Karin Bernays closed the fourteenth issue of Adventurous Comics. It was just as 'eh' as she remembered. She had moved the box of comics away from the window as soon as Euclid left. For every panel she read, she spent as much time staring out the window at the bare wall across the alley. Panels turned to pages and afternoon became evening became night. The alley remained empty the entire time; no sign of Sheri or the ring Karin had paid her for.

By four, Karin assumed Sheri had gotten caught up in some work. Some experiment or lab thing or whatever it was scientists did all day had taken priority. By six, she assumed Sheri had died. Toxic fumes, radiation, chemical explosions, freeze ray; anything could happen to a scientist. By seven, Karin had ruled out a few causes of death. Chief among them was 'shrink ray.' Karin was smarter than most people and understood a fundamental law of physics: things are as big as they are. The only way to make something smaller was to take something out of it. That fact in hand, she had long disproved the possibility of such a device. Freeze rays were still a possibility. It was unlikely to have been aimed at Sheri, but the technology was simple enough that she could have underestimated it. You just needed to make a refrigerator that affects the object you point at rather than the space it surrounds. Trivial really. By eight, she had ruled out death, well sciency death at least. Those all seemed to result in big repercussions. A boom, or a puff, or a zap. None of which had graced the plain wall outside Karin's window. By nine, Karin had come to the horrifying realization that Sheri might have taken the money with no intention of ever following through.

But scientists are doctors, right? They take an oath. . . what is it. . . the "Hyppocratic" oath. Damn! I should have known!

The faint sound of shoes on stone echoed out of the dark. Karin climbed atop the desk and put her head through the window. She cut a cautionary glance at her door, but Maxwell failed to appear.

At the end of the alley, a woman was walking with a flashlight in one hand and a small box in the other.

Karin glanced at her desk and checked her notes. She had written and circled it in large red ink just for such a late-night rendezvous, "Sheri? Took a while, did you get lost?"

"Sorry," the light from Karin's room illuminated Sheri as she stopped beneath the window. Her clothes were coated in a layer of tears and dirt, "I got distracted with some experiments at the graveyard."

Better to not ask what the dirt means then.

Sheri held her left hand to the window, "I got the ring you asked for. I hope it is as. . unpleasant as you wanted. There's a bit of money left over, and-"

"You can keep it," Karin said, taking the box, "Do scientists take an oath like other doctors?"

"No?" She sounded uncertain, "At least, I have not made any."

I guess I was wrong.

"If you don't mind my prying," Sheri shined the light into Karin's eyes before realizing that was blinding her, "Why did you need an ugly ring?"

Karin opened the box. It was perfect, better than what she had ever expected it to be, "Why does anyone need a ring of metal?" She paused, eyeing Sheri through the ring's loop, "To forge a chain."

"And what chain is that?" the flair of mystery kept Sheri's interest just as Karin had hoped.

"You'll have to wait 'til tomorrow for that answer," Karin stopped to ensure her tease kept Sheri engrossed in the conversation, "What were you doing here this morning?"

"Just going for a stroll to walk off the morning fatigue."

Karin knew Sheri was lying, but couldn't place what it was.

Best to remain fooled for now. Lower her guard before spilling her guts, er, metaphorically speaking.

"You must have exhausted every road on the island to end up here. Did you see anywhere to eat? That's good mind you."

"I had a good dinner at-" A roaring 'smack' echoed through the alley followed by the softer rumbles of water falling into itself.

Neither woman could see into the darkness of the lake. As the sound faded into memory, they both found excuses in their heads. Something heavy struck the water, a boulder or a car perhaps, but how did it fall onto the water? As time passed they began to wonder if it truly was as loud as they remembered. In this way, the deafening roar became quieter and quieter until the only thing the two could believe had made it was a stone being tossed from one of the many dark rooftops of Flores. Having the incident rationalized, the pair continued their discussion long into the night never again thinking of what it could have been.

----------------------------------------

Three men stood outside the building Grenfell and Maxwell had rented for the racers to stay. They had done so before tacking on the fourteen-day layover in the city so its sixteen rooms were beyond inadequate. It stood beside the race's office with only a small alley separating the two buildings. The three men knew none of this, nor did they know that alley was the same one where Maxwell had granted the wish to form the town on the shore. How could they? They'd never been to the city before tonight and were only in town on business. When the streets had been deemed deserted, the three approached the door. Hands, the shortest among them, knelt before it and set a box of tools on the ground. The other two, Irrelevant and Unrelevant stood beside him. Each looked in a different direction, watching for potential witnesses and blocking their view of Hands's work.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Three assassins for a few self-proclaimed scientists was a bit overkill, but efficiency wasn't the point of the mission. Like everything else in the world, the point was money. Sheri and her cheating had cost them tens of thousands directly, and hundreds more indirectly. Killing her brought back the legitimacy of the race and the bets would return with it.

Unrelevant nudged Hands; someone was coming. Hands kept his pick in the lock while Irrelevant moved beside Unrelevant to further shroud him.

"Good evening gentlemen, what keeps you up at this hour?" The man said.

"He lost his keys," one of the two standing men said.

"Really? I could have sworn I paid for the entire building. I should have mine somewhere," the man stopped fifteen feet away from them and dug into his coat.

Unrelevant nodded to his partner and reached for his gun, "I thought I'd seen ya before. Which one are ya?"

"Does it matter?" Irrelevant added, "Either one is worth more than those bets."

The man eyed the pair of pistols aiming for him as Hands stood from the door, "I didn't know my corpse had such market value. Should I be flattered?"

Hands reached for his own weapon, "Not your corpse, your ransom."

Hands's fingers curled around the familiar spot where he had holstered his gun every day for decades. Skin came upon skin as memory, habit, and the weight at his hip all failed him.

A subdued voice blew past Hands's ear, "My day has been full of unpleasantries," it said, "I had a meeting with people under the delusion they could manipulate me. Then I was forced into the most dreadful, one-sided conversation to ever torture my ears. And to end it all? To finalize my hated errand? The one thing I bought for myself, the one silver lining, tainted and rusted already, but still shining, and she ruined it. I have allowed many people to slight me. Some were so insignificant as to be worthless; others were worth too much. She is in the first category, barely worth the breath of her name, yet her victories burn my very soul. Even one as insignificant as knowing I had bought those books for myself. And now you, a group of thugs ruining my nightly stroll."

Hands was too afraid of the voice beside him and too transfixed by the sight before him to look away. The street beyond the shoulders of his two partners was dark and devoid of all life save for the moths circling the street lights. The relevants turned and aimed their guns at the man now standing over Hands's shoulder.

"Another threat? Do you wield a weapon or a prop? Your purpose is to kill, your weapon's purpose is to kill, so why hesitate?"

Unrelevant answered Grenfell's question. The gunshot echoed in Hands's ear before being replaced by a droning ring. Hands reflexively turned to follow the noise. He should have seen the man's body on the ground. But, the man should have run past them. Should have.

The bullet hovered in the air in a way they so often don't. He could only see it for a moment before it fell to the ground. When it landed, it embedded into the concrete with all the force it should have spent on Grenfell's skull.

"Thank you," Grenfell said, "After two incidents Maxwell forbade action unless necessary, and killing was completely out. But, he is far more understanding when a life that matters is on the line. Leave the dog to growl at its betters, but kill it the moment it bites."

Hands felt Grenfell's chest with his elbow. He pulled his arm up and threw it down. Somehow he fell short of the centimeters between them. He stumbled, flailed, and fell. but he did not hit the ground.

The wind whistled past his ears while his shirt billowed and rippled like a sail. Still, he did not hit the ground.

He watched his partners clench their fingers against the trigger. They curled and closed around nothing. Had he been closer and had the wind not been stinging his eyes shut he would have seen that their fingers had somehow gotten behind the trigger. He couldn't comprehend how they failed to touch the piece of metal they had pulled hundreds of times over the years. But he couldn't explain how he was still falling either.

The two relevants struggled to get their fingers around the trigger. No matter how much they stretched them, they couldn't quite reach. Grenfell pulled a knife from his coat. It was small, barely two inches, the sort of blade you use to cut tape or thin wires, and the man stood four feet away from them. Despite the impossibility of it, Grenfell flicked his wrist and the two men's heads fell from their bodies. Their driverless bodies crumpled before rising up to meet the floating heads. Like Hands, they feared the ground.

Grenfell approached the two corpses and gave each a small nudge before they vanished. The nudge was pure theatrics as the heads and drops of blood floating beside them vanished as well.

Grenfell looked at him and approached, "Thank you for this, I needed something to go right today," he said before tapping Hands's shoulder.

The street, the wall, Grenfell, and the lights all vanished in an instant. Hands could see nothing, but as his eyes adjusted he could make out white dots above him, and two grey fogs to either side. He tried to turn his head, but the wind rushing past blew his hair into his eyes and forced his gaze back to the night sky.

"Do you know how it feels to converse with someone leagues beneath you?," Grenfell's voice continued from the shore. Hundreds of feet and the roar of the wind separated Hands from Grenfell, but he could feel Grenfell's hot breath fall on his ear, "Like if you were to speak with a Neanderthal. They have the capability of understanding but need so many concessions from you to do so. You must limit your speech, your words, your thoughts to such an infantile level. And it doesn't stop with the conversation. After talking day in and day out, your translations become habitual—the very act of pretending to be on their level taints you."

Hands felt a shift in the wind. The wind stopped intensifying as his velocity reached its maximum. Still, he did not move any closer to the water.

"To be honest," Grenfell said, "I didn't even mean to kill you. I was just so distracted by your friends that I didn't notice how far you had fallen until it was too late. I wanted to ask some questions. Who sent you, why, those sentences you only ever need to utter when times are interesting."

Hands shouted a response. A plea that he would answer anything if Grenfell would spare him, but the wind swallowed his words.

"That's the problem. Even if I could hear you, I'd feel just terrible pulling this information from you under a false pretense. I can't save you anymore. Besides that, I wouldn't have listened."

Hands felt nothing, but he saw the difference. For a moment his body was free from its flat position and rolled. For a moment he could make out Grenfell's silhouette standing on the shore. For a moment he saw it rise with the buildings. For a moment he was falling.