* MISSING PIECES / / MURDER

[SPECTRE]

[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: calibri; font-size: 9.2pt; line-height: 1.4;"]tw for: murder (non-descriptive), blood, and animal death

Spectre had grown exhausted by the promise of tomorrow. The idea that today could ever end, and that tomorrow would be a blank slate with new opportunities. Routine was his only solace. The knowledge that today was a simple matter of going through a checklist. Tomorrow was not a certainty. Neither was today. Each hour that bled into the next was not a matter of fate or a promise from some deity. It was permitted, each minute was allowed. Given, not by a god or the universe, but by a broken and flawed mankind that held him on a leash, bit behind his teeth. At least horses got a break. Spectre feels hard-ridden and worn, sores and bruises and weakness chasing him like mice after a bag of grain with a hole in the bottom. He loses pieces of himself to wandering mouths.

No, he won't delude himself into thinking that he had not already lost every part of himself.

He carries a dead burrow of rabbits on his belt, strung on wire, and doesn't look at their eyes. The looming fence is of no concern to him. Patrols seem infrequent at this point, and this isn't his first visit. The dogs at the fence bark and turn in circles, teeth clamped down on the wire fences and slobbering over everything they can touch. Trained but feral enough. Just enough. He tosses a rabbit to the pack and watches them hound each other over it, snapping jaws and mournful baying as they lose. Tosses another from the top of the fence, and another. By the time he's out of rabbits, the dogs have left him alone and the town is quiet.

It's cooler here in the night, and comfortable. His steps are slow and silent throughout the old streets, weaving between buildings. His target doesn't sleep in the hotel — a mistake, at least now. Perhaps once upon a time they had thought it would be safer like this. It's not as if his superiors would have accepted defeat even in that case. Spectre still would have found a way around security. Daylight distraction, or during a patrol. It doesn't matter. It's over quickly, his orders had asked for nothing specific. Short bursts of arterial spray and panicked brown eyes that gloss over quickly, grip on his arms weakening, mouth going slack. Blood doesn't show up on black. Spectre looks normal. Unaffected. Emotions don't so much as flicker across cool grey eyes. It's over; that's all that matters.

Though it would have been more respectful to leave them there, in their blood-soaked bed, Spectre drags them out into the street. The people of Los Santos were not yet stirring, but they would soon. He buries a knife between their ribs and leaves the grisly scene without a second thought. By the time anyone would stumble across the scene, he was long gone.

[ ooc ] the knife is there for king! it can be moved but ic, he needs to see it / possibly take it

[KING]

[align=center][div style="width:500px;font-size:9.2pt; text-align:justify"][ INFO ] Tomorrow wasn't a blank slate. Not for the people who'd done terrible things today, who had one foot chained to the bodies they left behind. Penitence was inescapable. It wasn't necessarily King's responsibility to ensure it, but neither was he compelled to work at clipping the links and prying their fingers off the gun grip. He wasn't some kind of knife-tamer, either, for the ones who had more in common with a handled hilt than a human being. At the end of the day, people didn't have a safety to press to make them harmless.

No disassembly to check worn parts, no "it was an unfortunate malfunction." Because ultimately there was a choice, and other decisions that had laid the groundwork leading there. Most people couldn't know how they'd handle the incline until they took it, couldn't know whether they would fall or keep their feet.

King wouldn't be like that. It wasn't a corner he'd allow his back to press against, and anyone who thought that there was no possible way of controlling the outcome- they didn't know themselves well enough, didn't know people. He had to believe their choices began and ended with them alone, because otherwise, what the hell were any of them doing? Too much uncertainty there for his liking, and the reins had always been his to direct.

He didn't want to start blaming other people for his own failures.

And this was definitely his fault. Should have worked harder to keep his little city safe, to protect its caretaker, but somewhere along the line he'd made a mistake. His heel caught a domino he hadn't noticed, and each clacking collision brought them here, to King kneeling beside a dead body with a knife protruding between their ribs like a greeting card.

One that said close, but not close enough.

"Dragged here from another building," he murmured to himself, gaze following the trail to a structure separate from the hotel. They'd been isolated and alone. Perfect conditions for an assassin, really. Parts of this were different, unlike the other deaths, but what appeared to be the killing wound was clean and precise as all the others were. 

Blade was almost four inches long. Strider, judging by the printed name close to the base, once he wiped off the blood with the victim's shirt. His lips pressed together, brows drawn. Time to move on, then. There had to be a witness somewhere around here, whether or not they'd seen the crime; someone had to have seen where he'd gone, and if they hadn't, then King would have to ask for the nearest settlements and hope the assassin hadn't decided to retire someplace small and secluded, unknown to everyone here.

Had to hope the violence-itched man he met at the border would handle the body's preparations. Whoever they were, leaving them out in the street was disrespectful.