Episode 222 · No Room to Leave

On the morning he was due to leave, Soles carried Maxim’s bag into the training hall to return his equipment.

The room was familiar: a bench against the left wall, an open floor and the office doorway at the far end. The stacked mats had been pushed against the other wall. Bull stood beside the bench while two of his group waited by the doors.

Soles intended to put down the bag, have the inventory signed and go.

Bull caught its strap.

— In a hurry?

— My return’s been cleared.

— Has it?

The agency phone lay on top of Soles’s folded shirt. Bull tipped the bag before he could take it out. Clothes spilled across the bench; the wash kit fell open on the floor.

One of the men by the door laughed. Soles crouched to collect his toothbrush.

— Leave it, Bull said.

Soles put it back in the case and stood.

Across the hall, the man in uniform had stopped in the office doorway. The man in gray stood beside him. Soles had seen the uniformed man halt sparring with a word. Even Bull had stepped back when he spoke.

— I need this signed, Soles told him.

The officer’s attention moved from the bag to Bull.

— You’re due at transport.

Bull’s fingers tightened on the strap.

— I’m a cleaner.

— Your field clearance is still suspended.

The men by the doors became quiet. Soles had heard versions of that exchange for weeks. A man brought back injured from an argument Bull called a lesson. A vehicle withdrawn after another incident. Reports that kept returning to the same desk.

Bull had always found somebody lower down to answer for the interruption.

Now he turned toward Soles.

— They send you out alone. Open a few doors, come back in time to wash your shirt. Three months and you’re finished.

Soles took the strap from him.

— Ask them.

Bull’s face tightened. One of his men glanced toward the officer and then away.

— I’m asking you.

— And I’ve answered.

Soles moved toward the office doorway. The man standing there stepped across his path, leaving Bull at his back. Soles stopped rather than shoulder past him.

Behind him, leather scraped.

Bull had drawn his knife.

He held it low enough to keep it out of the officer’s direct line of sight for a moment, though everyone in the room could see what was in his hand.

— Show them you can do something useful.

Soles turned to face him and raised his empty hands.

— Put it away.

Bull advanced. Soles gave ground into the open floor, keeping clear of the bench. He wanted the officer to have an unobstructed view of the blade.

— Tell him, he called.

The man in uniform stayed in the doorway. Beside him, the man in gray shifted far enough to see both their feet.

Bull smiled without looking around.

Soles knew that smile. He had been waiting through it since the first Sunday, trusting that a witnessed assault would finally become somebody else’s responsibility.

The knife came across toward his face.

He stepped back with his guard high. Bull followed the retreat and cut at the hand nearest him. Soles withdrew it too late; the point opened his left sleeve and the flesh beneath it.

Heat ran down the outside of his forearm. It did not hurt yet. For now it was only warm, and wet, and the most interesting thing in the room to everyone but the two men in the doorway.

— Enough! Soles called toward the doorway.

The word had worked for the officer. It brought no answer from him.

Bull drove forward again. Soles turned away from the point, but his feet came too close together. A shove caught him before he had set them, and he stumbled two steps.

The room seemed to offer him all the wrong habits at once: watch the knife, retreat in a straight line, wait for somebody better placed to stop it.

He put his feet under him as the trainer had taught him and drew the dark blade from inside his coat with his right hand.

Bull paused at the sight of it.

— That’s what you use? Looks like you dug it up.

Soles held the point between them.

— Last time. Put yours down.

Bull struck over the words. Soles checked the reaching arm and tried to turn clear, but Bull caught his coat with his free hand and hauled him into a short blow.

The punch split the inside of his lip. He tasted blood as he pulled out of the grip.

He raised his guard. Three months had taught him that much, and Bull had just taught him the rest: a guard was only arms.

The officer could see his blood now. Soles raised his voice once more.

— Are you going to stop him?

The man in uniform moved a hand. For an instant Soles expected him to come forward.

He was holding back one of the onlookers who had started into the room.

Bull saw it too.

His next attack came harder. Soles let the thrust pass beside his coat and stepped outside the knife arm, turning from his feet instead of wrenching with his shoulders.

He wanted Bull off balance and away from him.

The dark point entered below Bull’s shoulder.

Bull struck at him as he withdrew it. Soles took the blow on his guard and retreated into the open floor, leaving a clear pace between them.

Warmth spread through his right arm. His breath steadied, though his left forearm kept bleeding.

Across from him, Bull tried to settle into the stance he had used a moment earlier.

His shoulder moved. The rest of the turn failed.

He tried again, staring past Soles as though somebody had stepped away in the middle of an exchange.

— Where is he?

Soles kept his knife up.

Bull touched his own chest with his free hand. The anger had left his face for something Soles found worse to watch.

— He was there.

Near the door, one of the cleaners stopped smiling.

Soles had meant to make room. Bull’s reaction told him that something else had happened, something a bandage would not put back.

The man in gray leaned forward.

Soles saw him do it and understood at last what the silence in the doorway was for.