Crossing the international terminal, I kept an eye on my new shadow. As I went through the crowds and bought some magazines and stationery at various shops, I would switch directions as though I’d changed my mind, then check a guide map and look around to “try and get my bearings.”
I spent about twenty minutes on this observation task, but it looked like I only had a single tail. Their black hood kept jumping in and out of sight, denying me a good look at their face. However, there was definitely something unnatural about their movements compared with the rest of the people around.
This is strange, I thought. It reeked of amateurish work. Typically, you tailed someone as part of a team. This person might have been the bait to draw my attention away from the others, but they were still incredibly artless about it.
Then again, if this was an absolute layman, that presented its own troubles. Without the tacit understanding of what they would do if they were a professional, I had no idea of when and how they’d move in.
I directed my gaze upward and checked the surveillance cameras that were all throughout the building. Airport security was tight. No matter what you did or where, they’d have video evidence. Even with such recordings, assassinations and terrorist attacks still occurred. The person who had used nerve gas to kill Kim Jong-nam, a North Korean, at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport a few years ago had been an average Indonesian woman.
The Kuala Lumpur incident was the sort where people had used a throwaway assassin to carry out the attack, and professionals had been observing from a safe place. Still, as far as I could see, nobody was giving my hooded follower instructions. I went up escalators and elevators, too, to check other places they might be watching from, but nobody stood out. Either this person was alone, or they had drones or something keeping a constant eye on me…
Now that my face was public knowledge, maybe it was best to assume there was a bounty on my head on the dark web. This could even be an amateur assassin, given only a photograph of the target and their flight name, coming after me for a pittance. Their intentions were unclear, but if they were going to use bombs or gas, it could lead to unwarranted collateral damage.
I turned away from the center of the terminal and continued in the least-populated direction I could find. I sped up slightly to try and make my pursuer impatient. If they really were acting solo, they would have to follow at my pace.
Continuing, I walked into a restroom at the terminal’s edge—the only place in the airport without any cameras.
If this follower wanted to kill me, this was their perfect chance, and it served me well, too. In this situation, the presence of security cameras was actually disadvantageous for me. I wanted to live a life that didn’t involve getting arrested for excessive self-defense.
Upon entering the empty restroom, I made a tight tube out of the magazine I’d bought at a shop and quickly wrapped it with tape. Then I set down my rucksack and plunged my hand into it, retrieving a SureFire flashlight. A makeshift club made from a rolled periodical and a flashlight were the only weapons at my disposal. I had no gun or blade.
It might have seemed silly to those convinced that SAS soldiers were cold, unfeeling killers, but the thing we really excelled at was acting safely and in secret. Sure, it might be easy to simply kill a hostile encountered during an operation, but if it caused a whole lot more trouble in return, what would be the point?
After assessing a threat level, we did what we could to avoid such an option.
Only when necessary did the options to attack, flee, or kill come into play.
Hurried footsteps approached, then came into the restroom. The hooded figure stopped when they saw me ready and waiting. I turned on the SureFire in my left hand. Strobing it quickly, I succeeded in causing my assailant to cover their face with an arm reflexively. This flashlight was strong enough to block out a person’s vision and induce dizziness. I closed the distance, then whacked my pursuer’s throat through their hood with my magazine club.
They grunted and collapsed. Still, it didn’t feel like I’d struck them especially powerfully. From the sensation, I would’ve guessed they had a scarf around their neck. Deciding to take control before my opponent had a chance to regroup, I moved to grab the person’s hood.
No sooner had I tried than I heard a door open behind me.
Immediately, I turned around just as another figure was coming out of a stall farther into the restroom. Impossible, I thought. I would have noticed someone in there when I entered.
This new combatant didn’t have a human face. The man wore a black suit, and on his face was a grotesque mask that looked like a moray eel—large eyes, and a row of fangs sticking out of the mouth.
The first person staggered to their feet. Their hood fell off. This one’s disguise resembled the head of a white crow, with a sharp beak and eyes the color of blood.
Two thugs wearing animal masks. They still hadn’t drawn weapons. After warding the moray eel off with the strobe light, I jumped at the crow, grabbed his facade, and tried to twist it to the side. The disguise couldn’t allow him much of a field of vision, so a slight shift would completely block his view. To my surprise, however, the beak opened and let fly a shrieking caw. Even I couldn’t help but be surprised. My hand clutched not at a rubber mask, but an ample layer of down. I saw my stunned expression reflected in the surface of the creature’s glossy eyes.
Regardless of the plausibility, this was the living head of a ridiculously large albino crow. The bird-man lanced forth a white-gloved hand, and the next thing I knew, I was in the air. Such monstrous strength from such a slender body. My back slammed into the tile, knocking the wind out of me. The flashlight left my hand, and my magazine-club soared away.
The eel and the crow looked down at me from above; then, in synchronous movements that spoke of practice, they pulled long, straight-bladed swords from nowhere. Nothing I had seen thus far suggested they’d been carrying weapons of that size.
Suddenly, the lights in the restroom went out.
The two man-beasts shouted something, sounding disturbed, but I’d never heard their language before. Not wanting to let the opportunity escape, I groped around for the flashlight I’d dropped and eventually grasped it. As I tried to get up, I realized there was a faint red light surrounding me. I looked down to see, hovering just above the floor, a circular pattern. It was twisting and gnarled, looking like a maze. The design rapidly expanded until it covered the whole floor. I found my gaze drawn to it—as though my eyes had started searching for the maze’s exit without me telling them to.
A light clattering started up—and then came quakes strong enough to knock me off my feet.
It was an earthquake, a big one. The force was so great that I couldn’t stand. On all fours, I checked how my enemies were doing. The eel and the crow had blended into the dark; I couldn’t see them. Had the terrible shaking not demanded my attention, I would have pondered that curiosity longer. I’d never experienced tremors like this. Undoubtedly, there would be a lot of casualties… The floor danced, the walls warped, the support beams bent, and the ceiling split, letting in incredible sounds from every direction. Puzzlingly, I couldn’t see anything. It was too dark to have been a typical power outage. Despite it being the afternoon, no light spilled into the restroom from outside.
All at once, the floor under me opened. I’m going to fall! I immediately cradled my head in my arms and rolled myself into a ball. The crashing and cracking of the building collapsing accompanied me as I plummeted into the darkness.
Cold water caught me.
It wasn’t very deep. My hand met the gritty stone at the bottom. I paddled to get my head above water. Switching my SureFire off its strobe mode, I cast its light around. The eel and the crow were nowhere to be found.
When I stood up, I found that the water was only knee-deep. Attempting to get a handle on the situation, I wheeled the flashlight around to get a better picture. Unfortunately, the sights hardly cleared anything up for me.
I was in what looked like a stone passageway. The walls and ceiling both had cracks in them, moss grew in large tufts, and water flowed steadily along the floor. It was an old-looking chamber—almost like ruins.
A cave-in had blocked off one end. Had the earthquake caused it to collapse? I checked the ceiling with my light, but the hole I was sure I’d fallen through was nowhere to be seen.
As my light passed over the caved-in section, I stopped dead in my tracks. A young woman was collapsed on the ground. She was half submerged in the water and lay still. Either she was dead or unconscious. Her long hair bobbed and swayed with the gentle stream. It was also a curious shade: vivid blue.