NINE MINUTES
Crash.
A typhoon of rubble rips around Connor with every step he runs. With each thud of his exposed shins, he tastes the bubble of blood in his mouth. The flavour of the battle is bitter; pointless; vain, like this chase.
Yet Flood insists on running. His sprint is more of a scramble, limbs flailing through the rubble. One minute of running and still he has not stood still enough for Connor to shoot.
The Assassin uses this to his advantage. Now almost on the other side of the fort, he waits to put down this animal somewhere quieter. Somewhere away from the batter of bricks and the shatter of bones.
Somewhere Connor can hear his confession, without worry of being crushed to death.
So many questions. So many unanswered pleas as he tears through the strait of grass in an alley; a vein of the fort. Why is the Aquila firing on its own men and women?
Crash.
From above, a musket spits a bullet at an Assassin on a wall; her body falls for several seconds and she lands (dead) at Connor's feet. He has no choice but to step over the sorry sight. He will mourn the dead later.
Thomas Flood's tarred lungs cannot take much more of this. The hem of his coat becomes loose round his bloodstained boots. His pace slows, and the gap diminishes between coward and conqueror.
The time is now.
Connor stops for a moment, catches his breath and raises his mother's pistol. He must aim this carefully, even with adrenaline dizzying his vision. A little higher...finger around the trigger...
He shoots. And Flood falls forth with a bleeding back.