Gutter trash, Jill. Not worth your time.

But my body wasn’t listening. It knew better than I did, and I was suddenly across the distance separating me from Chain Boy, my knee coming up and sinking into his groin with a short meaty sound. He folded down, and I had the gun in my right hand, pointed at the last man. He fetched up like a dog at the end of his tether.

A chain’s only good if you can use it. It’s also only good for a very short distance, shorter than you’d think.

For a moment I wondered how I knew that.

The fourth man was actually a boy. A weedy little boy with greasy lank hair and a lean, sallow face, a leather jacket that creaked like the cow was still mooing and hadn’t missed it yet, and pegged jeans that looked dipped in motor oil. The switchblade made a small clatter as it hit the concrete, dropping from his nerveless hand. My finger tightened on the trigger.

He’s just a kid. Come on.

But that kid would’ve followed his buddies in raping and possibly killing me if I was what they’d thought I was.

Wait. What am I? It said something that even sleeping like the dead, I kept hold of a gun.

I didn’t see the Mercury. Martin D. Pores, nice guy and granny driver, had left me in an alley. Nice of him. Why was I surprised? Of course he would, it was the way things were going.

Pay attention! A sharp phantom slap, my head snapping aside, and my right foot flicked out again, catching sneaky Guy # 2 in the knee. Crack like well-seasoned firewood when the axe split it, and he folded down with a rabbit-scream.

Must’ve hurt.

The boy in the motorcycle jacket just stood there and shivered. I don’t know what he saw on my face, but it gave him some trouble. Maybe it was the mismatched eyes, one blue, one brown, that I’d found staring at me in the diner’s restroom mirror. Maybe it was the gunk smeared all over me.