Light poured out through the pane of glass fixed to the concrete ground before glancing off the man’s visor which had been peering through them for nearly an hour over the heavily-armed men standing guard by the four corners of the empty white room beneath him. After much strategizing, the man snapped a finger out, triggering a long pointed talon to protrude from the fingertip. He then began tracing out with the talon in question a faint circle on the glass cautiously enough to let out a feeble hiss. The disc of glass could have slid down from its place and hit ground zero, which probably might have alerted the guards below to the man’s whereabouts, had it not been for him intercepting the disc of glass in midair in time between the fingers. Slowly, the man pulled it out and unfastened a small pouch fixed to his belt with another hand, from which he withdrew a hand grenade the size of an egg. With the triggering pin pulled, he threw the grenade through th hole into the room, and it was moments such as this that he would scream ‘Fire in the hole!’, except he didn’t. Not in his current state. 

The explosion shook the entire building and at the same time, triggered a din of alarms in it. The man rose to his feet, took a deep breath from the inside of his helmet and took a plunge through the empty frame that had held a glass pane moments ago. This is for you, Linda, the man thought, as he fell for what seemed like an eternity, before executing a somersault in midair to land on both feet. Even through the smoke, the man could still see the four figures lying on the ground, unconscious. The four separate doors around him had been blasted off their hinges and he knew he had to act fast, for it would only be a matter of time before the other sentinels began tracking him down from the source of the explosion. He took the door to his right, knowing from the layout of the building that the route would lead him to where he would find what he had been looking for.  

The man sprinted through the corridor as fast as both legs could carry him, leaping off the wall at intervals every time a sharp curve came up to him too soon. Moments passed, with the chorus of alarms drowning out the guards shouting after him from both sides. The mercenary stood his ground and, with the double blades pulled out from their scabbards, a perfect ‘X’ behind him, hacked and skewered anyone with a gun in a fluid, graceful motion. The final guard came to him with a machine pistol and let out a fusillade of bullets at him. The man took a deep breath before swinging the double blades around, the bullets ricocheting off metal in a symphony of chinks, at least, till he brought himself close enough to slice the pistol’s barrel in two, before bringing a blade up, decapitating the man’s head clean off the neck, from where blood splattered out over the clean white ground.