I'm at a swimming pool when the assassins attack.

First is a tall, good-looking young woman in a navyblue one-piece suit. She has a gun, but by sheer luck she only spots me just as I pop out right by her--so close I can trip her. She falls in the pool. I jump on top and hold her down till she goes limp. Dead. I'm in no mood to hold back, not after North Korea's leader sent those women to assassinate his own brother in public.

Then... when I'm IN the pool, three MORE women in swimsuits show up with guns. Trapped. I'm a fish in a barrel. But I dive--I can hold my breath a long time. Bullets slap the water, but it slows them within inches; even if I'm hit, I may get away with just shallow wounds or bruises, and the low angle deflects shots.

Their gunfire causes a panic. Lots of screams and running, then silence. No one grabs them--sunbathers just panicked and fled! Guess I'm on my own for the few minutes till the cops show up. Can I hold out underwater?

Maybe. I'm not in a swimsuit but cut-off jeans--for a reason. This attack wasn't totally unexpected. I stashed a futuristic weapon of my own in a pocket, as insurance. It's a flattened ovoid just 5-6 cm long. A stunner, not designed to kill. I fire from a yard under. Water bends and diffracts the beam a bit, same as light, but it still penetrates better than bullets. The three gradually get groggy and slow. Their aim gets sloppy.

The stun'll last only minutes; no time, no help, no rope to tie them up. No cops yet, not even sirens. I'm alone here. With professional killers. When you have no allies, mercy isn't an option. Guiltily, but firmly, I push them in, face down, like the first killer. I don't like drowning women, or helpless prisoners--but I won't let assassins escape to try again.

You only get one chance to kill me. The new ruthless me.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Murderous violence: rare in my dreams. I'm a little feverish from a recurring infection--but even when it flares up and I sweat or my heart pounds, I usually dream of stresses like hard climbs or scary heights; not personal violence like this.
• Armed women attack in public place:
  1. That North Korean assassination in a Malaysian airport. That the dream echoes a real assassination suggests the dream's saying my illness is a real danger.
  2. Just read "The Trials Of Cinderella", a version where Ella's a social reformer. Her rich classmates escalate from insults to violences. The matriarch of one leading family openly considers assassination to silence her. It triggered flashbacks--schoolmates never pulled weapons on me, but they broke or dislocated ribs.
• Hide underwater, it blocks their bullets: When my infection flares up, I hide socially (remember that Jazz Age expression, 'the social swim'?) Dull, but solitude helps.
• Quiet, nonlethal, futuristic stunner gradually knocks out my enemies: my self-designed protocol of antibiotic herbs works slowly--not a magic bullet, not a bullet at all, but they do fight the infection and I can take them longterm--unlike the prescription antibiotics I tried for a year.
• Ruthlessly drown my stunned assassins: starve parasites of vital nutrients? Lyme spirochetes outlast months of antibiotics by encysting--curled up, shelled, fasting, sleeping. But I can stick with this herbal protocol and diet for YEARS--I can be as relentless as they are.
• ACTION: Even if others see the steely New Me as selfish or standoffish, stick to my treatment. Herbs--and solitude when stressed. Won't stop the bullets, but it slows them to merely painful, from... fatal.

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