The man named Kant waited patiently in a dark, shadowy corner of an unnamed alley. The persistent rain had left his clothing damp and his body chilled. He was at this miserable place, not out of personal choice, but out of duty. He was there to kill someone. He had never met his intended victim and would have no reason to kill him other than that he had been told to do so. He’d received the identification, description and location of his target earlier in the day and had not requested a reason for the kill. It was simply an order and he had been trained to follow orders without question or hesitation. Kant finally spotted his target exiting The President’s Hotel in downtown Portland. It was exactly nine o’clock and the target was precisely on time. The middle aged man wore a dark, gray overcoat and a brimmed hat to deflect the rain. He surveyed the landscape outside the hotel, swung a long, tasseled scarf around his neck and descended the hotel’s stone-stepped entry way to the sidewalk. He walked with an air of confident importance. At his distance, Kant wasn’t able to make out distinct facial features but he was certain this was the man he was supposed to kill. He’d been given specific information as to the man’s whereabouts and the time that he would be leaving the hotel. There was no other human traffic on the hotel’s perimeter and none within the marble and gilded walls of the hotel’s foyer. He knew the man would be walking to his favorite poker pub a few blocks away and that he’d have time to affirm his judgment. Still, he didn’t want to make a mistake. Mistakes weren’t tolerated. Kant stepped out of the alley, filled his lungs with a deep breath of cool air and tracked the unsuspecting man from the opposite side of the rain slickened street. He calculated the distance to the neon sign broadcasting the target’s destination and altered his pace to be able to intercept him at the point he’d chosen to accomplish his task. The identified kill spot, reconnoitered hours earlier, provided both dim lit cover for the murder and a ready escape route once it was completed. Kant moved stealthily towards his victim while maintaining constant vigilance of the public and fluid landscape. Absolute attention to detail was essential. Witnesses were not allowed and getting caught was not an option. Kant’s training had provided the skills he now employed, skills that were now second nature. That training had also instilled in him an emotional detachment from the process. Kant, in fact, had not had emotions of any kind for as long as he could remember. There was a time when he felt saddened by the act of killing but it was an inexplicable sadness for himself as much as it had been for the lives he had ended. Those feelings had gradually dissipated and eventually they were replaced with a singular submission to duty. He had relinquished all emotion. In essence, he existed in isolation from the traits that made him human. Kant quickened his pace, crossed the street a block ahead of his target and walked casually toward him, the gap between them contracting with each step. One hundred feet from the entrance to The Full House pub, at a point where the street intersected with another of Portland’s web of alleys, Kant hailed the man and asked for directions to an invented location. While the man pondered the question, Kant completed his final analysis of the man’s identification. Six feet two inches tall, blue-green eyes, light brown hair with emergent gray strands around the temples, mid-fifties and, most importantly, a small crescent shaped scar above the left eyebrow. Satisfied he’d found his intended target, Kant muted his prey with a swift and well-placed blow to the throat that immediately collapsed the man’s trachea. The target grabbed his throat, crumpled to his knees and gasped for air. Kant scanned the area. No one had witnessed his attack. He gripped his prey with powerful arms and dragged him forcibly into the alley and dropped him onto the cobbled stone surface. He watched as his wide eyed victim flailed violently; grunting and gasping in a desperate quest for air. Kant removed the scarf from around the man’s neck, twice-wrapped it around his head and over his mouth to muffle the sounds and waited dispassionately until the man grew still. He then extracted the man’s wallet from the inside pocket of his suit coat and ripped the expensive watch from his wrist. Both were items he had no personal use for and would quickly discard in an appropriate place. Finally, he knelt next to the target and checked both the carotid and radial pulse. Kant found no evidence of a beating heart. He moved the man adjacent to the bricked wall of the alley and propped him into a sitting position. He tied the scarf back around the target’s neck, returned his hat to its proper perch and straightened his shirt and coat. Kant stepped slowly back from the lifeless body and took one last look. Satisfied that his task had been completed according to plan, he merged into the shadows of the alley way and stepped away from another death.
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