No Hero Read Online Free

going to blame the painkillers for me being slow on this one,” I say, “but can you run that by me one more time?”
    “He stabbed you, Boss. Stuck a sword in you. He must have been close. You must have seen something.”
    A sword. I saw a sword. I saw it going into my body. Blood and black. Black vision. White blade.
    I blink, rub my eyes. Memories—a nice place to visit but not necessarily somewhere you’d like to live.
    “She,” I say, attempting the whole stiff upper lip thing. “Not a he, a she.”
    “See!” Swann shifts from her hospital standard-issue chair to the corner of my bed. “We’re making headway already.”
    “Yeah.” I smile but I... No. I don’t want to go back there, I find. The girl, the sword. The thing... My moment of madness. I’m not a reliable witness.
    “I’m afraid I don’t remember much else,” I say.
    “Come on,” she says, “what do we always tell the witnesses?”
    “A pack of lies,” I say. Which is true.
    “You remember more than you think,” she says.
    “Yeah,” I say. But it’s hard to express that that’s what really scares me. I don’t want to remember any more.
    “You’re going to bust this thing wide open,” she says and she pats my hand.
    It’s an odd moment. Something between affection and condescension. I think I might be blushing. Then she’s blushing. We stare at each other. I think maybe this is what it would be like if one of us suddenly grew an extra head and it started spouting profanities.
    “Sorry,” she says.
    “Quite all right,” I manage, and then we disengage the offending body parts and then suddenly her phone goes off and equally suddenly there’s an emergency involving blood work and contamination, and missing paperwork, and all sorts, so she doesn’t even get to hang up before she’s waving goodbye, so I’m left alone with some chocolates and the desire to eat them until I feel nauseous.
    Five minutes later I’m still thinking about the hand pat far more than is either healthy or reasonable. It’s almost a relief when Ms. “You-suffered-a-punctured-lung” walks in again.
    Turns out that’s not her real name.
    “Felicity Shaw,” she says and sticks out a hand. Her suit is paler today but no less severe. “You look like you’re feeling a little bit better, Detective.”
    “Thank you,” I say. “Fresh air and exercise. Drugs and doctors. All that.”
    She doesn’t smile. I think Swann would have smiled at that. Which I hope makes me funny and not Swann a woman with a terrible sense of humor. Could go either way on that one, though.
    “I’d like to ask you some questions about what exactly happened the night you were injured,” Shaw says, because Shaw is serious and businesslike.
    Which is fine, of course, except I don’t even want to talk about what happened to someone who thinks I’m funny, let alone to someone who thinks I’m juvenile.
    “I don’t suppose you have some ID?” I say, which is a dodge that’s been thrown in my face enough times that I feel it’s only fair I should get to use it.
    That does elicit a smile from Shaw. Except I wasn’t trying to be funny. Something is off here, and I don’t know which one of us it is.
    Shaw reaches into her pocket, pulls out a card. “Felicity Shaw, director of Military Intelligence, Section Thirty-seven.”
    “MI37?” I sound incredulous because I am. MI5, yes. MI6, I’m with you. And if logic persists in military intelligence, though I’m not sure it does, you could probably convince me over time about MI1, 2, 3, and 4. But MI37? Really?
    “Yes, Detective,” Shaw says. “MI37. We are a reality We certainly don’t advertise our existence the way MI5 and 6 do, but that just means the politics of intimidation are not useful in our arena. It doesn’t mean we’re not real. We are real, Detective Wallace, as real as the consequences you’ll face if you discuss this conversation with anyone else.”
    I take the ID card from her. It has her face,