Session Two

A bit later...

I stepped out of the flat, my hands in my jacket pockets, and started walking down the street. I had two more addresses to check out, but it was getting late. Might be best to call it a night and try again in the morning.

A tall fellow I'd not noticed before approached me as I came out of the building. “I heard you talking about Augie up there,” he said. “What's going on?”

I scowled at him. “Who the hell're you?” I demanded. I'm not used to complete strangers striding up and talking to me like we're neighbours or something.

He didn't answer, but pressed on with more questions. “Are you looking for the khatvanga too?”

I hadn't mentioned the sceptre's strange name to Kara up in the flat building. “You were out here in the street while I was up there,” I pointed behind me, “in the flat?” He nodded. “An' you heard me talking.” Another nod. “From here.”

“Yeah,” he said. He didn't seem to think it was at all odd.

“Nobody can hear that far away, through a bloody building,” I informed him, moving away. Unless he'd put a bug on me somehow, or someone else had.

The big cop came over to me. He looked a little less close to death, but he still sported a grisly wound across his abdomen. “What's this about the sceptre?” he boomed. “Who else is looking for this thing?” He eyed me with open suspicion. “What's your part in all this?”

The tall guy had followed me and now I was sandwiched between nosy stranger and never-die cop. “It's none of your concern, mate,” I told him, flicking a glance behind me to the other fellow, so he knew he was included in the statement. “It's my business. Now if you'll excuse me.” I made to move past the cop.

I didn't hear anything that sounded like a threat, nor the sound of a weapon being readied, so I tuned him out. Mostly. He made some sort of derogatory remark about Australians, and while I'm not usually so thin-skinned as to respond to something so generic, for some reason this was just too much. I was tired of being hounded, being grilled and given the third degree by total strangers. Who the hell did they think they were, anyway? I reached out to give him a shove with my hand. I should have calculated this move based on several facts which I was all too ready to ignore: one, the cop was about seven and a half feet tall, built like a rugby player. A shove wasn't going to do anything but annoy him. Two, he had taken a wound which would kill any other man, and here he was in my face. But I was in that particular headspace, the one which has helped me get my ass handed to me on more than one occasion. Older, now, but not wiser.

The cop seized my wrist and effortlessly, almost fluidly, twisted my arm, turning me around in a classic maneuver. It didn't exactly hurt, somehow, but it wasn't comfortable. He made a mention of my sidearm, hanging under my arm in my shoulder holster, which he could now clearly see beneath my unzipped jacket.

“Alright, alright,” I conceded, realising I'd walked into a situation I couldn't talk my way out of. “I give. Lemme go.”

He released me and I took a step back from him. “Take out the gun,” he ordered tersely, “with two fingers, and put it on the ground.”

Ugh. I could replace the gun – it was a pricey European model secured in Brussels years ago – but I liked it. After a while you just get used to a particular gun; how it feels, how it fits your palm, its heft, its balance. I sighed and did as the cop said, shoving it closer to him with my foot. He let his own gargantuan foot settle over it and I must have cringed at the idea of that appendage flattening a loaded – and expensive – weapon.

“I'll just keep it safe here for you,” he said, smirking.

It was then that we heard the sirens. I figured it was the fleet of ambulances I'd requested to take the run-through cop to hospital. But I was wrong. Every police car in Philadelphia roared up to the scene, emerging from alleyways, driving up onto the sidewalk, surrounding us.

There were about six people, all total, in the area by this time, including the woman with the sword and the tall guy and the monster cop. The cops poured out of their cars and started accosting people. “Get down on the ground!” they screamed, sidearms and assault rifles levelled at us.

Now here was a situation both novel and familiar – surrounded by bad guys with big guns with no clear escape route. But this wasn't Europe, and I wasn't a Legionnaire anymore. And my only weapon, a measly forty-five, was under the big man's foot.

I hadn't done anything wrong, but that's not worth arguing when a fleet of police with high-powered weapons are screaming at you. So I put up my hands, got down on my knees. Immediately a cop came rushing over to handcuff me.

The monster cop looked puzzled, and that intrigued me. He looked even bigger from on my knees; a towering mass of muscle, blood from his belly wound staining the lower half of his uniform shirt. “What's this about?” he asked.