“Get your samples?” he asked.
We met in the living room.
I clocked his left shoulder edging forward, his right torquing back, slipped the right cross that would’ve put me on my ass, brought a left hook through his face as he tilted off balance, then caught him across the bridge of the nose with a vicious elbow.
He stumbled back, blood sheeting down his face.
We traded blows, some missing, some landing. Even my hardest strikes seemed insufficient—it was like fighting an oak tree.
After I caught him in the left temple, he shook his head and charged, his meaty arms opening. My mind was shrieking, Do not let him get you on the ground.
We were in the hallway that led past the stairs to a family room, and as he went for my legs, I jumped straight up, pinning my feet against the walls, then dropping straight down on top of him, my knee driving into the back of his head with a sickening thunk.
As he lay stunned on the hardwood floor of the hall, I wrapped his long hair around my right hand, closed it into a fist, and smashed his head into the floor.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Four.
Impossibly, he struggled to his feet, but I clutched his back, clinging to him, my right arm around his neck, squeezing with everything I had, trying for a blood choke that would cut off the artery to his brain and give me a precious few seconds to figure out— He crashed me into the wall, the force driving the air out of my lungs, then spun around and launched back into the opposite side of the hallway, so hard I cracked the drywall.
My ribs were in agony now.
He slammed me into the wall.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Until I couldn’t hold on anymore
Until I couldn’t breathe.
My grip released.
I crumpled to the floor, and as I gasped for breath, the man rained down a series of blows on my face—
* * *
—
When I came to, I was lying on the kitchen floor and the man was at the dining room table pulling a syringe out of a small black bag.
Everything hurt.
I felt broken, the pain edging beyond what I was capable of compartmentalizing.
I watched him tap the side of the syringe, and as he turned toward me, I closed my eyes.
The floor creaked as he approached and knelt beside me. I felt his warm hand on my shoulder, knew the needle was coming.
I opened my eyes, opened my right hand, and thrust it straight up into the man’s soft throat.
It was a perfect strike.
He made a terrible gasping sound and dropped the needle, clutching at his neck.
His face turned red.
Panic filled his eyes.
I rolled over and came to my feet, staring at the man as he tried to breathe. He seemed to be getting a trickle of air, but not nearly enough. I figured he had two minutes of deeply unpleasant consciousness remaining. Four to twelve minutes before brain death.
“I crushed your trachea,” I said, groaning against my own pain. “I could let you asphyxiate or I could save you.”
He nodded violently, his face turning purple.
“You have a knife in that bag?”
He nodded, fighting to breathe.
Fifteen seconds.
The man’s black bag lay open on the counter. Inside was a 9mm Kimber Micro, handcuffs, vials, syringes, and a Viper-Tec Blue Phantom knife.
I hurried back over to the man, who was now sitting against a kitchen cabinet, choking to death.
“Lie on your back,” I said. “Move your hands.”
Forty-one seconds.
It was an odd thing to go from trying to kill this guy to saving him inside of a few seconds, but he had information.
I climbed on top of him.
“Blink wrong, I’ll slice you to ribbons.”
He nodded frantically.
His face was a wreck, and I could see exactly where my blow to his throat had landed. It had crushed in the upper part of his larynx. I ran my finger down his throat until I felt another bulge—the cricoid cartilage. The indentation between this and his Adam’s apple was where I’d make my incision.
When I flicked open the Blue Phantom, the man’s eyes went wide.
Its blade was insanely sharp.
I eased it in, the man whimpering as blood poured from the new wound. I carefully pushed the blade through a membrane until it punctured into his airway.
His face was turning blue.
Seventy-eight seconds.
I knew I’d penetrated his airway, because some of the blood sucked in through the wound. I lengthened the incision to half an inch.
Whether from the pain or oxygen deprivation, the man was now unconscious.
Retracting the knife blade, I came to my feet and started opening kitchen drawers, looking for a straw or— I grabbed a BIC pen with bite marks on one end, quickly separating the body from the writing components.
The cut I’d made in the man’s neck was ugly—ragged and bleeding like crazy, but with some effort I was able to finesse the hollow body of the pen two inches through the man’s neck.
He wasn’t moving.
I put my lips to the pen, blew two breaths into the man’s airway, and waited.
Nothing happened.
I started CPR—one hundred chest compressions per minute.
Then two more breaths into the pen.
Repeat.
Four minutes, twelve seconds.
I was about to start another round of CPR when the pen shuddered in its hole and made a gurgling, sucking noise.
The man’s eyes opened. He took long, desperate breaths through the pen and stared up into my eyes with a helpless intensity. The color in his face was returning to normal.
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.
I watched the panic return, and for a split second, almost felt sorry for him.
“I hold your life in my hands,” I said.
He nodded. He knew.
I touched the pen. “This is all that’s keeping you alive.”
I rushed into the living room, grabbed my laptop out of my pack, and returned to the kitchen.
I sat next to the broken-throated man and opened a blank document.
I didn’t have much time—someone must have heard the gunshot that killed Tiffany.
“What’s your name?” I asked, then handed him the laptop.
He typed: Andrew
“Is my sister in Glasgow?”
He shook his head.
“How did you get entangled with Kara?”
We were in Myanmar together. I was a part of the team that rescued her. She approached me last year to be a part of her project “Why is the upgrade killing people?”
I have no idea
Probably true.
“What were you supposed to do with me?”
Transport you out of here
“To Kara?”
Yes
“Where is she?”
I don’t know
I reached over, yanked the pen out.
Gasping.
Desperation.
Hands clutching at his neck and that oxygen-starved purple beginning to color his face again.
“You think I won’t watch you slowly suffocate?”
Andrew typed frantically: Colorado
“Where in Colorado?”
Near Silverton, please
“Give me an address and I’ll let you breathe again.”
58 Eolus Way
I shoved the pen back through the hole in his throat, and as he gasped for air, I watched him, trying to surmise if he was lying, but the trauma of the tracheotomy was drowning out any expressions, much less readable microexpressions.
I heard footsteps on the front porch. I grabbed the laptop, jumped to my feet, and raced into the living room, shoving it into my pack as someone pounded on the front door.