^{New York City - June 27th 1982}

"We have gone off track, the human race has lost its way somehow and is now wandering in an ever expanding moral desert. A wasteland of runaway crime, deceitful politics, consummate greed and pointless, destructive expansion. 

There are those who feel that nothing than can be done to halt this trend, that there are no simple solutions to the world’s problems, no single course of action that can turn the world around, nothing that can be done to halt the bloody and violent cascade down this staircase of self destruction that we seem to be inexorably tumbling. 

There are those who feel that there is nothing they can do.

I am not one of them."

^{Baltimore - August 15th 1979}

His vision swam and the ringing in his ears became unbearable.  He tried to steady himself against he edge of his desk but his equilibrium was completely shot.  His hand slipped from the edge of the old, tanned wood and he began to fall uncontrollably.

He somehow sensed the impact just before it came and his head clashed horrendously against the solid tile fireplace surround with a sickening crack.  Surprisingly the blow didn't knock him out instantly.  He lay there for a several minutes trying desperately to think how he could get himself out of this situation.  He felt no pain, his entire body simply felt numb and he discovered that it was impossible to move. His vision suddenly cleared and as it did he realized that there was a very real possibility that he was going to die right here on the floor of his office… alone. 

The ringing continued in his ears but the high pitched keening seemed to be intensifying.  Just before he finally blacked out, he realized that as the sound slowly increased in volume and pitch it reminded him of the steam trains his father had taken him to see when he was a child.

For the next five hours he lay there unconscious and un-missed.  Professor James William Burrows had suddenly and without any reasonable warning, become the most dangerous man on earth.

^{Times Square, New York City - October 24th 2010}

This wasn't his first hunt, but it was surely his most time consuming and complex.  He shifted his legs trying to avoid them cramping up again. There had been a light drizzle earlier in the day just after sunrise but the rooftop was mostly dry, shielded from the worst of it by the towering buildings all around this part of town.  He'd had the good sense to wear warm gloves and a heavy jacket which he was now laying on. He had some jerky and drinking water in a flask fitted with a straw, so that he could take sips without having to lower his eye from the rifle scope. For the most part, he was pretty comfortable, apart from the cramps which came and went.

He'd been up on the roof now for almost six hours and there was still no sign of his target. The message had warned him there would be a long wait, he wondered for the first time how much longer that would be.  In a way he felt flattered that they had chosen him. There were literally hundreds of hunters in the New York area now and they could have picked any one of them, but they had chosen him.  He guessed that he had shown excellent patience before on the kill he'd made down in Trenton, perhaps that had gotten him moved to the top of the list.  Five confirmed kills so far in the last six months and not even a trace of any kind of investigation.  He had no idea if this was a particularly high figure, they didn't publish kills scores yet.

Ironically it had been his father that had taught him to be so patient, a wry smile touched his lips as he wondered if the old man would be proud of him if he could see him now.
He realized his thoughts were drifting away from the job, so he brought himself back to the moment.  He panned the rifle around, scanning the crowds below through the scope, looking for the target, searching for the telltale sign that would mark out the one person he had to shoot… still nothing.

The school party had moved on, probably into one of the many theatres, the Nun had also gone which was a shame as he'd kind of hoped it would be her.  The guy going through the trash was still there and so was the man in the raincoat who looked like he was waiting for someone.  Still no target though. The hunter waited on.

^{Albany, Texas - May 12th 1984}

Jim White was a small time independent stock trader, he'd had his ups and downs over the years but mostly he'd managed to bumble along keeping things on an even keel, but recently he was having a problem.  He just could not deal with all the new computer trading systems that were taking over his world.  He was sure that his time as a trader was slowly but surely coming to an end and he was right.  There were so many hot shot kids coming up through the ranks and they all new how to work strings of trades far faster than he could every cope to deal with.  He was becoming a has been, he knew it and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.

But then the package arrived.  In it were instructions, very detailed instructions for a stock trade that someone wanted him to carry out.  The funds had already been transferred to his trading account.  When he realized the amount of money involved Jim got nervous.  He called the phone number included in the package to try and call the whole thing off, it was too big for him.  The voice on the phone reassured him nothing was untoward and that he was under no obligation to cover any losses.  The voice on the phone told him that the trade orders were based on some very serious new computer prediction results and that if he carried out the instruction to the letter he would make himself a very nice commission.

The predictions turned out to be startlingly accurate, a moment after the order to sell the stock was passed the price started tumbling.   Working the floors over the years you sometimes saw well timed trades but this one was different.  This one reeked of inside information.   The trade instructions had been delivered by mail over three weeks ago, which in itself was not particularly unusual. There were many people that traded by post in strong stocks which never varied much, but these were not secure commodities, these were extremely volatile ones.  The fact was that there was no way any computer prediction could have been this accurate from that long ago, it just wasn’t possible. 

The instructions the package contained were both lengthy and detailed.  The client had specified exact purchase and sale times down to the second with a string of caveats attached.  The conditions were all ordered on the probability of them having any relevant effect on the trade stock, and none of them had been above 8%.  As it turned out none of those listed ever came to pass.  The trade was as smooth as butter.

Jim looked over the figures and whistled,  whoever the client was they had just cleared over sixty eight million dollars profit on what was essentially a five minute trade.  Pretty tasty all things considered.  Jim clapped his hands together and rubbed them furiously, the commission on this one single trade would get him out of the business before he was forced out by all those hotshots on his heels. 

'Yes Sir, good day at the office', he laughed and decided to take the rest of the day off.

Check back soon for the next part of The Cell.