Professor Strike
by Dan Rodriguez
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
“I’m not a professor. I keep telling everyone. Doesn’t anyone learn anything in my class?” Then, I see it in her eyes. Something familiar.
It isn’t flirtation. It isn’t revenge. Curiosity, knife-like. Hunger.
For a second, I don’t breathe.
“You stood there,” she says, almost in a trance, “and you took my father’s life. I watched. Saw it all. My father crumpled to the ground, and you walked away. Strode away, like a king. Like a god. I knew right then and there, no matter how long it took, I wanted the same power.”
The headache stabs through my brain like an icepick.
It’s so clear now. This dangerous little girl. In a former life, I would have recruited her. That hunger in her eyes, that curiosity. It is killer instinct, looking for release.
I sit down heavily in my chair, the rusty springs creaking, rubbing the heel of my hand against my temple, trying to crush the headache out of my skull.
“What you saw,” I say low and flat, “wasn’t power. It was the hollow.”
Mara tilts her head, eyes narrowing. “Hollow.”
“Yeah. Like standing in an empty house after the fire’s out. Quiet. Cold. Nothing left but the echo of what you burned down.”
She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move. Just stands there, letting the silence stretch until it becomes razor sharp.
“I don’t want the hollow,” she says finally. “I want the thing that made it.”
I laugh, short and bitter. “Kid, there’s no ‘thing.’ No magic switch you flip and — boom — now you’re unstoppable. You’re left holding someone else’s life in your hands, and you never stop feeling the weight. Ever.”
“Then teach me,” Mara says.
“No.”
Her jaw tightens, that sharp, predatory stillness coming over her again, like a hawk waiting on the wire. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I just did.”
“Teach me,” she says again, softer this time. “Teach me what you did. What you are.”
I stare at her — too long, maybe — before shaking my head. “You think you want it, but you don’t. You want to be able to sleep at night. You want to be able to eat without tasting copper. You want to live without wondering if the next kid in an alley’s got your number. I can’t, not anymore. You don’t want this, Mara.”
“Then why,” she says, leaning forward, “does it feel like I need it?”
The mats in the PIASTA gym still smell like sweat and bleach, same as they did twenty years ago. I hate being back here. Feel like a ghost haunting my own grave.
Mara stands in the center, arms crossed. She has that serrated look in her eyes again, the one that tells me if I don’t do this, she’ll find someone else who will. Someone who’ll turn her into a weapon without blinking.
I sigh, cracking my neck. “Listen close,” I say. “Because I’m only showing you this once. What I’m teaching you isn’t strength. It’s leverage. Technique. And once you know it, you don’t get to unknow it. You understand me?”
She nods.
I step in, slow and deliberate, the way I was back in Bottle Alley. My arm slides around her neck, forearm pressing against the artery, the other hand locking the hold. Tight. Clean. Deadly.
“This is the Wolf’s Jaws,” I say. My voice sounds flat, detached, like I’m reading from a manual. “Not a choke. Not really. It’s a blood cut-off. Five seconds, maybe six, and they’re out cold. Ten, twelve, and they don’t wake up.”
I let her go. She stumbles back, rubbing her throat, eyes blazing but not afraid. Not even close.
“You feel that?” I ask. “That moment when your vision starts to tunnel? That’s the edge. You take someone past it, and you can’t walk it back. Ever.”
She just stares at me.
“You think you want this,” I say. “But the first time you use it — really use it — it’ll hollow you out from the inside. You’ll stand there over some poor bastard, listening to the blood in your ears, and realize you’ve got nothing left but the quiet.”
“I need to learn more,” she says.
Is that a threat? A promise?
I should’ve walked out. Should’ve told her to find another monster to feed that hunger. Instead, I nod, against my better judgment. “Fine. But you’re gonna do exactly what I say. Or you won’t live long enough to regret it.” My head feels like it’s going to burst like a pipe bomb.
It happens fast.
One second, I’m setting up a training dummy. My back is turned. Just one second.
The air shifts — sharp, electric — like the moment before a gun goes off. Maybe I knew she’d try something. Maybe I truly am washed up, and she got the jump on me. Or maybe I just didn’t care anymore. Tired of waiting to be found out. Tired of pushing air in and out of my lungs for what? What great contribution am I making that makes it worth keeping me around? Maybe she should be the one to finally take me out.
Then she’s inside my guard. Smooth. Clean. Perfect. Her arm snakes around my throat. My own goddamn move. The Wolf’s Jaws.
The room tilts, the edges of my vision already darkening. Blood roars in my ears. My hands claw at her arm on instinct, but she’s got the leverage, just like I taught her.
“Say it,” she snarls. Raw. Ferocious. “Say his name.”
So, it is revenge after all. My voice is nothing but gravel. She loosens her grip, just enough for me to speak, but nothing more.
“Angus...” I croak.
“LAST NAME!” she screams, unhinged now, her breath hot against my ear.
“Steven . . steve... st...” My knees buckle.
“This is what it felt like, isn’t it?” she hisses, leaning closer, tighter. “When you killed him.”
The world narrows to a suffocating tunnel.
And then, nothing.
No, not nothing. Hollow.
Not a warning. A promise. A glimpse of the endless, empty quiet that’s been waiting for me since that night.
The world snaps back wide and wild, breaking over me as air crashes back into my lungs. I blink hard, trying to get my sight back.
She’s sitting on the floor now, legs folded under her, staring into her trembling hands. Not rage. Something else. “I could’ve killed you,” she says. Not a boast. A confession.
“Yeah,” I rasp, voice shredded. “But you saw it, didn’t you.”
Her eyes are glassy, caught somewhere between fury and forgiveness. She swallows hard. “Yeah,” she whispers. And it sounds less like an answer, and more like the start of something neither of us can name.
“When I started this,” Mara says, her voice even now, intense but controlled, “I wanted to kill Strike. But I see now... he died long ago.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” My throat still burns. I push myself off the floor, surprised my legs still work. The gym is quiet — too quiet — shadows stretching long across the wooden paneling, the racks of medicine balls, the “aetheric slimmer-izer” machine humming softly in the corner, doing whatever the hell it’s supposed to do.
“I’ve spent my whole life preparing for this moment.” She looks up at me, eyes rimmed red, still wet. Sitting there in that rumpled boy’s outfit, knees drawn up, she looks smaller than she ever has, like a chick that’s tumbled out of the nest. “What will I do now?”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Mara, look around you. Look at what’s happening to Manhatta, to the whole damn world. Wires hissing. Towers crackling. Airships buzzing. Assistants on every corner”. I point toward the skyline, where cranes rise like steel bones against the evening glow.
“The world’s sprinting and nobody asks where. PIASTA’s not just a warehouse with a coat of paint anymore. It’s a world-class institution. Hell’s bells, the 9th Avenue El is barely six months old. And that’s just the beginning. You’re keen as a blade and a little terrifying. You could be anything you want.”
She doesn’t move. Just stares past me, through me, into something I can’t see.
“The world tries its best to make you forget,” I say, quieter now. “And maybe you will, for a while. But the pain... the pain stays. Always.”
Slowly, she rises. Straightens her knickers with trembling hands. Her jaw tightens, but her voice stays level. “If I could just be you,” she says, almost a whisper, “nothing would stop me.”
I take a step closer, my voice low, almost gentle. “Why, in the name of the Earth Child, would you want to be me?”
Something breaks in her face, just for a moment. She turns her head, gaze falling to the street below, where the city’s lights pulse in rhythm with some new, dangerous heartbeat rising from Manhatta.
“Be someone better,” I tell her.
Outside, on Chambers Street, a ghostly green phantasm lumbers past, an enormous mastodon, shaggy and prehistoric, its ectoplasmic coat rippling like smoke in a slow wind. An ice truck swerves lazily around its legs. Nobody looks up. That’s this town: miracles stalk the streets.
Emerald light washes through the gym, pooling in the shadows as the mastodon pauses, peering in through the factory windows. Then it moves on, silent and impossible.
I shake my head. “There are at least a dozen insane things we’re doing right now,” I say, voice low, almost pleading, “things we barely understand. Everyone’s too caught up in the moment to notice. And when this all goes sideways...” — I meet her eyes — “the world is going to need people like you.”
Mara closes her eyes, tilts her head — a raptor at rest, thinking. “Maybe I should withdraw. Mull this over.”
“No, please don’t.” I let out a humorless chuckle. “You’ll ruin my enrollment numbers.”
That earns me a smile. A real one. Not the plastic mask she wears in the lecture hall.
“Okay,” she says, “I’ll stay on. As a favor to you, Mr. Blake.”
“Finally. Mister Blake.” I clap my hands and grab my tweed blazer, threadbare at the elbows. “Someone actually learned something in my class.” Then, softer: “Seriously, does anybody know what’s going on under the Core Dome?”
Mara shrugs.
“Me neither,” I mutter. “But whatever’s coming, it’s coming here first. PIASTA’s the place to be... if you don’t mind the occasional brush with the unthinkable.”
She tilts her chin up. “I hope you won’t mind showing me more of those moves. I bet I could learn a thing or two.”
I hesitate. No neck prickles. “Okay,” I say carefully. “After finals. And you still owe me that essay, young lady.”
“Oh, right.” She gives a small, embarrassed shrug. “Guess I’ll get right on it.”
“Everything all right in here?” A security guard stands at the gym entrance, flashlight cutting through the deepening gloom like the Coney Island lighthouse.
“Yeah, we’re good, Arend.” I wave him off.
“Glad to hear it, Professor Blake.”
I bite my tongue. No point correcting him.
“Ol’ Maddie the Mastodon swung by for a visit,” Arend the guard says. “Just checking up.”
“Much appreciated. We’re done here.”
Mara and I step into the night.
“I’ll see you Monday,” she says, her brown leather shoes shuffling soft against the sidewalk as she disappears into the illuminated haze of Chambers Street.
I turn toward the 9th Avenue El. The headache’s gone, but the streets hum with something restless. The aetheric lamps strobe above me, painting everything in harsh, unnatural hues — magenta, violet, ice-blue — shadows bending the wrong way. A paperboy shouts headlines nobody believes. Somewhere high in the sky, an engine hums in a key that rattles my teeth.
I duck into The Wampum Belt but skip my usual. I go straight to the cheap gin and let it do its work. Just sit in the back, coat collar up, letting the smoke and the static hum from the aetheric conduits seep into my bones. The Lenape jazz players are at it again — low, dirty, sharp enough to cut glass — but tonight the harmonics are off, bending in ways that make the air feel like biting tinfoil.
It’s not music. It’s a warning.
Then it slides in under my ribs, sharp and cold, the old instinct I thought I’d buried. The Wolf’s Jaws, locking down. Outside, the streetlights flicker in sync with the rhythm, once, twice, then holding steady.
No student note sitting on my desk this time. No way to tell what’s coming for me. Is it someone trying to settle a score? Maybe it’s something worse, some formless, unknowable menace birthed from children playing with tools left by the gods. With my luck, it’s probably both.
Ignoring trouble never buried it; I was renting dreams by the hour. I may not know much, but one thing is certain. Whatever’s coming is already on my trail. Something’s out there. Something hungry. And it has my scent.
Maybe Mara’s the edge I need. No, she’s more than that. For the first time in a long time, somebody might notice if I go missing. Somebody who actually gets better when I’m around. I see my own ruthlessness reflected back in her eyes. I’m no professor to her, and I don’t have to be.
“Mara.” A four-letter word. So is “hope.” I stumble back up to my apartment, lock the door, kill the light. The city keeps humming. Tomorrow, we see if hope can buy me one more dawn.
Copyright © 2025 by Dan Rodriguez
