Forester sat with his back against the door of the massive freezer and watched as Regan lifted the knife in her hand and pointed it at Gareth. She looked like a demon that had dragged itself up from the depths of hell. 

'She doesn't know there's another--' Forester whispered. 

He saw a flash of movement in the corner of his eye as Dieter's sickle flew out of the shadows. There was a high pitched whistle as it lashed out towards Regan like a whip. Regan was already moving though. She threw herself to one side and rolled over a metal bench as the blade flew past. It caught the corner of the table and left a deep scour in the metal surface before the chain went taut and it flew back into the shadows. 

Regan kicked over a metal bench with a loud crash and jumped behind it. Forester could see her searching for the source of the attack in the corners of the room, where the gloom gathered like dust. 

For a few seconds, nothing moved. The room was silent, except for a muffled skittering, scratching noise that sounded like rats trapped in a wall cavity. 

'It looks like the music changed and left you behind, girly,' said Gareth. 'You're going to kill me? You play yourself up as something else, but there are worse things than you around here.' 

Another sickle flew out of the darkness trailing its chain. It looked like a metal bird as it sliced smoothly through the air. Regan ducked behind the metal bench, but as she did the sickle suddenly twisted in the air and changed direction. 

Forester watched it swoop towards Regan, and realised that it was flying towards her blind spot. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but it was too late. The sickle sliced through the air with terrifying speed and curved around the table where Regan was hiding. It hit her in the side and sent her sliding on her side across the tile floor into the middle of the room. 

'He snuffed her!' said the enforcer with the tattoo. 'That was fast.' 

Forester saw the chain go tight again, but the sickle didn't return. Instead, Regan slowly rolled over and started to rise. At first he thought she was wounded, but then he noticed the chain clenched in her fist. 

'She caught it?' he said under his breath. 

Regan pulled back tightly on the chain as she got to her feet. The sickle dangled uselessly beneath her fist as she glared into the shadows. 

Dieter dropped from the ceiling into a crouch, still connected to Regan by the chain of his weapon. 

'You are skilled to evade my attack even without being able to see it.' 

Dieter unfolded himself from the bottom up, as if he was being constructed in stages. He looked relaxed, like a sprinter limbering up for a run. He stood on the tips of his toes and grunted as he stretched his thin, wiry body up towards the ceiling. He clenched the chain of his weapon in one fist, pulling back against Regan. He held the rest of the chain looped in his other hand; dangling at the end was a second sickle. 

'Another enforcer?' said Regan. 

Dieter dropped out of his stretch and looked at her silently over his mask. Something seemed to pass between them that Forester couldn't understand. Regan shifted her grip slightly on the chain. 

'No,' she said. 'You're different from them. You're like me.' 

Dieter adjusted his stance, sinking into an insectoid crouch. He looked at Regan speculatively. 

'I once heard of a silencer who looked a little bit like you, a young girl with blue hair. They say she was a prodigy. A natural killer. It couldn't be you though. I hear she's dead.' 

'You're surprisingly well informed for a human lizard in a cheap carnival costume.' 

Forester looked from Regan to Dieter. The two of them looked calm as they faced off down the length of the room, but the air felt like it was crystallising around them. He couldn't have moved if he wanted to. He'd seen high level battles before, but this was something else. 

For a few seconds, neither of them moved. The chain creaked as both fighters refused to relinquish their grip. 

Suddenly, Dieter sprang. His second sickle flew out of his hands too fast for Forester to see as he leapt into the air. It struck sparks from the blade of Regan's kitchen knife as she dodged to the side, releasing the chain in her hand. She slid along the tiled floor as Dieter whirled both sickles on their chains. They sounded like giant wasps as they chased after Regan, ricochetting off the sides of tables and cracking the tiles behind her. 

'She can't do anything!' said Gareth. 'She's just running!' 

Forester watched Regan deflect another sickle. Regan stepped back to catch herself from falling as it hit her with tremendous force. The whirling chains gave Dieter a huge reach advantage. Although Regan had avoided being impaled so far, Forester couldn't see a way for her to get close enough to him to attack. He looked across at Gareth and the enforcer with the tattoo. Gareth was smiling now, not the toothy, flashy smile that Forester had seen before, but a nasty bloodthirsty sneer. 

Dieter sprang around Regan with powerful jumps, picking his angles of attack. He had her trapped in the centre of the room now. She was like the eye of a storm of whirling chains and sickles. He clung to the walls and scuttled across the ceiling, using every advantage he had to find a hole in Regan's defences. 

Forester felt a sick fear swirling in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't going to be much longer now. There was no way he could escape with Eva if Regan died, not with Dieter blocking the door. He looked at Regan as she rolled across the floor and swept aside another sickle as it sliced past at her neck. Her eyes were full of fire. There was no fear or desperation in her expression. It was almost as if Dieter's sickles were fluttering pieces of paper blowing around her. Even as she dodged and parried, her eyes remained locked on Dieter himself. 

Dieter used his weapon as a grappling hook and flew over Regan's head. She was forced to drop to the ground as a sickle almost decapitated her. 

'Perhaps your reputation was more grandiose than the reality,' Dieter said. 'This is what a natural killer can do?' 

Regan stayed silent. 

Dieter's attacks became faster. He was springing over her now, sending his sickles in looping, unpredictable arcs that changed direction at the last moment and appeared in unexpected places. Forester found his vision burring as he tried to follow their complicated patterns. Regan looked like a wolf being attacked by a swarm of bees as she twisted and ducked to avoid them. 

'Look at her,' said Gareth. 'She can barely stand up.' 

'How is she still alive though?' said the enforcer with the tattoo. 

Gareth looked at him, then looked back at Regan. 'Dieter's just toying with her.' 

'Is he?' 

Forester watched as Dieter scrambled across the roof and somersaulted away. His movements didn't seem as clean as they had been before. They were becoming wild and savage. His attacks seemed to be becoming increasingly desperate as Regan defended each strike. 

'There's nothing she can respond with,' said Gareth. 'It doesn't matter how long it takes.' 

As he turned back to the fight, Dieter sprang into the air. The instant his feet left the ground, he knew he'd made a mistake. He had jumped too low. Forester saw the look of desperate determination in his eyes melt away to be replaced by fear, but it was too late. 

Regan uncoiled like a spring. She gripped the knife with both hands as she brought it in an arc over her head. Dieter met the blade in mid-air going at tremendous speed. Blood exploded out of his body as the blade opened a deep furrow down through his chest and into his abdomen. His corpse hit the ground at Gareth's feet with a wet thud and splattered his immaculate shirt with blood. Its arm was thrust outwards as if it was reaching for something just beyond its grasp. 

Gareth looked down at the corpse with the expression of a drowning man watching his raft slip away. 

'But--'

His sentence trailed off into silence. 

Regan turned to look at him. She was wet with Dieter's blood. It dripped off her hair and ran in rivulets across her cheeks. 

'You might as well wipe that look off your face,' she said. 'None of you are leaving this place alive.'