Due to busting my ribs at the weekend and ending up in ER on Monday, I wasn’t much in the frame of mind to continue. The pain is more or less under control now and my muse has returned. Woo Hoo.

Azrael had imagined she’d be presented with the sentence of the person to be culled, detailing why they must die, but when she faced the banker assigned to her, a bald, fat, sweating man sitting behind a priceless off-world wooden desk, she learned otherwise.

Armed with a mental image of a middle-aged man, details of his usual security and precisely where he would be when she made the hit, Azrael wanted to vomit. She was no better than the gun she now collected on her way to the rooftop transport; one weapon carrying another. The Banker had also given her instructions as to where she must position her lethal shots on the body of her victim. One for the head and one for the heart so there was no possibility of saving the man. Of course, had she been equipped with a higher velocity projectile weapon, this would be a consideration as the man’s head would have exploded on impact. The choice to use what she must was necessitated by the proximity of other people to the man. Although the banker didn’t enlighten her, Azrael wondered if the extra care came because the person who ordered the hit would be standing close by to give a façade of innocence? She couldn’t think why else she needed to make shots into a crowd, for the second shot was going to confirm the identity of the victim as no accident.

Once on the roof she checked over the grav lifter left out for her, going over all the fuel lines and the ignition system. Aside from getting her in position on top of a highrise roof to make the kill, she depended on it to get her away clean afterward. A random thought crossed her mind, leaving her to wonder what happened when the banker’s angels got caught in the act?