The street was quiet; the eerie calm of mid-evening having settled in. Winters were always harsh in Orion City, where the frigid temperatures can last for months at a time. The snow was falling at a steady pace. It wasn’t hard enough to obscure vision, but enough to cause an annoyance. Further down the street, a lone streetlight cast a warm glow. The isolated lamp cast an air of romance. As if one would expect a dashing, handsome young man and a beautiful starlet to pause underneath it, kissing in the twilight.

A man stumbled out of the alley sliding on the slippery pavement. He hiccupped before a drunken giggle escaped from his lips. In the shadows, another man sat silently on a rooftop watching his easy mark.

The drunk slipped again, falling face first into a snowbank. The man in the shadows connected a rather impressive eyepiece to the dermal implant next to his right eye, activated it, his vision flooded with an abundance of information. At a single glance, the scanner was able to identify the height, weight, blood pressure, and blood alcohol content of the man who was now picking himself up out of the snow. With how intoxicated he was, the alcohol might very well do the job for him.

With the twitch of his eyelid, the eyepiece calculated the distance between the drunk and himself. Eight meters. The drunk had eight meters of life left, and had no idea. He shuffled closer. Seven and one-third meters. He slipped, sliding forward a bit. Five and a half meters. Four meters.

Blade drawn, he loosened his cloak slightly, and sat on his haunches, ready to strike like a viper in the trees. He could have ended this already. A small flick of the wrist, and a dart would have completed his task, without him ever having to leave his perch in the darkness. The neurotoxin in the dart would leave him dead before his nerves registered the feeling of the needle against his skin. If he didn’t care about noise, he could’ve thrown a small explosive, finishing his contract with a bang and a spray of red. No, those methods were beneath him, there was no honor in it. He’d been instructed in the old ways, and to him, anything else was just laziness.

A small vibration in the eyepiece indicated that the man was in position. The assassin knew that it was time to strike.

Leaping from his vantage point, he held his blade in a position to end the man’s life. Time seemed to stand still, as if he were hanging in the air, defying gravity. Reality came crashing back to him as a blur crashed into him on his left side.

Pain exploded in his ribs, and he was vaguely aware of a faint cry from the drunk. He was on his feet in a flash, ready to defend himself. Mentally he was kicking himself. He should have seen the attack coming. He’d grown complacent, not even for an instant considering the possibility of a bodyguard.

“Identify yourself,” a mechanically assisted voice demanded. The voice belonged to the cyborg that had prevented the assassin from completing his task.

A metal piece had been grafted to its face, with more permanence than the eyepiece the assassin wore. Its right arm was completely mechanical, dull gray and out of proportion with its flesh and blood left arm. Despite its relative smaller size, the assassin knew that the metal arm was far more dangerous.

The assassin remained silent, moving to stay toward the cyborg’s left side. He held the short sword in his right hand, in a reverse grip with the blade along his arm. He used this form to imitate a defensive posture, but he was still a very dangerous adversary. Almost imperceptibly the assassin turned his wrist, lining up the dart mechanism on his forearm. Because the enemy’s strength was enhanced, the assassin could consider the poison as an option. He fired the dart.

The cyborg batted the projectile away with barely a second thought. The dart made a tiny dull sound as it ricocheted off of the metal arm and buried itself in the snow. The assassin swung the blade around in a decapitating maneuver, but the cyborg had anticipated the attack. Its metal arm caught the assassin in the ribs, staggering him backward. He quickly shrugged off the blow, forcing the pain he felt to the back of his mind. Pain was a barricade, the enemy of strength. Without thought he slipped into the old teachings of his youth.

“I repeat, identify yourself,” the cyborg didn’t sound angry, its voice flat and even. The assassin idly wondered just how much of the creature was augmented. He pressed another button on his wrist mechanism and there was a burst of static designed to confuse electronics. It flinched, and then for the first time looked angry.

With blinding speed, the cyborg lashed out at the assassin. Anticipating the attack, the assassin pivoted and threw a lightning quick sideways kick, using the momentum to knock the enemy to the other side of the street. In one fluid motion, it leaped back to its feet and attacked again, this time careful to maintain its balance. It was trying to overwhelm the assassin with the speed of its strikes. The assassin was too skilled to be overtaken in such a manner. Augmentations and enhancement were not a match for his skill and experience.

The assassin pulled a small, gray sphere, roughly the size of an eyeball, from a pouch on his belt. In a single graceful motion, he blocked an attack with his blade, reached up to switch off the eyepiece, and threw the sphere at the ground.

The sphere exploded in a flash of light so bright that for a moment it blinded the cyborg. Realizing the danger it was in, it threw itself backward, trying to gain a precious moment to recover.

The assassin swung his blade around, connecting with the side of the metal arm and cutting a large fissure, sending sparks flying out of the artificial wound.

“That is my identification,” the assassin said, callously.

The cyborg’s arm was still functional, but it was obviously damaged. It was twitching slightly in time with the sparks, vaguely reminding the assassin of the way blood pulses out in time with the heartbeat.

The assassin closed the distance between them in two steps. He smashed the lens in the cyborg’s facial implant with the handle of his sword.

The cyborg’s sensors now compromised; the fight was on much more even ground. It jabbed at the assassin with its damaged arm. Then when he blocked the punch, it struck the assassin square in the jaw with enough force to fell a weaker man.

The assassin stepped back, and removed another small, gray sphere from his pouch. The cyborg recognized the object, and turned off its facial implant in preparation of the blinding light.

The assassin squeezed it slightly, and tossed the sphere toward the cyborg. Less than a foot away from its head, the sphere exploded, ending the fight and the cyborg’s life in an instant.

The assassin drew himself up to his full height, not letting his body feel the aches of battle. He turned, following the trail through the snow that the drunk made trying to crawl to safety. He caught up to the man near the end of the street, desperately trying to hide under a steel bench.

Rudely yanking him to his feet by the collar of his coat, the assassin stared into the drunk’s eyes.

“Who are you?” the drunk exclaimed, terror written across his features. “You killed my bodyguard! They told me he was the best!”

“My name is Sayïf al Ra’id, and your life ends as it was lived. Without grace, compassion, or pity.”

Next Chapter: Chapter One