'You'll find out soon enough.' His voice is quiet, controlled, and then he's running at me, a final act of defiance, and one I'm not expecting. I can't stop the pomp from happening. He tears through me, a scrambling fury of claws. This fellow didn't expect to die, and he's mad about it, but not enough to betray his boss. In fact, I can tell he blames me. After all, I didn't die and I was supposed to.
Well, he doesn't have my sympathy.
The pomp is painful, but fast, then he's gone, and I'm left standing, feeling dizzy. Rubbing at my limbs. No one should die with such rage inside them. It leaves me hurting, and angry. Dissatisfied on every level.
'You really should clean up in here,' Wal says, picking up another chip packet.
'Don't you start,' I growl.
My mobile chirps. I drag it from my pocket. It's a text from Lissa: Of course you do.
What?
My office door swings open and Wal slips from air to arm. The ratio of earth to Hell has shifted in earth's favour. There are shouts, another ringing alarm, and Tim and a couple of the bigger guys from the office rush in. They look at me then at the broken glass. All this mess. It's the first time I have a real excuse for it.
'Naked.' I lift the phone up in the air. 'Of course!'
'What the – Steven, are you right?' Tim demands, then his eyes widen. 'What the fuck happened to your ear?'
Oh, I'd forgotten about that. I reach up and touch it. My fingers come back bloody. I'm aflood with wooziness. Jesus.
'Someone just tried to kill me. And a second someone killed them, from upstairs, on the roof – Hellside, but you should check the real roof, just in case…'
Tim looks at the men with him, nods, and they run off. Leaving him, me and the phone.
I sway near the broken window. Perhaps I should move away from that drop. 'Sorry about the mess.' And then I remember the glass in my foot.
'Watch your step,' I say, as darkness swallows me.
8
I' m rushing through the creaking, mumbling dark. Knives whisper and flash around me, winding and slashing at each other. In their wake, smoke trails and bodies fall where there were none – as though the knives have knitted their victims' existence and demise in the same instant.
My boots crunch on ash and bone.
A man gibbers on the hill. He sees me, comes rushing down. I stand and wait, uneasy, my belly cold. But I will not run. I recognise him at last.
Morrigan.
'You didn't think you had it that easy, did you?' he says.
The earth is a mouth, a great swallowing mouth. Morrigan tumbles and is gone.
I am rushing through the dark. The knives a circle of stone around me.
A hand closes on mine and I can't get free.
Another hand, and then another grabs me. Someone pulls out my index finger, and cuts. Severs the digit from the palm.
'One by one. That's how it works.' It's Morrigan again. He brings his face close to mine. 'You never should have won. The job's too big for you. Your feet are too small for the boots you're clomping in.'
I push him away. He slashes out with a whispering knife. Another finger falls. I'm awake. I check my fingers.
All there.
Someone is stitching up my foot. There's that uncomfortable sensation of skin being pulled tight, without the pain. Not that I want the pain, but my body is all too aware it's going on somewhere, that trauma is being had whether I can feel it or not.
I'm lying on a bed in Brooker's room, which has to be the best fitted-out sick bay in any workplace in Australia.
'I don't remember Mr D ever getting into this sort of trouble,' Dr Brooker says, looking at me over his glasses. Brooker's work as Mortmax Brisbane's physician usually means the occasional bit of stitch work, a few prescriptions and a lot of counselling. He's very rarely in Number Four – which is what saved him during Morrigan's Schism – but he's available most of the time. I've known Dr Brooker since I can remember, before memory, in fact. He was the attending doctor at my birth. Yeah, and I get about as much sympathy from him as anyone in my family would have given me. I suppose I could take that as a compliment. I called him the 'good Doctor Brooker' once and got a cuff under the ear. His mood hasn't exactly improved since.
I grimace. 'Mr D had been doing this a century or two before you were even born. He'd gotten the trouble out of his system.'
'Nevertheless… you really need to concentrate on your job, not this messing about with guns. People always get hurt.' He jabs a gloved finger at my foot. 'You're an RM. You're not about hurting people.'
'He had a gun. I had a chair, and believe me, he ended up much worse than I did. Ouch!'
Brooker harrumphs and pulls a stitch tight. 'Keep still. You were much better when you were unconscious. You'll be all right. Quite frankly, I don't know why anybody even bothered trying to shoot at you. Waste of time – you can't be killed that way.'
'Maybe they just wanted to see if they could hurt me?'
'Well, they can hurt you all right.' He smiles broadly. 'But not as much as me if you don't keep still.'
'Where is everybody?'
'Does this look like a party to you?' Brooker rolls his eyes and finishes his stitching with a neat knot – he's done an awful lot of those over the years. 'They're waiting outside, where I told them to wait.'
Yeah, I might be RM, but in this room Brooker is king.
I clear my throat softly. 'Can I ask you something?'
Brooker looks at me. 'Shoot. No pun intended.'
'Did Mr D ever talk to you about his dreams?'
Brooker shakes his head; I can tell he thinks the question has come out of left field. 'Steven, I hardly ever spoke to him at all. Don't tell me you thought otherwise. He was a peculiar man.' Brooker squints at me. 'To be honest, I like you much more.'
I don't tell him that Mr D is still very much around.
I remember how Mr D died. Bones crunching as the SUV rolled over him. He certainly ended up in a lot of trouble. But then again for the majority of us that's all we can expect. Time and the world are hard and grinding. Bones and flesh are soft.
'Now, these dreams… '
I sigh. 'They're nightmares really. Nasty as hell nightmares.'
'Everyone has bad dreams,' Dr Brooker says. 'Particularly in your job, and mine.'
'That's not the problem,' I tell him. 'It's just that I rather like them.' My face flushes.
'How much?'
My face is burning. 'A lot.'
'Hmm.' He squints at me like I'm some kind of thermometer. I don't know what sort of reading he gets but after a while he turns away. 'Don't get caught up with dreams. Sometimes that's all they are.'
We both know that isn't true. Brooker looks worried. 'See me in a day or two – this really isn't my specialty. Now isn't the best time, you've been through a bit of trauma. And I'm sure that hasn't helped.'
'It'll heal,' I say looking at my foot.
'I wasn't talking about that. The way all this happened – the way you became RM, and the betrayals you faced – none of it was good. Steve, I lost a lot of dear friends that week. You lost more than that. It takes its toll.'
But is that really a good enough excuse for the number of times I've shown up at work drunk? Or just not
