Omega(36)
I kicked him in the face and rolled him off me as I pulled a glove off my left hand with my teeth, spinning around and lunging to land on top of him, bringing a knee into his groin again. There weren’t going to be any points awarded for the cleanliness of this fight, and I didn’t care. I just wanted to survive it. I got astride his abdomen even as I wrestled to get the glove off my fingers; the moment they were free I jammed my bare hand against the skin of his neck, choking him as hard as I could. With the other, I slammed him with punch after punch, driving his already broken nose into his face. “What...” I said, forcing my words out even as I evaded his hands, which were reaching for me, “...is...Operation...Stanchion...?”
I counted the seconds as he writhed after every hammer blow I landed. “What...is...Operation...Stanchion?” I felt my knuckles crack but I hit again, ignoring the pain, smashing him down with one hand while draining his life with the other. “Answer me!” I felt him go limp in my grasp, his body slack underneath me, and I held on for just a few seconds longer before I let my ungloved hand release him. I hit him in the face a few more times, just to be safe. Maybe more than a few.
I let out a long breath, a sigh, and slid from him, laying my head against the ground. All my strength was gone, completely and utterly, as though it had disappeared with nothing more than a dozen pains to mark its passage. “You son of a bitch,” I said, and kicked at him, hitting him in the arm. I took another breath and forced myself to my feet. “What the hell is Operation Stanchion?”
7.
There was a sound behind me of rubble shifting, and I prepared myself to deliver another attack to my downed foe if necessary when I heard a familiar voice. “Damn, that sucked,” came Clary’s stupid baritone. “What the hell was that?”
“Our enemy, you brain-dead jackass,” I said. “You’ve successfully almost gotten us killed, you unbelievable moron. I just have one question for you—are you working for us? Because I honestly don’t think Mormont or Zollers could have made worse choices for us than you just did.”
Clary’s husky figure emerged from the shadows and rubble in the corner of the basement. “Well, yeah, I’m working for the Directorate,” he said as he stepped over Scott’s body to stand next to me. “I mean what do you think—”
I grabbed him with my bare hand around his neck and heard a GURK! “You. Idiot. You almost got Reed and Scott killed—not to mention me—and you’re so damned oblivious you don’t even realize it.” I watched his piggy little eyes move back and forth and I saw the pain emerge on his face as he felt the first stirrings of my power working on him. He didn’t resist, even as he began to grunt. I threw him loose and let him fall in a pile of broken boards. “If you...ever...come on a mission with me again and fail to follow my orders when I’m in charge, do you know what I’m going to do?”
His double chins obscured his neck, but I saw the bob of his Adam’s apple. “You’ll...uh...kill me?”
I leaned down, and wondered for a beat why he didn’t turn to rock before I realized that he was afraid of me. “I won’t kill you, Clyde. I’ll drain so much of your mind that what’s left will have all the cognitive ability of a pumpkin.” I narrowed my eyes to glare at him. “Which, in your case, will be nothing but the sharpest of improvements.” I brought my hand around and patted him gently on the cheek, which he flinched from. “Clear?”
“You...” his voice wavered as he regained his capacity for speech, “you can’t talk to me like that!”
I grabbed him again around the neck and lifted him up. He was taller than me by a full head, so I tilted my back at an angle so that he was above me and his feet couldn’t touch the ground. I felt the swirling start in my head, and he shrieked, so I let him go, and he fell back into the refuse pile he had landed on a moment earlier. “I can. I will. You will listen to me while you’re alive or I’ll make you my slave after you’re dead.”