Poking my head through, I attempted to look around, but the room was too dark to see anything. Luckily, I had planned for such an eventuality. I quickly quashed the voice that was screaming for me to abandon this course of action and plucked the cheap pair of sun glasses that I had purchased earlier out of my coat pocket. I poured just enough heat through my mind and into those glasses to force my will upon the lenses.
It certainly helped the transformation process when I had a good understanding of what I was transforming an object into. But sometimes, a crystal clear purpose was all that I needed to have, which was the case with this little transformation. And to think I had just stumbled upon it one dark day. Instead of blocking or muting the available light like they were meant to do, now these lenses would amplify the available light. Like I said it was my clear purpose that made this transformation work since I have no clear understanding of the science behind night vision. But fortunately, my understanding wasn’t necessary for me to use them.
I had bought myself about a minute or two of excellent vision, but I needed to replenish the heat I had used. I pulled out the last two hand warmers, opened them, and with another quick transformation, I made one of their sides sticky so I could secure them to my arms. Once I felt their warmth flowing into me, I quickly ducked my head into the hole and looked around the empty hallway. Once I was sure no one was in the room, I entered and resealed the hole behind me. Uncertain where to go, I randomly turned right and walked down the hallway, listening for the anything that would help me locate Alexis.
As I came to the end of the hallway I started to hear bits of a conversation. And that was when the half of my brain that wanted to let Alexis live started back up again. What if Alexis has a family? What if he has children? What if they are with him in the room? Fear began to build inside of me, and that voice I had tried to quash in my desire to stay alive began reaching me again. This time, it was asking me what I was going to do now. With a deep breath I focused on what needed to be done in order for me to live through the night.
But with every step I took that pesky little voice kept asking questions. What if he has children? What if those children are with him? Again I chastised myself for the stray thoughts as I oriented myself on the conversation and started my search. For all I knew Alexis was alone and watching TV. But that little voice was persistent, it was bad enough that I was being forced to kill one good man. Could I kill someone else just as innocent?
As I was trying to ignore that rather pointed question I found the source of the conversation, a door with light seeping out from its edges. I had to know who was in that room before I could or would do anything. I stepped to the side of the door and placed my finger to the drywall. With another simple transformation I made a hole in this side of the drywall, about four inches wide. Then I took a deep breath and reached through the hole to touch the other side of the wall and made another hole though this time it was only about an inch wide.
Fortunately I had remembered to lift the glasses to the top of my head so the light coming from the other room wasn’t all that blinding. Holding my breath I examined the room and was able to make out Alexis sitting on a couch watching television. I instantly let out a sigh of relief. But why am I relieved? Just because he was sitting in this room all by himself didn’t mean that he was a single man, it just meant that he was alone catching up on his television. Am I really willing to sacrifice his life for my own?
Of course that was when the voice of self-preservation reminded me of something. Specifically, what Dante had told me before I left that restaurant, Alexis had been getting in the boss’ way and it had to come to a close. If I were to balk at Dempsey’s assignment for me then he would just send another one of his goons to finish the job. Plus I would have that less than pleasant reunion with the rather large bullet. So, the question that had been plaguing me since I opened the envelope, was once again silenced.
I tried to convince myself that Alexis’ own actions had condemned him, therefore, I wasn’t a murderer that belonged to Dempsey. I was only responsible for the cleanup. With this thought, the last vestiges of argument were extinguished. My decision was made. Reaching into my coat again I pulled out my trusty pen. Yes. I went to an execution armed only with a pen. But honestly, I could have pulled anything out of my coat and it would have been the perfect weapon, since it was simply a placeholder for what I needed.
I have never really needed a weapon for anything. My take on the matter was if I needed a weapon then I was doing something very wrong. But that didn’t mean I was a stranger to guns, not in the slightest. I combed through my memories as quickly as I could and found the one I needed almost instantly. A long time ago I had been given the opportunity to help disassemble and then reassemble a nine millimeter Beretta. It was definitely a bizarre opportunity but then again, it was the type of one that I enjoyed collecting, you just never knew when some experiences would prove useful. And now, for the first time, that experience was going to be very useful.
Fixing the mental picture of all the pieces together I let the pen rest in the palm of my right hand and poured heat through that mental image and into the pen. In the blink of an eye, what had been a pen was now a serviceable nine millimeter Beretta, complete with the hopefully functional sound suppressor. With my tool in hand I dropped my eye back to the hole and made sure Alexis hadn’t noticed I was there. This was going to be difficult enough without having to look him in the eye. Thankfully, he was still engrossed in his show.
Taking a deep breath I leveled the gun at the back of his head. This was it. Once I crossed this line there would be no going back. My conscience tried to nudge me once more, telling me this was wrong. Why now? The man was a dead man, I was just cleaning up the mess that my new boss had stirred up. I attempted to ignore that little voice I braced myself for the gun’s kickback. When I was as ready as I was ever going to be, I silently took one more breath and evenly squeezed the trigger.
If the muffled click bang that billowed out of the gun was what it was supposed to sound like when suppressed, then I was happy that I had remembered to add the suppressor to my mental image. But unfortunately, that was all I was able to be happy about; the bullet that had been speeding its way to Alexis’ skull came within three feet of its target and stopped in midair, like a fly caught in a spider’s web. Confused, I repositioned my sights and pulled the trigger again. Or rather, I tried to, but I quickly found that I was unable to move any part of my body, not even squeeze the trigger. Panic lanced down my spine as I tried to force my body into action. When I was unable to follow my mind’s directions my fear soared to new heights.
What is going on? I forced my eyes to look down the barrel’s sight and I saw Alexis turn around and look straight at the hole in his wall. Even though I couldn’t see his mouth I could tell by his eyes that a small but wan smile was spreading across his lips. Remembering the face from the picture I was unable to reconcile that face with the half face before me. Instead of a joyous man all I could see was an executioner. Casually the well-built man stood up, walked towards the suspended bullet, and plucked it right out of the air before examining it. From here I could tell that the front of it had crumpled as if it slammed into something solid. But the path had been through empty air, there was nothing for it to slam into. What have I gotten myself into?
Alexis dropped the bullet to the ground and turned his attention to the hole that I had made. He was too far away to do anything more than look at it, but he closed the distance easily enough. I wasn’t able to see more than his finger trace the edge of his side of the hole. What is he doing? Is he appraising my work?
But before I could really wonder anymore, he quickly removed his finger. Then, the room went dark and I realized he was just like me. He had sealed his side of the hole. Naturally, my glasses that would have allowed me to see quite comfortably were resting away from my eyes. So I was forced to stand there in the darkness and wait for my new executioner to fetch his axe.
Chapter 18
When he eventually leveled his gaze upon me he seemed to be measuring me, like a pig at market. The air of indifference that was radiating off of him was unnerving. After a subjective eternity of study the man leaned against the doorframe and, shaking his head, spoke in an emotionless voice. “Well I will admit that you do have a fair amount of skill.” Pausing to take a deep breath he crossed his arms in front of his chest as he went on. “But unfortunately for you, you weren’t as equally blessed with intelligence.”
With a disgusted sigh he stalked over, never taking his eyes away from me as if I would finish the attempt if given the opportunity. I tried to reply but my mouth was as still as the rest of my body. So I stood there and waited for this man to pass judgment on me. As I tried to stare at the man’s neck I couldn’t suppress the feeling that this was going to end very badly for me. Strangely, I found myself thinking about how rare my particular talent was “supposed” to be. Before attending Dempsey’s tournament I had never met anyone else with my abilities and yet within the last twenty-four hours I had discovered two. Dempsey’s woman and this man were just like me.
Despite the serious nature of my predicament, a part of me couldn’t help but examine the technical side of the situation. How did he manage to stop the bullet, and how did he manage to so completely immobilize me? After all, he had been in a different room with no line of sight to me, and from what I knew about our gifts that was quite impossible, or it should have been.
Looming over me he spoke softly, “What am I going to do with you?” Alexis idly started scratching the bottom of his chin with his right hand. And he kept on scratching as he stood there silently, pondering his own question. He was obviously aware of just how useful silence can be in inducing terror. All I could do was wait for him to come to a decision. Eventually he broke the silence with a whisper, but in the utter silence of the room it may as well have been a scream. “I’m going to remove the restraints I’ve placed around your mouth, but no more. And I’m only doing that so you can answer me, do you understand?”
I instantly felt pressure evaporate from my jaw. How had I missed the pressure being applied? What did he do to me? After a few rapid blinks I shifted my eyes up as far as I could and I recognized a growing look of impatience thickening upon Alexis’ face. He was waiting for me to answer him, and I was remaining silent, great. I pushed past my shock quickly offered my reply of assent.
With a nod he leaned against the wall, positioning himself in order to place his face on the same level as mine. “As I said, you have talent kid. But you lack understanding to pair with that talent.” A wry laugh escaped his mouth before he shook his head and concluded his thought. “Tonight, you were like a child attempting to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.”
I knew I was in trouble, but I had no desire to put up with his taunting “What’s happening to me?” On its own, not a bad question given the circumstances, my problem was the tone. Rather than acting meek—or even normal—I instead sounded a bit belligerent and demanding.
Knowing how much trouble those words were going to cause my I tried to close my eyes, but like the rest of me they were frozen. I clamped down on the words that were wanting to pour out next. Instead, I lifted my gaze so that Alexis’ solemn stare didn’t quite meet my own, while still allowing me to study his. This was not an easy thing to accomplish.
As the silence, not to mention the tension in his face, began to build, I was worried that my big mouth had finally secured my death. But suddenly the tension in his face simply disappeared. And with a deep belly laugh Alexis began to twirl his finger in front of my face, which only confused me. Eventually he was able to voice what he had been attempting to communicate through his hand gesture. “I’ve essentially wrapped you up in a cocoon.”
Emboldened by his answer, I asked the next question, “How?”
Folding his arms across his chest he offered me a friendly smile, but that was where the warmth ended. The tone let me know that while he may have been willing to overlook the tone I had used earlier, the same wouldn’t be true again. “Your question just demonstrates the lack of understanding you have when it comes to forging. Now forget any more questions you might have because I have one for you.” While his voice was calm I could see the deadly seriousness in his eyes. Without moving, he somehow managed to appear to be looming over me again. With the same emotionless voice he asked me his question. “Why did you even try to challenge me?”
“What are you talking about?”
As I answered I could see the shock in his eyes grow. “Surely you must have…” but he was unable to say anything else past the stutter in his voice. Taking a long moment to collect his thoughts and composure he was eventually able to ask his question. “Are you honestly trying to tell me that you had absolutely no idea that I was a forger?”
Now I was the one to be confused. “What does faking signatures have to do…?”
The shock and confusion fell away from his face only to be replaced with a look of disgust. In a stern and commanding voice he asked, “You don’t know what a forger is, do you?”
“I can honestly tell you that I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Then what on earth brought you here, tonight?”
My throat tightened up and not because of the constraints. Truth be told I was honestly more than a little embarrassed that I was about to admit to my target that I was there with orders from a crime lord to assassinate him. At the same time, a part of me decided that the truth was my best option, so before I could stop myself, I started to blurt it out. “I was recently forced into this by Bertrand Dempsey…”
He immediately stood straight up so I was unable to see his face, but I could hear the snarl in his voice, “You’re one of that man’s assassins?” I could also hear the sheer revulsion hanging thickly in his voice.
Again before I could think, I opened my big mouth, “I guess so.”
The snarl and disgust were still in his voice, but they were also mixed with cautious curiosity as he asked, “What do you mean, you think so?”
“I was sort of forced into this job, if you want to call it that.”
The snarl had at least been dropped from his voice as he inquired. “Okay I’ll bite. How were you forced into this job?”
If I could have closed my eyes I would have, but since I unable to, I launched into the pertinent part of my tale. “I was playing in his hold’em tournament and I had had an extraordinary run of luck, which was taken by the dealers as a sign of cheating. And since this is Dempsey we’re talking about, they told him their suspicions. This in turn spurned him to order a break in the game so he could have cameras installed in the final table. It was there that he caught me when I actually cheated in the final hand.”
“What are you stupid?” He asked, though by his tone I could tell it was a rhetorical question, so I just bit my tongue. “You actually tried to cheat Dempsey?”
“I wasn’t cheating him personally.” I offered as an explanation. But as those hollow words left my mouth even I knew I had been fooling myself. I could no longer believe the lie that I had tried to sell myself. I had been nothing more than a fool.
With a look of indifference the towering man said coldly, “That doesn’t matter, boy. Truth is truth, and the truth is you cheated the worst man possible. But what does intrigue me is that you’re still breathing, which I’m going to guess leads into what you actually did?”
“I changed one of my pocket cards into an ace.”
&nbs
p; “Giving yourself a…”
“Full house, aces over eights.”
With a laugh he looked down, “You willingly gave yourself a dead man’s hand?”
“What?”
“You do know what that hand is right?”
His question made me nervous, what was so special about that hand? I cautiously answered the question. “No, I’ve never heard of it. Should I?”
“The reason that hand is called a dead man’s hand, is Wild Bill Hickok was killed when he had that hand. You do know who that is, right?”
“Some famous dead cowboy right.” I said flippantly.
Shaking his head in frustration Alexis muttered, “What do they teach these kids in school these days?” Returning his attention to me, his words instantly grew clear as they bored through me. “While there is some debate over the actual composition of the hand there is a consensus that it was at least two pair. A pair of black aces and eights.”
I didn’t realize that Alexis stopped until I looked up and saw his waiting face. Did he ask me a question? I quickly muttered something about understanding what he had said, it seemed like the most logical thing to be waiting on. I must have been right because, after another minute of silence, he started up again. The man really knew how to wield his silences to full effect.
“Now as I’ve implied only the fifth card is surrounded in mystery. There are some who will swear up and down it was some sort of queen, while others claim it was the nine of diamonds. But then again there are those who are convinced, or maybe they would just rather believe, that the third card was another ace. Now it just so happens that aces over eights is the most widely known version of the hand and, due to the strength of that hand that is most likely scenario. But either way, it’s considered an extremely unlucky hand to have.”
The nine of diamonds, was Alexis being serious with me? There was no way he could have known what my starting hand had been. But then… Is this all just some strange and bizarre coincidence? When my mind finally pulled together all of the stray thoughts into one intelligible, or mostly intelligible pot, laughter was on the verge bursting out of me like water from a dam. I fought to control myself as I had zero reason to laugh. It took me awhile, but I was eventually able to diffuse the impending laughter, which is of course when I chose to open my mouth. “Well then I guess it was quite the apt hand to make for myself.” And with the one quip the wall I had built around the laughter crumbled and my laughter filled the hallway.
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