The endless struggle of humanity continued. It didn’t matter how many had died in the past, it didn’t matter how many were dying, or were destined to die, they continued. Some did it for personal gain, some for a cause, though a few, and a growing majority did it because they knew nothing else, because they wanted nothing else. Some could easily place themselves within a category, most didn’t care. Orson, on the other hand, didn’t know for which he was destined, sometimes he thought that he didn’t care, but these small windows of self-enforced bliss never lasted, and he was always forced to tumble back down into a spiral of self-be-wonderment.

He was just another of the men in the shadows, the trigger-men, the ones who enforced the will of those far more powerful than they. He did as he usually did, bore into the nearest wall with his eyes, and wait to leave. This was his latest, and least karmic, of odd jobs. He was engulfed by the darkness of the surrounding hallway, the silence of which was almost as unnerving as it’s absence of light. The null zone of sense would have engulfed him if not for the light and sound of the doorway behind him.

The hinges hung loosely, the remnants of the force used to rip the door away from them still creating a swinging motion that caused the shadows to splay themselves in the light that forced it’s way into the hall. Orson was still in his usual reverie, the light and the sounds of struggle behind him cut out by his senses, he was engulfed in a dark and soundless veil of his own. He enjoyed these moments of thought, they were his islands of relativity in a world where everything moved quickly, too quickly.

While unnoticed by Orson, the sounds of struggle gradually tapered off, the muffled voices were quieted, and then stopped. As always, this slow decrescendo ended with a single accent, the loud bang of a gunshot, as sudden and unwonted in the quiet of the hallway as the final nail in a coffin. Orson stepped into the light, ready to do his job as always. He moved quickly through the first room, not bothering to notice much as he looked down to avoid the glaring of the light above him, instead staring at his booted feet, down his Leather Jacket, eyes adjusting from the darkness of the corridor.