Memento Mori

4.5 - THE KILLING HOUR

I'M WOKEN IN THE DARKNESS by a presence.

A heavy shadow moves through the office. Standing over the cot with hands out of sight. His head remains in shadow as he stoops to pick the 6-Teba from the pillow. In his huge hands, it's like he's plucking a grain of rice. Watching now from the washroom, I slither from the toilet and flat onto my stomach atop the thin rug. Breath locked tight in my chest, not risking a sound yet. A sliver of light from the grand window illuminates his clothing as he turns the gun over. The colors are black and orange.

Everything freezes inside me.

They are here. A dozen questions spring into my head. How did he get past the guards? The man's river-smooth movements answer for me as he sets the revolver back down. A silent golem of the Assassin class. Here for Ulysses or for me, I don't know. No time to guess why. Sharpened metal glints in his hand.

The assassin's head drifts back to the office door. Heart thundering, I take the chance and steal forward out of the washroom, instinctively reaching for my hip. My hand pats around empty leather. On the other side, my activated JOY dangles from its magnetic clip. I could summon a temporary gun from it, but to do that, I would have to open a projector screen. Too loud, no time.

Drifting forward almost on my knees, passing across the small gap from the washroom to the desk. The old headquarters slumbers around us. Dark of the morning. The killing hour. I press against the desk, listening for the faintest swish of cloth as the assassin returns to examining the room. His shadow hasn't moved yet. It stretches from the window to steps, down the length of the office to the seating area. Only his shaved head turns.

Ankle height, I peer low around the corner. Can only see the assassin's boots, but I can fill in the rest of him. A murderer twice my size. One with a weapon and probably several classes specifically chosen to gut me from hip to head. I pull back and press my spine flat against the wood, swallowing down the fear. Willing that gunslinger's stillness back into me. Sarah's training calms my racing heart. I plan the chain reaction of my attack. Unnerving, being so calm when I'm about to die. Somehow, realizing that makes it a little easier.

My fingers tighten into martial shape.

Do or die, Gunslinger.

I do.

Blinking from thought to action, I explode around the corner of the desk in a martial artist's powerslide, flashing across the smoothed floor. Teeth plated in orange gold sneer down at me, already waiting. Jaws about to snap shut. A curved karambit wraps around the assassin's right hand, small blade glinting like a cold iron fang. But his eyes have to jerk down in the fraction of the moment it takes to eliminate the space between us. He didn't expect me to be so short. It costs him.

The JOY's training wheels kick on as I slash my legs into his ankles, dropping him to the floor. He hits the concrete with a surprised grunt. Momentum sends me past him unslowed. I rotate, plant my hands and shove off the floor in fluid motion, twisting the slide into the aerial corkscrew of a bullet jump. Lunging for the cot and the gun atop it. Hand outstretched, my fingers graze the wood of the grip just as his latch onto my ankle like a handcuff and yank backwards with ferocious force, tearing me away from the 6-Teba.

All the air in my lungs ejects at once as I'm slammed into the ground. A massive hand encircles my throat and tightens inwards. The ground drops out beneath my heels. Lifted off the floor. Cartilage cracking, air whistling then choking off as he squeezes my windpipe shut. I thrash and kick against an iron grip. Trying to scream and nothing coming out. Nails tearing uselessly at his skin. Eyes about to burst. Black spots erupting in my vision. My heel connects with his face, but it's like kicking a cinderblock; he's huge and I'm not. Sharp knives of glass drive into my back as he smashes me against the window, splintering the view.