"My name is Alec Trevelyan. I'm an agent of Britain's MI6, and I inherited my code number from the agent before me. These days, I am 006!"
"February 20, 2005 — Korea. God almighty! The disaster there was too horrific for words."
"That afternoon I led a team down to the Han River and used a Weyland-Yutani ship to help with the rescue."
"The air was thick with the reek of blood and charred bodies. Standing at the bow, all I could feel was my own helplessness. If a disaster like this ever fell on me, how could I ever save my own family? Before I could think it through, a dark, monstrous fish came bursting up from beneath the water and swallowed me whole in a single gulp!"
"Night of February 20, 2005. With Bella's help I finally cut open the monster fish's stomach and killed the thing! The look in Bella's eyes was pure revulsion — and I was revolted with myself too. The inside of that monster's gut stank beyond belief. Was this damned creature raised on a diet of shit?" A few Cossack curses were scrawled in here.
"Bella says it was a carp. Since when does a carp grow to the size of an elephant? With a tail and four legs? While I was fighting the thing, there was a Korean woman up on the bank the whole time, loosing arrows at it — you might try actually hitting the target! And she's supposed to be a champion? If not for the virus enhancing me, I'd have been shot dead by you! Korea's champions are a sorry lot. That's all I'll write today — my backside is throbbing! I need to go see to my wounds."
"February 27, 2005. Seven days in Korea now, and honestly it's left me low. I told Bella that once this batch of survivors is treated, I'll head back to Germany to be with my wife and kids."
The next two pages were completely blank. The old boy 006 had left them empty, dotted with a great many question marks, because he truly didn't know how to go on writing his diary.
Two pages later, he began again.
"God only knows what year it is now! My memory's in pieces, but I can piece most of it back together. All I remember is... Bella was singing some song — 'Big Fish,' was it? The melody was lovely, a little melancholy, though I couldn't make out the words. And then... the compliment was right on the tip of my tongue when that luckless woman got yanked away by something — and dragged me right along with her!"
"Second day in the wilderness. As the biochemical virus in my body did its work, my memory came back in full — but I still had no idea where 'here' was."
"Third day in the wilderness. I met a man named John Preston. One glance was all it took to know he was a dangerous piece of work — a savage heart concealed beneath a courteous, well-mannered face."
"Fifth day in the wilderness. John, a tough-minded sort, slowly recovered his memory. He said he'd worked on Wall Street as a stockbroker, and he seemed to think the laws of the civilized world didn't apply out here. He even tried to feel me out by telling me how he liked to chase down prostitutes with a chainsaw.
What a sick piece of filth! Wall Street is packed with exactly this type — glossy on the surface, a bellyful of rot underneath. They're worse than terrorists!"
"Sixth day in the wilderness. Just as John was describing how he'd pulled on a raincoat and hacked a colleague from behind with an axe, a band of strangely dressed people found us."
"Nineteenth day in the wilderness. John and I joined the local Underground, then turned right around and sold their intelligence to the powers running the city. The leader of that resistance called himself some sort of 'Mentor'? I nearly died laughing — you? Worthy of the title? I put a bullet through this so-called Mentor on the spot. Delightful!
John and I have signed on with an armed order inside the city called the Tetragrammaton, serving as Grammaton Clerics. That was when I finally learned the actual date. It seems the people here once used some New Era calendar, but later, to prove the long pedigree of their own side, the city's rulers went back to the old Common Era reckoning. It's now the year 2205 A.D. — the 23rd century..."
"September 2, 2205. Starting today, John and I have begun learning a combat art they call Gun Kata. Back among the Underground, they claimed Gun Kata was invented by their Mentor; over here in the Tetragrammaton, they say the Tetragrammaton invented it. Makes no difference to me — except... except why do these Gun Kata forms look so much like the fighting arts of the Assassin Brotherhood?"
"September 15, 2205. John and I have finished our training and put on the dark, close-fitting trench coats and black gloves that stand for discipline and order."
"The people here regard human emotion as a disease. Hatred, irritation, rage, joy — every bit of it is treated as the outward symptom of a flare-up. Twenty years ago they developed a drug made specifically to suppress human feeling, and everyone who enters the city has to be injected with it."
"Fooling these future people is far too easy. As if I'd ever inject some dubious drug like that? John did, though — and I have to admit, the effect of the drug, combined with the true self hidden beneath John's mask, gave me a genuine shock. Nothing about the man had changed — not his expression, not his muscles, not his height — yet his sheer presence sent a chill through me, and I'm an elite agent. It was as if I stood before not a man but a killing machine."
"November 5, 2205. After suppressing his emotions for so long, and having mastered the Tetragrammaton's Gun Kata, John has torn away his stockbroker disguise for good. The bloodlust rolling off him is so thick that even I find it hard to withstand. It's difficult to believe this man was once nothing but an ordinary person."
"November 9, 2205. To keep this diary, I have to stay out of John's line of sight. Diaries, books, music — over here, all of it is considered an outward symptom of emotional disease."
A great many Cossack curses filled this passage.
"Keeping a diary is the one hobby I've got! Can't a man have even that much? What a shithole of a world! John's been watching me like a hawk these past few days. I have to be careful — more careful than ever."
"November 10, 2205. John cornered me anyway, inside an abandoned church. We both know full well that we come from the same place, and I didn't believe he'd raise a hand against me."
"I picked up a volume of William Butler Yeats's poems with my diary tucked inside it. On the surface I was reading; in truth I was still writing. I wanted to seize the moment to finish the last two sentences of today's entry, then explain everything to John afterward."
"My shoes are a touch too big. John was standing right in front of me, and I felt him step on my foot, so I offhandedly quoted a line of Yeats — 'you tread upon the wings of my dreams.' We're both modern men; I assumed he'd catch my meaning."
"And who'd have thought — the bastard opened fire!"
"The round had tremendous penetrating power; it punched clean through the volume of Yeats's poetry, through my diary, and through my skull. John turned and walked away. He'd killed his own comrade without a flicker of guilt. Thanks to the biochemical virus in my body, I clung to a sliver of consciousness — but I knew I was dying, that I'd be gone any moment now..."