"Tell me what I want to
know," he said finally. "And you know damn well what that is."
The Hunter
fidgeted slightly. Then, raising his chin up, drawing weight onto his bulky
shoulders, he said, "Fuck what you want to know."
George felt the
outline of the knife in his pocket, just to make sure it was still there.
"Tell me, you bastard," he snarled.
The Hunter simply
stared at him. It was hard to say whether there was anger or confusion in his
eyes, as if he was really thinking it over.
"Too
late," George said under his breath, but not before he brought the knife
up to The Hunter's neck and--
The Hunter
swerved it from his wrist suddenly in a motion too fast for his eyes to
capture, and in a blur of images turned so that George's back was to him, and
The Hunter drew his forearm around his neck, the cold touch of steel sending a
shiver down his back. Kicking The Hunter's shin with the back of his shoe, he
grabbed violently at the knife and struggled to wrest it into his grasp. The
Hunter wailed out, and threw a fist into George's face that momentarily blinded
him and sent the knife spinning off to the side. George swore and flung his
body to the knife, when he heard a shout come from behind one of the large
white marble pillars that held up the building.
"I thought
you were dead," said the man, slowly coming into view.
In an instant
George recognized the voice, and all the strength in his arms suddenly went out
as his heart dropped like an anvil.
"Yes, cut the
surprise. It's me," said Michael. He was the man behind all of this. But
George couldn't figure out why, and his mind wrestled with putting all the
pieces of the puzzle together. But there were some missing.
"How...?"
was all that he could say.
"It's quite
easy, really. But oh George, it's so sad that you didn't listen to me. Tragic,
really. Didn't I tell you to trust no one?"
"But... you."
"Think
about it. Did I not tell you, before I sent you off on your mission, that you
would be involved in one of the biggest operations carried out for years? I
don't think it ever came to you the immense magnitude
of it."
"I still
don't understand. Why you? What could you get out of this?"
"Ah, well
that's the simple part. The Hunter here sent one of his--terrifying, I must
say--men to my office, offering a truce. The terms were a little to skimpy for
my taste, but I could see reward off in the distance, a bit far-fetched, yes,
but I was halfway through the tunnel and the light was getting closer. I felt
this--have you ever felt anything like it?--nagging feeling in my gut, like half
anxiety half ambition. It's a stomach thing, buried deep in there. It's so
intense that you can't eat, that you can't think about anything else. And you
think of the reward--oh, the time I
spent daydreaming..." For a moment he stopped, as if to do precisely what
he was describing. His eyes, grey as ever, looked suddenly like a stranger's,
and all George felt in that moment was sad.
Not
even disappointment or betrayal, not then. Only sadness. Betrayal was merely
the action, the movement that set everything off, but it was not what he felt
now. Betrayal wasn't something you could feel.
Betrayal is meaningless if there is no output or medium through which you translate
it into a pseudo-tangible feeling. And
the output now was sadness, sadness for the friendship with this man he had
thought he had, destroyed so abruptly, so insensibly. And it was a hopeless
sadness, so deeply penetrating and utterly bleak that it seemed to spread to
every inch of his body like pitch-dark, dense, thick oil. It left him impotent
in its wake.
"Yes,"
Michael continued, "and I grabbed hold of the opportunity. But can you
guess the obstacle in my path that prevented me from getting my reward? Can you
guess who that was?" Not waiting
for an answer, he went on, "Yes, it was you. You, who still thought that
it was your mission, your duty to get rid of The Hunter and his posse of
barbarians," he put extra emphasis on the word duty, as it if was something completely stupid and childish,
something that only the helpless and deluded strive for.
"Well why
didn't you just kill me then?" George spat. "That would've made
everything a hell of a lot easier for you. You lying bastard, why didn't you just kill me!"
"Can't you
at least figure that one out? Why would I subject myself to a torrent of
investigations that would eventually lead to me, when I could make it look as
if you got yourself killed on your own? And that's where The Hunter here came
in."
No, George
thought. This would not be his coup de
grace. He would not die here, not now. He sprang up.
And Michael fell
down.
It came without
thought or warning, and George jumped backward when he heard the gunshot,
thinking it was aimed at him.
But it was
Michael who fell. The bullet went straight through the back of his head, and
killed him instantly.
Another gunshot,
and The Hunter, who had been standing there by the side in case George tried
anything, fell too.
For a moment he
thought he would be next. They had killed (whoever they were) two already, why not him? He quickly scanned his
surroundings to look for a hiding place, and saw one behind a large pillar in
front of him. He almost began toward it but his head was still intact, at least
as far as he could tell. And as he looked around for his savior, he spotted
Emily emerging from the darkness.
And he smiled.
