Cocked gun trained, immobile, at sweating hostage. Browning pistol: sleek black barrel holding four bullets – two gone. No movement except rocking and roving eyes. No sound except faint whimpers from the bundle on the floor. No expression on Yassen Gregorovich's face.

He didn't care who died on his watch.

The hostage – some Iranian weapons-dealer who'd been selling stuff to both sides; Abbas Tirdad or something – had slowed to a stop in his panicked back-and-forth swaying and was now scrunched up into a tight little ball trying not to cry. Yassen knew the signs: he had seen it hundreds of times. They'd wrap themselves up as tight as they could, muttering meaningless platitudes under their breath; maybe they'd pray, if they were religious; maybe they'd sing quietly and let tears run down their faces (this was pathetic and honestly a bit revolting); maybe they'd laugh bitterly. If they didn't pull themselves together, they would go mad. Yassen had seen it hundreds of times before.

He sometimes shot them: it was kinder that way. Yassen was as kind as he could be in this job. Some people called him psychopathic.

He could hold a gun like this for days… three days, actually, although he preferred not to have to. At the end of that particular strait (an idiotic boast that he could last out a week, carried out within Scorpia's training zone), Hunter had smacked him for being so stupid, given him a cup full of water to drink and sent him off to bed with a couple of ration bars. He hadn't tried more recently: in the real world, it just wasn't a very good idea.

He tended to loose focus after about six hours. Sometimes he'd let his gun drift slightly off target, although it didn't really matter: he could realign it in an instant. Normally they had shifts to stop things like that happening, but they were short of staff today and Yassen was all they could dredge up. Well… not really 'dredge up', per se…

Hunter would've smacked him for that thought.

He was drifting again. Eight hours, he'd been here, with no breaks. They were going to relieve him in a bit, but damn it it was difficult. He started to realign his gun once more then jumped, as a couple of bars of generic text-alert whistled from his pocket. The safety catch on the gun had been off and the bullet grazed Abbas Tirdad's ear, leaving a small crater in the wall behind him. Abbas Tirdad shrieked and started wailing quietly into his hands.

Yassen gritted his teeth and slipped the hand that wasn't holding a pistol into his left pocket. The phone looked Westernised, clean, and deceptively cheerful against the drab background of the cell, and Yassen opened the text in irritation, because Hunter knew he worked all hours of the day…

But Hunter wasn't here now. Hunter was the enemy. Hunter shouldn't care.

Yassen frowned (a mask: he felt like snarling). Hunter had this phone's number. Hunter was… absent… Nobody should be contacting him. Nobody.

He read the text.

I hav a son – H

Blinked. Slipped his phone back into his left pocket. Slowly lowered the Browning.

Smiled.