Sam needed all his government training to remain conscious with a fucking stiletto heel embedded in his neck. It hurt even more than the TOPS knife some foreign operative he’d failed to frisk properly once stuck in his back. Every instinct had yelled at him to yank that TOPS knife out of his back then, and every instinct yelled at him to yank the damn stiletto heel out of his neck now. But he knew that…as long as the blood wasn’t spurting outright and he could still breath…his life could depend on leaving the heel in his neck till he made it to a hospital.
That yell. Had he, only half conscious at the time, imagined it? Sam peered through the crack between the wall and the door he was hiding behind. No. Must have been Ms. Twitch, she who’d stabbed him with the fucking stiletto heel. (Not that he blamed her, half passed-out from Alex’ chloroform at the time and undoubtedly aiming for Alex.) And that yell was just in time, judging from the all-but-strangled homeless woman Alex dropped to look up at Ms. Twitch. Sam noted that the homeless woman jerked almost imperceptibly when she hit the floor. A good sign.
But now Ms. Twitch was in trouble. And Alex was distracted by Ms. Twitch and had just walked past the door Sam was hiding behind. Shame he never had a TOPS knife CAT 1095 when needed, but he swung around the door and toppled Alex before Alex even heard him. Too easy. He was about to contain Alex with a full-nelson slam…
But his head spun hard.
Though he dreamed of her incessantly yelling, when he woke up Ms. Twitch was only whimpering and then silent. Her blood was everywhere. Alex, back turned to Sam, was still at work on her.
Only one solution that was fast enough. Biting his lip to avoid screeching in pain, he yanked the stiletto heel out of his neck and sank it into Alex’ neck. Whereas Ms. Twitch had missed Sam’s jugular, Sam did not miss Alex’.
While a now-helpless Alex spasmed across the floor, Sam could feel the huge clot of blood that spurted out of his own neck. His knees buckled. He fell on top of Ms. Twitch.
Unexpectedly, considering her lips weren’t even twitching any more, her eyes fluttered open. Sam was heartened by a reaction to the sight of him that he’d seen often enough to interpret as a healthy female reaction. “You,” she said with a sudden smile, “are real!” She looked even less appealing to him than usual, but he did his best to smile back. I mean, what the fuck. But then she, like Alex, also spasmed. “You’re real,” she said between spasms, “and…I can see my whole life now…everything that was real. You’re real…and so was my evil twin Judy.” She went limp.
Sam was sweating the protocol of calling 911 for them all, without blowing his cover, while fumbling for his phone.
It slipped out of his hand and slid across the floor, out of reach.
He checked Ms. Twitch’s neck and found no pulse anyway. But there was still himself and the homeless woman.
Then it started, like the kind of corny old movie you only watch when you’re up in the middle of the night and desperate. His life. Starting with when he used to play secret agent man with the brother that had died in a terrorist attack long before him.
