Greg Rucka - Critical Space

"I remember the elevator and the lights going out and the noise. After that things get horribly disjointed. I remember waking up as she was binding me, and I tried to scream and she'd gagged me. I don't even know where I was half the time. She wouldn't tell me anything, Atticus, she wouldn't tell me why. She wouldn't tell me anything…"

By the time we made the turn back to the park she'd forced her way through the trauma, and her legs weren't all water anymore, and she was willing to try walking on her own. When we reached the car, I took the key from my pocket, unlocked the door, and helped her get behind the wheel. On the passenger seat, Drama had left an open Triple-A map, a route highlighted on the paper. Antonia dropped into the seat and stared over the dash for a couple of seconds, massaging her wrists one after the other, then noticed the map.

"Directions," I explained. "Back to my place."

"What do I say to them?" she asked. The rain pounding the roof of the car made it hard to hear her.

"I don't know," I said, because it was the truth.

Antonia searched my face. "She's going to kill you, isn't she?"

I didn't say anything. It seemed like Drama had gone through a lot of trouble just to put a bullet in my head, but I wasn't taking bets on how the night was going to end.

"Atticus – come with me."

I pressed the car key into her palm. "You want to take the Holland Tunnel. You have to go now, Your Ladyship."

She looked at the piece of metal I'd put in her hand as if she'd never seen anything quite like it before, then put it in the ignition. The engine started, and I stepped back, one hand still on the door.

"Put your seat belt on," I said.

She tried to laugh, but all she managed was a wobbly smile. Once she'd snapped the belt into place, she said, "Thank you."

"For you, anytime," I said, and I shut the door, stepping back from the vehicle. Through the water streaming down the window, I thought I could see her giving me one last look, and then the headlights came on and she pulled away.

When the Escort had disappeared into the rain and the night, I turned and started making my way to the slope, to where Drama waited for me.

She met me in the parking lot just past the restaurant that sat on the water. The restaurant turned out to be named after Frank Sinatra, too, and I toyed with the idea that Drama was maybe a Sinatra fan herself, and that was why she'd picked the location. But I realized it wasn't; she'd picked it because farther north and a little east was the campus for the Stevens Institute, and from there she'd had a clear view of everything going on below.

It had taken me just over twelve minutes to make the walk, and the rain had begun to taper off, and now the thunder came in distant and irregular growls, and the lightning couldn't be seen at all. Her directions had been calm and quiet, and had given me no indication of how much farther I needed to go.

As I came around the north side of the restaurant, she ordered me to turn right and approach the Hudson and toss the Motorola into the water. I did, and when I turned back around, she was there, standing beneath the awning of the building, out of the shadow, and I realized I'd walked right past her and not even noticed.

I thought she would leave some kind of distance between us, but she just walked right up to me, stopping only long enough to toss her Motorola into the river after mine. Once she did that, her hands appeared empty.

Each time we'd been this close before, her face had been concealed. This time she hadn't bothered. Finally, the fear that had been absent on the dilapidated pier made itself known, and beneath my soaked shirt I swear I could feel my heartbeat trying to pound its way out. I closed and opened my hands, wishing they would stop shaking, and then I wished that I was someplace else, warm and dry and going to live.

She was almost as I remembered her, and that surprised me. After describing her so many times I'd begun to think I was fabricating details I'd never actually known. She was just under my height, slender, though her shoulders were a little broad, hinting at upper-body strength. The clothes she wore were ordinary, jeans and a shirt and a fabric jacket that was either blue or black. Her hair had been cut very short, and when she turned her head, I could see it was almost shaved at the back of her neck.

I waited for her to stop, but still she kept coming forward, and when she was close enough to touch me without needing to fully extend her arm, she did, pressing her left palm on my chest. Through the wet fabric, her touch seemed hot. The gesture itself was not hostile, but it terrified me, and I couldn't bring myself to move, to look away from her.

We stared at each other.

She had a full mouth, a narrow chin, a slender and small nose. Her eyes seemed large, and she didn't blink, and in the weak light I couldn't tell their color. Her ears were small, laid against the sides of her head, and she wore no jewelry. Her cheekbones were high, making all of the angles of her face that much sharper.

"My name is Alena Cizkova," she said.

I opened my mouth and heard my voice. I don't remember what I said.

There was a tiny, hot pain from my left thigh, and I forced myself to look down, saw her withdrawing the needle, saw her drop the syringe. It was a thin plastic one, disposable, and the plunger had fallen all the way, and I watched as it hit the pavement beneath us, making a little splash in a puddle as it landed.

I brought my eyes back up and said, "That's a stupid way to kill me."

She blinked. The corner of her mouth moved, and her lips parted, and she tilted her head back, and she started to laugh. My mouth was filling with foam, and I told her that it wasn't funny, and I tried to grab hold of her, grabbing at her arm where her hand was still on my chest. She stepped back, and I tried to move forward some more, to grab her again, and my left leg understood but my right wanted to stay exactly where it was, and I ended up on the wet asphalt on one knee, then both, then on my hands.

She laughed like my death was the funniest thing she'd ever seen. Part Two

There was a Doberman.

The dog was a he, and he didn't have a collar, and he weighed at least sixty pounds, and his eyes, soulful dog eyes, seemed to be telling me that the jury was still out, and until it came back, I'd better be on my best behavior. A puffy scar ran along his neck, width-wise all across the throat, white-pink flesh that would never grow for again. He put his muzzle beneath my left hand, nudging it with his wet nose, and when I moved my fingers he turned away, his nails clicking on a hard floor.

It was day and the sunlight was strange, washing out colors and already heavy with heat, and I tried to make some sense of my surroundings as best I could without my glasses. Mostly I was seeing hues, light green and blue, past the foot of the bed, broken by a rectangle that was an open door. To my right, the wall continued, though it was disrupted halfway along with a painting, a swirl of colors that blended together.

The sheet across me was white, and there was no blanket. I lifted it and saw that my left leg was intact, and felt an enormous relief, so great that I fell back and just lay still, staring at the ceiling, at the fixture positioned high above me, at the blades of the fan as they whirred in silent rotation. There had been hallucinations, and there had been many of them, filled with people I'd known or still knew; the boy who'd beaten me up every day after school when I was ten; the drill sergeant who'd given me a faceful of Mace in AIT, then ordered me to run the obstacle course; the teacher who had humiliated me when I couldn't conjugate my Latin fast enough. All those people, faces I hadn't seen in decades, tormenting me each in different ways.