Down Time

Miko said not a word, just smiled and opened a case. Inside was a gleaming Desert Eagle .50. The weapon must have been moved right out of the factory. No serial numbers. No evidence they’d been removed either. Arc paid Miko the standard fee, plus a little more for herself, and as silently as they came, so they left.

Arc watched two men speaking Italian, unload some boxes, then get back in the van and drive away. Arc sighed. He didn’t want to be found right now. He looked back up at the fire escape. Were his gun still holstered, it would have been attached to his shirt, which hung in shreds. Arc frowned. There was just enough light from the neon signs so that he’d be able to see the barrel. Unlikely it had been soiled so much he couldn’t see it.

He knelt down and checked the pool of fluid he awoke in. Sure enough, he had laid on his gun and holster the entire time. His jacket wasn’t far away either. Arc counted his losses: one shirt in shreds, one pair of shoes missing, half a night’s worth of memories vanished. He tucked his gun as far into his jacket as possible and stepped barefoot out of the alley. New York blazed before him as if it were on fire.

He looked up and down the street. His actions, what he remembered anyway, were clear enough, but the reasoning behind them was gone. The building with the purple sign was there. It yielded no answers.

He started walking back towards a neighbourhood he recognized. Something was wrong with the city. What cars there were drove with their headlights off. That was a bad sign. Arc pressed his gun closer to his ribs, waiting for the worst. He went down a small set of stairs and ducked into a basement level bar to avoid being seen. Subtle table lamps lit the bar. Tupac Shakur’s latest album thumped out of the jukebox. A picture of President J. Jackson hung above the sink behind the bar itself. The three other people inside eyed Arc suspiciously. They were Israeli, or Palestinian - Arc couldn’t tell. He quickly took a seat at the bar, ordered a beer. The bartender was black and looked relieved.

Finally armed with a moment to just him, Arc tried to replay the evening. He bought the gun a day early, got in the car with the white voiced male, was dropped off at the target building, went inside. How the Israeli girl ended up against him was anybody’s guess. He had all the memories of his actions, more or less, but none of the reasons why. If it was a sweep and clear, something went horribly wrong for him to end up outside with his clothes torn off.

"So much for our president," said one of the men in the bar, deliberately loud enough to be heard by all, "Thanks to him, niggers kill us every day. As if we weren’t good enough at doing that ourselves."

Arc winced. He tried to concentrate on the music in the air, the insistent voice pleading for a change, for dominance, an end to violence through superior strength. The streetlights sailed past so fast they were streaks of phosphorous glare against the ebon sky. His vision moved up and down in time to the urgent beat. A day earlier, Arc had been living in the Bronx projects, gazing at an unemployment check, looking at a new career in high-stakes heists. In his fingers he twirled the phone number of a guy his cousin knew who needed Arc to help knock off the bank from which Arc had just been laid off as a third shift security guard.