Simon Hall (simon_hall) wrote in ofevil, @ 2009-10-16 13:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | phantom |
Who: Phantom (Simon Hall), some NPC's
When: Between September 24th - 30th
Where: Belgium, Walloon Region, Namur Province
What: Black ops happen. Simon moonlights for a few days. ooc: Or, the reason why Simon wasn't with his usual team during the Paris rescue.
Ever so often a mutant would be born, so destructive that even their own kind recognized the necessity for their destruction. Sometimes their powers were genocidal in nature, sometimes they would imperil the very fabric of reality itself. Other times, their mutation would take on a self-loathing bent and would only affect other mutants. Humanity loved those. Every other generation or so, one of those infamous mutant would be born whose X-gene allowed them to either siphon or merely neutralize the mutant powers of others. Every time this happened, humanity would rush to try and fashion a so-called cure that would steal powers from mutants, so that they would be powerless and weak, ripe for destruction.
Such a mutant it was that brought Simon Hall to Belgium while most of the rest of his team was in Paris. It was a small operation. Only two mutants had been sent by an office that dealt with only the blackest of ops. The humans had learned from past mistakes. The ankle bracelets that hid the two operatives' mutant signatures only worked on one or two mutants at a time. Any more than that, and the sensors would detect an anomaly in their readings.
Only Theo, a teleporter, and Simon were privy to this operation because of it. Besides, a big strike force would just be a deterrent in this case. The facility was too well fortified and armed. The loss of life on the side of the mutants would have been unacceptable, so this smaller op was designed like a surgical strike instead. If they failed, then those unacceptable losses would have to be reevaluated. A previous team had already tried and disappeared without a trace, but not before relaying important intel back to home base.
The day and the hour came. A grim faced Phantom reported for duty with time to spare. They had been through some grueling training for this. They had to be precise, they had to teleport to a place they had not seen themselves except in video feed, so they had been made to drill similiar jumps with only detailed GPS intel and visual for weeks. They had practiced countless scenarios in which they took out their target with differing levels of difficulty. They had plans upon plans in case their powers failed within five, ten, twenty feet of target and everything in between. They knew it was likely one or both of them might not survive this mission.
Simon was moderately afraid, as was natural, but for a lad who never really displayed many emotions, it was hard to tell the difference. His struggle had ever been internal. Some people were even creeped out by him, because from the outside it seemed like nothing could touch the Phantom. He had even been called heartless by a few of his partners. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but Simon figured it was safer that way. He set all feelings aside when it came time to do the job. He had always been good at that.
He had never been to Belgium and, as far as everyone was concerned, that still held true. In truth, all he saw of Belgium were two things. One was an abandoned ramshack battlement outside of Namur; an old city in Wallonia; which told him they were somewhere in southern Belgium. The second was the inside of the facility itself. It had been built mostly under the nearby Meuse River which, as Simon remembered, rose in France and flowed through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea. From the mission dossier he had gathered that Namur stood at the confluence of the Sambre and Meuse rivers. It was cradled within three different regions: Hesbaye to the north, Condroz to the south-east and Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse to the south-west. The language spoken was French. If things went south and he was somehow able to make it out alive, he was instructed to head to Hesbaye.
The mission itself had almost been anticlimactic. Yes, it had been dangerous, they didn't quite account for all the things that could go wrong, and it took them four days to finally make their post-op meeting point with their powers acting up because of a scrambler ray, but they'd achieved their objective.
The mutant had been so young, his eyes so full of despair, that Simon had hesitated. But then the boy had told him, "Thank you." Simon had gasped and gritted his teeth even as Theo yelled at him to finish it already. He had lifted the ceramic knife and slit the boy's throat in a smooth, practiced move.
With no powers, he had been forced to rely on his own bloody hands to do the deed that must be done. But the boy had thanked him before the end. He had not wanted his power, he had not wanted to live his life as an animal, a lab rat trapped in a cage forever. He had wanted it all to end, and Simon had been his angel of mercy. It had been necessary. Magneto had given the order himself, if his orders were to be believed.
Simon had to tell himself these things. He had to believe he had done a mercy. He had to believe he had done a great service to homo superior. He had to believe it was all necessary. He had to.
It wasn't that he would have rebelled and refused to do his duty for the Mutant Nation if he didn't believe these things. No. His sense of gratitude and loyalty were too great for that. But believing it helped him sleep at night. Even so, he would be seeing that boy's face in his dreams for a very long time. Before, when he had been forced to kill for the cause, Simon had done it with his powers. It had a sense of unreality to it in a way. Having had to physically slit someone's throat, with a knife, with his own two hands, putting the weight of his body behind it to sink the edge into flesh and slice, feeling the blood spurt angry and warm to spatter him; these things gave the experience a whole other deeper, visceral feel. Simon would never forget this mission. It was like making his first kill all over again.
When it was all over and he was released from debriefing and observation, Simon took a personal day. He cleaned out his apartment, got a haircut, dressed nicely and went out. He went to church and lit a candle for Osvaldo Mariano Cales, the boy whose blood was on his hands. He had a nice dinner, went to a club, brought a friendly violet-skinned young man home, had a very un-memorable tryst with him, and had already sent him on his way by midnight. By the time he changed the sheets and showered, he figured he was still on schedule to get a good six hours of sleep before reporting for duty the next day. The whole night he had dreams of doing dangerous things with dangerous men who were nothing like certain safe, harmless and friendly violet-skinned men he had recently met. In the morning, Simon would lose violet boy's phone number before heading in for work with his usual enigmatic not-quite-smile.