Killer of Killers

by Mark M. DeRobertis

  When Trent jumped up, Toka pinned him against the bubble of another capsule and raised his arm for a pile driving hammer strike. Just as he delivered it, Trent slid under the hold, and Toka’s fist struck only the glass in an explosion of razor-edged fragments.

  Trent popped up again, this time behind the mammoth Samoan, and delivered a hammer strike of his own to the nerves at the base of Toka’s neck. The chief only grimaced, and after a shrug, resumed a relentless offensive aimed at Trent’s head. Ducking and swerving, Trent answered every one of Toka’s swings with strikes to the ribs, shoulder joint, and hipbone. He connected numerous times, but the chief’s considerable girth was like natural armor, and Trent knew it was not to his advantage to engage the monstrous Samoan blow for blow. He stepped back to redirect every lunge and swing until his opponent showed signs of fatigue.

  Trent realized, however, that Toka’s assault was not reckless nor was it indiscriminate. He had cornered Trent between three misaligned gurneys where he caught him by the belt buckle and the front of his shirt. He lifted Trent over his head and plowed him into the closest capsule. The glass shattered into countless splinters, after which Toka again held Trent aloft and slammed him down, blasting the next bubble to smithereens.

  Jagged edges shredded Trent’s back, and he saw his own blood whipped across the room. He grabbed Toka’s wrist and tried to wrench free but found himself a third time bashed through exploding glass.

  Toka seemed content to smash every tube in the room if it meant slicing Trent to ribbons, but on the next upswing, Trent snared a crystal fragment and drove it deep into the chief’s blue-covered shoulder. When Toka screamed, Trent was sure the razor edge severed the musculocutaneous nerve. Toka threw Trent across the room, where he landed on the top of yet another bubble, misaligning the gurney, and flashing more sparks into the air.

  Toka plucked the shard from his shoulder and tossed it aside. His arm quivered, and his blue sleeve blotted a bloody purple swath. He raised his fist and worked it open and closed. Apparently satisfied, he eyed Trent again and crept toward him. Squatting atop the glass, Trent looked down and saw two handles on the seam of its tubular cover. He gripped the metal bars and then noticed the skull and crossbones on the adjacent cabinet. The lines from the I.V. were damaged, and tetrodotoxin dripped to the floor. He knew a single drop in one of his open cuts spelled certain doom.

  The Samoan lurched, but Trent jumped back while raising the lid at the same time. As Toka’s hands pierced the stall, Trent slammed the metal-rimmed glass. Caught at the knuckles and howling in pain, Toka yanked his hands out, leaving chunks of skin along the frame. With a deafening roar, Toka grabbed the gurney, ripped it free and sent it smashing like the one before. “You’re next!” he yelled and charged with a flurry of blows.

  Trent avoided with ease the massive arms. Still, Toka did not let up, and their frantic movements bumped more cots out of position. But in doing so, Trent found he had more space to utilize his superior speed.

  Toka was like a berserker consumed in fury, telegraphing lunges, and his strikes were clumsy and inaccurate. Shortly, Trent noted Toka was delivering his blows at a slower pace. He knew it would only be a matter of time before the oversized security chief expended his energy. But Trent had backed into a bundled jam of gurneys, and it was in that moment Toka leaped forward and snared him in a bear hug. The huge chief commenced a mighty squeeze, which would crush Trent’s ribs in a matter of seconds. He reached around and bent Toka’s injured fingers backward. At the breaking point, Toka released his grip and raised both of his fists to pummel Trent into oblivion.

  When the huge fists came down, Trent countered with a Seoi Goshi. He spun around while placing his elbow in Toka’s gaping armpit, and threw him over his shoulder. The massive body flipped in midair and crashed face up on the floor. Trent dropped to a knee and unleashed a rapid succession of strikes, targeting the superior medial nerves behind Toka’s cheekbones and the deep temporal nerves, but the electronic cabinet behind him limited his wind up. He couldn’t muster the force necessary to end the fight. The blows took a toll anyway, and Toka bellowed from the punishment.

  In an obvious effort to escape the nerve attacks, the chief rolled onto his stomach. Trent didn’t let up and continued striking vital points behind Toka’s head and neck. Toka raised himself on all fours, but in doing so exposed the left side of his face. Trent made both of his hands into tight fists and jutted the second knuckle of each middle finger forward. With blazing speed, he delivered rapid, alternating strikes to the lacrimal nerve, posterior ethmoidal nerve, and the long and short ciliary nerves behind the orbit of the nearest eye.

  The blows scored, and a screaming Toka covered his face with his folded arm, thus presenting the bloody wound on his shoulder. Taking advantage, Trent unleashed repeated hammer strikes to exacerbate the injury. Over and over, he pummeled the gash, bursting blood with every strike. Soon the splattered gore covered most of Trent’s upper body and became indiscernible from his own leaking lacerations.

  Toka launched himself forward with the power of his legs, but the force of his lunge bent the wheel of the gurney beside them. The low trajectory of the impact toppled the capsule on top of them and spilled the body of a young woman into Trent’s arms.

  Electrodes snapped and sizzled, and plastic tubing sundered free. Trent saw the dangerous poison leaking from the lines. Fluids puddled the floor. He straightened his back to make sure his cuts cleared the toxin. His next concern was bleeding from the girl’s temporal incisions. A procedure that required a complicated surgery was instead violently effectuated, resulting in serious hemorrhaging on both sides of her head.

  Trent shot a quick glance at Toka and saw he was out for the count. He hoped to save the sleeping woman and examined her face. She couldn’t have been more than twenty, and even though her head was shaved, she bore a strong resemblance to someone he loved. This might have been Yoshiko. He yanked linen from the overturned cot. As sparks flew from torn wires, and severed tubing dangled, Trent held the girl over his lap. He folded up the sheets as quickly as he could and pressed them onto her bleeding lesions.

  At first, the linen absorbed the blood, so Trent increased the pressure. Then the blotting stopped, and Trent’s heart leaped when he saw the girl’s chest expand with a deep breath. He guessed the interruption of toxin in her system resulted in the cessation of paralysis. Now that the bleeding was under control, he dared hope her eyes would open any moment.

  Enormous hands suddenly snatched the girl’s body from Trent’s lap. He looked up, but only in time to see the snarling security chief heave the sleeping girl aside, as if she was nothing more than a piece of garbage. Her limp body slammed into the wall and slid to the cold and cluttered floor.

  “No!” Trent shouted, but just as he did, the Samoan tank plopped on top of him. The colossal body pinned Trent’s legs to the tile and his back to the cabinet, pushing the crystalline quills further into his flesh. The tremendous weight allowed no leverage for an effort to get free.

  Once again Toka’s mitts found their death grip around Trent’s neck, and the fight had come full circle. A second time Trent let his guard down, and this time there would be no rotating portal to save him. Toka roared with glee. “Die, you bastard! You killed my brother, and now you die!”

  With only seconds of life remaining, Trent noticed the left side of Toka’s face scrunched due to muscular contractions caused by the nerves he had damaged. The resulting facial contortion forced Toka’s left eye shut, which meant he was blind to anything Trent might do with his right hand. In desperation, Trent reached out and snagged one of the broken I.V. lines. He prayed it was the right one.

  Toka hollered again, “Die, you son of a bitch, die!”

  As Toka boomed the final word, Trent jabbed the dripping tube deep into his opened mouth and right down his throat. In but a moment, the huge body sagged and fell backward, stretching the width of the comatose ward.

  Trent coughed the air back in
to his lungs and pulled himself up by the metal machines. He surveyed the devastation. Three patients lay sprawled on the floor, including the woman snatched from his lap. Hastening to each, he felt for their pulses only to learn all three had expired. From what he could tell, the rest of the gurneys still functioned, although most had been shattered or pushed out of place. There was no trace of the medical staff, which only minutes earlier swarmed the portal-locked chambers.

  Trent returned to the motionless chief and studied his spread-eagled form. His brown face was no longer scrunched, and both of his eyes were frozen wide. Trent bent over the gaping features and peered into the glazed orbs. “I don’t know if you’re stone cold dead or just paralyzed,” he said. “If you are dead, you deserve to be. But if you’re paralyzed and you can hear me... Kiss my ass, you son of a bitch.”

  Trent straightened and winced from the sharp stings of his sliced skin. He viewed again the havoc their battle had wrought. Intermittent sparklers lit the floor and then fizzled in plumes of searing vapor. The stench of shorted circuits breached his nostrils, and with it he discerned the smell of Fugu. He scanned the dormant audience and wondered if they somehow sensed the struggle. It dawned upon Trent that he was used to cheering crowds, but this forgotten group stayed ghostly silent. He might have just saved their lives, yet there was no applause, and likewise, no ovation.

  Trent decided it was the way he liked it. He opened a portal and departed from the ravaged room. An appointment with Abraham Soriah loomed, and he wouldn’t miss it for the world.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dragons from the Past

  Inside the Eternity Lab’s executive suite, Charles again watched Abraham on the telephone, receiving the latest report from their security tower. Abraham responded to the report with a slew of orders, and Charles had no issues with any of them until he heard Abraham say, “Keep them outside the building until Chief Tacau gives the word to return.”

  Charles realized that those particular orders might not be possible to follow. He asked, “And if Chief Tacau isn’t heard from again?” He believed Trent Smith would defeat their security chief and anyone else pitted against him. He was also mindful of a guilty pleasure, as he secretly rooted for the ‘rogue vigilante’ the entire time.

  Still holding the phone against his face, Abraham firmed his mouth and added, “Maintain order as best as you can until you hear back from me. And make damn sure no one leaves the premises.” He slammed the phone back to his desktop, and to Charles, he said, “It seems Toka has found Trent Smith, and the two of them are tearing up E Wing. And to make matters worse, most, if not all, of our imports have fled the building.”

  “Maybe we should send Specials out there,” Charles suggested, “to help Security maintain control.”

  “Half of them are in the infirmary,” Abraham replied.

  Charles frowned. “If this gets out, we’re shut down. You know that.”

  “If it gets out,” Abraham responded, “perhaps we’ll be shut down. And if so, it will only be a temporary setback.”

  Abraham smiled, but Charles could tell he wasn’t happy. Charles wasn’t happy either, and he didn’t pretend to be.

  * * * *

  The limousine bounced over the winding road on its way to the small airport where Karl Manoukian’s private jet awaited. Karl turned off his cell phone after learning of the disturbance in E Wing from his mole in the security tower. He knew that Toka Tacau was dealing with Trent Smith in his own way. Karl wasn’t sure which man he wanted to prevail. He felt at this point that Trent Smith was his last chance to defeat Abraham Soriah, and the irony didn’t escape him. The man he wanted dead turned out to be the key player in his plan to regain control of Eternity.

  But as Karl watched the passing pines through his open window, he couldn’t ignore the sobering truth. Not only did his control of Eternity depend on Trent Smith believing Abraham Soriah sent the Turks to kill him, his very life depended on it. And that was a sobering truth indeed.

  * * * *

  E wing’s sealed gateway blocked Trent’s path through its lobby and to the hub beyond. He spotted no handle or motion sensor, but there was a security bell and a two-way intercom. He rang the security bell. When the guard on the other side looked through the circular window, he stared, then winced, and made no effort to open the gateway. Trent knew he was a bloody mess and his charade as an inspector was finished. Nevertheless, he activated the intercom and griped, “What are you waiting for? Open the damn door!”

  The guard didn’t respond, but Trent wasn’t in the mood for another ridiculous standoff. “Brainless pawns,” he uttered. “Can’t anyone think for himself?” He repeated his search for a means to energize the gateway, and finding nothing, he raised his gaze once more to the air duct. The prospect evoked a single word. “Shit.”

  He leaped up and squeezed through the vent, knowing this time, at least, the crawl would be short. Just as Trent moved forward, excruciating pain forced him to hiss and pluck a dozen shards from his elbows and forearms. Moments later, and with no further concern for stealth, he punched out the grid to E Wing’s restricted lobby.

  After dropping from the vent with reduced grace, Trent spied a blurry movement from the corner of his eye. The Chinese security guard was charging with his arms swinging in the style of a Kung Fu offensive.

  Trent parried the strikes, surprised the Chinaman’s speed rivaled his own, but his lacerated skin gave him reason enough to consider a different strategy. He’d try talking to the man. “Stop fighting me. Do you even know what you’re guarding in there?”

  The guard didn’t stop. Instead, he delivered a combination of punches and roundhouse kicks. The attack was heavy on the flanks, and it triggered déjà vu. Who else fought like that?

  Trent continued to parry the blows, and then landed a side-kick to the guard’s chest. The blow knocked the guard off his feet, but an acrobatic back-roll sprang him instantly up. He returned using the same strategy, forcing Trent to shield his flanks, and then delivered his own side-kick, knocking Trent onto his shredded and blood-soaked backside.

  Massive agony swarmed Trent’s senses, as the crystal razors further embedded his skin. The multiple fragments made a back-roll impossible. Trent could only shift to his side and bear yet another blue-clad obstacle. He shouted, “Stop fighting me, you idiot! What’s the matter with you? I’m not the bad guy. Can’t you see that?”

  It became clear to Trent that what the guard saw was a grisly intruder, frazzled and splattered in gore. He was nothing more than a mangled and messy portrait of misery. He wanted to explain, but fatigue overwhelmed him. He couldn’t believe his string of victories over so many colossal killers would end in defeat to a pint-sized security guard.

  Apparently, the guard was waiting for Trent to right himself, but Trent couldn’t move anymore. He lay in an expanding pool of red, exhausted and immobile. He hoped the security guard would believe the duel was finished, and it seemed that he did, because he started to approach in an unsuspecting manner. The moment he stepped within reach, Trent shot his legs out and took him down with a scissors throw. And before he could react, Trent applied a chokehold—the Tatsumaki-Shime.

  Trent was prepared to maintain the hold until the guard passed out, but he felt the guard tapping his forearm. Trent knew the signal. It meant his opponent would no longer fight. Trent didn’t let go, but he eased up and snarled, “Do I have to kill you to get you to listen?”

  “No,” the guard answered. “That would be permanent.”

  “You’re damn right it would be permanent.”

  “But this assignment is only temporary.”

  Trent couldn’t believe the man’s levity at this critical juncture. It called to mind a fighter in his past. Trent released the hold.

  The guard stood up, and when Trent dragged himself to his own unsteady feet, the guard bowed and declared, “Midori no Me no Tora.”

  Trent mentally separated the blue uniform from the guard’s Asian face.
“I know you,” he said. “You’re Zao Lin. I fought you in the Japanese circuit.”

  “Yes,” Zao replied. “You are the only person to floor me with a scissors throw and follow with a dragon choke. That day you did it to me twice. And today, a third time. I knew then it was you.”

  “I didn’t recognize you in that uniform,” Trent confessed.

  “And I didn’t recognize you with all that blood everywhere,” Zao countered with a good-natured smile.

  Trent had no time to get reacquainted. “Listen, I just found out how they’re making their medicine. You’ve got to help me.”

  Zao remained silent.

  Trent spoke again. “Do you even know what they’re doing to your people in there? What I just witnessed goes beyond human degradation.”

  Zao’s face darkened, but still he didn’t answer.

  Trent threw his arms up. “Are you listening to me?” Flustered, he grumbled, “If only Samantha was here. You’d listen to her, I’d bet.”

  Zao raised his eyebrows. “Samantha Jones?”

  “Yes, Samantha Jones.” Trent studied Zao’s face. “She was working with someone in the FBI to uncover the horrors of this place. And believe me, I just uncovered some horrors that would blow your Chinese socks off.”

  “It’s me,” Zao said. “I am her contact. The FBI recruited me for this assignment. My orders are to await Detective Jones’ arrival and find a way to admit her into the wing. She was to report anything suspicious and call in a task force if needed.”

  “Why haven’t you gone in there?”

  Zao pointed to a camera bolted high on the wall. “All of the rooms are monitored. The security tower is watching me every minute.”

  Trent looked at the camera. “Are they watching you right now?”

  “No. The surveillance and facility intercom systems were disabled just before the intruder alert.”