Free Silence In Numbers: File One by Jake Taylor Page A

target. She had violet hair, strong lavender eyes and a skintight black military combat suit, which to him meant she was quite out of place in this fight between criminals. He aimed the gun but she moved faster, her pistol shooting it out of his grip. He flung his remaining knife and charged as he drew another.
    She sidestepped and slapped the thrown knife away with the flat of her free hand, bringing up her pistol to block his stab attempt. In the next few seconds their limbs were a blur as she avoided stabs, he avoided shots and they both tried to get the upper hand, punches, kicks and grapples being countered. They wouldn’t know who’d come out on top, though, as the other criminals in the room had recovered and both opened fire. Rufus and the woman instantly dropped below the table, but noticed as Rufus’ target took off out of the room.
    The woman vaulted over the table, gunning down two guards and chasing the man into the hallway. Rufus flipped the table, kicking it into the remaining guards, picking up another gun and following. He fired on both people in the hallway; the woman rolled into a side door, the man wasn’t that lucky. His legs were caught by a few bullets and he went down heavily with a loud cry. Rufus tossed the empty gun aside and readied his knife for the kill but the woman came out firing to stop him. Fortunately for him, he managed to avoid both shots, and that must have been the last in the weapon since she flipped it around in her hand and came at him with melee strikes once more.
    Rufus did his best, and after several hard strikes it seemed he was the stronger, but she was faster. He stabbed at her stomach and she jerked to the side, catching his wrist. She ejected the magazine from her pistol and, as it fell to the floor, kicked it back up into his face, which only stunned him for a second, but in that second she jammed the empty pistol on top of the knife so the blade went inside the magazine chamber, twisted hard and ripped the knife out of his grip, struck him hard in the stomach with the hilt and kneed him in the chin sending him to the ground.
    She dropped her knee into his stomach and pulled the knife from the gun, holding it to his neck and speaking in an even voice touched by a hint of breathlessness. “Don’t move. I need him alive, but not you.”
    Rufus sighed, following her directions as he heard someone else coming from further down the hall, probably more of her unit. “I can tell when I’m beaten.”
    “You’re still planning a way out of this.” He was surprised at her intuition, and more so when she knocked off his shades, looking into his eyes. “What’s a professional like you doing with these thugs?”
    Rufus smiled. “I was trying to kill them, obviously.”
    “Not the answer I was looking for.”
    He shrugged. “This is what I’m talented at, and what I enjoy.”
    After watching him for a long moment, the woman nodded and stood up, sliding her pistol into her belt. “We could put your talent to a much better use. If nothing else it’s a free out.”
    Rufus still remembered the swirl of thoughts in his mind as he watched his knife thud into the ground next to his head followed by her last three words. “Think about it.”
     
    The beeping reminding him to check in brought Rufus from his ruminations. He sent his in, looking back at the street below. It’d turned out to be a good choice, he couldn’t deny that.
     
    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
     
    Reno casually guided his helicopter around the Kitsuine Tower. He was probably one of the only pilots who casually flew a multi-million dollar war machine around between skyscrapers, not to mention thought of it as his. Then again he might be the only one with the talent to do so.
    With non-action flight like this, he was always able to sort of half-focus on it, knowing he wouldn’t make a mistake. He glanced back at Katsumi but she seemed distracted herself, paying him no attention, her eyes raking the ground below. He felt for