The Great Below

The First Assignment - Part 2

The thing about winter was the quiet.

It dominated, giving even the wide expanse along I-88 the acoustics of a small room. It filled the edges and cracks with snow, lining the entire world with an effortless quiet, like the foam sprayed from tubes to insulate attics and crawlspaces. Octavia had seen it in her home magazines. The outdoors became everyone's front hall, where secrets were whispered, where you lowered your voice for the benefit of guests in the living room. Then some interruption would come, like the slick passing of a car with slush in its wheels and the stillness would seep in once more, sealing up the town with more unavoidable quiet.

Alex led them into the back of the building closest to the interstate and used a key to access the maintenance stairwell. He carried the case with the Remington for her. She lost count on the never-ending steps, but estimated the building to be about ten floors. She could distract herself with the details she already knew: they had to use the roof. Even though their client was happy to provide a maintenance key, none of the building's windows opened. A security guard patrolled the building after hours, but took a thirty-minute lunch in a break room off of the lobby each night around 9 PM. She was going to have to adjust for wind; Alex insisted that even though there was no breeze at ground level, she would have to take both direction and velocity into account.

At the end of the stairwell, he opened a door and they both stepped out onto the roof. Her boots sank into a virgin snowdrift, and he was right. There was a different quality to the wind at the top of a tall building. It lacked civility; it pummeled from each direction and bled through her clothes like ice water. Octavia tugged at her ski cap but it only turned her fingers to ice, and worse – it didn't stop the tips of her hair from whipping up and stinging her face. She shook her head, refusing the pair of men's gloves Alex offered her, fearing they would catch in the trigger.

"Be quick with the scope," Alex told her. She would have struggled to hear him if it weren't for the little communication devices in their ears.

Just looking at the case stirred the molten lead in her stomach. The cold might help. She took the case and rested it against the short half-wall ahead of her, where they faced the opposite building. If Octavia froze enough and the cold turned to pain, then the pain turned to numbness, she thought she might do anything to go back to the car. It wasn't strength, but it might harden her all the same. She had to compartmentalize.

It took longer than usual, setting up the sniper rifle. Her hands were clumsy with the chill. Alex watched, then intervened, checking the scope repeatedly until he was satisfied.

"I counted the windows," he said. "Go up nine from the ground on the far left side. Then, at the corner, go right three windows. Now take a look at him."

Octavia crouched down, peering through the scope. Kneeling at the cinder block half-wall allowed the wind to come in bursts that made her eyes water. She could see the blinds on his window, dividing the room into vertical slits. There was her target – the back of a man's head. He was a nondescript brown shape. A haircut.

"Don't fire until I can confirm," Alex warned. He'd produced a small set of binoculars from his coat.

Then the waiting began. She held her breath, when she could, knees melting into the snow as she watched the un-moving head, her finger poised and aching over the trigger.

Octavia had postponed her failure until this point. She'd misrepresented herself. "Is that where I'll go?" she asked. The wind whipped the words away, down the facade of the building.

Alex didn't budge, staring through his binoculars. "What's that?"

"The room with the bathtubs. Is that where you'll take me when I fail?"