"That actually works."

"It does not, shut up. I'm fucked here, which means you're fucked, too."

"He stabs out my eyes."

Miriam's heart goes cold. "I know."

"I call your name before I die. Isn't that strange?"

"No," she lies.

"I'm going to die."

"Everybody dies."

"I die badly, painfully, tortured to death."

"It is what it is."

"You did this to me. You have to undo it."

"Fate gets what fate wants."

Her mother turns to her.

She looks into Miriam's eyes. Even though she's sitting, she reaches up with arms made long, so long they stretch across the room, and pulls Miriam to her. The world shifts, drags, smears in long blurs and streaks of light.

Her mother says: "And thine eye shall not pity, but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."

Miriam stammers, "I don't understand–"

And then the dream is rudely ended.

THIRTY-TWO

Ain't Torture Grand?

Rudely ended by a fist, actually.

Harriet's fist. Right in Miriam's solar plexus. The air sucks out of her lungs. She'd double over if she could, but she can't, so instead she just coughs like she's trying to expel a squirming knot of angry weasels from her chest cavity.

"Awake now?" Harriet asks.

Miriam blinks away the haze from whatever drugs Frankie stuck into her. She notices that Harriet is wearing black gloves. So I don't see how she dies? Is she really that much of a control freak?

"In a manner of–" She wants to say speaking, but she only wheezes and hacks, trying to find breath to fill her windbags.

"The solar plexus is an excellent place to hit," Harriet explains. "At least, it is if your target is untrained. It's a massive bundle of nerves. Fighters know to toughen and tighten that area. They strengthen the muscles there to form a braid of armor. For everybody else, though, it's a beautiful and easy target to strike."

Miriam draws one last gasp, feels like her body has caught up with itself.

"Thanks for the MMA fighting lesson, Tito Ortiz."

"I don't know who that is."

Miriam licks her dry, cracked lips. "Not really a surprise. So, hey, thanks for waking me up out of my dream. It was getting a little too creepy in there for me; my head is no longer a safe place to visit, I think. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Harriet's hand forms a flat hatchet blade, and she chops it right into Miriam's neck.

Miriam gags and gasps anew. Her face goes red. Her eyes feel like they might suck back into her brain or pop out and roll across the floor.

"Mastoid process," Harriet clarifies. "Protects the windpipe. Hit that, and it forces the target to gag. The gag reflex is an instant limiter in a fight. It represents a terrible panic state for the body, which offers supreme advantage to the attacker."

When Miriam can breathe again, and when she's curtailed the urge to dry heave the dust and acid that's probably lining her stomach, she speaks.