"Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy...prowls like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour."--1 Peter 5:8


Two days later, Harry was still alive. Damned if he knew what was going on, but until he found out, he'd be playing by the old rules, the ones he'd learned growing up on the streets. They'd kept him alive then, they should do the same now.

Rule 1: Never stand still. A moving target is harder to hit. A stationary target is a breathing corpse. After he'd gotten out of the warehouse, he'd been in constant motion. He'd gone back to his apartment without allowing himself to be seen, collected a few thousand in cash that he kept in case of emergencies, some spare clothes, and a box of .44 magnum rounds, stuffed it all into a nondescript gym bag, and vanished into the night.

Rule 2: Trust no one. For two days he'd been avoiding everyone he knew, and everyone who knew him. With the publicity he'd been getting recently, ever since the "Dead Pool" murders, hiding was more difficult. People recognized his face, and his tall body tended to stick out in a crowd. He'd spent most of his time hiding out in an old abandoned factory he remembered from his youth. The company had sold off all the machinery and abandoned the building when it had gone bust thirty years ago, but legal wrangling had left the structure standing until no one could remember its original function. As far as most people were concerned, it was just one dingy eyesore among many. It the perfect hiding place.

Rule 3: Survival first. Anything else is secondary. He'd cut himself off from his work and his small circle of acquaintances, and left no evidence of his survival. The few newspapers he'd been able to get his hands on said it looked like he was dead. That could cause problems, but they could be dealt with later. Right now he had to know what was going on. He had a hunch that any publicity he got now could be serious trouble. Staying alive and ahead of whoever was gunning for him had taken up his whole attention for the last two days. He knew from experience that when dealing with unknown quantities, those who erred on the side of caution lived longer, and his miraculous survival was very much an unknown quantity. So he'd been running fast and hard, trying to stay at least two steps ahead of whoever had attacked him in the warehouse. He shuddered at the memory. He was a tough-minded man by nature, with long exposure to life's rough side, but being jumped by a sword-wielding nut minutes after being gunned down and recovering intact had left him shaken.


"Surprised, Callaghan?" Dirty Harry looked up at the speaker. He was standing on a catwalk across the room, some ten feet above the grimy warehouse floor, a big man, tall and muscular . He was asian-looking, wearing his hair in a pony-tail down his back, with a mustache that connected to sideburns over his unshaven chin. His clothes were all battered denim, and he wore a trenchoat despite the warm weather.

All of this was noted by Harry in passing, but most of his attention was grabbed by the large and unusual sword he held loosely at his side. The hilt alone was two feet long, capped by a large leaden pommel. The blade was slightly longer, thick and heavy. All in all, it looked like some giant kitchen knife.

"Who the hell are you?" Callaghan snarled at the man even as he was reloading his pistol.

"I am the instrument of your death. I am the one who arranged for you to come here, the man who leads these pathetic street punks. I am the man who will shortly take your head." The big man leapt over the railing, rolling to break the fall and coming up with his curious blade in a two-handed grip. He charged Harry, screaming "There can be only one!"

Dirty Harry didn't stop to ponder the bizzare battle-cry. He just pumped three .44 magnum loads into the guy's chest. The crazy swordsman fell backwards as the bullets hit him like a freight train. He lay in a puddle of his own blood, gasping a while as his lungs tried to function in spite of the massive damage done to them, his blade still held in limp hands. His lungs shut down at last, and he became very still. Harry had seen enough corpses in the past to recognise one now. The maniac was mortality-impaired.

Harry walked up to the guy for a closer look. As he drew closer, he became aware of an odd sensation, a pressure that seemed to be building inside his head, making him nauseous. He had closed most of the distance between them when the sensation suddenly grew in intensity. Harry leapt back even as the dead man gasped air into his recently perforated lungs and swung his broadsword in a clumsy slashing arc. The swordsman got to his feet and came at Harry again, swinging visiously, but without precision. Harry evaded his fierce blows and ran for cover behind a stack of crates. The guy kept coming, more cautiously now, weapon held before him.

"Give up, Callaghan," he growled at his prey. "You can't do anything to me with that toy." He dived behind a support post as the S&W revolver fired again.

"Easy, Callaghan. What do you think you can accomplish? Why not just give in?"

"Screw you, asshole. A good man's dead because of you. Now it's your turn." Callaghan popped up from behind his cover and fired, hitting the man in the head. He went down, but the pressure inside Harry's skull remained.

"If you had been luckier, Callaghan, you might have learned about our powers. As it is, I'm about to take your head." The man who would not die rose again, lifting his blade. "Now your head is coming away from your neck, Callaghan! It's over!" Harry fired his last bullet into the man, and ran like hell for the door.


After three days, he figured it was time to experiment. He started by cutting his arm with a knife. In seconds the wound had healed. Next he pushed the blade clear through his hand. Within a minute of his withdrawing the blade, the hole was gone, healed with a spark of blue fire. He proceeded, in the interests of science, to shoot himself in the foot. The boom of the Magnum rattled the warehouse windows, and was followed by a long string of profanity that kept them rattling. Then the pain was gone. The foot, which had had a two-inch hole blown straight through it, was intact, again with a flash of blue energy.

"Well, I might as well try it," muttered Harry, as pointed the revolver's barrel at his chest. This time the gun's report was followed only by silence.

Harry gasped in a lungful of air as he came to. "Damn." He said to himself.


After five days, someone found him. He was surprised to see that it wasn't the swordsman from the warehouse, and even more surprised to see that the man had a sword anyway.

Harry was sitting in a little alcove eating a meager lunch, food he'd purchased on a rainy night while wearing a hooded slicker to hide his face, when he felt the pressure in his head again. Seconds later, the factory door burst open and a slender man with a long-bladed saber in his hand strode in.

"I am David Mann of Virginia. Face me, whoever you are."

All right, David." Harry stood, drew his gun, aimed, and fired. Three large wads of lead going through it at an incredibly high rate of speed turned Mann's head into jelly, and spattered most of it on the walls and ceiling. Harry reloaded and holstered his gun before he realised something: The pressure was gone. That was the last rational thought he had for a while, as blue lightning began to flow from the dead man's headless corpse and lash Harry with waves of burning energy.


Dirty Harry pulled himself up from the floor, his brain numbed by the flaming river of thoughts, feelings, and fragmented memories that had surged through him. His body, on the other hand was more aware and alive than ever. His senses were heightened to the point where he could hear the voices of the couple arguing in the apartment across the road, and see the individual grains of dirt on the floor across the room. He felt brimful of energy, ready to jump over buildings or wrestle bulls. He felt reborn.

Now he applied himself to an examination of David Mann's headless body. The clothes were of fine make, elegant but durable, cut to give the wearer freedom of movement, and there was a hidden sheath in the coat's lining designed to conceal the saber. The pockets contained five hundred dollars in small bills, and a valid driver's license and American passport, both bearing the dead man's face and the name "Jacob Marley" with an adress near Golden Gate Park. Harry pocketed the cash without qualms. The man had come to kill him, after all, and he wasn't going to need it any time soon.

"I guess we can die after all. Just got to do it right. Now if I only knew what the hell that lightning was." Harry now turned his attention to the sword. He was no expert on antiques or edged weapons, but he was quite capable of recognizing the letters "CSA" stamped on the blade. And judging by the quality and the wear, this sword was an authentic Confederate officer's sword, not a replica. An authentic nineteenth-century sword, maintained in excellent condition, carried by a man whose ID gave one name while he introduced himself with another. Yet one more piece of evidence to support Dirty Harry's conclusion that some pretty strange shit was going down.