Six hours later the atmosphere was very subdued. Even the dives had mostly closed, so they’d had to really lower their standards to find one to sip drinks in.

They were alone in the back, well away from the nearest light. The beer was a brand Freel had never heard of, and it didn’t look terribly appetising. He didn’t know what it actually tasted like. His brain wasn’t back to that point yet.

He just sipped for the sake of sipping. And it seemed that everyone else was as well. Kreb slowly lifted his mug up to swollen lips and touched the rim against them. He put it back down just as slowly. After a couple of breaths he swallowed.

The only sound was low autogenerated music coming from roof speakers. There were no lyrics. Just soft electronic sounds. It made the overall silence in the bar all the more acute.

“He cheated,” Kreb finally mumbled sullenly. They were the first words spoken since they’d sat down.

The big man winced, and touched his battered throat.

“Mm.”

The sound came from Dunton. He hadn’t said much else since they left the clinic. Talking moved facial muscles, and his were a mess from the broken glass. The late-night, bleary-eyed doctor had glued the cuts together with a pen, but that left Dunton’s face covered with jagged lines of blue healing gel, like a jigsaw puzzle.

“Yeah,” Yules said, listlessly. “Yeah. I jus… yeah.”

He’d had the cuts in his scalp sealed up with more gel, as well as cranial injections for the concussion. Kreb wore a fingerless medical glove, to speed up the healing of his hand. He wore a small patch of the same material over his nose, and the doc had printed out some temporary replacement teeth before sending them on their way. They didn’t quite fit his mouth, and had a slightly bluish tint to them.

Freel had come away with some fractured fingers, mostly on his left hand, and a concussion of his own. It had earned him some bone injections, as well as healing wraps, and one of those devil-damned cranial injections. It had been a long time since he’d had one, but the lingering sensation was just as unpleasant as he remembered.

Silence ruled for a few more unbearable seconds.

“He cheated,” Kreb repeated, with another wince. His voice was quite raw, even after the doctor’s injections. “I mean, he… he…”

Kreb trailed off.

“Well, if someone hadn’t given him a helping hand…” Yules said meaningfully.

“Oh, you were just handling him SO well until then,” Dunton responded to the barb. “It was he who put you in front of my swing.”

“And it was you who swung, pill-head.”

They both stopped. Arguing required energy. And Dunton’s face clearly hurt.

Freel’s comm rang. The number displayed did nothing at all to improve his mood.

“Nn.”

The ringing continued, and he knew that drawing this out would only make it worse.

“Hello, boss,” he said.

The boys looked up at him.

“Hello, Freel,” the voice on the other end said. “I was hoping you could dispel some stories.”

“Aha.”

Freel leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“Stories about my main enforcers, my main agents on the streets, the faces of a certain part of my business… getting their shit kicked out through their mouths.”

“No… uh… no shit was involved, boss.”

“By one man,” the boss went on.

He let the words hang. The seconds felt like an eternity.

“Well, SAY something!” he eventually insisted.

“I’d… the… what do you WANT me to say, boss?”

“I want you to help me understand the maths here: Eight fists against two. How does that go wrong? HOW, Freel?”

“He… he…”

“I could understand if he was a Nihunian, but NO. Baseline, I’m told.”

Freel picked at the armrest with his fingernail. He should have gone through his beer faster.

“He pulled some sneaky shit, boss.”

“And you were doing what, exactly? Conducting yourself like a proper, honourable sportsman? Is that what I’m paying for?”

“No. Boss.”

There was another pregnant silence. Freel didn’t know how to fill it, and thought that perhaps the boss didn’t either. He looked over at the boys, for once hoping that someone would interject something, if only for them to absorb some of the heat.

They stayed silent.

“Who was he?” the boss finally asked.

“I don’t know his name. He was at that quote-unquote treatment clinic we visited in the afternoon. As a volunteer, not a patient.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. He… he must be ex… something or other.”

“Well, I sure hope you didn’t all get spanked by a nurse.”

Freel clenched his jaw, even though it made his battered head hurt.

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“This is an embarrassment to ME, Freel. You know what is coming in a few days. I can’t afford embarrassments. Not ever, but especially not now. Tell me you’re going to make this right.”

“We’re going to make this right, boss,” Freel said.

“Make me BELIEVE you.”

Freel took a deep breath. Then he leaned forward in his chair, and dug for strength to put into his voice.

“I’m going to get even,” he said through his teeth. “We’re going to find this guy, and we’re going to make a nasty mess. Then we’re going to leave his body somewhere public, as a message. This black-clad turd is dead.”

“Well, get on it. Starting tomorrow.”

The call ended. Freel looked at the comm in his hand. He wanted to throw it at the wall. He wanted to kill the next person who so much as looked at him a second too long. But most of all, he wanted the stranger.

He looked at the boys. They’d been paying attention, of course.

“Starting tomorrow,” he said. “We’re ready for him now. No messing around. We’ll blow his legs off and make him wish he’d stayed home.”

They were battered and tired. But they were just as angry as he was, and he saw the sparks that would become a furious inferno once they’d recovered a bit. The stranger was going to pay.

“Operation Payback starts in the morning!”

Freel banged a fist on the table. Then winced as a stab of pain shot through his hand.

# # #

The new day didn’t find him fresh. How could it? Proper medicine could put a man back together in short order, but it wasn’t a substitute for sleep. And it sure did nothing to fix his mood.

Thankfully, he didn’t need to be at his best for this next part. He knew damn well where to make his first stop.

“I want the killshot,” Kreb said, from the Dragon’s passenger seat.

“I know you do,” Freel said. “We all do. But I’m the one who gets it.”

“He busted my teeth and put a knife through my hand. Through it!”

“And that elevates you to leader of this little group?” Freel said, and turned his attention away from the road for a moment. “No, it does not.”

“I got it the worst!” Kreb insisted.

Freel had no doubt Yules and Dunton would argue against that, if they weren’t busy with a quick, boss-mandated check on the Big Nest.

“Maybe you’re right. After all, I have no idea what it’s like to get beaten to a pulp by someone much smaller than myself.”

Kreb went through an odd sort of convulsion; that type when people restrain themselves from throwing a punch, but the energy has to go somewhere.

“Screw you, man,” Kreb said through his temporary teeth.

“Well, no reliance on muscle next time,” Freel said, ignoring Kreb. He looked at the drinks cooler. The drinks cooler with the concealed compartment in the bottom. “Next time we gun him down.”

Carrying a gun when you weren’t specifically expecting to use one was a dangerous gamble. A quirk of the local law made it hard to get away with, bribes or no bribes. But of course they were called for, on occasion.

That shitty apartment high-rise came into view, and so did the police drones and vehicles that hovered around it, at varying heights.

“Wah?”

Next to him, Kreb patted his own pockets, double-checking for anything illicit. Scenarios shot through Freel’s head, but most of them fell apart immediately, dismissed as nonsense. Someone with this kind of pull wouldn’t be a part of an effort that began with helping junkies in withdrawal up thirty flights of stairs, so you could start wiping up their vomit. And no way would this kind of force be mobilised over a simple intimidation visit.

“We better leave the drinks cooler,” Kreb noted.

“Yeah.”

There were no actual barricades, neither physical nor signals, so Freel went around the building to the parking lot, steering very carefully. A police ground car, the sort that could hold a combat team, a host of drones, or a crime lab sat outside the main door. Freel let the Dragon slowly drift up to the officer that stood guard.

“Good day, citizen,” the woman said, in that stiff way that was apparently drilled into them in the academy.

“Good day, Officer,” Freel replied, forcing politeness into his voice.

He pointed up.

“What is going on?”

“There are reports of a neutron bomb in this building, citizen.”

Freel spent a second absorbing that.

“A neutron bomb?”

“A neutron bomb, citizen.”

“Who reported this?”

“I am unable to share that, citizen. But command is taking the matter seriously.”

“And are you finding any actual readings?”

“Not yet. But readings can be fooled. We will continue to search, until our techs are satisfied.”

“And when will that be?”

“I am unable to share that, citizen.”

Freel kept up a friendly smile. It took effort, but he managed it.

“Is the building closed off?”

“No, citizen. It was infeasible, given the number of residents. Just be aware of the scanner.”

She pointed to the door, and to the portable, heavy-duty scanner that had been set up around the entry. There was no getting in with anything considered illicit.

Freel glanced upwards. The police might not be likely to bother responding to an harassment complaint, given the quality of the area, but when they were literally a shouting distance away…

“Thank you, Officer.”

He drove away, fuming as he did so.

“Convenient, isn’t it?” Kreb commented. “This happening right now, as we would be coming by?”

“Yeah. It sure is.”

He made some distance, then found a public parking spot before bringing his comm out. That stupid little “clinic” had a public number, and now Freel called it.

“Yes?”

It was the woman who seemed to be heading the place. The one with the big ring and the uppity attitude.

“Where is he?” Freel asked.

“Where is who?” she replied.

“He,” Freel said with menace. “The guy.”

“Look,” she replied gently. “I take care of a lot of confused people. Just take a breath, think clearly, and I’m sure you can articulate what you want to say to me.”

Freel glared at the comm with burning hate. He could just picture the look in her eyes.

“I’m not going to play games with you,” he said. “I’m doing this to give you a chance. Tell me where he is, or some time soon I will come looking for him. And I will look hard.”

“I don’t know,” the woman said. “We get a lot of different people here. They come if they want, and most go back to their regular lives soon after.”

“And miss out on the glamour of changing adult diapers? You don’t say.”

“My point is that I don’t know where he is.”

“I don’t believe you,” Freel said.

“Well… that just isn’t my problem, honey.”

He squeezed the comm like it owed him money.

“Oh, it is your problem. I will make it your problem. On top of the problems you already have.”

“I am not a victim,” she told him.

“Oh, really? You sure looked like one when I was showing you the view yesterday.”

He leaned forward in the chair and held the comm closer to his mouth.

“Let me tell you what I’ve learned: People with soft lives have no idea how weak they are. Until someone like me puts them to the test. I am going to find your boyfriend…”

“Not my boyfriend.”

“... and after that, who’s going to get in my way? Think about, while you think about where he is. Think about the view, and what I said about it. Ten seconds. Eternity.”

He ended the call.

“So, are you in love?” Kreb asked.

“Hah, hah!” Freel barked at him.

He started the car back up.

“The cops will lose interest eventually. Then we’ll go back. Until then, we’ll ask around the streets. Someone like our friend in black doesn’t exist without a footprint.”