You Should Bring Ghosts on Your Missions

*** Edited.  Originally the MC made a joke. But after I re-read it, I worry it sounded like an insult, so I deleted it. **

{The Past -- Virginia, United States}

Robert B. Smith was now known as Brian R. Smithson. He was back in Langley, Virginia, United States.

When he walked into his office, he saw his new assignment in a big yellow envelop. Inside the envelop, he found round trip tickets to Vancouver, Canada. A few photos of two men who would be his targets. There was also a fact sheet that detailed the who, the when, the where.

There were no "why" and "how." He only needed to find them and kill them quietly. He could only guess this was a mission to kill the people who may have stolen some documents from the engineer.

For CIA assignment, Robert really didn't need the ghosts' help. But the ghosts liked to travel with him. They were like kids sometimes.

"Can we please go?" Tao said. He was always the first to ask to go travel with Robert.

"We just went when we release Yao the other time, remember?" Robert tried to refuse to bring the ghosts.

"I don't mind going again. Free trip is my favorite thing" One ghost said.

"You get free everything with me!" Robert wanted to remind them.

"I would like to go, too! I wasn't paying attention last time." Another ghost said.

At this point, Robert had only five ghosts with him. Even thought that was two ghosts less from before, that could be quite noisy sometimes.

"Can we please travel without the bottle?" One ghost asked.

"No! You guys cannot be talking when I make my kill." Robert declined.

"You can deposit us back to the bottle when you go out to kill." Tao suggested.

"OK. Fine." Robert then opened the bottle and the ghosts came back to his head.

But after Robert arrived in Vancouver, he realized he forgot to pack the glass bottle. He asked the ghosts if they purposely failed to mention that.

"Stupid Robert. Don't blame us for your own stupidity." Tao answered first.

"You are getting old and forgetting things! Not our fault. You should probably take some health food supplement, like Ginko something, to help with your memory and your stupid brain." Another ghost said, and then they all laughed.

"OK. You guys must be quiet when I kill. I don't need distraction."

Robert found the two men leisurely drinking coffee at a cafe.  He then sneaked up on them. The two men remained calm and asked what Robert wanted.

Robert said, "Follow me. You will know. We can have a talk without any violence."

One man snorted, "Yeah, right, we will not follow you."

"You know what? You're right. I don't want you to follow me now.  I'll just burn down your hotel room. Ciao ciao."

Robert then just walked off and hid in an alleyway.

Robert was just bluffing.  He thought that was a good way to throw them off. And they did get nervous. That ought to at least get them to stand up.

The two quickly went back to their hotel, and Robert secretly followed them. Once these two men reached their hotel room, Robert dashed out from the hallway corner and quickly pushed them in. Robert successfully stormed into their room.

Robert agilely tied them up and started to search their pockets. Then, he started to search all their belongings in the room. Finally, he flipped the mattress and found an envelope.

Robert took out whatever was in the envelope and looked. He didn't know a whole lot of chemical weapons, but it looked like the information he was asked to protect.

Robert didn't even think he should waste time interrogating them. These two men were probably special agents for some foreign intelligence. And Robert kind of had no patience to break them down today. His assignment really was just to kill these two guys.

Robert decided he would just ask some simple questions, as a routine:

"This is what you stole from our chemical engineer, isn't it?"

"We didn't steal. Your chemical engineer gave the document to us, because someone was going to kill him."

Robert shook his head. "OK. Whatever. And what agency sent you?"

"We are the engineer's friends. No one sent us."

Robert shook his head again, and he took his gun out, aiming at them.

Robert pulled the safety, "I'm sure you guys knew you would be facing fatal threat of a gun. So I'm just going to save me some time and go ahead and kill you guys now."

"Wait! Stop!"

The loud pleading came from the two men. And then there was also one coming from his head.

"What the hell? I told you guys to be quiet!" Robert was now speaking to the ghosts.

"Robert, these two men are not special agents."

"How do you know?"

"I just know. You probably shouldn't kill them."

"But it's my assignment. I'm supposed to kill the information thief."

"Maybe you should follow them and check out their stories."

"I don't have that much time!"

The two men now watched Robert talking to himself. The two men then looked at each other, finding this very odd.

In the end, Robert decided to throw those suspects into the confinement of a safe house in Vancouver. He made some phone calls back to the headquarter, asking if the chemical weapon engineer was OK.

And he learned the chemical weapon engineer was dead. Cause of death unknown.

Robert then started to think this was all very wrong. Did someone not want the chemical weapon to be built? But it was nearly finished. If the higher-ups didn't want the weapon anymore, why wouldn't they just stop the project? Why killed the engineer?

Eventually, Robert found out that the reason for killing the engineer was indeed someone didn't want the weapon to be built anymore. And they decided to kill him, because the engineer had a mind that was capable of making great weapons. If the engineer was still alive, he could fall into someone else's hands and start making new weapons for them. Therefore, an innocent man died again.

Maybe Robert couldn't be sure if that engineer was entirely innocent. The ghosts said they found out that the engineer maybe trying to sell his services to a different group of people.

But still, this man died all because of competitiveness. It was so meaningless. What do all these weapon competitions going to do for the world? A very smart engineer lost his life for a reason that sounded like a jealous lover: "I don't want to have you anymore, I still don't want someone else to have you either!"

But why stop building the weapon all of a sudden? Even if the engineer planned to work with someone else, what is the real problem?

Robert was never told a "why" about anything.

Then Robert would be gone. "Brian R. Smithson" had to be gone again. He didn't kill the two men who had the documents. And he didn't kill them mostly because the ghosts told him to stop.

Robert wondered if he should have the ghosts come with him on missions from now on, maybe he would get more insights.

After Brian R. Smithson faked his death, Robert pondered if he wanted to re-join the CIA. Despite he had several successful hunting of the targets, he started to resent the CIA, like he had with the military. He didn't like meddling foreign relations anymore.

Robert assumed a new identity. He was now back to being Robert Smith. It was not a big deal, because Robert Smith was such a common name that no one would ask any questions.

Robert Smith, still looking like a 23 years old man, had decided that he was done dealing with foreign affairs. He wanted to work on actually helping people. So he signed up to join the FBI.

He thought, with the FBI, he could work on domestic crimes. And some crimes Robert would come across.

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I added some more details for the last chapter explaining that Robert was merely faking a death and then escaped back to the US to rejoin the CIA again. I didn't want you guys to think it was a rebirth or reincarnation type of thing. He obviously would not die because he could self-heal.

Please let me know if you have any questions! All comments are welcome!

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