He'll bleed out in under two minutes.
One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four.
The counting helps.
Keeps me focused.
Keeps the chaos controlled while my body does what it was trained to do.
Four is next—machete swinging wildly, fear making him sloppy. I sidestep, pirouette, catch him across the throat with my left blade while my right buries itself in his kidney.
Five comes at me from behind.
I hear him before I see him—the displaced air, the crunch of leaves, the particular sound of someone trying to be quiet and failing.
I spin.
Fouetté en tournant.
My blade catches the light as it arcs toward him.
He's dead before he hits the ground.
Six—the last one, the one who called the man in the trench coat delusional—freezes.
I see the exact moment he decides to run.
And I see the exact moment my blade catches him in the spine.
He drops.
Silence.
The forest goes perfectly, absolutely still.
I'm breathing hard—short, sharp gasps that make my chest heave—and my hands are trembling with post-combat adrenaline. Blood drips from my blades, pooling on the forest floor, mixing with the early evening dew.
Six bodies.
Six kills.
All in the time it took for a madman to count down from ten.
Not bad for a Tuesday.
The giggle escapes before I can stop it—high and manic and completely inappropriate—and I clap my blood-stained hand over my mouth.
Stop. Focus. You're not alone.
The man in the trench coat still has his eyes closed.
Still sitting there with his arms crossed and his legs folded, like nothing happened at all.
"I knew Blaze would handle it," he says, voice carrying that same bored authority. "But it's a shame such tactics didn't get me the obvious answer I need."
His eyes open.
And the tip of my blade is already pressed against his chin.
