Be true. Always, her mind replied, and Amira leapt into action before the men could react. She pressed the door open and slipped through, accelerating as she moved. Her bare feet softened her footfalls as she covered the thirty feet to Susan’s abductors. Like onstage, she floated across the floor, but instead of focusing on grace, she channeled all of her strength into pure power, mixed with anger and outrage at the two men who threatened her best friend.
Less than five feet away, the men halted, suddenly aware over the sounds of Susan’s protestations of the movement behind them. The man holding Susan’s left arm turned his head just in time to see the force of the young woman swarm down upon him.
Amira launched herself into the air, her right leg extended with her right foot angled at ninety degrees in the perfect flying sidekick position. The bottom of her foot struck the man in the small of his back, driving the breath from his lungs and violently propelling him forward as he reflexively released his grip on Susan’s arm. As Amira landed on her feet, the man crashed into a couch for waiting guests and flipped head over heels over the back.
Amira turned to the second man and ignored Susan’s stunned look of surprise at her sudden appearance. “Let her go. Now.”
Susan’s second abductor, a Chinese male in his thirties with brown eyes and longish hair, as if trying to blend in on a college campus, released Susan’s right arm, stepped back, and smiled. He stood a few inches taller than Amira, and his body language exuded confidence, even in the face of the sudden attack that had temporarily incapacitated his partner.
He’s dangerous. The smile says it all, Amira’s father warned.
“I don’t know who you are, but Ms. Li is coming with us. You’re meddling in affairs that don’t concern you. I applaud your effort to save your friend, and I’m going to give you one chance to walk away. I hope for your sake, you take it.”
“He’s right, Amira,” Susan said, defeated acceptance and concern for her friend evident in her voice.
She’s trying to protect you, not save herself. You need to do it for her. Amira smiled at her friend, and a sense of calm washed over her, similar to the way she felt in the seconds before she performed onstage. Except this stage is a battlefield. “No. He’s not,” Amira said defiantly, and sprang forward before either Susan or the man could respond.
She slid forward and feinted a strike to his face with her left hand. He recoiled, turned to his left as he slid backward, and brought his right arm inward as if to deflect the punch…exactly as Amira had hoped.
In addition to Kung Fu in college, she’d been training with her father to box since she was ten. As a female fighter, there was only so much power she could wield, but she made up for it with blinding speed that her father told her could’ve made her a professional fighter if dance hadn’t been her passion.
Amira slipped to her right, lowered her center of gravity, and delivered four powerful blows to the man’s left side. The punches doubled him over, but he still lifted his arm to ward off additional attacks. Amira seamless shifted tactics, grabbed his wrist with both hands, swept her left leg forward into his left foot, and pulled the arm straight back in a wristlock. The combination of momentum and control as he lost his balance and footing resulted in Amira pulling him to the ground while maintaining tension on his wrist.
From Susan’s vantage point, one moment the man who’d been in charge and threatened her and her family was standing there, the next moment, Amira had him on the ground with such speed and violence Susan was stunned at her friend’s aggression. She’s some kind of warrior. My God.
Amira felt a surge of something primal, a sense of satisfaction at the knowledge she’d just physically bested two men who’d tried to abduct her friend, her roommate. She felt no fear, only the calm, now with the addition of a sense of purpose, as if she were made for this moment. She welcomed the feeling, powerful in its strength and resolve. This is what it truly feels like to win. But now, you need to end it and get Susan out of here.
Amira leaned over her captive, his arm locked-out under her control. “You didn’t hear me the first time, but I think you hear me now.” There was a menace to her voice, a tone not even Amira recognized. She felt as if some force controlled her actions, as if she were possessed by another being. She looked up at Susan as she torqued the man’s wrist. He exhaled sharply in pain. “Where’s your cell? Mine’s in the theater. I left it on stage when I heard the commotion. We need to call 9-11 and get out of here.”
Susan shook herself from her reverie at her friend’s actions and shrugged the teal backpack off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor behind her. She turned, bent down, opened the small compartment in the front, and retrieved the Samsung flip phone her parents had purchased for her.
The man in Amira’s grasp finally spoke, gritting his teeth in pain.
