Anders Benet had murdered his mother in the womb.
He had no memory of this, nor could he say he intended the woman any harm. Indeed, it wasn’t until his fourteenth year that he killed anyone intentionally. That was the year his middle-aged gym teacher learned, just before she died, what a mistake it was to humiliate him in front of his fellow students, a fact she attested to repeatedly, over and over as she begged for her life, before Anders choked the childless woman to death by shoving her own bloody ovaries down her throat.
It was a messy kill, to be sure, and poorly planned, and he was very nearly caught. But then he had been in a hurry, a rush to consummate his first orgasm of violence. For he had learned something about himself not two weeks before, a simple truth about his past that changed everything, and that would come to change the world. His uncle, drunk and filled with guilt, had finally shared the circumstances of his mother’s death. The family had remained tight-lipped out of fear of upsetting the child during his most sensitive years. No one wanted to suggest her passing was his fault.
But it was.
Baby Anders had had fits. Not often. In fact, there weren’t more than five through the entire pregnancy, and the first few lasted mere minutes. But as the fetus grew, so did the paroxysms, and by the last, Anders’s nineteen-year-old mother drove herself to the hospital in severe, cramping pain. At first everyone assumed she was giving birth—a full nine weeks early—but as soon as it was clear that was not the case, the doctors started scratching their heads. As they ran test after test and debated the risks of removing the fetus so prematurely, baby Anders continued his dark episode—the longest one yet—and so managed to aggravate an existing bruise. Five agonizing hours later, he triggered a hemorrhage, and very quickly his mother’s death.
Uncle Mik had explained all of this with his eyes cast to the floor. More than one tear dribbled into his beer, which he drank nonetheless. And never once did he look at his nephew. He couldn’t. Besides being a frail man with horrible nystagmus, Mik Van Veen was a coward.
When, after a long silence, the man finally turned to face his nephew’s shock, guilt, and anger, he saw nothing of the sort.
He saw only peace.
And then something more.
The older man recoiled as the boy threw a smile across his face—casually, the way a model might toss a scarf over her shoulder.
Young Anders was relieved. For he knew then that the fits he had been fighting his entire brief life—fits so dark he dared not share the full details—were not an anomaly, a deviation, as his teachers had led him to believe as they walked him to the corner to calm down. They were, in fact, the deepest, realest part of himself. The larva he had felt squirming in his skull, and which drove deep and abiding urges, hadn’t infected him from without. It wasn’t an alien or a demon. It was an organ, like any other.
But unlike any other.
Deep inside the young man’s chest, his heart bared a razor-toothed grin. Whatever else he was going to be in life, Anders Benet knew then—rightly, peaceably—that he would be a murderer, and that he would take from the world everything the black maggots in his head had promised.
And more.
But first, he knew, he had to be perfect. Above suspicion. So he practiced glamour. Charm. He smiled. And people smiled back. He became a model. He sang in a choir. He seduced a Dutch minister—a right-wing bigot in his fifties with a young wife, an older ex, and three children—and so secured appointment to a prestigious university. He played sports and entertained tasteful dalliances. He befriended everyone. At graduation, he was asked to join a small software startup that would eventually make him wealthy. Then came a brief stint in European football, to cement his masculine appeal, before entering politics. And shortly after his forty-second birthday, Anders Benet won a seat on the European Commission.
And every time the black maggots stirred, there was another kill—sometimes several. Like the swinging couple he had murdered the very week of his appointment. He met them online, and in the middle of their love-making, he killed the wife while the husband watched, incapacitated. He took his time. He enjoyed it. Not the killing so much. The horror in the man’s eyes.
For it wasn’t enough simply to kill. That was no great effort. Any street thug with a gun could slaughter. It was the power, the power that validated his dark destiny, the one forged in his mother’s womb, the one that stoked his patience.
And the higher he rose—in business, in politics—the more his allies had to lose, by association, if his true passions came to light, and so the easier it was to manipulate them into hiding certain relevant facts. It was simply a matter of playing on their self-interest. And giving them a single reason to doubt any of it was true, even a mediocre one. For the selfish will always choose a convenient lie over an inconvenient truth.
Still, it was true that for most of his life he felt incomplete, like a king in search of a country.
Until one day, while sitting on the Commission, enduring his hundredth meeting on farm subsidies in the east, mind wandering to the previous night’s entertainment—a Turkish intern he’d raped after mangling her with a pair of forceps—he noticed a symbol on one of the documents, a symbol he wasn’t supposed to see.
Three circles connected in the center by three lines.
And when, after weeks of patient investigation, its meaning was finally made clear, Anders actually stood in a quiet hallway with his mouth agape, feeling as though he had just plucked the sword from the stone. He even looked at his palm as if it held the weapon. Here was his sword. All he need do was wield it and the kingdom would be his. All those promises the black maggots had whispered, the ravings that sent him to the corner in grade school, the whooping screams that kept him awake at night, all of it would finally come true.
And now, a full fifteen years later, he was mere days away from absolute victory. He had burned away the last vestiges of Anders Benet, cultivated fraud. Murderer. And had emerged his true self. And as he stood looking out from his castle, he knew that he had finally arrived. That ultimately, finally, everyone who had stood in his way, everyone who could stop him, had been beaten or stayed. All of them.
Save one.
The very last.
The Red King turned to see the prisoner roll into the room in his wheelchair. It was a simple wheeled seat, mostly plastic and with no power. The metal bars of prisoner’s helmet formed a thin lattice over his scalp, like a cap, and it penetrated the man’s skull in eight places. Microwire electrodes had been threaded through his cranium and around his brain. If he drifted to a meditative state, the helm would directly stimulate the spinothalamic tract in his spinal cord, triggering maximum pain. It was an effective deterrent for an enemy who had proved himself both resourceful and resilient.
The emperor of the world motioned toward the end of the table between them and took his seat. It was dim but not dark. The only light entered through the single long window that ran most of the length of the conference room. Barely two feet high, it had rounded corners and was so thick it slightly distorted the view of the river valley beyond.
The guard deposited the prisoner and left.
There was a full two minutes of silence.
The Red King began. “And so begins the next round of our little game, Captain. The handful of misfits you’re so attached to are nothing but a nuisance. Although”—the emperor of the world made a face—“I should give credit where it’s due. You’ve managed to be quite the nuisance. You know what I want.”
“Prophet.”
“I will show you my cards. At this point, there is no reason to hide them. The man has eluded our network so effectively that our scientists have speculated he may have unusual abilities that make him . . . let’s say immune to our tracking. Perhaps even to our big machine. And that makes him a powerful and unacceptable variable.”
“And what if I told you the reason you can’t find him is because he doesn’t exist?”
The Red King smiled patiently. “So,” he began softly, “sensing I have reached the point of impatience with silence, now you will begin feeding me misinformation laced with just enough of the truth to keep me motivated. I told you before, I know the game, Captain. Please.”
John shrugged as if to say he didn’t care whether the man believed him or not.
The Red King studied the prisoner’s face. His smile turned to an incredulous smirk. “That’s your story? Really? I must say, I’m disappointed. I expected something rather clever. I was looking forward to it, in fact. I’ve given you days to prepare. And this is your best? That you all . . . what? Ran into each other at community bingo? Just woke up one day and somehow found out about my organization? Decided to do something about it? Four troglodytes. Alone.”
John didn’t twitch.
“Did they teach you that word? In whatever inner city carcass you attended school?”
John knew he shouldn’t let the man get a rise out of him.
“The Prophet has been a whisper behind the scenes of the international black arms market for several years. I suppose you’ll tell me that was all a cover. For you.
“No. Excuse me. You’ll just hint at it. In a fit of weakness, your carefully practiced façade will crack and you’ll let a few facts slip—verifiable ones that could, if we checked, corroborate your story—before you slip back into resigned silence. And we’ll feel like we’re breaking you.”
Still, John didn’t answer.
“You’re buying time, Captain. I know it. You know it. Unlike your previous captors, I am not in the ransom business. Nor am I so stupid as to fall for your games. And today is the day everything changes. So, please. Think carefully before you respond.”
“I don’t know where the Prophet is.” He paused. “Or the rest of them.”
“I believe that. I believe you were smart enough not to look for them before you turned yourself in. That way you’d have no truth to hide. But I also believe you know how to find them. And somewhere among your little friends is the clue that will reveal the man himself. No one walks this world alone. Not even men like you. You had a whole government behind you. Even if you don’t know where your friends are, they have names. Family.”
John thought about AJ. Wink’s parents. The little girl herself. Even if their enemies began to suspect John’s story was true, prudence demanded diligence. They would carve into his friends.
John knew he shouldn’t say anything. Anything he did or didn’t say could potentially reveal something he did or didn’t know. It was always better to be silent. Give them nothing. Let the doubt gnaw.
But this wasn’t like before. This wasn’t a job. It wasn’t even a duty. It was something else. And at that moment, more than anything in the world, John wanted this arrogant fucker to know the score.
And perhaps to goad him into taking his frustration out on John.
“You know,” he began softly. “I’ve seen some ham-fisted interrogations before, but this . . .” He shook his head. “This is ridiculous. I know I should just keep my mouth shut, but it’s taking all my willpower just to keep from laughing. Does this shit actually work on people?”
The Red King squinted.
John went on. “You don’t want the Prophet. You’re making it about him, and about my team, in the hopes I’ll reveal something, a clue about why I turned myself in. That’s what’s bothering you. Because you can’t figure it out. Can you?
“A man like you. A time like this. That countdown tick-tick-ticking to zero. I bet you’re mighty busy. I bet you got a line of people outside your office wanting all kinds of shit. But here you took time out of all that to—what? Chat with me about a man who doesn’t exist?
“Could be I’m just a fucking idiot. Some poor cripple out to be noble, sacrifice himself for his friends. But you can’t sit there and say we’re a fucking nuisance. We beat Fears. We hacked your unhackable network. We escaped your dragnet, repeatedly, and kicked you in the balls at every encounter. The only constant in this whole damned mess has been your underestimation of us.
“Naw. The only reason you’d take time to talk to me—now, in the middle of everything—is because you know we’re a helluva lot more than a nuisance. We’re a threat. If I had my guess, probably the last one. More than that, you have no idea why I’m here. No fucking clue. And you have no idea where the rest of my team is. And you’re fucking scared.
“I’ll tell you something. I shouldn’t. But I will.
“You should be.
“Maybe, if you weren’t the world’s worst fucking interrogator, I would have let something slip. Maybe. But I can see you coming from ten miles out, you clod-footed Neanderthal. Comin’ at me with your office-politics bullshit. Fuck.” John shook his head.
“But I’ll tell you what. I’ll go ahead and give you a clue. You want to know why I turned myself in? It’s simple. It’s so god-damned simple, it’s right in front of your face. Maybe, if you weren’t such an ass-faced troglodyte—yeah, I know what the fuck that means, you racist motherfucking cunt fart. Maybe if you weren’t the biggest one in this shithole, you’d have figured that out.
“Now. Are we gonna do this, or is that the best you got? ’Cuz right now I’m fucking bored.”
The Red King looked at the desk. He stood with a nod. “Very well,” he said calmly. “Let’s see if we can’t entertain you, then.” He touched a button on a console in the table and there was a soft tone. “Prep chambers. And tell the doctor we’re ready.”
A female assistant acknowledged and the man walked around the table. He raised one arm above John’s shoulder and pointed the other at the door. “Come, Captain. I have something to show you.”
The door opened with a slight serpentine hiss and the thick-necked guard stepped in to roll John down the hall.
The Red King walked ahead. John didn’t take his eyes from the man the whole length of the short trip—two rights and a left, where he was made to wait at a wide T-intersection. Any hope John had of making a mental map of the facility had died days ago. It was just too big.
The guard rolled John down a hall lined in frosted glass panels with at least eight identical doors on each side. All three men entered the third on the left and the door sealed behind them. There was a control panel in the hall but not inside the room. In fact there was nothing in the room but a bed, toilet, and sink. The walls were the same frosted glass. John figured it wasn’t actually glass, but something considerably stronger.
It was a new holding cell.
The Red King stared at the back wall, and after a moment, it turned clear.
The guard rolled John to the glass. He was looking down from the second floor on some sort of operating room, like a high-ceilinged, high-tech surgical theater. There was only one exit, on the left. There was a large screen hanging at the back and a round metal hatch near the center of the floor.
“Clod-footed cunt fart . . .” The Red King whispered to the glass.
A gaunt man entered the theater. He was average height but very thin, with hollow eyes and long fingers. He carried a black leather zip-case, which he set on a small rolling table next to a chair.
Five armed guards followed—big guys—and took up defensive positions around the walls.
The hatch in the floor slid open, barely wide enough for a man, and a fixed metal restraining chair rose into the room. The man inside sat on a bar between his legs, like a bench. His chin and cranium were cradled and immobile. One arm and both feet were held by shackles.
It was only when John saw the stump of a second arm that he realized who it was.
Ian.
John’s lips pursed.
They had some kind of tubes up his nose, and his severed arm was inside a white plastic cup trailing wires. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t sneeze. And they were forcing oxygen into his blood so he couldn’t phase. He wore a thin blue bodysuit that bulged over a bandage on his right shoulder. He had a couple healing bruises on his face. But other than that, he looked in good health.
The chair locked into place and turned to face the door as the gaunt man fixed a magnifying glass to his forehead and rolled closer.
“Let’s see here.”
John could tell that the sound was reproduced, brought in by speaker rather than by an open connection to the next room. That meant Ian probably wouldn’t be able to see or hear him.
The Red King turned and leaned closer to John’s ear before whispering. “Are you having fun yet? Or are you still bored?”
The soldier didn’t look.
The big screen on the other side of the theater kicked to life. The symbol—three circles connected in the center by three lines—filled the high-definition display.
Only now there was a red crown in front.
A woman appeared. She was standing in front of the very room Ian now occupied. It glowed with stage lighting as she spoke to the camera with a pleasant smile.
“Hello. And welcome to Alpha Site, our center of operations.” Captions in six languages, including Japanese and Russian, flashed below. “We’ve brought you here because you have information vital to the prosperity of the human race.
“Unfortunately, if you’re seeing this video, you have been unwilling to cooperate.” Her face widened with the broad smile of a flight attendant. “It’s my job to change your mind.
“My organization prefers to make friends rather than enemies. Which is why we’re willing to waive all that’s come before.” She spread her open palms. “No matter what path has brought you here today, cooperate now, and everyone will prosper. Peacefully. And pain-free.” Her genuine smile widened. “In order to help you make sure your next decision is the right one for you, we’ve created this short introductory video to highlight the features of your impending torture, which may include drowning—”
The screen switched to an underwater image of a large West African man with wide, terrified eyes losing his last breath to bubbles in the water.
“Burning—” Skin boiled and flaked. It hit John so hard he couldn’t even see whose skin it was. But he recognized the screams.
“Acid—” Skin ran like water, revealing soft red tissue underneath.
“Forced removal of teeth or finger nails—”
“Sterilization—”
“Insertion of needles or other foreign objects into the eyes—”
“Ears—”
“Scrotum or vagina—”
And so it went, on and on. John almost lost it at “exsanguination.” He watched the sequence, which didn’t appear to be faked or exaggerated, from under a scowling brow. They really did have it down to a science.
The spokeswoman appeared again. “Our helpful representatives are standing by. If you would like to share, speak now. Otherwise, your torture will begin shortly. Thank you for your attention. And have a nice day.”
“Fug you,” Ian grumbled as the screen clicked off. With the tubes up his nose, his voice sounded nasal and congested. “I ain’t tellink you shit.”
The gaunt man was unmoved. John guessed he was the Armenian the woman at the front gate had warned him about. He wondered what had happened to her.
“Well, now.” The Armenian lifted a dentist’s drill and looked down his nose at Ian through his magnifying goggles. “Let’s begin, shall we?”
The drill emitted a high-pitched whine. Everyone watched it move closer. As soon as it hit the tip of Ian’s tooth, he screamed.
The Red King left John to watch. He didn’t gloat. He didn’t ask a question. He just walked out and left the soldier alone and trapped inside his frosted glass cell.
The Armenian kept at his work. He was patient, methodical, and seemed as though he was working very hard. Like a maestro at concert, he was there to perform rather than to enjoy, and he squinted and strained as he moved through Ian’s mouth, testing before drilling, rinsing and probing, looking for those precious few teeth that could be mined slowly, and always repairing the damage with fillings before moving to the next tooth—John guessed maybe five or six in all.
Ian screamed for a while after every drill. Eventually he would stop, if only from exhaustion, and the Armenian would give his lungs, and the nerves in his jaw, a short break before continuing. After an hour or so—it was hard to tell without a clock in the room—Ian simply let out a low, warbling moan that seemed completely involuntary, as if his conscious mind had drowned so deeply in pain that his subconscious had come to take over.
And all the while, the drill whined. High-pitched. Up and down. Like the glee of a small child. Grinding through enamel. Then pulp.
John was nearly sick from the smell, which wafted in from the vents from time to time. Burnt enamel. Sweat. And the pungent, bilious odor of diarrhea that suggested at some point Ian had lost control of his bowels. Or simply didn’t care.
After a while, The Red King entered the theater, took a seat, and watched the action as if attending the opera. Occasionally, his head would tilt to one side or the other as if appreciating some deft move. And when it was time to stop, roughly two and a half hours in, the workers came to hose Ian off and the emperor of the world stood and applauded with slow, loud claps. The Armenian merely nodded demurely and began cleaning and packing his drill.
“Yoo sdobbin? Reddy?” Water dripped from Ian’s eyebrows as drool ran from his fat lip and fell like crimson spider silk to the floor. “Dab was nuffin. Pfussies.”
John’s lips and teeth pressed together. He had to give it to Ian. The kid was hanging on.
The Red King stepped closer to examine the work. He bent and studied Ian’s mouth from inches away. “Oh, we don’t want to get too far. Not right away. We don’t just want you to suffer. What we want takes time.”
Satisfied with the work, the man stood straight. “You’ll resist, of course. Days, I suspect. If you’re stronger than that, maybe even a week. It doesn’t matter. Every day I will come and you will suffer. Every day I will leave and you will go back in the hole. The next morning you’ll come out again only to suffer some more.
“Today it was your lower jaw.” He turned. “What will it be tomorrow, Doctor? The upper?”
“Oh, no. We must give the nerves time to recuperate. Too much damage and they will simply fail. The Armenian looked up from his case as if searching the ceiling for an answer. “Tomorrow, I think the testes, perhaps.”
The Red King nodded and turned back.
Ian was doing his best to hold his resolve. But he was losing.
“Later tonight, when you’re locked in pitch blackness, unable to move, unable to hear or see anything, tissues throbbing from the day’s adventure, it will dawn on you: we never asked you any questions.”
That got his attention. Ian’s eyes moved to the man.
“And we never will. Not one.
“Some men can take torture because the act of resisting gives them purpose. It makes them feel like they’re fighting.
“You won’t have that. We’ll simply torture you and watch as the bright hope that even now beams from your eyes slowly wilts, first to stubborn defiance, then to flickering hate, then confusion, and finally incoherence. Suffering without purpose, without reason, without bargain or sense, day after day, eventually you’ll lose the rational foundation upon which the mind is built.
“You see, despite what you think, we’re not after you, Mr. Calrissian.”
A light clicked on behind John, revealing his presence to everyone in the next room.
Ian looked into the eyes of his friend. There was surprise.
“We’re after him. You don’t matter in the least. You’re no one. Your appointed role here is to suffer and to crumble into a useless vegetable. A lunatic. While your friend watches. While the guilt gnaws.
“He’ll sit, comfortably, as your mind goes. It’ll start with inappropriate jokes. It always does. Did you know that? That’s your mind shedding baggage as it tries to hold onto itself. Your psyche jettisons the norms and mores foisted on it by polite society. After that, you’ll start laughing, desperately, for no reason. Then come the strange non sequiturs. The paranoia. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even babble gibberish—the final reversion to an infantile state. The last stage. Before the end.
“You see, each transition marks the crumbling of a wall around your very soul. Finally it, too, will collapse. And peering into your shattered eyes, even as you shriek mindlessly, day after day, your friend will see nothing left of the old you. Just a shell. A drooling, mumbling, incoherent husk that is only ever really there for the pain. The rest of the time, you’re just . . . gone. Alive. But a zombie.
“The captain will beg to be tortured, of course. He’ll bargain. He’ll deal. But he won’t be ours. Not really. He’ll try to hold out. He’ll try to be clever. They always do. Especially the soldiers.
“Until one day, a week or two from now, he’ll see some flash of the old you. Just a random look. In the eyes, usually. Our scientists say it’s completely meaningless, just the habitual firing of facial nerves, like a tic. Or the reflexive bite of a rattler’s severed head. But it doesn’t matter. That glimpse of what you used to be will trigger a change. He’ll realize what he let you become. While he slept comfortably. While he ate steak and enjoyed feminine companionship. Every day of your senseless torture nurtures a seed. Under the fortress of his mind. A terrible vine that creeps through the subconscious. Growing. Slipping its long tendrils into every fiber of his core. Until that day, when it will break through the surface and bring the whole of him down in one go.
“That’s when he’ll crack. That’s when he’ll be ours. Fully. Completely.
“The method is 100% effective. Sadly, we can’t take credit for it. The Soviets. They were the true masters. They could convert anyone. And apparently they learned it from their Siberian prison masters. Who knows who invented it first? The Vorgýrim, I would imagine.
“Afterward, your friend won’t just give us your friends. The Prophet. The Faction. He’ll erase everything you lived for. Fought for. Died for.”
Ian couldn’t look at John.
John couldn’t take his eyes from Ian.
The Red King turned for the door, but stopped halfway. “The captain turned himself in. Did you know that?” He looked at Ian’s face. There was only disbelief. “No? I didn’t think so. It’s true. Look him in the eye and see if it isn’t so.”
Ian’s eyes turned as his head remained motionless. He was stoic. But he could see.
The Red King continued. “He didn’t see the point of continuing the fight. So he turned himself in. I think the plan was to sacrifice himself and give you all time to get away. Although I have no idea where you would run. But the captain, you see, he quit. And so you might ask yourself . . . What is it exactly you are suffering for?”
The Red King snapped his fingers and the light clicked off. “Rest well in your dark little hole, Mr. Calrissian. And we’ll see you in the morning.” Then he followed the Armenian out the door, and Ian was alone.
As the metal chair began its slow descent into the hole underneath, barely large enough to fit the both of them, Ian fought back a tear.
John was watching in the dark when Ian awoke with a grunt. The wall at the back of his cell wasn’t just frosted glass. It was a view screen, and John wondered if the torture theater really was in the next room or if that’s just how the screen made it appear. Ian could be anywhere in the complex. Or on the other side of the world.
John watched his friend in black and white, displayed inside a two-foot square that had appeared in the middle of the wall as soon as the hatch had sealed. It was the middle of the night and all the lights were dimmed or off. John would have been awake even if half his body wasn’t boiling in painful tingles. All the easier that it was.
Ian breathed through his mouth, almost panting. Drool ran from the corner of his lip. His jaw was quivering. John figured right about then Ian’s nerves had traded a sharp, stabbing pain for a throbbing, penetrating ache that beat on him like a hammer behind the ears.
John just stared at the screen as his friend heaved, chest moving up and down as the rest of him was pinned motionless inside a tiny black hole. His pupils had dilated in the dark. His gaze was . . . gone away. Ten thousand miles.
Then it stopped. Just like that, Ian came back and his eyes turned to the camera. He couldn’t see John. He was just looking at the camera, and his gaze missed his friend.
“Go ahead.” He looked away. “You can say it. I wasn’t even supposed to be on the team.”
John frowned. He sat in his plastic wheelchair in his glass-walled cell and watched. He listened to Ian talking to himself as if John were right next to him.
“I miss them. Is that crazy? After everything?”
John shook his head. “I miss ’em, too, man,” he said softly.
“I kinda get why she did it. You know. You should’ve seen the stupid shit I did in high school. Trying to be cool.
“’Course, dweeb like me, there was only so much bad I could do. Wink screws up and the whole world hangs in the balance.” Ian smiled, head fixed in place. Then his face turned down.
“Take away the Oric, and what am I?”
John’s throat spasmed. His lip quivered. “My friend,” he said to no one. He swallowed hard.
“Her dad was right.” Ian’s eyes were ten thousand miles away again. “A geek, a dyke, a kid, and a cripple. Seriously . . .” Ian’s voice trailed off. “What were we thinking?”
Long minutes passed. John watched. And then it came. Out of nowhere. The question finally came.
“Why?” Ian asked softly.
The soldier gripped his wheelchair as if holding on for dear life, as if a whirlwind would right then break through the ceiling and try to carry him away.
Ian’s voice was barely above a breath. It seemed the only reason he said it aloud was to hear it and prove to himself it wasn’t all a dream. A nightmare. “Why’d you do it, Cap? Why’d you turn yourself in?”
John looked down.
“Why didn’t you fight?”
He waited. But that was all his friend said.
Eventually, finally, Ian fell asleep.
And John watched in pain.