Women were no challenge, I felt. This next target

was another woman. Granted, I chose the last,

random victim, but it felt too easy and convenient.

      Something about my last target was a cheat. It seemed unfair.

Also, women weren’t hard to deal with. I wanted some craft

and care within my task. I wanted challenge. Then I realized I

was being haughty and reckless: if it was too difficult, I might

reveal myself. Perhaps I should have been grateful when

women came up on the random generator I carried around.

       Ada 6-075 was going to be particularly easy. Or,

so I believed. She was an older inhabitant and as such she

wasn’t particularly lively. She wasn’t decrepit in any way, or

hampered by any signs of age, but someone so old would most

likely be so routine that I could kill them effortlessly.

       My assumptions would prove me wrong.

       Having not been notified of another murder to be

committed, I merely took my spare time to shadow the woman

already chosen. For a week I followed her on the streets and

constantly re-read her data file. The worst thing I discovered

was that she was almost never alone. It was vexing. Never

alone. Either she was with her bonding, or co-workers, or

friends, or wandering through well-populated areas.

       This woman was indeed a challenge.

       When the red light glowed on the edges of my tablet,

I found only a couple days allocated for her murder. It wasn’t

much time. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it.

       The opening I sought came unexpectedly. Ada changed

her routine slightly for a moment. She wandered off the street

into a fountain cul-de-sac, presumably to wash her hands in

the rush of fresh water constantly burbling just a couple dozen

feet from the open areas. It broke off sight from much of the

populace.

        I had seen the woman bid farewell to a group of friends

mere minutes ago. She was between activities and away from

the general public along 23rd Street. Moments behind her, I

followed the older lady into the narrowing.

       She was seated on the bland, concrete rise to one side

of the flowing water going between the narrow buildings’ walls.

Ada was indeed cleaning her hands. Her back was to me and

the road. Her hearing was clouded by the woosh of liquids

across her hands and through the convenient aqueduct.

       It was my only chance.

       Time flipped forward. My perception was edited

somehow, and the view I consciously saw went from my

position only a few feet behind her to suddenly being of her

head under the shallow water in the trough. My hands held her

shoulders tightly, my digits desperately enraged with the power

of a dozen men. Ada’s hair was soaked, bubbles piling out of

her, the woman’s hands pushing away from the water’s sluice

while I used my weight to keep her pinned.

       I wasn’t sure how long I had been suffocating her.

Luckily I wasn’t strangling her. My fingers dug into the front

of her shoulders just above the clavicles.

       Movement. Movement behind me.

       I turned quickly. A young guy was watching me. I had

fear in my eyes, I must have had. When he saw my face, his

features repeated back to me the urgency I felt. There was no

time to lose.

       “Help,” I croaked.

       He was frozen.

       “Help me!” I said loudly, “She’s trying to kill herself!”

       The lad was challenged. He couldn’t function for

several seconds.

       “Well, do something!” I cried out.

        He ran.

       Ada’s strength was beginning to wane. It was well

into her submersion. Water must have gotten into her lungs.

Her weakness helped me as I furiously attempted to act out

an alternate reality for a crowd starting to filter into the small

fountain recess.

        There might have been as many as a dozen people

watching me. None of them were helping. They were all

unable to understand, and so they did nothing. Stupid.

        “Help!” I screamed to everyone.

       My arms straightened, my back arched. It hopefully

looked as if I was trying to pull the elderly woman out of the

fountain while in reality I was locking my elbows and keeping

her lodged beneath the surface of the water. Ada’s body was

going limp, but her arms jammed onto the ledges remained

there. Everything made me look like a hero.

        Soon there was a stray steward filtering through the

crowd. My heart fell, my veins ran cold with anxiety. That

young man had found authority. Now came the real challenge.

       Ada’s pulse was fading quick. She was clearly

unconscious, but I couldn’t afford to let her come back to life.

I held her there until the steward broke through and saw us at

the fountain; that was the moment I struggled to pull her from

the water.

       Unable to comprehend the situation, the guard watched

me drag her to one of the walls in the cul-de-sac and lean her

upright. That would hold water in her lungs. Ada’s eyes were

wide open in terror, her mouth open and dripping water.

       “She tried to kill herself!” I exclaimed for the steward

as he leaned down, “I came in here and she was completely

under the water! I tried to pull her out. She struggled!”

       Everyone was chattering, distraught over the tragedy.

       “Look!” I told the steward, pointing to where my finger

nails dug into her shoulders from the front, “I tried to pull her

out! I tried!”

       The crowd mumbled louder after my evidence.

       “There was something wrong with her,” I said.

       Silence from the steward was beginning to worry me.

I was sweating heavily, but the water splashed all over me

disguised the sweat.

       His contemplation went on a while. He was sizing me

up.

       I thought I was going to be taken away. Mr. God

might have been able to help me, but I couldn’t be sure. If

an investigation was going to be pursued, I’d have serious

troubles. Just over the shoulder of the steward, directly in my

eye line, was my populace device. I couldn’t let my slate be

found. My blood began to tingle with unbearable fear.

       He checked Ada’s pulse on her jugular veins. Then the

broad man put his head to her chest. She was dead. I could tell

from his expression. It almost brought tears to roll down my

cheeks as I believed I was going to be discovered.

       “Okay,” the steward broke from his observations, “you

can go.”

       Without any more words, I picked up my murder

calculator and struggled through the crowd at the mouth of the

small indent between structures on 23rd Street.

       I had done it: I had fooled them all.

       I was free.