Young Writers Society

(...continued).

It was late. The warning was late. Bernard Mason knew as much, and he would have informed his murderer so, had he the ability to die and speak at the same time. As it was, nobody knew of the mistake. Nobody except the assassin herself.

Rule Number Two: Caustics do not make mistakes.

The very air seemed to shatter into a thousand pieces as the shots were heard again: once, twice, three times. The money in Heaney’s hand fell from his limp grasp and fluttered towards the sleet-covered tarmac, like a shower of autumn leaves. His mouth fell open but he couldn’t scream. He was a man on the sidelines, watching murder happen before his very eyes. What else could it be, if not murder?

He knew, Heaney thought, horror-struck. Mason knew.

He just stood there, gaping, as the inhabitants of Rainside Street filtered out of their homes, rushing like ants, having panicked after hearing the gunfire. Several women screamed. There was a hush as a few people rushed to where Mason had fallen. A rivulet of crimson had bloomed around him, not creeping out like tendrils of some leafy plant; but gushing, like red-hot liquid. A sudden memory of a pub flashed through Heaney’s mind, the smell of alcohol, sweat and wafting intoxication. Death was a gamble, he thought, a card game of vibrant reds and blacks and whites. One person pulled the ace, the other was left to fall. Winners and losers. Such was the reality of life.

This was Brian Heaney’s first philosophical thought.

It was also his last.

Heaney walked towards the scene as if in a daydream, although it was more like a nightmare. The world was a haze of sultry sighs and yells that resounded as though from a distance, at least to his ears, like everything had been muffled by layers of cotton cloth. The sound of the sirens pierced the haze, sudden and ringing; they surrounded him in close to no time flat as he stood by the crowd, blinking blearily and wondering just how the fates ticked—malicious things. The ambulances arrived, as did the police. Heaney wasn’t able to get a look at Mason; he was always surrounded by a crowd of people. Medics rushed to his aid, but the man was pronounced dead on the spot.

‘Nobody leaves the area,’ Heaney heard a pot-bellied police officer saying with a strong Bristol accent, as the ambulance whisked off past the crowd. ‘If anyone has any information, they are requested to divulge it to the authorities immediately.’

Heaney pushed through the crowd, his feet feeling like lead, and found himself standing by the back of a police van, face to face with the inspector; he repeated to the police what Mason had told him to say, stumbling over the words slightly. He was still in shock. It had all happened too fast – too fast for him to understand. He felt numb and mindless. The police nodded at him, not unkindly, and told him they would contact him again for further questioning after the post-mortem. Finally, Heaney staggered back down the road for what seemed to be the millionth time that day.

Home, he thought. He just wanted to go home.

The crisp pound notes that Mason had handed him lay forgotten, buried beneath a fresh layer of snow.

~* ~

The woman smiled to herself as she slid the gun deeper in her bullet-proof bag. Everything about her was bullet-proof, it seemed—from her cold, crow-black eyes to the lack of expression on her face. It was part of her profession and today’s job, although simple, had taken ten years to plan and organize. Ten years of burning hatred, of careful planning and training; the task had become almost an obsession. It had all been worth it, though, in the end, she thought, despite that one minor slip up. She cringed when she thought about it, but all was safe, she reassured herself. No one had to know the warning was late; the only other person who did know was dead. She was safe. Her Commander, Paulo, would not find out. He would not punish her for her lapse. It was considered artless to kill without Warning. It was considered dishonourable, and low.

The assassin did not want to be either.

Slipping her pack over her shoulders, she moved swiftly through the folds of the night, slinking away from the blood and the noise. A silent laugh escaped from her lips as the sound of sirens reached her ears.

Stupid humans, she thought. Never arrive on time. Useful, though, despite all their ignorance.

Her lips curved upwards in a wicked smile as she ran through the gardens, leaping over the hedges and nimbly landing on her feet. She reached the main road and pulled her jacket around her tightly, even though she didn’t need it. Fluffing up her hair, she began walking at a more leisurely place. An innocent, out to run a couple of errands before returning home. No one would suspect anything. No one ever suspected anything.

The streets were more or less uninhabited now, as the cold weather worsened – was it possible for it to worsen? – and the sky darkened overhead. Night was coming in fast, and the streetlights were already on; the light pooled in trickles of yellowish gold on the pavement. The white snow looked as though it had been tinted with stained-glass colours in the night—a mound of frozen honey, and the snowflakes were bees that buzzed towards the ground. The cold was beautiful, and the woman-assassin did not understand why humans despised it so.

She caught sight of a man trudging by along the road, and saw that it was the same person she had seen Mason talking to, moments before he died. He walked in a slump, head bowed forward, like he was hoping that the cold would swallow him up, or that he’d dissolve in himself. He was a witness, the assassin thought, and it was dangerous to let him live. She had killed many people in her time, and she felt sympathetic towards none of them. Dying was dying; a simple process, uncomplicated and blunt, but requiring subtlety. It did not matter who or what the dead left behind. She made her mind up in seconds: The man had to be dealt with lest he turn out to be a threat, both to her and to her organization: Calatria. She glanced around quickly, but not a cat yowled on the street tonight. She followed the man as he turned into an alleyway and walked on, past a dumpster and a peeling advertisement on the wall (Falling follicles? Herbert’s hair-growth formula is for you!).

The man sure could use it, she mused, catching sight of his bald head shining in the dim light as she slipped in after him, into the alleyway. She watched as he stopped stock-still in the middle of the walk, as if struck by some sudden thought, or like he could sense the presence of another. And then, perhaps acting on a whim, or by some sheer force he could not understand, Heaney turned around, so his face was in full view. A glazed, empty expression had latched itself to his features. The assassin couldn’t help but smile superciliously as the expression shifted slightly. His eyes widened with surprise and unmistakable fear.

‘Who—?’ he began to say, but stopped suddenly, as if deciding he didn’t want to know. He hadn’t noticed the woman’s presence in the alleyway before, but he could tell that her being there was anything but good news. He turned on his heel suddenly, as if to flee. But the man couldn’t have taken more than a couple of steps in the opposite direction when the woman-assassin raised a pale hand against the frigid wall of winter.

‘S’tiun’ra,’ she whispered, and the air around her seemed to heat up suddenly, rising and billowing like steam in a furnace. It would’ve suffocated any normal person, but suffice to say, Calatria's assassins were anything but normal. The assassin laughed quietly as Heaney stopped in his tracks; he was no more than putty in her hands. His back was still towards her. It was a pity, really, she thought, because that meant he wouldn’t be able to look death in the face. Or maybe it was better this way, because she really didn’t like the way bullets ripped apart faces. It rendered them ... unrecognisable, and even humans did not deserve to be forgotten, insignificant dolts though they may be. Cocking her head slightly, she wondered which angle was best to shoot from, scrutinizing the man’s paunchy frame. He was several paces away from her, nearly six feet away, in fact. She wouldn’t even need the scope to aim at him.

But ah, where’s the fun in that?

Discreetly pulling out the rifle from the bag slung over her slender shoulders, the assassin allowed herself a moment to survey the weapon. It was a Bangcracker with sniper-scope, lightweight and fast. Louder, perhaps, than was necessary for a prototype, but so far it had always managed to do its job. The swiftest of weapons, cutting straight through a person’s arteries like knife through paper. A .297 cartridge, already loaded, filled with a synapse-numbing liquid that first drove man unconscious, before letting the poison flood his veins. Metal was so much more fun to kill with than frost. She raised the rifle until the sniper-scope was approximately level with her eyes. She didn’t notice the fact that the man was shivering, that his coat was patched and he didn’t have a hat, even in this cold. She didn’t wonder if he had a family; a job; a hobby, or what kind of life he led. It wasn’t her job to wonder, because life meant nothing to her. They were all the same, humans, with their precious, foolish natures, and the only thing this man had in common with her previous victims was death.

Smiling, she pressed down on the trigger. There was no Warning.

CRACK.

~End of Chapter One, Part Two.~