APPRENTICE IN DEATH

It would be the first kilt. The apprentice understood the years of practice, the countless targets destroyed, the training, the discipline, the hours of study, all led to this moment. This cold, bright afternoon in January 2061 marked the true beginning. A clear mind and cool blood. The apprentice knew these elements were as vital as skill, as wind direction, humiture, and speed. Under the cool blood lived an eagerness ruthlessly suppressed. The mentor had arranged all. Efficiently, and with an attention to detail that was also vital. The room in the clean, middle-class hotel on Second Avenue faced west, had privacy screens and windows that opened. The mentor had planned well, booking a room on a floor well above the trees. To the naked eye, Wollman Rink was only a blob of white catching glints from the strong sun. And those who glided over it were only dots of moving color: the old, the young, the in-between. The novices and the show-offs, the speedsters and the creep-alongs. And none of them knew, none of them, that they were caught in the crosshairs, seconds from death. Seconds from the choice to let them live, make them die.