“I hope you don’t mind if we determine that for ourselves,” the man to the left said. “Your clothes look pretty good to me.” He was tall and moved smoothly for his size. The two men on each side of the center man moved to his left and right, holding their knives out. They wore clothes that were old, and their shoes had worn spots on them. One had a pockmarked face that also bore a scar that ran the length of his left cheek. His right hand had scars and looked like it had been burned.
“You can make this easy on yourself or we can do it the hard way,” the one on his left said.
Tag noticed that they all had on hoods but didn’t wear anything to hide their faces from him. The hoods would hide their faces from the camera but not from him.
“I think it’s going to be the hard way even if I wanted it easier,” Tag said to the man on the left. “You’re letting me see your faces, so I think there’s no way you’re going to let me walk away from here. Is there anything I can do to leave safely?” Tag asked while looking at the ground, because he still had four seconds until the camera’s blind spot returned.
The man said, “We have a smart one here, boys. I guess if you let us cut out your eyes so you couldn’t identify us later, we might consider it.” The man cocked his head to the side and then said, “But I don’t think you’ll just stand there and let us do that, would you?” He then looked at the one on his left and nodded.
At that moment Tag saw he was back in the blind spot of the camera again, just as the man on his left lunged forward to cut his throat. Everything suddenly turned to super slow motion. Tag could see in his mind where the attacker’s thrust was going to be, and the attacker’s movements seemed to happen very, very slowly. He stood up, moving at what felt like normal speed, smoothly stepped inside the thrust, placed his hand where the man’s hand was going to be, and grabbed his wrist as it arrived. Then, while turning the man’s arm, Tag slammed his fist into the man’s elbow, breaking it, which caused him to drop his knife. Tag immediately started a roll to his right to avoid the slash of the second attacker, which was aimed at his back. As he started his roll he saw the first attacker’s knife falling slowly by his head toward the pavement, and he reached up and grabbed it with his right hand. In the middle of his roll he raised the knife up into the path of the second attacker’s slash, causing the attacker to cut his own wrist, severing his tendons and ligaments, which caused him also to drop his knife. Tag picked up the second knife with his left hand as he came out of his roll. As he straightened up, he immediately saw a psychic shadow the thickness of a pencil running from his right hand toward the gunman in front of him. The gunman had started to lift his gun to shoot, and Tag threw the knife in his right hand at the shadow, connecting him with the gunman. The knife flew through the pencil-shaped shadow at normal speed and entered the gunman’s right eye socket as he crouched to take aim. The gunman stood there for just a moment before he slowly fell forward.
As the knife left his hand toward the first gunman, Tag sensed that the other gunman behind him was taking aim, so he followed his throwing motion and did a side roll as a bullet slowly went through the space his head had just occupied. As he rolled he saw another pencil-thin shadow under him, and he threw the second knife between his legs. He noticed during his roll that there was a bird flying overhead that appeared to be almost stationary. He thought that time must have somehow slowed down for him. He was moving at what felt like normal speed, but everything else was moving very, very slowly. The knife he threw at the second gunman also flew along that pencil-thin shadow and struck the second gunman in the heart. The gunman fell backwards, his second shot going wild. Tag came out of his second roll, stepped in front of the first attacker, grabbed the arm that was broken, and swung the man viciously face-first into the wall of the building; he then pivoted toward the attacker, who was still holding his cut wrist, and kicked him between his legs. As the attacker bent forward Tag slammed his knee into the attacker’s face so hard that the attacker came off the ground and flipped backward so fast that he hit his head on the concrete with a sickening sound. Then Tag sat down next to the wall and lowered his head. The camera was coming back and the psychic shadows were disappearing.
The big man in the center had not even moved during the few moments that the other four had been killed. He stood there, stunned, and thought, “This isn’t possible; no one can move that fast. This boy killed four men in less than five seconds. He moved faster than my eyes could follow. I was supposed to keep him from running and now here I am, surrounded by four dead men. And these men were good, very good.” They scared him; two of them were former soldiers that were proud of how vicious they were. “Now what do I do?” he wondered. He stood there, afraid to run and afraid to attack, which was fine with Tag, because the blind spot wouldn’t be back for another ten seconds.
Tag’s heart was beating wildly and he was amazed at what happened. He didn’t even have a chance to think about what was happening during the attack; his body seemed to react without conscious thought. “What now?” Tag asked. “Do we continue this, or are you going to let me go?”
The big man noticed that the boy never raised his head when he spoke. As a matter of fact, while all this happened he did not get a good look at the boy’s face; he was moving too fast for him to see. The big man had a lot of experience. He was a former naval marine who had seen more than his share of hand-to-hand training. But he had never seen anything close to this. He may not have seen the boy’s face, but he was certain the boy had seen his. He stood there and struggled with what to do. “What do you suggest?” he asked in a shaky voice.
“Just turn your back, count to three, then go your way,” Tag said. “Just four more seconds,” Tag thought.
Tag knew that the big man was scared about being identified and was not going to go away easily. The big man thought for a moment and then said, “Okay, we’ll do it your way,” and slowly turned around. “Perfect,” Tag thought; he was in the blind spot once more and was immediately moving behind the big man as he turned. It was then a simple task to move through the psychic shadows so he wouldn’t be seen.
The big man slowly turned, started to leave, and then turned to see if the young boy would assure him that he would not identify him. The boy was gone. “Where did he go? Where is he?” he wondered. He turned and looked everywhere, but the boy was nowhere to be seen. He felt a chill in the deepest part of his soul and then he felt fear. He turned and ran. He knew that now his family might be at risk if he was identified.
Only twenty seconds had passed from the moment the first attacker moved to when the big man ran away. That was too short a time for the security team to arrive, but they did land there only two minutes after the big man had started to run away. One of the Directorate surveillance monitors had received a warning from the cameras’ sensors that gunshots were fired and a crime was being committed. The Directorate camera monitor took over manual control of the area cameras just as the big man left the scene. The monitor followed the big man until he lost sight of him when he went through a doorway that was recessed in a wall of a tall habitation building where thousands of families worked and lived. He switched to the cameras inside the building, but there was a shift change taking place and there were hundreds of people moving through the corridors. Even setting the cameras to find only the people who were his approximate size proved fruitless. There were just too many people, and he could have moved out of the corridor without being seen. “They must have planned this so that they could use the shift change to escape,” the monitor thought. The monitor then started looking for the other person that was sitting against the wall, but he was nowhere to be found. “How can that happen?” he wondered.
When the security team arrived at the scene of the attack, they looked at the carnage and wondered what had just happened. The bodies had fallen in haphazard fashion and blood was everywhere. John Sinclair, an enforcement committee senior inspector, looked at the bodies and then made a decision. Esa Connor, who was the department head of the North American enforcement committee, received a call on his com and said, “What is it, John?”
“Sir, I’m at a crime scene where four people have just been killed. The killer has escaped without being apprehended and I’m having difficulty determining exactly what happened here.”
“Four people killed,” Esa thought. Then he punched a button on his com and said, “Julie, send me John’s coordinates. I’m going to the scene,”
John looked at the dead bodies and told his team to expect Department Head Connor to arrive shortly. “I don’t remember the last time we’ve had more than two killings,” John thought. “I can use some help.”
Chapter 5
A dmiral Dorg, supreme commander of the Cainth military forces, entered his office, and everyone immediately came to attention. He looked around his command center for a moment and then said, “Rest; continue
