I stick angry lesions with a pin and watch the pus run out down the side of a cliff face leg, no stubble or hair, naturally hairless thanks to the Baroline. I’m engaged in conversation with Ace the Bleeding Faggot. He earned this title in jail. He’s now in The Frontier because he was recruited. He’s a notorious stoolie and thus the perfect man for our purpose. It’s New Year’s Day.

“What’s your resolution?” he asks me.
“To not kill anymore people. What’s yours?”
“That’s a tricky one. Mine is actually to marry a whore that I’ve been seeing steadily. You know the one, Violetta.”
“Yeah, I know,” I tell him. “Shit, I already broke my resolution. And that one put an end to your resolution.”
He seems hurt and begins pacing the room muttering to himself, “Guy cuts off someone’s head in the real world and is relegated to the rubbish bin of society.”

He turns quickly to me and exclaims, “Holy shit! I’ve gotta see an Arab!”
“Arabs are only good for camel eating,” I reply. “Can’t be beat at it. Know the techniques, handed down from Bedouin indoctrination. Cap of the prime M and an Arab will begin to tell tales. Nothing like it in the world. Introduced Dr. Stevenson to it at one point and the whole thing turned sideways. Lachrimosis, that’s just what he said. Didn’t make a lick of sense but I figured I’d fetch the soldiers and see who saluted. To a man, you understand?” He was pacing the room anxiously and I popped a Baroline in my mouth, savoring the dead meat aspect of the transaction.
“Look,” he finally spouted, “there’s six ways out of every building. I’ve taken four or five of them before and I’m not ready to take all of them. Look at that window.”

I made my way over and saw a horrible scene, a man set on fire and chained to a shop front, howling in agony.
“That’s an enemy agent,” Ace the Bleeding Faggot explained. “The store is a front for clandestine operations but he grassed back to his crew so they’re making an example. The fire is figurative, not literal. They’re burning down their cover, the way a croaker gets burned down after he stops writing."
The whole building was some kind of diving shop, anchor broken, drifting into blackness at a greater rate than it’s weight makes possible. There was no condition of buoyancy to the place. I turned to Ace the Bleeding Faggot and said, “If we had eggs I could make steak and eggs, if we had steak.”
“God damn it!” he shouted suddenly and ran to the wall. “This is my fucking birth certificate!”
“That’s my award from the organization,” I defended. “I won it for service in the field.”
“It’s my birth certificate, I’d know it anywhere. I’m taking this.”
“I’d like to give it to you but the rules state that it can only be transferred after the next recipient has bested me in hand to hand combat."

This agitates him and I say, “I didn’t make the rules.”