2009-06-17 18:02:09

“This is what you call fun?”

The question should have made me wince, I suppose, but since she was looking the other way, I just grinned as I shoved her through an unmarked door. Bullets snapped as they impacted the wall, just missing us. I briefly wondered what mateial the wall was made of to produce that particular noise.

The truth was that not only was this not what I had planned for my first date with Cynthia, it was the last thing I had expected to actually happen — which meant, to my surprise, and probably hers as well, that the black-clad assassins were here for her. This made her much more interesting.

And yes. I did think it was fun.

The way I see it, anyone who devotes his life to a career he doesn’t enjoy is a fool and has thrown away his life. That includes those few of us left lln the… hands on security and espionage industry.

The hallway we turned down led away from the main concourse. It was narrow with several doors at intervals on the sides. I had mixed feelings about the lack of people. There was no one in our way as we darted down it, but if we didn’t get out before our pursuers got in, we’d be easy targets. If we did, though, we’d be a step closer to throwing them off, and a lot closer to the trains that would take us to safety.

Cynthia’s breath was coming heavy already. She didn’t look unfit — I wasn’t too picky about body type, but my friend, Sven, who set up this blind date, knew that I insisted on a healthy life style. Cynthia clearly wasn’t a sprinter, let alone a long distance sprinter. “Don’t think about it,” I told her. “It’ll just discourage you.”

She sneared, clearly not impressed with my advice.

I glanced over my shoulder. One of the assassins was rounding the corner. I grunted an expletive and dragged Cynthia the last few feet to the end of the hall then yanked her to the left just as the bullets started spraying.

“What the heck is going on?” she hissed.

“Shut up,” I said simply. I don’t like rudeness as a rule, but it wasn’t the time. All thoughts needed to be on escape. Plus, other than the immediate escape I didn’t know what was going on. “Come on,” I said more gruffly than I intended as I took her hand and led her into the crowd on this concourse.

I’d been on protection detail many times, and I’d grabbed a lot of people a lot of ways. But taking Cynthia’s hand stood out to me. It felt good, like it was made to be in my hand. It irritated me, because twitterpation would just distract me from the current crisis.

Fortunately, Cynthia didn’t resist as I wove through the crowd. Our pursuers followed us into the mass of people and were considerably less polite than I was, shoving individuals aside. No one had noticed the gunshots — the killers had relatively quiet weapons and the crowd was loud. But there were a lot of shouts and protests at this.

“There’s a shuttle to the other side of the complex,” I said. “It’s not an escape, but it’ll buy us a moment to rest.”

She nodded without saying anything. Her face was turning red. We needed that rest.

tags: assassin, chase, Cynthia
categories: Music, Unrelated Shorts, Writing
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