Project 43: Healing

One Widow

The once soundless stairwell filled with the deafening echoes of two frantic footsteps as Elias ran after the mysterious blonde. Through the pitch-black darkness, he could hear the woman's breathing as she rapidly descended the floors.

He didn't want to shoot the woman, he had much more use of her if she were alive and able to answer his questions. He could finally figure out what the task force knew and how they were getting their information, and maybe, just maybe, he could find a way to throw them off his scent.

As the pair neared the third floor, Elias got impatient and decided to jump over the railing in the hopes of cutting the woman's path. Through his determination to catch the agent, Elias had forgotten just how far into decay the building truly was. 

As he threw his weight over the frail wooden railing, instead of gracefully landing on the lower stairs, Elias crashed right into the woman ahead of him. He felt his boots collide with her stomach as he accidentally kicked her backward against the steps. He gathered himself just in time and was able to block a blow from the startled woman, who had miraculously been able to recover from her fall almost instantly.

Elias pulled back his punches, trying to keep in mind that he wasn't meant to kill the woman. Still, something about how she fought, her quick and sharp movements, and the way she seemed to adapt to his technique instantly, was pulling him back in time. 

The woman kept on piercing through Elias' defences like a snake, moving too fast to catch. However, she was growing more tired of not making any progress toward the door. With each punch, she became sloppier, her mind clearly preoccupied by something. All it took was a microscopic opening in her stance for Elias to shatter through her defences and violently throw the blonde woman down, her back hitting against the wooden stairs that slightly bent on impact. He held her down by her neck, images of countless strangled victims flushing through his head as the woman's hazel eyes searched for a way out.

"Who are you?" Elias asked, his voice eerily steady and mechanical. For a flicker of a moment, he managed to scare himself. 

The woman was scared. Elias felt her heartbeat quickening and her breathing hitching, but she refused to let her fear show. Something told Elias that the odd sense of familiarity he felt had not gone unreciprocated.

"How did you find me?" Elias asked again after a long silence filled with the creaks of rotten wood as the woman tried to free herself.

Rather than answer his line of questioning, the woman quickly wrapped one of her legs around Elias' torso and, in one swift motion, pulled herself out of his grip and onto his back. Elias immediately stood up and grabbed her by the shoulders, attempting to slam her body back onto the ground, only for her to pull her body weight forward, sending Elias crashing down. 

Though Elias was able to roll into his fall, he heard the mushy wood flooring crack under the sudden weight of the two fighters. Before either one of them could react, the floorboards finally gave up after decades of fighting against time. 

As the pair fell through the floor, Elias managed to grab hold of a wooden beam, somehow still strong enough not to break apart with his weight. As his body swung uncontrollably from side to side, he felt a broken piece of a two-by-four painfully pierce his skin right under his shoulder. He couldn't have imagined rotten wood to be so sharp, but somehow it managed to puncture through his shirt and at least a couple of layers of skin, if not more.

He wasn't sure how or why, but by some instinct, Elias managed to grab the woman's wrist with his free hand, just before she managed to fall. He looked down just in time to see her violently grab his wrist and twist his grip off of her. For just a moment, before she fell, Elias thought about jumping after her. He couldn't let her run off and broadcast his location to everyone in the world, he had just gotten away.