The staccato bursts of the girl's rifle firing up the staircase faded as the Hunter ran quietly out of the old building. It took all his willpower to resist the urge to look back, to stay and help the girl. He knew she was good enough not to let the horror of the sudden and quite unexpected destruction of their tight-knit little unit get in the way of finishing the job they had started. She would keep the bastard pinned down and distracted for a while. Long enough for him to find another route up there.
The foreman's house appeared to be held together by ivy, thick twisted trunks curling up the wall, roots growing into the brickwork giving the building the appearance of a big mutant plant. Although nearly pitch dark in the forest, the Augmented Reality glasses made everything clear as day as they scanned the outside of the building and presented him with a quick and easy route up the plant to the window on the first floor, the one furthest away from the staircase. He made short work of clambering up the plant, hoping that the noise of the shooting was enough to mask the sound of his ascent.
No time to worry about that now son, just stay alert, stay focused. The echo of the old man's voice cut through his thoughts. The Hunter tried to ignore it, just a remnant of an old friend long gone. He was desperate to avoid coherent thought and thus transmitting his true intentions to the combatants inside.
They had been forced to switch to sign language when he had realised what had been going on.
He must be listening in on the Neuros!
What? How? The girl's eyes had been wide.
I don't know, but we need a different approach.
What do you want to do? He's pretty well dug in up there.
I don't know.... Need a distraction. Think you can hold him?
Sure thing! I'll keep him busy! She had been frightened, her hands almost shaking too much to do the signing although the sentiment was ripe with bravado. He had seen the darkness descending around her and he'd left her there, alone.
He shook his head. Little lights began to appear in his peripheral vision, pulsing in time with the blood pumping round his head, like he could see his heart beating. Music: Stars, he thought and a gentle staccatto melody began to feed through his earbuds. With each note a white dot was extinguished and soon he was able to concentrate on the task in hand.
He crept through the window, Neuros silent now, lest Balan was still listening in. When he scanned the room, his glasses highlighted potential obstacles and showing him the optimal path through them. No readings from Balan himself. Somehow the bastard had managed to throw the system off so it was impossible to see him on the infra-red. He felt his muscles tense and tried to relax, to concentrate his mind so that when he finally caught up with the man there would be no mistakes. He would be on top of things this time.
But when he saw what lay there waiting for him, he felt his heart leap into his throat and a wave of nausea caused him to double up, throwing a hand out to steady himself against the nearby wall. The body of a young woman discarded on the floor, lying across a rotting old mattress. Limbs twisted awkwardly, beautiful face scratched and bruised. Blood still pumping slowly out, soaking into the material. He reached out to place his fingers on her neck. She had no pulse, but her soft pale skin was warm. A recent kill, then.
The scanner had already told him this and in much more disturbing detail than necessary, but the Hunter had always felt there was no substitute for real touch, real feelings. He needed to remain in touch with reality at all costs. Looking at the broken body, his eyes filled with tears and his vision tunnelled until all he could see were shadows and death, dark winged daemons spiralling around her battered face. They had only just found each other and now she was gone. He sank to his knees.
They were all gone.
All he could think about was the look on the man's face when they had met for the first time on the train a couple of weeks ago. The sneer as the murderer had leapt backwards out of the car and rolled away into the bushes. That was the closest they had ever been, until now.
Balan. The Hunter felt the bile rise in his throat as he thought the name. Nari had come up with it. The demon of finesse and ruses. Also a prince of hell and this bastard certainly lived up to the description. They had learned his real name when the Hunter had downloaded his image off the glasses into Unicorn's systems, but it was too late to adjust their thinking by then. The name stayed.
The press had called him The Invisible Killer. This year's big thing, leaving behind a trail of bodies with no evidence, no DNA. Twelve bodies to be exact, twelve that they knew about, anyway. Fourteen now. The Hunter felt the pressure begin to build behind his eyes.
They were all dead now.
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