He laughed.
“You don’t get it, do you? This is not a game. You are not going to
awaken in the morning, vowing never to eat cheese again before bedtime.
This is, in a very real sense, Game Over. You will die, painfully. And
after that?”
There was a pause.
“After that, I don’t know. It depends on your views on religon, I
expect.”
The knife remained at James’s throat, a sharp edge that described his entire future.
The blade was short.
The blade withdrew. A moment of joy, he was going to live!
There was a loud bang, and an instant of confusion before the fall of the penny. Another assaliant, hidden in the the shadows, a gun. Picoseconds later, James’s head exploded in a splash of blood and bone, and his lifeless corpse crashed to the floor.