"Whoo! We did it!" shouted Walker, punching the roof. "I fuckin' live for this shit! Yeehaw!" As I wondered if he was nuts, he suddenly sat back just as I had. "That Kingsdamned sucked though, and if I never do it again it'll be too soon. Shee-hee-hee-heeit."

I flopped my head over to look at him, bouncing as the van hopped up onto tarmac. "Walker, if we ever do that again I'm quitting."

"You ought to quit anyway," came an amused male voice from the front of the van. "Whatever he's paying you, I guarantee it's not enough."

The speaker was driving the van. He was all tac'd out like Monta, right down to the ski mask. He sounded young, his voice a smooth tenor.

"Aw, shut up, Willy. I'm payin' her plenty, and unlike some of us she don't gouge me for chits before savin' her friends' lives."

Willy laughed. "That's just poor business acumen, Walker. Though you are always meeting interesting people. How'd he 'befriend' you, jo-san?" he said to me. "Blackmail? Bribes? Death threats?"

I chuckled despite myself, sending a jag of pain up my side. "A little bit of all three, I guess." It was technically true.

"What the hell, Sharkie!" Walker protested over the gale of laughter from up front. "It wasn't like that at all."

"Sure, sure," teased Willy. "You've always been so good at healthy relationships."

"Wiremu..." said Walker, a note of warning in his voice.

"Sorry. Too far. Really, though, you're lucky I decided to pick up the phone. I was in the middle of a date, in fact-"

"At one in the morning?" I broke in before immediately realizing I'd been rude. Either head trauma or loss of blood was making me feel drunk. "Er, thank you for interrupting it, though."

"Oh, no thanks needed," came the airy reply. "He was a nice guy, but not "pass up triple rates" nice."

"Well, thanks anyway." Things had gotten hairy near the end there. I'd never thought I'd be in the middle of a Quarry Kings standoff. "Pretty sure those security guys were about to unload on us."

"Ha!" Willy laughed while Walker muttered, "Fat chance." The van pulled into a tight left turn and I glanced back at Monta as he made a low noise. After making sure he was still secure I asked a question.

"Why's that so funny?"

"They're lazy. Especially the ones who get stuck on guard duty like that," said Willy. "Real Admin samurai would've just blown you away no questions asked."

Walker got out a cigarette with his good arm, flipping it around his fingers. "Argent Fist pukes gotta fill out a report to corporate every time they pull a trigger. Their guns got logging software in 'em, so no shirking either. And if there's one thing I got in common with those motherfuckers it's a burnin' dislike for paperwork."

"You don't seem to like them much." In fact, there was more spite in his tone than when he talked about the Blues.

"Admin sends A.F. to the quarries when they think we're gettin' lazy. They march around bustin' heads, breakin' shit, maybe a rape or two. They strut around like a bunch of little shitpot kings until Admin says we've been 'reprimanded' good enough." I'd never heard such venom in his voice. "Never mind if the missed quota was 'cause of a drylung outbreak, or machines breakin' down cause they won't let us stop to fix 'em, or 'cause a fuckin' scaffold should've been replaced years ago comes down and kills half a crew. Never mind any o’ that shit. They need their Kingsdamn stone and who gives a solitary fuck what happens to the people diggin' it for 'em so long as it gets dug, right? Fuck 'em."

"S-sorry, Walker. I wasn't trying to bring up something-"

"S'fine, Sharkie. Ain't your fault. It's just, even thinking about it gets me-"

"Oh no, is someone feeling ornery back there?" sang out Willy, like he was asking a little kid. I blanched, getting ready for a shouting match.

"Oh, fuck you, Willy!" yelled Walker, but I saw he was actually smiling.

"You aren't my type, Clyde. Too short, and I can't abide the smell of smoke."

"Clyde?" I exclaimed. "Clyde?" Something about this whole situation combined with missing a couple pints of blood got to me, and I cracked the hell up. Screw my side, I was literally going to bust a gut. "Fucking Clyde! Ha!"

"You didn't know?" asked Willy incredulously. "Oh, that's just amazing!" He joined me, his laugh surprisingly smooth and pleasant.

"What the hell's wrong my name, dammit?" shouted Walker over us. "Ain't no deep dark secret! Clyde's a good name, a fine name!" We just laughed harder. I wasn't even sure why it was so funny; maybe just the release of tension after that mess of a rescue. "Go to hell, then, both of you!" Walker shook his head, laughing quietly, and finally lit his cigarette.

That made Willy shut up instantly. "No smoking in here!" called Willy desperately. "Come on, seriously! Put it out!"

Now Walker really laughed. "Take us down to double price and I will!"

"Ugh! Fine, damn you! Fine! Far be it from me to tell you where you can and can't kill your lungs." Willy shook his head, muttering. "I can feel this heap depreciating by the molecule..."

I finally managed to get myself under control. Man. Regardless of everything else, this job was certainly good for meeting interesting people.

Willy drove us to Doc Laggard's in Blisstown, a trip of maybe half an hour. He nattered on about this and that the whole time-I was pretty sure he was trying to keep us awake.

"Don't die on me, now," he warned us when we arrived. "Somebody's got to pay for my new Vintner."

"I ought to own half of it already," Walker muttered. He still shook Monta's hand, though, as did I.

"Thanks again for the save," I said to him. "And it was good to meet you."

"Oh, anytime. Anytime you want to pay me so much, that is." He chuckled. "Something about you, jo-san, tells me we're going to meet again."

"If you say so."

"I do." A dark eye winked behind his balaclava. "Take care, both of you." And he was off into the night, perhaps to have the inside of his van power-washed.

"A freelancer, huh?" I said to Walker. Monta was once again slung over my shoulder. My earlier good humor, I considered, was probably a slight bit of hysteria over getting out of there alive. Now, I just felt like tenderized meat.

"Yeah. Trustworthy in the sense that he does everything to the letter. Just have to make sure you give 'im the right ones." He sighed. "Shall we?"

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"Let's." We walked to Doc Laggard's, passerby giving us a wide berth, and shoved inside. My ears were assaulted by tunes that were a little more mellow than yesterday's, but still very loud. The girl at the counter, her tattoos in a new pattern but otherwise looking the same, took one look at us and buzzed the back door open. She watched us with wide eyes as we passed, and for some reason I winked at her. Her mystified gaze followed us until we were out of sight.

Doc himself was playing video games projected onto one wall of his surgery, the lights turned down. Glassland Warfare 4, I thought. Had I been a little less fucked up I would have felt bad; a couple more kills and he would have had a Praetor drop.

It was not to be, though. When Walker burst in, Doc spun around in his chair and immediately fumbled the controller when he saw all three of us.

"Mass casualty! Holy crap! Mass casualty!" He leapt up, hands clapped to the side of his head, then scuttled over to the sink like a roach as the lights came up to full glaring brightness. "Okay, who's the worst?" he yelled over his shoulder as he washed his hands. "We've got to, what is it...triage, yeah!"

"Monta's up first," said Walker, glancing up at me. I was in agreement. A few more minutes on my feet wouldn't kill me. I set him on the articulated bed-chair as gently as I could.

"Gunshot in the left thigh, resulting in a broken femur..." murmured the Doc. "What did you give him?"

"Standard painkiller tab," said Walker. "Whatever he had in his fak."

"Sure, sure..." Laggard wasn't really listening. He pricked Monta's finger with some kind of scanner, checked the results, then grabbed something that looked like a tape dispenser and pasted a strip right across Monta's forehead.

"'Thetic tape," said Walker quietly as he noticed me staring. "You just use more or less of it for different weights."

Doc Laggard turned back to us while the tape took effect, rocking back and forth on his heels. "This is kind of an awkward question, but how hard do you want me to go?" he asked Walker. "Should I stick to conventional medicine, or break out the tech-"

"Spare no expense," Walker said. No hesitation. "Throw nano at 'em if you got it. Just get my people healthy."

"Oh, man! Yes sir!" Laggard flashed a boyish grin before spinning about to grab supplies out of his cabinets.

I glanced down at Walker. I kept being surprised by his generosity, his loyalty. It wasn't something I was used to. There was Sawada, of course, but he'd always been the exception that proved the rule. To lay out as much money as Walker did for someone he'd barely known three days was unheard of.

Doc Laggard, meanwhile, cut away the rifle, Monta's boot, and the leg of his pants to reveal a caramel-colored leg. It was toned and firm except where the skin puckered around an ugly bullet hole. I turned around, embarrassed. In a real hospital they wouldn't have gawkers in the operating room.

The Doc, however, muttered a running commentary under his breath as he worked, and from what I could hear, he scanned for bullet and bone fragments and pulled them out before setting the bone. Then he shot in some kind of nanotech to make the bone grow together quicker, applied a CySkin variant to help the muscle heal, then bandaged the wound and set the whole leg in an inflatable cast.

After all that, he got a folding gurney down from a rack on the wall and the two of us moved Monta to it. "Give him these," the Doc told Walker as he handed over a bag of pill bottles, "and have him call me when he gets up. It'll be easier if I just explain it." Walker nodded. Doc got on fresh gloves and put a new cover on the bed, then clapped his hands once. "Nice! Who's next?"

I eyed Walker sidelong. "Do you mind?"

He bowed and gestured to the bed, as if ushering me through a door. "After you."

With some difficulty, I was able to get up on it and lie down.

"Wow," the Doc marveled. "No offense, Sharkie, but you look like shit."

"Least I have a shirt on."

Laggard glanced down at his own bare chest, covered only by his open lab coat. "It gets warm in here sometimes! But seriously, you're so messed up I'm just going to let the bed scan you." He hit a button on the frame, and an armature popped up. It made a brief pass over me, projecting a flickering laser grid, then folded back away.

Doc grabbed a palmslate from its holster on the bed and frowned at it. "Hmm...that's weird."

This, of course, is what every patient loves to hear their doctor say. "What's weird, Doc? Doc?"

"Something's playing hell with my scanner. Readings are all fuzzy." He glanced up at me, eyes wide. "You haven't eaten anything radioactive lately, have you?"

I blanched. "Um, not to my knowledge."

"Oh, you would have known. If it wasn't hot to the touch and glowing pretty colors, it wouldn't be strong enough to cause this." He tapped his fingers rhythmically on his cheek. "Whatever. Maybe there's some prank DRM on there the cracker missed, or something. We still got some useful info, though." He turned the palmslate around to show me.

"Concussion highly probable, a bruised lung and liver, minor internal bleeding, an abdominal wound that may have perforated the intestine, a deep laceration on the forehead, a long but shallow laceration on the calf, and something's fucky with your scaphoid bone, though I'm not sure what from the scan. This along with various minor cuts and contusions. Oh, and you ripped your CySkin from yesterday." This last was delivered in the acerbic tone used by disapproving doctors since time immemorial..

"Sorry about-rgh!-that, Doc." None of what he'd said was especially surprising, but it was like having all of it listed off made me more aware of each injury.

"Oh, don't be." he said with a big smile. "Now I get to charge you twice for it!"

Now there was a thought. I wondered if there were doctors out there who paid hitters to beat people in order to drum up business.

"So. Not much I can do for the internal bruising and stuff. That would take better nano than I've got. What I can do is stitch up your forehead, calf, and side and seal 'em up with CySkin. I'd like to put a scope through the abdominal puncture first, though, just to make sure the intestine wasn't perforated. Sounds good?"

It would probably hurt less after he did all that, so I nodded. "Good. Go for it."

"Sweet! Alright, go ahead and lie back." He grabbed the 'thetic tape and checked the legend on the side. "Don't usually read this high on the size chart..." he mumbled. "There it is!" He stuck a generous length of the stuff on my bicep, and his face immediately began to buzz and blur. "Sweet dreams, Sharkie..." Doc sent me off into 'thetic-land.

---

Blurry lights pass by me, from below to above. A great, rattling rumble is all I can hear. My immediate vicinity is warm and still. Something hangs in the center of my vision, silhouetted by the lights, but it's too blurry to make out.

I'm in my dream again. It doesn't end abruptly like it usually does, though. There is only the rumble, and the lights, and the comforting warmth. It's almost pleasant.

But then something changes. The heat becomes sweltering. The rumble harsh and deafening. And standing over me is a person.

I am looking up at him. The perspective makes me realize that I am lying down. He is not sliding past me, I am rolling past him. As my head passes by him, I realize who it is.

Yorda, the boy who years ago would have slit my throat over a few denars had I not killed him. He weeps from the orbit that is not a shattered ruin. I move away.

I approach another. Zaemon Pak, the man I beat to death at Orrechs, stands over me. His face is waxy. The glass in it sparkles. Pinkish fluid runs from his tear ducts as he smiles at me, smoke leaking from his nose. I move away.

Soon I see two more. Zaemon's friends, the ones I killed in the alley. What were their names? Did I ever know them? My thoughts are so slow I'm not even sure. The woman grins at me, but the slit in her throat makes a frown. The man's disapproving glare is made darkly comic by his misshapen head, soft and flattened. I move away.

After them there are others, men and women with gaping wounds, with holes in their heads, some cradling severed limbs, others hugging themselves to keep from falling apart. Last is Rossignol, expressive lips scowling beneath the mashed crater of his face. I move away.

How many people have I killed? Shouldn't I know? It's only been a few days but I've lost count already. Does life mean so little to me? The rumble gets louder still, the lights brighter. The shape hanging in my vision becomes more defined, and I realize it is a word. I still cannot make it out.

I realize that I don't regret the lives I ended tonight. My friend and his friend were in danger, and I would defend them as I would Sawada, or Dezhda, or Tanje, or myself.

I realize, truly realize, that a gang war is still a war. For better or worse, I have picked one side, and the other will be out to kill me, out to kill my friends. For better or worse, I have to fight. The conflict must end for me and mine to be safe.

So I'll fight. I'll kill. I will do what I can to end this as fast as possible.

And what if you like it? whispers a voice. What if you enjoy such dark work?

It doesn't matter how I feel. The results will be the same no matter how I feel. I trust myself to stay under control.

There is a clang, then a tremendous boom as of a steel door slamming. The lights flicker, then grow brighter, brighter, too bright to look at. The rumble is all-encompassing, there is a fiery itch on my forehead and-

---

I woke up slow, emerging from unconsciousness like it was a pool of crude oil. My thoughts felt slow and slimy, stubborn to let go of that dream. It was like waking up from a really heavy, too-long sleep.

Walker's face swam into view above me. "Sharkie? You up? How d'you feel?”