He was still wandering through this memory when someone grabbed his throat from behind - a powerful hand, too. For anyone else, this would have caused absolute panic and a choke reflex, but not for Bill Heller. No, sir. Plus, this guy wasn't the best hitman he'd ever come across either - he was only choking him with one hand. "Amateur" was the one thought that popped into Heller's mind.

A voice whispered in his ear. “You thought you were going to get away, old man. You thought you were going to choose when you kicked the bucket. No way. This is a message from the 'Council'."

The choking grip tightened more as Heller felt another hand moving to push him forward into the wall in front of him. Whoever this guy was, he obviously assumed that Heller was just going to be choked to death surrounded by the stink of piss, stale cologne, and dampness. Bill Heller decides when Bill Heller dies - nobody else. This was the last mistake this rookie was ever going to make.

The guy squeezing Heller’s throat never got to see that the reason his eyes were closed wasn’t because of panic. It was because he’d entered that Zen place inside his head, the place he went to just before he did something terrible.  Killing someone while you’re angry makes you sloppy. You make mistakes, you get caught and then you’re getting yourself killed at the end of a needle, a rope, or a bullet.  Serenity was the best place to commit a murder from. Bill Heller had learned that a long time ago.

The big goon behind Heller was still squeezing for all he was worth, working his second hand into the equation now. What happened next was so sudden that anyone watching from the outside could have mistaken it for a scene from some martial arts movie. The victim wasn’t the victim now.

Heller turned to his left slightly and ducked his head downwards, breaking the attacker's choke hold in an instant. He heard the “Ughh…” of surprise escaping from the rookie killer’s mouth as he did this. It was one of the last noises this man was ever going to make.

As he continued moving to the left, he had a split second to draw a scalpel from his pocket, gripping it firmly but lightly in his right hand. Calm. Cool. No force. He continued a downward pivot to his left and then crouching slightly, he quickly sliced into the inner thigh of his assailant with his right hand.

Unless you were inside Bill Heller’s head, or an ER surgeon, you would have had no idea what had just happened. The scalpel was so sharp that the big guy choking him wasn’t going to figure it out for a while yet either. He’d just cut clean through the femoral artery with a barely audible 'snick' as the blade cut through fabric and flesh. The quietest whisper was all it took to seal this man’s fate.

Heller took two steps back to examine his handiwork. That effort of escaping had winded him badly, he could feel just how much energy he's used up in taking out just one thug. In the good ole days, he could have taken this guy out without breaking a sweat. Now, the effort had almost killed him.

Whoever had been choking him stumbled backwards into a cubicle, his hand gripping his groin near his thigh. The nerves in his leg were obviously flaring with pain now in an attempt to tell him he had a mortal injury and he had to take care of it.

Heller stood watching him calmly. The big goon had that look of surprise people have on their face just before a car crash, but he was slowly turning a very white color, too. No matter how hard clamped his hand down on his thigh, blood was gushing from the wound. When your femoral gets cut that cleanly, you don't have much time, and Heller could see this guy was already going into shock. He was getting ready to go asleep for a good, long…eternity.

Realizing there was no point in waiting around to be caught mid-murder by some random guy wandering into the restroom, Heller knew he had to finish what he’d just started. He took two quick steps forward and crushed his attacker’s windpipe with the heel of his palm. It doesn't take much effort to crush a human throat once you knew how, and the old man knew exactly what he was doing.

The gasping, bleeding mess in front of him slumped backward onto the toilet. Whoever he was, he was dead now. With a gentle click, Heller pulled the door closed.

He checked himself for blood spatters, found none, and went back to washing his hands and musing on the past. He found himself smiling into the mirror now, and for just a split second, he felt sure that he saw the face of a younger man smiling back at him.

“So the Council aren’t quite done with me yet? That’s good to know,” he muttered to himself.

Once he was done washing the blood off his hands, Heller checked the door one more time, stretched himself fully upright, cracked his neck, and exhaled deeply, closing his eyes as he did. For some people, murder made them weak with fear and sick to their stomach. Right now, though, Bill Heller felt more alive than he had in many years. He felt great actually.

A few moments later, he shuffled out of the restroom and into the diner, walking slowly back to the table as Jason watched him intently, but pretended not to.

With a slight groan, he sat himself down in the booth across from Jason, smiled and then continued with eating his pie. Heller knew it was always a good idea that people believed you were far feebler than you actually were - a few grunts and wheezes was usually more than enough to convince them of that.

Chapter 17

"They even found other weapons in the Book Depository, did you know that? They found at least one other handgun there, but no one ever asked what it was for. It actually belonged to Oswald, because his original programming included a 'suicide' instruction, where he'd fire several shots, drop the rifle, and then blow his own brains out,” Heller demonstrated the motion of a guy offing himself with a pistol. “Unfortunately, the 'Ultra' program was still quite ummm...immature...back then, so Oswald's programming didn't run as expected. Ruby took care of that though, so we didn't care how Oswald died, just as long as it happened."

"Bill...you said earlier that Kennedy had to be killed so that millions of people could live, or something like that?" Jason asked. He’d heard the remorse in the old man’s voice earlier, and it was the one bit of the story he hadn’t explained just yet. This was the reason they killed Kennedy after all, so he wanted to know more.

Heller paused and looked straight ahead of him for several moments, and then lowered his gaze to focus on the surface of the table they were sitting at. His breathing had slowed, and that sickening wheezing coming from inside Heller seemed to ease off just a little bit. To anyone passing by, it probably looked like some old guy was just having a "silver" moment, but Jason knew it was deeper than that - this was a man mentally wrestling with a demon that had been haunting him for years.

"How do you really tell what's right from wrong?" Heller asked but leaving the question hang in the air for someone else to answer. "How can a seemingly good deed go so badly wrong?"

Jason growled through his teeth, "Jesus Christ, Heller, are you suggesting that executing Kennedy was a good deed?"

"It seemed to be at the time, Jason. We thought we were saving the world from a far worse fate. We sacrificed one man to save tens of millions." Heller replied.

"I wasn't sure before, Heller, but I'm almost completely sure now - you're a raving madman. How the hell can you justify doing what you did?" Jason said.

Heller paused again and gave him that long, cool stare. It was enough to bring any outburst to a sudden halt. It was a mental slap in the face to calm him down.