Killer of Killers (36 page)

When Trent jumped up, Toka pinned him against
the bubble of another capsule and raised his arm for a pile driving
hammer strike. Just as he delivered it, Trent slid under the hold,
and Toka’s fist struck only the glass in an explosion of
razor-edged fragments.

Trent popped up again, this time behind the
mammoth Samoan, and delivered a hammer strike of his own to the
nerves at the base of Toka’s neck. The chief only grimaced, and
after a shrug, resumed a relentless offensive aimed at Trent’s
head. Ducking and swerving, Trent answered every one of Toka’s
swings with strikes to the ribs, shoulder joint, and hipbone. He
connected numerous times, but the chief’s considerable girth was
like natural armor, and Trent knew it was not to his advantage to
engage the monstrous Samoan blow for blow. He stepped back to
redirect every lunge and swing until his opponent showed signs of
fatigue.

Trent realized, however, that Toka’s assault
was not reckless nor was it indiscriminate. He had cornered Trent
between three misaligned gurneys where he caught him by the belt
buckle and the front of his shirt. He lifted Trent over his head
and plowed him into the closest capsule. The glass shattered into
countless splinters, after which Toka again held Trent aloft and
slammed him down, blasting the next bubble to smithereens.

Jagged edges shredded Trent’s back, and he
saw his own blood whipped across the room. He grabbed Toka’s wrist
and tried to wrench free but found himself a third time bashed
through exploding glass.

Toka seemed content to smash every tube in
the room if it meant slicing Trent to ribbons, but on the next
upswing, Trent snared a crystal fragment and drove it deep into the
chief’s blue-covered shoulder. When Toka screamed, Trent was sure
the razor edge severed the musculocutaneous nerve. Toka threw Trent
across the room, where he landed on the top of yet another bubble,
misaligning the gurney, and flashing more sparks into the air.

Toka plucked the shard from his shoulder and
tossed it aside. His arm quivered, and his blue sleeve blotted a
bloody purple swath. He raised his fist and worked it open and
closed. Apparently satisfied, he eyed Trent again and crept toward
him. Squatting atop the glass, Trent looked down and saw two
handles on the seam of its tubular cover. He gripped the metal bars
and then noticed the skull and crossbones on the adjacent cabinet.
The lines from the I.V. were damaged, and tetrodotoxin dripped to
the floor. He knew a single drop in one of his open cuts spelled
certain doom.

The Samoan lurched, but Trent jumped back
while raising the lid at the same time. As Toka’s hands pierced the
stall, Trent slammed the metal-rimmed glass. Caught at the knuckles
and howling in pain, Toka yanked his hands out, leaving chunks of
skin along the frame. With a deafening roar, Toka grabbed the
gurney, ripped it free and sent it smashing like the one before.
“
You’re next!
” he yelled and charged with a flurry of
blows.

Trent avoided with ease the massive arms.
Still, Toka did not let up, and their frantic movements bumped more
cots out of position. But in doing so, Trent found he had more
space to utilize his superior speed.

Toka was like a berserker consumed in fury,
telegraphing lunges, and his strikes were clumsy and inaccurate.
Shortly, Trent noted Toka was delivering his blows at a slower
pace. He knew it would only be a matter of time before the
oversized security chief expended his energy. But Trent had backed
into a bundled jam of gurneys, and it was in that moment Toka
leaped forward and snared him in a bear hug. The huge chief
commenced a mighty squeeze, which would crush Trent’s ribs in a
matter of seconds. He reached around and bent Toka’s injured
fingers backward. At the breaking point, Toka released his grip and
raised both of his fists to pummel Trent into oblivion.

When the huge fists came down, Trent
countered with a
Seoi Goshi
. He spun around while placing
his elbow in Toka’s gaping armpit, and threw him over his shoulder.
The massive body flipped in midair and crashed face up on the
floor. Trent dropped to a knee and unleashed a rapid succession of
strikes, targeting the superior medial nerves behind Toka’s
cheekbones and the deep temporal nerves, but the electronic cabinet
behind him limited his wind up. He couldn’t muster the force
necessary to end the fight. The blows took a toll anyway, and Toka
bellowed from the punishment.

In an obvious effort to escape the nerve
attacks, the chief rolled onto his stomach. Trent didn’t let up and
continued striking vital points behind Toka’s head and neck. Toka
raised himself on all fours, but in doing so exposed the left side
of his face. Trent made both of his hands into tight fists and
jutted the second knuckle of each middle finger forward. With
blazing speed, he delivered rapid, alternating strikes to the
lacrimal nerve, posterior ethmoidal nerve, and the long and short
ciliary nerves behind the orbit of the nearest eye.

The blows scored, and a screaming Toka
covered his face with his folded arm, thus presenting the bloody
wound on his shoulder. Taking advantage, Trent unleashed repeated
hammer strikes to exacerbate the injury. Over and over, he pummeled
the gash, bursting blood with every strike. Soon the splattered
gore covered most of Trent’s upper body and became indiscernible
from his own leaking lacerations.

Toka launched himself forward with the power
of his legs, but the force of his lunge bent the wheel of the
gurney beside them. The low trajectory of the impact toppled the
capsule on top of them and spilled the body of a young woman into
Trent’s arms.

Electrodes snapped and sizzled, and plastic
tubing sundered free. Trent saw the dangerous poison leaking from
the lines. Fluids puddled the floor. He straightened his back to
make sure his cuts cleared the toxin. His next concern was bleeding
from the girl’s temporal incisions. A procedure that required a
complicated surgery was instead violently effectuated, resulting in
serious hemorrhaging on both sides of her head.

Trent shot a quick glance at Toka and saw he
was out for the count. He hoped to save the sleeping woman and
examined her face. She couldn’t have been more than twenty, and
even though her head was shaved, she bore a strong resemblance to
someone he loved.
This might have been Yoshiko
. He yanked
linen from the overturned cot. As sparks flew from torn wires, and
severed tubing dangled, Trent held the girl over his lap. He folded
up the sheets as quickly as he could and pressed them onto her
bleeding lesions.

At first, the linen absorbed the blood, so
Trent increased the pressure. Then the blotting stopped, and
Trent’s heart leaped when he saw the girl’s chest expand with a
deep breath. He guessed the interruption of toxin in her system
resulted in the cessation of paralysis. Now that the bleeding was
under control, he dared hope her eyes would open any moment.

Enormous hands suddenly snatched the girl’s
body from Trent’s lap. He looked up, but only in time to see the
snarling security chief heave the sleeping girl aside, as if she
was nothing more than a piece of garbage. Her limp body slammed
into the wall and slid to the cold and cluttered floor.

“No!” Trent shouted, but just as he did, the
Samoan tank plopped on top of him. The colossal body pinned Trent’s
legs to the tile and his back to the cabinet, pushing the
crystalline quills further into his flesh. The tremendous weight
allowed no leverage for an effort to get free.

Once again Toka’s mitts found their death
grip around Trent’s neck, and the fight had come full circle. A
second time Trent let his guard down, and this time there would be
no rotating portal to save him. Toka roared with glee. “Die, you
bastard! You killed my brother, and now you die!”

With only seconds of life remaining, Trent
noticed the left side of Toka’s face scrunched due to muscular
contractions caused by the nerves he had damaged. The resulting
facial contortion forced Toka’s left eye shut, which meant he was
blind to anything Trent might do with his right hand. In
desperation, Trent reached out and snagged one of the broken I.V.
lines. He prayed it was the right one.

Toka hollered again, “
Die,
you son of
a bitch,
die!
”

As Toka boomed the final word, Trent jabbed
the dripping tube deep into his opened mouth and right down his
throat. In but a moment, the huge body sagged and fell backward,
stretching the width of the comatose ward.

Trent coughed the air back into his lungs and
pulled himself up by the metal machines. He surveyed the
devastation. Three patients lay sprawled on the floor, including
the woman snatched from his lap. Hastening to each, he felt for
their pulses only to learn all three had expired. From what he
could tell, the rest of the gurneys still functioned, although most
had been shattered or pushed out of place. There was no trace of
the medical staff, which only minutes earlier swarmed the
portal-locked chambers.

Trent returned to the motionless chief and
studied his spread-eagled form. His brown face was no longer
scrunched, and both of his eyes were frozen wide. Trent bent over
the gaping features and peered into the glazed orbs. “I don’t know
if you’re stone cold dead or just paralyzed,” he said. “If you
are
dead, you deserve to be. But if you’re paralyzed and you
can hear me... Kiss my ass, you son of a bitch.”

Trent straightened and winced from the sharp
stings of his sliced skin. He viewed again the havoc their battle
had wrought. Intermittent sparklers lit the floor and then fizzled
in plumes of searing vapor. The stench of shorted circuits breached
his nostrils, and with it he discerned the smell of Fugu. He
scanned the dormant audience and wondered if they somehow sensed
the struggle. It dawned upon Trent that he was used to cheering
crowds, but this forgotten group stayed ghostly silent. He might
have just saved their lives, yet there was no applause, and
likewise, no ovation.

Trent decided it was the way he liked it. He
opened a portal and departed from the ravaged room. An appointment
with Abraham Soriah loomed, and he wouldn’t miss it for the
world.

Chapter
Seventeen

Dragons from the Past

Inside the Eternity Lab’s
executive suite, Charles again watched Abraham on the telephone,
receiving the latest report from their security tower. Abraham
responded to the report with a slew of orders, and Charles had no
issues with any of them until he heard Abraham say, “Keep them
outside the building until Chief Tacau gives the word to
return.”

Charles realized that those particular orders
might not be possible to follow. He asked, “And if Chief Tacau
isn’t heard from again?” He believed Trent Smith would defeat their
security chief and anyone else pitted against him. He was also
mindful of a guilty pleasure, as he secretly rooted for the ‘rogue
vigilante’ the entire time.

Still holding the phone against his face,
Abraham firmed his mouth and added, “Maintain order as best as you
can until you hear back from me. And make damn sure no one leaves
the premises.” He slammed the phone back to his desktop, and to
Charles, he said, “It seems Toka has found Trent Smith, and the two
of them are tearing up E Wing. And to make matters worse, most, if
not all, of our imports have fled the building.”

“Maybe we should send Specials out there,”
Charles suggested, “to help Security maintain control.”

“Half of them are in the infirmary,” Abraham
replied.

Charles frowned. “If this gets out, we’re
shut down. You know that.”

“If it gets out,” Abraham responded,
“
perhaps
we’ll be shut down. And if so, it will only be a
temporary setback.”

Abraham smiled, but Charles could tell he
wasn’t happy. Charles wasn’t happy either, and he didn’t pretend to
be.

* * * *

The limousine bounced over the winding road
on its way to the small airport where Karl Manoukian’s private jet
awaited. Karl turned off his cell phone after learning of the
disturbance in E Wing from his mole in the security tower. He knew
that Toka Tacau was dealing with Trent Smith in his own way. Karl
wasn’t sure which man he wanted to prevail. He felt at this point
that Trent Smith was his last chance to defeat Abraham Soriah, and
the irony didn’t escape him. The man he wanted dead turned out to
be the key player in his plan to regain control of Eternity.

But as Karl watched the passing pines through
his open window, he couldn’t ignore the sobering truth. Not only
did his
control of Eternity
depend on Trent Smith believing
Abraham Soriah sent the Turks to kill him, his very
life
depended on it. And that was a sobering truth indeed.

* * * *

E wing’s sealed gateway blocked Trent’s path
through its lobby and to the hub beyond. He spotted no handle or
motion sensor, but there was a security bell and a two-way
intercom. He rang the security bell. When the guard on the other
side looked through the circular window, he stared, then winced,
and made no effort to open the gateway. Trent knew he was a bloody
mess and his charade as an inspector was finished. Nevertheless, he
activated the intercom and griped, “What are you waiting for? Open
the damn door!”

The guard didn’t respond, but Trent wasn’t in
the mood for another ridiculous standoff. “Brainless pawns,” he
uttered. “Can’t anyone think for himself?” He repeated his search
for a means to energize the gateway, and finding nothing, he raised
his gaze once more to the air duct. The prospect evoked a single
word. “Shit.”

He leaped up and squeezed through the vent,
knowing this time, at least, the crawl would be short. Just as
Trent moved forward, excruciating pain forced him to hiss and pluck
a dozen shards from his elbows and forearms. Moments later, and
with no further concern for stealth, he punched out the grid to E
Wing’s restricted lobby.