At the edge of my peripheral vision I see him reach a hand out, as though to tap me on the shoulder.
In one quick motion, I turn, grab his right wrist, and twist as hard as I can. He does not cry out but instantly fights back. He swings his left forearm into mine, trying to knock my grip loose and pull free. On a flesh-toned band around his right index finger, the tiny, piercingly sharp spike of a poison promise glints just slightly in the dim orange light.
I can’t break free. My attacker’s got too tight a grip. He pulls me in, throwing a hard left elbow to my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. I try not to double over, struggling to keep my hold on his right wrist. He follows up with a quick left jab at my face, which I barely manage to dodge.
Scared diners stand up and back away. I plant my feet and bullrush the guy into the bar, cracking his back into the edge of the counter, lifting him slightly off his feet. I slam him into some empty glasses, and they shatter underneath him. He grimaces, seemingly impervious to pain, giving only a frustrated grunt.
The dull shine of a short steel paring knife catches the corner of my vision, lying stuck in an orange behind the bar. I lean for it, reaching out with my free hand, but the man in the black sport coat hits me hard with a kick to my stomach, throwing me off. His wrist slips free of my fingers.
In an instant he’s springing up and he’s on his feet and he’s slashing at me open-handed, and I barely manage to dodge. I bump into a table, rattling plates and silverware as I duck under another swipe. He swings again, and I get a forearm up and manage to deflect. He takes another hard swing, and again I clumsily block, the impact stinging. He leans in to grab me, but I slip away. I’m out of breath now, my arms drained of strength. His movements precise, he comes at me again, but I upend a table in front of him, sending an expensive abandoned meal crashing to the floor at his feet, plates and glasses shattering to hundreds of white, jagged pieces. People are rushing out of the restaurant all around us now, voices shouting.
I feint aside as though to run, and he comes at me. As he reaches in with his spiked finger I hit his forearm again and force it aside. I snap off a couple of quick left jabs into his jaw. Barely phased, he hooks me by the collar and swings me around. I manage to keep his weapon hand away and above our heads, but as I throw a harder punch at him he ducks and leans in, ramming a shoulder into my chest and hammering me back into the bar.
All his weight presses me down, bending me backward. I take a desperate swing at him, thumping him in the ribs. He lets out a groan but doesn’t even try to stop me from hitting him again, and instead grabs my right arm with his left and tries to pull it free. Pinned, I can’t move, can’t roll aside. The poison promise lurches closer. Closer. I take a few more panicked strikes at his stomach, and he strains but doesn’t let up, so I reach for his face, trying vainly to grab at his eyes even as the tiny, deadly spike closes in on my neck, bit by bit. I can’t reach. These will be the final seconds of my life.
Desperate, I grope with my free left hand for something. Anything that might work as a weapon. Spilled alcohol soaks through my sleeve as my knuckles brush against an overturned glass, sending it rolling away. I can feel the corrugated plastic work surface behind the bar. There’s a paring knife there somewhere, I know it’s near. If I can only reach it. My right arm is trembling, the strength in it failing, and the tip of the poison promise is so close now, just kissing distance away from the exposed skin of my neck.
Glass shatters on the back of the man’s head, exploding in a sudden spray of gold-colored liquid.
He goes instantly limp. With my last remaining strength, I shove him aside, letting him collapse unconscious and facedown on the bar. Brady Kearns stands over him, holding the jagged end of a smashed wine bottle.
“Go easy,” he says, his voice betraying his own disbelief at what he just did. “A wine like that needs to breathe.”
“Brady,” I say, short of breath as I jump to my feet. “You keep surprising me.”
“I keep surprising myself.”
I pat down the unconscious man. Finding only a phone in his black sport coat, I throw it to the ground and stomp on it, cracking it under my heel. I consider taking the poison promise from his finger, but decide it might be tagged and isn’t worth the risk, and so instead take the paring knife from behind the counter, fling the orange off it, and tuck it under my cap. “We need to go.”
“Agreed.”
The remaining diners stare petrified at us as we rush out, past the bar and atrium, through the thick wood and wrought-iron doors, and onto the bustle and multicolored lights of The NewLanding. Cops are already rushing toward The Eridani, pushing through the crowd, shouting amplified orders through earpiece megaphones.
“Follow me,” Brady says, ducking his head low. We walk quickly to the nearest access alley, turn, and go past the auto-valet, where finely dressed customers of The Eridani wait anxiously for their cars. They don’t seem to notice us as we hurry by them, down another alley, off The NewLanding, away from the cops and the panicked people fleeing the restaurant, into a residential area packed with towering high-rises. Another block south, and we arrive at a long, high capacity auto-valet lane for one of the residence buildings, where a little blue two-door city coupe is pulling up. Brady must have called for it while we were walking.
“This us?”
“Yeah.” He pulls a key fob out of his pocket and pops the trunk open. “You’re going to have to ride in here.”
I stare at the clean gray fabric lining inside, starting to feel very uncomfortable about all this. Brady planned further ahead than he should have been able. He probably rented or procured a car to keep from being tracked, and maybe he had the foresight to park over here because he knew it would be a quicker getaway, but something about all this seems too easy.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because we’re going straight to the spaceport. That opportunity might disappear if my connections there learn about what just happened.”
I’m sure he’s right, and I can hear sirens. Again faced with little other choice, I climb in.
Brady closes the trunk, shutting out the daylight. A few seconds later I feel the vehicle move. Curled up in a fetal position in the darkness, I wait, trying to enjoy the relative calm and quiet. It might be the last respite I get before I meet my end, but I can’t help but reflect back on the life I’ve lived, opportunities I’ve missed. What good have I done? What difference have I made? Somehow I never let myself acknowledge the possibility that I’d die in the line of duty, but now that the prospect of that feels imminent, I realize the irony of my savings sitting in the bank. All my life I’ve worked so hard and sacrificed so much in pursuit of my goal, and just when it’s within reach, I take too big a risk and lose everything. I’ve got no heirs, either, so my money will forfeit to the government after I’m gone. The few handfuls of chalky dust I’ve struggled for my whole life will go back into circulation, indistinguishable from the rest.
I can’t think like this, I remind myself. I have no idea what will happen when the trunk opens, and I need to be ready for anything. This is not over. Not yet.
I find myself tensing up a little bit every time the car comes to a stop. I’m clutching the paring knife when the trunk finally opens and lets in the light, but the first thing I see is Brady, a warehouse ceiling high above him.
“We’re here,” he says, “but we’ve got to be quick.”
I kick my legs over the bumper and climb out, putting my feet down on a bare concrete floor. Filling the vast space are packages, pallets, barrels, crates, all of it marked with the yellow-and-black SCAPE logo. We’re inside one of the Consortium’s shipping hangars at the spaceport, and Brady has not betrayed me. Not yet, anyway.