"The dead don't want anything because they are dead," some people say.
That would be true if the person who said it wasn't talking about him.
Him? Who is he?
He killed hundreds.
He widowed plenty.
His name was Gregor Fidget Scrob.
Some say he deserved that name.
Others say he carved it on the faces of the witnesses that had seen his art. Who were now past tense.
But one thing was certain—
Gregor Fidget Scrob would go down as the greatest assassin mankind had ever known.
---
[Location: Mont Blanc, French Alps
Time: 16:43
Temperature: -11°C
Wind: 45 km/h
Visibility: 4 kilometers]
Alpine winds whipped across Mont Blanc, carrying flecks of crystalline snow that settled on the barrel of Gregor's Barrett M82A1. His weathered fingers, calloused from decades of trigger discipline, made minute adjustments to the scope.
From this vantage point—3,487 meters above sea level, nestled between jagged rocks that cut into his elbows—the Château du Lys appeared no larger than a dollhouse.
The silver in Gregor's stubble caught the fading sunlight. His face etched with wrinkles and scars, remained impassive as he calculated windage, elevation, and the Coriolis effect. The air temperature hovered at minus eleven Celsius—cold enough to alter bullet trajectory by several centimeters.
'2,736 meters to target,' he thought. 'At the edge of effective range, even for a .50 caliber round.'
Behind him, Elise Vandermeer shifted her weight, her breath visible in the frigid air. Twenty-seven, blonde, with hands that hadn't yet developed the telltale calluses of a veteran. She was good, on paper.
"It's impossible," she whispered, binoculars fixed on the château's eastern wing. "Even with a Barrett, that's beyond maximum effective range. The shot would drop nearly twenty meters. You'd need—"
"Silence." Gregor's voice carried no emotion, merely instruction. He didn't blink as he observed his target through the scope—an overweight aristocrat with a receding hairline and a gaudy ruby pinky ring. The man's hand rested on the shoulder of a girl no older than fourteen, her eyes wide with fear.
Gregor's breathing slowed. One breath every forty-five seconds. His heartbeat—a metronome at forty beats per minute—barely registered in his chest.
Elise watched him, her eyes narrowing. "Target confirmed. Gérard Fontaine. Luxembourgian banker. Human trafficker. Forty-seven confirmed victims, all minors." She paused. "The girl wasn't in the briefing."
Gregor didn't acknowledge her. The crosshairs settled on a point six inches above Fontaine's left ear, accounting for bullet drop over distance.
'Inhale. Hold. Exhale halfway.'
His finger caressed the trigger.
'Pressure increases. Five pounds. Six. Seven.'
The Barrett roared, the recoil slamming against his shoulder with enough force to fracture a collarbone. But Gregor didn't flinch. Didn't blink.
Through the scope, 2.736 seconds later, he watched as Fontaine's head erupted in a spray of red. The banker's body toppled sideways, away from the girl who stood frozen, splattered with her captor's blood.
Elise's jaw slackened. "Holy shit. That's a new world record. 2,700 meters. You actually did it." Her voice dropped to a reverent whisper. "They said you were the best, but..."
Gregor was already disassembling the rifle, his movements precise, economical. No wasted energy, no celebration. The kill was a task completed, nothing more.
"There are at least six more traffickers in that building," Elise said, scanning the château. "We could clean house. These monsters deserve—"
"We aren't heroes." Gregor's voice cut through her enthusiasm like a blade. "Or charity workers. We're assassins. It's as simple as the name. Murderers for hire."
He packed the disassembled Barrett into an unmarked case. "The organization pays us to kill specific targets. Nothing more."
Elise opened her mouth to argue, then froze. Her hand went to the radio at her hip. "Movement. Northwest perimeter. Multiple vehicles."
Gregor was already moving, scope trained on the approaching convoy. Three black SUVs, government plates. "Interpol Tactical Response Unit." His voice remained calm, as if remarking on the weather. "We've been compromised."
"How? The extraction point is two kilometers east. We'll never make it on foot." Panic edged into Elise's voice as she scrambled to gather their equipment.
Gregor surveyed their surroundings, his mind calculating variables, probabilities, escape vectors. Wind direction. Terrain composition. The sunset's remaining light.
"The service tunnel," he said, shouldering the rifle case. "From the old mining operation. It runs beneath the eastern ridge."
"That's not on any of our maps," Elise protested.
"It wouldn't be." Gregor was already moving, his footprints in the snow almost mathematically precise in their spacing. "The entrance collapsed in '97. But there's a secondary shaft two hundred meters north. Used by smugglers during the border disputes."
Elise stared at him. "How could you possibly know that?"
Gregor didn't answer. Didn't slow. Every step measured, deliberate.
The hidden entrance was exactly where he said it would be—a narrow fissure between granite outcroppings, obscured by decades of alpine vegetation. As they slipped inside, the first bullets ricocheted off stone mere centimeters from Elise's head.
The tunnel was pitch black, smelling of mineral deposits and stagnant water. Gregor navigated its twists and turns without hesitation, using only the faint glow of a penlight.
"The structural integrity is compromised in this section," he stated flatly, pointing to a sagging wooden support beam. "Step exactly where I step."
Two minutes later, the tunnel behind them collapsed with a thunderous roar, sealing off their pursuers.
"You knew that would happen," Elise said, dust coating her blonde hair. It wasn't a question.
Gregor's face remained expressionless in the dim light. "Probability was high."
They emerged from the tunnel as night fell, two kilometers from where Interpol was still searching. Thirty minutes later, they approached a small hotel in Chamonix that served as their safe house.
---
The hotel room was utilitarian—one bed, one couch, walls thin enough that conversations from adjacent rooms filtered through like whispers. Gregor secured the perimeter, checked for surveillance devices, and then occupied himself with cleaning the disassembled rifle parts while Elise showered.
Steam escaped as she emerged from the bathroom, a hotel towel wrapped around her torso. Her wet hair clung to her shoulders as she noticed room service had delivered food—a bottle of Bordeaux, cheese, bread.
Gregor stood by the window, a cigarette sending tendrils of smoke toward the ceiling. His silhouette cut a sharp contrast against the parted curtain through which he surveyed the street below.
"How do you do it?" Elise asked, reaching for the wine. "How does someone become the best?"
Gregor exhaled smoke, his eyes never leaving the street. "You're a rookie. Stick to figuring out the basics."
"Basics?" She scoffed, pouring a generous glass. "I graduated top of my class. Perfect scores in marksmanship, infiltration, and hand-to-hand combat. I can field-strip an AK-47 in twenty-two seconds and identify sixty-three toxins by smell alone." The wine glass caught the lamplight as she raised it. "I'm hardly a rookie."
Gregor turned, his weathered face half-illuminated by the streetlamp outside. For the first time, he looked directly at her. "You're good. On paper."
His gaze flicked to her wine glass, then back to her eyes. "This job requires something most people lack. Heart."
"Heart?" Incredulity pulled her eyebrows together. "If anything, assassination requires getting rid of one's heart."
"Not heart as in emotion." Gregor moved away from the window, the cigarette dangling from his lips. "Heart as in instinct. I could kill you right now." His voice remained conversational, matter-of-fact. "That glass in your hand could be laced with cyanide, and you wouldn't know until the first symptoms hit. Your SIG Sauer is in your bag, ten feet away. You're unarmed. Vulnerable."
He reached for the wine bottle. "So stick to knowing the basics. That's all you need to survive."