Jay walked down the long narrow corridor, lit evenly by an unknown light source, as if the walls, floors and ceilings themselves radiated some undetectable light. His half-burned/half-healed stump, where he had blown off his own hand just above the wrist, throbbed terribly. He held the stump of the forearm over his heart, its only use now being to prevent an instant kill shot from any low velocity rounds that might hit him.

Shoot, I’ve always been a two-handed fighter, even with firearms. This feels spooky.

The realization that he could control his own bleeding had come to him suddenly only days ago, and with a sense of surprise. It did require some concentration to maintain.

It’s a shame you won’t lose enough parts to get good at this.

The feeling of his heart beating in his stump, and the urge to wiggle fingers that where no longer there set him ill at ease. For the first time in his life he went into combat lacking confidence. But a red-hot anger burned within him to strike back at the soulless corporation who had designed him, who had ordered the death of Marge and Edward Bracken so that he would be sent to Baltimore to live with Randy and be in position to fulfill the plans of this evil company that had hijacked Mister Shuei’s time-travel operation. He had often been manipulated by smarter men—boys even—and, well, virtually every woman he had ever met. But that had not deeply troubled him.

He had always felt like a free spirit; had always been himself within. But now, to realize that his very existence was a form of manipulation, that he was just some puppet on a string, a buzz-saw in the hands of some rich ruthless corporate entity—now that pissed him off!

How far will you even get dummy?

Well hillbilly, I’m leaving some dead meat in my wake, and when I die, they lose an expensive asset.

Wow, getting snuffed! Now that’s a plan. For instance, some dumbass like you could even come up with a plan like that!

He continued on down the spongy hallway that made no echo, no sound at all. The hall looped and spiraled and then kept spiraling upward at a gradual angle, describing an ever smaller circumference.

Yeah, this is the building that looks like a rounded church steeple from the street. There will be someone worth killing above.

He held his .50 caliber auto in his right hand just before his shoulder, and mentally checked his combat inventory: twelve rounds in the clip; one spare clip; another loaded weapon on your thigh, and the knife across your hips.

A helmeted head turned the corner and he fired a double-tap, shattering the face plate with the first round and exploding the startled face within the helmet with the second. The figure fell flat on its back as two more security goons in body armor kneeled to either side of it and leveled their pistols.

Press them.

He kept walking and firing. He knocked one back with a chest shot. As he traversed to the other target and the chest-shot target began scrambling to its feet he got stitched up the left side with nine millimeter rounds; knee, thigh, hip, kidney. Before the pattern of automatic fire pulled across up into his chest he hit the shooter in the throat, instantly snapping its neck, but not before another round shattered the radial bone in his stump.

This sucks, profoundly so.

Really?

Well, I thought I should think one half-educated thought before I checked out.

He limped forward and drew a bead on the rising head of the other shooter and put two rounds into the head plate, which knocked the shooter out. He then heard a swooshing sound behind him. He did a reverse pivot and sighted along his weapon even as he turned and extended his arm.

He had drawn down on Tina, the most beautiful woman he had ever loved, and who he still loved even though she had tried to kill him back in Flagstaff. She was wearing a black jump suit—no, she’s a paramilitary gen and that’s her operations suit.

Yeah, that’s about as bad as it gets.

Her hair flowed with liquid grace as she actually broke his right wrist and ejected his firearm from his grip with an outside reverse crescent kick.

Wow, it must be nice to be able to make that kind of stuff work.

You have no idea my worn-out meat-shield.

Now, uncomfortably reminded that he was in close combat with a telepathic psycho-bitch with a genius level IQ he took his old time boxing coach’s best advice, when he had been outsmarted by a superior technical boxer. “Just be Jay Bracken for three goddamn minutes!”

And that’s how he fought, with an empty mind and a burning desire to beat the beautiful off of his ex-wife. He stabbed her in the face with his bloody stump and then sunk a huge right hand into her slim belly; the force of which was dissipated and actually recycled into energy by her operations suit, but did make him feel better for having landed it.

She responded by slamming a crocodile kick into his left thigh, which caused geysers of blood to jet from the bullet wounds in his leg and hip. He began to fall but grunted through a left elbow strike, which she ducked, and the torque of which caused his oddly stressed and shot up left leg to snap just above the knee joint.

As his face slammed into the wall her taunting thought came to him, I never did understand what she saw in you. You are nothing but a pathetic up-gunned Executive Protection model.

Oh shit, this is Tina’s sister, the one she was afraid of.

His right leg, which he had somehow managed to keep under him, then snapped just below the knee as she ‘kia’d like some obnoxious strip-mall karate chick.

Oh, now this sucks profoundly!

He looked up at her as she lunged in with a spear hand, which he somehow thought made her look even sexier.

Wow, Tina’s twin is even hotter than she is.

Her fingertips then ripped through his chest between his pectoral muscles and popped the cartilage between the ribs. He had an odd sensation as his ribs separated to admit her hand and she pierced his inflating lung sack and splintered the rib behind it.

What a bitch!

Oh now this sucks!

That’s worse than getting fisted by that big freak Kreel.

There was something though about her hair, her smell, even her penetrating lethal fingers; that made him ache for her. And his lung, his remaining one on the left, seemed to inflate enough to make up for the one that was shredded. His chest felt really lopsided and hurt like all the fires of hell burning the hair from an altar-boy-molesting Pope’s ass.

She thought into his mind as she looked into his face with her beguiling black on pearl eyes and licked his blood from her ruby lips, Oh my meat-hunk trophy kill, don’t get an erection. When I emasculate you for my trophy you will bleed out too soon, and won’t be able to appreciate the exquisite torture I have planned for you.

She then hissed in his face, “I have dreamed of this day, the day I dismantled the man that killed a world!”

Yeah, she’s smokin’ hot hillbilly.

Yep, and disturbingly smart, just my type.

The woman then stood and ripped off his pants, the yellow pants he had scavenged from the maintenance guy he murdered in the basement while he was changing the water in his scrubbing machine—Sorry dude. She stripped him with her left hand as she shaped her right hand like a knife to severe what had quite literally been a huge part of Jay Bracken’s identity.

Sorry Private Johnson, looks like it’s your turn to take one for the team.

If you have the stomach to read on be sure and purchase Den of The Ender available as an e-book on this site and as a November 2014 print release from DarkEyedGirl Books.

Don’t worry Mom, as authors go I may be a cruel god. But I do have my limits. This evil bitch is not getting anywhere near Brant. Eddie though might want to watch his back!