One Eyed Jacks

"How long will this take?" Sui Ma asked with more than detached interest.

"It depends," Cu

… so that should cut down on the time it takes him to assimilate the memories."

It took a few moments, but then Deadhead finally began to groan and squirm. "Noooo!" he cried, twisting as if to avoid a fatal blow.

Cu

"Red hair," Deadhead panted in his trance. "Smiling face. The boy likes it, he does." He squirmed again and let out a long, keening cry.

"Is he alone? Is there another in the room?" Deadhead whipped his head back and forth. "Another. Too far back. Blurry. Can't see who-"

Cu

"At his desk."

"What's he doing?"

"He is afraid. He opens the box, though he doesn't want to. He is saying, `Why are you doing this to me? I don't want to. Don't make me do this.' He puts his face down in the box-"

Cu

"Redhead," Sui Ma said. "Mind control."

"Dr. Tachyon," they said together.

Sui Ma frowned, shaking her head. "I don't get it," she said. She looked critically at Deadhead, who was panting like a dog and tossing and jerking spasmodically on the floor, caught up in the aftereffects of brain-eating. "Why would Tachyon make Kien kill himself?"

"Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it was some other redheaded mind-control artist." Cu

Sui Ma again looked into the distance. "That may be true," she admitted, "but since when did truth have anything to do with deciding upon the proper course of action?" She looked at Cu

"So I'm still dead," he said with as much flippancy as he could muster.

"Let us say that the firm is eliminating your position," Sui Ma said with a smile.

"Okay," he said. "In that case, fuck it."

He faded to total invisibility. He didn't know the layout of Sui Ma's room as well as he did Kien's, but he'd done his best to memorize it in the last few minutes. He hit the ground, rolled, and came up dodging as he heard Sui Ma shout and her guards blunder around the room. There was a short burst of gunfire, an anguished scream, and then Sui Ma shouted, "Use your swords, idiots, and guard the door!"

He moved 'toward the sound of her voice, and stumbled over what sounded like a moaning Deadhead. He landed silently, rolled, stood, and bumped into someone else. His hand slashed out and sunk into firm, muscular flesh, and he felt sudden, searing pain as a sharp blade chopped down into his upper thigh. He stifled a scream, and struck up at where he judged the sword wielder's wrist would be.

He struck flesh again, and pulled away. The blade came with him, still lodged in his thigh. He set his teeth together and yanked the sword from his leg, fading it out. Clasping both hands around the hilt, he swung in a great figure eight, feeling it slice through meat like a hot knife through butter.

Sui Ma shouted again at her guards, and that was a mistake because now he knew where she was. He started to circle toward her, holding the invisible sword out before him like a blind man might hold out his cane, and to the confusion and panic ru

There were deep, hoarse shouts in new voices, and the sound of gunfire blasted deafeningly through the chamber. Cu

There were more than a dozen Wolves wearing leathers and delicately featured Michael Jackson masks, and armed to the teeth with automatic weapons and combat shotguns. One of them had a portable boom box, and the song "I'm Bad" was blasting through the chamber louder than the reports of their weapons.

Sui Ma was standing before her throne, more anger than fear on her face, braced by two of her guards, who were dropping their swords and fumbling for the guns holstered at their sides. Cu

He felt something warm and sticky splatter on his face and faded in his eyes, knowing that the mask of blood he was now carrying would give him away anyway.

One of the guards was down, but the other was turning toward him, gun up and ready. Cu

She looked at Cu

He nedded. "You were right," he said. " I could never work for you. And I don't think that you could ever work for me."

He thrust the blade up and into her stomach, and she gasped, collapsing backward onto her chair. She looked at him for what seemed a long time before her eyes glazed over. Cu

In the rest of the chamber the Werewolves were wrapping up the last few of their surprised, outnumbered foes. Warlock stepped over Deadhead, cowering on the floor, and came up to join Cu

"Got here as soon as we could," he said, "after one of the brothers spotted you being hustled out of that laundromat. Finally figured, what the hell, bust in and-"

He stopped and stared at Cu

"Don't worry"-he laughed-"I'm all right. This isn't mine." He wiped at the blood, smearing it but managing to remove some of it from his features.

Warlock seemed to catch himself. "Right," he said. "Glad you're okay. But we'd better move it before more of these damned gooks show up." He gestured at Sui Ma's corpse. "They're not going to like that."

"Okay," Cu

But despite the death surrounding him, despite the pain he himself felt, Cu

In the far-gone days when the Bowery had been noted for its fashionable nightspots, the decrepit building now known as the Werewolves' Lair had been a famous luxury hotel. When things started going bad for the neighborhood, the hotel had been turned into apartments. When the neighborhood really hit the skids, it had degenerated into a flophouse, then been abandoned for well over a decade, sinking even further into pathetic decrepitude before the Werewolves took it over as their headquarters.