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important proposition for MacFarlane.’
    ‘Doesn’t everyone?’ the young muscle asked.
    I shrugged but said nothing.
    ‘Well?’ the muscle said, slightly confusing me.
    ‘Sorry, I thought the question was rhetorical. I don’t know, is the answer.’ The muscle was not quite sure how to take this. I cursed myself. I’d made this guy feel stupid, which would in turn lead to anger, which would in turn lead to me having to kill him.
    ‘Look, son, I know your story and I know your life. I know what you’re doing and I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to see MacFarlane and make my offer.’ The muscle looked amused. He turned to his audience of fellow toughs.
    ‘He’s worried about hurting me,’ he said, laughing. None of his friends laughed. I tried again, desperately trying to keep this boy alive for no good reason I could think of.
    ‘Let me guess, you’ve got some scary-sounding street name like Razors, Deathboy or Heed-the-Ball.’
    ‘Cordite.’
    ‘I don’t want to know what it is. I’m just telling you about your life in an attempt to lengthen it and save myself some trouble.’
    ‘Listen to him, boy,’ the barman said. ‘He’s special forces, or was.’ I said nothing, just watching, hating the inevitability of this.
    ‘So what? You vets are all piss and wind ...’ Cordite found himself looking down the barrel of the Mastodon.
    ‘Mine’s bigger than yours,’ I said. ‘Now what you’re feeling is peer-group pressure. You can’t back down because you’re being watched by the people you’re trying to impress, and it will be humiliating if you don’t do anything.’
    Though I knew it would be worse than humiliating. This boy’s career was over. He was going from predator to prey in the Rigs’ food chain after this. Somewhere in Cordite’s drug-addled mind he realised this too. I read the movement in body language almost before it happened. I felt the world of the bridge bar slowing down until it was like everyone else was moving through thick mud as my reflexes kicked in. I let everyone see that Cordite was going for his gun. I even let him touch the weapon before I pulled the trigger, already shaking my head sadly as I did. The two feet of muzzle flash scorched Cordite’s dermal chest armour. My audio dampening kicked in, compensating for the deafening roar of the oversized revolver. In what seemed like slow motion to me, I watched the bullet pierce the boy’s armour, enter the chest cavity, pick him up off his feet, and then the explosive charge in the bullet detonated, sending liquefied and scorched parts of his internal organs squirting out of the entry wound.
    I lowered the enormous smoking pistol as Cordite hit the ground. Many of the other muscle had their hands on their weapons, including the salary man’s guard. The salary man was just watching me with casual interest. Anecdote fodder. I looked down sadly at the corpse I’d just made. Ignoring the threat of the rest of MacFarlane’s security in the bar, I opened the chamber of my revolver, took out the spent round, pocketed the smoking cartridge and replaced it with a new, loose round from my pocket before holstering the pistol.
    I looked around the bar. Changing to low light, I saw the table at the back. The fat-looking guy, ostentatiously sporting his wealth, smoking a cigar, decadent make-up, and wearing fashion ware, the two prettiest girls in the bar with him and guards who did not look like they had their heads stuck up their arses.
    ‘You have your sacrifice,’ I said angrily. ‘You going to listen to me now?’ MacFarlane took a drag of his cigar. The cherry flaring up illuminated the white-painted skin of his fleshy, bearded face, his red-gloss lips and dark eyes.
    ‘Natural selection,’ he said, nodding towards Cordite’s body. ‘Thank you for culling my herd.’
    ‘I don’t have to stop there,’ I said and then cursed myself for such an obvious response.
    ‘You do in a room full of my men. You may