Shadow Memories: A Novel (The Singularity Conspiracy Book 1) by Nicholas Erik Page B

did it for bonding. Maybe it was nostalgia or just because everything else looked so damn intimidating. But the shotgun, menacing in its nondescript, functional, inky steel, was the ticket.
    “I can give you one of those,” Barston said, “and I’ll throw in one of these for good measure.” He handed me a pistol. “.38 revolver. Load it up with some hollow points and it’ll blow your goddamn brains clear across the wall.” He made an explosion noise and spread his hands out, simulating a big boom.
    “All right,” I said, “sounds like a deal.”
    “And hell, since you’re such a nice guy,” he said, gesturing for one of his men to grab the merchandise, “I’ll even give you some of those bullets. So you can shoot these fellas before they shoot you.”
    “Thanks.”
    He handed me a leather holster. “You ever shoot from the hip, Desmond?”
    “No, I never shot much at all.”
    “Well,” Barston said, loosening his tie and the button on his jacket, relishing the opportunity to teach, “you do it like this.” He placed his hand on the gun hanging from his holster. “Stare ‘em down, and then bang, smooth as waxed pussy, you slide it out and get ‘em between the eyes.”
    In a fluid motion, he brought a giant silver pistol out and had it against my head, pulling the trigger.
    The empty click echoed through my brain like the loudest of gunshots.
    “Woah, boy,” he said, putting the gun back, “you should have seen the look on your face. I dropped the clip out.” He kicked at the ground with his shoe, and something skittered along the floor. I exhaled. “You’re just lucky I didn’t have one in the chamber.”
    “You didn’t know?” I asked as we went up the stairs, once my voice had returned.
    He gave me a look.
    “Fifty-fifty.”

29
    Ask Her
    “You tell Cassie to give me a ring sometime,” Barston said, leaning into the cab of my truck through the open window, “Ol’ Ben is always here to lend a pretty girl a hand.”
    He turned to walk away.
    “Hey,” I said, “how do you know her, anyway?”
    “Well,” he said, not missing a single step, “I owed Shadow a favor. So I check up on her, time to time. Bastard went just about crazy, but hell if he didn’t love his family. But that’s something you got to ask her yourself.”
    I pulled the truck out, looking in the backseat at my new purchases. The shoulder strap felt odd against my body, awkward. Like some cosmic artiste had drawn it on my person as some sort of satire. The weight of the gun, it bouncing with the rhythm of the road, that was new, too.
    I didn’t like it, but it made me feel better, all the same. And the shotgun in the back seat had that old familiar feeling, like the last beer of the night. Nothing good, but sometimes familiarity is what you need when everything around you is turning into an asylum.

30
    Singularity
    I hit the deck just as I opened the door. Either my reflexes were improving, or my instincts knew that projectiles would be imminent.
    “You fucking piece of shit,” Cassie said, “you don’t know what you’ve broken, you useless…” Her voice trailed off as she noticed the shotgun in my hands. “The fuck is that? Don’t tell me you went to see Ben.”
    How she knew, I couldn’t guess. But I played it cool.
    “Yeah,” I said, checking for missing limbs as I got back to my feet. “He says hi, by the way. And he had some other interesting things to say, too.”
    Her rage had dialed down to a simmering boil from the overflow of a minute prior. It was still dangerous going, but then, life seemed pretty risky these days.
    “You shouldn’t have smashed this, Kurt,” she said, nodding at the pile of dust she’d dragged out from underneath the couch, “it was important.” The way she leaned on important, it wasn’t from its artistic value.
    Which wasn’t much.
    “I was investigating, since you didn’t give me much to go on.” It was a lame excuse. Half truth, though. The other half was