Maja polishes her astro-gun, locks it in her holster, and gets prepared to finish this last gruesome part of the mission.
This particular area of the city is the outcast – just like her. Poverty and crime is rife, gangs and warlords holding influence over the most common of suriviors... also called citizens. Right now Area Libertine is cast in the shadows of the night, the pavements sleek with the rain that blankets the city, almost obscuring the flashing neon signs. Maja knows better than to trust the bright insigna of small food stores and cheap liquor shops, knows by name the criminal leaders who use it as cover to do their dealings; tainting the honest workingman with bribes of security and safety which fat politicians can't provide.
She's a small figure amid the cheap metal skyscraper landscape that is Chicago District 2.3.
Her legs are clad in leather pants, her black hood up to cover her features: smoothly arched eyebrows, grey eyes tinged with hazel, and plump well-defined lips. Her brown hair is plaited to stop the damp wind obscuring her vision with loose strands.
Everything about her is practicality, with a sense of danger. She's got a reputation to uphold too, however insignificant she may seem in the grand scale of things.
She waits for the sign – one of the lightbulps of Devon's Nightmare Nightclub to go off- and then she's on the move.
She easily jumps over a barrier, one hand immediately grasping a metal ladder, and she scales the rest of the building. Rain splatters against her face, droplets fat and fresh, until she's on the bare terrace.
At that point she crouches to unzip her backpack and begins to assemble her sniper gun. The wind shrieks in the night, louder and wilder up here and closer to the abandoned heavens. Her fingers move automatically, not deterred by the slippery pieces, until she finally lies flat on her stomach, sniper gun ready, and she prepares to eliminate her enemy.
She finds him easily on the green lense.
Bald head, dramatically bulky body under a leather jacket. Mid forties. Arrogance and practiced terror on his face.
She waits for him to reach the pre-determined spot. Breathes in once, and releases the air slowly. Her heart pounds, not with fear or anger, but with the importance of her mission.
So she's not going to get it wrong.
Not today.
Not ever.
It's time.
She pulls the trigger.
The bullet splits the air soundlessly, cutting through droplets as it whizzes in its trajectory. Too small for the human eye to notice. Too quick for even the Gods to observe. The target moves– he noticed someone's followed him. That's when the bullet finds him. From this distance, his arm explodes. It was supposed to be his head.
It's too quick.
The assassin is dazed. "No!" She growls, but it comes out as a wail.
She doesn't wait. Swing the rifle over her back, and sprints back over the side of the building, much less composed. Her arms swing up as she jumps over the building, twenty-five stories up. Instead of crashing down below, her hands connect with something – a zip-wire.
She sails through the air, a raven in human form, a slender predator of the night. The metal line dips down perilously and she bites down a little gasp of breathless fear she has every time. It hauls her down to the base of the building across the square, almost as vertically as an escalator. She lets go of the handles, rolls gracefully on the ground to break the fall, and evenly pulls up to continue the run to continue the momentum. Maja doesn't allow herself to feel the vertigo of the changing of air thickness.
Just runs to finish off what was interrupted. Her astro-gun faithfully grasped in hand, she round the corner to where the previously deserted street is now alert with her target's grunting.
She can see him now, that beast of a man.
He's being supported by another male, slightly shorter but with broad shoulders. Their backs are facing her, her target seems to be close to unconsciousness.
Maja has to think fast. She could have finished him off if he'd been alone, her hood disguising her identity from those far enough to peer from windows or doorways. But there's a witness now, things are meddled up. What to do? What to do!
She fumbles on the spot, before deciding the risk of punishment is worse than the risk of extra blood on her hands. She still has to be discreet, though.
The men cross a corner, half-running, before she can take a chance and shoot them. She follows. The alley is dark, with dumsters and graffiti that say "F.uck President Holgan" and barbed wire. There's a car waiting, and when she's in the alley the beams turn on.
Double f.uck.
She squints in the light, her hand jumping in front of her face to disguise her, but she knows it's already too late.
The broad-shouldered man helping her target noticed her. "Hey!" He shouts in warning.
But he's noticed her gun.
Her indecision keeps her rooted to the spot. Realizing this, she lifts her arm and points her gun, but can't see anything with the headlights blaring in her face, blinding her to her targets.
That's when the man knocks her out cold with a single swift hit to the head.
Before she hits the ground, it really hits her how shi.tty this day was.
YOU ARE READING
THE GIRL WITH THE ASTROGUN
Science Fiction*Fantasy, Dystopian, Sci Fi* Maja, a hired assassin working for a powerful slum gang boss is hired to assassinate a 'person of interest'. Someone very surprising, and very handsome, gets in the way. How will this mission turn out?
