Chapter 48: Lady, At Least Take A Breath
-Bang-!
The ear pro caught the impulse and crushed it flat into a metallic crack that punched straight through my skull anyway.
My forearm had my eyes. My other hand had Tikki’s face. So the white didn’t take my vision the way it was built to, and the ringing stayed a wall of pressure behind my ears instead of a spike through them, and the two of us came out the far side of it functional.
Functional. Not fast.
And two seconds was all a professional ever needed.
She was on me before the white finished fading.
I caught flashes. A bike helmet, black and scuffed, already strapped to her head. A dark jacket. And speed that did not belong to just another woman.
Her shoulder drove into my chest while her elbow came up into my left cheek, and my head snapped right hard enough that my world tilted, stealing my balance in the same motion her off-hand clamped the shotgun and shoved the muzzle away from her while racking the pump backward until the shell spat out across the tile.
All that in a single second motion.
[What th-]
Pain bloomed across my face while blood filled the space behind my teeth, but she didn’t stop.
That same elbow came back in a backhanded arc and shoved straight into my nose, and I heard the crunch from the inside before I felt it, a wet pop that flooded my eyes and dumped copper down the back of my throat.
[Profes-]
Before I could even finish that single thought, she ripped the shotgun out of my hands, and the pump she’d hauled backward slid home forward as she pulled, the whole disabled weapon going live again the instant it left my grip, one clean motion that took my gun and armed it again.
I tried reaching for Telekinesis and found soup where my intention was supposed to be.
Concussed. Vestibular system spinning. Every scrap of processing drowned in the pain across my face as I stumbled back a full step while she brought the muzzle up.
Beanbag. Center mass. It would end this in one pull. But then again, I wasn’t alone.
"WEAAA- HISSS-!"
Tikki hit the helmet visor claws-first, and the shotgun dropped from her hands while he went to work on her, screeching and biting and refusing to come off as the two of them tumbled into the hall.
I got my hand under me and dragged in a breath that tasted like a copper mine and shoved myself upright.
By the time I cleared the doorway, she already had him off her.
And in that half second, she had a choice.
The window sat open right beside the TV stand; one throw and he’d have been seven stories in the air with the horde below.
Instead, she stuffed him into the cabinet under the TV stand and shut the door.
[For that alone... I won’t kill you...]
Then she grabbed the hammer off the top of the TV and came at me and swung it at my head.
I ducked under the arc and buried a fist in her stomach, caught the back of her collar, but her backhanded elbow cracked across my left cheek before I could finish the throw, stumbling me three steps into the open floor.
I hadn’t even planted my feet before she was on me again.
Her boot shoved into my chest with the full drive of her weight behind it, a straight Spartan kick that put me airborne and dropped me on my ass across the floor.
And my soul damn near left my body.
The chest bruise that had finally, barely, stopped screaming lit right back up like a fucking Christmas tree.
[Come on!]
She was already over me, hammer rising for the strike that ended skulls.
And that was the exact instant Telekinesis finally answered.
I grabbed her and slammed into the far wall hard enough to shake the framed pictures off their hooks as I got a knee up under myself while she peeled off the plaster.
But still, somehow, she was up before I was, the hammer already leaving her hand.
I wrenched my head sideways by pure instinct before it whipped past my ear, missing me by inches and cratering the wall behind me.
But now I had the distance I needed. Grabbing her with Telekinesis, reeled her straight in, ready to shove my elbow into her with the full weight of my body behind it.
[What’re you gonna do no-]
The thought never finished because reeling her in gave her a free ride, and she rode it, tucking into the pull while her fist arrived at my face carrying every bit of that borrowed speed.
From that single shove of Telekinesis, she learned enough to weaponize it without understanding the first thing about how it worked.
My head torqued around, blood spraying out, and she had already jumped on my back before I’d finished turning, both arms wrapping my throat while her legs locked around my waist.
My air cut off clean while the edges of the room started going soft and dark as I clawed at the arm and got nothing. I reached for Telekinesis and found only the animal noise of a brain screaming for oxygen.
So I ran. I drove us both backward into the low coffee table in the middle of the room with her riding my spine, spun at the last stride, and jumped onto it back first.
-Crash-!
The table detonated under our combined weight, and her grip blew apart with it, and I rolled off her, scrambling away on all fours, coughing while the room spun, dragging air down a throat that felt half its normal size.
[Need space!]
But she was already up.
By the time I got my legs under me, she had a table leg in her fist, and it was already in the air.
I caught it with Telekinesis a hand’s width from my face and shoved it off line.
She looked at me for one flat second and rushed in again.
[Oh no you don’t!]
I grabbed her mid-stride and threw her into the ceiling, held her against it for half a heartbeat, and let go.
She dropped, hit the floor, and stood right back up again.
[What the... Lady, at least take a breath...]
I grabbed her again before she got a full step, and this time I didn’t let go. I bashed her into the near wall, then another, whipped her down into the floorboards , hauled her up and slammed her through the edge of the dining table by the kitchen door, one impact into the next, while she had no answer for any of it as I left her curled up into a smashed dining table.
Done, every read in my body said. Finally done.
But nope, she pulled a flashbang and threw it at me and scrambled on all fours through the kitchen door toward the shotgun on the floor.
[Ah shit!]
The instincts cultivated over years worked against me, and I dove flat on my stomach on the floor, hands clapped over my eyes before-
-Bang!
The crack rolled through my skull, stealing another second and a half, and I was still shaking it loose when I got my hands under me, but she was already back in the hall doorway with the shotgun raised.
I tried reaching for the gun with TK but-
-Thard-!
The beanbag bashed square into my chest, and the pain went off like a bomb behind the plate, the ceramic eating just enough of it to leave me conscious.
I stumbled back, hit the TV, and went down face-first onto the floor.
-Click-Clack!
[Fuck! Fuck-Fuck-Fuck...!] I got my palms flat and pushed.
But she had already pumped it and crossed the room and planted herself over me, the muzzle at my back before-
-Thard-!
-Click-Clack!
-Thard-!
-Click-Clack!
-Thard-!
-Click-Clack!
-Thard-!
-Click-Clack!
-Thard-!
-Click-Clack!
She put the entire tube into my back one after another, methodical, almost unhurried.
The back plate took most of the brunt before passing the rest straight into muscle and bone until my whole body was one flat sheet of blunt agony, even my arms stopped being sure they belonged to me.
Emptying the gun, she threw it aside and hauled me up by the collar, stood my half-conscious body against the wall, and started in with her fists.
Left hook. Right hook. Throat. Nose again. Left eye through the glasses. Right eye. Stomach. One kidney. The other kidney. A knife-hand chop to one side of my neck and its twin to the other.
Her hands moved almost too fast to track.
I got my guard up, but she stripped it aside and kept wailing, every shot to my head landing before the last one cleared. I couldn’t even gather two consecutive thoughts to shape a single ounce of TK.
She fisted my collar and drove her knuckles into my stomach, again and again, shoving her whole fist in each time while thunder rolled down through my guts with every strike.
Then she wrapped her hands around my throat and squeezed.
And that was the mistake.
Because the fists stopped, and the concussion fog thinned just far enough for one clear thought to form in the gap.
-Bash-!
A pulse of raw force blew out of me in every direction and threw her clean off her feet and across the hall.
I hit the floor on both hands and knees, no air anywhere in me, black crawling in from the edges, fighting to stay conscious by pure refusal.
[This... is bad...]
She scrambled up in two seconds. And I’d had enough.
-Crash-!
I smashed her back into the wall with Telekinesis, closed a grip around her throat, and started to squeeze, dragging my own breath down in ragged pulls, still on my hands and knees.
And that was when my eyes found the details.
My jacket, and the zip dragged lower than I’d left it, most of the plate carrier showing through the gap.
The Glock on the chest carrier, the backup knife, and the shoulder holster that carried my Shorty 40. All of them were empty.
She’d been stripping me the entire time she beat me, and I hadn’t felt a single one of them leave.
[No...]
My heart quit mid-beat as I snapped my head up, and the woman I had by the throat with an invisible hand had my own grenade launcher leveled at my face.
"Wai-! I surrender!" It scraped out of a ruined throat while my hands shot up on their own.
That was just common sense. Nobody wins against a HEAP round from across a living room, and I still had enough common sense left in me to know it.
The woman went rigid for a full two seconds before she let out a shaky-
"N-Nikki?"
And I recognized that voice that very same instant. It was that one voice in either life I would never forget, and it had just said my name.
"Nia?"
Comments