Augustine31’s Weblog

Autumn, 2099. It’s been a month into Vincent Marcos’ stay in New York, a stay he sees as an exile from his native Spain from where he was forced to take flight because of a bounty on his head. Vincent, the son of the man who is credited for the “Second Birth of Fascism is Europe,” feels frustrated and trapped in this expensively furnished apartment for a cell, his plans to assassinate the Dictator of Russia, for which the bounty on his own head was placed, put on hold, if not completely foiled. He’s been planning it for years, that assassination – ever since the day the same dictator, then the interim prime minister, had Vincent’s father killed by a sniper ten years before.

Vincent remembers that day well. The images are fresh and vibrant. The memory of seeing his father die so vivid that he can almost feel the warm beads of blood spattering on his face as they alighted the stretch limo. Remembering that day, Vincent’s anger is cooled into sadness for a young man’s life without a father to look up to. Vincent pulls out his gun and points it to his head. In a moment of weakness, he wonders what it might be like to be dead, no longer having to have thoughts like the ones he’s having. He questions life, its worth and his. He questions his faith and the afterlife, taking solace at the idea that there is none. That way, he won’t have to pay for an occupation of killing like he’s about to enter into.

Now, a continent away from his homeland, finding sanctuary in his uncle’s one-hundred-and-thirteen Usher Building at the center of downtown Manhattan, Vincent fills his days training in martial arts and gun combat for his eventual self-ordained task. Soon, his talent recognized, Vincent’s uncle, Allan Usher who, like his father, is a loyal fascist with his own stable of weaponry, soldiers and assassins at his bidding, absorbs his old comrade’s son into his private army as an assassin. It’ll be good practice, his uncle tells his nephew who had yet to kill a man.

The day of his first assignment draws near, and Vincent, very moral and a feverishly devote Catholic, tries to hide his anxiety, feigning confidence and stoicism. He sees the irony of it now with the gun to his temple as he remembers the day his father died. He turned to God to cope with his father’s death. Now, for the same purpose, he gets ready to sin, and what’s more, to subdue his nagging morality, he tries to convince himself that there is no God and angels waiting for him in the afterlife to tell him that he’s meant for hell.

He hears the walls of the Usher Building whisper and Vincent puts the gun down. They’ve done that before, those walls, speaking in strained, hushed voices like ghosts. As Vincent follows the voices out the door and into the hallway, he remembers the words of the old bum outside the Usher Building, a rumored seer and holy man, shouting into the street how the building is evil and alive, sharing the same soul as its malevolent master, Allan Usher. Impossible, Vincent thinks, his steps directed by the quiet voices.

In the elevator, the voices tell Vincent to press a code that sends him down to the basement of the Usher Building. There, Vincent sees a sprawling laboratory where scientists observe a girl’s room from one side of a two-way mirror. The scientists look at charts and history files, and Vincent overhears them talking about the Black Cherub, an accomplished assassin with over a hundred kills Vincent had heard much about. Worriedly, the scientists discuss how the Black Cherub, whom they inject with a drug that keep her obedient and stoic about her work, could suddenly show emotion, and strong and violent ones at that, having intense orgasms several times as she killed twenty-one more people than she was ordered to on a mission the other night. She’s starting to ask questions too, one of the scientists says, gulping, fearful for his life. He looks back at the girl’s room on the other side of the two-way mirror. What if she finds out the truth about her? he questions.

Vincent peers in, and sees something he could only describe as beautiful. At the sight, he is thrown back six years prior, to when he was twenty, having just quit college to pursue his quest to kill the newly appointed dictator of Russia. His fiancé picks a fight with him that night, begging him to stop his obsession. She’s pregnant with their child, she says, but Vincent answers that he doesn’t care, his devotion for his father, a man he confuses as God himself, commanding his life, disallowing him a life of his own. An hour later, in a spectacular display, his fiancé hangs herself on a tree just outside of his house.

Vincent had not though of her in so long – not until now, when he sees the mirror image of her in this girl standing on the other side of the glass, being watched by a team of scientists. That girl is the Black Cherub, thirteen-year-old Claudia with no last name.