The punch collided with François' nose, knocking the thin man off of his feet, loosing his half-smoked Gitane cigarette out of his mouth, and sending a tear-jerking sting throughout his face. He landed flat on his back, driving the wind out of him with a great oof.
François looked up at the man who had once been his friend, stout and burly, his black shirt clung tightly to his muscled body. Time had made his back stubble and neat combover become heavily flecked with grey. Remy had been a cop, then a detective, and was also a member of the GIGN, France's answer to the American S.W.A.T.
"Sous-merde pute!" Remy spit. "Get the hell out of my bar with your bullshit!" Remy said, heading through the door to his office.
François scrambled to his feet and looked around the bar, a medium-sized place with low lighting and a decent number of patrons, though not enough that the punch and yelling would go unnoticed. The hum of chatter from the patrons had stopped and all eyes were on him.
"Nothing to see here, just a friendly dispute, return to your beers, please." François chuckled.
"You have to be friends to have a friendly dispute." He heard Remy call.
François then remembered his mission and hopped over the bar and caught up to Remy just as he was about to slam the door. François put his foot between the door and the wall and the door collided with his foot.
"Mon dieu!" François cried as now a new pain was born in his foot, a sibling to the one in his face. "Be careful!" François demanded as he walked into the tiny room that he assumed Remy would call 'an office'.
"Maybe don't follow me and I won't slam doors on your feet." Remy deadpanned, taking a seat behind the desk that took up most of the space in the room with unpainted walls and no windows.
"To hell with my foot, my shoes are what I'm worried about, these are Gucci, you could have damaged them!" François complained.
"Fuck you and your knock-off shoes. Get the hell out of my office!" Remy demanded.
François took the seat across from Remy and nearly laughed when he saw the man stiffen and bristle with anger.
"Oh look, that vein still comes out of your head when I speak. But you need to listen! I need your help, this job is far too important for me to go alone."
"Oh, yes, the bullshit about the American senator." Remy rolled his eyes. "Look, I don't know what scam you've got going but it won't work on me, now—"
"Listen! A man is going to die and we can stop it! It is the duty of police officers to protect the innocent, and even though you don't have your badge anymore—" François was cut off by Remy grabbing his silk tie and using it to pull François's head full force into the hard desktop.
Then, a cold cylinder was pushed into the side of François' head and he heard an unmistakable metallic click of a safety going off.
"Don't you dare bring that up! You ruined my life and I have spent every moment since trying to fix it, you long-tongued cock sucker!" Remy growled.
"Of course! Of course! But listen, I-ow!" The gun was being pressed into his skull harder and harder. "I-uh-I know you want to get it back, and you're right, it is my fault you got fired-AHHH," François cried out as Remy forced the barrel of the gun into his skull further still, "and that's why I came here! I can fix what I ruined, imagine 'former detective Remy Lefèvre saves American senator with his psychic friend' they'll have to give you your badge back!" François pleaded.
Remy released him, and François stumbled backwards, tripping over himself and falling to the ground. Remy shook his head in disbelief.
"You're crazy, get out." Remy commanded.
He thinks it's too good to be true, which means he wants it to be true!
"I won the lotto!" François proclaimed, throwing his hands into the air in celebration. François turned to look at him. "I won because I dreamt of the winning numbers being announced on TV and then I went and bought a ticket with the numbers! I'm a millionaire! If I can make millions, who's to say I can't get you your badge?" François questioned.
Remy smirked and François saw the lightly lined face move subtly into contemplation.
"Tch. I thought I saw your rat face in the paper. You really dreamt the lotto numbers? Those shoes are real Gucci?" Remy asked, François could see that he still was on the island of disbelief, but at the water's edge. François lifted his foot in the air and slapped the side of his five hundred dollar shoes.
"One-hundred percent, mon ami!" François demonstrated, modeling the shoes. Remy laughed.
"Fuck it, I don't care if you're lying or not, you've got money. You're going to pay for everything. Every month of rent on the bar while I am gone. My room and board, and I will have a separate hotel from you at a five-star hotel. First class plane ticket, everything." Remy told François.
"Of course, but, fuck rent, I'll just buy the place for you! Nothing but the best for my friends!" François exclaimed.
Standing up in jubilation, arms spread wide signaling for an embrace. Remy put a distancing hand on François' chest.
"Ah, ah. We're not friends. This is a vacation for me, you owe me that and more. But, sure, we'll go to the senator's house on the day in your dream. And when no one shows up to try to kill him, I beat the shit out of you and fly back to France first class. Do you understand me?" Remy instructed.
"Oui, Capitaine!" François said, striking a mock salute. "But when we go to the senator's house and the strange man does show up and he does try to kill the senator, you and I stop him, make the front page news and you tell my daughter and ex-wife that it was all my idea and that I'm a hero and we be friends again, deal?" François offered his hand to his former friend, a man who was always harder and stronger than himself, his deeply gray hair accented with surviving black strands was still cut into a military-style and his clothing was sturdy and pragmatic, a far cry from the crisp, new opulent attire of François
He has to shake my hand now, no? I got him hooked, line, and sinker! I'd go alone and keep all the glory of being a hero to myself, but I can't fight worth a damn, or be a detective, or...
Remy looked at François' hand for a long moment and the artist began to swear a bit in his head, thinking that the old barman would change his mind and leave him high and dry. But in the end, the large, calloused hand of the soldier smacked into the smooth paint-stained grip of François and the two shook on the deal.
François went back home that night in high spirits, not just because he had secured his bodyguard for his grand heroic gesture, but because Remy had convinced him to stay at the bar and buy bottle service.
His money had attracted the attention of two young women at the bar, he invited them back home for a nightcap and the three of them shared his four-postered bed that night in a five-minute romp that left François thoroughly satisfied and the two women disgusted with themselves.
François held both women in his arms, turning away from the sliding glass door having been gazing out at the sea, a solitary white drone flying over it. That night he drifted off to sleep, hoping to dream of his great heroic act. What he got instead was terrifying.
Hotels all smell the same. Heavily sterilized as they are, you can still smell the human debauchery underneath.
"You're right, dear. But they're necessary, we have to keep moving." A voice behind him said.
He turned and looked, and there she was. Beautiful as the day they first met after his operation.
"Anna, I don't know what I'd do without you." He said. She laughed her perfect laugh.
"You're silly, a knight doesn't need a princess to go on a crusade." She smiled.
"No, but it makes it a helluva lot easier." He got up and embraced her, she was smaller than him and he liked that. He loved how he could envelop her with his arms, shield her from the world. "I'd die for you. You know that, right?" He asked, pulling away from her, just a bit, to look into her beautiful sparkling eyes, blue as the sky with a hint of green around the iris, he moved his hands from her waist to her pitch-black hair. She kept it short and messy, but he didn't mind.
"I know. But you need to live, we have a lot more work to do. The Singularity demands progress, and there are those who stand in the way." Her voice was so soft and so low that it made him melt.
"Like that bastard, Cartwright." He didn't like talking about that son of a bitch in front of her, it always ruined his mood. She nodded and he reluctantly let her go, she went to the drawer and pulled out the gun. The M45A1 he got when he first enlisted has been his constant companion ever since.
"You know what you have to do." She said, the sickly yellow light of the hotel room reflecting off her pale skin, giving her a golden aura. She was so beautiful that he could feel tears in his eyes.
"Yes, sweetheart, I do." He took his old friend from her hands, feeling the weight of it.
The weight of its potential. The weight of the responsibility given unto him by The Singularity. There was a knock at the door, shocking them both.
They shared a look of confusion and fear. He went and got the laptop on the bed and opened the feed from the spy cam he'd put above the door, only an idiot would look through the peephole.
He opened the program connected to the camera he hid in the lamp by the front door. It showed him two men standing in the hallway. One was a broad-shouldered, stocky man in his forties or fifties, with steely grey stubble all around the lower third of his face. He was wearing a grey burlap jacket and combat boots.
Not good. The haircut, build, and outfit all give him away as an operator...
The other was painfully thin, with shaggy, black, unkempt hair. He wore designer sandals and an expensive-looking shirt with paint-stained pants and designer sunglasses.
What the hell?
Then he saw something that made his blood run cold. Two cops standing off to either side of the door so as not to be seen by anyone dumb enough to look through the peephole.
"Anna, run." He commanded.
"What? I'm not leaving you!" She whispered back. He stood up and took her head in his hands. He planted a kiss on her and she kissed him back, it was just as sweet as their first kiss back in the hospital.
"You need to go, I can't protect you when things get ugly. Go through the window and meet me at the bunker, ok?" He pleaded. She looked like she was going to cry, he hated making her feel that way, but he knew he needed to.
"I love you." She trembled.
"I love you too." They kissed again and he released her.
She walked backward, keeping her eyes on him as she went to the window, opened it, and stepped out. The last he saw of her was her skirt fluttering in the wind.
The knock came again, more assertive this time. François racked his gun with a cybernetic hand and went to the wardrobe, inside he found one of his mines. He stopped a moment and turned the bomb over in his hands, admiring his work.
He set the mine and unlocked the door. He stepped back a safe distance and used his powerful cybernetic prosthetic arm to quietly, easily lift the queen-sized bed and turn it on its side, the mattress facing the door and himself behind the bed, looking at the Kevlar sheet that was sandwiched between the mattress and the metal frame.
"Come in!" He called, and the door opened. The police flooded into the room and set off the mine, blowing all four men sky-high.
François sat up with a jerk, his body soaked in sweat and his mouth dry as sand. The two women were still next to him, Alice and Madeline or was it Amélie and Bernadette?
Doesn't matter, they don't care about me. I have to tell Remy about the bomb, he won't believe me, but a fair warning is fair.
François pulled out his phone and dialed the number Remy had given him, the phone rang to completion and went to voicemail. François called again to the same result. The third time he called, Remy answered.
"It's three in the fucking morning, what do you want?!" Remy's groggy voice shouted.
"We die." François whimpered.
"What?" Remy asked.
"In America, the man who shoots the senator, we corner him at his hotel with the American police and he blows us up. He rigs a bomb to the door of his room." Remy explained.
"Then we don't go to his fucking hotel! Easy, now go to sleep!" And Remy hung up.
François thought about calling him again but thought it might endanger his already reluctant partner's compliance. François picked up his wallet, and inside he found an old, wrinkled photo. He pulled it out and examined it as he had done almost every day.
It was him, Françoise, and Élisabeth from Christmas, the only one he had made it to. Françoise was only three years old and Élisabeth had just turned nineteen, he was twenty-one. Élisabeth was sitting shoulder to shoulder with him, rolling her eyes and smiling, just a little. François had a grin ear to ear looking like a fool and baby Françoise was giddy in her father's arms.
I promised them I would do better, I was working at the paper making those stupid cartoons. Élisabeth actually laughed when I teased her instead of slapping me and her father tolerated me. The perfect day. We will have more! I will become a hero and Françoise and Élisabeth will see that I'm not a loser!
François put the photo back in his wallet and laid back down, he pulled the silken sheets to his chin and drifted into a deep, thankfully dreamless, sleep.