Chapter 5: the inevitable revelation

Hannibal

The silence that followed her words hung heavily in the air. I stood there, a few steps away from her, senses on alert, but a part of me was beginning to doubt. Doubting my certainties, my mission, everything I thought I knew about myself. The shadow enveloping me was not just a physical threat. It was a mirror, a mirror held up to my own image, the one I had never wanted to look at.

The walls of the apartment seemed to close in even more, the outlines becoming increasingly blurred, the colors more vivid, like a dizziness that took hold of my mind. Every movement I made, every breath I took, seemed to resonate in an increasingly narrow space, as if I were losing myself in a parallel dimension.

I blinked, trying to concentrate. No. I couldn't let myself be carried away by this strange atmosphere. I had to stay clear-headed. I had to finish this mission.

“I am here for a reason. Nothing will distract me from it,” I said in a firm voice, but I could hear the crack in my tone. I felt vulnerable, more than ever. Every word I uttered seemed to reverberate falsely in this room, as if something greater than me was at play here.

She looked at me with a twinkle of amusement in her eyes. “You've always thought you were invincible, haven't you, Anibal? As if killing was the solution to everything, as if erasing someone from the face of the Earth could erase the flaws you carry within you. But it's not that simple. It's never that simple.”

She approached me slowly, with an almost disturbing calm. Her footsteps made no sound on the floor, as if she were melting into the shadows herself. When she arrived in front of me, she looked up at me, her eyes bright and piercing, as if they were piercing through my soul.

“You think you can escape your demons, but you carry them with you every day. With every murder, you get a little closer to yourself. And that's not what you want to see. That's not what you wanted to see.”

Her words struck my mind like waves against rocks. Each sentence, each look, seemed to slowly strip me of all my illusions. I knew that, somewhere, she was telling the truth. But I didn't want to accept it. I didn't want to recognize that this truth risked turning everything upside down. Because if what she was saying was true, it meant that I had spent my whole life running away from a reality that I could no longer ignore.

“Stop...” I murmured, almost in spite of myself. ‘You're not the one who's in charge here. You're just a... a target.’ I tried to pull myself together, but my body seemed to be reacting to the intensity of my own words. I felt as if I were in a trance, as if everything I had known until then no longer made sense.

“A target,” she repeated softly, her gaze never leaving mine. ”You see, you continue to see me as a target, but it is not me that you are trying to hit. What you are looking for, Anibal, is not me. It is you. And you know very well that you cannot escape it forever.”

I felt a cold sweat running down the back of my neck. My hands were shaking slightly. I wanted to turn away, grab my gun, find a way out. But the walls seemed to be closing in on me. There was no longer any space to hide behind my role as an assassin. She had confronted me with what I feared most: the truth about what I had become. A truth that I had always fled by hiding behind my murders, by erasing the lives that I took.

She turned slowly, and in a softer, almost compassionate voice, she continued: “You have always acted in the shadows, haven't you? But every time you killed, you extinguished a part of yourself. With each life you took, you distanced yourself a little more from yourself. And with each life you erase, you erase a little of your own humanity. So tell me, Anibal, what is left for you to save?”

The words made their way into my mind like a breach. I had always believed that I was doing the right thing, that I was acting for a cause, a reason. But now I found myself in front of a mirror, a mirror that did not show me the face I was used to seeing, but another face. A face marked by guilt, by the shadows of the past that I had deliberately hidden.

“I'm not like that... I didn't choose this...” I stammered, the words struggling to come out. I was trying to convince myself, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. This confrontation was much more than just a face-to-face with a target. It was a face-to-face with myself, and I couldn't bear what I was discovering.

She slowly turned her head towards me, and a gentle but sad expression crossed her face. “Do you still see yourself as a victim of your choices, Anibal? Every man you killed... it was you, in a sense. Each death was just an extension of your own defeat, of your own escape.”

She came closer again, and this time I didn't move. I felt as if something were collapsing around me. My legs were trembling slightly, my fists were clenched, and a dull pain was rising in my chest. Perhaps it was the fear of this truth that I had ignored for so long.

“Why…” I whispered, my voice breaking with emotion that I had never allowed to show through. ”Why are you here? Why now?”

She looked at me, a smile of understanding on her lips. “Because you have no choice, Anibal. You put yourself in this position. And now it's time for you to understand that running away is no longer an option. You're going to have to accept what you've become.”

The walls seemed to close in even further, but it wasn't the room that was closing in on me. It was me. I found myself trapped by my own demons, and I knew it wasn't a trap I could escape by eliminating a single target. No, this time I had to face something much bigger. Something I had always ignored.

I lowered my head, feeling the tension rising. My thoughts were confused, my breathing rapid. The war I was waging in my mind was not a war I could win with weapons or cold calculations. It was an inner war. And for the first time, I understood that I would not escape the truth.