“He wants another study session?”

“That’s right. Claudius came to me a few hours ago and asked me to forward that message to you. I think he’s a little shy about asking you in person. I can even get a private room booked for you if you’d like.”

It was with those words that I was bound by an unspoken contract. Professor Prier did his best to appeal to my generous side and asked me to assist Claudius in catching up once again. He did note that his grades had improved significantly since our last meeting, so he wanted me to rub some of my work ethic off onto him once again. I agreed only to keep him out of my hair. I was given a time and place and left the classroom for my next lesson. I didn’t think much of it until the time came to fulfil my end of the bargain.

I was very assured that nothing strange was going on until I entered the wing of the building that Prier had specified. It wasn’t the main, H-shaped building in the centre of the grounds, but one of the outlying buildings that were reserved for various other purposes. This particular building was once used as accommodation for the teachers, but that practice had fallen out of fashion in recent years and most preferred to commute from the nearby villages instead.

The moment I stepped through the front door, I realised that I was the only person inside. Each step echoed outwards into an empty atrium. Everyone else was busy with their own studies or societies at this time of day. The unused rooms in the building could be booked by the students, though I saw little reason to do so when the dorm library was already well-stocked with everything you could need.

I could feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck. This had all the makings of a trap. My instincts rarely turned out to be wrong, and there was no harm in being cautious. I made sure that nobody was following me or stalking the long, carpeted halls before heading up the stairs and to the room that Trevor claimed we could use. The door was already unlocked when I twisted the handle.

It was one of the oldest tricks in the book. I pushed it open and stepped back. There was no sign of Claudius sitting at the table, which meant that...

“Rargh!”

There was no time to worry about what it meant, as some moron in a black mask leapt from behind the door and swung at me with a knife. I ducked the wild slash and rolled through, ending up exactly where I didn’t want to be. He turned on his heel and pursued me inside with the weapon held aloft. His build was large, that of an adult man, and the way he held the knife made it obvious that this wasn’t his first rodeo. The culprit behind the shooting had shown himself at last.

He came at me again. I stepped back out of his range, which forced him to change strategies; taking the dagger in both hands and running at me to pull me into a short-range skirmish. There was no way for me to win that fight as things were. My back bumped into the rim of the table as he closed in. I flipped over it and landed on my feet. My attacker could do nothing as I kicked the edge and forced it into him. He fell back onto the floor but retained his grip on the weapon.

I knew better than to fight unarmed against someone using a knife. All they needed to do was charge at me and get a good angle to perforate one of my organs or cut a vital artery. Now that he was stunned, I rushed back through the door and into the hallway. I cursed myself for wearing the black loafers that came with my uniform – they were not made for running! There was only one person who could have set this up, but their motivations were a complete mystery to me.

My first priority was survival. As I passed one of the windows I took the opportunity to tear a piece of the curtain away and twist it into a fairly strong piece of rope. It wouldn’t block the sharp end of a knife, but I wasn’t going to use it for that. I stepped into another open room and slammed the door shut behind me. I could hear his footsteps moving around the space as he tried to find me. If he had done his due diligence before attacking me, he would have noted that the floors were very loud. People never planned for contingencies like this. He believed that he could surprise me, stab me, and hide my body without anyone finding out.

It was a damn shame that he picked a fight with me.

As soon as I heard him pass my doorway, I opened it again and leapt onto his back. His arms flailed as he tried to wrestle me off, but soon the bite of my makeshift garrotte was pulling back on his neck and constricting his airway. He wheezed as panic started to set in. The human mind was not capable of fully rational decision-making when it was being put under time pressure like this. In this case, he still had his wits about him. He gave up on trying to slash me with his knife and backed me up into the wall. I was forced to release his neck and guard my face as he attempted to bludgeon me with his elbow.

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The bone in my forearm wailed in protest as he placed it under extreme duress. Body parts could be exchanged in a fight for progress. Once I saw my window, I reached around and scratched at his eyes with my nails. It was a dirty trick – but anything goes when your life's on the line. Tired of my fun and games, he grabbed the side of my shirt and flung me away onto the floor, tearing away some of the fabric as I went.

“You bitch! I knew you were gonna’ be a problem!”

He rubbed the red mark that I had left on his neck and tried to catch a breath before I fled again. All of these decisions were being made on the fly within milliseconds of the situation changing. I reached down to my thigh to try and draw my gun – but I discovered that the tightness of my skirt was too much to give me a good angle so that I could unlatch it. There was no time to pull the buttons free and loosen it. All that work to buy a holster for my gun and I didn’t even have the chance to use it.

With that plan scrapped, I moved on and tried to unsettle him. I jumped up onto my feet and goaded him on, “Not very tough for such a large gentleman.”

Whatever he was expecting when he pieced together this plan, me taking the fight back to him was definitely not included. I grabbed my curtain whip from the floor and unravelled it to give me some slack. He was furious, charging at me like an angry bull who was seeing red. I stepped aside and dodged his thrust, wrapping the underside of the curtain around his wrist and kicking his knee out from under him. I whipped his captive arm to the side and slammed it into the wall. The knife finally flew from between his fingers as I repeated the process three more times. I placed my foot against the knife and kicked it along the ground, sending it spiralling down the polished floor and out of range.

This was not how I was used to fighting. His size and strength advantage was significant, and there was only so much leverage I could squeeze out of my own body. Now that the knife was no longer in play, the would-be killer decided to abandon his initial plan and do things the old-fashioned way. He cracked his neck and his knuckles, ready to beat down a thirteen-year-old girl in a brawl. I’m sure it made him feel like a big man.

My body wasn’t strong enough to leave any lasting damage without a weapon. I could bruise him, and maybe leave a cut using my knuckles, but I did not expect any more than that. I did the smart thing instead and turned around. He gave chase as I ran towards the knife that I had just idiotically discarded out of instinct. I was still a faster runner. I slid to a halt and grabbed it, but when I turned back he was already gone.

“Crap!”

He had slipped down the corridor that split off at the intersection. I stayed on the left and peered around but there was no sign of him. He’d thought better of trying to get the knife back and ran away. I pocketed the knife and sighed. He’d ripped a hole clean through the abdominal area of my shirt. It was a learning experience I would not soon forget. The skirt was an element that I hadn’t even considered before; it had prevented me from shooting him dead and ending the issue then and there.

If he believed that he had gotten away without showing his hand, he had another thing coming. I had sussed him out. I knew his tricks and ways, and I had a very good idea of who the man behind the mask really was. Hard evidence would confirm my thinking, and now that I had a prime suspect the hiding place for the gun had come into sharp focus. He may just have buried it somewhere after all, but not in the gardens. My own trap would have to wait. Cleaning up the mess I had caused came first.

The curtain and torn cloth were neatly tucked into my pocket for later disposal, and I did a fast run-through of the fight to make sure that no evidence had been left of my presence. A few strands of my hair had somehow gotten entangled in places. Genetic matching wasn’t a concern, but it was characteristic of me as Maria – and any hints as to what had really happened here were unwanted.

Once the sweep was done I headed back down the stairs and into the yard. Dodging the students who were out and about on the grounds was difficult, but I somehow made my way to the dorm room without anyone stopping me or asking questions. The fabric pieces were shoved into the bottom of my suitcase’s gun compartment so that I could burn them later. I could make an excuse for the torn shirt if someone were to see it. The teachers would write it off as some light mischief or vandalism from a problem student if they ever noticed the damage at all.

I sat down on the bed and took a moment to think over what had just happened. Even an assassin as experienced as me would get rattled by a surprise attack. It was the same with every job I took. Adrenaline would flood my body and make my heart pound in my ears. I could only calm down after everything was done. I’d sit in my house and take an hour to digest the events that had just occurred.

I knew who it was.

All of the pieces had fallen into place. Now I just needed to come up with a plan of my own to be rid of them. They’d be scrambling to patch the leak they’d caused by shooting at Felipe and me. The real unknown factor was whether the killer understood that I had deduced who they were. It would determine their next course of action, but ultimately, they rested at the same branching-off point. They would return to their hideout and recover the weapon; that single piece of hard evidence was all I needed.

Tomorrow I would launch my counterattack.