Ten seconds outside the artificial cold of the casino and I was already drenched in sweat.

Summer in midtown, sticky and stifling. Loud with sirens, car horns, cat calls, distant screams, the blare of a police radio from an undercover's open window.

I wasn't drunk as I stepped out of the Emperor's Lounge, my checking account down two grand and change, but I wasn't sober neither. I was in that sweet spot before nausea sets in. Seeing everything a bit more sharply, as though for the first time. I looked around, observing my city like a stranger would.

To the West, the polluted haze over Lake Oriab glowed dull crimson as the day gave up the ghost. The sunset was obscured somewhat by the crooked skyline, old neo-gothic buildings silhouetted in black by the fading light. To the north loomed the broadsword shape of the Milton Building, windows blazing, dwarfing its rivals.

No stars came out as the sun disappeared. Night wasn't dark here, it was dim orange: ground-light reflected back from the city's shroud of smog.

I turned and walked south on Amnesty Blvd, hands in my pockets, head down, eyes on the sidewalk, occasionally glancing ahead if an alleyway was coming up- best to be careful, even on Amnesty on a busy night. Panhandlers held out cardboard signs scrawled with sob stories and lies. I ignored them, fucking jobless junkies. I ignored the hookers too. And the rentboys.

All I wanted was to get to the Copperhead and keep drinking till I couldn't walk anymore or the sun came up, whichever came first. Tomorrow was Wednesday, my day off, and I liked to spend those sleeping off the night before. I turned off Amnesty onto Cassilda, the Y train rattling along the elevated tracks above me. A cluster of punks stood in a semi-circle next to the station stairway, giving me tough-guy eyes. Wannabees. I ignored them, stuck a cigarette in the corner of my mouth and went fishing for my lighter.

"Hey man," one of them called out after me, some white kid with dreds and dumb tattoos. I swear to God this city was getting more crowded with freaks each year. "Spare some change?"

I watched them cross the street and come for me out of the corner of my eye. I sighed. It was always some fucking thing. There were four of them. Dreds was the biggest, but they were all too skinny. Dope fiends don't eat well.

They spread out slightly, tried to surround me, and the first one to make his move was dreds. He came at me from behind, tried to grab my arm.

I broke his at the wrist. He screamed and scrambled backwards, but by then two of his friends had closed in on me- one landed a punch before I could pull out my knife. I went down- but gracefully, fifteen years in the SJPD meant I knew how to take a hit. Rolled out from between them, towards dreds, blade out. I grabbed him by his broken arm, wrenched it behind him, pushed my knife to his throat. I held him from behind, facing his friends.

The other three paused, eyes wide with idiot shock.

"Well?" I said.

"Please..." wheezed dreds, and I threw him to the ground.

They were stupid but not that stupid. All of them ran for it, including my new friend, holding his lamed arm up to his chest and whimpering as he staggered off into the night.

My phone buzzed. I didn't recognize the number.

"Yeah?"

"Alex," said a voice I knew, one I hadn't heard in a long time, "We need to talk."