He puts up with Matision’s harassment as long as he can. Finally, wheezing heavily, he stops at the entrance to an alleyway, and props himself up against a wall, his head thrown back, his neck exposed, gulping for breath. Within seconds, Matision, in a low crouch, the ball tucked into his gut pocket, appears out from around a corner. His hands paw the air, working hypnotically to draw T.K.’s attention. “It’s you and me, old man,” he jeers. “I got the ball, you got the rifle. Kill me and you win.” Matision is relying entirely on Pierce Spencer’s control room conviction that T.K. is too far gone to fire an accurate shot.

T.K. raises his rifle, aims it in Matision’s direction and starts to squeeze the trigger, but his arm begins to shake. The twitching spreads with awesome rapidity across his body, until he can hardly stand up. Limply, he slips to the ground, and sits there, his left hand a slimy red, his jaw trembling, his rifle carelessly perched across his lap.

Matision towers over him. “I thought you’d be tougher than this, old man,” Spencer instructs him to say for the benefit of the viewers at home. “I guess I gave you credit for more than you’re worth.”

He reaches down for T.K.’s neck, flexing his hands to loosen them up for the administration of a stranglehold.

He has his hands almost under T.K.’s helmet when T.K. erupts. He jams his rifle butt up into Matision’s Adam’s apple. Coughing and gagging, Matision lurches sideways, tugging at his helmet strap, loosening it in a vain bid to draw torrents of cooling air into his injured throat.

T.K. rolls over on his stomach, and pulls himself forward, until he’s within two feet of the prone Matision. He sticks the end of his rifle up against Matision’s head. Because there are just the two of them left (the two medimen not counting), and the last survivor wins regardless of score, T.K. has simply to fire, and he not only gains his revenge, but he wins the Killerbowl, besides.

He does not fire. He has another, larger score to settle. Keeping the rifle firmly pressed against Matision’s temple, T.K. struggles to his feet. “Get up,” he tells Matision.

The two referees, his and Matision’s, stand off to one side, exchanging puzzled glances.

“Move,” T.K. tells Matision once he’s up. “That way.” He indicates with his head that he wants Matision to move east down Myrtle.

Baffled, T.K.’s referee steps forward. “Mann,” he says, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but if you don’t immobilize that ball carrier and do it soon, I’m going to blow this play dead.”

“Stick it up your ass,” says T.K., barely getting the words out before the referee blows his whistle.