The Meat Locker

The basement smelled of rust, freon, and bleach.

The Meat Locker was a cavernous, tiled room kept at a shivering thirty degrees. Sides of beef hung from hooks on a motorized track on the ceiling. In the center of the room stood an industrial grinder, silent and ominous.

Luca dragged Arthur into the center of the room and threw him onto the cold, wet floor.

Arthur scrambled backward, sliding on the slick tiles, until his back hit the grinder. He was hyperventilating. He jammed the inhaler into his mouth. *Hiss. Gasp.*

"You think you're smart," Luca paced in a circle, the gun trained on Arthur’s head. "You think because you know numbers, you know how the world works. But out here, in the real world, 2 plus 2 equals whatever I say it equals."

"That's... mathematically unsound," Arthur wheezed.

* Heh-hee-hee-hee-HEE.*

The laugh was getting louder. More jagged.

"Stop laughing!" Luca screamed. The sound was clearly getting under his skin. "Why are you laughing? You're about to die!"

"I... it's a nervous tic!" Arthur cried. "I have... high cortisol levels!"

"I'm going to lower them," Luca raised the gun. He aimed right between Arthur’s eyes. "Any last words, Artie? Any final calculations?"

Arthur looked at the gun. He looked at the black hole of the barrel.

He stopped shaking.

Slowly, deliberately, Arthur Penhaligon lowered the inhaler. He pushed his thick glasses up the bridge of his nose. He took a deep breath, but it wasn't the ragged gasp of an asthmatic. It was deep, calm, and controlled.

"Actually," Arthur said. His voice had changed. The stutter was gone. The pitch dropped an octave, becoming smooth and cold as liquid nitrogen. "The calculation is already done."

Luca frowned, confusing clouding his rage. "What?"

"The probability of you pulling that trigger is 100%," Arthur said. He stood up. He brushed the dirt off his knees. "But the probability of the gun firing? Zero."