Painful Beginnings
I've always hated the idea of killing. Any time I heard or read about the mass murderers who enjoy killing, I would get this sense of confusion and anger, followed by a will to do my utmost to solve this problem. So when I became old enough to be passed as an adult, I joined the FBI. This was my compromise, to ensure I would cause the least amount of harm while stopping those who would kill en masse. It took me a lot of effort to be accepted, and the training was hell-like, but it was worth it in the end. Coming out as top of my class, I had my pick of where to go, so I chose California, as it was heavy in killers I would be able to stop. For the first couple of months everything was simple, nothing big happened that I was included in solving, but I was still helping so I bid my time. After a while, I was given my first job, of dealing with a bomb threat located at a local university. This, of course, ended up being a false alarm, but because of how swiftly and efficiently I was in dealing with it I was given recommendations from my superiors for better jobs, which is how I met Caroline Bushard, a stunningly beautiful and hard working agent who would rather spend a couple of days in the building during a case then get proper sleep at home. This drive to work is what caught my attention, but the seemingly uptight and strict personality she has at work is something I would soon figure out was not her daily life personality. Outside of work, she was a sweet, clumsy, and funny woman who caught my heart just as easily as she catches criminals. Months more passed, and our chemistry continued to build while my career kept rising, soon rivaling Caroline's own infamy.
A year and a half later, we would be engaged and held in the highest regards as the best duo our local agency had ever seen. Each job was always taken care of swiftly and without losing anyone, minus the criminals we had a gunfight with, during the job. Or at least, it had been like that, until a special job came after 2 years of us working together. It was handed directly to us from the director of the FBI after he had heard wind of our rising fame and ability; it had to do with the most dangerous serial killer America has seen since its founding. Kaden White, who was known for his 30 known murders of innocent people, and a suspected 20 more, and a long list of capabilities that made him capable of much more than would be ideal. We were assigned to a platoon of 20 individuals, led by the assistant director of California in an attempt to finally find him and put him in his place.
After months of searching, the location of Kaden White was found, and so our operation was set to begin the day after. Intense planning and many phone calls later, we had his building surrounded by 150 people, ranging from normal police officers to SWAT. The job was supposed to be in and out, with minimal losses, if any at all. What we didn't know, was that Kaden White wasn't alone, and this only came to light once that door was broken down by the SWAT team; it came in the form of everyone in sight of the door being shot down mercilessly. 4 dead, and 6 more injured, everyone took cover. Caroline and I proceeded to go forward with our 20 man platoon in an attempt to stop the gunfire and save those still alive. With the cover fire from our team, we managed to get them to safety and by then we were clear to enter the building, so we did. The first 7 to go in ran into a large explosive, taking out them and the ceiling which buried 2 alive. Storming forward, more goons with guns made 3 more men fall dead, with 4 more injured. The smell of blood was heavy in the air, feeling almost as if we were in an iron mine. Every step we took into this building the more sick I got. There was so much death and destruction happening to both good and bad people, but it was nothing I could stop.
15 minutes of storming the building later and our numbers had gone down to 37 able-bodied people, 74 injured, and 39 dead. Their numbers were uncounted, but it is assumed there were at least 300 individuals that fell dead on their side. At last, the rest of us reached the final floor. Even though it was highly dangerous, we split into 4 groups, my own had 10 people, including Caroline; I wouldn't have allowed them to separate us even if it was an order. Going into the deepest part of the basement, my squadron ran into 20 men opposing us, and in those numbers was none other than Kaden White. Immediately after we entered, 3 of my men dropped dead with 6 of them doing the same. Taking cover, it took 5 of my men's deaths and 13 of theirs until I was finally able to shoot out Kaden White's kneecap. I wasn't aiming to take him alive, as he was shooting at me and ended up killing a lot of good people, but with him incapacitated I walked up to him. With my gun held out at the ready, I inched closer with Caroline behind me, but seeing him in too much pain to fire a gun that was now out of his hand, I holstered mine in favor of cuffing him and finishing this job as soon as possible. Hesitation was something I was told to never have, but I couldn't just kill someone unarmed and unable to fight back.
Not all plans are meant to go well though, and as I was taking out my cuffs Kaden slid out a one-shot sleeve pistol. Taking quick aim to my lungs, he fired in an attempt to bring me down with him. But it never hit. I saw the gun, heard the shot, felt an impact and blood dripping down me, but it wasn't mine. Lying in a now growing pool of her blood slowly spilling out of her uniform, Caroline's breathing was harsh and her eyes were slowly losing their beautiful spark of life. But I could only sit there, staring at her slowly dying in my lap.
"120 huh? Not bad Kaden" and with that Kaden White managed to escape, the sole criminal survivor of this raid. I couldn't understand what was happening, what this pain in my chest was, what this burning feeling I had was, but I didn't have time to think about it as I heard Caroline painfully cough up blood.
I lightly brushed her hair behind her ear, getting a full view of the pain on her face. As tears refused to come out from the disbelief this was happening, with strength coming from somewhere unknown and with a determination to tell me one last thing, Caroline looked right into my eyes and said "Please don't blame yourself, we couldn't have known he would have something up his sleeve, literally." She tried to chuckle at a joke I felt would be her last but ended up coughing for a couple of seconds before calming down enough to tell me the last portion of her final words. "I'm sorry I couldn't protect us for me to finally surprise you, and I'm sorry you won't be able to be a father anymore. I love you, now and forever, where not even death can keep us apart. Please keep me waiting before we meet again, I wanna see what you look like when you're an old spirit." And with that, her last dazzling smile was given as her life slipped from her struggling fingers, leaving behind the woman I love more than anything, and my tears could finally find what they wanted to do; they came rushing out faster than they ever have before, with the only semblance of me being my painful wailing as I held my dead love as close to my heart as I could.
It took me several minutes to slow my crying down and lower my voice to a dull roar, but I finally found what this burning feeling in my chest was. It was pure, unbridled rage. Anger bigger than anything I've ever felt before, and it was all being aimed at a single, breathing person: Kaden White.
I was found in that room 1 hour later, still staring into the dull eyes of Caroline when they decided to leave me and her body until after all the other bodies were taken care of. When they were finally done, they allowed my best friend Mark to come in and talk me into letting her be brought out. It took him 10 minutes, of which no one tried to rush him or me due to the pure grief they could feel coming from me. After he managed to convince me, I simply wrapped Caroline in my arms, stood up, and followed behind the body cleaners with her princess carried by me for as long as I could. It pained me more than any wound ever could to part with her, but I knew I had stuff I needed to do. So I looked at her, took a glance at her stomach which held my now dead child and gave a silent vow of vengeance towards the bastard that caused this hole in my heart to be torn open with thorns of poison.
As soon as Caroline's body was taken away, everything after that felt like a blur, anything capable of being remembered only burned a bigger hole in my already crumbling heart. Giving my report so soon after the incident showed they cared more about the results than the loss of the good men and women lost that day; this lowered my belief in a system thinking more of results than responsibility. When I was handed an award of valor it scorched my heart, giving me a memento of my lack of resolve that caused the loss of the only thing truly important in my life. When people looked up to me for the heroics I displayed during the event that took so many lives, it fueled my anger by making me further blame Kaden for everything wrong.
Years passed, and my career took a turn for the worse. My efficiency went up, but so did my mortality rate. Any criminal that didn't outright surrender was killed practically on sight, without even a shred of a chance of capture from my end. There was this obsessive glint in my eyes that strangers or new people would be wary of, and people in the know would show pity whenever they understood what it was for. I was famed for something different now, and it was my obsession with the criminal Kaden White. Every chance I would get would be spent searching for him, trying to get him in a fit of revenge that only I knew how deep it really went. Because of him, I lost the love of my life, my child, and my morals. My friends distanced themselves from me, and my family stopped trying after the third month of me relentlessly searching for a solution only I thought would help everything; the death of Kaden was the only thing I longed for.
Though he seemed to be the biggest name in any news source for a couple of months, after the second year with no news about him whatsoever everyone assumed that he had gone into hiding, or stopped with his career of criminal acts after so long of terrorizing everyone.
After 7 years of relentless searching, and a couple of close calls for being fired or being put off duty, I finally found him. His hideout, the only place where he would be vulnerable from a sense of safety. And it was this place that I proceeded to plan a raid of. I wouldn't tell anyone, as they would only get in the way of my revenge, and I would stop at nothing to get the revenge I so desired. After stockpiling ammunition, several different weapons, and explosives with many more deadly devices and tools in my possession, I took my customized SUV to the location of my revenge. And when I got there, I was not disappointed. Kaden was there, and he was only with a group of 40 people.
Unpacking my SUV of anything non-explosive, I set it up to drive straight into the floor level of his complex, and blew the top floors to oblivion while heavily damaging the first two basement floors, killing 28 of the people in the process. It felt good to start my revenge, and anyone who can be friends with this bastard deserved death.
As soon as the debris settled enough to have visibility, I stormed in with multiple firearms, shooting at anything that moved, which paid off as the criminals were still confused as to what was happening, leading to 3 more dropping dead. With 9 more targets to find and neutralize, I brought a pack of grenades to the staircase, of which I threw a flashbang down to stop any people from seeing what I was about to do next, which consisted of pulling the pin of one of the grenades and throwing them altogether through the door on the bottom of the stairs. This resulted in 5 more people dead, and 2 more with maimed legs which I subsequently double-tapped their heads to make sure they died. Bringing the last of my arsenal, holding my own and Caroline's side-arm at my side with an M-14 in my hands, ready to mow down the remaining people in my way of Kaden White.
When I made it to the next room, I got shot in my leg, making me fall, before I made it behind the door frame that was getting bombarded by constant gunfire. Taking out a small piece of reflective material, I used it as a mirror as I looked to see what was happening and where they were, and since they seemed to have no place to hide I took aim backward and managed to shoot both of them due to special training I was given for these situations. Now that I could see Kaden, I saw him leaning on his cane and supporting himself with the wall. It seems that in one of the previous explosions I seriously injured his leg that still had a kneecap, and he wasn't carrying any visible arms, so I shot his other leg, despite the white flag he was carrying, and jumped on top of his arms to make sure he didn't bring out the sleeve-guns that killed Caroline.
With pain and terror contorting Kaden's face, he seemed to be doubting that I would kill him because he remembered me. He remembered how I ruined his leg, how I ruined his career, and how much he enjoyed killing someone who seemed so dear to me. As he gave snarky comments to try and hide his fear, mentioning Caroline's name only sealed his fate even more as I bashed his head with my gun, knocking him out. Tying up each wound the best I could, I strapped him to a chair and splashed him with cold water I found not too far from where he was tied up. Without a single word, and him staring at me for a couple of seconds, I grabbed small needles I had on me and stabbed them into the most sensitive nerve bundles the body had, causing so much pain that Kaden started to froth from the mouth just enough to let me know he was being overloaded with pain, so I stopped inflicting the pain.
After he started catching his breath, as he was unable to hold back tears from the pain, he started to attempt to speak, before being pistol-whipped hard enough to break his jaw, keeping him from speaking. Not that I couldn't tell he was, I could see it in his eyes, but I just smiled and stabbed his nerve bundles again, this time a little slower so he can savor the pain he was feeling. After repeating this for almost 30 minutes, which to Kaden felt like a couple of days, I stopped and spoke calmly, with a voice sounding of very little mercy, and maybe even a bit of enjoyment at this situation.
"Do you even know how much suffering you put on me? On everyone connected to those, you've killed? Well, the pain you're feeling? Irrelevant compared to what I felt after you killed my pregnant wife, this is nothing. The burning feeling inside me is barely even quenched, but I'm afraid we ran out of time, by now there are FBI agents outside this building, looking at the carnage that your actions caused. This whole debacle? It could have been avoided had you just not been a killer, but I have to thank you for waking me up. I saw too much good in a world that deserved very little love, and now that my only light is gone I have no purpose here. I hope you rot in the hellhole that you'll be going to, Kaden White." And with that, I put him out of his misery with Caroline's gun, and with my own, I put it up against my head. "I'll see you soon my love." And with the final bang of the massacre that happened that day, my body dropped and my soul left, leaving this god-forsaken world, and finally releasing me from this never-ending pain in my soul. With this, the story of Aiden Cunningham came to a close and allowed the story of Aaron Ambrosus to commence.