Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States
Assassin Name: Adrian Stroud
AKA: Patch

Adrian took one last look at his car, a 2018 Audi A7, black, plate-swapped, leather-muffled. It looked like a lawyer’s car until you popped the trunk. His gaze climbed to the parking sign, a metal rectangle of bureaucratic menace, stacked with symbols and time limits that read like an escape room puzzle.

After a brief calculation, he realized he’d parked in a three-hour zone. He shrugged. That should be enough. After all, it was the only open space he’d found in the Loop after a slow reconnoiter of the blocks around LaSalle Tower.

He fed the meter with exact change and went to the trunk to pull out his gear. Bending slightly, he noticed the chalk mark on the curb, fresh, still white, and the meter maid across the street. She lingered like a sniper with a ticket pad. Adrian sighed, confident he’d finish before she came back around.

He hauled the rifle case, blending into the lunch rush like a consultant running late. He moved briskly, eyes forward, counting intersections. The walk stretched on, eight blocks of wind tunnels and briefcases, and his mind started to calculate the real cost: the time it would take to get from his car to the kill point and back, and how much that shaved off his three-hour window.

Adrian was in his late thirties, lean as a wireframe, with the tired, deliberate gait of someone who measured his steps to satisfy a health app. His face was a practical thing, close-cropped dark hair, a thin scar bisecting his left eyebrow, a map of a near miss, and eyes that scanned angles the way others scanned a buffet. He dressed in nondescript dark tailoring that said “consultant” at a glance and “problem” upon closer inspection.

There was a certain upside to parking far from the scene of the crime. It would be harder to match his car to a list of suspicious vehicles. If things went sideways, distance meant delay, and delay meant survival.

He moved between buildings with that same measured gait. The Loop pulsed around him, glass walls, steel bones, honking horns, and the hum of people chasing currency. He wondered what they all wanted. What pressure they carried. Was it their last day? Someone’s, at least. His target’s, if all went according to plan.

Adrian reached the shabby rooftop opposite Renwick’s office. The access door creaked open into a graveyard of discarded corporate furniture, ergonomic chairs wrapped in cloudy plastic, filing cabinets waiting for removal, and metal stands that once held laptops. He stepped around them carefully. He’d been here yesterday, and the day before, when he’d chosen this location. Every inch was already memorized. 

• • •

Adrian positioned himself, making sure he was hidden from at least two directions, then began setting up his gear. An Accuracy International AXMC in .308, he liked this rifle because it was easy to assemble and adjust. A single 4 mm Allen key handled the length, width, and every delicate nuance. The key itself was stored under the adjustable comb, locked in place by a spring detent.

When he first encountered it seven years ago, it made him laugh so hard that carbonated grape juice sprayed out of his left nostril. He’d turned to his weapons man and said, “What the hell are you offering me?” He’d since learned to love this nonsense. The weapon had served him faithfully through countless missions: fast, quiet, surgical. Outfitted with a custom suppressor, proprietary glass, and an extra-stiff bipod, it had become an extension of his breath, the way samurai were said to regard their katana.

When the rifle was finally in position, he began his series of environmental measurements and tests. Wind drift, glass reflection, sightlines, each detail logged in the still silence of his mind. He was in the zone, detached from everything except the physics of death. The world narrowed to mathematics and breath control.

He glanced at his watch. His target, Charles Renwick, was due to appear in the corner office window. As he did every day at exactly 1:15 p.m., drinking a cup of tea and eating an energy bar made of ninety percent dates and ten percent materials you wouldn’t give to your worst enemy. He bought them from that woman with the cart who smiled too much and sold her handiwork while talking about her grandchildren. You bought a product, and somewhere in the exchange she gave you a small portion of her hope.

Except Renwick wasn’t one to give anyone much hope. Ruthless in finance, indifferent to the wreckage of lives beneath his spreadsheets. A master of laundering money through international shells, the kind of man who talked about “efficiency” while closing hospitals. Adrian didn’t need much more background than that. This wasn’t just another payday; it was a correction, a small improvement to the world’s balance sheet.

Then came the sound, a creak, a jolt inside his skull. Timing. The parking meter. Another variable in the calculus. He was already an hour and twenty minutes into the limit. A parking ticket was one of the most abhorrent things imaginable, and during a mission, it was a death sentence. An official document linking him directly to this location, stamped, time-coded, and impossible to erase.

The thought wrenched him out of his focus, dragging him from the calm, precise rhythm of the hunt. He tilted the binoculars sideways, down to the street below. There she was, the meter maid, talking into her radio, her posture casual but menacing. A minute later, two tow trucks turned onto the block, lights flashing red and amber, the lead one adorned with tiny chrome skulls that the driver had probably added himself, a proud nod to his personal culture of doom. 

• • •

Adrian returned to the roof, frustrated and sweating. He opened his gear bag and pulled out the Accuracy International AXMC. The components were smeared with sandwich mess, mayonnaise and egg crammed into crevices where metal met metal. He swore and fished a damp cloth from his pack.

He worked the cloth through the rifle’s contours: the braided grooves of the bolt, the baying twist of the barrel’s exterior, the tight joints where the stock met the action. The real hell was the small places, the recoil lug’s pocket, the edges of the bipod mount, the threads and flutes that catch anything soft and sticky. It took patient, angry repetition to coax the goop out of those nooks; every wiped pass seemed to smear it somewhere else. When he finished he rested his forehead against the stock and the whole rifle smelled faintly of baby wipes and crushed dates.

The timer chirped. He pressed his eye to the binoculars. There was Renwick at the window, tea in one hand and the energy bar in the other. Two neat bites gone; he nibbled as if on ritual. It was time.

Adrian cocked the rifle and slid his finger inside the trigger guard. His fingertip found a smear of mayonnaise. He cursed under his breath; grease was the last thing a precision instrument wanted. It could foul moving parts, gum up sears, or change the way the bolt cycled, the sort of contamination that meant a full strip and inspection later, not something you fixed with a soggy napkin on a rooftop.

Another timer went off. He checked his phone: ten minutes until the meter maid’s next round, a re-chalk that would timestamp his car’s presence. Money still sat in the meter; he still had time. But the chalk would leave a mark, and a mark was evidence.

He watched Renwick chew, date paste blackening his teeth. Adrian’s hands trembled from the run, from the indignity of sandwich gunk on his rifle, from the arithmetic of an eight-block sprint. The decision drilled at him: take a slightly shakier shot now, or preserve pristine conditions and risk his car being tied to this place.

He told himself he couldn't do the parking lottery again. He steadied, closed one eye, leveled the sight, and squeezed.

Mayonnaise exploded under his nail. He hissed. Renwick twitched, a tiny lurch to the side. The round grazed him, clipped flesh or cuff, something that left him holding the energy bar as if it were suddenly fragile. His coffee mug toppled and shattered across the desk. He screamed; the office became a single, collective animal, all motion and noise.

Sirens flared and people stampeded toward the exits. The kill hadn’t been clean. The mission was noisy now in ways bullets never intended. 

• • •

Adrian looked back at the office windows. Would he rush the kill? From what he knew, Renwick usually sat with other employees for lunch in the kitchenette, a men-only gathering. They gossiped about colleagues and ate food brought in from outside.

If he wanted to kill him during the meal, he’d have to change position or use different ammunition, something that could punch through walls. The dining room sat diagonally across from the corner office, two rooms over. He didn’t have that kind of round on him; for that, he’d need magnum ballistics or a hardened-core bullet, the kind meant to keep going instead of stopping in drywall.

He took a breath, tilted the binoculars, and looked back to the street. Two cars were being dragged out of the parking lot, unwilling victims, hooked to the tow trucks that had rolled in earlier. He gritted his teeth. He ran the timing in his head again, rehearsing the shot in microseconds. Everything else was perfect. The kill wasn’t the problem. The fresh chalk lines on the asphalt in the alley next door were.

The chalk on the curb was a timestamp, a white scrawl that told when the car had been there, a trivial mark that could tie him to this location as surely as a fingerprint. His thoughts flipped from clean execution to the brutal math of evidence.

A lump rose in his throat. Calm was his true weapon, whether in the kill itself, the getaway, or managing failure. Calm separated him from ruin. Now he was anything but calm.

Adrian cursed silently, decocked the weapon, and began stripping it for transport. He fished out the 4 mm Allen key, collapsed the barrel and bipod, and removed the scope. He slipped the binoculars into a padded compartment in his bag, slid the rifle components into their cases, and crawled out from among the plastic-wrapped furniture to pick up the gear.

He muttered, “I can’t believe I broke position for this nonsense. I should’ve taken the L.” Then he was running, fast, efficient, through the lunch crowd, cutting across streets. Pigeons exploded from their perches and, in their annoyance, clipped his shoulders. The sniper case clinked and jangled because he hadn’t repacked it neatly; the hardware knocked against itself like teeth in a jar. For a moment he thought it would have been cleaner to leave the weapon on the roof and trust no one would find it. But if he’d had that luxury, a parking ticket wouldn’t matter.

Eight damn blocks back to the car. He stopped, panting, checked his watch, and leaned on the meter. He fed it coins and bought himself more time. A meter maid strolled by, head tilted as if approving a rehearsal, and glanced at him. He considered leaving a tip and then dismissed the idea, any extra interaction increased the chance of being recorded. He preferred as little human trace as possible while he worked. That was why he’d brought sandwiches from home. 

• • •

Adrian gritted his teeth, still looking through the scope. He still had the option of taking another shot.

The parking dilemma filled his head like static, clouding judgment. Finally he disengaged from the optic, let the rifle rest in its case, and forced himself to move. He couldn’t think clearly while the car sat there as a physical link to the operation. Fake plates or not, a white chalk crescent on a curb was a hand that could point at him later. It wasn’t just a camera; it was evidence with a timestamp.

He went down the fire escape. Below, security guards were already moving like startled animals, radios chattering. He shouldered his bag; the stench of mayonnaise filled his breath and turned his stomach. He cursed under it. I have to stop this mayonnaise in every sandwich, he thought, half-complaint, half-command.

At the Audi he was panting, ribs burning. He started the engine; the car idled with that polite, expensive hum, leather creaking as he shifted. The meter still had money in it, a little, useless grace, and for a moment he let himself think of that coin-stacked time as a small anonymous gift to the city. Anonymity felt like oxygen.

A tow truck passed, its chrome grill catching light like a predator’s eye. The meter maid stood strategically on the corner, hands folded behind her back, gaze sweeping the street like a sniper of time. She waited for the smallest lapse in judgment, a second too long at a curb, a single underfed coin. Those were the mistakes Adrian had come to fear more than patrols or cameras.

He drove at a cautious pace, the city folding and unfolding around him in glass and horn. Time was bleeding away; every minute gnawed at his options. He considered an on-the-move shot, follow the ambulance, take a trailing round when they hit the bridge, let the river be his witness, then dismissed it. Too complex, too many moving parts, and not his pay grade without an extra crew. He didn’t have the bandwidth for a moving assassination.

He hunted for a new, unremarkable space farther from LaSalle. Hydrant cones, permit plates, and valet-only signs sabotaged him. A valet-tagged Lincoln sat like a fat prize; he nearly took it, then thought better of the noise and paperwork. In the end he parked in a dim lot off a side street, found a forgotten rental cover in the trunk, and swapped the plates again, a second disguise on top of the first. Ugly, practical, but it bought him time while multiplying the risk.

Bag back on shoulder, he half-ran toward the tower, then climbed to a backup roof he’d earmarked in earlier reconnaissance. This one was lower and more exposed, less ideal for concealment but still had a view of Renwick’s floor. He hauled open the zipper, eased the rifle from its case, and pushed the barrel out into the wind as if testing it against the city. Below, the Loop had become a hive of flashing lights, news vans, and an ambulance crawling slow on LaSalle.

He waited. Sirens stitched the air into nervous sound. In a moment Renwick would appear again and a second chance might present itself. He told himself he could still act, helicopters might not be airborne yet; the evacuation might stall, but a bitter taste had settled in his mouth. The mission had gone sideways. For now, it had failed.

There was one small consolation: he’d moved the car. That mattered. In his world, survival began with procedural hygiene, remove the link, erase the timestamp, refuse the ticket. He settled the rifle, tasted the sour of mayonnaise at the back of his throat, and listened to the city breathe around a plan that had just unraveled. 

• • •

Through the windows he saw Renwick clutching his elbow, blood blooming through the fabric of his white shirt. He was still standing, dazed, blinking at his own mortality like it was a surprise appointment. He probably couldn’t name a single person who’d want him dead.

The office was chaos: coworkers dragging chairs, tearing at his sleeve to see how deep the wound went. A man in a tie pressed napkins against the bleeding. Phones rang in all directions.

Adrian aimed again. This was his chance, maybe his last, to end the job that had turned into one long parking nightmare. His finger slipped into the trigger guard. The metal felt slick, obscene. He tilted the rifle, wiped his fingers on his pants, and stared at the smear. This is fucked up, he thought. This whole case gets tangled in the smallest, stupidest things.

He brought his eye back to the scope. Held his breath. Aimed.

Then, in the crosshairs, he saw the medics arrive. Gloves, kits, professionalism. Renwick was already being surrounded, lifted, stabilized. Adrian hesitated.

There’s a rule, not written anywhere, but known in the quiet corners of his profession. You don’t finish a target once they’re under medical care. It isn’t mercy; it’s logistics. Hospitals mean witnesses, cameras, police coordination, press. Killing someone on a stretcher doesn’t just break ethics, it breaks containment.

Adrian lowered the rifle. The mission was dead, at least for now. Time to erase the traces.

He folded the Accuracy International AXMC down to its bones, locked it in the case, and sprinted toward the stairwell. His body ached, lungs burning, the mayonnaise stink rising like a ghost. Every step was a catalogue of errors he’d have to live with.

By the time he reached the last parking spot, he was panting, soaked, furious. And then he saw it.

A crisp white slip flapping under his wiper.

His heart dropped through him. Anger hardened instantly into calculation. The ticket was evidence, timestamped, photographed, and uploaded by the city’s enforcement app. A digital breadcrumb leading straight to him.

The meter maid stood a few paces away, smoke curling lazily from her cigarette. She exhaled through her nose, indifferent, unmoved. Her eyes met his for half a second, a hint of malice beneath the detached authority of a hunter who always gets her prey.

Adrian snatched the paper, crumpled it, stuffed it into his pocket without looking at the amount. He got into the Audi and merged into the flow of traffic. The city swallowed him up in its indifferent hum.

The police scanner crackled, radio chatter about a rooftop shooter, coordinates, a name that hadn’t yet been found. The FBI tag buzzed faintly across his encrypted line.

The paper in his pocket felt warm, like a fresh wound he was pretending not to feel. A tow truck cruised by in the next lane, slow and predatory, yellow lights pulsing like a heartbeat.

Forget the feds, he thought, merging onto the expressway. These bastards are the real hunters.