Chapter 37: Chapter thirty-six

Present day

 

The man in black knocked on Gwen’s door and there was an immediate sound of movement from within, as though she had jumped from her chair. Moments later came the sound of the unlocking of multiple locks. Apparently, Gwen had invested in some additional security since his last visit.

She opened the door and smiled her relief at the man. “Thank you.”

“Get your things together,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

He followed Gwen into her room as she dragged a suitcase from beneath the bed and hurriedly packed in with clothes, toiletries and a laptop while he waited. As he stood there, his eyes flicked around the room, checking exits and windows as was his habit.

It was because of this habit that he saw, across the street in an apartment with a clear view of Gwen’s, an open window with what looked like the barrel of a L96A1 sniper rifle poking out of it

He dove for Gwen. A shot rang out.

The man reached her before the bullet could, tackling her to the floor as her bedroom window exploded into shards of glass.

“Stay down,” he snapped, drawing a pistol and coming up to a squat.

The sniper was quick to adjust and it was only moments before a bullet blew through the wall below Gwen’s window and whizzed past the man before lodging in Gwen’s dresser.

Probably has building plans, the man thought. Able to make a reasonable estimate of the weakest points of the wall to shoot through.

That was just the Program’s style. Put someone in place to watch a target and eliminate them when necessary. Packing a suitcase was probably enough to warrant a bullet and he had probably just been waiting for the best shot. That would have been when she tried to leave the room again, as the window had an excellent view of the doorway. The man seeing him first had meant he had to act rashly, but he still had them pinned down with no means of escape. Even now, he would be having a team dispatched to break down Gwen’s door and take them from the other side. All he had to do was keep them pinned down long enough for them to get there, and not waste too much ammo doing so.

Or at least, that was what the sniper thought.

The man launched himself to his feet and fired a round through Gwen’s shattered window at the opposite building. He didn’t hold out much hope of hitting him, it was too far away and the tall buildings funnelled the wind in such a way as to make shooting between them very difficult, especially with a handgun. Dusk might have been able to make that shot, but it was beyond the man’s skills.

That hadn’t been the point though. The sniper flinched slightly as the bullet took a chip off the building’s exterior wall alarmingly close to his position, and that was all the time the man needed to make a run for it.

He didn’t run for the exit though, the sniper’s flinch wouldn’t give him time for that, he ran for Gwen’s en suite bathroom instead, entering his mind palace as he did so.

There was a small window in this bathroom situated above the toilet. It was already open as far as it would go and that wasn’t very far. Certainly not far enough for him to fit through it. But the man fired four times into the hinges and then ripped the window free with his bare hands.

In his mind palace he entered a room that looked like the inside of a small, circus tent where he kept his knowledge of contortionism.

The man practically leaped off the closed toilet and slithered through the window, contorting his body unnaturally and ending with him standing with one foot on the bottom of the window frame and one hand holding onto the top while his other two limbs hung out into the empty air beyond.

He swung his body and kicked off the side of the building while he jumped from the window frame with his other foot.

A shot rang out as the sniper fired at him, but it was too late.

He fell out into nothing, dropping like a stone down the building. But his kick had given him just enough sideways momentum to bring him to the balconies that the residents of Gwen’s building in corner apartments enjoyed.

He caught a balcony railing with both hands and the shock rippled through his arms and threatened to pull them from their sockets. The railing itself didn’t handle it well either and he heard the distinct sound of tearing metal before he let go of it and dropped to the floor below. He repeated this manoeuvre, dropping from balcony to balcony, three more times before he judged he was low enough to avoid serious injury and kicked off, dropping to the ground. From there he sprinted across the street and into the other building.

From there the sniper had two options, he could wait and try to shoot the man when he came in, or he could run. In this case, he chose the latter, and the man caught him dashing down the stairs.

The sniper saw the man and moved to raise his gun but then his eyes went wide as recognition dawned and he realized who the man must be.

“O—” he breathed, though whether he would have said ‘Oblivion’ or ‘Oh shit’ will never be known, because the man was upon him and broke his neck before he could get out another syllable.

459.

After that, he and Gwen left in a stolen car, swapped vehicles, and made their way to safety.

“So, this is what, like a safehouse or something?” Gwen asked as she put her suitcase down in the bland living room of the bland apartment in the bland neighbourhood that the man had taken her to.

“Something like that,” the man said. He only had the resources for one permanent safehouse and he was already hiding Liz there. Keeping them both in the same place would be bad tradecraft, so he had taken Gwen to his actual home.

“Can you, can you stay with me tonight?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said, not bothering to mention that he didn’t really have anywhere else to stay anyway. “You can have the bed, I’ll take the couch.”

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Gwen nodded, still shaking from the adrenaline leaving her system.

“Would you like me to make you something to eat?”

Gwen blinked at that. “You’re going to cook?”

The man nodded. “Any allergies?”

“Ah, no,” she said, still seeming surprised by the idea of him cooking.

While the man’s emotions were muted, his senses weren’t. So, food, like sex, was something he enjoyed as much as anyone else. He went to the kitchen and began preparing a meal.

It might have seemed an incredibly normal and domestic thing to do, though if one watched closely they would see that there was something too precise and fluid about the way he used his knife. There was something incomplete about his movements as well, as though the herbs and vegetables he chopped and the meat he prepared were a poor reflection of the canvas necessary to demonstrate his true skill with the blade.

When the food was cooked they sat at the table and ate together. The man had made a variation on a chicken Massaman curry that he had taken a liking to while taking down a child-sex ring out of Chiang Mai. Gwen seemed to enjoy it well enough and said as much more than once.

When they had eaten, the man showed Gwen to the bedroom, also bland, and asked her not to touch his computer without his say so. He had several security measures in place of course, but Gwen was excellent at bypassing digital security and he was confident they wouldn’t keep her out if she decided to go poking around. She agreed to leave it alone, and assured him she only needed her laptop to keep investigating the Program’s accounts.

“Are you sure you want to keep working on that?” he asked.

She gave him a wry smile. “It’s a bit late for that isn’t it?”

He nodded. It was.

“Besides,” she said. “I can’t let people go around shooting at me. Sets a bad precedent and all that. I’ve got to nail them now.”

He nodded again and turned to leave the room.

“Uh,” she said as he neared the door. “You, um, don’t have to sleep on the couch. If you don’t want to…”

Gwen, despite still being visibly shaken by the evening’s ordeal, looked very inviting standing there in his bedroom.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I wouldn’t want to take advantage.”

Gwen gave a nervous laugh. “Are you kidding? I’ve been trying to get you into my bed for most of a year, and now it’s looking like I might be dead soon and miss my chance altogether.”

The man smiled. “Well in that case…”

He shut the bedroom door.

 

 

The man was gone before Gwen woke up. She awoke to find the bed empty and when she called for him, there was no answer. She mused briefly that he might have gone to get them coffee before she saw a note stuck to the door. It read:

Had to leave. Back tonight. Call if you need anything.

Something about the note struck Gwen as rude, though she couldn’t say what. It wasn’t as if she and the man were together, and she wasn’t expecting him to end messages with an xo. But it seemed so formal; just conveying the facts. A normal person might have been more familiar with someone they had just spent the night with.

Then again, the man had never done anything to suggest he was normal.

Gwen made herself at home, getting dressed and going looking for something to eat. She found some bread and butter and made toast. After breakfast, she poked around the apartment, exploring, though she did as the man asked and didn’t touch his computer. She checked for cameras, because the man was paranoid enough to have hidden surveillance around his house, but didn’t find any.

Probably knows a remote feed is too easy to hack, she thought. Smart. Whatever the reason, she was confident there wouldn’t be any video of her tryst the night before.

When she was done camera hunting, she stripped down and turned on the shower. While the water was heating up, she took out her phone and made a call.

After a few rings, Kessington Smythe answered.

“I have his home address,” The Wraith said. “Awaiting instructions.”

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