Ack-Ack Macaque by Gareth L. Powell

navigation light.
    She tried to assess her internal damage. According to the clock readout in the corner of her vision, two days had passed since the attack. She hadn’t felt it. Her biological clock had been disrupted by anaesthetic and shock. In addition to the pain at the back of her head, her throat felt bruised and swollen, and there were tender spots on her back and chest.
    She found it galling to be back in a hospital bed, and humiliating to have been taken down so easily, especially after all her quarterstaff training. The hallway had been too narrow for her to swing her stick properly, and the Smiling Man had possessed a strength that belied his thin frame.
    But it wasn’t his strength or his speed that bothered her most. The thought making her skin crawl was that he’d known her name . This hadn’t been a random attack; he’d known who she was, and he’d been there specifically to kill her.
    But why?
    She didn’t know him. As far as she knew, she’d never seen him before. The only thought she had that made any sense was that the attack was linked to Paul’s murder. But how?
    Thinking of Paul, she screwed her eyes tight and pictured her internal file index. Had he survived? She scanned down the list of folders until she found the one she’d created to house his digital back-up. With relief, she saw that it was intact, and still active.
    Thank God.
    Holding her breath, she accessed the icon, and Paul’s image swam into view before her, Hawaiian shirt, white coat and all. From this angle, he seemed to be pasted onto the sickbay’s ceiling, from which vantage he scowled down at her.
    “Where the hell have you been?”
    “Excuse me?”
    He hugged himself, hands on bare elbows, and she saw the fear underlying his anger.
    “I thought you were dead.” He put his head on one side and looked around, absently fingering his beard. “Why are we in hospital? What happened?”
    Victoria clenched her fists, resisting the urge to touch her scalp.
    “I lost my soul-catcher.”
    “Shit.” He put a comforting hand out to her, then seemed to realise what he was doing, and dropped it. “Where are we?”
    “Back on the skyliner.”
    “Are you going to be okay?”
    “I don’t know.” She tried to shift position in the bed. The sheets were lank and coarse around her. “I think so. Probably.”
    Paul rubbed his chin.
    “When that smiling guy burst in, I thought we were toast.”
    Victoria didn’t reply. She’d been terrified. Even now, she shied away from the memory. Of course, she’d been beaten up before, in pursuit of stories. It was a professional hazard of journalism. But this time it was different. Nobody had ever tried to kill her before. Things had never been that personal.
    True, she’d almost died when that Navy helicopter fell into the Atlantic; but that had been a malfunction, an accident. It was quite another thing to feel a man’s hands around your windpipe, deliberately choking the life out of you; to have a knife driven into the skin at the back of your neck.
    And yet...
    Her investigative instincts clamoured for attention. There was a bigger story here, she could feel it.
    Paul frowned at her expression.
    “What is it?”
    With her head still resting on her pillow, Victoria laced her fingers together and looked up at the ceiling.
    “Paul, I need to ask you about your sex life.”
    “My what ?”
    “Your sex life. The police think you may have known your killer.”
    “And just because I’m bi, that means it has to be someone I’m sleeping with?”
    “Were you bringing men back to the flat?”
    “No.”
    “But since the separation—”
    “No.”
    “You mean you’ve never—”
    “No!”
    A silence grew between them. Finally, Victoria said, “You were looking through my eyes when I got attacked. Did you get a good look at the man who did it? Did you recognise him?”
    Paul gave his head an angry shake.
    “Not my type, sweetheart.” He wagged a finger at her. “But I’ll tell