Mary stood on the ledge on a rooftop and found herself in total silence as she looked at the asphalt ground through her mask. It seemed so distant. It made her feel like it was only within her arm's reach but she felt like her body would break if she ever tried to jump down. She shivered, she didn't know how but it seemed as though her bones would break if she tried to do so.
Mary kept her eyes glued to the floor that she never found the time to look at her surroundings. The expanse of old apartment buildings around her faded out of her view. It also prevented her to appreciate the sea of overgrown trees that stood tall as the countless rusting lamp posts that filled the streets. She neither notices the cold wind that made her hair sway, nor the pale night sky that stretched above her as well.
Mary swallowed her saliva and jumped back from the ledge as if she got awakened from a strange dream. Her heart skipped a beat and found herself taking a long breath as she shook her head. She felt a sense of warmth in her stomach at that moment and it urged her to shove her hand into a pocket hoisted at her side. Tilting her head as she pursed her lips, she took a radio from that pocket and made a call. "This is Mary. I'm a bit early for my report… I want to say that everything looks normal but… can I know… can I know what's happening?"
The voice behind the radio groaned. It came from a man who surrounded himself in darkness inside a padded room as he faced a mic and two computer monitors. "Again?"
"Yes, p-please…" Mary bit her lip. "I'm ready to help… in… in any way that I could, sir."
"Don't worry about it," he replied with a heavy sigh, which was then followed by the sound of the man typing on a keyboard and clicking on a mouse. "I guess it makes the guards chatty, especially when we're keeping the security line clear... Being in unfamiliar territory on the opposite side of our actual targets but still with a weird amount of encounters doesn't help either. By the way… Mary, I could see your name here, that's why I know you… can I call you Mary?"
"Sure…" Mary took a few steps towards the ledge once more and scratched her face while it drew up a sarcastic smile. "I don't even know if I could say no to our field commander, but thanks for asking."
The man chuckled. "Oh yeah, I'm like that now… but no worries, I'm just being polite, also looking for a potential hook—"
"Nope—"
"—Yes, nevermind!" The man behind the phone let out an awkward laugh. He looked at the computer screen in front of him that showed the top-down view of the space where Mary was. Right next to it was a map of a province that had a huge thin white circle drawn in the middle of it. "But going back, I do have a few other sectors in control. I don't know if this would help or put your heart at ease, but we just had a confrontation a few hours ago about four blocks from where you were."
"Why didn't you…" Mary shouted back but she cut her words midway. She ended up holding her breath and swallowing her saliva. "Please, tell me what happened."
"They got wiped out," the man behind the phone sighed.
"Then why didn't you call out to us?!" Mary, still with the radio hovering in front of her mouth, walked towards the ledge and looked around in panic. "We could've been there—"
"Whoa, hold on there, tiger," he replied with a nervous chuckle. "We've read the plans just like you, and we knew what to do… Do you want to compromise this mission too, do you have someone that you needed to save there? If so, then, by all means, jump off of that building and walk in there by yourself. Remember the part where we had to keep the security line as thin as possible?"
"Yeah…" Mary kept her face straight as she clenched her fist.
"That's what I thought… Everyone knew what happened," the man continued but then, his confident tone fell back. He took a deep breath through his nose after a second of silence and added, "I-I'm sorry too, I shouldn't have said that. I guess I'm a little shaken too."
Mary heaved a sigh as she tried to shrug off the sudden feeling of her getting stabbed in the chest. "Do… Don't worry about it."
"But yeah, look, Mary… can I call you Mary?"
"I told you… it's fine," Mary replied as she tightened her jaws into a wry smile. "You can call me Mary, sir."
"Right… right…" The man let out a hearty laugh and tapped a few keys on his keyboard. "But yeah, don't worry about it. We haven't touched the sentries but we're following the usual protocol. We just sent three reapers there to investigate, if you know what I mean."
Mary raised her brow with a slight grin. "Then, what happened next?"
"Oh, they were all wiped out too…" The man's voice came trembling as though it was passing through a nervous smirk.
"What?" Mary shouted.
"Yep, they all died and one of their last words was…" The man changed his pitch into a high note and continued, "Fuck, this guy is so fast!"
"Oh…" Mary soon took notice of the trees with their leaves swaying along with the wind.
"That's what was recorded. One of the three died two seconds after they entered that block, and the vital signs of the other two went offline a minute later with a three-second interval. So yeah, that guy must be so fucking fast," the man on the phone chuckled and paused to clear his throat. "And oh, before you panic, yes, I followed the protocol and sent a request to use the Owl so we could deploy a decent team to kill that speedy boy. It got held up! It turns out that there are two other major movements around your sector and Miss Rachel is still up with the consultations on what to do. We were told to hold back and observe for now because she got the Choir on the phone."
"I see, thank you then…" Mary smiled. "For being so nice too."
"But about the hook—"
"No." Mary sighed.
"Fine… could've been a lot nicer and told me that we should be friends first but no. Anyways… I should probably consider this as your report telling me that nothing is happening so we should be good. The others should be calling in right now and—" The man behind the phone paused. He widened his eyes at the moment he saw the vital signs of the sentries around Mary disappear from the map. "Wait, what the fuck!?"
"What?" Mary tightened her grip on the radio and looked around.
"Wait wait wait wait wait… no no no no no nooo…" He continued as he sent his fingers towards his keyboard like a storm. "Girl," he added before taking a deep breath. "Girl, get out of there now!"
Mary raised her brows as her eyes wandered at her surroundings. "What, why?!"
"The others just disappeared from the map and—"
"Too late," Mary said through her greeting teeth as she looked at the figure that presented itself in front of her.
"First time talking to a girl in a long while and this happened..." The man clicked his tongue and slammed his fist into the table. "Fuck!"
"Please, sir!" Mary shouted, stepping back as she tried to fish for her knife's handle behind her.
"Fine, fine… tell me, what do you see!" The man groaned in panic and looked into the screen. "I don't know if you're gonna live but fuck, tell me who that fucker is!"
Mary took a deep breath and twisted her lips into a smile. She tilted her head and stepped back towards the roof's ledge. There, she furrowed her brows behind her mask as she looked at the violet knight casting its shadow over her. She wrapped her gloved hand over the hilt of her knife in silence. It took her all to prevent herself from doing anything else, the knight in front of her made her legs tremble and heart burn with anger. "It's that bitch killing us off one by one, maybe that speedy boy… probably."
"Oh, goddammit! Talk to it or something, I'll send some backup now!" The man behind the phone shouted.
"I was actually looking forward to increasing my killing streak, but I guess I won't," the knight said. Although metallic, it had the voice of a woman.
The knight didn't appear to carry any other weapon except for a single one-handed sword that had a blade as long as her arms, a crossguard that seemed shorter than normal, and a circular pommel that prevented it from sliding down from her hand. It's just that this knight in particular, compared to the last one she studied, had a helm that carried the head of a lion with its metallic mane resting at the back of her head and with its fangs neatly embedded right above her helm's eyeholes. The rest of her armor was fitted to her body, which upon further inspection, defined her frame that looked a bit smaller and thinner than what Mary had expected.
"I guess I could not move freely from here, bummer," the knight spoke once more, taking a step forward as she placed her blade over her shoulder. "But no matter, you look like you know what you're doing, care to entertain me for a little bit? You can be my second appetizer after all that fodder."
Mary, as a response, looked beyond her. She saw that some of the roofs from afar had little to no ledges and if it had, they had a hole bore through their thin fences. It seemed like it got rammed by a small vehicle. It made Mary step back towards the wall that held her body from falling and there, she confirmed that it was made from a thick solid concrete. "Great, we'll follow the protocol, then, but I do want to propose a plan…"
"What, what is it?" The man behind the phone shouted in panic.
"I'll drag the battle out with a game of tag and wait for backup as you said but in turn, I would like to request you to kill every single one of this knight's friends," Mary declared without taking her eyes off of her enemy.
"Okay, sure," the man replied as he pressed a few buttons on his keyboard. "As long as you don't die."
"Nice, I'll call you back, sir." Mary turned the radio off and shoved it back in her pocket. At that moment, a small smile crept up behind her mask as she thought of some ways on how she could dismantle that knight herself.