DEFINITIONAL CHAOS

by scott westerfeld

I wanted a mission, and for my sins the ConCom gave me one.

It was the usual chaos: everyone on the Convention Committee thought someone had wired the money. Nobody had. Eighty-four thousand dollars, due to the convention hotel two weeks ago. The owner was threatening cancellation, which really would be a problem: seventeen thousand stormtroopers, Browncoats, pirates, quidditch players, and Dr. Who sidekicks wandering the streets, plotting revenge on whomever had left them roomless.

The money was ready to go, but the hotel owner demanded cash now, delivered to her winter home in forty-eight hours. A crazy thing to want, but maybe the money was headed straight into drugs or political contributions—she was down in Florida, after all. That’s what you get for dealing with family-owned hotels instead of the soulless Sheratons and Marriotts of this world: personality, chaos.

But I wasn’t complaining. Like I said, I needed a mission. Even if it meant missing that weekend’s Stargate SG-1 marathon, I was ready to go.

The call came at noon; my berth on Amtrak’s Silver Star was booked for 3:25. An hour later I’d digested a handful of aspirin, showered, and packed, and was pulling my Walther PPK/S 380ACP (of German manufacture, not the post-war Manurhin production run) from its original cardboard box. I set to work with the (also original) finger-looped cleaning rod, bringing both the Walther and my Taurus PT138 to a dull shine. I decided that the Luger my dad gave me for acing my SATs was overkill, but I cleaned it, too, just for luck.

Let’s get one thing clear: my gun collection wasn’t the only reason the Convention Committee had chosen me. Just as important was my alignment, consistent across every system known to gamingkind. Whatever the common good needed, lawful or not, I was willing to do it. I was the only person for the job.

Or so I thought, until I saw Lexia Tollman waiting with the ConCom, bright-eyed, green-haired, and grinning like the devil. She was wearing the leather Peacekeeper jacket I remembered her always wanting, and it looked good on her.

“What’s she doing here?”

The ConCom shuffled their feet, staring at the floor. One ventured, “We figured you’d need some company.”

“Hey, Temptress Moon,” Lexia said. “How’s it going?”

I flinched at the sound of my old Mayhem name. Stats spilled across my mind: Temptress Moon had been a neutral good Paladin of Balance, Fourteenth Echelon, with a Voice of Barding and a persistent aetheric life-link. Practically divine, almost unkillable.

Almost…except for an obscure resurrection-blocking poison distilled from the bark of the Tree of Vile Tidings. Administered by my then girlfriend. For fun.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.

The ConCom collectively hemmed and hawed, pretending they hadn’t expected any unpleasantness. As if Lexia’s betrayal of me wasn’t legendary on the Mayhem boards.

“We can’t have you going alone,” one said. “Not with that much money. We know it’s a little…awkward, but Lexia’s the only one who could go on such short notice.”

I nodded slowly. She’d always hated Stargate.

“You’re armed, after all,” another spoke up. “And she’s not.”

“You’re sure of that?” I said.

They all turned to stare at her.

I sighed. “Let me guess, she said she wasn’t.”

Lexia rolled her eyes, but pulled off the Peacekeeper jacket, its plastic snaps clicking between her fingers. She tossed it to me, kicked a small backpack across the floor in my direction, then turned slowly in place. All she wore now was a black T-shirt and a pair of jeans, too tight to hide a weapon. She’d been working out, I noticed.

I rifled the backpack: wallet, cell phone, another black T-shirt, and a bottle of my favorite vodka. The bottle made my mouth dry for a moment; I’d promised the ConCom to stay sober on the way down.

Then I saw the pair of handcuffs labeled: Remember these, T-Moon?

My stomach flipped, but I didn’t let anything show on my face, just zipped the backpack up and searched the jacket. Nothing but two Amtrak tickets and pocket lint.

The public address crackled and screeched, then told us that the Silver Star was pulling up on Track One.

I could have told the ConCom no right then, gone back to my apartment for forty-eight solid hours of jonesing Jaffas and dodgy Dial-Home Devices. But suddenly my own DHD was out of order. Maybe it was just the chance to break out some +2 firepower in the real world. Or maybe something twisted inside me wanted to be trapped on a train with the woman who had killed me.

Lexia saw me hesitate. She smiled and yanked a black leather briefcase from one of the ConCom.

“I’ll carry the treasure.” Her tongue flickered across her lower lip. “Just like old times.”

I gave the ConCom one last glare, then followed her to the platform, preparing myself for twenty-seven hours of angst and nerves and the dredging of long-buried anger. Not the mission I’d expected, not at all. But at least this way one worry was gone….

No way would I fall asleep on the way down to Florida.

Our roomette aboard the Silver Star was not Amtrak’s finest. The size of two London phone booths stuck together, it smelled bluely antiseptic, like the water in an airplane toilet.

We settled into the two seats, facing each other, our ankles almost touching. Lexia instantly rebelled against the small space, flicking on and off the lights, discovering cup holders and coat hangers concealed in the walls. She fiddled with the small table beside her until it unfolded, astonishingly, into a toilet. Hence the blue smell.

I set the briefcase on the floor and rested my feet on it. When the station outside began to slide away I relaxed a little, feeling safer in motion. But Lexia was hovering now, fussing with her backpack up on the luggage rack.

“Sit down,” I said.

“And fasten my seatbelt? This isn’t a plane, T-Moon.”

“Lucky thing, too.” I breathed deep to feel the reassuring pressure of the PPK’s holster against my chest, the Taurus strapped to my ankle. Guns and planes don’t mix, so when carrying briefcases full of cash, slow and steady wins the race.

As long as slow and steady stays locked and loaded.

The conductor knocked on the door, asking for our tickets, and Lexia started fucking with him. She asked how long till New York City, and he sputtered until she laughed and admitted we were on the right train, headed down to Miami. She chattered as he punched and tore along perforations: asking questions about the “sleeping arrangements,” half-flirting, pretending she and I were lovers who’d just been in a fight, sowing confusion.

Once he was gone, Lexia slid the roomette’s door shut, locked it, and drew the blind that hid us from the corridor. She finally settled in the seat across from me, staring out the window.

But twenty seconds later she was bored, nudging the briefcase with one foot. “Maybe we should look inside.”

“Forget it.”

“Don’t you want to see what fifty-seven thousand dollars looks like?”

“Eighty-four.”

“Whoa, that’s a lot. Thanks for telling me.”

I cleared my throat. Score one for Lexia.

“What if it’s not all there?” she said. “What if one of the ConCom borrowed some? Shouldn’t we count it?”

She reached for the case, and I lashed out with one steel-toed boot. She jerked back her hand, nursing two fingers between her lips. “Ow.”

“I didn’t touch you.”

“It’s the thought that counts.” She played dejected for another moment, then her eyes brightened again. “Seriously, though, the case felt too light. It made a clunking noise, like there’s a brick inside. Pick it up yourself.”

“We’re not. Opening. The briefcase.”

“They didn’t say we couldn’t. So why not?”

“Because I can’t imagine anything worse than being stuck in a tiny roomette with you and piles of someone else’s cash!”

I shouted the last three words, which seemed to still the train noise for a moment, and her eyes grew manga-sized. Tears flickered with the shadows of passing trees. “You don’t trust me, Temptress Moon?”

“Well spotted. You are, in fact, the last person I’d trust.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because you’re vain and self-centered and you do pointless, destructive things for fun. You’re chaos personified.”

She smiled. “Flattery this early in the journey, Temptress Moon?”

“Quit calling me that.”

Lexia leaned back, propping her feet up on the briefcase. “Oh, so that’s what this is about? You miss your little paladin girl?”

“Miss her? It took me two years to level her up, then gather all the artifacts I needed for that life-link!”

“But immortal is boring, T-Moon, and anyway, you enjoy grinding.” She nudged the briefcase again. “Did you hear that? There’s a brick in there, I swear.”

“Quit fucking with the case. Quit looking at it. I’m not letting you do to the ConCom what you did to me, okay?”

“A blatantly false comparison,” she said. “I quite like the ConCom, and I hated little miss Temptress Moon.”

I turned away and stared out the window. The backyards of people poor enough to live next to train tracks flashed past—weedy lawns and broken cars. “It was the Voice of Barding, right? Because it gave her a higher charisma than you?”

“I didn’t give a shit about that crappy Voice of Barding,” Lexia said. “It was your tepid alignment.”

I hissed out a slow breath through clenched teeth, feeling the dull twinge of old wounds. Here it was, said aloud at last: the underlying conflict of those last months of our relationship, in game and out.

“Neutral good is not tepid,” I said. “It’s the only real good, beyond the rigidity of law or the self-indulgence of chaos.”

She rolled her eyes. “Beyond relevance, you mean. Goodness all alone is just an abstraction. Where’s the story in neutral good?”

“Ever heard of Robin Hood? There’s a story for you.”

“Not this farko again.” She sighed. “Dude steals from the rich and gives to the poor. That’s definitional chaotic good.”

I shook my head, the old arguments rising inside me, one hand scrawling on an invisible whiteboard as I spoke, drawing an alignment matrix in the air….

“Robin Hood isn’t chaotic at all,” I said. “The Merry Men aren’t a bunch of fuckwits—they’re an organized group with a strict internal code. And when King Richard, the lawful frickin’ leader, comes back from the Crusades, Robin Hood restates his loyalty to the crown! He’s for the greater social good, whether achieved lawfully or chaotically. That’s definitional neutrality.”

Lexia leaned forward, crashing through the invisible whiteboard. “But when King Richard comes back, the story ends! Robin Hood becomes just another monarchist suck-up. It’s only when he’s embracing his inner chaos that he’s worth putting in a story. He’s probably waiting for the next evil sheriff to take over so he can start up another guerilla campaign.”

“Um, citation needed. In the actual, not-made-up-by-you story, Robin Hood isn’t pining for chaos at the end. He gets elevated to the nobility and lives happily ever after.” I raised my hands, balancing left palm and right. “And that’s because he’s neutral good: happy inside or outside the system.”

She grabbed my wrists and pulled them out of balance. “Cite this: All that Earl of Huntington crap doesn’t appear until the late fifteen hundreds, after a century of proto-Disneyfication. In the early tales, Robin Hood’s a frakking May Day character.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, great. Are we back to that semester you got all Marxist in AP History?”

“Not that May Day, the chaotic pagan one where they dance around the phallus. And however you try to neuter him, Robin Hood still robs from the rich—not the tax-hiking rich or the sheriff-aligned rich, any rich will do—and gives to the poor. And that is some pretty fucking chaotic social engineering.” She paused and frowned, her face only inches from mine. “Hey, are we in kissing frame?”

I pulled away from her grasp, sinking back into my seat, my gaze dropping from hers. I saw fresh Celtic squiggles on her arms, and more muscles than I remembered. But despite tattoos, workouts, and green-streaked hair, Lexia hadn’t changed much in the last year. This close, she still smelled the same.

I turned to the scenery blurring past. “Nice time to glorify stealing, when we’re babysitting eighty-four grand of someone else’s money.”

“Nice time to change the subject.” Lexia stood up, stretching. “Shit, I need a drink.”

One hand on my shoulder, she pulled her backpack down from the luggage rack, its straps flailing around my head. I heard the top of the vodka bottle spin—a sharp sweetness spread across the roomette’s antiseptic smell.

She took a long drink, then sat and offered me the bottle. The liquid sloshed languidly with the train’s motion, and the glass frosted with condensation; she must have packed it straight from the freezer. Tempting, but I shook my head.

Everything she’d said so far made me trust her even less.

“You think you’re Robin Hood, don’t you?”

She shrugged. “We share an alignment, him and me. Delicious chaotic goodness.”

“Hardly,” I said. “He’s neutral good. And you, my dear, are chaotic neutral.”

She turned to watch the scenery, shaking her head. “You still don’t know why I killed you, do you?”

“To bring chaos to the established order?” I said. Back then, almost unkillable, Temptress Moon had ruled in Mayhem. A cold, pale queen whom all had feared, even as they loved her. “And for fun, I suppose. Not much good came of it, certainly. From the message boards I’ve read, Mayhem’s been a slaughterfest since she died.”

“Mayhem a slaughterfest. What a tragedy.” Lexia took another drink. “Perhaps we’re laboring under different definitions of good.”

I shook my head. “Don’t take the easy way out, Lexia. Murdering your boyfriend doesn’t count as good under any moral framework. And neither does stealing this money.”

She looked down at the case, a smile forming on her lips. “Well, that’s one way to illuminate the issues under discussion.”

“What is?”

“Why not define our alignments in terms of this mission.” She kicked the briefcase. “For example, why did the ConCom call upon you, Mr. Famously Neutral Good, instead of getting someone lawful?”

“That’s obvious,” I said. “Lawful good also takes the money to its rightful owner, but he won’t bring a gun across state lines. He follows the laws of the land, even if that risks getting robbed.”

“Fair enough. So what does lawful evil do?”

I leaned my head against the window. The glass was cool, pulsing with the rhythm of the tracks. “That one’s trickier. If I’m lawful evil, I can’t break my word, but I don’t want any good to come of my actions.” I chewed my lip for a moment, in no hurry to answer—we had about twenty-six hours to go, after all. “So I promise to take the money down to Miami, but in ambiguous terms, like one of those contracts with the devil. So I steal it and use the proceeds to start an evil cabal—a well-organized one with a strict internal code.”

Lexia shook her head. “Two problems. One: eighty-four grand doesn’t buy a lot of minions these days, so your cabal is small and lame. Two: the ConCom is composed entirely of aspies with level-twenty powers of nitpicking. Before they hand over any money, they make your lawful-evil ass swear to an ironclad agreement to deliver it.”

I shrugged. “So I deliver the money, but then convince the hotel owner to use it in a scheme to foreclose on several orphanages. All very legal.”

“Much better.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, seeing the invisible whiteboard again. “Okay, Lexia, you do true neutral.”

“That’s easy: true neutral takes the money to Tijuana, has a draz of a time on someone else’s dime.” She raised a hand to ward off my protest. “Unless, of course, we’re talking druidic neutrality. In which case she steals the money and gives it to the Florida Marlins.” She snorted. “Because balance is everything.”

“You always did find balance boring, didn’t you?”

“Except when it’s falling apart, T-Moon. Chaotic neutral goes to you.”

“No way,” I said, “I did the first two, and you’re the chaotic neutral one in this roomette.”

“I’m chaotic good, you fuckwit.” She took a drink. “But were I chaotic neutral, I’d start by taking this train in the wrong direction. And when I get to New York, I take the briefcase to Grand Central Station at rush hour, pop the latches, and fling it all oh-so-high into the air.” She gestured with the vodka bottle, which sloshed with delight. “Then I watch that lovely dance ensue.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, visualizing it. The afternoon light flickered through the trees like a movie projector on my eyelids. “Wow, not bad. And you say that’s not your natural alignment?”

“Of course not.” She smiled. “I’m all about the greater good.”

“Yeah, right.” I opened my eyes and looked at the vodka bottle. “No poison in that bottle, I assume?”

She took a long drink, then held it up for me to check: The level had definitely gone down.

I reached for the bottle, which was as cold in my hand as a can of frozen orange juice. I took a sip, then a real drink. A little was okay, as long as I didn’t get too far ahead of her.

“You do chaotic evil,” she said.

“Whoa. So many choices.” I took another drink. “Steal the money, obviously…and then go through the Miami phone book and pick eighty-four random names, hiring a hit man to kill each one.”

“For a thousand bucks apiece?” She laughed and pulled the bottle away. “Those are some pretty cheap hit men.”

“All the better. Think how many innocents my cut-rate hit men will kill in their chaotic, unprofessional way.” I pulled the bottle back and took Swig Number Three, having decided to count my drinks. “So do chaotic good, if that is your real alignment. You steal the ConCom’s money and give it to the poor?”

She shrugged. “That’s a bit bland.”

“But you said Robin Hood was full of story!”

“Story is sticking a cocked arrow in some rich bastard’s face. So what’s the modern equivalent of that? How about I borrow the money and buy a couple of Stinger missiles, then shoot them at Rupert Murdoch’s Learjet.” Lexia sighed. “But I’m probably getting too sane for that, now that I’m all graduated and shit. Helping the ConCom fill downtown with seventeen thousand costumed geeks seems chaotic enough for me.”

She stared past me at the speed-blurred trees, her voice falling off a bit, and pulled the bottle back from me.

I frowned. Maybe Lexia did look a little saner, staring out the window like that, her hand tight around the vodka bottle’s neck. Almost philosophical.

I drank, counting Swig Number Four. The dining car was opening in an hour, and food would clear my head. But no more swigs after this one. It was going to be a long night of staying awake and watchful. Even if Lexia had grown too sane for shoulder-fired missiles, this was still the girl who had poisoned me….

I frowned, looking down at the bottle in my hand.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“I just realized: You haven’t had any since I took my first drink. What’s up with that?”

“Not thirsty anymore.”

I tried to hold her gaze, but my eyes dropped to the bottle again. My stomach flipped. “Quit fucking with me.”

“I’m not fucking with you, Temptress Moon. You’re being paranoid.”

“With you around, paranoia is an entirely reasonable state of mind.”

She sighed. “Well…maybe I did sneak something into that bottle just before I handed it to you. And that’s why I haven’t drunk any since.”

I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry.

“That’s why your head’s muzzy,” Lexia went on. “And that dizziness creeping up on you? A precursor of worse things.”

I swallowed again, glaring at the bottle. The view was shooting past at top speed now, but the ride felt as smooth as if we’d stopped moving, the train resting on the track like a turntable needle on a spinning disk.

“Maybe the slightest hint of disassociation?” she said, leaning closer. “As if none of this is real?”

I shook the bottle. “What the fuck did you put in here?”

“Sucker!” Lexia leaned back, laughing. “You feel dizzy, T-Moon, because we’re drinking eighty-proof liquor on an empty stomach in a speeding train. And you feel disassociated because you’re a frakking geek, and we always feel disassociated.”

I clenched the bottle neck as tight as a club, then sighed. “Don’t do that shit, Lexia.” My mouth was insanely dry, so I took another drink. “I might shoot you.”

“You need to relax.” She held out her hand. “I’ll make you a deal. One more swig each, then we’ll go get microwave pizzas from the café car.”

I gave her the bottle, and Lexia held it steady for a moment, marking the level with one finger. Then she drank hard and measured it for me again—she’d knocked half an inch off. She handed it back. “Come on, wimp.”

“Okay. But pizza next.” I drank deeply.

When I was done, I capped the bottle and put it on the floor. The rattle of the train had settled into me, melding into my dizziness. I could feel the vodka in my veins, taking the edge off everything. Suddenly the briefcase full of cash under my feet didn’t seem so unnerving—it was just an object I had to take somewhere—and Lexia didn’t seem so dangerous.

I breathed out a slow sigh.

But she was staring at me.

“What?”

“That should be enough to put you down,” she said quietly.

I rolled my eyes. “Didn’t we already play this game?”

She stared out the window. “Yes, but I cheated last year. This time we both drank the same poison.”

“Fuck off,” I said. But her words were making my head spin again. I needed pizza.

She kept talking. “I put the roofies in there the moment the ConCom called. Figured you’d join me for a drink sooner or later.”

The train lurched, and both of us grabbed our armrests. Shit, I really was feeling disassociated now. But only because Lexia was fucking with me.

“You drank a lot more than I did,” I insisted. “Plus, I outweigh you by ten pounds.”

“Yeah, but I use those things to get to sleep these days.” She yawned. “So I have at least an even chance of waking up first.”

I shook my head, trying to clear it. But red spots were drifting into the roomette now, hovering at the edges of my vision.

Shit. She’d really done it.

I reached for my Walther. “You won’t wake up if I shoot you.”

Lexia laughed. “But you’re about to pass out, T-Moon. Not a good time to commit murder.”

The roomette was really spinning now. I gritted my teeth and pulled the pistol out. “Maybe, but if you’re dead you can’t take the money.”

She stared down the barrel and smiled. “And when my conductor pal finds my body in here, that briefcase full of cash just might be considered evidence. The ConCom’s screwed, even if they eventually prove it’s theirs.”

I blinked away spots, trying to think. But the rattle of the train was tangling the situation. How had I been so stupid. Poisoned twice by the same woman!

Finally the gears in my brain caught, and I waved the Walther at her. “Your handcuffs, put them on.”

“Ah, yes, the handcuffs.” She shook her head, her words slurring now. “I have other plans for those.”

“Get them out or I’ll shoot you!”

“We already covered that.” She settled back into her seat. “Why not take a fifty-fifty chance of waking up before me? You might get the money and save the con. Flip of the coin, roll of the die. I think that’s the properly neutral good thing to do. Me? I’m going to sleep.”

I watched in horror as she made a pillow of her Peacekeeper jacket, settling in for a long night. My brain was shutting down fast now, the red dots spreading into a roomette-filling haze, my fingers going numb around the Walther’s grip. The rattle of the train grew louder, crowding the worry, fear, and anger from my mind….

I got my gun back in its holster just before the darkness came.

Temptress Moon rose up the wall of the Keep, her cloak of weirding blending with the shadows. Her fingers slipped into cracks and crannies, her split-toed boots tickling the ancient stones as she climbed. Iron watch-birds flitted past unseeing, their clockwork insides rasping like a potter’s wheel.

She reached a window, slipped through. Inside should have been utter darkness after a sky crowded with two full red moons, but set in Temptress Moon’s eyes were jewels of persistent vision, and the room sprang to life, every corner sharpened with their facets.

She stared at her victim on the bed, pausing to listen to his breath, slow and steady. He was naked, his arms ribboned with tattoos, hair streaked with green, the bedclothes coiled around him.

The jewels in her eyes revealed hexes of protection scattered on the floor, and she danced closer, like a child making a game of not stepping on cracks and discolored tiles.

Beside his bed, Temptress Moon hesitated. They’d built this Keep together, having slain the glass dragon whose teeth made the rose window of its chapel. Bare-handed they’d strangled the dire wolf whose skull lay in its flagstone, and carpeted the great hall with their bear-killing expeditions in the north. Uncountable creatures fought side by side; it was a shame it had to end like this.

But she drew the long knife anyway.

She raised it high, the marks of old magic shining on its blade. But suddenly the room splintered, her vision fracturing like a spun kaleidoscope, the floor rolling underfoot. Waves of nausea and dizziness pounded against the walls of the world, a roar filling her head like the rumble of a train.

Her victim rolled over and smiled up at her.

“Shouldn’t have drunk that vodka,” he said. “What were you thinking, Temptress Moon?”

She tried to answer, but her mouth was full of ashes.

Waking up was slow and winding. My head pounded, and my tongue seemed to have expanded to the size of a turkey leg. Something was kicking me, and I grunted at it.

“There you are.” Lexia’s voice.

I forced my eyes open and she came into focus, my Walther PPK/S in one hand, the briefcase in the other.

“Crap,” I murmured. The sun flickered through the trees outside—in the east, morning already. I’d been out for more than twelve hours.

My arms and legs were tingling, the life squished out of them. As I tried to sit up, metal bit into my left wrist. Lexia’s handcuffs rattled, attached to the armrest.

“Crap!” I cried.

“No yelling, now. I don’t want to have to shoot you.”

I glared at her, considering screaming for help. But Lexia had been willing to drug me last night, even to drug herself. Risking a bullet to test that chaotic resolve didn’t seem like a great bet.

Besides, with my head throbbing like this, yelling was a painful prospect.

“Why are you still here?” I said. “Why aren’t you at Grand Central throwing money at people?”

She pushed stray hairs away from her face. “Just woke up. Haven’t had a chance to get off, but we’ll be in Jacksonville in a few minutes. Besides, we never did get a last kiss the first time I poisoned you.”

Lexia was holding the Walther too casually; I considered making a grab for it. But the pins and needles in my legs were fading, and suddenly I felt the Taurus PT138 holster strapped to my ankle….

My expression must have changed.

“What?” she said. “Those handcuffs bringing back fond memories?”

I shook my head slowly. “No, it’s just that I finally won the argument.”

“In what sense?”

“This proves you’re not chaotic good. You’re not anything but self-interested.”

She squeezed the handle of the briefcase. “You don’t know what I have planned for this money, T-Moon.”

“Alms for the poor?” I made a fist with my right hand, trying to wake it up. The outskirts of a small town were flitting past the window—Jacksonville getting closer.

“More interesting than that.” Lexia smiled. “A little social experiment. You’ll find out sooner than you think.”

“Can’t wait.” I shook my right hand, forcing blood back into the fingers.

The train began to brake, and more tracks sprang into being alongside ours, coursing like serpents around us. We were almost at the station.

Lexia stood, keeping the Walther leveled at me. She lifted the briefcase. “No shouting till the train pulls out, or someone might get hurt.”

“I’d rather catch you myself, which I will.” I narrowed my eyes, flexing my fingers. “Sooner than you think.”

She smiled, pushing the gun into one jacket pocket, her hand still closed around it. “We’ll see who catches what, T-Moon.”

The train had almost stopped, the platform empty outside. Lexia probably could have gotten away, even if I’d started yelling.

But it wasn’t going to come to that. The moment she turned to slide the door open, I reached down and drew the Taurus.

“Don’t go, Lexia.”

“Sorry, but I—” Her voice caught when she saw the gun.

She let the door slide shut behind her and leaned against it. I could see the Walther pointed at me from inside her jacket pocket.

“Now this,” she said with a smile, “is getting chaotic.”

We sat there, face-to-face in our roomette, northern Florida passing by.

“I keep telling you,” she said. “I don’t have the key. I left it at home.”

“Bullshit, Lexia.” I yanked at the handcuff. “Where is it?”

“But I wasn’t planning to let you go. And obviously it’s to my tactical advantage not to have the key. Didn’t you search me?”

I frowned. I didn’t remember seeing any key, but wouldn’t it have been stuck in the handcuffs?

“And anyway,” she said. “Why would I let you have it?”

“Because otherwise I’ll shoot you!”

“Bang, bang, bang,” she retorted. “Just shot you back before I died. And my gun’s way bigger.”

“They’re both my guns, I’d like to point out. I bet you don’t even know how to flick the safety off.”

“Bet you I do,” she sing-songed, then glanced out the window. “Listen, we’ll be pulling into Palatka, Florida, at 8:18. We need to get this squared away before then.”

“Squared away?”

“Like, what do you want?” She thumped the briefcase. “Forty percent?”

“No, I want all one hundred percent of it—delivered to the rightful owner!”

She sighed. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

We glared at each other for a while. Adrenaline had taken the edge off my roofie-and-vodka hangover, but I needed desperately to piss. I couldn’t help but wonder if Lexia’s handcuffs would let me close enough to the squalid folding toilet. Maybe the threat of an attempt would make her produce the key.

But I needed to hold on to my last shreds of dignity.

We sat there for long minutes, staring at each other. Either one of us could have started shooting, and the other would’ve been too late to retaliate. But that’s the reality of standoffs with guns, I suppose. If anybody really wants to pull the trigger, it happens right at the beginning.

And there was something elegant in the balance about this situation, something I didn’t want to break.

Finally, southern swamp-Gothic houses began to whip by: the outskirts of Palatka.

“Unlock this handcuff,” I pleaded. “Hand me back the gun, and that’ll be it. We can even take the money down together, if you want.”

“No,” she said.

“Why do you keep doing this stuff to me?” I said.

She leaned back into her chair and sighed. “You mean, why did I kill poor Temptress Moon?”

I nodded. In a funny way, that first betrayal mystified me more than this one. There hadn’t been eighty-four thousand dollars at stake back then.

“That’s simple,” she said. “Everyone asked me to.”

“What?”

She leaned closer, her chest a foot from the barrel of my Taurus. “The game’s called Mayhem, T-Moon! But with you controlling everything, there were never any atrocities to avenge! Your meddling goodness made it boring, sucked all the mayhem out of it. In that narrative framework, killing you was the greater good. Boyfriend or not.”

My jaw dropped open. “But nobody ever said?—”

“Everyone hated Temptress Moon,” she shouted. “People were begging me to kill you for months! I tried arguing with you, wiping out your minions, anything to get you unstuck from that lame alignment.” She shook her head sadly. “I’m still trying.”

I sat there, the gun in my hand wavering for the first time.

“But you just can’t let the balance go, can you? Maybe if I make it easy on you.” She stood and dropped the Walther on her seat. “This is my stop. Give my regards to Miami.”

She took a step toward the door, briefcase in hand.

I blinked, looking at the discarded Walther on the empty seat across from me, then at the gun in my own hand. Why had she…?

“Wait,” I said softly.

Lexia shook her head, put her hand on the latch.

I raised the gun. “Stop!”

She rolled her eyes. “Or you’ll shoot me?”

“Yes!”

“An interesting possibility,” she said, and slid the door open.

She was really walking out with eighty-four thousand dollars of the ConCom’s money—the community’s collective good faith in currency form. I couldn’t let this happen.

I pointed the pistol at her leg….

Click.

Lexia turned back to me, smiling now. “Thought I wouldn’t remember your ankle holster, T-Moon? I remember every one of your stupid guns.”

I flung myself forward as far as the handcuff allowed, grabbing the discarded Walther from Lexia’s seat and pointing it at her.

“Click, click, click,” she said.

I wavered for a moment, the gun right in her face, then sighed. Didn’t bother pulling the trigger, just dropped the gun on the floor.

“So this whole standoff thing,” I said. “It was just so I wouldn’t yell for help?”

The train was braking hard now, a ragged concrete platform sliding past. Not a cab in sight in this tiny station. How did she plan on getting away? I could call for the conductor now, but somehow the screams didn’t come to my throat.

Lexia sat down across from me, reached a hand into her pocket. “Don’t be silly, T-Moon.” She pulled out a handcuff key. “Like I said, it was an experiment.”

The cuff snapped open, and she took my wrist and began to massage it.

“But it’s all over now.”

I blinked. “So the money…?”

“Goes to Miami. Like I said: chaotic good really wants those seventeen thousand costumed geeks gathering downtown. I just needed a little quality time with my old boyfriend.”

I coughed. “Quality time? You drugged me, handcuffed me, forced me to decide whether to shoot you or not!”

She shrugged. “Chaotic quality time. But it’s all for the good.”

So…yes, we took the eighty-four grand down to the hotel owner, who turned out to be more pleasant in person. Just a big fan of punctuality. She served us tea on her veranda, wearing a floral sundress that was all the colors of linoleum.

The convention went on as scheduled, the downtown streets full of stormtroopers, Browncoats, pirates, quidditch players, and Dr. Who sidekicks, along with fresh new ranks of unkillable cheerleaders and Guitar Hero characters.

Not to worry, chaos marches on.

And…no, we didn’t get back together, if you thought that’s where this was going. Are you nuts? Lexia’s fucking crazy.

In any case, her scheme had never been about rekindling our love. It was simply her own very chaotic version of that goodbye kiss we’d never shared.

But one old flame was relit by the trip: I started playing Mayhem again. Anonymously, for now, long hours of grinding every day. And I’m not some lame-ass neutral good paladin this time, but a creature much more interesting. A chaotic evil assassin of the Iron Clan with a cloak of weirding, jeweled sight, and two specialties in climbing. I’m currently questing for the legendary Knife of No Doubt.

You see, my assassin doesn’t want to stay anonymous forever. One day she plans to visit the keep that Lexia and I built together, climb in through that window, and reintroduce herself to an astonished world.

Frakk neutrality. Revenge will be mine.