Caldor rounded the corner with his hands clasped behind his back and an expression of mild curiosity on his face, as though he had simply been out for an evening stroll and happened upon us by coincidence. He was dressed in a formal attire. Not a hair out of place.
"I had a feeling," he said pleasantly, "that you two might find each other eventually."
Marcus rose to his feet. "Caldor…"
The shot was so quiet that for a moment I didn't understand what had happened.
A silencer. The sound was almost nothing — a soft, mechanical exhale — and then Marcus simply stopped. Mid-sentence, mid-breath, mid-whatever he had been about to say. His body registered it before his expression did, and then he went down, and the stone floor was very hard and very unforgiving, and the sound of him hitting it echoed in the corridor far longer than the shot had.
I was on my feet without knowing I had stood.
