Sanguinary

When they arrived, they couldn’t see inside to tell whether the man inside had left or had remained inside. The Agent peered further into the darkness, but saw nothing. The front wall of the cell was a Perspex screen, but a mattress covered it. The light had presumably been smashed, so the only way to determine what was inside was for him to go inside.

Just as he entered the cell, the man pounced. Quickly, without think, The Agent crouched and the inmate sailed over his head and smashed into the wall. As the man dizzily got to his feet, The Agent could see his face for the first time as his eyes rapidly adjusted to the darkness. The face was the same as the one he had seen in the inch-thick file filled with bloodshed. When the inmate stood up, The Agent brought his arm around his neck and squeezed as hard as he could. The inmate’s eyes bulged out as he struggled to break free. With his free hand, The Agent reached round to his pocket and brought out the glass shard. He held it against the man’s neck, and then pushed it in. The inmate pushed him away as blood poured from the wound. The Agent got to his feet and rushed out of the cell. Briefly blinded by the sudden brightness, he stood still, waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the light. He then took his gun from his holster, and-keeping it trained on the open cell door-reached round for another out of his backpack. This man was clearly homicidal and psychotic, so he didn’t want to take any chances. The man stumbled out of the darkness, his right side drenched in blood. He stood stock still, seeming to draw on all his resources of strength, then jumped at The Agent.

The Agent fell to the floor, already ready for such an attack. When the inmate was almost on top of him-barely three feet above him-he pointed his guns at the man’s chest and kept firing until the clip was empty, suspending the maniac momentarily in the air. When The Agent finished shooting, the man fell to the floor with a thud.

The nurse helped him to his feet and wiped the blood from his face. Now there was no turning back. Up until this point, he had been able to make choices. He could have chosen not to go into the asylum, to save the nurse, to shoot the man he had been paid to see set free. He didn’t have to, but he had decided to. Now, however, there were no options available to him. His employer was going to be royally pissed off, and with good reason. He would almost certainly hire someone to have him killed. Why then had he done it? Why had he killed the inmate in 47B? Maybe he was developing a conscience.