Caine Black Knife

BAD GUY

I linger upon this moment, as I have a thousand times, or a million, or only once forever; no number can signify, because times have no more meaning than does Time. All of you is present here: your painful birth and your blasted childhood, your criminal youth and murderous manhood, your sad slipping-down maturity and all your many deaths-

And yet none of you is here now, too.

In this moment, for this moment, you have erased yourself. No longer an Actor, a man, Hari Michaelson, Caine.

You vanish into the legend you are still creating.

The conference room is institutional green. The conference table is faux-granite grey. The conference chairs are mauve.

Do they look comfortable to you?

Do you somehow sense the quantum smear of futures in which you’ll someday sit in them-when you’ll have conversations too much like this one with other, younger Actors?

This question will hang suspended without answer until I have voice to ask.

For now, I focus on the hum of the motorbed under your ass, on the saline drip streaming drool into your strapped-down left arm, and on the salt I taste on the back of your tongue.

The vast curving screen that fills the far wall of the conference room shows a glowing skeletonized schematic of the vertical city. The schematic rotates slowly, displaying differently colored pinpoints of light: a virtual orrery of fourteen planets.

“I, ah, must say, Michaelson,” muses the doughy troll that you call Administrator Kollberg, “you are taking all this rather, mmm, well. .”

You roll your head to the right, and without the slightest twist of emotion regard the nine inches of iron nail still jammed through your wrist. “It wasn’t exactly a surprise.”

And I love how your voice sounds inside your head, even at a dull flat hum. .

“Well, yes. When you pull the spike yourself, online-oh, that will be very dramatic.”

“I can hardly wait.”

“Don’t let it concern you. You’ll get another round of injections before the retransfer. You’ll barely feel a thing. We dial down the dolorimetrics on the cube recordings anyway; no one wants to really feel your pain-the public wants to savor your suffering, not share it.”

“Yeah.”

“So think of this as an opportunity to do some real acting for a change. Make it convincing and move on. Staggering off into the darkness-”

“I want to talk to Marc Vilo.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My Patron. I want to talk to him.”

Kollberg shifts his weight backward in the comfortable looking chair and lets his thick lips flap their way through a long, slow sigh. “I’ll take that tone from you once, Michaelson. But you’re not on Overworld now. Mind your place.”

You close eyes that burn and sting. *From the air,* you tell yourself in silent monologue. *Something in the air.*

Already you narrate your life.

“Sorry, Administrator. Sorry. It was the meds talking. But please, sir, if you would only let me-”

“Entertainer.” The plump Administrator rises and folds his soft pale hands in front of his crotch. “As I have explained, Businessman Vilo has already signed off on your new contract. He’s a very busy man.”

“Please put a call through, Administrator. Please. He’ll take it. He will.”

“He may. But he won’t change anything. He can’t; Studio operations are sacrosanct. Now. Here’s your escape.” Kollberg takes a few steps toward the head of the table. One of those soft pale hands unhitches itself from his crotch and clicks a pen-size control.

The schematic of the vertical city dissolves into a new view, from the upland plateau side. One bright red star shines well away from the exit tunnel.

“This is where you will retransfer. Once you have removed the spikes from your arm and your ankle-”

“How am I supposed to have gotten all the way up there?”

Kollberg looks at you.

You swallow, and drop your eyes-a conditioned reflex? Or is the empty malice in his colorless gaze too much for the nerves of a mere Hari Michaelson? “Sorry. Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. Please, Administrator. Continue.”

“Well.” Kollberg clears his throat: a cough delicately indulgent as a cautious pedophile’s. “Actually, it’s a fair enough question. After you retransfer, you’ll cover the continuity gap in your Soliloquy. It doesn’t take much-just a phrase or two about the struggle to crawl all that way, and something about the confusion of the battle against Pretornio’s zombies covering your escape-”

“But-” You shake your head, your face twisting to mirror the twist of sick anticipation in your stomach. “-but, well, I mean, first they’re not zombies-”

“Oh, whatever, Michaelson, please don’t quibble-”

“And there’s just no way I could have crawled that far in that kind of shape. Hell, I don’t think I could crawl that far now, meds or not-I don’t think I could crawl that far if I were healthy-”

“It’s a silly objection, Michaelson. No one will care. After all, that ogrillo bitch practically healed you on the spot, didn’t she?”

“Not exactly healed; I mean, look at me-”

“Now, as you struggle away from the city, you’ll find a saddlebag just here-”

He clicks the control again, and a new pinpoint lights up a few hundred virtual meters from the first.

“-which you will theorize must have fallen from one of the horses during Kess Raman’s abortive attempt to flee-”

“Are you serious?”

“In that saddlebag are four canteens of water, as well as jerky and flatbread. There are also several vials of a cream which you will identify as a medicinal salve; when you rub it on your wounds, this will cover the effects of the intra-dermal time-dissolve antibiotic and steroid capsules we’ve injected along your spine. They’ll release over the next seven days, though you’ll hardly need them that long, as you shall see.”

The twist on your face becomes a full wince; nausea thickens below your throat, and it can hardly all be from the antibiotics and steroid injections, can it? “Um, Administrator-?”

Kollberg again clicks the control, and the virtual city shrinks into a vanishing perspective; a new star appears virtual kilometers away. “Roughly here-where you can easily arrive before daybreak-you’ll find two horses, which you will identify in Soliloquy as from the company’s remuda and theorize that they must have escaped from the others during the raid. Make up whatever names you like; it’s not important. One will be fully tacked and will have saddlebags of its own, also containing filled canteens and provisions, as well as some spare clothing and boots, so that you can dress yourself and bandage your wounds. Don’t worry about having to find them-we’ll transfer them in near enough your location that you’ll be able to hear their tack jingle-”

“Administrator, please.” You duck as though you would bob and weave if you weren’t strapped to the motorbed. “Isn’t that a little . . convenient? I mean, come on, sir-finding the saddlebag with exactly what I need-then a horse, with clothes and boots-not to mention that ogrilloi don’t let horses just wander off; horsemeat tastes like-”

“Michaelson, this is a fantasy.” Kollberg sighs with exaggerated patience.

“No one expects it to make sense. It’s not supposed to be realistic.”

He clicks the control again, and the wall view dissolves to a colorfully illuminated map of the eastern Boedecken. “Now. You’re only seven days’ ride from the Khryllian outpost at North Rahnding; by switching horses and sleeping on horseback, you could make it in less than five-”

“Five days? Sir, please-if you’ll only make the call to Businessman Vilo-”

“Wait, wait; you haven’t heard the best of it, Michaelson.” Kollberg’s voice heats up, and a sheen of sweat slickens his upper lip. His eyes go squirrel-bright. “We will arrange for a Khryllian reconnaissance-in-force to be moving out into the fringes of the Boedecken; though I cannot guarantee the actual makeup, there is a strong chance that you should see at least five Knights, possibly as many as ten, and up to one hundred fifty armsmen-”

“What good does that do anybody?”

“You’ll encounter them less than three days out from the vertical city. You’ll tell them that the Black Knives have a captive Knight of Khryl. .”

Kollberg leans closer. His breath smells of lavender and orange mints.“Imagine the rescue, Michaelson. Imagine. Ten Knights. One hundred fifty lancers. Falling upon the Black Knives like a steel thunderbolt. . with you as the advance scout, having received a Khryllian Healing for all your wounds. With you penetrating the camp to locate the prisoners, to prepare them for rescue. With you finally using all the skills of the Monastic assassin you are, to eliminate pickets and preserve the element of surprise. .”

“I can see why you like it.”

“And this is why you’ll like it, Michaelson. This is why I went to Businessman Vilo; this is why I risk my career on an emergency transfer for an unknown Actor. A never-was.”

Kollberg leans even closer. Under the sick-sweet pastilles, you can smell on his breath the blood-sugar problems that are bringing on his type 2 diabetes.

“Can you say: first-handers?”

And now you can’t breathe at all, and I’m sure it’s not from the smell. “Are you serious?”

“Oh, yes. Oh, I am. I’ve been showing clips of your Adventure to a few. . select connossieurs. . already. As soon as you make contact with the Khryllians, we’ll be putting you on live. For the whole rest of the Adventure. Live.”

“Live. .” you echo. Your lips hang. You can no longer feel your toes, or your fingertips.

“Because I see something in you, Michaelson. I saw it from the moment that buck stood up on the badlands. I know star power. You have it. And I saw it first.”

As you stare at him, all you see now is the sweat beginning to collect in droplets on his face. “If you only knew how long I’ve been waiting to hear somebody tell me that.”

If he only knew how what should have been the sweetest moment of your life somehow leaves your mouth full of dust and bitter ash.

“I’m going to make you, Michaelson. I’m going to make Caine the star you deserve to be. And in the process, I’m going to make myself into the top Administrator in the whole damned Studio System. It all starts right here. But you have to play, Michaelson. I can make you go back, but I can’t make you be the Caine you need to be to make this work.”

You lower your head and stare again at the spike. And I can only guess what you are thinking.

Are you remembering that the whole time you’ve been back in the Studio-the whole time you’ve been back on Earth-from the tiny Winston Transfer chamber to the emergency infirmary to the recovery room to here, you have been given not so much as a glance outside? Because this is all you say here: all you have ever said: all you will ever say:

*Not one window.*

No glimpse of the world you were born into. The universe you had left, and to which you have been returned.

It is at this moment that something within you unlocks. I feel it in your chest: as though an iron band fastened around your heart snaps open at the touch of a key in your mind. “I get it,” you say slowly. “When you rescued me, you weren’t saving my life. You were saving your career.”

Kollberg actually grins. “Michaelson, you died the day you passed your Boards. If you’d given yourself up for dead back then, you’d already be a star.”

You do not answer, for truth requires no reply.

“All right,” you say after a moment. “All right.”

Your left hand can make a fist. Your right can, too, and though the nerve-block handles the pain well enough, the slide of your wrist tendons around the nail twists you full of nausea.

That is the nausea’s source.

Isn’t it?

“All right. It is what it is.”

Kollberg offers a moist chuckle. “Most things are.”

You nod toward the screen. “Give me back the vertical city, will you?”

Kollberg clicks, and the schematic grows itself around the constellation of fourteen stars.

“Those are the surviving humans?”

“Mmm.”

“How do you track them?”

“By their thoughtmitters, of course.”

You only stare.

Kollberg’s lower lip bulges. “I’m sorry-was this a mystery?”

Again you can’t quite manage a deep breath. “They’re all Actors? All of them? The porters-everybody?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Pretornio?”

“Livia Murphy, out of New York.” Kollberg manipulates his control, and the screen flares with a view of the Black Knife camp seen through a veil of blue-white flame, while hidden speakers burst to life with the crackle and spit of burning fat and the bone-conducted distortion of Pretornio’s voice, chanting her Old High Lipkan.

Another twist of the control cancels the audio, and Kollberg sighs. “Quite the pity, actually. Had any of her own Studio’s Administrators a hint she was capable of such power, she may have had a more. . extensive career.”

“Holy crap. .” You lie motionless on the bed, cold and once again numb. “It is a snuffer. .”

“Oh, please.” Kollberg looks disgusted. “Grow up, Michaelson. The Studio doesn’t produce snuffers. That’s an urban legend.”

“All Actors,” you murmur. “Every one of them. .”

“Of course. How do you think your bloody expedition was organized? You think it’s easy to place Actors on real treasure hunts?”

“Why didn’t-but we didn’t know-”

“Because you’re Actors.” Kollberg flicks a piece of imaginary lint off the sleeve of his Administrator’s chlamys. “Even with unbreakable conditioning-blocks and the most expensive training in the history of Earth, you just can’t stay in bloody character. Look at you and Bergmann-the instant you’re alone together, you’re reminiscing about your damned school days. I mean, really.

Do you have any idea how much editing we’ll have to do in that sequence?”

“Bergmann? You mean Marade?”

He nods. “Olga Bergmann, out of Vienna. By the way, the sex was superb; we’re keeping that. Very nicely played, on your part; you have an eye for neurotic weakness. If she lives through the rescue-and you do, of course-we’ll slot you for some team-up Adventures. Banging the big Nordic blondes always goes down well. Oh, and speaking of going down-next time, make sure she gives you head. I’ll speak to Vienna about it. You can sixty-nine if you want, but really it’s better if she just does you. You’ve heard of the sexual position sixty-eight? ‘Give me a blowjob, and I’ll owe you one.’ Ha-hrm. Especially if she’s on her knees. That’s nuclear when it’s a powerful woman; the more submissive, the-”

“Administrator, for Christ’s sake-”

“Entertainer.” Kollberg leans on the word. His little piggy eyes have receded into his face. “The proper response to a direct order is ‘Yes, Administrator,’ or, informally, ‘Yes, sir.’ ”

He waits.

Vomit burns the back of your throat.

Kollberg says, “Let’s give a try, shall we? Entertainer?”

Your jaw locks down so hard your teeth ache. Your throat clamps shut. You manage to say, “Yes, Administrator,” anyway.

You’ve done harder things. Can you remember any right now?

Your gaze goes from the spike through your wrist to the fleshy curve of Kollberg’s cheek and back again. *The real difference between him and Crow-mane ,* you monologue, *is he’s too fucking smart to give me a free shot.*

And, of course, that Kollberg has offered you something to lose. “Yes, Administrator.” It’s easier the second time. It gets easier every time. “All right, Administrator.”

“Now. Let’s start again.”

You grind words out between your teeth. “I still need to talk to Marc Vilo.

Please, sir.”

Kollberg shakes his head. “I thought I explained-”

“You did. But you don’t understand, Administrator. I’m not trying to get out of this. I’m not trying to get out of anything.”

Kollberg settles back into his chair and folds his hands over the soft curve of his belly. “I’m listening.”

“We’re on the same side here, Administrator. You want Caine to be a star. I want Caine to be a star. More than anything. More than being alive. Being an Actor-that’s all I’ve lived for since I was ten years old. And you-well, I don’t know you. But you’re what, forty? And you’re still putting together crapass straight-to-cube Adventures with packs of no-names? Your career’s not going exactly the way you hoped either, I bet.”

Kollberg’s only response is a squint that seems to suck his eyeballs all the way to the back of his skull.

“I’m guessing this Adventure’s the biggest you’ve ever done. It is, isn’t it? And sometime before we all got bagged-maybe back when I went walking out that gate-you saw a whole new future open up in front of you.”

You can’t get your teeth to come apart, but you can unleash a facsimile of Caine’s grin. “I’m reading your fucking mind, aren’t I?”

Kollberg’s lips squeeze themselves into a liver-colored asshole.

“Pulling me was the biggest chance you’ve ever taken. That’s why you’re down here. That’s why you’re bullying me into this horseshit escape thing. You bet that brand-new future on me.”

Words squirt through those lips like a fart. “If I did?”

“You’re gonna lose.”

Kollberg lurches forward, red flush climbing his face. “The difference between us, Michaelson, is that I can lose and live. Remember I can put you back right where I found you.”

And this, My Love, is where you become My Love. This is where I know you are truly Mine. When you let the grin fade. When you let your eyes go soft, and you let your voice drop like a lover’s. When you say, “That’s what I want.”

“Eh?”

“Administrator, you’re not a real Studio man. Not really.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m not trying to be impertinent, please, Administrator, but-where did you come from? What branch of Service?”

“Health care,” Kollberg admits reluctantly. “I ran St. Luke’s Ecumenical, in Chicago. But I’ve always enjoyed-”

“Yeah. Everybody does. But listen: popping in a cube now and then isn’t the same. It doesn’t mean shit. Adventures Unlimited is my whole life, Administrator. I have breathed Adventures in and breathed them out since I was old enough to work secondhander gear. Before I was an Actor, I was a student of Acting. Before I was a student, I was a fan. A real fan. Do you have any idea what that means? What it is to be a fan?”

“Well, I hardly think-”

“Fan is short for fanatic. You get it? This isn’t just a hobby for me. Or a career path. This is my fucking religion.”

“Religion.” That liver-colored asshole drops the echo like a soft turd.

You let passion rise in your voice: the iron band that had unfastened within your chest goes red, then white, then melts and burns away. “When you’re a fan, it eats your life. There’s nothing else for you, you get it? Administrator, everything I know came from Adventures-shit, the only reason I learned to read was that there just aren’t enough good real Adventures, so I started reading ones people just made up-then I started reading the shit they based those Adventures on, and-well, I just never stopped. It’s all I ever thought about. It’s still all I think about.”

You turned your face up toward the joining where the ivory ceiling meets the green wall, but you are looking at something I cannot see with your eyes.

“When I was twelve I got in a knife fight with an older kid. All we had were homemade shanks, all point, y’know? I wasn’t even scared; I’d cubed White Fire, Black Steel maybe twenty times, so I let him slash me over the ribs because I knew it’d only hurt but wouldn’t kill me, and I stabbed him in the thigh-just like Jonathan Mkembe, get it? And he ran away. Jesus Christ, Administrator, when I lost my goddamn virginity, you know what I was thinking? I was thinking we were both decent fucks, doing pretty good, considering neither one of us were, y’know, Actors, and I was using pro technique, y’know, because I’d already fucked maybe seventy or eighty women secondhand-and she’d done more than that. . The biggest thing that ever happened to me? When I was maybe ten or eleven years old, I met Nathan Mast. You know who he was?”

Kollberg shakes his head. “I don’t see where you’re going with this, Michaelson.”

“Doesn’t matter. He used to be famous, back before I was born. He was one of Mkembe’s sidekicks for a while. The point is, he was living in the Mission District Sorrows-the Single Room Occupancy Temp flops. He was a broke-down old ragface.”

“Pathetic.”

“Not for me. It was the greatest day of my life. You know why? He was just an ordinary fucking guy. You get it? He wasn’t a god. He wasn’t Superman. He was just like any other Temp ragface. Just another loser.”

“So?”

“So he was just like me.”

Kollberg squints. “Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“And so-”

“And so that was the day I discovered I had a shot at this. I’ve been getting ready for it ever since. I’m not going to fuck it up.”

“Fine, then. I’m very glad to hear it. Now, the garrison commander at North Rahnding is a Knight Captain by the name of Purthin Khlaylock-”

Administrator, you’re hearing me, but you’re not hearing me. What I’m trying to get through to you-without any disrespect at all-is that I know more about this shit than you do. Than you possibly can. That’s nothing against you, Administrator. Adventures are just your job. They’re my whole life. There is nothing in my life I care about more than story. There is nothing I know more about than the difference between a good one and a bad one. You’re betting my life and your future on what happens in the next day or two. Let’s go balls-out to make it the Greatest Fucking Show on Overworld. Come on, Administrator. What do you say?”

Kollberg’s lips go back to asshole. “Are you trying to tell me you have a better idea?”

You draw a long, deep breath. The word inspiration has never been so appropriate on so many levels, for with the air comes your true spirit. Your power.

My Power.

“What I’m telling you is that Caine can’t run away.”

“Eh?”

“I know you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to set up this escape, and I appreciate it-”

“It’s not an escape, Michaelson. It’s a rescue. That’s why you’re not going first-hand until you make contact with the Khryllians-”

“Yes, sir. And if you can get the Khryllians coming, you can have them coming all the way to the city, right? Why bother leaving at all?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What if-instead of supposedly crawling out of the vertical city-I were to supposedly crawl into the city? Deep into the city?”

“I don’t follow.”

“I’m with you on the nobody cares about continuity. You’re right. Fuck logic. It’s fantasy; who gives a shit as long as it juices your shorts, right? So:

what if I were to crawl into, say, where the Black Knives stashed all our weapons. . ?”

Again you bring your voice down like a lover’s. “Think about it, Administrator-think about Caine alone in the dark, surrounded by ogrilloi, yanking out these spikes-then finding the bladewand. .”

Kollberg’s eyes light up. “I can see it. I can see it!”

“So a few extra things could have been stashed among the gear as well, huh? You could manage that, right? Another magick weapon or two, maybe some real Healing salve instead of the fake crap. . a few things that nobody told anybody else they had. Now Caine’s got them all.”

“Right. . right. .” Kollberg frowns. “No, wait, it won’t work-the Black Knives have already distributed your belongings. They’re all over the camp.”

You shake your head in crisp dismissal. You have him now, and you know it; the battle is won. The rest, as you will come to enjoy saying, is mop-up.

“Doesn’t matter. Look, we were after the Tear of Panchasell, right? So other people must have been looking for it too-so I’ve crawled in someplace and passed out among the bones of some centuries-dead treasure-hunters. You can manage some dusty old bones, can’t you? Now I’m armed. Shit, with the Winston scanners, you could locate the Tear itself, can’t you?”

Kollberg’s sideways half-shrug half-nod is a shade too noncommittal.

“Oh.” Your lips might make a smile if they weren’t so thin and flat against your teeth. “You already have.”

“Well-”

“It’s really there? It’s not just a legend?”

Kollberg sighs. “It’s really there.”

“Cool. You can drop me in right on top of it-how’s that for dramatic? Semiconscious, I’ve crawled in and passed out right next to the legendary treasure that we’ve given our lives to find?”

Kollberg’s lower lip sucks in between his teeth. “It’s. . not bad. .”

“So there I am among the bones, next to the Tear of Panchasell. . maybe with a hot-shit magick weapon, or something else to give me an edge, huh? I can move okay, even wounded, but if I can get close to Marade, I can get Healed too. Or drop some Healing shit in among the bones-whatever you’ve got on hand; I don’t care. I’ll make it work. All I need is hard intel on where everybody is and how to creep their positions-you can do that through their POVs-and Winston scans can get me the layout of the camp, with guards and whatever. I need to know where the top bitches are, and I want to know who’s got the fucking bladewand, and we can work out the rest of the details as we go along. Whatever else I need, you can just kinda slip in there, where I can be conveniently surprised to find it. . just exactly when I need it most. .”

Kollberg’s nodding along with you, his gaze directed inward, at visions of monitors lit with an imaginary Adventure. “Audience,” he mutters. “Audience. We can sell cubes, but you should really have first-handers for this-”

“That’s why I want you to call Marc Vilo for me.”

Kollberg’s eyes narrow to fleshy slits. “Eh?”

“Businessman Vilo knows people, Administrator. Lots of people. People with what you call exotic tastes.”

“I don’t get what you mean.”

“You’ve heard of him, right? You know how he makes his living?”

“Well-Vilo Intercontinental-”

“Is a front for organized motherfucking crime, Administrator. He can probably fill your first-hander booths just out of his own top boys.”

“Really?” Again, the light in Kollberg’s eyes fades to a frown. “Well-this will be exciting, to be sure, but I hardly think a rescue, even single-handed, can be called exotic-”

“Rescue?” Your laugh is dark as night on the cross. “Fuck rescue. Those people died when they passed their Boards.”

“Michaelson, really-” Kollberg tries to hold onto a disapproving frown while a smile fights for control of his mouth. “I mean, even Marade? Your promise-”

“Guys say lots of shit when their dicks get hard.”

Kollberg’s mouth opens. Then it closes again.

“I learned a lot about myself out there. I learned I’m not who I thought I was. I’m not who I wanted to be.”

Lips peel off your teeth. “Who I am is better.”

Kollberg blinks. “Michaelson-”

“This is the question, Administrator. You don’t have to answer. Don’t answer. Just think about it. What was the part that made you decide to pull me? To take this chance on me? What got your dick hard?”

Kollberg’s lips vanish altogether, and his eyes nearly do the same.

“I bet I can tell you what it wasn’t. It wasn’t when I was making that speech about being legends. It wasn’t when I sold everybody on the die fighting crap. It wasn’t even when I went out alone and fought Spearboy. None of that hero shit.”

“Heroes sell, Michaelson-”

“Sure they do. Hell, I like ’em too. What’s not to like? You can’t piss without splashing a hero in this business.” More of your teeth appear. “But you weren’t out pimping Marade’s clips, were you?”

Kollberg looks thoughtful.

“I’m not one of the good guys, Administrator. I am what I am.”

“This-” Kollberg still looks thoughtful. “-is not necessarily a problem.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“I believe,” Kollberg murmurs, “that I am beginning to understand.”

“That’s what’s wrong with the whole escape-and-rescue thing. Getting your friends out, saving lives, all that shit. That’s good-guy crap.”

“And you. .”

“I don’t care if they live through it. I don’t care if I live through it.”

Kollberg gives you a half-believing smile. “What do you care about?”

“I care about story.” The heat in your chest boils into your throat, but your voice stays low and hard.

Because now it’s your voice. Not Hari Michaelson’s.

“Remember what I said about story? I’m gonna teach those shit-rotten rat cunts a fundamental principle of real story.”

“Ah?”

“When you fuck with the bad guy-” Your true grin unfolds like a butterfly knife. “-the bad guy fucks you back.”

And I, as I did, as I do, as I will forever, say-

Yes, My Love. Yes.

Fuck.

RETREAT FROM THE BOEDECKEN (partial)

You are CAINE (featured Actor: Pfnl. Hari Michaelson)

MASTER: NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.

© 2187 Adventures Unlimited Inc. All rights reserved.

I take my time unwrapping the wire from the dagger’s hilt, smoothing each kink, stroking it long and straight. It’s good wire, flexible, copper maybe, eight feet or so; I double it, slip the dagger through the loop, and wrap off the ends to the dagger’s naked tang just below the guard. And that’s it.

Time to go.

I unfold myself from the Warrior’s Seat. Undoubling my legs brings a red snarl from the crusted spike-holes in my ankles. It makes me smile.

The blue sparkle has faded from the mud, and it has dried now, and I scrape it from my arms and chest and back with the dagger’s blade, shaving with it fear, and doubt, and the memory of pain.

I have no need to check the belts, or the gear I have taken from these ancient bones. Each piece is in its place, as I am in mine.

The mud falls away, and the blade touches scars I bear.

This is the axe from Kor.

This is the arrow from the Teranese floodplain.

This is the spike from the cross, and this the burn from Crowmane’s god.

This is the alley knife from home, and this the brick, and this my father’s fist. There are scars the blade cannot touch, but I don’t need them. The ones on the outside are enough to tell me who I am.

I am strong. I am relentless. I am invincible.

I bend now and lift from among the dusty armored bones the spikes I pulled from wrist and ankle. Dirt has caked my blood upon them. In the rose-pale glow cast by Panchasell’s Tear, I weigh them in my hand. Then I stick them behind my belt.

I grin at the runecut rose diamond the size of my head on its pedestal of gold, and the vast shadows of the cavern echo my black chuckle. “Think you’re the biggest tear ever shed?”

I thread the dagger through its doubled loop of wire. “That’ll change.”

››scanning fwd››

He hunches away from his partners and shuffles along the shadowed alleyway. At the ass end, he leans his spear into the corner so he can use both hands to unwrap his breechclout, and he squats.

Ogrilloi and humans aren’t that different. They’re pack hunters, we’re opportunistic scavengers, but the behaviors overlap enough that our evolutionary adaptations have a lot in common. Like, say, we both prefer a little privacy when we crap.

Has to do with diets heavy in protein and aromatic fats. We evolved using the undeniably fierce smell of our feces to mark off territory. And being top predators-or, in our case, smart enough to be dangerous to top predators-we don’t worry about fresh fecal reek attracting the wrong kind of attention.

Our shit says better keep the fuck off.

Loudly.

And it’s a hell of a lot louder to a scent-hunter like an ogrillo than it is to us poor nose-challenged humans.

Steam from one hard turd rises faintly into the slanting moonlight. Which is why that squatting buck over there has no idea I’m slipping over the lip of this ruined wall. He leans on the shaft of his grounded spear, grunting low in his throat, waggling his hips, trying to work the next turd out. Poor bastard’s crapping diamonds. Too much rich food.

But, y’know, I’m about to help him with that.

I slide through the moonshadow along the crumbled wall, bare feet feeling each step before I shift weight forward.

There are two contrasting styles of garrotte. The more popular is the cheese-cutter style: a single strand of thin flexible wire between a pair of handles. It’s pretty damned foolproof. Slices the external jugulars, crushes the trachea, and with the right kind of takedown there’s not much struggle either. The downside is that it takes a long damned time; a determined man can keep fighting quite a while with no fresh oxygen to his brain, and if you get a little careless on his back he can still kill you before he bleeds out. And if the wire’s too thin it can cut the trachea instead of crushing it, and then you’ve got a real fucking fight on your hands.

I favor the strangler’s noose.

Squatting, he’s put his head just at my chest height; the doubled loop of the dagger’s hilt wire slips down past his eyes, his snout, his tusks-the loop’s extra-wide; if it snags I’m a dead man-and in the nightshadow he can’t see it. The first he even knows it’s there is when my two-handed yank on the dagger snaps the noose tight under his chin. He jerks up standing, and I ride his rise, doubling my knees to put my weight into his shoulder blades.

One one thousand.

My weight captures his balance; we go staggering backward. He drops his spear to claw at his throat, and his cry of alarm doesn’t even make a hiss past the two strands of hilt wire that clamp shut his trachea.

Two one thousand.

His backward stumble takes us to the ruined wall. He hits it just above his knees and we topple over it. His weight crushes me into the rubble and flares splash the inside of my head and I don’t care.

Three one thousand.

He kicks and flails and rolls and tries to reach back over his shoulders to get at me with his fighting claws, but his own massive musculature betrays him; his arms won’t bend that way.

Four one thousand.

And now he finally remembers the spear he left on the ground over by his steaming turd, and he struggles to his knees and pulls himself over the wall again.

Five one thousand.

And he takes one step, and my weight drives him to his knees. He keeps trying-the bastard’s no quitter-but this is the thing about the strangler’s noose: properly applied, it doesn’t cut the jugular veins, it only squeezes them shut-and it doesn’t close the carotid arteries. Which is to say: it doesn’t stop blood from going to your brain. It stops blood from coming out.

The whole thing takes only a little more than twice as long as it takes to say massive cerebral hemorrhage.

He makes it to the spear at seven seconds, but his hand will no longer close upon it. At eight seconds, his will can no longer drive his collapsing body, and he crumples, twitching.

He keeps twitching for a while. Even after he’s basically dead. His sphincter never does let go. Poor bastard.

I take the wire off his neck before I skin him. I leave the flesh on his head, except for the musk glands under his jaw, which I have use for.

Last, before I go: I take from behind my belt one of the nails that had fixed me to my cross. I use the pommel of the dagger to pound it into his forehead.

Because they’re scent hunters. Because I want them to know.

Caine is here.

Caine is coming for them.