_ _ _ 'Hero Sato'

The crisp, recycled air seeping from Goodnight Moon was a better indicator that I was on the right track than the omnipresent neon signs were. Now that I knew to look for it, the brisk currents turned up undertones of sake and a sterile chemical tinge that reminded me of a hospital or a morgue just below that. The scent worked wonders for my focus. I had a job to do, I could deal with whatever the hell Shenhua was to me and my feelings for her once I was done here.

The bar was somehow even more deserted than it had been when I was last here; glossy tables and empty booths reflecting outwards to the abyssal cosmos. The two governing bodies were in a similar reflection, Intatenrup glowering down at Boss Satou as he menaced upwards at it. I got the impression this was old hand for both of them, two giants locked in hateful orbit around each other.

The massive open bar could have housed a hundred workers with room to spare, instead I counted twenty guards as static as any other fixture in the room. The tables should have been bustling customers and servers, yet they were forsaken tombstones of polished rock capturing the cold light of the stars and the void beyond. The grandeur I'd first been struck with now reeked of corpulent indulgence being mocked by the infinite frigid indifference of space.

For all that empty space, both within and without, Satou filled the room as only a minuscule titan could.

His raw presence blazed into a semi-solid aura of commanding authority as intense as the room was cold. He was a man who knew with absolute certainty that he was destined for bigger things than this bar. This orbital, that world, everything was within his reach if only he could grasp it and bury his claws deep enough. Without looking away from the heavenly monoplex before him, Satou asked a question that filled the room.

"Tell me Painter, in a hundred lifetimes could you every recreate such majesty as this?"

I figured his 'this' meant more than just the view. Boss Satou wasn't a man of such narrow vision. No, his meaning would have been everything around me; not just the bar or the view but the whole of Tengoku. For a second I was tempted to agree. Tengoku certainly had its dazzling lights and luxuries I'd only dreamed of in my planetside upbringing. It was majestic, but all that beauty hid a great deal more that repulsed me— that should repulse anyone who called themselves human. The glorified slavery of indentured servitude, the top-heavy distribution of not just luxury but basic needs, and the selfish desire to maintain a status quo that kept a small handful in absolute power at the human cost of thousands of others. There was a beauty to Tengoku, but it was a shallow, ugly thing to me.

"It's been said that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' Mister Satou." I answered without hinting at my true opinions.

"Just so, Painter. Tengoku's cold beauty is very much to my liking." He turned from the void to fix me with a calculated smile absent of any genuine warmth. "Of course, complementing and contrasting these shades with warmer hues brings out the best in both spectrums. Your palette would be a welcome addition to my family."

I never cared much for verbal fencing, but much like a keen insight, it was a necessity in my line of work. Satou wasn't hiding his intent which meant this was an informal offer. I still had a choice in the matter, or the illusion of one at least. If I joined the family I'd be a made man instead of a dirty secret.

It was a sickeningly sweet temptation, same as every other treat offered on Tengoku. I would be trapped here, keeping the wheels of Tengoku greased with blood. The rewards of my labor would be a lavish prison cell serviced by attendants no better than furnishings. The offer was so sweet I could almost feel myself rotting away on the inside.

"Frankly, Mister Satou, I find that Tengoku's climate doesn't pair well with my… creative humors. I still intend to move on and find a more agreeable locale." Satou's scrutiny cut into me, taking the measure of my character as he formulated his counterstrike.

"So it would seem. Then we should toast your health and conclude our business quickly," He let the words hang as he marshaled the next, lending gravitas to his counter stroke. "Since my Tengoku is so… disagreeable, to your sensibilities."

I was still parsing his words as one of his bodyguards left his post to make a trip to the bar. Two glasses were served, Satou's no bigger than a thimble while mine was more traditionally sized. I kept a puzzled look off my face while Satou scrutinized me, clearly looking for something I wasn't seeing. This had to be another test, but why? What did he stand to gain at this point? The drinks were poured with due reverence by the guard turned tender. Satou lifted his shot between thumb and forefinger while I took up my filled glass in reply.

"To your health, Painter." Satou intoned, his face stony as he sipped his shot.

Without skipping a beat, I downed a finger of my drink. I was expecting the familiar burn of whiskey or vodka and was pleasantly surprised to find it lacking. Satou didn't seem like the type to poison, and if he was the mismatched glasses drew too much attention to the drink. Unless the drinks were just a feint and the real blow would come from somewhere else… Still, I couldn't figure out the significance behind the lopsided act, and from Satou's interest I was clearly expected to. So maybe it wasn't a test but rather some unspoken slight?

"I've had a more comfortable booth prepared where we can discuss your work at length." Satou said gruffly.

We crossed the room and once again, the absence of patrons and workers stood out, especially with the guard cum server tailing behind us. The absence of life paired with the slight muffling effect of the bar's permanent chill fog reminded me of a barren moonscape, one I was being marched over to a shallow grave of a booth sank into the leftmost wall. The two guards flanking the booth did nothing to assuage my mounting doubts. Satou and I sat, our server stood to Satou's side, diligently topping off his tiny cup.

"I am a man who enjoys saving his dessert for last. You mentioned complications, what happened?"

"It was a robbery gone bad, as planned, but there was some extra… breakage. There was a girl-"

"One less slut in Tengoku is hardly worth mentioning."

His interruption caught me by surprise, not the words or his flippant tone but the complete lack of tack. He'd offered me a woman's life as a rush fee so his stance wasn't particularly shocking. All the same, I buried my shock under a sip of sake while I recovered. Why the change in decorum?

"There's also these." I said, keeping my voice level as I placed Ivan's ZashaSec badge, serialized pistol and antique ring on the table. "Ivan was far more connected than you were led to believe, Mister Satou."

His flinty eyes could have been cut from an asteroid for all the emotion behind them. The look of disdain, the faintest sneer of his lips was another story. My little jab had bruised his pride far more than it should have. I'd placed the items side by side but it looked like Satou's gaze was favoring the ring instead of the badge, meaning my hunch about its importance was right. This went beyond cool under fire. He'd known and he sent me in anyway.

"It is of no matter." Satou puffed. Downing his shot, he held out his glass for an instant refill. One was offered to him with due reverence while my glass went ignored.

"Then Tengoku is very different from Intatenrup. The Wardens and planetside ZashaSec teams usually take exception to one of their own getting murdered in the line of duty— even more so off duty."

"They may take as much exception as they see fit; it is still of no matter to me."

I grit my teeth at his indifference but said, "So it would seem."

Cool though he was, Satou's covetous eyes widened when the OSD was added to my growing collection on the table. Unlike the other items, I kept my fingers on the drive. I could tell in an instant that this info was never a secondary objective. The deader was a nuisance that needed to dealt with, but this data was the final nail in his casket. That local police (assuming Tengoku even had cops as I would recognize them) had brought in a private military corp to get this data quietly then that meant major waves were rocking the orbital, and I'd just dumped a load of oil on the fire.

"And this," I asked knowingly, "is a matter of consequence?"

Satou held my eyes even as his outstretched cup was refilled once more. My cup was still more than half-full from our toast yet now at some sign I didn't see, our tender finally topped me off. Suddenly I wasn't so scornworthy after all. I ignored the glass, just as the tender had until now.

"Mister Satou, I wouldn't be so unprofessional as to renege on a deal after I'd finished my work-"

"That is good." He barked, flinty eyes flicking to my fingers. "Then why do you cling to what is mine?"

"I merely wanted to offer an outsider's opinion." Satou subtly inclined his head, humoring me. "I see that certain facts of our arrangement were… misrepresented. The need for discrepancy need not necessarily equate to the need for deception. Freelancers less understanding than I might not appreciate the intricacies of your particular circumstances."

Satou narrowed his eyes to little more than accusatory slits, reading between the lines. I'm no fool and you won't bully me out of my just reward. I listened for the clicks of pistols having their safety's disengaged but the sound never came.

"Your opinion, Outsider, has been noted." Satou said, once again inclining his head.

I removed my hand from the OSD and tried not to smirk at Satou's visible effort not to snatch it up. His collected demeanor was crumbling, which meant nothing good for me. The waves of change tended to make men in power jumpy and Satou didn't strike me as the type who wouldn't snip loose ends if he stood to benefit.

"Is there anything else, you wish to report to me, Outsider?"

"Nothing, Mister Satou." I said, bowing as much as the table would allow for good measure.

"Then your payment awaits, as soon as I've confirmed the veracity of your accounts."

"Of course, Mister Satou." I said, trying not to bristle after being called a liar so blatantly. So long as he delivered, my pride could take the hit.

My pile of loot was collected by his guards. Satou and I sipped at our drinks to while away the uncomfortable silence. Something had changed since our last meeting, something outside my job here. Was it that he'd gotten what he wanted so there was no need to keep up the act, or was it something else entirely? The goon returned to whisper in his boss's ear, causing a wide grin to pinch Satou's flush cheeks.

"The fruit of your labor awaits." Satou said with a calculated smile, his flinty eyes as devoid of life as the bar.

Satou led the way, his goon-bartender bringing up the rear as I was marched in the middle. I tried not to compare my present marching order to how a prisoner might be sent to his execution. I tried, and I failed. The lowest level of this monoplex bar had discrete inwards-facing doorways I'd failed to notice before; the bar's dominating view all but ensured the eyes of any patrons would wander upwards instead of down. The door I was led through had us crossing through a cozy poker room staffed by yet more goons, then deeper still into a back office.

Matsumoto stood to the side of a regal hardwood desk, silhouetted by a white-canvased wall behind him. Every other wall in the office was inked with dull metallic hues some shade between blue, grey and black; the room would have felt suffocatingly small despite its size if not for the hanging scrollwork contrasting the frigid atmosphere. The meter-long scrolls created an air of mysticism, one savagely exaggerated by the bronze hooks scattered across the ceiling.

Satou took his seat behind the desk, wearing his thoughts openly for the first time since I'd met him. His face was a perversely contemptible mockery of childish delight while he eyed me up like a fly about to have its wings plucked off. Just looking at him made my skin crawl with prickly heat. At a nod, the guard behind me left the room and shut the door.

I knew a show of power when I saw one. Marching me past almost thirty guards in an empty bar to a secluded location was as unsubtle as it was heavy handed. If I was an amateur to wetwork, I'd have been weighing my odds and finding them overwhelming. A novice would have been suitably cowed into accepting whatever scraps were about to be thrown his way. The fact that I'd been left practically alone with the family's head spoke of a different battle to come. Instead of pulling my four-shooter, I pointedly examined the scrolls hanging from the walls while I waited for Satou to make me an offer I couldn't refuse.

"I want you to join the family." Satou finally said after realizing that I was no longer paying due attention to him.

"I refuse." I hadn't even turned from the scroll to answer him, though I refrained from fully turning my back to either of them. I doubted he would dirty his own hands, but I wanted to be ready if he made a move.

"That wasn't an offer." Matsumoto growled, his tone all cold business and quick temper.

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"The terms of our agreement-" I started, speaking as if bored even though my heart was lurching to high gear and a fire was building in my stomach.

"Have changed." Satou cut me off.

"I've delivered your data, painted my deader, ransacked his abode. It wasn't perfect, I'll admit that, but I have done everything you asked for and now you see fit to renege on our deal. I wasn't expecting such poor form from a man of your station." I stated the facts, doing my best not to sneer back at him.

"You violated the terms of your arrangement." Matsumoto growled. Satou held up a belaying hand.

"Tell me painter, what does this room lack?"

The sudden change in tactics caught me off balance. I stopped looking around the office and started looking at it as a whole. The color balance was fair, a warmer mirror of the void-viewing bar overhead. A person's office, much like their home, said a great deal about their nature. Boss Satou had a style of subdued extravagance, one that didn't scream its nature but proudly wore the fact of it. His office full of imports that highlighted his wealth and his solitary prestige, yet the wealth he showcased was always against a drab backdrop: his desk to a white wall, his scrolls to dull metal, even his bar ultimately used its magnificent background of the cosmos as nothing more than an accent piece.

"Your accent wall is too stark." I noted critically. "The contrast too steep. It highlights your desk and your person but you are lost in its pale oppression."

Satou's perverse smile widened to appalling proportions, his supposed splendor lost behind that frog-mouthed smirk.

"My thought's exactly, Outsider." He purred.

The door behind me opened on cue, two goons in suits entered the office dragging a limply struggling form between them. She was stripped naked except for the black sack covering the petite woman's head and the manacles clamped around her wrists and ankles. In a fluid heave they hoisted the woman and hung her a half-meter off the floor, suspended by her chained wrists by one of the ceiling's brutal hooks. The heavy lifting done, both guards took separate corners behind me, opposite Satou and his new office decoration.

Neither Satou or Matsumoto spared a glance for the spectacle, both keen on reading me. Whatever they were looking for wasn't forthcoming, the only things swimming below the measured indifference on my face were disgust and wrath. I kept both sensations in check, heedless of how they brayed for blood. The heat flooding my limbs was beginning to burn from the inside like my bones were made of molten steel, searing me with a murderous desire to set it loose.

"Not exactly the complimentary piece I would have went with." I said, my tone one of strained neutrality that both men saw through in an instant.

"Do you not recognize your whore when she's not on her back!?" Matsumoto roared, tearing the black hood off the woman. With the hood clear and her no-nonsense black bob cut settled I recognized her, even with the broken jaw and swollen black eye.

This whore—no, this poor woman—was Shenhua. The woman who'd almost tempted me to stay here in this mock paradise because it meant I could have her. Her remaining eye lolled about the room in a daze, the pupil wide and unfocused from her beating.

I couldn't stop my mind from drawing comparisons to the last girl I'd seen hung from chains. My heart set a heavy, hammering beat just like it had back in that basement and heat poured from me. My limbs were aching for action, for savage bloody motion. The last man who'd done this was barely human, little more than a monster masquerading in the skin of a man. Shenhua wasn't dying, not yet at least, not unless they'd broken her skull. From the looks of her, they might have.

I pulled my adrenaline-sharpened vision off of Shenhua's battered face to see Satou leering demoniacally at me from behind his desk. How lost was his wretched soul that he would do this to an innocent woman who'd done nothing more than her job? If I shot him dead and ripped out his heart, what shade of blackest evil would I find at his core?

"You have my attention." I uttered the words, damned near choking them out as a snarl.

"In truth, I don't care for this decoration either. As you said, it clashes with the room and doesn't address the blank canvas at all. Wouldn't you agree, Matsumoto?"

"Your vision is flawless, as always, Boss Satou." Matsumoto concurred, the drivel of his sycophancy as revulsive as his sidelong leering at Shenhua's naked flesh. "You were warned about playing with other men's toys, Hero-kun."

"I didn't- We didn't-" Satou's slammed fist cut my words short.

"Have you not disrespected me enough? Must you lie to my face, in my very own office as I offer you a path to redemption?"

"We know you called her to your room," Matsumoto added, sliding his hand between Shenhua's legs and reaching inside of her. I'll kill him first! "That your seed was sown in her barren womb as she came to 'play doctor' for you."

My vision was tunneling, a red haze narrowing the world to Matsumoto's smugly superior expression of contempt, groping Shenhua all the while. She didn't utter a sound of pleasure or pain, she just squeeze her good eye shut and hung there like a corpse. My four-shooter was still loaded, if I could kill the four of them with a single shot each… I still wouldn't have enough time to reload. I still had Ivan's second service pistol tucked in a pocket. I could use that, then scrounge for guns and ammo.

Then what? I was backed in a corner, Shenhua would need my help and there would still be around twenty-five armed goons looking to save or avenge their boss. I could only shoot my way so far before a lucky shot brought me down. If we were going to die here, I wish I'd taken Shenhua up on her offer, since we were damned either way.

"You said I had a path to redemption. I join your family and you let her live. Is that it?"

Satou laughed a frog-mouthed bellow, showing entirely too many artificially-whitened teeth. "Of course not. The bitch will die for her betrayal either way. No, I'd thought it obvious what I expect you to do, Painter."

Simmering, murderous rage didn't help me put the dots together any faster. My gaze constantly flicking between Satou's grin, Matsumoto's smirk and Shenhau's good eye, now drunkenly focused on my face as tears poured down her own battered visage. Her split, bloodied lips were silently mouthing three words over and over again, her broken jaw shrouding the words but not the meaning.

Sorry, Cherry Boy.

"You want me to paint your office with her." I said.

Impossibly, Satou's frog-faced grin widened further until it was practically ear to ear.

"And if you don't," Matsumoto said, drawing a pistol with his off-hand. "I will."

Satou stood, his demonic frog-wide grin vanishing behind his earlier mask of impeccable control.

My four-shooter was in my hand before I knew what I was doing with it. A stereo pair of clicks sounded to my left and right, the goons in the corners squaring me in their gun-sights.

"I'll leave you and Matsumoto to discuss the fine details." Satou said before departing, walking through our armed standoff without the slightest concern for his own well being.

Once the door closed behind Satou, Matsumoto drew back his hands, leveling his pistol at my hips and bringing his offhand's moistened fingers to his nose. His eyes rolled back in depraved ecstasy as he inhaled Shenhau's scent.

"If you'd just had a little patience, you could have bought any girl you wanted, Hero-kun. But you couldn't contain yourself for a single day, could you? I suppose it was just too much to ask of a lowborn terran cur like you."

"That's not how it happened." I snarled.

"Oh I know. She told us all about your little performance issue while we were breaking her. How you distinguished yourself in the bedroom. You spilled your seed and left her to sow it by hand. How noble of you. Your precious virtue remains intact. Tell me, is that gun as volatile as your manhood?"

"Shut up!" I roared, my pistol centered on Matsumoto's torso. A twitch of the finger and he'd die.

"So you can get it up when you try. Does pointing that at me while I list your invalidities soothe your ire? Does it make you feel like the man you are so painfully desperate to be?"

I cocked the hammer. Matsumoto smirked.

"Oh come now, we both know you lack the follow through for that. Even if you shoot me dead," Matsumoto backhanded Shenhua hard enough to leave an imprint of his knuckles. "This whore that you're so fond of, will spend the rest of her life begging for death and being denied. Killing her is the last kindness you can offer her. Paint with her and Boss Satou will let you hurl your worthless life to the stars, just as you wished to do last cycle."

Sweat was pouring off me, the heat of five bodies on the dull edge of conflict had made the room stiflingly hot. My blazing nerves were alight all across my body but try as I might, I couldn't command whatever the heat inside me was. I could kill Matsumoto but that wouldn't save Shenhua… or myself. Not that I had much hope of walking out of this room alive, one way or the other.

I dropped my aim, my four-shooter hanging heavy at my side.

I couldn't save her. I couldn't save a single damned woman in this glass-bubble hellscape of a paradise. The only thing I could do was make sure she didn't suffer a second more of this humiliation then was necessary.

When all else failed, I had nothing left but the cruelest kind of decency. The most heartless type of mercy. Shenhua's good eye was losing focus yet it still clung to me, a dim candle in the cold crushing darkness.

"Did you…" I uttered.

"Did I what?" Matsumoto blustered. "Rape her? As if-" Any further words from his serpentine tongue were stilled as he looked down the barrel of my four-shooter centimeters from his face.

"I wasn't talking to you. Shenhua, when you washed up, did you… Was that when?"

Her faint nod was as damning as it was weak. Tears pouring from her battered jade eyes confessed more than she could with words.

"Why?"

"No more owner." She croaked in little more than a broken whisper. "It is happy dream, no?"

"Yeah. It is." I agreed, voice tense and throat tight. All I have to offer her is the cruelest kind of decency. "Why don't you close your eyes and think about that?"

She nodded again. "Will it hurt?"

"It's just like falling asleep." I lied. "So dream a happy dream."

Shenhua closed her eyes while tears poured down her bludgeoned face. Her split lips were quivering in time with the sympathetic ache in my chest as she tried to put on a brave face. I reached for a word of comfort and found nothing. I couldn't offer her comfort. All I had was the most heartless form of mercy. An apology appeared on my tongue and died before it passed my lips.

My four-shot revolver's muzzle shifted from Matsumoto to Shenhua.

There wouldn't be a funeral for a working girl like her. No one would weep over her sealed casket longing for one last look at her gorgeous face. My pistol's muzzle hovered ten-centimeters from her temple while I choked on my stillborn apology. She didn't deserve this. I doubted any of the girls in Tengoku deserved this. They would get no salvation from their damnable fate. Only a lucky few could hope and dream for mercy.

I squeeze the trigger with a lover's caress.

The white canvas receives its first wide stroke of red paint. The misfiring nerves of her spine make her body shudder where it hangs suspended, agony and death animating her body where her soul should have been. My aim drops to her below her throat: veins, arteries and her twitching spine all blocking my shot's path.

A kiss of the trigger makes my gun shudder.

The canvas takes its second splash of depth, the impression of a life cut short dotting its surface. Her body has stilled, clenched muscles now releasing in the ignominy of death's uncaring clutch. She isn't dancing on her owner's chains anymore, rather she's swaying like a gruesome metronome to the reaper's waltz. My pistol glides down her skin, settling just under one of her perfectly plump breasts. The sight of her fair sex stirred no passion in me as it had yesterday; the vibrant woman was gone, only lifeless meat remained in Paradise.

The third shot is teased from my draining revolver.

The portrait drinks in her heart's blood; the gluttony of the canvas a disparagingly appropriate reflection of this station's own insatiable appetites. The final stroke of the brush is revealed to me as lines of dripping blood hint at the soul of this piece and the unquantifiable truth that it would represent. The leaking sack of tattered meat hung before me only resembled a person in the loosest sense; gone was the woman who might have been my answer. Its face was an unrecognizable mess of splintered bone, stringy meat and sloughing skin, yet the faintest smile she'd tried to put on for me was still there despite the required muscles having been destroyed.

The truth was buried in that haunting smile. I stole the reaper's role and embraced the gore splattered flesh sac, playing the angles of my pistol's final shot through my mind. My inks were of the foulest origins, as a painter I was obligated to honor my work and its mortal cost. I leaned my weight into the once beautiful woman's body, aligning my final shot to conclude another painting.

I pressed our bodies together and my heart wept as I brought my weapon to its climax.

Matsumoto's stiff profile made an ideal boundary; catching viscera, bone and bismuth pellets in plentiful quantities. There was a moment's delay before he registered that he'd been shot; a single moment where he'd been admiring my work with a degenerate's warped glee before his legs weakened and pain reached his mind. A straight-edged man, detached from the cycle of cruelty he perpetuated, slumps to the floor in howling anguish like music to my ears as he unveils my masterpiece.

The painting was a work of grisly perfection.

There was a gruesome beauty in the runny red hues, a degree of artistic whim that captured the weight of an entire life on a single canvas. I'd made an angel on the cavans, her ruby wings weeping as they spread to take flight, the outline of a man in negative standing at her feet. This painting would be Shenhua's legacy, not mine. It was a heartless kind of immortality to be rendered in art paid for in blood. She was the angel trapped in marble and I was merely the mortal hand that had set her free of her earthly binding with brutally efficient butchery. Truly, Shenhua was nothing more than a sack of shredded meat, perforated by my damned mercy.

"She… is magnificent!" I'd been so lost in my work, I hadn't noticed Satou reenter behind me.

"Yes," I said without turning from the woman who might have been my answer. "She was."

"What do you call it?"

"Shenhua's Escape From Paradise." The words came automatically.

A sense of absolute certainty washed over me at their rightness. I peeled my gaze from the woman I'd mercifully murdered to face Satou and his goons. All three were enraptured by the red angel, eyes fixed and mouths agape. Both goons still had their pistols pointed in my direction and Satou himself had his hands stuffed in the pockets of his suit jacket. I'd missed my chance to save Shenhua before, I couldn't let this opportunity to avenge her slip through my fingers.

My four-shooter slipped from my fingers, my hand already in motion for Ivan's service pistol in my pocket. The leftmost goon, snapped his head at my sudden movements, his pistol flinching up faster than I could dodge behind Satou or his desk. I just needed one more second! A half second!

The fires threatening to consume me from the inside went from a raging inferno to a single white-hot mote of unparalleled focus on the pistol squaring on my chest. The pistol that would kill me. The pistol that would stop me from avenging my red angel! The goon leveled his gun, he had me dead to rights.

He pulled the trigger… And his handgun exploded like a string of firecrackers as the entire magazine cooked off simultaneously— including the round in the chamber.

His bullet ripped through my good shoulder as I wrapped my fingers around the pistol in my pocket. I tipped the muzzle as far as my pocket would allow, and hip-fired a burst at the other, still-armed goon.

Sparks flew in a puff from from the wall behind him, every blind-fired shot striking wide of my mark. Goon two was patting himself down in disbelief when two shots cannoned through my guts and a third came bursting through my back.

My legs folded like snapped twigs, the floor rushed up the meet me. I got my mangled hand out to slow my fall but not by much. My other hand ripped Ivan's pistol clear of my tattered pocket.

I pushed myself upright and got the looted gun leveled on Satou's balls just as a mule kick knocked the weapon from my hand. A follow-up kick had me seeing stars. The third had me seeing nothing at all.

"Enough! I don't need any more blood in my office. Drag him and his whore to the usual airlock, but let him bleed out before you flush it." A searing ashy pain lanced into my back where a dull throbbing ache was spreading. It wasn't an ache really… more like a throbbing… cold.

"After all, we don't want him dying too soon."