Okay, that’s a lie—I was scared. I might have been able to take on one of them, but two was a definite problem. Escape would be my best option—and since my forte was breaking through an offensive line, I felt I had a fair shot. I just needed to choose my moment and go for it. We were in the alley behind the shop. I could go left or right. Having two directions doubled my chances of escape.

“Let me guess,” I said to Ralston, “your ‘associates’ would like to have a word with me.”

“They’re not much for words,” Ralston said. “And I want to remind you that this was not my call. It’s a Powers-That-Be kind of thing.” Then he cocked his head, thoughtfully. “Think of them as nukes. I don’t have to light their asses on fire as long as you agree to get back with the program. No questions, and no more trouble.”

But that wasn’t going to happen, and we all knew it.

When I didn’t back down, Ralston sighed. “Fine,” he said. “You do realize why this has to go down, right? You have to be made an example of for others. Kind of like a shipwreck that marks where the rocks are.”

Then he signaled for the Things to make their move. Now was my chance. I dug in and charged forward, but this was an alley, not turf. I had no cleats, and there was gunk on the ground that made me slip. Rather than barreling through them, I just fell right into them.

In an instant Thing One was holding me, and Thing Two was swinging away. It was all fists—which was good news in a way. If knives or other weapons were involved it would have meant they intended to kill me. Fists meant they just meant to mess me up—although I wasn’t stupid enough to think that death wasn’t also a possibility.

I struggled against them. I kicked, swung, and elbowed—I didn’t make it easy for them—but any damage I did to them was nothing compared to the punishment I received to my gut, my face, even my groin—and that weakened me to the point of being unable to fight back. I was doubled over, and although my knees were buckling from the pain, Thing One kept me on my feet so they could keep on hitting me. Finally Ralston told them to stop, and they did, like he had hit their Pause button.

“One last chance,” he said. “This could end right now, everything could go back to the way it was, and we could all be happy campers.”

I responded by telling him to perform an act on himself that I once believed was physically impossible, until Norris sent me the link to a video which proved it wasn’t.