The ninja covered his face again, being able
to stand up after being smashed against the ground. Kevin was still in shock,
almost paralyzed, very close to were he had stood when that familiar face had
looked at him with the eye that had gazed upon his so many times in the past.
The ninja did not stay to chat; he was agile enough to open the wind and exit
through there. How did he not fall to his death? Kevin had no idea. To be
honest, he wasn’t even thinking of that.
That night, he wasn’t able to sleep. He
decided to go to work early and check on the records again for the incident
that had taken the life of his husband almost two years ago. As he drove to
work in the middle of the night, he remembered that day clearly. They had been
fighting a lot, the reason been that Paul wanted to have more missions on his
own. He didn’t want to be paired up with his husband every single time. Kevin
took this the wrong way.
For a week, the tension in their home had been
very high. They would only spoke to each other if they had to, avoiding each
other completely at work. However, they were assigned to the same mission once
again and Paul wasn’t up to complaining about it with his superiors. He knew it
wasn’t a good way to try to start his own thing as an agent so, in order to win
everybody’s trust as a capable guy, he accepted the mission without asking any
questions.
It was a very straightforward mission: they
had to infiltrate a very secure compound where a very wealthy businessman kept
his private documents. In them, he supposedly had proof of the existence of
several chemical and biological weapons that had been sold illegally to
countries that wouldn’t know how to manage any of that. Their mission was only
to copy the documents and come out as soon as possible.
Entering the compound was very simple. The
three agents they had sent were able to step in undetected, all very well
trained in martial arts and everything needed in order not to make noise or
activate any of the alarms of the place. They were able to reach the library,
where the documents were being kept. It was Paul who took the pictures of what
they needed and finished just when Kevin stepped in the wrong direction and
activated an alarm.
They had to knockout several of the
businessman’s thugs, which was easy at the beginning. But on their way out, one
of them was able to take hold of Paul and Kevin was sure he had heard the
snapping of his neck and his body falling to the ground. He was sure he had
seen his body hit the ground just as his body went numb and the other agent had
to help him run faster.
The information was lost that day. However,
they were able to retrieve all of it months later, in a raid the special forces
of the state had been authorized to do in the compound. Of course, they had no opposition
of any kind. They didn’t find any bodies on the premises or recently dug areas.
Even like that, it was very unlikely that Paul had survived that. The guy that
grabbed him was taller and bigger in every sense, his hands being larger than
Paul’s face. He had to be dead, that’s what Kevin had to convince himself to
believe
There was a funeral for Paul and everyone in
the agency attended. Kevin got to meet his parents, which he had never met
before. He didn’t get close to share his grief, instead looking from afar and
realizing that, despite having gotten married in secret, they still didn’t know
a lo about each other. The fact that he had no idea what Paul’s mom looked like
before the funeral made him feel awful.
And that was two years ago. As he drove into
the office building, he realized he had no idea what route he had chose to get
there. He had barely paid attention to the road and he felt bad for that for a
second, before returning to those days once again, before Paul disappeared and
they were happy, back when they had decided that they wanted to live together
forever and ever.
It had been a very easy thing to decide. They
had been dating for a little more than a year after the relationship had
started in the strangest of ways: not four months before commencing their love
story, Kevin had finished another one with a former girlfriend with which he
had been engaged to be married. He decided to call off the wedding when he
realized he couldn’t deny that he felt different inside and needed to process
that. Beside, work had been hard, as usual.
Paul had been working with them for a while,
not too long. He barely knew him well and the truth was they didn’t really like
each other. Paul saw Kevin as the typical guy that thinks he’s better than everyone
else at anything, form his physical appearance to anything he could do with his
body and his mind. And Kevin thought Paul was a very smug guy, never really
accepting his mistakes or accepting his obvious flaws.
It was on a mission that took several months
to complete, where Paul had saved Kevin from a bomb, practically using himself
as a shield in order to protect his partner. From then on, they gained a
certain respect for each other that enabled them to form a relationship that
grew to be a very stable friendship. But even then, they felt something was off
with all of it.
At the same time, Kevin began his problems
with his girlfriend. They got worse as the date of their wedding got near and,
after another intense mission where he and Paul single handedly completed the
task at hand; he realized she was not what he wanted from life. So he cancelled
the engagement and tried to think about everything for a while. Just two weeks
after that, he kissed Paul for the first time. And another two weeks after,
they had sex. It was then when Kevin realized that he had been very close to
making a very big mistake.
The guard at the office building recognized
him and he was able to enter without any problem. Outside, the first glimmer of
the new day could be seen very far into the horizon. As he sat in his office,
he looked for the files of their last mission and checked every single paper
the Special Forces had submitted about their mission there, when the whole
place had been swept.
He
couldn’t understand what was missing, what had happened. Paul was dead; he had
heard his neck snap. He was sure of it. He had been convincing himself of that
for years. But now he was alive. Even with that scar on his face and those wild
eyes, it was still him beneath that
ninja outfit. He looked in the computer again and discovered that a similar
ninja vigilante had been reported before, in a couple of missions by the
agency. It seemed he was very skilled and worked both against and with them.
It was difficult for Kevin not to think about
the guy with whom he had slept so many times, kissed so often and felt so close
during so many nights. During their life together, they had slept in the nude
and Kevin had learned to love to wake up and feel Paul just by his side. He
would often hug him tight and kissed him softly. It was difficult to understand
why and how he loved him so much but he did. Maybe that’s why it was so hard to
see him alive.
A stack of papers fell from a nearby table.
Kevin woke up from his daydreaming and looked in all directions. The papers had
been stable moments before and there was no window opened. He got near it in
order to check out the exterior but they were too high above the ground. He
knew it was stupid to be worried. He decided to grab something to drink from a
machine, unaware that the picture he kept there of the two of them had been
taken away.
In the rooftop, Paul removed the cover over
his face, revealing his very pale skin and the scar across the side. He looked
at the picture, without any particular expression. He seemed to be on the edge
of tears for a moment but then he threw the picture from the rooftop and put on
his face cover again. The shadow of a soul that had been visible for a moment,
was not there anymore.
