He finds her marooned a few feet from her transport, sporting her usual arsenal of deadly weaponry—tiny ring-mounted laser turrets, lipstick laced with neurotoxins, boots loaded with poison fléchettes and the oldest doomsday device known to man. . . paralyzing beauty.

He swings his shuttle into the docking grid, hatch hissing, spitting steam and filtered air into the dingy port atmosphere. She leans against the battered hood of her flyer and lights an impossibly thin cigarette. "You found it." She pushes a stream of smoke through her lips. It curls through the air around his head, vaporized nicotine fingers caressing his short hair.

"This place is a maze." He reaches into his jacket and retrieves a derm patch. Peel plastic and slap skin, just below the left ear. A bucket of calm sloshes down out of the sky and into his skull. A sigh.

She blinks, green eye shadow flecked with powdered diamond and phosphorescent dust. Lipstick like liquid pink pearls. Eyes like jade stippled with gold. "You look like you could use a drink."

They shoulder their way through the throng of sticky drones; massive wage slaves jittery with the prospect of unloading their net worth for a few hours of entertainment and a new pair of pants. She draws herself up into a cosmic string, weaving around their gravity wells without falling into orbit, avoiding any celestial collisions. He slinks behind her, pulled along by a trail of perfume and desire.

***

The table is festooned with flashing images and scrolling lines of text—advertisements rattling off the benefits of the newest disposable cleaning product, talking heads espousing the virtues of their all-natural nostrums. A small high-rise of Italian condiments is parked near one end—salt, pepper, parmesan cheese, extra-virgin olive oil, red pepper flakes and balsamic vinegar. She grinds the butt of her cigarette into a hunk of glass and sips wine from a tumbler. Shimmering pink lip prints on the rim.

"This isn't like the others." His glass feels heavy, his head light. He takes a long pull anyway. Dry red wine ratcheting up his sense of romance. "This is dangerous, even for you." He sets his glass down on a video of Milan in spring, the period at the end of his sentence.

She raises a sculpted eyebrow and the corners of her small mouth. "Dangerous?"

"You don't know what happens on those trains."

"Nothing you couldn't handle, I'm sure." Words more poisonous than any neurotoxin, more lethal than any fléchette.

He shoves some bread in his mouth, chews on it to think. Thoughts like an elephant wading through half-melted rocky road. Another bite, just to sort it out in his head. "It can be done, but it won't be easy." He leans forward, wipes his mouth with his hand.

She sips the wine, ammunition for the return volley. It is short, precisely aimed and completely devastating. "No. . ." Pink tongue on her upper lip, just for an instant. "No, it won't."

* * *

He heaves red phlegm into the sink, lungs screaming at the cool filtered air of the cabin as if it were chlorine gas. Abdomen contracting like a snake shedding its skin—a futile attempt to eject ravaged lung tissue. He watches a ribbon of pink spit slide from his lips toward the drain, closes eyes and wills the cough away. The attack recedes, but the urge lingers like a ghost, holes up at the base of his neck and waits. He lifts a silver canister to his lips, caresses a small button on its top. Silver vapors sweep down into his throat, pour out of his nose as he exhales. Cool somnolent mist tranquilizing the cough, abating the pain. The room shifts as the train eases into a turn. He goes with the momentum, lets it lull him onto the small bed. He lays back, enjoys the air while he can, while it's not like breathing knives.

He stares through the bent plexi skylight. Green trees slicing through blue sky tumbled with towering clouds. He closes his eyes, lets his mind wander. She is there again, sitting in a black chair, legs crossed, lips wrapped around an ivory cigarette holder. She is always there, cycling in and out of the depths of his mind like currents of air in a weather system. She is gift-wrapped expectation, an unobtainable panacea for his pain, always with him but never truly his. The thought leaves him raw and aching. Without her he is a ruin of hatred and longing, falling from one bloody situation to the next. Together they are distilled nightshade, sickly sweet, intense and completely lethal.

He rises, peels the stained black t-shirt from his pale body. He moves slowly, muscles like knotted cord contracting under translucent skin. Muscles honed for speed and accuracy, masses of potential energy waiting to be unsprung. He moves before the mirror, eyes exploring the scarred landscape of his chest. Flexes his muscles in sequence, watches ribbons of shimmering, spectral tattoos boil to the surface all over his body and face. Some glow, others reflect and refract light. At speed he is an impossible target, a blur of perplexing highlights and shadows. He flexes again and watches the tattoos submerge.

His arsenal is not beautiful like hers. A belt concealing two thin strips of glassy metal, two whirling, twisting ribbons that slice like Ginsus. Two thick black wristbands loaded with an unbelievable number of stinging cells, microscopic hypodermic needles loaded with anaphylactic toxins. The unprepared, those without immunological inoculations, blow up like puffer fish and choke to death on their own swollen flesh. One impossibly heavy black pistol, cast from a super dense material to minimize the recoil from its infinitesimal bullets. He does not need his armor today. Instead he wraps another thin bracelet around his left arm. It houses a crumpled collection of carbon nanotubes, a collapsible buckler stronger than steel.

The door hisses open, slicing into the soft silence of the cabin. She drapes herself across the threshold, a lithe thread of black-clad sexuality. Long black boots caressing a grasping black dress. It clings to her breasts, wraps itself firmly around her thin neck. Small hands dipped in black velvet gloves. She slithers into the room, the door closing behind her. "Are we ready?" The dark molasses smell of tobacco and perfume trailing her words like jet exhaust.

"Nearly." He notices her green eyes exploring his body, widening at the scars and tangles of muscle.

She moves close to him, reaches up with a finger to caress a scar on his left pectoral muscle. "Is that from me?"

"Yes." A pause. He feels her finger on his chest, feels its warmth spreading through his flesh like a drop of dye in a glass of water. "Berlin."

"I am. . . very sorry about that." She presses herself onto his chest, velvet hand drifting up to his cheek.

He studies the shimmering red of her lipstick, wonders if masks his last kiss. He does not care. She is soft and unbearably hot against his skin, pushing him down onto the bed, hands disarming his weapons one by one until he is defenseless under her.

* * *

The train hisses cleanly and silently through the air a few millimeters above the track. The dining car is nearly empty, manned only by a few lone men, each hunched over a particular vice—rich red wine, dark pipe tobacco, powdery white opiates. One of them watches the whiskey from his last sip ease its way down the inside of an octagonal tumbler. He is pale and tinged with yellow like old paper, white hair streaked with silver. His bottle is half empty. The remaining liquor bends the pale afternoon light into a splash of amber on the white marble tabletop. Scenery flickers past the plexiglas window; stands of silver-green conifers blurring themselves before snow-capped mountain ranges that waltz by in the distance.

He checks the time, pulls a small angular watch from the pocket of his wool vest. 3:35 p.m. Another sip of whiskey to steel his nerves. Adjust the heavy white cuffs of his shirt. The meeting will be terse, quiet and potentially ruinous. If all goes well, he will leave the train with his luggage, his life and enough credits to live the rest of his days in comfort. He will return to his love triumphant, two tickets to a resort island in his hand, a smile on his face. All will be forgiven and she will understand why he has betrayed the company, their family and friends. She will understand that it was all for her, for a better life. If all does not go well, he will be a become a smear on the passing scenery, unworthy of even a bullet point on the local news nets.

He drains the tumbler, floods it with more amber liquid. He takes a sip and watches as an impossibly huge man squeezes through the door at the far end of the dining car. He is draped in a white suite, capped with a white top hat. The huge man heads his way, shuffles between the marble tabletops, the tails of his coat moving like doves' wings. He is followed by a small man in a fez, red sash tied around a slim waist, eyes like two drops of ink on papyrus. He casually holds a think black case by an ornate sliver handle wrought in the shape of a striding cheetah.

The large man moves like a weather front, hunkers down at the booth and waits for the small man to take a seat. He slides in, the tassel on his fez bobbing and weaving like a cat's toy. The large man scoots in behind, makes a seal between the tabletop and the back of the booth. The small man speaks.

"Please to meet you," he says with a broken accent. A pause, long dark fingers caressing the silver cheetah. "I trust you have what I need?"

"Yes." He sets the tumbler down, reaches into his vest and retrieves a slip of sliver metal. He lays it gingerly on the table, strokes one edge and watches as it unfurls itself, inflates into a mirrored dome. Lines of code and three-dimensional schematics pour over its surface, throwing white light across their faces.

The little man's eyes grow. "Ah, I see. Good."

The silver-haired man palms the globe. It crumples, then folds itself back into a slip of metal. "You have my. . . reimbursement?"

"Of course." The cheetah handle peeks over the edge of the table, leads the case onto the white marble.

He reaches past the bottle of whiskey, his pale fingers explore the cheetah's frozen stride, wrap themselves around its back. "Thank you."

The little man extracts the slip of metal from the tabletop, slips it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

The door at the far end of the car hisses open. She slips through, black dress swallowing the afternoon light. A gossamer veil suspended from a pillbox hat shrouds her face, a screen of congealed coal smoke. She slides down the aisle toward their booth, hips swaying like a pendulum.

The silver-haired man struggles to resolve her features. His eyes ache with anticipation as they trace the faint outlines of her face. They fall, explore the gentle curve of her waist, her sculpted thighs.

The train leans into a turn, aims itself at a mountain range. Momentum pulls him toward the blurred alpine scenery beyond the window. Lights flicker on along the ceiling of the car.

"A tunnel." The weathered man smiles, white teeth flashing in the horizontal rays of the sun.

Thin screens slither from their hiding spaces along the windowsills, work their way up over the glass. He watches the last few firs streak by, then turns his attention back to her.

She stands at the end of the booth, veil retracted, eyes trained on the retreating scenery. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" Words falling from her lips like snow.

"Who. . ." he pulls the case toward him, hugs it to his chest.

The small man lifts his hand above his shoulder, raises two slinder fingers. Two men in suits rise from the booths behind him and move into the aisle. A third remains seated, puts one hand inside his suit jacket.  The small man answers her question. "Yes, yes it is. Allow me to introduce myself, I am. . ."

She ignores him, leans down over the man and his case, green eyes boring into his face, pink lipstick shimmering in fluorescent lights. He pulls back, sucks in a lungful of her perfume. Then her lips are on his, soft and wet and warm. His heart races, his synapses fire like gatling guns.

She pulls away, leaving him to tremble in his wake.

"Aren't you going to introduce us to your friend?" The small man adjusts his fez, fondles his sash and smiles.

He cannot respond. His chest is in a vice, his arms frozen around the case. The world slows. The train's gentle sway is stretched into one endless slide. The tassels on the man's fez move like the tentacles of a squid. The huge man next to him is a statue, unflinching in the cool light. She stands in the aisle, pale and terrible, thin blade gliding from her sleeve into her pale hand.

The lights flicker, then go out. They flash once, capture a freeze frame—her hand on the back of the big man's head, knife slicing into his neck, a spray of blood across the little man's face. The silver-haired man watches a blur of light streak into the car, long tendrils of silvery metal twisting through the air around it. The two men in suits turn to face it. Something warm splashes in his eyes and everything fades.

* * *

His blade carves a clean line into the man's back and cleaves the corner off his booth. The hunk of foam tumbles into the aisle at the feet of two men in suits. Their pupils reflect the light pulsing under his skin. 

* * *

The big man crumples in the booth, his dead bulk lodged between the seat and the marble tabletop. The small man reaches for the case locked in the dead man's arms, but she is too quick. Her blade sinks into his forearm and he screams. She retracts it, aims it at his eye socket. Her arm strikes out like a scorpion's tail, but he weaves, dives over the back of the booth and into the aisle behind her. She spins to face him.

* * *

The first suit reaches into his jacket and pulls a pistol, aims it at the blur of light and shadow before him.

He drops a blade and snaps his gun out of its rigid holster. He raises it and fires, tumbling across a tabletop and diving into a booth. It cracks like current jumping electrodes, spitting magnetically accelerated hunks of depleted uranium down the aisle. The first one takes the suit's arm off at the elbow. It slaps the tile floor like a dead fish, pistol clutched in its hand. The guy screams and charges down the aisle, trips over his own arm and goes down.

* * *

The tassels on the little man's fez whip like an angler's lure. He crouches low, leathery hands spread open. She spins, a human cuisinart twirling down the aisle. He dodges her blade, strikes out with a fist. It catches her in the ribs, sends her reeling. She recovers, aims a kick at his head. He ducks, but her heel catches his shoulder. It upsets his balance and he teeters, places a hand on the back of a booth. She spins again, pressing a tiny button in her boot with her toe. A swarm of flechettes hisses from her sole. The little man weaves, but he's not fast enough. The tiny blades flay his shoulder and arm, bury themselves deep in his muscles. He grimaces and spits at her feet.

* * *

He flexes once and the light under his skin fades. The other guy picks his way over his friend, who's wailing in the aisle, grasping at the place where his arm used to be. The guy steps over him like he's stepping over a puddle, fires a few rounds into the dark end of the car. The bullets rip through the booth and shatter the marble tabletop behind his head. He pops up, pistol cracking, punching holes in the roof of the car. He trains it on the guy, hits him square in the chest six or seven times. He takes the hits, stumbles over his friend and summersaults into a crouch. He gasps, but there's no blood. He's wearing a vest.

* * *

She dives forward, sweeping her knife in a steep arch. He's slow now, blood sluicing out of his shoulder and arm. The blade catches him in the ear, takes its lobe clean off. He winces and tears stream from his left eye. He lunges, grabs at her waist. She dances away, swiping an "X" into his chest with a flick of her wrist. She's having fun now, like a bullfighter at the end of a match. He stumbles to the floor in her wake, smacks it hard. She can tell he's planning a surprise, wants to use his last ounce of strength to spring up and defeat her. She waits for it, confident in her speed and cunning.

* * *

He leaps from the booth, tumbles into the aisle. The guy is still squirming in his own blood, gripping his ragged stump and moaning. He's over him in an instant, brushing the guy's cheek with a wrist band along the way, whirling his blade before him. He hears the guy choking and coughing behind him, lungs trying to breathe swollen flesh. The last guy raises his pistol and fires. The muzzle flares, sends lead and vaporized cordite into the darkness. His shots miss, tear into a window at the far end of the car. Wind and noise consume the small space. He whirls his blade once, wraps it around the guy's wrist and pulls. The guy's hand twists into the darkness, pistol clutched in its fingers, filum of blood trailing it like a kite string. He rolls once, whips the blade a second time, wraps it around the guy's neck and pulls. His head tumbles onto a tabletop.

* * *

The little man bounds off the floor, releases all his potential energy in one go. She is ready, knife loose in her hand, shoulders poised. But the man springs backward, not forward, staggers into her partner, snatches the blade from his hand. She charges.

* * *

He lets the blade go, jabs his pistol into the little man's spine and pulls the trigger. The gun's shots are muffled, like fingers snapping in a crowded auditorium. Bullets tear through him like shruiken through rice paper walls.

* * *

The first shot hits her in the gut. The second and third tear through her rib cage, rip the flesh off her back and tumble into the door behind her. She drops the knife and crashes to the floor.

* * *

The train emerges from the tunnel, strikes into open space. Red sunlight sluices through the busted window and floods the car. Cold air tears into the space, whips across his short hair, sends marble dust swarming. Window shades slip back into their hiding places, revealing a flat green meadow.

He stands, pistol impossibly heavy in his hand, eyes fixed on her body. It is crumpled between the booths like clothing cast off in a fit of passion. He stares, chest hollow, head empty.

Sirens blare. Tiny red lights descend from the ceiling, inverted domes spewing shafts of red light. He feels the train begin to loose momentum. The door behind her opens. Narrow red beams of light sweep through. A voice follows. "Do not move."

He looks at her body one last time, then turns and strikes for the broken window. He does not feel the bullets enter his back as he leaps through the window and into the chill air.

© 2008 Dustin Driver