
Kreutz is
increasingly worried by this turn of events, and begs the Gem to get back to the secure
room. As he does so, the Assassin gears himself up for the assault, and charges Kreutz,
hitting him in the stomach with almost all his remaining force. As he lines up an elbow to
Kreutz' face, Kreutz tells the Gem to run, and then fights back with a swift left hook to
the Assassin's jaw before being brought up himself with a knee to the throat. As the
Assassin tries to close in on him, he executes a dropkick, taking his weight with his
hands and bringing both feet up to the Assassin's jaw. For a moment, both men are down. As
he draws his gun,
Kreutz asks the Assassin if he has any more
tricks up his sleeve. As the Assassin sweeps his legs groom under him, and the gun goes
flying, he realises that this man may have more resources than he knew.
Having grounded
Kreutz, the Assassin makes for the shadows, to recover his strength and regroup. He seems
battered and exhausted and blood is dripping from a number of cuts and grazes on his body.
As he gains the few seconds he needs to catch his breath, 
he knows he is in trouble. Not for his own life, in which he
places little value, but because if he messes up this close to the target then this has
all been for nothing, and that would be unbearable. He pulls his back up gun from his
boot, and wonders what to do next. The voice of Kreutz closes on him, shouting 'you can't
hide forever, Assassin!'. From one pocket, he pulls a handful of coin-sized flares. He has
run out of the knockout and poison varieties, so this is his only chance. He dons his
sunglasses/goggles and launches the flares
at Kreutz.
The Assassin
returns fire, and, with the aid of his glasses, has better aim than Kreutz, landing a shot
through Kreutz' shoulder, effectively disabling him, as the Assassin seeks higher ground,
although the effects of the fight are all to obvious by his battered features.
Kreutz is still
on his knees where he fell, his left arm virtually useless. He seems almost delirious with
the pain and curses himself for underestimating the Assassin. He tells himself that to win
here he has to think like a killer, find the Assassin's weak point, and at the moment that
weak point is that he thinks Kreutz is blinded.
Kreutz stumbles through the Church like he is
blinded, but heading purposefully for one point. As he reaches it, he draws his gun,
points it at his target and exclaims 'got you!' in triumph
expression of dismay before he is jumped by the
Assassin, who knocks him to the floor and hits him hard enough to knock him unconscious.
As the Assassin makes a break for it, he decides he needs to make sure Kreutz is out of
action, so he doesn't have to keep watching his back when he is heading for the target. He
takes stock of the weaponry he has to hand. It doesn't look good. One knife, one nearly
empty gun, and a few more flares.
Suddenly the
Assassin spots it. Out in the open, easily grabbable, the gun Kreutz dropped earlier. 
The Assassin figures this has to be a trap, but trap or not, that
gun could be his only method of defeating Kreutz and getting to the target. The Assassin's
image fades into darkness as he steps back into the shadows, and his shadow moves forward.
dangerous again. As he moves forward to take offensive action,
however, he hears a telltale click from somewhere nearby, and realises this was a trap.
Relying on instinct, he drops as a bullet whizzes past him and returns fire with both
guns, leaping out of the way of Kreutz' spray of bullets.
A bullet ricochets off the pillar the Assassin dives behind. The Assassin realises that he
is in a standoff, and that the best armed will survive, and sadly right now that's not
him. On the other side of the room, Kreutz, with one arm in a tourniquet, surveys the trap
he has lured the Assassin into. He is better armed than the Assassin, but he is losing
blood from his arm and has been seriously weakened. 
He needs to finish this quickly. In an attempt to goad the
Assassin, he yells to him that there is no way out. The Assassin, trying the same thing,
yells back that Kreutz should have killed him when he had the chance. Kreutz, aiming with
his good arm, vows not to make the same mistake again.
Before the Assassin can move or act, Kreutz fires, hitting the Assassin in the arm. The
Assassin drops, this final would seeming to prove too much for someone already pushed to
the limits of his endurance. Or so it seems. Kreutz, a man suspicious by
nature, heads over with a gun trained on the Assassin in case he is playing possum, and to
make sure the Assassin won't rise to his feet again, he puts his gun to the back of the
assassin's head and begins squeezing the trigger...
A cry of 'NO' splits the already abused air of the cathedral, and before Kreutz can pull
the trigger, a bolt of blue energy shoots from the black jacketed
arms of a new entrant into the room, hitting Kreutz square in the chest, and knocking him
through a pew. The camera moves back to show Kreutz' new attacker to be none other than...
...Michael, who surveys the scene, and the
attack he just perpetrated with a comment of 'I HATE doing that.'
The Assassin can barely move but he answers with irony that a 9
mm. bullet has just passed through his shoulder. Michael helps him to get on his feet. The
Assassin removes his glasses and we can see how beaten up he is. He wants to know how
Michael got there. Michael explains that communications were out suddenly and he feared
the worse, so, knowing the whereabouts of the battle, he showed himself through the door
after noticing the broken window. The wound in Assassin’s arm is bleeding a lot.
Assassin
smiles at Michael showing his secret knife device in his wrist and says, ‘I had a
plan, but thanks’. Now is the time of the answers. Michael explains also that the
prone body of his attacker is the one of Joseph Kreutz, head of the Kreutz Syndicate by
day, and security consultant of the Gem by night.
Kreutz lies out cold over
the broken pews, his mouth open, blood staining the shirt and part of the wood. Assassin
extracts the knife and asks if he should finish the job. Michael replies that there’s
no need, that he already has an energy web over him and it should put the businessman to
sleep for the next fifteen hours.
He says to Michael that Kreutz may have set him up, almost killing him,
but he’s sure the Gem was right there. Michael starts to put a bandage over the
wounded shoulder while he’s interested to know if the Gem knew who the Assassin was.
Assassin’s not sure. Is clear that his arm it hurts a lot, but he’s making his
best effort to not showing this. The wound is safe now. Michael asks where the Gem is now.
‘Hang on’ says the Assassin.
No
glasses, No scanners on. We’re seeing through the eyes of the Assassin. He has the
ability of see things in different thermal shades, going from red to white.
He carefully searches around and he starts detecting the fallen
bodies of the soldiers he vanquished earlier. Suddenly he points a place and yells a loud
‘There!’. A beam of green light pours out of his hand marking the way through
the Gem’s location. Michael dives out avoiding the energy ray. He’s surprised of
the new talent of his operative friend.
‘How the
hell did you do that?’ asks him later. The Assassin is surprised as well, then he
points out the right direction to follow.
A heavy
door framed by stone pillars. Both men run through this corridor, everything happens fast.
They finally arrive to a familiar place, the Gem’s room. The Assassin just says
‘This is it’, and he kicks the door.
The Gem is there, as well as John. Assassin and Michael found themselves
looking at the Gem who’s holding a Walter pistol directly into John’s head,
locking it captive with his other arm. He smiles devilishly and he greets the men with a
extremely calmed good evening. The Gem also
says he’s glad they’ve found the way into the room.