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Friday, June 19

Dead Letter: Part 17 – Skin in the Game

True to his word, Hammer argued vehemently to have Fiona given a COCKTAIL. For a little while it looked like she might be given the 9mm retirement plan, but ultimately Sprague prevailed. It was easier to have at least one witness alive; if everyone died, it would look like ABC was covering up something, and Majestic didn’t need more GNN reporters snooping around.

Hammer, decontaminated and showered, took a look at himself in the mirror.

Maybe Fiona was right. Maybe he was becoming a cold bastard. But then, he did what he had to do. To protect everybody. People like his grandma in Manhattan.

His grandmother lived a life Hammer wanted her to maintain. It made him happy, thinking of her smiling at him from her porch, standing in the sunlight.

It was a fiction, of course. He knew that. But fiction was what counted as life for most people. The truth was ugly and violent. It killed Blade. And it would kill him one day too, if the package he had sent himself from the future was any indication.

In the mirror he looked tired, older. The job aged him. Gray streaks were sprouting at his sideburns. Hammer left the decision to pluck or dye them or do nothing at all to another day.

Hammer opened the medicine cabinet and popped some aspirin. Another day. He had killed the Karotechia sorcerer, Whitcher, just as his future self had indicated. But the other parts – the scar on his thumb, the woman with the tattoo – hadn’t yet come true.

Or did it? [MORE]

posted by talien at 6:41 AM

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