by Craig Boldy
He slashed again at my left side, and I tried the same move I had used in the previous mission, catching him in the side of the head with my elbow. The first blow with the gun had ripped the chinstrap from its stitches, the second, other than making my elbow and fingers go numb, was mostly absorbed by the helmet, but it was enough to send it flying off of his head.
He took a few steps backwards and pulled the goggles and scarf off before shaking his head. The blow had obviously dazed him; I just hoped it was enough to throw him off his game slightly. He slashed for my right-hand side before I was ready for him and it earned me another cut down my right arm, this time slightly deeper.
I stared into his eyes as he stared into mine. I could almost see the decision being made in his eyes. He was going for an all-out charge. Before I knew it he was rushing me, knife held low. I caught his wrists before the blade could do any damage and the blow took us both to the floor.
This guy was bigger than me, so he had the advantage. He landed on top of me with the knife in his hands over my chest. I was on my back on the floor straining against the weight and strength of my assailant as he tried to press it into my chest. We would have been evenly matched if not for the pain from my two slashes and my numb fingers from the first blow. It was making it difficult to resist.
The knife was about two inches from my chest as I struggled to keep it away. Very slowly it began to descend, millimetres at a time. I could do nothing to shake him off, nor could I push the knife away. He had me pinned to the floor, and my strength was failing me. I stared into his eyes, and he looked back at me victory in his face. He knew as well as I did that it would be over very soon; I had only a few more minutes before all my strength was gone and the knife would plunge its way into my chest. I had one chance. I could push the knife one way or the other. It would still pierce my chest, but I had a chance of it missing my heart.
There would be a release of his strength after he had driven the knife home. I could take the opportunity and use the few minutes I had left before I bled out to reach the weapon and blow him away. It would still leave Evan alone to deal with the last guy hovering over the hostages.
A dark shadow fell over the two of us, and I saw from the corner of my eye another person in combat gear. I knew it was over then, I couldn’t resist one of them, I had no chance against two.
Suddenly my arms jarred and a vacant look passed over the face of my attacker. His fingers uncurled as he closed his eyes and the knife dropped from his hands to lay on my chest. I felt the pressure of his weight suddenly lift as the other guy rolled the unconscious guy off of me. I breathed a sigh of relief as I looked at my saviour. He held out a hand and helped me to get to my feet.
"So much for taking care of him." His distorted voice became clear again as he lifted the goggles and scarf from his face.
"Evan! Boy am I glad to see you. I tried to knock the guy out, but it didn’t go so well."
"That’s a bit obvious. You want your gear back?"
"Keep it. I've had enough of this now." I looked down at my wounds. My shirt was a mess; the slit was hanging open and showing the gash underneath. Thin red rivers of blood had run down my arm from the slash there and were now beginning to drip from the fingers of my right hand.
I tore the sleeves off my shirt and made a quick tourniquet to try to stop my arm from bleeding. We dragged the big guy over to where the rest of his group were laid groaning, and I tied them up while Evan removed the combat gear.
"The last guy out there wanted to know what was keeping everyone. Luckily for you, he sent me back here to check up on everyone."
"Tell me about it." I would be having nightmares about him staring down at me, death in his eyes and in his hands for a long time to come.
Evan had given me the perfect opportunity to take out the last robber, but I was in no mood for messing around now. I left him with the weapon and gave specific instructions to guard the prisoners while I took care of the last one.
I limped out of the safe, though the cage and out into the corridor. I had sprained my ankle as I fell and it was giving me a little trouble as I walked. The host hadn’t held up very well to the onslaught I had put it through. I just walked out into the lobby without even thinking about hiding my face.
The last man was still standing in front of the hostages, waving his weapon menacingly. I didn’t bring any of the P-90s or Berettas which were strewn around the vault; I was worried about firing it with the bulk of the hostages cowered behind him. He could shoot at me to his heart's content but any bullets I sent his way would hit innocent people.
I quietly walked out of the door and into the main lobby, taking a second to duck underneath to find the buttons Evan had mentioned. There was a small plastic box attached to the underside of the counter with two separated red push buttons. I pressed them hard until I felt something click, and made my way through the hatch in the counter, nonchalantly picking up one of the brass poles they used to mark out where to queue. It had deep burgundy plush cords coming out of it at right angles. I unclipped both of them dropped them to the ground as I walked on.
The hostages who weren’t staring at the floor or off into the distance watched me silently. To them I must have seemed some sort of bloody monster, emerging from my hiding place where five heavily armed bank robbers had gone but not returned.
I walked up to him slowly; he still hadn’t turned around. I tapped him on his shoulder to get him to turn around; I wanted to make sure the gun was pointing away from the hostages when I knocked him out. The last thing I wanted was for him to tense up as he went down and blow away half of them.
The moment he began to turn, I drew the pole back like a baseball bat. Once the weapon was clear, I let it fly and whacked him over the head as hard as I could; hard enough to knock him out even with the helmet on.
He crumpled to the floor as a couple of shots rang out, to the gasps and screams of the hostages as they threw themselves to the floor to escape; lucky I had thought it through.
I picked up the gun to make sure it was out of his reach in case he was just dazed and kept it pointed at him while I checked to make sure I hadn’t broken his skull into little pieces.
I stood up as the noise of general terror from the hostages began to grow again. I tried to calm some of them before I realised they were all beginning to panic and were staring behind me. I turned to locate the focus of their terror and heard another shot reverberate across the marble lobby.
I heard the shot before I felt the blow. It felt like something big hit me. I staggered a few steps back from the shock that nearly knocked me off my feet. I looked down to where my shirt began to gush blood and instinctively tried to turn around to see if any of the hostages were hurt. I made it halfway through the turn before another ringing shot dropped me to my knees.
I could barely move, but there was no pain. I rotated my eyes and saw one guy stood at the door of the van pointing his Beretta at me. In all of the planning and commotion, I had forgotten about the driver and the leader waiting in the front of the van.
He started to walk towards me, lowering a pistol; a slight curl of smoke was rising from the end of the barrel. I tried to stand, but I barely had any strength left. Two shots to the chest and the only thing keeping me upright was the sheer force of will provided by the nanotech.
I could feel the connection slipping. My vision was growing dimmer, and everything I tried to do was happening a few seconds after it should have. I fell to the floor and rolled onto my back with one of my arms behind me.
The man who had shot me entered my field of vision as I lay staring at the ornately plastered ceiling, shortly followed by the leader of the gang.
“What the hell was that all about?” the driver asked, his weapon now down by his side.
“Hell if I know. I thought you had vetted these guys.”
“So did I.” He said as he leaned in over me to look into my eyes and I quickly pulled out the Beretta I had shoved down the back of my
jeans.
His face changed the moment he saw the gun, but he didn’t have time to react. I swung it upwards and fired, the round passing through his head in a heartbeat. The leader had a few extra seconds to react before my gun was trained on him, but he didn’t have his weapon drawn and those few precious seconds were wasted trying to undo the pop clip. I fired again, taking out the leader and ending this whole fiasco.
The last thing I saw was the bodies of the two men drop to the floor as the ceiling began to shine with the flashing blue and red lights of the police vehicles pulling up outside.
I could feel myself slipping back into the darkness and then the feeling of growing smaller and smaller until eventually, I was back in my mental corridor.
It wasn’t the best of missions, but at least I had saved any of the hostages from getting hurt. I just hoped Evan had the good sense to take off the disguise before the SWAT team breached the building; otherwise, he might have ended up being shot after all.
I made my way towards Hanson’s door to just jump straight into him rather than going to my own body, but when I tried to go through the door, it wouldn’t open. I looked to find the handle missing and immediately stepped back into to my own body.
A few moments later, I opened my eyes to the worried face of Filch and the unmistakable sound of medical alarms. At first, I began to panic, thinking that there was something wrong with my ventilator. I looked askance at Filch.
"Don’t worry," She said, "It’s not you, its Hanson.”
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End Of Part One
Thank you for purhasing and reading this novel, I hope you have enjoyed it so far. Please dont forget to leave a review!
Cant wait for Part Two? Well you're going to have to, I'm afraid. But dont worry, Part Two will be available early 2019.
As a special thank you for purchasing this book, once Part Two is complete it will be loaded into this ebook, giving you the culmination of this exciting story completely free!
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Also By This Author
Overlord Of time
What would you do if you found yourself stuck in an alternate timeline with only an experimental piece of technology keeping you alive? If your timeline was somehow wiped out, irrevocably changing your life and everyone around you?
Jason Brooks is the founder of a successful R&D Company - FutureTech Industries. After concluding a research project on miniaturised time-travel technology, he was ready to move on to the next great mystery, until an apparent malfunction thrusts him into an alternate timeline.
Travelling into the not too distant future, looking for answers, Jason suddenly finds himself on the losing side of a war against a madman who has conquered the planet using Jason's inventions.
Lacking the power to return to his own time and plagued by a recurring dream containing a message he can't understand, Jason is forced to fight his way to the person responsible for the devastation as he desperately tries to find a way to restore his timeline and put an end to the horrific vision of the future he finds himself in.
This incredible story will satisfy not only sci-fi enthusiast but everyone who’s looking for a nail-biting adventure to keep them longing for the next page!
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About The Author
Craig Boldy is an accountant from South Yorkshire, England. He lives with his wife and Labrador.
Craig has always loved to read, spending a great deal of his childhood in libraries and is now incapable of passing a bookshop without at least a passing glance through the door. He finds contentment either behind the pages reading a good book or in front of a laptop screen, writing one.
After being selected to have a poem published in a regional High School anthology at the age of 14, he was bitten by the writing bug, producing various short stories just for the entertainment of doing so.
Craig’s writing career has had an awkward start. After working in demanding fields such as Accountancy, Bar Management and Customer Service he has finally found the time to put words on paper.
As a lover of comedy, science fiction and good old-fashioned swords and sorcery fiction, he likes to write what he knows best with his first novel “Overlord of Time” being a science fiction time travel adventure written in an easy-to-read style with humour and a unique twist.
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