July 26, Birmingham, England.

Tricia Milner always comes home late.
Don't get the wrong idea. She doesn't go to have fun.
She spends her time in her office. After her divorce from her cheater husband five years ago, she has become a completely different person. It was good that they didn't have any children together. So she was a free person to leave that scumbag without a second thought.
And she didn't look for any partner either. The term "relationship" now irks her out.

So here she is, enjoying her life alone.

She spends her days up to 9/10 PM in her office almost every day. Sometimes it goes beyond that time.
Today was eleven o'clock when she returned home.

She went to take a shower after she put down the things in her hands.  Humming a mild song, she dried her hair, and then she went to the kitchen. She always likes to cook for herself rather than eat out. Though it was way past dinner time, she was still a little adamant to have homemade food at least once every day.

She was smelling something very mild for quite a time now. But after opening Kitchen's door, the smell hit her hard. She felt light-headed.
She caught it immediately why the smell seemed so familiar.

Gas...the kitchen was filled with cooking gas. She had no idea how this happened. She can remember clearly that she turned off the burner before going to work in the morning.

Then what? Any leak in the line? How big the leak was to spread the gas to such an extent? Even this time she can hear the sound of gas leaking.

She should look at the situation before calling for help- so she turned on the switch of the light beside the kitchen door.

And then that happened.

That poor woman didn't know that the switch was damaged intentionally. Immediately after she pressed the switch, it burst and sparks lit up. And that was enough to trigger the gas.

The blast was so intense that the whole neighborhood reverberated with a sudden jerk. The glass windows shattered and the fire went out of the window in such a way that it looked like the exhaust of any rocket launching ceremony for a space adventure.

Tricia Milner didn't die on spot though. Her whole body burnt, all skins were gone. She was a fleshy and bloody mess that can barely be recognized as a human.
But in that state even, she managed to drag herself out of the kitchen to the study room beside it.

There was a telephone on a table.
Gathering all the strength in her body, she tried to get up grabbing the table to reach the telephone. She tried to reach the phone but her all tries were in vain. The keyboard and mouse placed beside the telephone smudged with blood as a sign of her last tries.

And a few seconds later, that workaholic lady collapsed to her last sleep.

But her tries didn't reach the eyes of three assassins who were waiting in a car parked a hundred feet away from her apartment.

Seeing the blast gave them the satisfaction they were waiting for. They knew this murder will also be termed an accident. Forgetting to turn off the gas and short circuit causing an explosion isn't a rare thing.
They did what they were supposed to do, observed it, and then left the scene without looking back again.

August 8, Grampian mountain, Scotland.

Eric Mortimer is a renowned mountain climber in the community. He can compete with professional free climbers easily. And this expertise didn't come in one day. He had to try hard for decades to master this skill. He could have been a professional free climber if he wanted to. But this was just a pastime for him. Something he is very much fond of- nothing more.
In reality, he is a computer engineer, working in a high post in a multinational I.T farm.

Though he loves climbing, he loves his profession even more than that.

But climbing is in his blood. During the good season, he doesn't care about the warning of others and simply just goes back to his second love- climbing.

He never cares about the danger in this sport. It is like a good drug to him. Conquering the difficult cliffs brings him joys that nothing else can bring him.
He is already fifty, but he still deliberately ignores the instinct that he should stop now. But he doesn't want to box himself just because of progressive ages. He wants to enjoy the freedom as many days as he can.
So whenever he has some free time, he lets himself loose and climbs choosing any new mountain.

When he climbed up the four hundred feet mountain wall and reached the peak of the Eagle's cliff of the Grampian mountain, it was already past noon. He panted slowly while sitting on the plane land on the peak for a few minutes.

When he brought out his canteen to sip on a little water, he heard the sound of rotors from a little far.

Shading the eyes with his palm, he looked towards the horizon. One helicopter with no marking on its body was coming in his direction. Surprising him, the copter stopped and started to descend just on the plateau on which he was sitting now.
He had to close his eyes for the flying dust and wind from the rotor.

The helicopter landed and not stopping the engine, the pilot jumped down from the pilot seat. Two other men followed him.

Seeing their direction was him, Eric Mortimer was a bit surprised. Who are they? What do they want?

Taking long steps, the pilot came toward Eric and raise his voice, almost shouting over the sound of the
Rotor, "Mr. Mortimer?"

"Yes. What's the matter?"

The man brought his wrist in front of his eyes and seeing the time he said, "you are late. We thought you'll reach the peak ten minutes earlier. At least that's what  your previous records say so."

Eric was puzzled, what the hell this man was saying?
"How do you know that I am late? Do you know when did I start climbing?"

"We know," That young man smiled, "We monitored the last five climbs of yours."

"Monitored? Why?" Eric was dumbfounded.

"So that we can arrange a special trap for you," the smile of the young man widened.

"What the hell are you talking about?"
Eric frowned, "what trap?"

"You'll know," the man gestured to his two acquaintances.

The two men from both sides of the first man came forward and picked the confused victim and brought him near the cliff.

This time Eric was scared for the first time. With trembling voice, he pleaded, "what the hell are you doing? What is this?"

"Exactly the fate of the unfortunate free climbers," the man answered with a smile on his lips, "the bad luck of not having a safety line."

Eric started to shout this time, "why are you doing this? Who are you?"

"I can't thank you enough, Mr. Mortimer. You chose a dangerous hobby and not only that, you came to climb all alone! You just made our works a lot easier."

"Please don't do this," Eric tried to beg mercy now, "please spare me. I have a family."

"Can't do so." The man shook his head side to side, "anyway, this is where we part ways. Goodbye Mr. Mortimer. Just know, it's nothing personal. Have a nice flight!"

The two men who were holding Eric up now swung him for once and threw him from the cliff without a blink.

The poor man screamed his lungs out on his way to the ground while trying to grasp something in the air to save himself.

The young man was looking down standing at the edge of the cliff to see Eric Mortimer fall.

The sound was still audible when the body hit the surface four hundred feet below.

After finishing the Job, three assassins went inside the helicopter and soon it disappeared behind the horizon.

August 19, London, England.

Duit Gardner was a completely different person from the five people mentioned earlier.
The only similarities were in their age, but the rests- well, not so.

He was a short man. Introverted with a pair of heavy glasses on his eyes. He has no hobbies, no dangerous liaison. He is a chicken-hearted man who even doesn't go anywhere alone.

He works in an internet-based corporation.
Home and office- these were his only destinations every day. Even he spends his off days at home, spending time with family.

The three assassins surveillance Gardner for seven days at a stretch but finding no way to cause an accident, they were out of their element. It has never happened before that their prey has such a plain lifestyle. The wait was piling up their frustration.
When they were on the verge of giving up, the team leader decided to take risks. These types of plans were always used on extreme measures when no other ways were found.

Gardner even doesn't drive in the fear of getting into an accident and just takes public transport on his way to the office.

He stays exposed for just two minutes in the entire day- when he walks back from the bus stop to his house.

The assassins chose that time- to kill him in front of everyone.

On the day of the accident, Gardner died just ten yards away from his house. The pedestrians and the people around watched him die in front of their eyes in broad daylight. A private car came out of nowhere with intense speed and ran over the poor man.

The police came as usual. But nobody found that car ever again. Scotland Yard broke some sweat over the case getting suspicious. But as there were no enemies found of loner Gardner or finding no motive of the car behind this accident, they had to ultimately drop the case. At last, the most elegant police department in the world wrote down the murder of Duit Gardner as a simple hit and run case.

6 murders- happened in six places, at different times, in different ways. It was normal that nobody found any connection between these cases. But the investigators who investigated the cases should have gone deeper. They could have found some clues that would have tied them together.

They could have found out a conspiracy that was planted to shake the whole world within the next few days.