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“Why the hell are you following me around?”

“I just wanted to talk to you.”

“So what —you thought you’d swing by, swap some war stories or whatever? Well you came to the wrong guy.”

“No,” he said, not unkindly. “I don’t believe I did.”

“I don’t care what you believe. Contact between Collectors is strictly forbidden. Do you have any idea what’d happen to us if our handlers caught wind of this? I ought to kill you just for being here.”

“Perhaps you should, but I don’t believe you will. It’s my understanding you’ve got a certain affection for the living. You may wish to get rid of me, but I’m guessing you aren’t going to sacrifice this perfectly good skin-suit to do it. Now, have a seat and let me buy you a drink.”

“Why on earth would I do that?” I asked.

“Because the way I hear it, we ain’t so different, you and me. We both know this job of ours is designed to chip away everything decent and human about us, until we’re no better than the monsters we work for. I, for one, am shitting myself at the very thought of that, and I reckon you probably are too. Look, I know it’s a losing battle, trying to hold on to what makes us who we are, but I also know that isn’t going stop me from trying. And if I had to guess, I’d say you aren’t going to, either. All I’m saying is, maybe it’d be easier if we weren’t going it alone.”

He was right, about the job part at least. See, this vocation is punishment for a life misspent —and as punishments go, it’s a doozy. Every time we take a soul, we experience every moment that brought that person to our grasp —every kindness, every slight, every gruesome act our mark inflicted. Mind you, I don’t mean we see those moments; we live them, with painful, blinding clarity. Over time, it wears on you. Breaks you down. Not to mention, every time you leave a vessel behind, you lose a little bit of what makes you who you were in life, until eventually there’s nothing left. It was the thought of that happening —that, and the horrors I’d experienced collecting nutjobs like Haas —that kept me up at night. It was these that kept me talking to Danny.

“So what,” I said, “you’re asking if I’ll be your friend?"

“I’m asking if you’ll let me buy you a drink.”

“You’re fucking nuts, you know that? If anyone were to find out about this–”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sam, all we’re talking about is a drink. What’s the harm in that?”

What’s the harm? I swear, over the years, I must’ve played that sentence back a thousand times. I’d like to think that if I knew then what I know now, things would’ve gone differently. And who knows? Maybe they would have. Or maybe I’m kidding myself, thinking I had ever had a choice. In those early years as a Collector, I was so lonely, so desperate —so scared of what I might one day become —there was really no other way for me to play it.

So yeah, I took that drink, and we got to talking. Turned out, we did have a lot in common. As I said, those who wind up marked for collection are either contract kills or freelancers, and since all Collectors were once collected, that means the same holds true for us. Now, I don’t want to tell tales out of class, but the guy who collected me? He was a freelancer, and if that sadistic bastard is any indication, they’re not a group you want to hang out with come the company picnic. Me and Danny, we were contract kills. The deal I made saved the life of the woman that I loved. Danny made his deal at the tender age of fifteen when, in the wake of the First World War, the British economy took a bad turn and left his onceaffluent family penniless, and his once-loving parents hateful and embittered. He was but a child, and the only education he’d ever had was in the classics as had befitted his family’s station; he hadn’t the skills to reclaim their fortune by wits alone. So he sought help —help of the demon variety. The way he told it, if he had it to do all over again, even knowing what that deal would cost him, he would’ve played it the same way. Something else we had in common, I suppose.

As the evening wore on, one drink became three, three became five, and by the time we stumbled armin-arm out of the pub and into the chilly November pre-dawn, me and Danny’d become friends.

Was it stupid? I don’t know. Fate? I couldn’t say.

One thing I know for sure, though: right or wrong, things would’ve been a lot simpler if I’d just killed him.

3.

The Plaza de Bolivar sparkled in the midday sun, still rain-slick from a spate of showers that had burned off when the first rays of morning light crested the Andes to the east. It was Sunday, and the massive square was flush with people: students, lounging on the steps of the old cathedral; lovers, chatting amiably as they strolled arm-in-arm; children, startling pigeons into flight as they splashed through the puddles that had gathered in the shadow of the capitol building. The scene looked like something out of a picture postcard, right down to the plaza patrons’ unselfconscious good cheer. At the moment, I hated each and every one of them, traipsing about without a care in the world while Danny jerked me around like a puppet on a string.

Five days had passed since I’d received Danny’s grisly message —five days since I’d left Varela’s mutilated corpse, and the corpses of his men, to be reclaimed by the jungle they’d so wrongly sought refuge in. The first two of them I’d spent hiking to the nearest village, although maybe village was too strong a word. Really, it was nothing more than a handful of ramshackle huts clustered around a narrow dirt track that served as their only road. God knows what they must’ve thought of me, stumbling filthy and delirious out of the jungle and begging for food and water in broken Spanish. But whatever they thought of me, they took me in, giving me not only food and water, but fresh clothes and a bed to sleep in as well. The bus to Bogotá arrived two days later, looking —as all buses in Colombia seem to —like some crazy Technicolor school bus, its roof piled high with suitcases, wicker baskets, and sacks of grain. I boarded it with a full belly, a clear head, and an undeniable reluctance to leave after the staggering hospitality I’d been shown by these people who had so little to give. Of course, the choice to leave wasn’t mine to make —Danny had made sure of that. I didn’t know what he was playing at, snatching Varela’s soul, and truth be told, I didn’t care. All I cared about was taking back what was rightfully mine, even if I had to tear him limb from limb to do it.

I set fire to a cigarette, and then struck out across the square. Though the sun was bright overhead, the mountain air was cool and thin. After a week spent traipsing through the Amazonian lowlands, my lungs seared from the sudden altitude, and gooseflesh sprung up on my arms at the slightest breeze. I was dizzy and weak, and my muscles protested at the exertion required to remain upright and on the move. If this meeting of ours were to come to blows, I didn’t like my chances. And with Danny, I really couldn’t rule it out.

About a half a block from the square was a small sidewalk café —a smattering of wrought-iron tables beneath a black canvas awning, within sight of the twin spires of the cathedral. I took a seat and ordered a cup of strong black coffee, as much for warmth as to kill the time. The minutes passed by as lackadaisically as the tourists, as though both had nowhere in particular to be. When I reached the bottom of my mug, I signaled to the waitress for another.

By the time I finished my second cup of coffee, I was jumpy, and my palms were sweating. My waitress wasn’t faring much better. When she brought my second refill, she shot off something in rapid-fire Spanish that I couldn’t understand, but I think I got the gist: order something besides coffee or beat sidewalk. I tried to explain to her that I was waiting for someone, but that didn’t seem to get much traction. Eventually, I acquiesced, looking over the menu and picking an item at random. That seemed to mollify her, because she snatched the menu from my hands and disappeared into the café, leaving me and my coffee jitters in peace.