From the tiles I see Herkimer go at Charlie with a samurai sword. He makes a few feints, a few exploratory thrusts. Even while clutching her injured shoulder she dodges them foxily, intuitively, but it’s clear that she is outclassed. She makes quick, dancerlike pivots and evasions, but her speed isn’t equal to his hallway-filling girth, his brute strength. She steps inside a thrust and then successfully blocks a hook punch, but the blow still sends her whole body crashing into the wall. She rolls away as Herkimer makes a violent slash at her head. She slips under it, the blade singing through the air, and staggers backward. A cloudburst of severed hair materializes before her, suspended briefly in the air, then drifts like dandelion snow to the ground. Herkimer smiles gleefully and approaches her, the blade of the Nakamura sword swinging lazily side to side. His grip is loose, almost negligent.

He is expert with a knife. He appears no less skilled with a sword.

And Charlie only has one good arm.

He makes a direct thrust at Charlie’s stomach but she side-steps it and kicks his knee out from under him. With Herkimer mometarily hobbled, she delivers several stinging blows to his kidney and the side of his head. They don’t seem to inconvenience him too much. During the flurry he merely draws back and backhands her casually in the bullet wound. She shrieks and collapses at his feet. He stands astride her cringing body like a colossus and, gripping the Nakamura sword in both hands, brings it over his head. The large muscles in his shoulders contract and then the tip of the sword is streaking toward Charlie.

I unholster the pistol. I don’t think. I just squeeze.

The gun has its gun orgasm. I am made blind and deaf by smoke and din. Herkimer wheels around in disbelief as white particles of foam float down over him: a miss. Herk remains imperforate. The drop ceiling, however, is a goner.

I don’t have time to fire the second bullet, the last bullet, before he swats the gun out of my hand. Then I am aware of a fist hammering my skull and my head telescoping into my neck. Amid the twinkling argentine floaters that waltz before my vision, I see Charlie spring up; I see her kick the Nakamura sword out of Herkimer’s hand; I see it clatter, glittering, to the floor at my feet. But that’s the last of my lucidity.