Ka

This is ka, I thought as I took my turn at the hole that Ashleigh had drilled into the roof. Below us was a shooting range and the next thought that followed was, I've been here before.

The day before, I waited in the shooting range in the basement of the Tet building at Number 2 Hammerskjold Plaza. I spent an hour or two there a day, and brought Penny there a couple of times a week. The kid picked up quickly, though sometimes got a little bored if I made her strip and clean her gun too much. She seemed to like helping me with mine better. Maybe she just likes the big guns.

She seemed excited today, because we were all going to shoot together. It's not the same as shooting together when you have to run to cover and cross each others lines of fire, but we needed the practice. I had a sore shoulder that told me that Alistair needed to spend a little more time down here.

The genius was a pretty good shot, though. I don't know much about crossbows, so he's going to have to just practice if he wants to get fast. I guess he has his own way about it, though. He had some sort of pump-action reloading going on. I've never seen anything like it, so I figured it was something he cooked up himself.

Ashleigh was also pretty good, but then, like Alistair, he was a field agent. He'd been out there, working sabotage and trading fire with Regulators before. Of course by his own admission he didn't have a lot of finesse. Well, dropping a car on someone is quite nice, but most of the time it's not the best idea. I had him picking wingnuts off the bench with his mind. He wanted to test something else out as well, some kind of shield he made. Like Alistair he was always making something. I was pretty surprised that something that came from thin air could stop bullets - low calibur ones at least.

Eden handled herself and her gun pretty well. I guess in her when Viet Nam hadn't been that long ago. She still remembered how to shoot. I wasn't too worried about her, not even in combat. She kept her head pretty well when we popped into her life with the lead flying.

It was with Penny and Carrie that I spent most of my time. Carrie didn’t think she could do it, and that was a problem. I never thought of myself as much of a teacher. I'd never tutored anyone and my academic career was as much a solo affair as my business career had been. But I found myself down in that shooting range, the one who'd shot the most people and been shot the most times and everyone looking at me whenever there was a question.

It made me think back to the last time I was here.

No, not this same range, but one very much like it. The top hat inked onto my hand was still vivid black and fresh when Lex took me to some warehouse outside of New Jersey, one of the places on Earth where the Low Men whiled their time away blowing holes in things and pretending to be human.

I remembered standing at the range with Lex next to me, showing me how to load the simple handgun.

"It looks dirty," I told him doubtfully. It was the first time I had ever held a gun. I didn't like the idea of it blowing up in my face.

"It's a range gun, it gets used a lot, but is seldom cleaned. There are other guns if you want another one." Lex held out his paw for the weapon and I stared at it, still a little shocked at the neat gray fur and the smooth leather pads and the white tips of his retracted claws.

"Can't I just clean this one?" I asked him. Lex paused and looked at me. I might've thought he was sizing me up to eat when I first saw him, but I knew differently now.

"If you wish to learn," He answered.

And so he showed me how to clean a gun and reload it quickly. I could almost do it in my sleep inside of a month. When he gave me the heavy guns, I was glad. These weren't cheap automatics that I felt like throwing away if they jammed on me. I wanted clean, working guns that could make The Kill when they had to.

Like Penny, like Carrie and the others, I picked it up quickly. I was already good at The Kill. Lex made me better.

"This thing is huge, the bullets are going to go everywhere," I told Lex. The Thompson rested uneasily in my hands, black and oiled and deadly. I had no illusions that I was going to be able to put so much as a single round through the bullseye.

"The bullets will go where you want them to go," the gray cat told me. I looked at him doubtfully. This was a lot different than learning how to take this gun apart and put it back together.

"I'm not psychic, you know?"

"I'm not talking about psychic powers, James. I'm talking about will." He put his paw on my shoulder and I looked up into his jade-colored eyes. "You're fast James. And you have good eyes. You can see your target and pull the trigger. But your enemies will be fast too. And their eyes will be sharp." The points of his claws dug into my shoulder through my heavy coat.

I could feel what he was talking about. I could feel his will radiating out from him like heat from a fire that was one errant breeze from going out of control. I felt then that if he wanted to kill me I would be dead. Not because of his claws or gun, but just because he wanted me dead.

"The one who wins is the one with the stronger will to win. When you draw your gun, you must decide that your target is already dead. When you aim your gun, you must will them to die. See the bullets ripping into them. See them die." His voice was as smooth as ever, deep and strong. I felt hypnotized, though he practiced no houken, no coin danced across his fingers.

"Do you want them dead?" he asked me, his voice rising.

"Yes," I answered. I didn't even know who "they" were.

"Are they dead, James?" He asked, his rich voice now ringing over the sound of the omnipresent gunfire.

"Yes!"

"Then kill them! KILL THEM ALL!"

I brought up the Thompson in one hand, not even distantly aware of the obscene weight of the heavy machinegun. It was just like my fist had grown into a long black finger. I screamed a wordless cry and my finger shot thunder like the hand of Zeus. I raked the gun across the range, pumping lead. The cardboard target twenty yards away was chopped to pieces. I turned and tore apart the targets on either side of me where a Low Man was popping little small-claibur holes in his target with a handgun. I went on screaming until the hundred-round drum was empty.

Lex made a strange twined-finger gesture with one hand that I could never hope to duplicate with my human hand and he gave a short, triumphant cry.

"It was well done, James. It was very well indeed."

I clapped my hand on Carrie's shoulder and echoed those words before I could stop myself. It was the first time in an hour that she hit the target twenty yards away. She smiled shyly. She was really very pretty when she just smiled. I mumbled something about Rolands lessons in the Books when she talked about her doubts. But even that was a little too close for comfort. Rolands talk of "I kill with my heart" and Lex's lessons about killing being a matter of will were eerily similar. Not for the first time I wondered what Lex knew of Gunslingers. Where did Lex come from? Why had he chosen to serve the Crimson King?

I jerked myself out of reverie then as I did now. I wasn't at a shooting range at the Tet building or outside of New Jersey. Below us right now were nearly twice our number of the King's harriers.

Why hadn't we waited for dark? Presumably then they'd all be asleep over in the dorms. With the thick concrete they wouldn't have been able to hear any shooting from inside and Our ruse with Carrie would've worked as well at night. Any suspicion guards might've had could probably have been deflected by Eden they way she covered it up when they saw Penny.

I knew why, of course. I still crave The Kill. If everything goes according to some perfect plan, there's no challenge. I wanted a challenge. I wanted them to fight back. I wanted a chance to blow some of those harriers to hell. And I wanted to give them a chance to kill me.

I glanced at Penny to see if she knew, to see if she suspected. I'd always tried to hide my self-loathing from her, but I'd come close to letting her see my naked hatred for myself.

Shooting wasn't the only practice we'd done. We'd run up against some powerful psychic creatures and events, and I knew that at least Alistair was pretty scared of something getting into his head. Well, since his head was pretty much only held together by the Rose, I don't blame him. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised that being with a new ka-tet kept brining up memories of the old one.

"It creeps me out they way everyone knows what I'm thinking, Lex. I'm going to loose it and start shooting." I pulled the tab on my third beer. Lex drank his out of a coffee mug, his pink tongue darting out to lap up the cheap foamy beer.

"It does?" He asked with genuine curiosity. I supposed that as a taheen, telepathy was as normal as blue eyes.

"Hell yeah, it does." I chugged half my beer in a few long swallows. "…I hear that in the devor toi they have hats… Hats that stop the Breakers from progging the guards."

Lex shook his head and wiped the suds from his whiskers with the back of his paw. "No hat, James. They don't give those out as party favors. But there are better ways. Hats can be lost. Knocked off. If you even lift one enough to scratch your head… There are better ways." He gestured for another can and caught the Bud I tossed his way. I hadn't gotten used to his unnatural grace and speed.

"I can show you if you want."

"What do I have to do?" I asked. I was always ready to learn something from Lex and he seemed to have an endless wealth of things to teach. He even taught me a few things about the stock market.

"You excell, James. Did I ever tell you that?" He told me. I shook my head. The approval of my dinh warmed my cold, dead cheeks. "You do not succeed at everything, but you try. You reach beyond yourself. You reach as far as you can."

I thought of my father, whom hadn't crossed my mind in years. Somehow I didn't think he'd be proud of what I was reaching for. I drowned his face in cheap beer.

After a long pause Lex spoke again. "A telepath can read your mind. But they can only read what is there to be read. When you open the pages of Moby Dick, you cannot read the story of Huckleberry Finn." I hoped this wasn't going to get too literary, I'd paid a kid to write those two book reports for me. "Think very hard about something James. Anything you want."

I shrugged and looked around for something to focus on. For some reason I remembered my mother's perfume. Vanderbuilt. It was expensive, but glorious. My father could seldom afford a bottle, but every year I worked odd jobs and mowed lawns until I could buy her one for mother's day. Heavy glass shapped like a swan. I remembered her smile and that glorious smell as she sprayed some on her wrist for me to smell.

Lex's soft black nose wrinkled, his nostrils dilating. "Vanderbuilt?" he asked. I nodded, but uselessly. His slitted eyes were closed and he could see it in my head anyways. It wasn't so bad when Lex read my thoughts. "And underneath that, you're thinking…" He trailed off, doing me the kindness of not finishing that sentence. "That's good, James. You have to think that down deep. So that underneath the memory of that scent is only more of the same. If someone means to prog you, or is looking for your mind amidst others, give them nothing to find."

I rubbed my temple. Thinking so hard on one thing made my head hurt. I popped another beer.

"There are other tricks. Things to help you keep your mind your own when someone else tries to own it. To make you do things." He turned his large green eyes on me again.

"Alright. Let's do it."

And we'd done it there in a conferrence room. I told them what I'd been told about building walls around my mind. I had to thank Lex for not laughing at me, because back then I had probaly been making the same riddiculous faces as I concentrated as they were.

I let Eden and Penny try to prog me and I'd done my best to keep them out. Eden was the stronger telepath…but Penny got in deeper. I feel like she's almost in my head already. It was hard not to think about her, what she means to me, especially with her right front of me, gently biting her lower lip in exaggerated concentration. I panicked when I felt her slide into my head like a blade, finding the gaps in the mental wall I built simply because against her I built no walls.

I actually physically turned away, as if by hiding my face I could hide my thoughts. My abrupt turn must have startled her, because I felt her leave my head. The contact was only brief, momentary. But had she seen all the way down? Had she seen to the depths of my regret? Every day is a torment to me, every drop of blood is a reminder that I am not human, I'm a creature of the Crimson King, and I live only because a little girl needs me. Every time the Top Hat Cats went after a breaker, I hoped that something would happen. Every time I went out with Penny and the others I hoped that some Low Man would be a better shot than me, would have a greater will to win.

Maybe one of these Low Men down there was better. But I realized that everyone else was in the same hunt as me. That when it came to The Kill, that they could die just as easily as me. If I thought I was a monster then, how would I feel if I survived another shootout, but someone shot Eden? Or Carrie? Carrie who just told me that she'd went out with Ashleigh and hadn't creeped him out. Who'd been so proud to have done such a normal things as gone out on a date.

What if it was Penny?

I'd fucked us. It was too late to cry off and wait for dark. The gate guards were dead, the window pried open by Ashleigh in a way that wouldn't remain undiscovered for long. There was only one way to make sure that no one else paid the price for my death-wish.

I had to win.

So I'll win. So that the others who never did wrong in this life, who deserved more than an inglorious death at the hands of things inhuman, could walk away from here. I'll win.

Those Low Men are already dead.