“Take your shot.”
I stand on an empty train platform at 1 in the morning,
having just exited the skytrain. My back is to a man who has been following me
for the last seven stops, and the walk through downtown along West Georgia. He
is in his late 30s, he has a non-descript backpack and a sling bag, black
jeans, t-shirt and boots.
He stops. We stand frozen for a moment.
I open my arms wide. Presenting my back.
“Take your shot.”
His fingers twitch, the right hand then. I turn slowly,
carefully. “You have a Sig P226 in your bag, I can tell by the way it swings.
Either that or you have a heavy piece of metal wrapped in cloth for some
reason. Your 226 has a rails attachment for a silencer, I saw when it hit you
in the side two stops back.”
He almost smirks, to play it off.
I meet his eyes with a gaze that is dead to the world.
He stops.
“Take your shot. But there are four cameras watching us.” I
point them out. Vancouver train terminals are some of the most watched surveillance
in the world. Automated systems and all that. “There are at least two operators
now paying attention, possibly a third. One of them is poised with his hand
over the system PA to ask what is going on.”
I continue holding my arms wide. “If you shoot now, there
will be three witnesses. Two recordings at minimum, both of which will need to
be scrubbed. If you shoot now, there will be an armed response in less than 4
minutes, we are too close to the airport for it to be otherwise. There are a
lot of places to hide sure, but they’ll close both bridges and you’ll have to
find another way off.”
He almost flinches. Still uncertain. I place both my hands
behind my back, patient, waiting.
“But take your shot. That’s what they paid you for isn’t it?
Take out one man, just one. A larger sum of money than you’ve ever been paid
for this kind of job. You never asked why. You never thought to ask why I was
worth so much money, or if I would fight back.”
I pace, he tracks me with his eyes.
“How many others have you preyed on this way? Inconsistent
husbands? Whistleblowers? Thieves of men and women’s property. People who hold
little secrets best left unsaid? Ah.”
He looks over his shoulder, his left one. He looks to see if
anyone else notices, but we are alone.
He looks back to me, I wait to take another step in my
pacing.
“Take. Your. Shot.”
He moves then, goes for the sling bag. It was unzipped, good
prep that, clean. The sound of metal sliding past neoprene, he pulls the safety
as it goes.
The rapport of the gun is loud in the station, the flare of
orange bright against the sickly blue-green of synthetic light. But I have
already moved, the bullet parts the air where my chest was a microcosm before.
It shatters against reinforced glass behind me, sending a myriad spiderweb of
cracks encased in a plastic decaling.
I squeeze just once, and a blossom of red explodes outwards
from his chest.
I rise from my knees, as he slides backwards and topples,
some kind of still-rigid oak in his bones. The P226 clatters against tile, his
bags fall in a heap.
I walk away.
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