The Tower of Emnu

Aaron Plane sighed when he saw the Guard leering at him through the tiny slit in his high security door. He sat with his back to the wall on his bed, trying to meditate. But of course they would not let him enjoy peace.

There was always something they wanted from him. To parade him around, to drag him to talk to psychologists. To a journalist writing a piece.

Angry family members of victims coming to spit him in his face, promising him he would die and they would watch. Which was obvious, since he was on death row. But somehow most people did not get it, the finality of it.

Nor his calm in the face of death.

Today would probably be no different.

"Plane, hands on your head, face the wall, then kneel. Now." The Guard, Hendrickson, said coldly.

Aaron sighed deeply and got up, stretched lazily and made the guard wait a bit before he followed his instructions. Three other guards came with Hendrickson into the cell and made sure he did not try anything.

Why they bothered was a mystery to Aaron, he had never attacked anyone in prison unprovoked.

Why bother? He knew he was not getting out by attacking guards. The guard made sure his cuffs were tight and they even cuffed his legs as well.

So he was having a visitor. Lovely.

"Who is it this time? The Times? Another hapless victim, too stupid to see the fault of their family members?"

"Shut up Plane, you will see."

Aaron shut up, he had nothing to prove and the guards would not touch him, because they were secretly afraid of him. They had good reason to be. Because he had killed a bit over 120 people in his career as a hitman. Adding a couple of guards to the list would give him no nightmares. Not that he would do it without good cause of course.

Despite what many believed, Aaron was not a monster.

A Psychopath or Sociopath maybe. Although it was not really what he was. Aaron knew he had empathy. He actually had lot of empathy for a great many people, but he, like many other soldiers had learned to compartmentalize. Once he had a target and he had judged it guilty according to his parameters he had no qualms to kill them.

Just like any solider would have no problem killing an enemy combatant or dropping a bomb on a house with a terrorist in it.

It was just that Aaron’s work had far less collateral damage compared to the army.

He had never used bombs and the few people who had died because they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, he could count on one hand. These were the kills that still haunted him. Not his targets.

They left the maximum security part of the prison and Aaron ignored the jeers and mad howls of the other prisoners. That they needed entertainment before their death he could understand, but he would never understand their depravity.

Although most people thought he was worse than most of them.

Aaron sighed once more when they chained him to a metal chair bolted in the floor in a visitors room.

Relaxed he leaned back and watched the guards leave. Then he waited.

He was good at waiting, he had patience. A quality most people dismiss in a killer, but a necessary one.

His patience and planning had made him this good, had given him an edge.

Aaron had never enjoyed killing, well had never enjoyed killing anyone but one man. He closed his eyes and remembered his first kill like it was yesterday. How it all began.

Because he believed that some people deserved death and the man he had killed so long ago now, he had deserved it.

It was a rainy night, the shabby motel Aaron was watching from the cover of darkness looked like the last place anyone wanted to be. Rooms for the desperate or the poor. Rooms mostly used for sex or drug deals, or any other thing people fled the city for.

Impassively he watched the door on the second floor, room 205 and waited. Aaron was patient even then when he was just 17. He held back his feelings, his wrath, his burning desire, his hurt. He fought all those things down until he was once more cold and reached tranquility. The rain cooled him down and filled the world with soft noise.

He was standing in the forest, underneath a fir tree. A black raincoat hid his weapons, a knife, a Glock he had stolen the night before and 3 magazines.

His boots were 2 sizes too large and stolen as well. From a Russian gangster who had some dealings with the scumbag in Nr. 205. He would be Aaron’s scapegoat and he made sure the mark of them would survive the rain.

There was other evidence, DNA samples of hair and other things that were in a pouch at his belt.

Everything was part of the plan.

Eventually, after what seemed like hours the door of room Nr. 205 opened and a woman left. Quick, hurried, looking around desperately. For a moment Aaron’s heart clenched and he thought it was his mother.

But no, he had made sure she was not here tonight.

She had been a few days ago though. Probably looking the same as the woman who left quickly in an SUV.

Aaron waited another 5 minutes and then walked across the street and climbed the outside stairs of the motel. The security camera would only catch his figure in a rain coat. He had padded it so that he looked more like the massive Russian idiot he stole the boots and gun from.

Aaron stopped in front of the door, reading 205 and knocked softly.

"Yeah?" a gruff voice asked.

"Sir, my name is Jameyson, I'm here because you said the AC is not working?" It wasn't. Aaron had made sure of it.

Many would have ignored that, but not this man behind the door. A weakness Aaron made sure to exploit.

"Ah yes." The man opened the door.

He was tall, the stature of a solider with black graying hair that was cut short. Blue hard eyes looked at Aaron and he could not help but stare at the mans square jaw and mouth pressed tightly to a single line.

Former Lt. Col. Francis Brewer. Ex-CIA, Ex-Black Force. Now retired scumbag.

Brewer did not recognize Aaron, how could he? Last time they had met he was still just a kid. But Aaron had seen him many times, had made it his mission to stalk him.

Aaron smiled and pointed at the toolbox in his right hand. Another prop easily stolen from the motel itself.

"Sorry for the inconvenience, sir, I hope I can fix it quickly."

Brewer just nodded and waved him in. He accurately dismissed Aaron as a threat.

Aaron wasn't an impressive man. Even in the padded raincoat he was shorter than Brewer, with dark short cropped hair and a thin physique. But he had delicate fingers and the gray eyes of his mother. With another thin smile he set the tool box down on the table in the motel room and then dragged a chair over to have a look at the AC. Brewer kept an eye on Aaron and for a while Aaron did nothing more but repair the AC.

Since he had busted it, he knew how to fix it. It was not too complicated.

"Okay, would you mind testing it, sir?" Aaron asked after a while and Brewer nodded and walked over to the wall where the AC control was.

For the first time Aaron had entered the room Brewer had his back to Aaron.

In a smooth and trained motion Aaron pulled out the Glock out of his coat. The patting had concealed the weapon even to the trained killer that Brewer was. Slowly and unhurriedly he aimed at the back of the mans head.

Then he squeezed the trigger.

There was no hesitation, he had trained this motion so many times it was more muscle memory than anything else.

Brewers brain splattered the wall, his body slumping down like the sack of meat he was now.

Slowly Aaron stepped off the chair and shot him twice in the back for good measure. The angle of the shots would indicate that he had been shot while kneeling, an execution shot. Silently he placed the chair where he had taken it before and opened his evidence pouch. A few hairs. Not too many and not too few to fall through the analysis.

Aaron looked at the scene, stepped around the corpse to look into Brewers face. He was really dead. Finally.

His blue eyes were blank and in a state of blissful ignorance.

A better death than he deserved.

Aaron had to fight back a sob, a cry of joy, his emotions bubbling over in furious elation but he kept control over himself and took a last long look at the room, making sure he had not missed anything.

Right, the toolbox. Quickly he gathered it and then he walked out into the rain.

He threw the Glock into a garbage bin at the end of the stairs and brought the tool box back to the shed he had gotten it from in the first place. He never removed his gloves and he left no traces this time with his boots. From the shed he jumped over a small fence towards the road and then slowly walked along the road away from the motel, vanishing in the darkness.

Aaron had never been caught for that first kill, just like he had never been caught for a hundred more after that.

But now that he had been caught, now that he was facing his own demise he felt no fear. In long sessions with people who wanted to understand him, how he could do such cruel and gruesome things, he had instead found why he did what he did back then. Why it had felt so good to pull that trigger.

Why the memory was still so fresh years later.

It was because of his parents of course, an answer that the psychologists loved to hear, but it was true nonetheless.

Aaron’s father, James Plane, had been with Brewer in the army. They had both been special forces. But they were both good, very good at what they did and so the government made sure to give them the "right" jobs.

They did black ops together, murder for hire for the government. Something that was beyond hilarious to Aaron now. But when Aaron was only 5 years old his father died on one of those black op missions.

Officially it was a training accident and his mother got the measly pension for it, barely a quarter of what they had gotten before, while James was somewhere in the world killing people.

Aaron had no memory of his father and even if it was Brewers fault that he died, Aaron had no way of finding out.

No, that was not the reason he had killed Brewer, the real reason was the money he was the custodian for, to make sure the Planes were taken care off. A fund from black ops themselves for those eventualities.

Unofficial money to take care of the families.

Problem was Brewer did not just pay out the money.

In his retirement the old spy and killer had made certain he had all the power over those left behind. And so he blackmailed the widows, who were vulnerable and had nobody to turn to like Aaron’s mother.

Sex for money they were entitled to.

The sad thing was that Gloria, his mother, was doing it for him, because he had wanted to go to college. That was how it had started. His grades had been good enough to go to any renowned university, but the money was not there.

So Gloria had reached out to James army buddies, to see if they could pitch in.

His mom was not very highly educated, she had lived a hard life and was devastated when Aaron’s father died. She had worked two jobs to support both of them, a fact Aaron was always grateful for.

When she first came home after meeting Brewer she had been acting strange. Something was off, even though his mother tried to mime being happy for his sake, she was anything but.

He heard her crying in her room that night and knew something had gone wrong. Something needed to change. So while he went and got admitted to college, he followed her. Back then they met in a hotel, not a broke down piece of shit motel in which Brewer had died.

Aaron was careful, patient and meticulous. He was not seen and after the "meeting", when both Brewer and his mother had left, he told one of the maids a sob story and got into the room they had been in.

The smell told him everything he needed to know.

From that moment he stalked Brewer.

While other kids played games on their PC, or went to parties. Aaron learned how to hack into security systems, by learning how to program them himself. He worked out and took lessons with some of the veterans that had visited them frequently before.

Some people would have asked for the police or his fathers friends for help.

But Aaron soon found out that it was pointless.

Brewer knew too much shit and even after his official retirement he had strong ties to organized crime. Undoubtedly he made sure they kept the bottom line, while lining his own pockets.

Aaron got his bank statements, got to know everything about the man.

What he found was that the guy was the worst kind of man imaginable. He did what he did not only to his mother, but to quite a few women over the years. He raped them and when they went to the cops, they would not take their statements.

Imagine that, he had the local and even federal law enforcement so deep in his pockets the man was basically untouchable.

So Aaron planned to kill him.

From that day, when he pulled that trigger without any hesitation, he knew he was different.

Some people can't hurt other people. He could.

But back then he had never planned on doing it ever again, his meticulous setup was so that he would never be caught.

Everything he had done was for his mother who never knew what he did.

When she heard about Brewers death she seemed so happy, so liberated and she celebrated him getting into college with Aaron by going out for dinner. To this day Aaron can still see her radiant smile while eating an expensive steak with him.

It still is one of his favorite memories of her. Life was good.

But of course life had different plans. The money for college was not coming. Apparently the internal black ops fund had been entirely siphoned by Brewer and there was nothing left. As such few of the veterans made a fuss, most just cursed his name and apologized.

It was at that time his mother fell ill. She had worked for a decade or more in a Pan factory and apparently the fumes had given her cancer. They joined a class action lawsuit against the company, but of course the money from that would come too late, if ever, to help her.

Aaron looked desperately for a job, so he could finance his moms hospital bills.

That was when he met a certain Russian gangster.

The brother of the man Aaron had brought into jail by killing Brewer. Now Vassily was not an idiot like his brother Vlad. He looked into Brewer, who had always been an advisor to the Russian Brotherhood and where cops stopped looking, Vassily began. Eventually he had narrowed it down to people with a motive alone and then he went to pay every single one of them a visit.

Aaron was working 3 jobs at the time to try and pay the bills, to take some loans for his mom, who was wasting away.

Then suddenly Vassily stood in front of him outside of a burger Joint. Aaron froze and Vassily grinned.

"So you are the guy who put my brother in jail." the tall man said with a grin and an audible Russian accent.

"I don't know what you are talking about." Aaron said lamely, while his brain was working at top speed to get out of the situation.

"Ah, you see, if a nobody sees someone like me in an abandoned alley grinning at them, they usually blanch and flee. But you froze, you recognized me, or rather my brother, right?"

"What? Sorry sir, I really don't know what you are talking about. I have to go back to work."

"You call that a job?" the gangster snorted disgusted.

"Listen you little shit, I know it was you. I have checked everyone else who had a motive and you are the only one who reacted and fits the motive. So now you have a choice to make."

Aaron swallowed hard and stared at the hulking man defiantly. He knew there was a security camera in this back alley. And his coworkers would hear him if he screamed.

"What choice?"

"You see, there are few people like us left in a 'civilized' society like this. Killers. I read up about you and your father. He was a very good solider, right? He killed people for his country, for money. Well I do the same." the man grinned.

"Just for my own profit and not for Uncle Sam. So here is the deal. You owe me for bringing my little brother into jail. I don't mind as much, he is an idiot, maybe he will smarten up after this. So I want you to do something for me."

"What?"

"Kill a man. Show me you are a killer and I will not only forgive you for my brother, but also make sure you will earn a thousand times what you could make in this shitty job of yours in one day."

And that was it.

Yes, Vassily forced Aaron to do the first job for him, but really back then Aaron had felt suffocated by the tedious work, by his stupid coworkers, by the world itself. Why his mother had to suffer for no reason but greed.

He hated it all and he fondly remembered how it had felt to kill Brewer.

Squeezing that trigger had felt better than sex and if he was honest Aaron accepted because he wanted to experience the feeling again.

The job itself was almost comically easy. Time consuming but easy. Vassily texted him a name an address and a photograph of a Latino, living on the other side of town. So Aaron stalked the guy.

He looked at his social media imprint, read his comments, looked at the guys twitter. Then he went to his house and hacked first the guys WiFi and then his phone. It was almost too easy.

On the mans phone he found some pictures of him posing with guns and some incriminating conversations. He could also see if the man was alone and where he was. So he planned another hit.

One afternoon he simply showed up on the guys door and knocked.

"Hey man, Chico sent me, there is trouble with the 56ers. You are Rodriguez right?" he asked him lamely and visibly nervous.

The latter he did not even have to mime.

"Who the fuck are you?" Rodriguez asked suspiciously, while staring at him through the peeper.

"I'm Aaron, Sal’s cousin, you don't remember? We met at his party last month."

"You're Sal’s cousin?"

"Yeah man, but Chico will be pissed if you don't hurry. Come on."

"I don't remember you." he said, but his voice did not sound so sure anymore.

"You were kinda high at the time or drunk." Aaron shrugged and looked around uncomfortably.

"Well its not my problem if you piss off Chico, I'll see you around."

Rodriguez thought for a moment, but he opened the door and smiled at Aaron.

"Ah no. I'll do it man, come in, grab yourself a gun and we'll be over there in a flash."

Aaron nodded and went into the room, grabbed one of the man's guns and shot Rodriguez in the head.

It was that easy, the Latino had not even noticed, as he had been busy loading through his AK.

Once people were armed they turned stupid. A handgun was as lethal as an assault rifle if you shot first and did not miss.

Aaron kept the gun and threw it in the nearby river afterwards, nobody had seen him and the police chalked it up to gang crimes or something along those lines.

From then Aaron’s life as a hitman began.

From Vassily he got names, addresses and photographs sent to a burner phone. Whenever the mobster wanted someone killed, Aaron got a message and went to work. It usually followed the same pattern.

Information gathering, Preparation and Execution.

He got to know everything there was to know about his target first, chose a specific time and location for the deed and then killed them.

With the first paycheck Aaron got his mother into the best hospital and cancer treatment program money could buy.

He told his mother that he had found a job and that they would sponsor his college and their treatment on the condition he worked for them for 10 years at least after graduation. It was not the most usual story, but Aaron simply forged the documents he showed his mom and that was that.

For the next few years he went to college, was a normal guy, partied and killed people every few weeks.

Aaron trained himself, took lessons in martial arts, took combat training and he spent an insane amount on the shooting ranges all around the city he studied in. He flew and traveled all over the country on his "missions".

He was meticulous and he was ruthless. If someone witnessed his kills they would die as well. He had no problems with that. Although he prepared and planned so it was not necessary.

He still had a code.

He did not kill children, nor would he torture people. He simply executed them.

He had no problem with women, in his mind why should the sex of a person determine if they were a scumbag or not?

Women could be as horrible and stupid as anyone and just because they tended to be weaker than men, did not mean anything to Aaron. Any sensibilities to women that way were just misogyny speaking in his mind.

With time he perfected his method and usually abducted his victims first, before killing them somewhere unpopulated and then getting rid of the body. It was simply easier to do than to always make sure he was not implicated at the crime scene.

Making people his scapegoats was something he still did quite often, but as a service, not because he wanted to.

It was messy and the innocent people in jail often tenacious.

Aaron lost count of the people he killed. Once they were dead and their bodies dissolved or buried or both, he would delete them from his life. There were no trophies, no evidence at all and Aaron felt good about it.

It never was the same as killing Brewer, but when he killed some of Vasily’s rivals, vile fuckers who were untouchable, he felt the same tingle of elation. But he quite quickly stopped hunting that thrill and killing became his job. He was quite frankly doing the same thing his father had done, the same any soldier was doing.

Killing because he was told to and because he did not want to die. Sure soldiers will tell you they do it for their country.

They will tell you they do it to protect freedom and democracy. But in the end they go where someone else tells them to and they kill the people there and they get paid for it.

No matter what they tell themselves, they are no better than him, just paid worse.

Of course Aaron got infamous in time and quite a few people knew of him, but not him. Only Vassily did and he kept him with that knowledge in check. Although Aaron started to say no to the more unsavory requests he got.

Torture people? Rape a woman? No thank you.

He would kill them of course, which was hypocritical in a sense, as death was considered worse. But Aaron was never that kind of killer. He did not need to rape women to get their attention.

His trained physique and easy confidence did that on their own. He had many girlfriends in those years in college.

But it never worked out because Aaron never opened up to them. Because he was never there for them, since his job would take him all around the country.

He ended their relationship once Aaron was sick of repeating the same lies so they would stop asking where he went and what he was doing. Why he would never introduce them to his parents. But he could never do that.

Once they knew his mother was sick and fighting with cancer, they would wonder where the money came from.

Of course he tried it a few times, said he had inherited it from his dads side or something. But it never worked out regardless in the end.

The problems started when Vassily got more and more ambitious and ruthless. When the hits were not on people in the mobsters way, but on people he wanted to torture or punish. Kill the wife of a subordinate that had failed the man.

More and more unsavory things popped up in Aaron’s searches of his victims and besides the normal scumbags more and more decent people ended up as targets as well.

Good cops and prosecutors. Murders Aaron committed, but not really liked doing.

It started gnawing on him, the people who had never done anything wrong, who were by all accounts good people. But it all paled in comparison to his mother, who slowly wasted away.

The chemo did not help, the cancer had spread and was growing again.

Aaron had millions by that time, he was by all accounts filthy rich, but he could not help his mother.

The helplessness he felt when visiting her was suffocating. It was grueling and she was such a strong woman. Tried to tough it out, tried to make him find a girl and settle down finally. But it was all for naught.

She died on a cold winter day and Aaron was unable to do anything, no matter what he did he could not change the fate of the one person in his life he loved the most.

When he left the hospital that day, Aaron felt alone, truly alone for the first time in his life.

Like a sleepwalker he continued what he was doing until he was finally sick of it. Instead of killing good people one day he simply killed Vassily. It was easy, he used a pretty common poison and made sure to put it into the mans morning coffee.

That was it.

Ending a life was so easy, sometimes it was surprising. Other times people could survive things you would not believe.

Aaron left the new boss of the Russian mob a message how to contact him and then just drove through the city and out of it. He quit college, or rather put in a gap year or two or three. He did not know at the time.

He felt lost, untethered from reality until he came by an army recruitment center.

Aaron still remembered his Dads old friends, the old soldiers camaraderie, how they went hunting with him instead of his Dad. Taught him how to shoot, how to handle a weapon.

On impulse alone he joined the army and followed his fathers footsteps.

The basic training was so easy, Aaron finished it with best note. Tactics? Shooting? He could have given that course himself. But he also learned a lot and he went on to become part of the Special forces.

There, in the army was also the first time a shrink poked around in his head. They told him he was depressed because of his mother, duh, and that he had used the army as a coping mechanism.

All true, he lived the army, spent all his time on it and when he had free time, he hung out with the other guys, drinking, being part of the team. The Comradeship was what he had missed the most and it filled the Void in his chest.

Aaron deployed, went on missions, killed and covered his buddies.

For three years he was an army man, through and through until he got an invite to Black Ops. Aaron did not accept, it had been just too much. He felt like he was his father, felt like he would repeat the same cycle, find a wife, have a son and then die.

Aaron just could not do it.

So he quit the army and went on to become a freelance killer for a few years.

He set up a website where someone could order a hit, like you would order a burger. He did not take most of the requests he got from the site, but he fulfilled enough to live a comfortable life.

But he also fulfilled enough, that he got the wrong kind of attention.

The Russian criminal empire had crumbled during his stay in the army without Aaron’s murders holding it up, but Aaron himself had suddenly a problem with the law. More people who would look at his doing, where before they closed their eyes on account of the Brotherhood.

Luckily most of his hits were marked as disappearances and as such only the few cases that went wrong or were frame jobs made noise. He moved around a lot during that time, just another ex military guy on the lookout for jobs.

He even went back to college at last.

But the equilibrium did not last.

The new top dog of the underworld food chain were the cartels and they were ten times as bad as the Russians.

The Russians at least wanted a good life here, up north, but to the cartel people it was all just a game, all just "business", they were just here to sell and murder, while they lived down south.

So they contacted Aaron, made him an exclusive offer.

But he declined, as he did not want to go back to killing good people. At least as a freelancer he could pick who to kill. It made far less money, but money was not really a problem anymore.

Aaron did what he did, because he was good at it. Because what else was he going to do? Settle down? How?

He just felt empty inside and his depression got worse as time went on.

He barely slept and often he drove through the night in endless circles so his mind would not wander back to his mother.

But the cartel did not like people saying no to them. Especially not someone who had done hits on their people as well and so they decided to liquidate Aaron. Which was easier said than done, since they did not know who he was. For a while at least.

Until the Russians sold him out. They had been doing their own research on Aaron and had found Vassily's dead mans chest.

In it was his identity and other important information and blackmail material.

Instead of taking Aaron back into the fold they burned him.

One day he was just another student finishing his masters in political science, the next, hit teams swarmed his location. He killed them all, but it was dirty, it was loud and it was brutal.

They caught him leaving his flat. Drive by with AKs, killing innocent bystanders and wounding Aaron, who managed to get to cover. Then he was chased by some guys on foot.

He killed them, which was probably his first and only real mistake. But its not like they show you in the movies.

When someone shoots at you, comes after you, you either kill them or they get you eventually. Running away is a good way to get shot in the back if the guys after you know what they are doing and the cartel guys were good.

Not as good as Aaron but good.

What followed was a wild ride through town and out of it, where Aaron left bodies in his wake. Still he managed to flee to one of his safe-houses, payed under a different name. A doomsday preppers cabin in the wilds surrounded by miles of private property.

But unfortunately the bodies he dropped caught the attention of the FBI and his real identity was busted. They came after him for the killings of the hitmen sent after him.

Say what you want about the FBI, but they caught Aaron two weeks later as he was about to flee the country.

How? Because of his second mistake. Revenge. Aaron had decided to get vengeance on the cartels and ended up killing the guy behind his own assassination order.

But it was all a trap laid by the feds.

He did kill the idiot who made him his enemy, but the FBI also left him in checkmate. Surrounded by more tactical police than he could kill. Aaron had considered going out with a blast, but instead surrendered.

Aaron opened his eyes. Finally. He sat here for an hour at least by now and the metal chair they had chained him to was really uncomfortable. Sadly even though the FBI put at least 4 tactial units on him, it had never made a splash in the media.

Nobody knew about him and nobody cared.

He had been sentenced to death for killing at least 20 people. That most of them were technically self defense since they shot and hunted him had made no difference to the judge or jury. That most of the guys Aaron had killed were wanted themselves did not matter either.

The verdict had been mostly because the FBI had reconstructed partly who he was and his lawyer failed with his motion to prevent that information going to the jury. So there in court they strongly hinted that he was a Serial Killer.

The Reaper. That had been his cheesy moniker. An underground hitman, who was death himself.

Aaron had never liked it, but had hoped the story would get some media traction. It had not.

He was convicted to death for a series of murders that could have been self defense, since they did not have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he actually was "the Reaper".

Now Aaron could hear the detective that had hunted him for almost a decade walking down the hall with another guy whose footsteps he did not know. It was funny really, when you had all the time in the world to yourself you noticed the strangest things. How the guards walked, how most of his visitors walked. You could hear a lot about a person if you knew what to listen to. The FBI agent had a slight limp, that was why he was so easy to hear to Aaron.

"Agent Walter, who is my visitor today? Another journalist? A Psychiatrist?" he said before the two had turned the corner to his room.

One of the men stopped, but Walter continued and looked through the prison door, before opening it.

The man was slightly overweight, balding with a blonde mustache that did not fit the man at all and baby blue eyes. He did not look intelligent, but he undoubtedly was, he just hid it very well behind the facade of a fat cop.

Like always he looked like he was constipated, his face red and his eyes slightly bloodshot.

"Plane." he said simply, while he opened the door for the second visitor.

It was a younger man with brown hair and wide brown eyes that looked at him with terror, with anticipation, with wrath. Family of a victim then. He did look kind of familiar, but Aaron could not remember where he had seen the man before.

After studying the younger man, Aaron looked to Walter and raised an eyebrow.

"Should I know who that is?"

"You should, but considering how many people you killed, you probably don't remember him." the fat cop said while he took a seat across the metal table in front of him.

"This is Franklin Sawyer." the FBI agent added and Sawyer sat down. He was staring at Aaron full of hatred.

"Nice to meet you Mr. Sawyer, to what do I owe this meeting?" Aaron said with a slight smirk.

Riling up people like this was really the only joy he had left in his life. Well. For now at least.

"You raped and murdered my sister." Sawyer growled, his fury palpable in the air.

His eyes promising bloody vengeance.

Aaron sighed and shook his head.

"James where did you find this clown? We both know my established MO is a quick merciless kill. I have never raped any woman in my life."

The FBI agent was silent and studied Aaron coolly.

"You think you are gonna get away with it don't you?" he asked.

"I am in death row, I don't see how that’s getting away with it."

"Did you think, I would not hear of the appeal? The bullshit technicalities? Killing a dozen Bangers in self defense? If it goes through and it has a good chance it will, then you will be out of death row or set free in a few months, way before your day on the chair."

Aaron grinned at Walter and he shrugged.

"I never thought you would not hear about it, but that’s just how the justice system works. The innocent and the guilty both end up in here. Good thing the law finds a way to get the innocent out if you pay enough money."

"Blood money. That they let you keep that stuff was the biggest mistake the bureau ever made."

"Stocks I inherited from my mother. I was quite fortunate to make money of the stock market. That is all."

Walter stood up and looked Aaron in the eyes while he leaned closer.

"I know you are the Reaper. I know who your first kill was. I stood on the same chair as you. I know that you perfected your method of dissolving bodies into nothing after your first year. The toxic landfills are all over the country. You killed hundreds."

"I am not any Reaper, I am just a student who had a run-in with some cartel bastards. Luckily I knew how to use a gun, otherwise I would not be here. I have confessed to killing people in self defense, nothing more."

"Sure and it was just a coincidence that you vanished whenever the Reaper let someone disappear?"

"You never charged me with anything. I simply like to travel a lot and I like to hunt and fish. That’s all."

"Yeah you thought you left behind no traces. But Franklin here, he is an eye witness to you murdering his sister."

Walter grinned broadly.

"They have managed to filter out some DNA from the toxic sludge you turn bodies into and they match Mary Sawyer, which connects you to all the other Reaper killings. We are still sifting through them, comparing DNA samples."

Aaron raised his eyebrows and chuckled.

"Is that so? Then why are you here with him and not my lawyer?"

The FBI agents grin froze on his face and he glowered at Aaron for a moment, before he leaned in closer and pulled a photograph out of his coat. He placed it in front of Aaron while he whispered.

"Sadly the kid was underage when he saw you and he was also high at the time. In a few seconds my phone will ring and I will leave the two of you alone. Take a good look at the woman that was your downfall."

"Downfall? I doubt it. You can't pin this shit on me. Whoever this Reaper guy is, its not me." Aaron said deadpan.

Walters phone rang and he answered it. For a few seconds he listened before he ended the call with a short.

"I will be right there."

Then Walter stepped out of the room. Before the door closed he gave Aaron a last look, his eyes hard.

"I hope you rot in hell, Plane." Then the metal door closed.

Aaron knew this was some kind of setup. But he could not really see what it was. His gaze swept over the room. The camera was still on and he was alone with the kid, Franklin Sawyer.

Only now he looked down at the picture.

It was a beautiful Latina, full breasts, wide mouth and smile. But her eyes were what Aaron made him recognize her.

The kid looked just like her, a male version of the woman who had almost killed him.

Franklin stood up, in his hands suddenly a gleaming revolver, but his hands shook as he pointed it at Aaron.

Slowly Aaron raised his manacled hands.

"I don't know what you are planning. But whatever you are doing, this will ruin your life. I did not kill your sister. I am not a rapist. Hell I have not even confessed to killing any women. Why the hell do you think it was me?"

Franklin’s jaw clenched, but he could not seem to bring himself to pull the trigger.

"I was in the wardrobe, high as fuck when you killed her. I never told anyone. I was not sure it was even real until I saw your picture and that you were on death row."

"How? It was not me, you are making a mistake. The bastard who did that to your sister is still out there man. Its not me."

"You choked her...until she stopped moving." Franklin whimpered.

"I have nothing left. They are all dead. I just want you to die. Then I can join them."

Shit. It was right, he had choked the woman to death and the kid was obviously suicidal and stupid.

"If you do this you will be a murderer..."but before he could say anything else the kid pulled the trigger while he screamed.

Aaron slipped off the chair, but he still felt the hot searing pain of bullets impacting his body, first his side than his back.

Held up by the restraints he spat out blood, while he watched the kid pull the trigger over and over. The clicking sound was oddly quiet after the deafening shots. The kid was crying, was shaking. Falling to his knees he stared at Aaron's bloody form.

The door opened and Walter entered the cell, his service weapon out.

"Freeze." he shouted, before he shot the kid in the head.

Franklin Sawyers eyes were wide when the shot yanked his head to the side. He stopped moving, his eyes glassy and dead while they seemingly stared at Aaron. Aaron stared back, pain filling his world. A single tear left Franklin’s eyes. Walter meanwhile took a look at Aaron and gave him a grin.

"Goodbye Reaper."

Then he shot Aaron twice in the head.