Martin was humming tunelessly as he held his hands under the flowing stream of water spilling from the gold-plated faucet to the targets home. It had been a nice job. Quiet until the end, his mark had not known of his presence before life left the eyes in one fell swoop. Had not counted on dying yet. They never did, the marks he worked on. Almost never at least. And in the end this was good for all people involved in his business. The target was spared unnecessary anxiety, pain and the desperately dangerous acts of resistance that sprang from them. Futile acts where he was concerned for sure, but they had the nasty habit of throwing unnecessary wrinkles into his artfully laid plans. Yes, he approached his job – a calling if you want – with a care that bordered on the artistic. There was no particular aversion in him to causing anxiety and pain – indeed in cases where it seemed warranted he was quite good at it. Good enough to take pride in this or that newsworthy murder of what some would call grisly proportions. He had – after all – gone through certain lengths with this or that one of his marks to make life unbearable before ending them. Indeed he toyed with the idea of driving a mark to commit suicide by careful application of pharmaceutical and mental coercion. But such acts needed the right target. The right circumstance. It had not yet happened. It would. After all, he had time to wait. If nothing else stayed with him, it was the time to wait. There was sadness in this. The sadness of long acceptance, buried deeply beyond the ice that was his nearly nonexistent emotional response.
Long ago he had decided it would be easier this way. The silent way.

He wrung his hands, carefully removing the copious amounts of bodily fluids he had allowed to be spilled on them. In a corner of the room stood a plastic bag from a typical pharmacy in which were bleach, peroxide and a few other chemicals the usage of would erase the signs of his presence from these lodgings. Except for the thing that was slightly out of place. (Namely the body that lay in his bed with a new kind of smile.) He changed his tune, his humming as the last bits and pieces went the way of expensive (and expansive) waste management. He added a bit of disinfectant to his hands – the kind they used in hospitals – and proceeded to wash them again. No use catching something from what had been a person once.

There was a vibration in his pants. The motion of his hands stopped for a second before repeating itself. The tune died, though. Disappeared into the silence of controlled breaths. It was a very good hotel. There was nothing else to be heard. He dried them on paper towels brought for this purpose before retrieving the object that had interrupted his tune – and train of thought. A mobile phone of the latest generation. His personal phone. (Nothing on it would hint at his occupation, that kind of organizing was done using more disposable means of communication.) One thing would look suspicious though. The number of political and justice feeds he followed with several Applications designed for the purpose. As well as an unusual number of communicative hubs of guaranteed anonymity installed. (One never knew when he had to do business after all.) But these things could be tools of a reporter or a politician. Nothing that would stand up to close scrutiny, only maybe to arouse it.

Now he picked one of the many-colored buttons on the touch-screen and opened a window. An alert had come in on one of his lesser-used newsfeeds. One that he followed more from a rather immediate interest than from professional curiosity. MutantRights. A channel affiliated with the Pro Mutant lobby around The Sanctuary. (And The Order, an organization that had turned more and more into a family of mafiosi over the years, as he was probably supposed to know.)

Euqality Now! Mutant Girl beaten by Officers.

A nice headline. Informative. Evocative. Got the message across with ease. It also aroused his interest. The phone went back into his pocket though. He had his priorities. First was the tidying up of a murder scene. Then escape. Then information on Mutant Policy.

Spreading//thoughts
// welcome here, come
/in here is
/something coming
\differences\opinion

/ Equality NOW! March for Freedom XX.XX.XXXX / noted, attribute: useless

\use\less?
\more?