Stango tries to dodge backward, stumbles. As he goes down, he braces his shooting arm with his other and fires. At this range, surely even Diogenes can't dodge, or at least he hopes so--else he's a dead man.

What he doesn't realize is that the pressure he felt against his pants leg was the scalpel striking home, the blade so sharp that he hardly feels it through the jolt of the gunfire and the adrenaline pulsing through his body.

But a moment later, his trouser leg is sodden, first deep, arterial red and then black as the blood saturates the fabric, and there can be no doubt.