Secretary of Defense Brett, a large bald-headed man, tending towards fat, wanted the name of a soldier: someone who was tech genius and ruthless. He wanted a tested operative, one that he could count on to do the right thing … that is - if this new AI down at Rhuhampton labs could not be controlled? 
He summoned 5-star General Kevin Bellwether, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who tossed the ball to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vice Admiral Macelby who went to the Director of the CIA.
The answer came back up the line in the form of a sealed folder stamped ‘Top Secret’. The Secretary broke the seal, leaned forward in his chair, and started to read.
After turning the last page over he closed the folder; setting it squarely in the center of his organized desk.
He’d removed the last page from the file placing it next to the classified file. Someone had hand-written the word– Adrasteia in red ink –across the page, from the bottom left-hand corner up towards the top-right hand corner.
Adrasteia: In Greek mythology it translated into inescapable retribution.
Using thumb and middle finger of his left hand he adjusted his glasses as he leaned back in his chair. He took a moment to collect his thoughts, and then picked up his secure phone.
The Director of the CIA was expecting this call. He picked up on the first ring. He was the person who had sent the file up the line, stamped Classified - Secretary Brett – Eyes Only.
The sky is big.  Well enormous to be precise.
If you’re standing on rock-solid terra firma, legs akimbo, body rigid, head thrust backwards looking up, you can’t see the whole of it.
A venerable wise old woman arrived at this profound bit of sky wisdom by simple observation. Or so the story goes.

This bit of sky minutia could be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Or not? - She thought.
Maybe this bit of wisdom is of great importance?
Maybe not? 
Maybe there are fakes roaming around all over the place.  Fakes who can’t generate a single original thought. Fakes who claim they’re wise beyond Methuselah. She wondered while adjusting the array of large saucer-shaped lights looming above the state-of-the-art operating table. 

The target was a man who’d left the political limelight of the Washington elite a few months ago. Yesterday he had been known for his unbridled influence, power and wealth. Today he’s known as a traitor - as big a traitor as a person can be. 
It was not just his country that he had betrayed, everyone did that nowadays.  P. James Hardington had betrayed humanity itself. In fact, he had tried to wipe-out half the world’s population: as far as they could calculate such a thing. 
The Op had been designated - Adrasteia. Retribution. Inescapable.
The large silent digital clock embedded in the austere clinic wall of the surgical theatre was ticking off time by the hundredth of a second.  The clock, plus all the other accoutrements, from front desk clerks down to the aspirins were part of a complete package offered by the Charning Clinic. An exclusive boutique medical facility owned by a for-profit LLC. A place where specialty doctors plied their skills by the hour. 
From the outside, the facility appeared to be an ordinary upscale Federalist home with a meticulously landscaped entrance.  Standing guard on either side of the entrance were potted sculpted trees set back in their own niche.
The front horseshoe cobble-stoned driveway was reserved for their special clientele.
Tucked away behind the building, surrounded by a high green-wall, was a large parking lot. The rear door, where the wealthy but not so important patients entered, was a plain clear-glass door affair.

Inside the hushed surgical theaterA, the operative made a click with her tongue.
A voice came into her ear with an update.
As she listened, she wondered, not for the first time, whether she was still sane. 
She can’t remember a time when the ominous shadows stalking the periphery of her dreams hadn’t been there - pushing their way into her dreams, turning them into nightmares. She always wakes from the violent shaking that the nightmares cause: and then the night sweats begin. During these episodes she couldn’t tell  the difference between the real world and the world of her nightmares. 
Maybe I’m mad? Maybe I’m totally bonkers? Maybe I walked into the scary-crazy world of the Mad Hatter and stayed for tea?
 

“Six minutes doctor,” she said.
“Thank you, nurse,” the doctor responded, looking up at the wall clock to confirm the time, then retreating into the electronic paperwork on his desktop.


Do the simple folk, those lacking awareness or those lacking just a little bit of good judgment take a somewhat circuitous route to understand this sky wisdom?
Why do some people ignore the lesson, right from the start? Eventually tumbling down the sink-hold of no return.
Why do others go straight, pay attention - learning this bit of important sky wisdom?
This information is important!

 It’s information that needs to be permanently embed into a person’s visceral memory bank. That knowledge being - that something evil, or someone wicked, can always creep up on you, unseen, doing you harm. Always!
In the world the operative moved through, of smoldering cinders and sharp poisonous objects, you honed your instincts and learned to twitch when evil or malice was near; that is if you planned to stay alive.   To do this, you were trained to pay close attention to the chaos in the world around you.
This outside world is not just as big as the sky, it’s dangerous, cavernous and sometimes lethal and always inscrutable. Furthermore, you can’t see the whole of it either. 

Another thought rumbled like discontented flash cards across the millions of miles of synapses in her head, execution or assassination? 
Was there a difference in how you carried out the death sentence?
When the outcome was the same?
That being the ending of a person’s life? 
And what would it be called if that ending is premeditated and calculated to be painful, long suffering and humiliating?  Not bullet short, or bomb express to oblivion.  Would it be called tormenting, causing deliberate agony, causing undue distress, maybe inflicting pain or just plain old fashion torture?  For some reason this didn’t bother her, but it should have. 
Out in the real world, where the operative used to function, there were people who took umbrage with groups or individuals who engaged in partial or total Armageddon activities.
These people also took umbrage with individuals who used anyone or anything to facilitate this end. 
Somewhere in another lifetime, she thought, this was a good thing, in its way.  Maybe if there had been enough people who took umbrage, who didn’t want humanity decimated and destroyed with radioactivity they’d have make sure that nuclear weapons weren’t dropped or even contemplated on being dropped on nations.  Nations that weren’t the flavor of the month at that time. 
The operative had stopped believing in everything.  But there were still enough people outside of her world of pain who took umbrage.  Eight to be precise, the Director of the CIA, the Deputy Director of Operations and the four other members of the Op team. all of them took umbrage with what Phillip James Hardington had tried and who he had murdered to do it.
The decision to approve Hardington’s death sentence had been unanimous. No paper trail, no emails, no audio, no visuals.  It took a silent nod of the head by the D and DO and then another nod between the Director and the President and then the last nod between the Director and the reinstated operative leading the team.
Once, a long time ago, the operative might have been in it for umbrage; but that life was drowned out in pain and sunk in agony. Today, Prime was in it for - brutal raw revenge.  It was so pervasive, so inundated throughout her entire being that she was almost blinded by it.
When Mary, Tom’s wife, first heard what Prime intended her danger antenna went up. “Tom, I’m not comfortable with torture.”
“Neither am I.” 
“What about Elana?”
“We don’t talk about it.  It’s what it is.”
“What if Prime cracks up?”
“She won’t Mar. Anyway, this is not about what I would do.  We’re a team.  We’ll always be a team. You know that Mar.   Prime said she has to do this and Elana and I have to watch her back. There’s no other way.”
“But you’ve been behind a desk for a year now.”
“I know Mar.”
“And Elana is a Police Chief for god’s sake.”
“We know Mar. Elana and I’ve talked this out a hundred ways and it keeps coming around to the same thing.  We need to watch her back. We’re a team.”
“Please, oh please be careful,” Mary pleaded.
“Always am.” Tom pulled his wife close, burying his face in her sweat fragrant hair.

P. James Hardington, was one of the broken people. Those shattered souls who’ve been irreparably wounded in their youth from physical and emotional abuse. Sometimes in poverty always in hopelessness. These broken children grow up to become irreparably damaged adults. Damage adults wreck a degree of damage to those in their sphere of influence that is Pavlovian.
 This abuse-inheritance left hidden ruptures that are still bleeding-out in Hardington’s adulthood. And like millions of his ilk, who became addicted to the physical abuse, he helplessly spreads his ruptured pain to those weaker than himself: with the ferocity of a virulent air born disease. 

P. James Hardington was sixty-two years of age, tall with a slight hunch caused by a collar bone, ecumenically broken, then set improperly.  When it rained, the ache in the old break wrecked his psyche.
P. James Hardington possessed middle-American good looks, a striking photogenic profile, and sported his own triple by-pass scar - which reminded him that money and influence could even hold off the grim reaper.  And if the millions he was filtering into the Frontier Institute for Research and Development achieved success, as it appeared to be doing, the actuation of technology to grow body replacement parts would mean that Hardington and his associates would have priority access. The goal of this research, as they viewed it, would be to replace whatever they needed replaced, whenever they needed it replaced; bringing them to the very doorstep of immortality. 
At first glance, if you didn’t know any better, P. James Hardington could pass for any other high-powered exec you’d come across at the White House or in a power restaurant in the Washington DC area. 
But P. James Hardington was not your ordinary run of the mill power-type; this man was the father of all narcissistic sociopaths, and that’s saying a lot since Washington is the spawning ground for such men.
They come as yeoman fledgling egocentric tadpoles, looking for their place in the halls of power and privilege. Some, like Hardington, thrive in the elitist swill that permeates Washington. A world which either feeds on the unsuspecting or swallows them whole.

Without her cue, the voice came over the operative’s earpiece, “all clear. Subject arriving on time.”
Check scrubs: O.K. Prime told herself.
Check ID: O.K. 
Check surrounding activity: No suspicious activity, all looks normal. O.K.
She prompted herself for the last time. Do what people expect to see you doing. O.K.
“Everyone ready?” the doctor asked as he looked up at the wall clock.
A small chorus of ‘yes doctor’ followed.



The specialized boutique medical facility consisted of four stat-of-the-art operating-rooms. A1 and A2 on the west side of the building and B1 and B2 on the east side. The whole facility was rather like an upscale two-family side-by-side with a lavish central foyer.
The lavish commercial establishment’s waiting/reception area, decorated in trendy hues of maroon and gold could hold fifty people at any given time.
Patients sat in silence on cushioned chairs waiting for their names to be called, after which their relatives or companions sat knitting, reading, working their cell phone or staring into space.  No one smiled. No happy chatter permeated the large room.
On their most productive days eight doctors, each working a six-hour shift, saw one patient after another throughout the twelve hours the facility was open.  When functioning at full capacity, each section could process up to twenty-five patients a day.
On their busy days, there was the incessant movement of doctors going from one patient to the next. On a good year they grossed forty million plus.
Hardington had chosen this facility because it gave him the privacy that a large hospital couldn’t. To accomplish this, he purchased the entire building for the duration of the primary morning shift.  All the non-essential personnel were to arrive four hours later than normal that day which left the building silent and stripped of prying eyes.