Painkiller

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Borland cradled a glass as he sprawled on his swaybacked sofa, a half-bottle of whiskey on the coffee table in front of him. Too tired to do more than zip open his Variant Squad jumper for a bit of relief. His belly bulged out and up toward the cracked ceiling like someone was inflating it.

Coming out of retirement was thirsty work.

He had set himself up under a dim lamp he kept on the cracked veneer side table in his living room. The television sat across from him. He'd already turned it on, but only got a bright blue screen. Since his reinstatement as a Variant Squad Captain he'd found enough extra money to hook up the broadband again. The fact that he'd ordered it four weeks ago and the television was still a blue screen with nothing on it gave him something to chew about at coffee break if anyone would listen, but he didn't really care.

Borland never watched much broadband anyway. Getting drunk and arguing with a blue screen made as much sense as yelling at the news. But hooking it up in the first place seemed like something that a normal person with responsibilities would do.

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