Turn About

Chase 03

I hear the sound of footsteps, loud on the old cement floor. They trod across the floor with volume and inevitability. I let go of the dart gun and reach for the real thing, I feel the rig attached to the bottom of the barrel. A small tactical flashlight.

I aim towards the steps and snap on the light an instant before firing. Almost faster than I can perceive, a blur speeds out of sight. I try to track his movement, but between the darkness and his speed, there is no chance. My gun spits two more rounds, not much louder than the snap of a finger thanks to my silencer, but the sound carries in the empty warehouse.

"Are you here to kill me," Alex says in the darkness.

I turn and fire, but he's gone.

"Let me guess," he says from somewhere above, "here to finish what you started?"

I aim overhead, this time I catch sight of him. Then he leaps away with inhuman agility, swinging along the metal struts until I lose sight of him.

When Alex moves, and he must be moving, I hear no sound. Something is very wrong. I start running along the rows of crates, all pretense of stealth gone. He must be able to see me somehow. Along with that he's also able to move faster than I can see, and keep from making a whisper of sound until he wishes.

I'm too far from the rear entrance, so I run towards the front. The light from my gun jumps as I run, but spreads far enough to keep me from running into anything. I stop as the door suddenly appears in the darkness, heavy chains numerous locks holding it shut. It looks like a twisted reflection of how a sane person would chain a door.

Briefly I consider trying to shoot the chain, but the links are huge, as are the locks. Instead I put my back to the wall and start checking for any sign of Alex. My movements are steady, even though my heart beats wildly in my chest.

Alex appears again, and I shoot at him. Then again. Again.

His face is locked in a feral grin that is chilling in the crisp blue-white beam of my flashlight. I feel my composure slipping, and start loosing more rounds into the still darkness. The gun clicks empty, and I reload, firing angrily.

"Get your ass out here, Valin," I sneer through gritted teeth.

The lights in the warehouse flicker and then flare to life, banishing the darkness. I look around and catch sight of Alex in a control room overhead. He peers at me, and then leans down to speak through a device of some sort. Then his voice sounds from speakers on high, "You're Williams comma Chase."

I fire at him, but the shots are off-mark. Considering the distance, I'm not surprised. He doesn't even duck as the bullets impact the wall behind him, instead he just keeps reading from a datapad.

"You were my number one suspect, I figured you out before you came after me," he says absently, "I mean, come on, 'troubleshooter'? Does your degree say your major was assassinology?"

I run across the warehouse floor, roll into cover, and squeeze off two more shots. They fly through the air previous occupied by Alex. He doesn't even look up as he sidesteps my aim, and the old microphone is still in his hand.

"So who put you on this job," he muses, "an ambitious underling, a threatened colleague, or a wrathful superior?"

This time I fire again, and immediately shift my aim to his right and fire again.

"Stop that, would you," he says as he avoids both shots. Then a gun materializes in his free hand and he fires without looking. A sound like an angry hornet flying at Mach 2, and then a searing heat through my right hand. My gun goes skidding away and suddenly I'm injured and unarmed.

He drops the microphone and datapad, and then walks down from the control room to the catwalk above me. Without missing a step, he hops onto the railing like a bird perching, and then drops the twenty-five feet to the floor and keeps walking towards me. I'm a little stunned, but I go for my gun anyway.

Somehow he covers the distance before me, and picks it up between two fingers and with a negligent toss sends it flying across the warehouse.

"You are the same one, right? The one who shot Alex, me?"