Harlequin

Jeff opened the door to the staircase and peered down. The air conditioner hummed quietly in the stairwell, but nothing else was audible, except for a thumping noise from very far away. He froze for a moment, then realized that it was almost certainly not the Harlequin coming up the stairs for him. Propping the door open with a paperweight from the waiting room table, he tiptoed down the stairs towards the noise, clutching the knife in one hand, the note and the phone stuffed into his back pocket.



"H--hello?" he ventured. "Anyone there?"



"Hey! Hey!" A distant shout echoed up to him. A female voice.



His target.



"Hey, wait there, I\'m going to come downstairs!"



"No, you wait, I\'m going to the roof!"



The roof. That certainly presented an easy out for his goal.



"Okay!" He sat down against the door and waited for the footsteps to draw nearer.



Eventually, he saw her, coming up the stairs, a glint of blonde hair, dressed in a torn, blood-spattered sweatshirt, holding a flashlight. He gave her a flashlight? God dammit, I want a fucking flashlight! "Hi. I\'m Meagan."



"Jeff." She extended her hand; he carefully manipulated his hands to put away the knife and return the handshake. "So, uh, I\'m trying to figure out why you want to get to the roof."



"I\'m supposed to get out of the facility to win my game. I figured, you know, I can find the roof, even if I can\'t find the exit. Right?"



"Right," he murmured. "Cool, I didn\'t think of that."



"Is that your goal, too?"



"Yeah." He smiled. "We\'ll go together, we\'ll get out. Hell, maybe we\'ll have a coffee together later, huh?"



"I--maybe." She smiled back at him. "Let\'s go."



In silence, they climbed the stairs together, towards the roof, Meagan\'s flashlight cutting a path through the blackened staircase. He noticed that there was a slight smile on her face still, as if she genuinely thought the prospect of having coffee with him would be a nice idea.



Good. She liked him. This would be easy.



The knife burned a hole in the back of his pocket. This won\'t be easy.



Minutes dragged by like hours as they climbed flight after flight of stairs together; Jeff\'s heart beat like a triphammer. He wasn\'t used to this sort of exertion, or this sort of stress. No one was. He was taking a walk with a woman he had to kill. Offering her coffee. His mouth felt dry and cottony, his lips chapped. As the stairs wound upwards through the facility, he began to feel dizzy, and was only jolted from his absent-minded reverie by Meagan\'s relieved announcement: "Finally!"



She pushed open the door and stepped onto the rooftop, sighing with relief as she breathed in the fresh air, the scent of the city after a cooling rain, and reached into her pocket for the phone.



"Harlequin? Harlequin, we made it, now tell me where the lobby is and let us out of here!" There was a pause, a long one. "Yes, we. Jeff is with me. He--" Jeff seized her in a headlock and put the knife to her throat; she dropped the phone in shock, the voice on the other end ignorant of anything but the clatter of the handset on concrete.



"I don\'t want to do this, Meagan, but he says I have to, or I\'ll die--"



"You think--I care--" she gasped around his arm.



He ignored it and took a deep breath, closed his eyes, prepared to plunge the knife into her throat, and shouted in horror as she ripped the knife from his hand and stabbed it into his throat instead.



It took a minute for the pain to hit him, and before he knew what was happening, he ripped the knife from his throat and lumbered forward to stab her chest, but missed, slicing a huge chunk out of her arm. Blood poured from the limb and mixed with the acid rain forming puddles on the concrete roof, just as the threatening skies gathered themselves once more and poured down on the two figures on the roof stumbled back and forth, leaving bloody footprints in the rain, melting away as quickly as they had come.



Meagan faded back, leaning against a chimney for support; the blood loss had begun to take its toll, and her arm screamed in pain. Her vision began to grey out as Jeff inched forwards towards her, but she breathed a sigh of relief when he collapsed before her, bleeding into the puddles. She sank to the wet ground, trembling, and slowly pulled the blue phone from her pocket.



Without waiting for his answer, she gasped into the phone, "Very clever, asshole. I killed him instead. How do you like that?" She heard him take a breath to respond, but overruled his attempt. "I\'m going to bleed to death. I need help. I need a doctor." She hung up the phone and let it slide to the ground.



Harlequin held the phone in his hand for a moment before setting it down and picking up his mask and a pistol, which he shoved into his waistband.



"I need a doctor."



It had been a very, very long time since he had heard those words.