“What? You know this saggy old bastard?” Jack glares as Zeke. “Why the fuck does every new person in the bar know you?”

There’s no time for any kind of response. Thegn is on Zeke in a blur, seizing the monkey in his bony grip. Corva tries to help, but doesn’t make it more than a single step. The head of the old Reaper’s scythe extends toward her at breakneck speed. She catches the rib of the blade in her hands, but it keeps pushing. The force of it pushes her back and pins her against the wall.

Jack edges closer to one of his barstools. Wrinkles don’t think I’m worth payin’ attention to. Mayhaps I can take a swing on him.

Thegn brings Zeke closer to his face and leers at him like a starving man might eye a turkey leg. “Smells like you’ve been in a fight with my rat.”

He turns back to Corva. “Things are starting to make sense. You’ve gone and found yourself one of the sigils. But it doesn’t look like you’ve broken him yet.” He starts to squeeze Zeke. “And you won’t get a chance to.”

Now! Jack grabs the barstool and lifts it to swing at the Reaper’s head. He never gets the chance, though. Still squeezing Zeke, Thegn turns and lowers his gaze on Jack.

“You think I don’t see you, boy?”

The old man slides his foot behind Corva’s gitfo bag, still sitting on the ground. The next thing Jack knows, the pack is in the air, launched right at him. It’s too fast to dodge, to duck, to do anything. The bag hits him square in the chest and sends him flying backward into the bar.

Jack feels all of the air escape from his lungs. He wheezes, attempting to coerce them to inflate. No good. The wind has been knocked right out of him. He shoves the pack off himself and leans forward. With great effort, he’s finally able to suck in half a breath of air. It doesn’t help much. A fit of coughs, gasps, and dry heaves rewards him for his troubles. He lurches forward on all fours, like he’s vomiting air.

Painful as it is, it doesn’t take too long to get back to something that somewhat resembles breathing. He lifts his head and turns his eyes—bloodshot and teary—back to Thegn.

The fight has moved on without him. Apparently Jack’s stupid, stupid failure to sucker punch Death with a barstool had provided enough of a distraction to let Corva wrench her way free from the scythe. Now she’s in close on the Reaper, dodging his attacks and attempting to land her own. And she’s fast. Ever so fast. Jack is reminded of the first day she crashed into his bar. She moves at a brutal, frenzied pace, but not without grace. Getting hit by her must be like being punched by the sunset.

But Zeke is still in Thegn’s hand. The wrinkled old Reaper hasn’t loosened his grip at all. Zeke’s little body—normally active and expressive—flops about limply as the fight progresses. Contrasted with Corva, Zeke is nothing like he was that first day she showed up.

Jack pauses as fragments of a memory squeeze their way to the front of his mind, coalescing into the seed of an idea. Like the first day!

He hauls himself back to his feet and heads to the most recently repaired section of the bar. With each step, he lets out a string of coughs and wheezes. Yet he still somehow manages to stumble over and drag himself onto the bar.

Now that he has a full view behind the bar, he can see the old control unit for the subsonic paralyzers. It’s still not fully repaired. The thing sits there silently, almost as if it’s staring back at him. Mocking him.

Jack swings his feet over the bar and lowers himself to the raised floor. He picks up the busted control unit and gives it a hard look. Slim said the array could be activated manually through this thing. Probably shoulda asked him to be more specific.

It’s a plain box, not much bigger than Jack’s hand, with two cables coming from it. One is for power and the other runs down through the floorboards and branches to each of the paralyzer units in the array underneath. Other than that, though, it’s just a nondescript black box with a couple glowing lights. Jack picks it up and looks closer. There’s not an obvious button on it anywhere. Slim! You an’ your friggin’ “simple” designs.

Desperate, he scans around for the device’s remote. Maybe Slim was wrong. Maybe that part ain’t busted. Maybe the remote will work. He spins around to look behind himself, stupidly forgetting that he’s still holding on to the control unit. The two cables tear from the back of the box and drop to the ground.

“Shit!”

He bends down and picks up the cable ends, inspecting them. The connectors are a little bent, but otherwise don’t seem any worse for wear. Carefully, he plugs them back into the control unit, first the array cable and then the power cable. Please don’t be fucked. Please don’t be fucked.

The moment that he inserts the power connector, there’s the pop and familiar whirring sound as the subsonic paralyzers suddenly cycle up. Jack stares at the little box in disbelief. His eyes widen as the realization hits him. “Yeah! That’s how ya do it, ya little asshole of a box! We win!”

Jack pauses after his shouts of celebration, realizing that the sounds of Corva and Thegn fighting have stopped, replaced by the pulsing hum of the paralyzer array. Right. Gotta check.

He sneaks a look over the bar at where he last saw them fighting. They’re not there. Well, not quite. They’re still in the bar, just not in the same place. And the interior of the bar itself, it’s not the same place either. It’s an absolute wreck. Tables are torn in half, chairs look as if they’ve spontaneously exploded, and every surface is cut, scratched, or shredded. It’s as if a tornado of chainsaws was let loose in the bar. Jack’s shoulders drop as he surveys the small-scale demolition. Maybe Harris is right about his inability to keep the bar from being trashed. “Seems I can’t do anything in this place without destroying it. Can’t even leave!”

He looks over toward the front of the room at Corva and Thegn. They’re caught mid-fight, unable to move. He can see their bodies shake as their muscles seize in waves. Zeke is still clutched in Thegn’s hand.

That’s right! Zeke!

Jack stands up and works his way along the bar’s back. Almost able to breathe normally, he moves quickly, ignoring the pain in his head and chest. A few steps in, he’s going at a pretty good clip. Get the bags, get Zeke, get the girl, get the fuck out.

He reaches the end of the bar and grabs the edge of it to let his momentum swing him around. However, the moment he crosses the threshold from behind the bar, a wave of sound hits him, followed by a wave of regret. He’s stepped out of the deadzone behind the bar. A hum fills his head, cycling in waves. The pulsing tone vibrates his skull, as if his brain has suddenly transformed into the world’s loudest purring cat.

He tries to look down. No dice. He’s got no control over any of the major muscle groups in his body. What’s worse, he’s off-balance from swinging around the bar’s end and he can’t move any of his limbs to catch himself.

His face and shoulder slam into the ground, and he slides a bit along the well-worn floorboards. He can see Corva’s face, partially obscured behind her raised arm. She must have been dodging or blocking something. She can’t move much, but with what little expression she can manage, the message is clear: Jack, you monumental fuckup.

And she’s right. As he stops skidding along the floor, something slides right into his field of view. An innocuous little needle-shaped electronic rod with a blue tip rests on the ground in front of him. The filter kneak that pairs with the paralyzer array. It must’ve popped out when he fell from Thegn’s grip earlier. Normally when he wakes up, he goes through his inventory of kneaks and makes sure they’re all jacked in correctly. Of course, normally he also avoids dropping himself on his own head.

Dumbass.