Matt Hilton: Judgement and Wrath

One of the more obscure facets of my training had been how to endure torture. I've ran the gamut of methods employed by those who find it necessary to prise information from an enemy soldier. Sleep deprivation, mind games, physical beatings: I had to suffer and defeat them all when a member of the Special Forces. When I was drafted into the team headed by the shadowy men who became known as Arrowsake, I was introduced to further methods. The Geneva Convention forbids torture. But those I fought did not give a fuck for conventions. So it was necessary for me to be exposed to the other methods that some governments and terrorist groups used with impunity.

As soon as the needle went in, and I felt the rushing in my skull, I knew what drug was coursing through my system. I'd felt its effects before. Sodium amatol. Truth serum as it's sometimes referred to. It's an inhibitor. It lowers resistance. It makes you feel drunk. But at the low dosage Dantalion had squirted into me, it wasn't going to kill me. It wasn't even going to send me to sleep.

What it would do was disorient me, take away my strength and make it difficult to fight back. But I knew I could shake off the effects. Given time.

Dantalion kicked me over.

He didn't know, but the pain acted in my favour. It shook off some of the debilitating fog in my brain. I rolled on to my side, looking for him.

My eyes rolled in my skull and I could see his silhouette in triplicate as my vision swam.

Aim for the one in the middle, I told myself. The thought struck me as funny, even as I knew that he was moving to kill me.

I rolled on to my hands and knees. A tide rushed through me, and I was almost sick. My heart felt like a massive bellows in my chest, blood pumped supercharged through my veins. Blackness clouded at the edge of my consciousness. I shook my head. Clear the cobwebs. Clear the cobwebs, I chanted to myself. Fight the drug, push it aside.

'One: knife?' I heard.

Couldn't quite comprehend his meaning.

'Two: gun?'

Fingers tugged at my back and I realised my mistake. I'd shown him my SIG. I didn't have the strength to stop him taking it. I barely had the strength to hold myself upright on my locked forearms.

'What's it going to be, Hunter?'

I sucked in air, holding it, making pressure in my skull to push back the fluttering shadows from my mind.

'How shall I kill you?'

'With boredom,' I told him.

Then I kicked out, pistoning from the knee so that my heel crunched into his nearest shin.

Dantalion howled with pain, and the sound did more to clear my mind than all my previous attempts.

Pushing upwards, I came to my feet. My head swam, and it felt like I was on the deck of a ship in the storm of the century. But I didn't stop. I slammed the heel of my palm into Dantalion's groin, took hold of anything I could find and squeezed with all my might.

Now his pain was given high-pitched voice. Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, sounding like he was going to sneeze. To give him something else to think about, I smacked my forehead into his face.

Not the best idea. The effect of bone on bone set off a tsunami inside my own head, and we reeled apart, equally stunned.

I grabbed for my gun: it wasn't there.

Dantalion was holding both my weapons.

Have to change that scenario.

But even as I lunged at him, he brought up my SIG and fired.

Luck rather than skill had caused me to dodge at the same time and the bullet punched through the space beneath my left armpit. I threw a looping right hook and drove my fist into his ribs. Dantalion was flung round by the force of the blow, but his left arm swept up and the Ka-bar slashed a line through my jacket. Dantalion stumbled away from me and I followed, chopping at his gun hand with the stiffened edge of my hand. My blow caught him on the mound of his forearm, shocking the radial nerve, and his hand opened in reflex spasm. The SIG clattered to the floor. It was out of reach for both of us and if I lunged for it I'd be inviting a knife in my back. So I threw a punch at his face instead.

Still under the influence of the drug, my punch was neither powerful, nor precise. I didn't knock him out, but I did flatten his nose against his face. Blood splattered, a torrent ran down his upper lip and into his mouth. He exhaled harshly, making droplets of his blood fleck my clothes.

He stabbed out at me and I grappled his arm. Holding his wrist with both my hands, I hauled him round even as I turned side on. His ankles bumped against my outstretched leg. It wasn't an expert judo throw, but it was enough to overbalance him and he went down to the floor. I fell on top of him, and loosening one hand from his wrist I drove my clawed fingers into his eyes.

Dantalion pushed me off him and I didn't have the strength to resist. We rolled away from each other. Then it was a fight to be first to our feet. Dantalion won and came at me, launching a kick into my ribs. I felt something crack and white hot pain flared through my body. He kicked again, but this time I hooked an arm round his heel and swept his leg high into the air. He toppled backwards and his fall took him almost to the edge of the platform. Then he rolled back towards me and I saw my own Ka-Bar glinting in his hand.

I had only one option. My SIG lay on the platform not half a dozen feet from Dantalion. We exchanged stares for less than a heartbeat, and then we were both rushing for the gun. Dantalion got to it first. He snatched at the SIG, even as he scythed the air in front of my throat with the knife.

But I'd never been going for the gun, I simply wanted him in a position where I could finish the bastard off. I leaped feet first at him. He fired, but he hadn't brought the gun round far enough and the bullet missed by a mile. Both my boots drove into his chest. I slapped down on the edge of the platform, my hip and right shoulder taking the brunt of the fall. It knocked the wind out of me, but nowhere near as much as my drop kick had done to Dantalion. He was thrown backwards, legs and arms windmilling as he disappeared over the edge of the platform. I heard the dull thud of him hitting the ground, but then there was silence. Painfully, I crawled to the edge of the platform. He was lying in a pool of light ten feet below me, squirming as though his spine had shattered during the fall.

I took stock of my surroundings.

I was in a large room that had once been a loading dock of some kind. A large roll-down shutter dominated one wall. It was partly open, letting in the harsh Florida sunlight. Glancing to my left, I saw a flight of metal steps leading down from the raised dais I was kneeling on. A guard rail would support me going down.

Down was where I wished to be.

Dantalion was injured, but he wasn't dead yet.

Pushing up to my feet, I again had to fight the disorienting effects of the drug in my body. The steps were a challenge, but I went down them hanging on to the rail, my feet clanging on the metal stairs. At the bottom I faced Dantalion.

Apparently his back wasn't broken.

He was on his hands and knees. His head swung up and he met my stare with a grim smile.

'I cannot die.'

'Want a bet?' I demanded as I moved towards him.

'Yes,' he said. Raising my SIG.

Suddenly all was sound and movement. The light went even harsher as the roller shutter was forced up and black-garbed men swarmed in. Laser scopes stabbed red beams through the room. Men shouted orders and commands.

I kept walking towards Dantalion and he rose up to meet me.

The gun was aimed at my face, but I just kept going.

Dantalion waited. Fisting both hands round my gun, he swayed where he stood, his legs braced wide. There was a book trailing on the floor behind him, attached to him by some kind of chain.