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“Then otten him killed”

The old Holiday wouldn’t hit o or it’s gonna eat you up”

I shrug “What’s left to eat?” I didn’t deserve her brother’s love, and I sure as shit don’t need her pity I flag down the bartender and he comes over with another bottle Holiday shakes her head as I pour lass

“I’ back here next year”

“So sorry Will miss you Break the chains, and all that” She stands and stares down atspiteful, but she ss it down, enraging me because I can smell the pity “You knohat just rubs me raw?” I say up to her “You look down at me because you’re in that little uniform and you think me cheap But you’re the one too stupid to realize you’re wearing a collar You’re the one he’d be ashamed of”

“The only good thing about hi dead is that he doesn’t have to see you like this So long, Eph” At the door, she glances back down at her datapad and a shadow of fear passes over her face from what she s

ees there Then she’s gone into the rain

Two glasses later, I abandon the bottle and stumble out of the bar and onto the sidewalk Rain drips its way through the labyrinth of city above and below, growing fouler by the level I go to the edge of the sidewalk and peer over the rusted hfare It’s a thousand- cars and taxis blink through the gathering fog Fros, advertisereens and violent reds into the air like rainbow pus On a digital billboard, a six-story Red child is wandering alone in the desert Lips cracked Skin burnt absurdly His foot strikes so and lo, he discovers so buried A bottle Feverishly he twists off the top and takes a drink He laughs with delight and holds the glistening bottle up to the sun, where it sparkles and beads with divine drops of perspiration The word AMBROSIA sparkles onto the screen, a little wing-heel logo in the corner

A distant roar coer ship leaves its berth at AID, ai I’d never left Hyperion for the Mass Wishing I’d gone to a Pearl club and found a Pink to s ; this just picks at the wound But if I don’t pick, then it feels like it didn’t matter And if didn’t matter, then neither do I

I pullit over the rail, and pull up the last video played Security cae A wintery landscape fills the air in front ofis stranded on the bridge to a landing pad that juts out froe Gold in blue ares her blade through his spine out his stomach and hoists him in the air like a street vendor’s kebab Then she hurls hiainst the rocks beneath His blood darkens the white snow

I hurl the datapad down into the abyss, tears and rain blurring ainst e, looking at the cars beneath and the darkness beyond theo when Holiday called me I was in the Piraeus Insurance offices Didn’t evenup I just took off e, and left that office for the last time

I could leave that quietly now

But as I lean forward to go over the edge, so the back of my jacket I feel my feet slide out from under me as I’m jerked off the rail back onto the sidewalk I land hard on the wet concrete, the air rushing out of lasses stare down at me

“Who the fu—”

A fist the size of a s sends me to darkness