I punched him, hard, in the stomach.
The auditor was no fighter and wasn’t prepared for the sudden blow. He doubled over, retching, his face red, back heaving up and down as he tried to keep his dinner where it belonged. His breath panted in and out of his lungs in asthmatic wheezes, and the bald spot on top of his head turned the color of a maraschino cherry.
Hitting Albert made me feel dirty. I’d hurt my share of people, but most of them had been trying to hurt me at the same time. Albert, on the other hand, wasn’t a threat. Hitting him felt a lot like slapping a child. There was no honor in that attack. I held very still for a moment and reminded myself that even dishonorable actions can lead to an honorable outcome. My mission wasn’t about hurting Albert, it was about stopping a far more dangerous threat to Empyreal society.
“Listen,” he gasped, flopping back onto the couch. “I don’t know who sent you, but you have to believe me. There’s something out there. Something coming. My handler tells me the Grand Design didn’t account for this. We’re the only ones who can stop it.”
I felt an uncomfortable twinge of sympathy for Albert. He and I were both little fish in a very big pond, and only the carp in the waters below us had plumbed its depths. Maybe Albert believed he was on the side of angels. His handler could have told him anything at all to make him believe that.
“You’re hurting people, Albert,” I said. “Do you understand that?
Albert’s eyes flickered to something behind me. His jowls quivered, and he raised both hands defensively. It was a rookie move, and I’d seen it dozens of times before in the arena. The poor guy really thought I would look behind me so he could make a break for it. Albert was a terrible bluffer.
Unfortunately for me, he wasn’t bluffing.
I heard the whistle of something heavy tearing through the air just before it slammed across my shoulders. The force of the blow drove me forward, off the coffee table, and I caught myself with a hand against Albert’s squishy stomach.
He coughed and gasped as I forced the air out of his lungs for the second time that night and shoved both his hands into my chest. It wasn’t a strong blow, but it was enough to knock me off balance after I’d already been stunned by what felt like a lead pipe to the back.
Knowing there was an opponent behind me, I rolled on my shoulder and popped back up to my feet near the end of the couch in front of the entertainment center and its little TV.
Albert’s rescuer was about my height, slender, and also dressed all in black. They wielded a pair of black tonfa, and their core glowed brightly with sacred energy.
“Don’t make this hard,” I said. “I just need to have a little chat with Albert, then I’ll be on my way.”
“Just leave,” Albert pleaded. “No one has to get hurt.”
Albert was wrong. I couldn’t leave without making sure he understood how important it was that he stop providing the heretics with intelligence. The fact that he had a mysterious bodyguard willing to fight for him made that a much, much harder sell. The only way to make my point now was to put a serious hurt on the bodyguard.
Or kill him. That’s what the dark urge really wanted, and its siren song was getting harder and harder to resist.
The tonfa-wielding fighter circled around the couch, weapons at the ready. He rotated the twin clubs around their offset handles so the end of one of the weapons jutted out from his fist while the other one ran along the outside of his forearm. That configuration gave him an easy way to attack and block while still protecting his hands and arms.
Albert’s living room wasn’t very big. I took one step back from the approaching fighter, and the backs of my knees were up against the auditor’s entertainment center.
The bodyguard saw I had no room to maneuver and rushed me.
I grabbed the small flat screen television off its stand and ripped it loose from the power and cable lines attached to its back. In the same motion, I hurled the rectangular missile overhand at the tonfa fighter’s face.
My attacker’s left hand flashed out, and the tonfa along his forearm bashed the small television aside. The screen shattered, chunks of plastic broke free of the frame, and the whole mess slammed into the wall on the far side of the living room.
While my opponent battered the television into submission, I summoned my fusion blade and went to work.
My first stroke sheared the man’s offensive tonfa off just above his knuckles. The severed end of the wooden club spun away and clattered across the kitchen’s linoleum floor. At the end of that strike, I reversed the angle of my attack and swept the butt end of my weapon across my opponent’s masked jaw.
The maneuver staggered my enemy and sent him backpedaling across the room. His shoulder slammed into the sliding door that let out onto Albert’s balcony and sent a lightning storm of cracks racing through the glass. My opponent’s core flared with a burst of jinsei that flashed out through his body’s channels, restoring his strength and dulling the pain I’d inflicted. He swung his tonfa out to extend the club past the end of his fist, and lunged toward me with a series of short, sharp strikes.
There was no room for me to retreat. I deflected the rain of blows with quick parries from my fusion blade. Without more room to maneuver, though, I couldn’t mount an offense. My blade’s long handle and blade eventually proved my undoing. The weapon was too unwieldy to deal with the close-in fighting favored by my foe, and a series of jabs from his right fist slipped past my defenses and struck me in the gut.
