Page 196 of King’s Ransom

‘I stopped at a Walgreens earlier tonight,’ I said. ‘Bought some Narcan. Took a nice strong dose of it before I went into Winnie’s party.’

Dumbfounded understanding spread across his face.

The doctor in him knew what I’d done.

Narcan—or naloxone—was usually used after a drug overdose, since it blocked a person’s opioid receptors. But surgeons had to make sure that naloxone was not in a patient’s system before surgery, since it could also do the same thing in advance.

It could block the effects of Duramorph.

As his body began to fail, the Unperson’s glazed eyes widened in absolute shock.

Shock at the realisation that I’d beaten him.

At the galling fact that I’d done it using his own medication, indeed, the very drug he’d given to me back at the construction site so I could die in my sleep.

And also at one other thing.

At the fact that I wasn’t going to kill him.

I was going to bring him in alive.

‘Nighty-night,’ I said.

Then his eyes closed and he slumped to the ground, succumbing to the drug.

AFTERMATH II

Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.

– Robert Louis Stevenson

via Robert W. Frank

New York City

1 January

A lot of stuff happened in the following days.

The media, naturally, jumped all over the story again.

The shooting death of Winnie Tan in her own apartment, in front of Aristo King and all their powerful guests, during an expensive party on New Year’s Eve: it was just too much.

They ate it up.

Headlines blazed:

BULLETS FLY AT BILLIONAIRES’ ROW!

ARI’S EX-WIFE SHOT!

Page Six had a field day.

Of course, connections to the events of December 21st were re-established . . .

. . . and a whole new narrative of that day was revealed.

It was a narrative with a new set of villains.