Chapter 17: Slap!

Book Two: Lt. Reilly and the Black Bird Offensive

I had lost focus for a moment. Forcing my chin up, my eye met Mitchell’s.She was evaluating me trying to decide how much more I could take. With the other man in the room I couldn’t blow my cover, so I didn’t say anything, but we had worked together long enough to communicate with the most subtle of looks. I knew what she had to do and so did she.

‘Slap!’As her hand met my face, the sound hurt my ears more than the actual strike against my jaw. It was the seventh or eighth strike, and my whole head was going numb.

“Where’s the girl!” Mitchell yelled at me as she raised her hand, ready to throw another slap on me.

“I already told you all I know,” I said through a fattening lip. They had me in an old metal chair and my arms were cuffed behind me. Riker, the weasley P.I. she was working with, was pushing me back in the chair, giving me the sensation that I could fall back at any time. It was making my stomach turn and bile come up to the back of my throat.

“Are you sure he knows where the girl is?” Riker asked. The short and round man was sweating more than I was. He was clearly out of his element.

“He has to know,” Mitchell said, sternly, playing her part, acting as if I was the traitor. “He made the drop, the money is gone, no one else was within miles of the site. The only thing we can conclude is that he was in on it.”

Riker nodded, looked at me, grabbed my shirt with both hands and shook me hard. “Tell us where she is!” he spat at me, his voice cracking with frustration and strain.

Trying to clear my throat from the blood that was pooling in my mouth I said, “For the thousandth time, I made the drop as I was told to do and left. I don’t know anything else. Don’t you think I would tell you if I did?”

Riker glared at me for a long moment and then released his grip, intending to let the chair fall back onto the concrete floor with my hands still bound behind me. Mitchell caught me with one hand and slapped me across the face with the other. Blood flew from my face and splattered on both of us. She then pulled me up, bringing all four legs of the chair back to the floor. Taking out a handkerchief from her pocket, she cleaned her hands and looked at the other man.

“This is getting us nowhere. I need some air,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” he said with uncertainty in his voice.

Mitchell walked across the floor of the warehouse room that was vacant of everything except us and the chair I was in. She peered out the windows to confirm no one was around and then walked out the door, securing it behind her. Riker stepped up in front of me and just looked at me for a minute. His expression was a mix of pity and contemplation. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. Instead, he crossed to the old windows that had yellowed and blurred with age and looked out of it to make sure Mitchell had actually gone out of earshot. Then his demeanor changed. The stress melted away from him. He stood up straight and crossed over to me with a slight smile on his face.

“I’m sorry about this, I really am,” he said as he pulled a small leather case out of his coat pocket. “I try not to involve others in these things, but sometimes it is unavoidable.” He then pulled a sonic-disruptor out of the case; a medical device about the size of a tulip bulb used to break up kidney stones. A very useful medical tool that someone with a very twisted mind figured could be used as an assassin’s tool. If held against an artery for half a minute, you can break up enough plaque to cause a stroke. Place it on the chest by the heart, and you can create a very painful death. Hold a man's head still and press it against the base of the neck for 10 seconds, or so, and you can disrupt the entire nervous system causing any number of organs to shut down all at once. A coroner would have to do a deep tissue scan and be looking for sonic disruption to determine such a death as something other than natural causes.

“You? It was you this whole time?” I said confused by the revelation.

“Well, not just me,” he said, his smile growing a little more. “I, of course, had a few associates, but you need not concern yourself with that. You will be joining them very shortly. I wonder if there really is an afterlife, and if so, will you be able to compare notes with my associates. Wouldn’t that be interesting?”

He approached me with the device in his right hand.

“And what if it was the other way around?” I asked

“What do you mean?”

I looked him dead in the eye and said, “What would you say to your friends that you sent to hell if you were to be the one to see them next?”

Before he knew what was happening, my right hand was on his right wrist, directing the disruptor away from me, and my left was on his throat. I threw him to the ground, my hands were free of the restraints because Mitchell had used my own cuffs that were coded to my DNA, but my legs were still tied to the legs of the chair. I went down on top of Riker, the chair still tethered to me. A more fit man would have been able to pull back and gain the advantage back over me, but his short stature and extra 80 pounds of gut worked in my favor. The impact of the hard floor caused him to lose his grip on the device, giving me the opportunity to grab it. Before he could react, I was pressing it up against his throat.

“Where’s the girl?” I growled in his ear.

“No, I don’t…” he tried to say.

I then pressed the sonic disruptor into his left eye socket. “You ever see what one of these things can do right here? Every nerve ending in your eye goes wild, and the fluid begins to boil. Then it sends shards of agonizing pain into the skull.”

He tried to squirm free, but I had all my weight on him, and my other arm had his left arm pinned back.

“You have three seconds,” I hissed. “One, Two.”

“She’s at the Pinewood Lodge, room 3A,” he said, the sweat rolling down his face.

“You got that?” I asked.

“Officers are on their way now,” Mitchell said in my ear. She was right outside, just around the corner, listening to the entire exchange through my implant that was on the entire time.

Major Mitchell burst through the door, her laser pistol pointed at us, followed by three local police officers. With their entrance, I was able to roll off Riker, handed one of the officers the disruptor and then worked on ripping off the duct tape that was securing my legs to the chair. Despite the punishment my face took, my right knee was what was killing me the most. The effect from the regrowth of my leg only got worse over time. I had said I was going to have it fixed after my benefits were reestablished, but things are never that simple.

Being back on the government payroll meant that I could have a military doctor examine and devise a treatment plan to fix my war injury, but the military med facilities on New Harmony were not set up for rehabilitation or cosmetic treatments; just emergency aid and general health services. I could see a local civilian doc to get the treatment, but the lion's share of the bill would come out of my own pocket, and that wasn’t the kind of money that I had.

As I got my second leg free, I looked up to see a hand near my face. Mitchell was holding it out to me. I took it and looked her in the eyes as she helped me to my feet, “You ever thought about pulling your punches?” I asked as I brought a hand up to my throbbing jaw.

“I did,” she said with a sly grin. I couldn’t help but admire Mitchell.Her cheeks and neck glistened with perspiration, and some of her long blond hairs had worked their way loose from the pin in the back of her head that kept her hair pulled back in proper uniform fashion. As the warehouse was very hot, she had opened up her uniform jacket and it was casually hanging open. Yet she still had an air of authority about her. Our friendship had grown over the past year since she had offered me the job in the Securities and Investigations division of the Alliance JAG office on New Harmony. Most of that time was used to ferret out officers and enlisted, or civilian contractors who were either being influenced by the London Syndicate or on their payroll. We had no idea if we found even half of their inside people on this planet, or even in this city for that matter, but our investigations led to 43 people being removed from key military and government positions, the arrest and criminal conviction of five government officials and the court-martial of seven Alliance officers. Trying to find and catch them was like hunting rats in an abandoned house. Impossible to get them all, but the hunt itself kept them out of the kitchen.

Mitchell looked me over, cringing at her assessment of the level of pain I must be feeling. “Take the rest of the day off. I’ll handle the paperwork.”

“Fine by me,” I said. “This wasn’t even my case anyway. You should do the paperwork.” I was teasing, but also a little serious.

“I know, and thank you,” she said. “I owe you one.”

“You owe me five,” I said.

“Four,” she corrected. “I spared you that meeting with Admiral Barker last week so you could keep your day off with Kayla.”

Nodding I said, “Yeah that counts. Kayla would have laid into me pretty good if I had canceled on her. I pulled my palm computer out and spoke into it. “Computer, request an auto-cab for this location.”

The computer beeped a couple of times, and then a voice replied, “Durlaines Auto-cab service responding. ETA three minutes.”

I then looked back at Mitchell. My head was really starting to throb as the numbness from the beating was turning into real soreness. “See you tomorrow.” With that, I walked outside to wait for the automated cab to pick me up and take me home.

~~~

The self-driving car picked me up from the main street near the warehouse. By that time a dozen more police officers had arrived along with three detectives from the local precinct. My undercover persona was that of a guy struggling to get by, old dirty clothes and such. Most of the law enforcement arriving wouldn’t know me by sight so I pulled my badge out and put it on my lapel so that everyone could see I was on the job. A senior detective who did know me walked up and asked me a few questions. I filled him in and directed him to get the rest from Mitchell. After all, it really wasn’t my case.

With New Harmony still being something of a vacation destination for many, the cabs services were very competitive. They kept their automated cars very clean and provided a number of amenities that they were more than happy to charge your account three times the going rate for if you indulged. Not that I had an affinity for the old dirty cabs found on more common colony worlds, but they did tend to be cheaper to get around in. The inside of this car was one oval cushioned bench capable of seating eight people comfortably. As I took my seat, the onboard computer identified me and asked in a simulated female voice, “Is your destination the office, home or other Mr. Reilly?”

“Home,” I answered, and the door closed as the car turned out into the street and headed in the direction of my apartment across town. Pulling up the cushion to my right I looked down into the compartment to see a variety of refreshments ranging from water and soda to beer and liquor. It was tempting to take a water, but at five credits a bottle, I decided to wait until I got home. Opening the compartment under the cushion on my left revealed men's and women’s clothing sets, prepackaged, made with smart fabric that would adjust in size under the wearer’s body heat. A luxury that some might need if they were heading from the office to a night on the town or if the night on the town resulted in messed up clothing, but it was not something I ever had to waste my money on. Sliding over I opened the cushion I had been sitting on. There I found what I was looking for, the first-aid supplies. In it were bandages, cold packs, basic meds, and a tissue regenerator. Again everything was overpriced, but three credits for a cold pack seemed reasonable at the moment. Pulling one out my computer chimed notifying me of the completed purchase. Crushing the bag in my hands to activate the chemicals, I placed it on my face where I had received the majority of the slaps. Putting my head back and closing my eyes I took a moment to enjoy the minor relief.

With midday traffic, it was going to take around 45 minutes to get home. It was tempting to keep my eyes closed and try to take a nap, but I could never sleep in driverless vehicles. There were just too many things that could go wrong in those things. So I pulled out my palm computer and opened up a work file. Even though Major Mitchell was going to do the full report, I still had to submit my version of events, and it would be needed first thing in the morning or sooner. It was best to get it out of the way then while it was fresh, rather than the next morning when I had better things to do. Scrolling through the files on the screen I found the one marked, Case 7545-19-A-MI-017, subheader Abduction of Minor, Missy Cartwright. Opening it, I created a new attachment and then dictated the statement,“Computer. Put proper header and title on investigator’s statement for this file and prepare for dictation.”

“File ready,” the computer said. “You may begin speaking at any time.”

I put the palm computer on the seat next to me, moved the cold pack up my cheek to my temple and composed my thoughts for a moment before I started. “On Monday, June 22, Alliance Calendar, Major Mitchell received…”

“Recording paused,” The computer stated. “Is the date entered for this calendar year or another year? Please clarify.”

The database had a basic AI that’s primary function was to make sure we kept our reports detailed and official. “Yes,” I answered. “All dates in this report will be from the current calendar year unless specified. Confirm.”

“All dates in this report will be labeled with the current calendar year unless otherwise directed. Confirmed. You may continue dictation.”

“Thank you, Computer, Major Mitchell received orders from General Oppenheimer to assist the local authorities on New Harmony with the investigation of the abduction of Missy Cartwright: a resident of New Harmony, age 6. Her father, Bradley Cartwright, is a Captain in the Alliance Space Forces currently in command of… computer make a note to look up the registry of the ship Captain Cartwright is commanding.”

“Captain Cartwright is currently in command of the T.S.S. Retligg.”

Taking a breath, I did my best to hold back my disdain of AI’s as they tended to get confused when a person’s voice demonstrated too much emotion like anger. “Add information to file.”

“File updated, you may resume dictation.”

I shifted the cold pack and continued. “Military Intelligence has an obligation to participate in any capital crime investigation involving a serving member of the armed forces or their dependents. Major Mitchell decided to serve as an ‘Advisor’ only on this case because Captain Cartwright has been divorced from the child's mother for over three years and has been serving off-world for nearly that amount of time. For that reason, she didn’t believe there would be a correlation between the crime and the father of the missing girl. The Major has worked with the local authorities on equivalent cases and was confident they had the resources and skills to accomplish the job on their own. However, by Wednesday June 24th, the locals had uncovered two suspects, each found dead before they could be apprehended and the girl was nowhere to be found each time. Mitchell suspected that there might be a mole on the inside tipping off the gang of kidnappers. She had a gut feeling that… ”

The computer gave two harsh beeps and then said, “Please restate in proper language.”

Writing reports was the one thing about the job that kept tripping me up. As an engineer my reports were simple because it was just about parts and results. Going into this job I assumed it would be the same, as what command wanted from the reports were just cold facts and little to no opinions. Yet describing events and peoples actions in that way was a lot harder than I expected and I found I often had to go back and refine my language.

“Computer delete last sentence.” A double beep told me the correction was made. “Computer resume dictation. Major Mitchell had a reasonable suspicion that the person might be Lipton Riker, a private investigator, hired by the girl’s mother who insisted that Mr. Riker was made part of the investigation, despite Mitchell’s and the Police Chief’s objections. Mitchell contacted me on Wednesday afternoon, June 24th, and explained her suspicions to me and asked me to assist her with a plan to force Riker’s hand. She told everyone that I was a confidential informant that she used from time to time, who would do anything for a few credits. They set me up to do the ransom drop. Mitchell felt they were all being played and in her gut knew that the drop would go bad…”

The computer beeped at me. “Damn it, I did it again.” Moving the ice pack to my knee, I thought about how to rephrase the wording for a proper government document. “Computer delete last sentence and continue.Major Mitchell had concerns that the local investigators were being misled and the investigation would be negatively influenced. Therefore, if everything went as planned by the local investigators and the girl was released after the money was delivered, then she would dismiss her suspicions. However, if the money disappeared and the girl wasn’t returned, then Mitchell wanted my eyes on the process from beginning to end in the hopes I would see something that would give them a lead. Her suspicions were right, but her hopes that I could catch a clue did not have a positive result. There wasn’t anything for me to see. The drop was out in the woods. I placed the package under a large rock that was marked with yellow paint. They had men and AI drones watching the spot for hours, but no one approached. At daybreak this morning they went back to the drop site to find the package was gone. I have no idea how they did it. That’s when Mitchell put another plan in play. She asked Riker to back her up, sent me a message to meet her at the warehouses in the retired spaceport in Old Town, and when they arrived she acted like she was arresting me, but instead they dragged me into an empty building, had Riker duct-tape my legs to a chair while she snuck my cuffs out of my back pocket and used them to secure my wrists behind me. Mitchell played the role of ‘frustrated cop’ and slapped me around in an effort to get me to talk. The ploy was to make Riker think he could use me as a patsy and do something that would prove he was involved.”

“Computer, pause dictation.” My head was starting to swim as my eye was starting to swell up and my jaw was getting stiffer. “Computer, save file and close. I’ll do the rest in the morning.”

“File saved and closed,” the computer answered.

I scooted down the oval seats to the back of the car where I could put my back up against the seat cushion and put my feet up on the other seats that ran along the sides. An alarm sounded from my palm computer letting me know I would be fined if I didn’t put my feet back on the floor. I considered just paying the fine, but I really didn’t have money to burn. So I put my feet back down and did my best to slide down enough to be able to recline my head on the top of the seat. Once in a somewhat comfortable position, I put the cold pack over my eyes and tried my best to relax for the remainder of the ride.

~~~

Kayla, my girlfriend for the lack of any better term, was at work when I got to our one bedroom apartment. I didn’t like referring to her as my ‘girl-friend’ since I’m in the latter part of my thirties and the term isn’t very adult. I guess the reason it bothered me so much is because it did fit her. Kayla was about 15 years younger than me. Not that the age difference made what we were doing wrong in any way, but I didn’t care for anything that might highlight the fact. We met when I signed aboard the Glacier Runner as their chief, and only engineer, a little over a year ago, but we didn’t really get to know each other that well until the day I quit and we spent the night in a cheap hotel room out of necessity. That was when our universe turned sideways. We were accused of sabotaging the ship and framed for murder. By the time we were able to prove our innocence, we were near the outer parts of Alliance space with very little money to our names. As friends, we got a place together on New Harmony, a safe and one of the nicer colony worlds we could afford to reach. We were able to get jobs and lived together as we saved up enough money to book passage back to Earth. That’s when our relationship grew from friendship into something much more. That was also when we learned that our troubles were not over and the London Syndicate had a price on our heads. Mitchell had been keeping an eye on us believing that there was a bigger conspiracy than everyone thought and she was right. Things really went bad when she discovered that the Military Investigations Office she was working out of on New Harmony was full of Syndicate moles. When everything was said and done, we had foiled a major plot to overthrow the government and many of the key players were either arrested or found dead. Mitchell was promoted to Major and sent to New Harmony to take over and clean up the military’s Criminal Investigation Division. It was a branch of the Judge Advocate General's office and would coordinate with local and galactic law enforcement agencies on any investigation or crime involving military assets or personnel. She also offered me a job working for her as an investigator which meant my reenlistment into the fleet. Kayla decided to stay with me and we’ve been a couple ever since.

When we first got back to New Harmony, I spent the first couple of months working with Major Mitchell to flush out the problems within the office and learn the basics of the assignment on-the-job, but you can’t learn a whole new skill set by osmosis. When the next round of certification classes came up, I had to go through three months of training. Whenever someone in the military changes operational specialties they have to do a service course to learn the job. Technical jobs like combat controller or sensor technician can range from six months to two years, but the assignments that are primarily riding a desk require only two or three months. Learning what there was to know to be an investigator was a three-month program. Most was done at the local base with a virtual instructor, which was little more than an AI running videos and pre-recorded lectures and responses to questions. The last two weeks were physical fitness, hand-to-hand combat and weapons certification. Most of which I covered throughout my service, but still had to prove that I knew it all and was physically up to the task.

Kayla was able to return to the casino she had worked at before but moved from cocktail waitress to bartender. In the beginning, she had the late shift 6 pm to 2 am. But like with everything she has done, she eagerly learned all there was to know, from mixing drinks to fixing the automated entertainment systems. She’s just not a person to stand still when there was something she could master. If she had the fortune to grow up in a normal family, she would have probably gone to college and become a doctor or design engineer building the next great starship rather than fixing drink dispensers and fending off drunks who wanted to get into her pants.

After a few months, her boss came to her and said that she had impressed him so much that he wanted to promote her to assistant manager. The truth was no one else wanted the job. The assistant manager works the day shift, managing the inventory, placing orders, writing the schedule and following up on customer complaints. The job had very little opportunity to earn tips which meant that the pay was less and their work wasn’t nearly as fun as pouring drinks and making jokes with the customers. Yet, she jumped at the offer. It meant working from 10 am to 6 pm so she would be getting home around the same time as I was unless I was on a case that required my attention at night.

I walked into our little apartment, sat on our second-hand sofa and put my feet up on the beat-up coffee table. The place was not luxurious in the least, but it was clean, comfortable and all ours, aside from paying rent and leasing the furniture from a place that was going to get three times the value of new furniture from us by the time everything was said and done. Yet there wasn’t an inexperienced freighter Captain barking orders at us and no criminal organization out to kill us to keep us quiet. At least not today.

A bird outside my window caught my attention. It was on a small tree, that was planted in a pot in the common walkway leading past our front window. Funny, I had been in this apartment for nearly a year and never noticed it before. Then again, I wasn’t normally home by myself in the middle of the day. My head started to pound again, and I decided I needed to take care of that. Getting up, and trying not to grunt like an old man, I made my way to the kitchen and got the two things I needed. A tissue stimulator and a beer. I administered the alcohol first, popping off the top of the bottle and drinking down two-thirds of the contents while standing next to the open food preserver. Then I crossed back to the sofa, sat, put my feet up and turned on the device. It was shaped like a small gun. All you had to do was point it at the spot that hurt and pull the trigger. It would scan the area and beep twice when it was done determining the level and depth of repair needed. Then you pull the trigger again, and a beam of light would come out of the tip and stimulate the production of something to get the cells to regenerate faster. I had no idea how it works, but it does numb the pain and usually heals the injury within half a day. I applied it to my cheek first, then my muscles around my left eye and then my neck. The pain subsided, and I really started to relax for the first time that day. I put my head back, closed my eyes and let my mind go numb.

~~~

My palm computer chirped, an indication that there was a new message for me. I opened my eyes. The sun had long gone down. The room was dark with the exception of the light coming from the kitchen area. Had I drifted off? I must have been dead to the world because Kayla was on the sofa with me. She was in a nightgown, curled up with a blanket and her head on my lap. With the back of my hand, I gently ran my fingers over her cheek. She smiled, mumbled something akin to a pleasant greeting and then went back to sleep. Taking the computer out of my shirt pocket I looked at the screen. It read, ‘Have news about your case, I’ll be here late tonight if you don’t want to wait until morning. Mitchell.’

Kayla mumbled something again and shifted her body to get more comfortable, running one of her arms under my leg, holding it like a teddy bear. I ran my fingers through her hair again. I considered waking her. She had often commented that she wanted me to wake her in the evening to spend some time together, even if it was just to talk about our days. Yet, I couldn’t get my mind off that message. It was going to bug me and I wouldn’t be able to give Kayla my undivided attention until I dealt with it.

For the past nine months, I had been working on a cold case of a missing corporal who disappeared a little more than a year ago after a shuttle he was in went down in the desert about 120 klicks southwest of the city. On that shuttle were seven other enlisted and two officers. The officers died along with four of the enlisted. The two that survived were the company sergeant and a private right out of boot. Corporal Gonzales, our missing soldier, was gone. There was no body, no blood, no clue to what happened to him. The JAG office investigated for over a month with no leads. The primary investigator concluded that Gonzales must have deserted and then he closed the case.

I checked my palm computer again to see if there were any other messages I missed. There wasn’t anything more than junk mail in my message queue. So I switched over to the files on my case. Placing the device on the arm of the sofa, I turned on the project view. An image of the first page of my file appeared before me. With a swipe of my finger, the page turned to the next. I scrolled through them as I did on most days. Some of the pages had markers on them for inquiries that the computer would update as more information became available from various sources. It had only been a day since I last checked and there wasn’t anything new.

This particular case came to my attention because I was looking for clues in my hunt for syndicate moles. During our run from them last year we stole a military shuttle that had been illicitly acquired by the syndicate. I figured if I could find out how they acquired it, I might dig up some viable leads. The registry number and serial number of that shuttle was the same as the one that was destroyed in the crash outside of New Harmony. Now, the most logical conclusion was that the syndicate stole a military shuttle, looked up the ID numbers of a shuttle that was no longer in use and tagged their ship with it to get past checkpoints. Yet, something in my gut told me there was something more to that. The people running the show for the criminal enterprise were actually pretty smart. Someone would have realized that the military keeps an active database of ships’ registries and their computers automatically check the identities of every ship, civilian or military, the moment their transponder comes within broadcast range. To use the ID of a shuttle that was destroyed while in service would be more obvious than if they took the numbers off one that was sitting in a hangar bay on reserve, collecting dust. They might as well have painted in bright orange, ‘Thieves On Board’ along the sides. The fact that the pieces of that puzzle didn’t quite fit together got under my skin and I decided to keep digging.

I put the palm computer back in my pocket and looked down at Kayla. Sometimes when I looked at her, she seemed so young, but other times, such as this moment, she appeared mature and confident, as well as beautiful. She brought me a comfort that I hadn’t known since I was a boy living at home with my family. Just the fact that she would rather sleep with her head on my lap than in a comfortable bed was not lost on me. It’s hard to let yourself care for someone without limits when you’ve lost so many people in your life. I wished I felt for her as much as she did for me. That’s not to say I didn’t have feelings for her. The fact was, I cared more for her than anyone else: so much so I was afraid of hurting her. It was one thing to live together and be a couple, but it was something very different to take that next step and swear a permanent commitment to each other. I know she would do it in a heartbeat. Having that kind of permanence in her life has been something she always longed for. Yet, for that reason I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t know where my life was taking me, and my new career wasn’t the safe 9 to 5 that I thought it was going to be. There were still too many things we were figuring out and too many unknowns in our future.

I ran my fingers through her long hair, along the side of her face. She smiled and made a sound like a hum of approval as she rubbed her cheek on my leg and then drifted back into a deeper sleep. Reaching down under her, I scooped her up, put my feet square on the floor and stood with her in my arms. I carried her to the bedroom and tucked her in. I thought about heading back down to the office but then decided to call in first to see if it was something I really needed to be there for. Sitting at the little desk we had in the corner of the bedroom I logged into the screen and keyed in my security code for a secured line. After a moment Mitchell appeared on the screen. When she saw me her face cringed a bit and then she asked sincerely, “How are you feeling?”

Just then I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror over the dresser on the other side of the small room. There was enough light on me from the vid-screen to see my right eye was black and my left cheek had a yellow and purple bruise. The dermal healer worked mostly from the inside out, so I wasn’t in a lot of pain, but it would be another day for the discoloration to go away.

With a reassuring grin I said, “I’ll live. What do you got?”