Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) by Justin Robinson

this probably wasn’t the first case of someone’s creativity conspiring to murder them, it was certainly the one that concerned me the most.
    “What was the second time?”
    “Chain, Nicky, remember? You knew where Chain of Heretic Martyr was. You and me were going to sell it. Earn your stripes, remember?”
    I did remember. I even had a little flashback to the bunker in San Pedro where I’d been taped to a chair while Vassily proposed that particular business arrangement. It probably would be cold comfort to the Whale if I explained that a) I live by a simple code: do unto others before they do unto you, and I wasn’t going to sit around and let him stab me in the back for the Chain, since in his case it would involve literal stabbing; and b) I still had the Chain, it was sitting in my trunk not a mile from his club, and it was currently bolted to another artifact many people would pay in the high millions for.
    “I never found the Chain,” I lied.
    “Don’t lie to me, Nicky. It hurts my feelings.”
    “You have feelings?”
    Vassily shrugged.
    “All right, what was the third time?” I asked.
    He was silent, staring down at me in the steadily deepening hole. It was not a good position, because with every shovelful of dirt, I was making Vassily loom ever larger in the blue-black sky. He was starting to look like a planet with shitty taste in clothes. “The... probing.”
    “Oh. Yeah. I actually do feel a little bad about that one.”
    I had used Vassily as a very large, very loud, very Russian distraction during my rescue of Mina from the Little Green Men. Vassily wasn’t going to win that fight, and honestly, just walking away from it was impressive. Sure, he was walking a little funny, but I wasn’t going to make that joke.
    “You feel bad? You feel bad?!” Vassily looked poised to jump into the hole with me, and that didn’t bode well. Getting shot I could handle. Getting eaten by a man-mountain, not so much. “They melt my cars. They capture me and my boys. They take us up in ship and... and...”
    Look, I can’t say for certain. I mean, I was terrified. I thought Vassily was going to lose his shit at any second and beat me into something like uncooked Chicken McNugget slurry. I was trying very hard to keep things light. But I swear I saw the headlights of his car glint off a single tear shimmering on that titanic white cheek.
    Vassily never finished the sentence, though I had a pretty good idea of what had happened on the ship.
    He looked down at me and said with finality, “That is why you are dying tonight.”
    I swallowed. Things were getting a little dark. I still had no idea how I was going to get out of this situation. I didn’t accept that there was no way out, but with every shovelful of dirt deposited at the lip of the hole, it was looking more and more like an actual grave. And graves aren’t like pancakes; you can’t just put a strawberry-and-bacon happy face on it and call it a day.
    “Right, so... can’t help but wonder about my girlfriend?”
    “She dies, too.”
    “Already put that in motion?” I asked.
    He stared at me. Finally: “All right, Nicky, all right. She is not hard to find, I think. When I do, maybe I bring her up here, have her dig you up. You’d like that? Be together forever?”
    “Personally, I’d like you to let us go. Maybe some gift certificates to a nice restaurant or something.”
    “No nice restaurants, Nicky.”
    “So, what, like Olive Garden?”
    “Very funny. You are making me think maybe I should kill you now.”
    “You sure you can track her down, huh?”
    “She is model. I found her once, I can find her again.”
    “I see.”
    Vassily inspected the hole. It was about three feet deep. “I think that’s big enough.” He pulled a gold-plated Desert Eagle from his jacket.
    “Vassily, look. We can talk about this, can’t we? I have information. Lots of information!”
    “Sorry, Nicky. This is the end of road for you. Goodbye.”
    He