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.
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