No Smoking After Nine
Posted on Tue Sep 9th, 2025 @ 12:15pm by Logan
1,512 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
Episode 7: Pathogens and Contagions
Location: Harry's Bar, Salem Center
Timeline: 28th February 1992 - 2101 hours
Harry’s was the kind of place where the sign said NO SMOKING and everyone agreed it didn’t apply after nine. Logan thumbed a battered lighter anyway, rolled a cigar in his teeth and sparked it. First draw flared warm; second came with that faint iron taint he’d started to hate. He let the smoke sit, slow and stubborn, until his hands steadied.
“Mate—” the barman began, half-hearted.
Logan looked at him. Not mean—just the kind of look that said he wasn’t in the mood to be told what to do. The barman weighed it, then shrugged and went back to polishing a glass that had already given up.
On the TV, the news ran stock footage of MRD checkpoints and men in windbreakers looking brave. Somebody down the bar muttered about “mutie curfews” and “keeping the town safe.” Logan said nothing. He could smell the man’s nerves through the beer and bravado—sour, jittery, like a dog that didn’t know if it wanted to bark or run.
The fever lifted an inch and the room widened. Sounds layered clean: the soft knock of pool balls behind him; a card deck being riffl ed; the jukebox motor whirring like an old fridge. Scents slotted into place—pine cleaner, damp wool, a hint of cheap cologne. No Hellfire perfume. No handler aftershave. No Sentinel ozone. He dragged the cigar, let the smoke out slow, and almost believed he could sit like this all night.
“Oi.” Boots scuffed. The voice came from the mirror more than the air—broad bloke in a flannel shirt and a face like a thumb, bringing his mate and a day’s worth of bad choices with him. “You’re the short arse who took my mate’s seat.”
Logan didn’t look at the stool. He’d taken the one that let him see the room and the door; if the seat had a previous owner, the seat hadn’t said so.
“Bar’s half-empty,” he said.
“That a joke?” The mate—leaner, quicker eyes—snorted. “You think you’re funny, grandad?”
Logan rolled the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “I’m not in a funny mood.”
Thumb-Face planted a hand on the bar next to Logan’s whisky. Big hand. Knuckles like gravel. He smelled like engine oil and old sweat and a mean sort of boredom.
“Stand up,” he said. “Let’s see if you’re still smart with your feet on the floor.”
Logan angled his head a fraction, enough to keep both of them in the mirror. He didn’t stand. He didn’t hunch either. He took another slow drag and let the smoke curl between them.
“Bad night to bleed,” he said, quiet.
The lean one laughed, too high. “He thinks he’s hard,” he told the room, auditioning for an audience that wasn’t there. He nudged the pool cue in his hand against Logan’s shoulder. “Up.”
Logan’s eyes dropped to the cue, then up to the man’s face. He let the cough that wanted out sink back where it hurt. He turned the ash off the cigar with a careful tap.
“Last ask,” he said. “Go sit down.”
The cue pressed harder. The barman exhaled, already tired of the paperwork. News babbled on about infection rates and safeguards. Somewhere behind Logan, chalk scraped a tip.
He didn’t sigh. He let the world shrink to hands and feet and reach. Then he moved.
The cue swept for his shoulder; his hand snapped up and two inches of steel slid from between his knuckles with a soft, ugly sound. The tip shaved the cue in half like celery. The top clattered away; the bottom stayed in his palm until he let it drop.
The lean one froze, eyes on the claws. “Jesus—”
Logan tilted the blade nearest the man’s throat so it caught the neon. “Seat’s still empty,” he said. “Take it.”
Thumb-Face came in swinging. Logan didn’t bother with the claws; he turned his forearm into the punch and let the man hit adamantium. Knuckles cracked against metal with a wet pop. The big bloke howled, clutching his hand like it had met a brick wall—because it had.
A bottle scraped off the bar and smashed toward Logan’s head. He rolled the cigar across his teeth, lifted his other hand and let the third claw flick just far enough to catch the arc—glass kissed his cheek, scored a line, and kept going into the wall. He felt the sting, then the warm trickle… then nothing. By the time the shard hit the floor, the cut had already knit, a pink seam closing to clean skin. He sniffed, unimpressed, and let the last bead of blood wipe away on his sleeve.
He stepped in, slow, not wasting motion. A wrist twist put the lean one’s arm on the wood; a single claw pinned his flannel cuff to the bar, sunk deep between boards without touching flesh. The man tried to yank free. The shirt tore; the bar didn’t. Logan leaned close enough for him to smell the smoke.
“Still want me on my feet?” he asked.
Behind him, Thumb-Face tried a kick out of sheer stubborn pride. Logan planted, took it on the hip and didn’t move. The big man did—hopping back on one leg with a groan as boot met bone that wouldn’t give. Logan rolled his neck until it clicked like a lock turning, then turned his head to look at him.
“Bad night to find out what I’m made of,” he said.
He withdrew the pinning claw with a neat pop, shaving only thread. All six slid home with that same quiet sound. The room breathed again.
Thumb-Face stared at his swelling hand. The lean one rubbed his wrist and decided breathing was a hobby he’d like to continue. Nobody reached for anything else.
“Sit,” Logan told them, voice low but flat as a floor. “Finish your drinks. Don’t finish your mistakes.”
They sat. The jukebox remembered the blues. The barman found a glass that needed urgent attention three metres away.
Logan took his stool like he’d never left it, turned the cigar, and let smoke wander up into the dead neon. He tossed back the last of the whisky, felt the fever purr at the edges, and breathed through it until the room steadied.
He tapped ash into the tray, eyes on the mirror.
“Anyone else?” he asked it, softer than before.
No takers. Good. He wasn’t here for a fight. He was here to make it to the next place without one.
He signalled for another. The barman poured without eye contact; Logan knocked it back in two slow swallows and let the warmth sit until the edges of the room stopped trying to fray. A minute later he lifted two fingers again. Second refill. He didn’t rush the third mouthful—held it, breathed through it, let the taste go sharp and clean before it turned to iron.
Sirens found the night outside—first a far-off smear, then closer, splitting into two cars and a van by the twinned wail. He could hear the radio chatter under it, clipped and bored. Local uniforms. Maybe MRD hitching a ride. The bar took a breath, that small, guilty hush where everyone decided to be invisible.
Logan thumbed his lighter, drew once more on the cigar and let the smoke roll out in a slow ribbon. No hurry. He palmed two notes from his pocket and set them on the wood, heavy enough to cover damage that hadn’t quite happened.
“Appreciate the hospitality,” he said. The barman gave a tight nod that meant he’d appreciated the lack of broken furniture more.
Logan stood. Joints complained; he rolled his neck until it cracked and the ache let go. Someone had been brave enough to glance his way; he ignored it. At the door he tugged his collar up, then paused as the fever bit without warning—white heat under the skin, a pressure behind the eyes that turned the mirror into three pictures at once.
The flash came hard. Red hair blown across snow. A hand warm in his. Paper walls and the hitch of a breath before a promise. The tank’s cold, the hiss of a mask, a voice saying hold still while the world narrowed to metal and light. He caught the frame of the doorway until it passed and the room snapped back into one piece.
Decision came quiet. No drama, no speech. Just the straight line that had been waiting since the gates went back up.
He stepped out into the cold, tasted the air—wet tarmac, de-icer, exhaust, no perfume he feared—and turned north, towards the big house beyond the treeline. Not fast. Not hiding. Just moving, the way a man walks when he’s finally decided where he has to go.
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