With a creak, the iron trapdoor opened upwards, and the rain began to pelt its way down into the building. Holding onto the ladder, Rishid dropped his head forwards, letting the cooling water strike his head and run down, night air flooding his lungs after the stifling heat of the maintenance shaft. Rung by rung he pulled himself up until he was off the ladder, stepping out onto the rooftop, feeling like he was close enough to reach out and touch the thunderclouds overhead.
The rooftop was flat and bare but for a single antenna and a couple of vents, doing their best to pump out the miasma of the building into the summer air. It must have been near enough midnight, the moon cutting its way through the clouds, almost as if it were going out of its way to light Rishid's path. He marched to the edge of the building, boots crunching the few pieces of broken tiling. No-one had been up here in a very long time, the wear, tear and bird excrement a sign of urban neglect.
The vantage point was perfect, a slight rise, a lip at the edge of the roof between two vents. From there he could look out across the street at the block opposite, down into every last window until it spun into a dizzying blur far below. How many floors had he clambered up on that ladder to reach here? Forty? Fifty? He wiped a sheen of storm-birthed water from his eyes and set to work.
Dropping the case from his shoulder to the roof, he allowed himself a quiet sigh of relief. The ache in his arm would be with him for the next night or two. If only he could have had some lighter equipment.
If only I could have had a few less rungs to climb, he thought to himself. He knew his place wasn't to complain about his work. His place was to do it, and do it as silently and efficiently as possible. No other result was acceptable. If he was going to have any success with his master's recovery then he had to remove any and all obstacles.
A lightning bolt split the sky as he knelt and opened the case, extracting his binoculars and dropping the strap over his shoulders.
Step one. Locate the target.
He turned to the block opposite, lifting the equipment to his eyes as the thunder rumbled in the wake of the flash. A world of greens and blacks revealed itself to him, the night-vision giving him a clear view of the buildings ahead, at every last secret it could reveal to him. For the most part, the curtains were drawn on every room, with a few exceptions shining out like beacons. Rishid glanced from one to the next, gaze travelling calm and smooth with mechanical care.
Empty.
Empty.
An elderly couple.
Empty.
Two young women arguing.
Empty.
Ah. There he was. Rishid's eyes fell on the target, in a room almost directly on his level, maybe a foot or two lower. The young man was sitting in an armchair, angled ever so slightly away from the window, watching a television in the far corner if the light displays were anything to go by. He wore a towel wrapped around his hips and was slumped with his head resting in his palm. Rishid might have thought he were asleep if it hadn't been for the gently, idle tapping of the fingers on the target's free hand against the arm of the chair.
Rishid let out a long breath, he wasn't sure how long he'd been holding it for, but the steam rose up from his lips as he let the binoculars fall.
Step two. Ready your equipment.
Rishid returned to the case, placing the binoculars back into their compartment before drawing back the zip on the rest of it. Several components in metal and thick plastic, each nestled into their own custom-fitted foam nook. He took each one out in turn, assembling them with practiced ease, sliding and twisting and locking until it started to take shape in his hands. A weapon built for silence and stopping-power. Long and matte black with a scope attached to the top. He had once thought to include a laser sight to ensure there would be no mistakes, but the idea of anything giving him away was beyond the acceptable parameters of his mission. With the scope, his instincts and his reasoning, this rifle would put an end to anything he saw fit to fire at.
Rishid lay down on the roof, ignoring the sensation of the rainwater seeping into his clothing, enveloping the front of his body with a cold sting. He propped the bipod of the rifle against the lip of the roof and put his eye to the scope.
Step three. Take aim.
Rishid adjusted the sight, zooming in deep into the target's room. Precision was the key. It was the mantra he repeated as he drew his aim across the floor, up the arm of the chair, over the target's slender hand.
Another bolt of lightning was followed almost immediately by its booming accompaniment. Rishid drew the rifle slowly to the right by fractions of millimetres. Over the man's arm, shoulder, past the rise of his chest with the faintest hint of rib and collarbone, until his sights were centred firmly in the middle of the sternum. From this range, with this weapon, at this point of impact, the young man would be dead before he even realised he was under attack. His heart would be torn apart in an instant, a thin black hole in the centre of his chest and a smoking crater in his back, head dropping forwards.
Step four. Fire.
It would be a quick death. A merciful death. The sort of death that Rishid knew his master would never bestow upon his enemy, especially if… If his darker ideals took over. Rishid tried not to think about it. That was why he was here after all, to put an end to the fear of the festering plague wrapped up in Malik's brain. The ravenous, blood-parched monster that stalked up and down the cage of the boy's soul. With no icon of vengeance, Malik would have no need for such a beast. So Rishid thought. So Rishid hoped.
It wasn't fair. This enemy, this so-called Pharaoh, he was perhaps no older than the master, barely even a man. Just as with the Ishtar family, his only crime was to have been born into the wrong line of genes. Tradition had taken away everything from them all, and left only blood-rivalries for the sake of millennia-old rules.
Rishid had done his research on this Pharaoh. He knew next to nothing, remembered nothing. He was a blank slate, innocent, almost uninvolved. Rishid knew something of amnesia, of the way trauma could tear memories from the mind and obfuscate them, turn them into nightmares. He was disgusted for his part in all this. Just as he helped Malik repress the events of his past, he had tasked himself with the mission of making sure the Pharaoh never got his own memories back. With the pull of a trigger, he would rob someone of a future and a past.
But it had to be done. If there was a chance this could save his master, and it could be done as mercifully as possible, then it was best to take the shot and be done with it. He told himself that again and again while lining up the shot with the young man's heart.
If it's the right thing to do, he asked himself, then why can't you look that boy in the eye?
Take one last look at his face before you pull the trigger.
You owe him that much.
Rishid let out a ragged breath, hands clenched achingly tight around the rifle. He raised the weapon, his scope climbing the Pharaoh's sternum, collar, slender neck, the curve of his jaw. He held his breath as he pulled up once more, to take in the targets face.
To take in those deep, rich eyes.
Eyes that were turned directly towards him.
The target was gazing out over the distance between them and boring a hole down his scope, looking right into him.
The target smiled. The target winked.