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“Did you get any of my messages? Is that why you came?” I couldn't remember if I had received them, so I shook my head, no. “No messages from me at all? I've tried for years...” He trailed off, then his eyes went to the saber again. “If you didn't...then why...?” I stood. “I'm not who you think I am,” I started to explain, but the words fell flat. I was interrupted by the blast of a gunshot, and my father's chest rocked with a fatal wound. To my left, Muckbuckle sat in the window pane with a smoking automatic pistol. “Sorry, friend,” he said, swinging the pistol toward me. “It's nothing personal. The suits, in all their bureaucratic genius, screwed up, as usual. They crossed their wires somehow.” He glanced toward the body of my father, confirming the kill, then carried on. “They dropped you into a local lowlife and gave you a kill order for the mayor and his son, not knowing that you were inhabiting that very estranged son! Of course, when I saw you in that bar I saw the family resemblance, but I figured it was a long shot until the old man said it himself.” He turned the pistol to me. “And I somehow doubt that you're willing to finish the job, since we both know from basic training that this would mean that you—the real you— would die along with your host. Any last words, friend?” I stared at him, this man who had killed my father, and a calm welled up, overtaking the anger and hatred. Above him, in the reflective glass of the window, I caught a look at myself, and recognized my father again. I was tall, with broad shoulders and long, dark hair. I was tall and strong, not big and clumsy. The saber in my hand was not comically small, but simply light and easy in my hand. And it flung toward my father's killer in quickness and a grace with which his trigger finger could not compete. I was at his corpse before it fell backward out the window, catching him and hauling him into the room. The guards burst in and charged with a yell, brandishing sword and flintlock pistol. I disarmed the killer's corpse and turned the pistol on the guards, but did not fire. Their bullets sunk into my shoulder and arm, but I knew I would make it. Diving out the window, I crashed down along the ivy, sprinted through the main gate, and out into the night, bleeding and alone.
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