Buried deep within the towering infrastructure of steel and glass of a corporate office skyscraper, a lone individual swiped his unremarkable white security card against the scanner. As it flashed green and bade him entry into the room beyond the secured double doors, he let out an exhaustive sigh. Sweeping long, unkempt hair from his eyes, his vision adjusted to the darkness of the room which was a stark contrast to the hallway he'd come from.
Moving at an uninspired pace beyond the entry doors, he trudged up the slightly inclined ramp to an elevated floor. The soft glow from rows of flat LCD monitors danced across his face as he walked slowly to his station. The mundane hum of the climate control system kicked up again in an attempt to keep the computer and monitoring equipment at a stable operating temperature. The other two individuals in the room were stiffly standing by his vacant station, as if they were impatiently awaiting the return to his seat. Dressed in impressive designer Italian suits and aggressively clutching slate computers, they looked at him with a conflicting air of contemptuous disdain yet burning need. He considered it quite an interesting conundrum. Any other night, he would take pleasure in relishing their attention, despite their clear perception that they were superior to him in almost every way. However, a swift look around the room reminded him of just what kind of night it was.
Approaching his multi-screen workstation, he watched each display flash the same sequence of videos in a continuous loop. At first, it had deeply disturbed him, but by now he had grown desensitized enough to the brutality that it no longer viscerally repulsed him.
Still, the horror of the events were not lost on him. The stark realism of the slaughter of an innocent woman in front of her husband. The unbridled fury and violence of a vengeful assassin who now, in the words of the monitor on the recording that he slaughtered, 'had nothing to live for'. The shockingly violent deaths of the tactical team sent to guard the Monitor. The final chilling message of a raving, homicidal, bloodthirsty renegade assassin espousing his private manifesto. All these events on their own were earth-shaking, shocking and catastrophic happenings. Combined, the bone-chilling significance of these events, despite the innate horror of their occurrence, left an intensely disturbing impression on him. Understandably, it was clear that these happenings upset the two lanky men that breathed down his neck now in an even deeper manner.
"We need to determine his most likely destination following the time index of the video loop in this sequence," the man to his right said as he bent low, dragging the time index of the looping video into focus on his slate.
The smarmy, perfectly manicured English accent grated over his ears. He marveled at their ability to say the most mundane sentence while communicating their superiority at every chance.
"We've managed to track the locator beacons on each individual in the room that was tagged. However, we noticed that there was one missing. While the body count in this room is correct, this man," the Monitor circled a dead body on his slate, "is dark."
Brandon leaned back in his seat with a puzzled look on his face as the two senior Monitors scrutinized his reactions. Understanding that each tac team member was 'lit' by a transponder tag, it was strange enough that the dead body was dark, but it was stranger that the tag no longer showed up anywhere within scanning frequency range of the tower they were in. Turning without saying a word, his hands flew like birds over the pair of keyboards angled toward him. The looping video restored itself to the corner of the large monitor directly in front of his station as he began to initiate a query of the online fleet database for the façade company associated with the tac team's provisioning group. Quickly navigating the directory of vehicles, Brandon joined the results of the entire fleet's VIN numbers to the lower-level garage's entry and exit logs. He finally spoke to the two Monitors behind him.
"Give me an approximate time the first tac team was dispatched please," he uttered the words by trying to assume his own air of icy confidence, even though it was anything but natural.
The Monitor to his left highlighted the associated time index and using the pen on his slate lifted the data from his display and touched the pen to Brandon's screen. The time index displayed itself in the foreground while he manually filtered the garage data by date, time and finally hour.
"By determining the set of fleet vehicles that left the garage during the time specified, we can narrow down the cars that were sent to the interrogation house," he said, deftly narrating his actions as he carried them out.
"Then by joining that set of cars to the fleet database for the tac teams, I can obtain their GPS transponder code. Because the telematics system has a cellular uplink in addition to a GPS radio, the unique GPS signature of each sedan is imprinted on the cellular tracking system each time the sedan travels from cell to cell."
"I don't see why we simply don't pinpoint the cars using GPS-" the Monitor to his right began, but Brandon cut him off, anticipating his question as he worked.
"Since the GPS system is run mostly by the American government, I don't have access or the ability to gather location data of a specific radio in real-time. However, I do have a hardline connection pipe into the city's 911 emergency service, which has the ability to track cellular signals as long as the car is transmitting its location."
The men fell silent as a terminal emulation window sprang to life on Brandon's screen. Logging into a new terminal session, he fed the unique GPS signature to the municipal emergency system's mainframe and obtained a series of relative locations as to the position of the interested set of tac team sedans near cell towers throughout the city. Dumping that to a textured and layered map of the metropolitan area and its outlying suburbs, he highlighted the current locations of the cars that left the garage around the specified time index.
"None of the teams have reported in. They are completely silent and transponder dark as well. It's as if they were swallowed whole by something," the Monitor related to his companion before glancing horrorstruck at the screen's display of four tac team cars clustered around a single location.
"Wait, that can't be right. What are they doing," the first Monitor said trailing off before being interrupted by the second.
"Isn't that-"
Brandon was alerted by a miniature window winking to life on his display. The operations monitoring software detected an anomalous feed originating from one of the many streams it monitored for significant visual variation in composition, motion and consistency. Enlarging it, all three of them grew silent.
Staring back at them, in real time, was the visage of a man, hunched over in the video's frame. His shock of blonde hair spiked haphazardly from his head. While his face disappeared beneath a mask of some sort, it was unmistakable that the Sword of Cain gazed at them now. Remaining so motionless to the point where Brandon had to be sure that the time index was progressing in the feed, the haunting visage of Cain in a mask staring back at them was unnerving. It was clear that he wanted them to see him. It was also clear that he knew that by now they had deduced that the tac teams sent out earlier in the day were all dead. He also wanted them to clearly understand that he now had his sword. He brought the weapon into the frame of the car's remote feed, its simplistic hilt now parallel to his face. Then it was over. A swift motion brought the feed to a jarring halt.
"Good God," one of the Monitors whispered over his shoulder.
However, Brandon knew the opposite influence was at work here.
"We have to inform the Elders. This can no longer remain concealed."
"Brandon, call in the rest of your team. Provision sufficient storage space for the preservation of all video feeds and movements of Triumvirate assets and begin a thorough background trawl of all of the Sword of Cain's recent activities including assignments, marks, training and capabilities. We need to know where he's been, and what he is capable of."
"Don't we already know what he's capable of? He's already killed two other Swords, stood toe to toe with Binary, dispatched at least six tac teams and escaped from an interrogation house. All in a time span of six hours," Brandon snorted irreverently, still trying to take in what he'd just witnessed.
"This guy is nothing short of fearsome."
For the first time in a long time, they had no witty retort or answer for his statement. The Monitors knew the matter-of-fact analysis was exactly how the Elders would see it as well. The Triumvirate organization had birthed one of the deadliest groups of assassins in the world. It was only a matter of time before at least one of them tried to buck the will of the Elders.