Genre microfiction experiment!

A firm handshake, exchanged briskly, and the deal was done. No one would now interrupt the flow of power between the two parties, nothing could dissolve their dominion.

Their hands met and too late he realised it was a trick. The contact was long enough to exchange the information; it was stolen from him in a flash of molecular transmission.

He clasped the outstretched hand; desperate, grabbing, his palm dangerously slick with terror-sweat. The grip held, but every inch of his body strained and screamed against the pull of gravity.

His fingers caressed the other man’s hand; he was shaking with excitement at the touch, where the hand he was holding was cool and steady.

Fire and damnation settled on the world, and even as the Sun was choked out they fought and fought over the last scraps of control.

But no one now would ever find him, no one would ever again know what he knew. It was a kind of bliss, as the programme took hold and deleted him piece by piece.

As he staggered away from the devastation behind him he managed to drawl out a quip that was snatched away in the riot of explosions behind him. They should never have rescued their own worst enemy.

And as he sat in his favourite chair and looked across the tiny, neat garden they had built together he reflected that the life they’d lived – with all its fear, joy, hardships, pleasures – had peaked at that first touch.