It's a terrible thing I'm called to do, I don't deny that. This is a place of beauty and peace. I'm here to destroy its sanctity and shed blood on these holy cobblestones.

I hate myself for what I do, but that's irrelevant. I don't make the choices about who lives and who dies. I take orders and dispatch my targets. It's about what they do, their decisions that bring them in front of my crosshairs.

A bullet is an explosion directed two ways. The backwards direction of the force gets blunted and absorbed by the rifle stock and my shoulder muscles, not to mention the padding on my jacket. The forward direction propels the relatively tiny projectile at thousands of meters per second, faster than the speed of sound and striking my target before gravity can drag it down below my chosen kill spot.

I broken into the temple's kitchen this morning and stuffed a bunch of rags into the oven. I set the oven for "low temperature," then I disabled the fire suppression system, broke the locks on the side exit doors, and stationed myself on a hill opposite the the only accessible exit.

In an hour, my target, the hero, emerges from billowing plumes of smoke carrying a child in his arms. He entrust the child to a crying woman, and then his chest explodes in red. I fire three more rounds into his head and chest, and then watch his collapsed form until it stops twitching. Even from the hillside, I can hear the screaming.