The Fire In My Eyes

by Christopher Nelson

  Yamamoto glanced between us, first looking at me, and then looking at Nikki. He could overpower us and take the device. Of that, I was sure. We could give him a hard time over it, and we would probably be able to break the device, but he'd win and we all knew it. He really didn't have much reason to agree to this.

  As if she had read my doubts, Nikki spoke up again. “Yamamoto, also, remember that there are Bureau agents on campus, and they're probably on their way here right now. While you can probably take us down, do you think you can take us down, and then deal with them? They'll have you outnumbered more than two to one.”

  He snorted. “Your federal agents are not that threatening.”

  One agent had been very threatening down in Washington. I grinned. He could be bluffing. “Even if we soften you up a bit?”

  Yamamoto locked gazes with me. I stared at him, eye to eye. The hair on the back of my neck started to stand on end. Maybe he wasn't bluffing. Even if we slowed him down, he could still have the strength to beat multiple Bureau agents.

  He broke eye contact. “Copies of the research data will be acceptable. We will recover as many flash drives as possible and divide them evenly between our two factions, so that we may have backup in case a single drive is damaged. If your federal agents arrive, we will work together to defeat them.”

  “Agreed,” Nikki said. I nodded.

  “Additionally, once the data is distributed equitably, we will both extend safe passage to the other. You have my word that I will not attempt to stop you from returning the data safely to your superiors,” he added.

  “And you have our word as well,” she replied.

  “Very well.” Yamamoto nodded at me. “You may have some combat training, but you are still a trainee. Concentrate on defense.”

  “Got it,” I said. “Nikki, can you handle the data?”

  “Just tell me how, and I'll get it done,” she promised, then frowned. “We've got a problem.”

  “They found us,” I said. “Right?”

  “They're coming up the elevator.”

  “They aren't even trying to disguise their presence,” Yamamoto said. “I can sense them without even attempting to manifest.”

  I growled, then turned to the door and knocked before pushing it open. Nikki and Yamamoto followed. The room was cluttered with circuit boards and tools, computers stuffed in the corners and several large monitors on display. The pudgy researcher looked up as we all walked in. “What's all that noise about?” he asked, then seemed to notice that my eyes were glowing. He made a sound that I could only imagine a fish out of water would make, then snatched something up from his desk and pointed it in my direction. I stood dead still.

  Whatever it was, it had a small vial of clear liquid attached to it. Even as I looked, there were glimmers of light from within the vial. A cable stretched from the device to one of the computers, and the computer's display was flashing frantic messages. “I take it that's telling you there's a lot of something going on here,” I said.

  “Are you here to kill me?” he asked. Sweat was beading up on his forehead. “I really don't want to die. If you want me to stop, I'll stop, I won't tell anyone, I promise!”

  Nikki stepped toward him. He cringed away. “Don't worry,” she said. “We're here to protect you and make sure your research gets finished. Where are your backups? We need to get some copies made. Fast. Before they get here. Flash drive?” She looked to me. I pulled my flash drive off my key ring and sighed. I kept copies of all my papers on the drive. They were on the laptop as well, but it was a little unnerving to surrender my sole source of backup. I flipped the little device over to her. She snagged it out of the air without hands and placed it on the desk in front of the researcher. He trembled.

  “They are almost here,” Yamamoto said. His eyes were still dark.

  “Make a copy of all your data on there,” Nikki directed the researcher. “Hurry. I'll protect you. Do you have any other flash drives? We need several copies.”

  “I understand,” the researcher said. I heard a desk drawer sliding open. “I've got a bunch of flash drives, I'll copy the data to each of them. This is just like the movies. I'll go as fast as I can!”

  “Just like the movies,” I said, looking toward Yamamoto. His mouth quirked into a small smile. “I guess I'm bait, right?”

  “Correct.”

  I reinforced my shield and faced the door. “Well, just let me know when they're here.”

  “They are here,” Yamamoto said, and the door burst open.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  For the second time that year, I fought for my life.

  Three men in dark suits rushed the door, breaking left, right, and center as they came through. They moved in perfect unison, only accomplished through excessive training and practice. On television, the choreography would have impressed me. Being on the receiving end, it terrified me. I reinforced my shield, spreading it wide. The surge of power caught their attention. All three pointed handguns at me.

  I had been shot at plenty of times in games. This was no game. Bullets smeared against my shield inches away from me, hissing red hot before sliding to the floor. The agents fired their entire clips. Spent, crushed rounds littered the floor in front of me.

  To my surprise, my shield held with power to spare. I reinforced again to keep them interested. Two of them tossed their guns away and the third dropped back to the door. Their eyes burned scarlet. Playtime was over. I divided my shield into layers of deflection and redirection. If they weren't careful, I could reflect their attack right back at them. They didn't fall for it. Telekinetic lances flashed from their hands and slammed into my shield, driving me back a step with each impact. My shield started to crack under the repeated blows and I folded it together to keep it strong.

  Yamamoto finally stepped in and took advantage of their focus. His eyes blazed orange and the rearmost of the Bureau agents staggered, dropped to his knees, and gagged. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. One of the other agents turned to face Yamamoto while the other kept his focus on me. The odds were even now, at least in a strictly numerical sense. If Nikki stepped in, the odds would shift to our favor, but she needed to keep an eye on the geek. We couldn’t risk losing him now.

  “Kaze!” one of the agents hissed. The injured one slumped sideways to the floor. I assumed he had passed out. Yamamoto had said he wouldn't kill in our territory, but spitting up blood wasn't a sign of good health. I pushed that thought aside and concentrated on my opponent again, splitting my shield into components again. With only one attacker, maybe I could bait him. I flicked a pulse of kinetic force at him to keep his attention and to keep him from putting all his power into offense. He absorbed the hit on his own shield and thrust back. His attack was brutal, focused, and aimed at the weak points of my shield. Green sparks flashed as I shored up the weak points, but as soon as I did, he'd hit somewhere else. I had no way to overwhelm his shield before he broke mine down.

  A few steps away, Yamamoto was provoking the other agent. Attacks slammed against his shield, but each one slipped off. “Deadly force? The use of firearms?” Yamamoto asked. “I was under the impression that your organization disavowed such things. I will report this to my superiors. They will be pleased to know that the rules of engagement have changed.”

  “Go back to Korea, you slant-eyed bastard,” the agent retorted. “Back off, give us the kid, and we'll let you live.”

  “Your promises are as empty as your soul.”

  “Eat shit!”

  I absorbed another attack and felt my shield crack. The agent attacking me said nothing. That wasn't a bad thing. I was too busy trying to keep my shit together to exchange witty banter. I poured more energy into my shield and tele'd a call for help to Yamamoto. “I can't take much more of this!”

  “Can you distract this one?” he tele'd back.

  “I'll try.”

  He nodded and tele'd a quick image back to me, three white bars against a black ba
ckground. I counted to three, then bled energy from my shield and rammed it toward his attacker. The agent swore incoherently as my attack saturated his shield, throwing him off-balance. He crouched low to the ground, and I could feel his shield waver. Another attack would break his shield, but I couldn’t redirect my energy again so quickly.

  Yamamoto hit my previous attacker with a telekinetic blade that slashed his shield vertically, scarlet energy bleeding from the gash. The agent danced backwards, manifesting his own telekinetic blade, moving for the doorway. I slammed the door shut behind him, trying to keep him from escaping.

  I didn't need to bother. The agent didn't have a chance. Yamamoto was relentless, dropping his own shield and attacking the silent agent with just his telekinetic blade. His next slash carved a gash horizontally across the scarlet shield, crossing the previous attack. The agent brought his blade up, but Yamamoto beat it aside, then drew back a step. I could sense energy charging his next attack.

  “Don't let the slant get you!” the other agent shouted. He threw a ball of scarlet energy at Yamamoto, but I intercepted it with a shield and deflected it into the ceiling. The ball scorched and blackened where it struck. It would have burned right through a person.

  I saw a brief smile cross Yamamoto's face, then he thrust forward with his blade. The attack pierced the shield right where the two previous attacks had crossed. If he had thrust straight through it, he would have taken the agent through the center of his chest. Instead, he angled it slightly and rammed the telekinetic blade through the agent's right shoulder.

  The agent looked at his shoulder, then at Yamamoto, then closed his eyes. I felt his grip on psionic power fade as he slid backwards off the blade and collapsed on the floor. “You should know better than to meet the Kaze blade to blade,” Yamamoto said. His attention focused back on the final agent. He raised the blade in a salute and started to advance.

  The agent snarled and flicked needles of red energy at both of us, spraying streaks of red wildly across the room. Most of them missed, but a few stuck to my shield and started to burrow in. I surged power to my shield, trying to burn them out. There were flickers of energy still connected to the needles. They were actual physical needles. What was he trying to do with those?

  Yamamoto's shield flared into a complete sphere of protection, but it was too late for me. All across the room, whatever the needles had stuck into jumped into the air and flew toward us. Circuit boards, soda bottles, a computer monitor that sparked and screeched as it was yanked free from its power cord, objects across the room slammed into us. I had been focused on blocking energy, not physical objects. The monitor clipped my head and dropped me to my knees, ears ringing. I touched my head where it had hit and my hand came away red. My vision blurred and I felt the room spin. Yamamoto seemed to be in better shape, but his shield was surging with power and I knew he couldn't do anything until he stabilized it.

  The agent pointed at me and I could see red energy building up at his fingertips. The gesture was oddly similar to the agent in Washington. “You're fucked,” he said.

  Nikki blindsided him before he could hit me. Energy flashed from her fingertips, quick green blasts that didn't have enough power to break his shield, but coming from an unexpected direction, they were enough to surprise him. The energy building for his attack vanished as he reinforced his shield and spun to counter her. I stood up and grabbed the monitor that had clipped me with telekinesis, then heaved it toward him. It bounced off his shield, but distracted him again for just a moment. That was all Nikki needed. She sprayed him with another salvo of weak bursts, but this time, she followed it up with a strong focused attack that bored through the flickering shield, right into his forehead. I didn't know what sort of attack it was, but his eyes rolled back and he flopped over without another word.

  I wiped my bloody hand on my pants. “Yamamoto? You all right?”

  “I am uninjured. You are hurt, though.” His orange shield faded out. I could see red scratches on his face where something had brushed him, but he wasn't bleeding like me.

  Nikki jumped up and rushed over to me. “Kevin! You're all bloody!”

  “He clipped me,” I admitted. “But you got him. Don't worry about it now, we need to get out of here. Did the copies finish?”

  The researcher's head popped up behind the desk. Nikki must have forced him down to take cover. That steel desk looked heavy enough to stop bullets. “Did I hear gunshots?”

  I looked down. At least two dozen flattened out bullets peppered the floor where I had been standing. I picked one up and flipped it over to him. “You could say that. Get all your research copied?”

  He peered at the flattened bullet, then up at me. “Three copies done, fourth just finishing. You're going to distribute this? Make sure it gets into the right hands?”

  Nikki walked over to him and took the trio of flash drives that had finished, then placed a hand on his head. “Don't worry. They'll get to the right hands,” she murmured. The researcher's eyes fluttered closed as her eyes glowed green. “He'll sleep, and he won't remember any of this, or his project,” she said.

  “Good, that makes my job easier.” The door opened and I turned to face it. My muscles froze in place. A fourth Bureau agent walked in, his eyes glowing scarlet. He brushed imaginary dust from his sleeves and smiled at all three of us. “Thank you for doing the hard work for me,” he said, walking over to the identically frozen Nikki and taking the flash drives, then plucking the fourth drive from the computer. He slipped all four drives into his suit jacket's inner pocket.

  There had been a fourth agent. I should have known. There had been the one attacking Nikki earlier, and then after I had disabled him, there had been three others looking for us. The fight had been intense enough that I hadn't even noticed the mental assault.

  “Your actions. Regrettable,” Yamamoto said. I tried to look toward him, but couldn't turn my head enough. If he could talk, maybe he could fight. I tried to say something, or telepathically communicate, but the agent's grip on my mind was firm. My heart and lungs were laboring just to keep me alive. Scarlet energy was pulsing in time with my heartbeat. The agent's presence was all around me and I could feel him slowly eroding the last barriers in my mind. If this kept up, none of us would walk out of here.

  “Regrettable?” I heard a crash from behind me. The grip slackened just enough for me to turn my head. Yamamoto was on his back now, blood dripping from his nose. The agent stood over him and planted a foot on his stomach. “You shouldn't have interfered with our business.”

  “Not your business,” Yamamoto replied. “Establishment territory. Not yours.”

  The agent pressed down with his shoe. I heard Yamamoto grunt. The grip on my mind slackened more and I took a full breath for the first time since the agent had walked in. If he let go any more, I'd be able to seize control back. Was that what Yamamoto was trying to do? I saw him looking at me and shook my head slightly. If that was what he was trying, it wasn't enough. “The Establishment couldn't find their own ass if you gave them directions. They're so busy screwing up in the city, they could only spare a pair of trainees to deal with this. You'd take advantage of weakness, wouldn't you, Kaze? ”

  “We respect and honor our adversaries,” Yamamoto said. The grip must have relaxed for him as well. “You? You are nothing but thugs, the lowest filth, with no respect for your enemies or yourselves. The concept of honor is foreign to you, gaijin.”

  I couldn't see the agent's face, but I did see him rear back and kick Yamamoto in the ribs. A solid thump echoed through the room and Yamamoto gasped. The grip on my mind loosened as the agent kicked again. I heard a crack, probably one of Yamamoto's ribs popping. I had heard that sound from my own chest often enough, thanks to Shade. I let fury push my power beyond my stable limit and burned the agent's grip on my mind clean. For a brief moment, I had a mental image of him stumbling away, fingers on fire, slapping them against his suit in an attempt to put them out.

  He spun to
face me, eyes blazing, but I gave him no chance to defend himself. I stepped into him and slammed a fist into his stomach, accelerated just a bit. He bent forward with a gasp and I pulled him off balance, then shoved him toward the sole window in the room. He stumbled over a power cable and I gave him a telekinetic boot in the ass, aiming him toward the window.

  I expected him to grab onto something, re-orient himself in mid-air, or simply bounce off the window. I only meant to give him a moment of panic, to distract him. Instead, he crashed through the window, spraying a storm of glass shards that caught the glow from his eyes and shone red in the early evening. He didn't scream. He only fell.

  Somebody touched my shoulder. “Kevin?” I jumped. Nikki. His grip was broken now. It had to be. “Are you all right?”

  “I guess?” I said. I hadn't heard him hit the ground, no thump, no crash. Had he hit the ground? Would I even hear it if he did? Was he dead? “I didn't mean to do that. I didn't.”

  “Calm down,” she said. “Did you get the flash drives?”

  I slapped my forehead. “No. Shit!” I didn't want to go down there. If he had hit the ground, I didn't want to see it. I didn't want to think about it. I hadn't meant to kill him, only force him to do something unexpected, to give me a moment to act, to force him to let go of Nikki and Yamamoto, not to kill him. “I didn't mean it!”

  She grabbed shoulder and squeezed hard enough to hurt. “We've got to get the drives and get out of here before we're caught.”

  “But I killed him!” I shouted at her. She took a step back. “I killed him! What the fuck was I doing? What was I thinking?”

  “You were defending yourself,” she snapped back. “Get a grip! It was an accident!”

  “He's not dead,” Yamamoto mumbled.

  “What?”

  The few pieces of glass left in the window rattled, then glowed red. The agent leaped in from some point below the window, face contorted with rage. He didn't even bother to land on the floor before lunging toward me. “You son of a bitch!” he screamed.