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He’s bleeding from the gash in his head and dragging one of his legs.
    ‘Let’s get the hell out of here, sparky.’
    The goblins watch us with narrow, menacing eyes as we make the painfully slow shuffle up the walkway to the elevator and out of the goblin lair.
    ‘You drive,’ Ronin says, fumbling for the keys as we reach the Cortina. I start the car just as he passes out in the passenger seat.

    ‘Ask for Dr Munro,’ Ronin says, his eyes popping open the moment we stop outside the emergency room. I help him through the entrance and we collapse on the uncomfortable plastic chairs next to a guy holding part of his face on with a cloth, and a woman missing a finger. I give her an empathetic nod.
    An old doctor with wild brown hair, a series of deep ugly facial scars, and a T-shirt with a cat on a trampoline beneath his white coat turns the corner, takes one look at Ronin and rolls his eyes.
    ‘Schoolgirls beat you up again?’
    ‘That was once!’ Ronin says, wincing. ‘And they
were
possessed by demonic forces.’
    ‘Right, “possessed”.’ Munro smiles. ‘Come on, let’s sew the worst of that up.’
    ‘You’re a gent, Doc,’ Ronin says.
    While I wait, I get a Coke from the vending machine and slouch against the wall watching the various casualties hobble by and trying to guess their origins. It’s while I’m trying to figure out how a guy managed to jam a corkscrew into
that
part of his body that I casually look through a window and see Anwar staring sullenly at an episode of
Days of Our Lives
on a flickering TV.
    Seeing my arch-nemesis is, like, emotionally challenging and I need to take a moment to process it:
CrowBax:
   
Could probably still take him out with an overdose. It’ll look like an accident.
SienerBax:
   
You’re ridiculous. We saved him. Besides, we’re being good from now on, remember. Remember?
CrowBax:
   
I don’t remember having an equal say in that.
SienerBax:
   
Be good. For Esmé.
CrowBax:
   
OK, fine. But we don’t have to go see him, right?
    I walk in through the ward door trying to look nonchalant. Anwar is lying on a bed looking bored, but when his eyes land on me they narrow into daggers of pure malice.
    ‘Zevcenko,’ he spits.
    ‘So nice to see you,’ I say through gritted teeth.
    ‘Yeah, I bet.’
    ‘I thought you were OK?’ I say.
    He lifts his pyjama top and shows me the nasty scar on his abdomen.
    ‘The stabbing caused complications. I have to have a colostomy bag.’
    ‘I bet chicks dig it,’ I say before I can stop myself.
    ‘Fuck you,’ he hisses.
    ‘Yeah, well, just don’t forget who saved your life. I could have left you there to marinate in your own bodily fluids.’
    ‘Knowing that hurts more than any of the tubes they’ve shoved into my orifices.’
    ‘Well I’m not particularly fond of the decision either,’ I say.
    We stare at each other in hostile silence.
    ‘What are you into, Zevcenko?’ Anwar says eventually.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I’m trying to figure it out, man,’ he says as he jabs the button next to him to lever his bed into a more upright position. ‘You give up your porn for a bunch of guns. I thought you were going to use them to secure some kind of new territory, but I don’t hear anything further about it. It’s like they’ve just disappeared.’
    ‘They have,’ I say. ‘I no longer have them.’
    ‘You sold them? I could have found you a buyer if that’s what you were after.’
    ‘Traded them,’ I say. ‘And what I wanted you couldn’t get.’
    ‘Hmmm. I always knew you were into some dark shit, Zevcenko. Let me in on it and I’ll leave your little flunkies alone.’
    ‘The Spider has disbanded. Kyle, Zikhona and the Kid are all NPCs now. They don’t figure in the game any more.’
    He laughs. ‘I think I’ll decide that.’
    ‘Listen,’ I say. ‘It’s over. We’re finished. High school isn’t like the Mafia.’
    ‘You’re really going to stand here and say something