Man in the mask

“Coast’s clear. I’m going in.”

I crouched down on the windowsill, feeling for the latch with one gloved hand while I held myself steady with the other. I was a good few hundred metres above ground. My fingers made contact with cold metal and I quickly unlatched the window, then pried it open carefully. The room was completely dark, the moon cloaked in clouds.

“Can I get some light, Clare?” I muttered.

“Roger that.” a faint voice replied in my headset. “Night mode enabled. Battery life is ten minutes.”

I nodded and adjusted my headset again, blinking as the room slowly started to take shape. I could make out a few chairs, a desk, a pile of papers on the floor. My breath hitched momentarily in my throat as I caught sight of a lump on the floor.

“Body located.” I knelt down beside the body. “I can confirm it’s definitely him.”

A man was crumpled on the ground, face down. I winced, then turned him over so he was on his back. His mouth was glistening with saliva. “Hypersalivation, rashes on the neck, evidence of restraint around his neck and chest... probably was struggling to breathe, holding himself like that. No blood loss.” I waited for a reply, and stared down at the corpse. His eyes were half-shut.

“Thank you. And you can confirm that the target is dead?”

I looked away. “Yes, of course.”

“Good job. Cause of death based on the crime scene?”

I paused, looking at the red marks on the neck of the corpse. “Respiratory failure. From the marks on his neck and the excess saliva, I’d say this was poison. More specifically,-”

“Arsenic!” a voice concluded jovially from the doorway.

I froze, then stood up slowly. “Clare.”

“Yes?” her response in my headset sounded so tinny and distant compared to the voice behind me.

“Delay my expected time of arrival by 5 minutes.” I turned around. The person in the doorway was tall, but their face was hidden in the angular shadows. They were holding a long knife, which gleamed in the dark. “Make that 10.”

A short pause. “Roger.”

And then silence. The figure hadn’t moved an inch, but I could start to make them out in the gloom. They were wearing some sort of bodysuit. Letters began running across my visor, telling me the approximate gender, mass and age of my opponent. The person appeared to be a male in his mid-twenties, around 6ft tall and weighing 80 to 85 kilograms. My heart rate quickened.

“Now listen,” my train of thought was interrupted by my opponent, who sounded like he was smiling widely. I stood up straight, but my hands were trembling slightly. “I’ll let you go, if you tell me why you’re poking and prodding at MY victim.” He spun the knife around in his hand. My stomach churned as I watched fresh blood drip from the razor-sharp blade.

“Weren’t you only supposed to kill Gregory Armen?” I asked calmly, hoping the hesitation in my voice would go undetected.

The man laughed loudly, a piercing sort of crazed cackle which sent ice cold shivers down my spine. “Where’s the fun in that?”

I gritted my teeth, sickened. The man stepped slowly towards me, and I realised he was wearing a mask which covered his face. Strands of reddish-brown hair poked out from the edges.

Before I had time to reply, the man lifted his hand and flicked his wrist. I immediately ducked as the knife that the man had been carrying whizzed over my head, barely missing my scalp, and implanted itself into the wall.

He whistled. “Not bad, blondie.”

My heart was now hammering in my chest like a drum. He was faster than I had anticipated. I stood back up and grabbed the knife from the wall with my left hand, keeping my eyes on the man. He kept walking towards me, deliberately, aggravatingly slow. I steadied my shaking left hand with my right, gripping the weapon tightly. As if it was going to help me against him. As if he was reading my thoughts, the man asked, “Think you can kill me?”

My breath hitched in my throat as a singular bead of sweat travelled down my temple. He tilted his head to the side. His confidence was almost tangible, filling the room, crushing me. I felt like a mouse in a trap. Think, Cyra, think! My voice screamed desperately inside my head. How can you escape this?? I froze, then suddenly my brain cleared. Yes, I had to escape. There was no way I could win. Jump out of the window? Definitely not. We were several metres off the ground, and turning my body to climb up to the roof would give him an easy opening. Through the door, perhaps? I could try and distract him, then run past him and leave – but an ominous feeling told me he wouldn’t fall for that. Dread began to cloud my mind as I realised there was no way out, when suddenly a shrill beeping interrupted my thoughts.

The man looked down at his wrist, revealing an ordinary-looking watch, which flashed red. He gasped dramatically, lifting a hand to his heart like an opera singer.

“I’m afraid I must go. Until we meet again!” Then he bowed, slinking past me before I could even comprehend what was happening, and jumped out of the open window.

I dropped the knife, my mouth wide open, then ran to the window, half-expecting to see him flying away like a witch. At this point, I wouldn’t even be surprised. But, staring out at the tall buildings and deserted streets, I realised there was no trace of him – just the flickering lampposts and the distant hum of cars.