Kira

    Kira tossed and turned uncomfortably in her bed, she thrashed wildly in her sleep trying to wrestle down the dark images of her dreams. Suddenly her eyes snapped open, her head staring at the bedroom door. The humid night was still and silent as her eyes watched the door, her breathing heavy and laboured from her nightmare.
    Then it came.
    The first of two shotgun blasts that blew the apartment door off it's hinges. Kira jerked as the sound reverberated around the narrow corridor outside her bedroom door.
    "Police! Nobody move!" The curt order heavily distorted by an electronic vocaliser. The order was followed by the heavy footfalls of seven or eight people storming the apartment.
    Kira's door was booted in violently and a bulky figure stood silhouetted in the frame, back-lit by the weak light in the hallway. The machine pistol in it hands swept the room methodically, eyes followed the barrel as the room swam in the ghostly green of image intensifiers.
    His voice crackled electronically as he caught sight of the billowing curtain "We've got a runner."
    "Acknowledged, locate and terminate." came the reply.

    The figure entered the bedroom cautiously, head sweeping carefully from side to side for signs of a trap pausing as a single gunshot rang out from the other side of the bedroom wall.
    "One down, looks like it's only the runner left." An electronic voice remarked coolly in his ear.
    "Acknowledged." He counted to seven before continuing to the window.
    Cautiously he checked the edges of the frame for any signs of the runner clinging to the wall, easing his machine pistol out of the window first he inched his head beyond the frame. His vision swam momentarily with large blinding greenish white flares from the city's street signs.
    A hand shot up without warning and clamped tightly around his neck causing him to choke as he snapped his attention downwards. Kira stood, seemingly oblivious to how precariously balanced she was, on two thin pipes that ran the width of the building below her window glaring up at him, a wicked grin on her face as her other hand thrust the machine pistol against wall shattering it like it was plastic. She slipped a small remote device out of the back pocket of her jeans and extended the aerial with her teeth.
    "Gotcha this time Abraham." She sneered as her fingernails pierced the kevlar neck guard effortlessly and sank easily into the soft flesh of his neck. Abraham managed a choking scream, blood ran down Kira's hand as he tried to gurgle for backup. "Oh yes," Kira whispered cruelly "gather them all together for me Abraham. Just like you made me do for you, all in one place makes it easier for the kill."
    She leant back, half dragging Abraham through the window, flesh and sinew tearing as she did, her nails biting deep into him.
    "Later Michaelite," She blew a kiss up to Abraham "give my regards to the Creator when you see him." So saying Kira flung herself off the pipes, her fist flexing severing his vocal cords with childish ease as she fell.
    Abraham's finger spasmed against the trigger of the shattered machine pistol, it chattered softly on the night air sending a stream of hot lead high over the receding figure as she fell through the darkness.

    Her thumb gently pressed the blinking red light on the remote, for a moment nothing happened then, without warning, the night sky erupted in a ball of red, orange and yellow as a series of explosives detonated throughout the apartment.
    Abraham's colleagues stumbled blindly through the narrow rooms and corridor as the first bomb exploded, those not quick enough to escape were perforated as slivers of metal shredded their armour. The officers thrashed and writhed amid the wreckage as the remainder of the police were cut down by more shrapnel bombs in the corridor.
    Kira watched with cold dispassionate eyes as the first blast took out the corner of her apartment in a greasy fireball, a smile tickled her mouth as a single burning golden feather tumbled down toward her.

    Wrapping her hand around the railing of the building's fire escape as she fell, Kira stopped herself with a sharp sudden jerk. The whole fire escape groaned in complaint as she flipped herself up onto it fluidly. Letting go of the crumpled section of railing she had been holding, Kira reached out and took hold of the charred feather.
    Turning it over in her fingers delicately she cast her eyes downward, gazing somewhere far beneath the filthy tarmac of the alleyway below.
    "Rest in peace Pitor." she whispered as she allowed herself a moment to relax.

    Turning and making her way swiftly down the fire escape to the street as the wailing of sirens approached, Kira rounded the corner of the building and disappeared into the dark underbelly of the city.

*    *    *