“I’m gettin’ too old for this shit.”

That’s Jack. He’s fourteen years old.

Jack runs his fingers through his shaggy mop of hair as if doing so would somehow wipe away the growing sense of inevitability. It seems like every time something is about to happen, he gets a little tingling sensation in his scalp, like a colony of ants is tiptoeing around up there. The sensation radiates from the roots of a white streak that starts over his right eye. It could possibly be his imagination, but experience tells him otherwise. He’s seen this story play out the exact same way too many times to second-guess his gut, or the skin on his head.

Those assholes on table five are about peaked. Cursing under his breath, he picks up another tumbler and wipes it dry. It’s a constant chore keeping this place clean, but folks get really picky when it comes to the sanitation of their drinkware. They could be covered in dust and blood and chunks of who-knows-what, but if their glass has a spot on it—

“Zeke! Dry!” Jack tosses the tumbler up to the ceiling trusses, but keeps his focus locked on the trio of mercs, who appear to be as heavily armed as they are inebriated. It’s only been a year since Jack took ownership of the bar, but he’s been working at the place for nearly a decade. That’s more than long enough to know when things are about to get really loud and really stupid, really quickly. And he knows those three sauced-up death merchants are going to be the catalyst.

The table is about as far away from Jack as it can be, but the drunken geniuses are loud enough that he can hear each angrily slurred word. So can everyone else.

“I said you’re out!”

“That wasn’t the deal! You can’t cut me out. Me and mine got us that job.”

“I won’t hafta cut you out. Just cut—”

The single gunshot reverberates throughout the bar. Heads turn as the high-pitched ring drowns out the sound of a single merc at the table slumping over. For an instant, it’s almost possible to see all the way through the gaping, bloody chasm in the dead man’s back to the finger-sized entry point in his chest. His former compatriot sits in front of him holding the handgun, flat-faced and emotionless. He almost looks bored.

Jack starts doing the math on how much the repairs are going to cost. About a gram of shock plus a couple liters of water to bleach away the blood stains.

The third merc doesn’t wait to have the gun turned on him. He launches to his feet and reaches up to grab the light fixture above the table. Tearing the light down, he uses it to trap the shooter’s hand, then pulls his own pistol, but never gets the chance to use it. The shooter stands while stepping forward, flipping the little circular barroom table and freeing his hand. Both guns slide across the floor, out of reach.

One new light fixture. Need to reinforce the wiring harness. At least the table’s still okay. As is his tendency, Jack makes up nicknames for the two mercs to use later when addressing them directly. The first one gets Shooter—obviously. The one that busted the light fixture is a bit tougher to come up with, but Jack finally decides his name is Improv.

They stand there, Shooter and Improv, hands poised over secondary weapons. Alcohol and adrenaline strain against the shackles of better judgment. Their eyes are locked on one another, attempting to anticipate whose spring will uncoil first, and whose will uncoil fastest.

Silent.

Tense.

It’s as if the entire bar has just been pushed onto a landmine.

An inhuman scream pierces the silence. It comes from the ceiling trusses where Jack had thrown the tumbler, and a moment after the scream, that very same tumbler comes crashing down on the bar, shattering. It’s a cue to chaos. Before the final shards of glass hit the bar and clink to the floor, the room transforms into a fighting pit.

The two mercs lunge. Shooter pulls a knife and holds it with a reverse grip. The blade extends back to his elbow. Improv opts for the spiked bat lying on the ground near the table. The knife and bat lock in a drunken stalemate, their masters exchanging hatred behind gritted teeth and coal-fired eyes. For a moment, Jack wonders about the nature of the deal that’d just gone south, but he has to put his curiosity aside as the other patrons of the bar get to their feet, too. They all pull back to a safe distance, but close enough to see the action. Bets are already being made on which merc will be left standing, and a circle of spectators forms around the two brawlers.

A couple more tables get flipped. At least two more broken glasses get added to Jack’s tally.

The two break, but not cleanly. Improv lowers his bat, allowing him space to drop his elbow forward and smash it into Shooter’s neck. Hard. Shooter spins from the blow, but completes the rotation and runs a mean cut across Improv’s face. Dance-like, he ends on one knee and looks up, grinning.

Without waiting a beat longer, the fighters re-engage; the scent of their own blood accelerates each one’s drive to drain the remaining five liters from the other.

One of these two isn’t going to survive. One dead body is plenty, though. Corpse disposal is expensive, and it’s not like there’s a bulk discount. Jack has had enough.

A small pop echoes through the bar, followed by a percussive whir. Mid-attack, Shooter and Improv seem to lose their footing and are carried forward by their own inertia. They fall into each other, their weapons completely missing their intended targets. Then everything stops. Everything. The fighters appear to be caught in an awkward embrace, straining against their own muscles. The other bar patrons lock, frozen and motionless. It looks like a freeze frame from some kind of mercenary prom.

Arms and legs seize and shake, arguing with themselves in vain attempts to override the stasis. Eyes flit about in their sockets in alternating waves of confusion and panic as everyone comes to the realization that they no longer have control of their bodies.

Everyone, that is, except Jack.

Jack hops up on the bar and shouts up to the ceiling, “Really? Of all the times to drop a glass, you had to go an’ drop it then?”

A responding scream comes from the trusswork, followed by an incomprehensible string of hoots and protesting chirps from the small capuchin monkey who swings down and lands on the bar. The majority of his body is covered in dark black fur, but from his shoulders up, his fur is solid white, like a bristly hood spray-painted over what ought to be his natural coloring.

Although the rest of him looks like any other monkey in his species, his eyes—more specifically, his pupils—are strikingly different. Instead of the circular shape common in primates, this monkey’s pupils are slitted like those of a cat, but the sides of the pupils are ridged. They’re like black, serrated blades against the golden amber of his irises.

After a quick scan of the bar, the capricious little four-fister grabs a shard of the broken tumbler with his tail and scrambles up around Jack’s body until perched on his shoulder. The monkey swings his tail in front of Jack’s face and points at the shard defiantly.

Jack examines the shard of glass. “One drop of water? That’s your excuse? You got four hands and a grabby tail, Zeke! You put away glasses all the time. You’re telling me that this one time, a single drop of water is all it takes to make you slip?”

Zeke answers with a barrage of chatter as he hops up and down, pointing at the rest of the broken glass on the bar. Insulted by the mere thought that he, of all the barbacks in the world, could be bested by just one unnoticed drop, he pounces on the bar and makes for a pyramid stack of recently cleaned tumblers.

Picking up the top glass, he spits on the side of it and points at the newly created wet spot. His eyes widen and brows push up melodramatically. His body language is clear: Oh no! Look at this huuuuge drop of water! This glass is soooo slippery now! Mockingly, he fakes losing his grip on the tumbler before very deliberately hurling it at the bar’s wooden floor. A cacophony of shattered glass follows as Zeke punctuates his point by spitting on each of the pyramid tumblers before chucking them to the ground one at a time.

“Alright, alriiiiight. Maybe I gave a bad throw. I guess I was a bit distracted by those geniuses over on five.” He stops and turns back to the room. “Speaking of … I’d almost forgotten.”

Jack and Zeke turn their attention to the rest of the room where everyone else—still straining against themselves—are likely wondering why this kid and his marginally domesticated employee are still able to move freely. Jack raises the small remote control in his right hand.

“Subsonic paralyzers. Had an array of ’em installed beneath the floorboards three months ago after the last pack of drunken assholes wrecked my bar. You dicks have gotten the honor of being their first real test.”

He’d tested them before, on himself. But this was the first use of the full array. He starts to pace back and forth on the bar top, enjoying the attention.

“It’s totally sweet kit. Maybe you fringe-livin’ mercs ain’t come across anything like it before, though. Waves of sound—sounds you can’t hear—confuse your brain to the point where it just locks your muscles ’til it can figure what the shit is going on. Exhausting as hell if you try to fight it.”

Jack points to one of the needle-like kneaks inserted behind his left ear, exposed tip glowing a bright blue.

“This little guy filters out the sound for me. An’ Zeke, his ear canals are too small for him to be affected at all.” He plops himself on the edge of the bar and lets his feet dangle over the edge, relaxed-like. “What’d be really nice would be that instead of freezin’ you up like this, I could get ’em to make you help clean up your mess. But Slim says they don’t work that way. Anyhow, I’m gonna let this run a bit longer ’til I know you guys have either cooled off or you’re too exhausted to do anything about being pissed off. So, let’s get comfortable and—”

CRASH!

A reddish blur explodes through one of the walls and flies across the room, decimating the far end of the bar in a blast of wooden splinters and dust. That little section of the bar also happened to house the control console for this crowd control solution of Jack’s. The previously frozen patrons of the bar collapse as their muscles finally relax.

Their repose doesn’t last long, though.

Clearly they’re not exhausted, and they most certainly haven’t had enough time to cool off from the insult of being imprisoned in their own skin. All glares aim at the bar. Jack sits there, wide-eyed, as his screaming little monkey hides behind his back.

“Well, shit.”