Easternport Vol. 1, First Edition

Smoke Angel - Part 3

Cory

I stopped to rest a few blocks away from the factory where there were no street lamps and no signs of life. Slumping down behind a building, I slipped the mask off and felt my face and shoulder where the man had clawed at me. My hand touched wet blood, but the pain of the injuries hadn't set in yet. My nerves buzzed so much that I felt like my body was shaking.

Just a few more blocks, I thought, ignoring the fact that I had no plan once I got there. My mouth felt like cotton; I was desperate for a drink, but there was nothing around to help with that. I stood up, leaning heavily against the wall for support. Even with the mask off, I still felt dizzy. In the blackness of the night, I couldn't see the ground to know if it was tilting or not. There was no moon or stars or city lights to give me any guidance. I pushed off from the wall to keep walking, but started falling toward my right and had to sit back down. My head and shoulder began to throb and a dull ache crawled through my muscles.

"It's not even worth chasing you if you're going to be this easy to catch," a voice said. I looked up to where it had come from, but couldn't see anything. "Did you find my mask useful?" he said."I'm going to need that back."

"You can take it back," I said. "It wasn't all that great. I think it leaked, too." I was confident that he was right in front of me, but I couldn't see him at all and my nerves were too loud for me to feel his presence.

His hand gripped my hurt shoulder, sending a burning sensation up and down my back. I gritted my teeth. "You are quite the little pain in the ass, aren't you," he said, digging into my skin with his talons.

I would have pulled my gun, but I had no idea where to aim. The darkness was so thick that I wondered if I had lost my vision. So once again, I focused myself on affecting his nerves. If I could make him collapse, then I could hold his head in place while I shot him.

I grabbed his wrist, where the skin was normally much more tender,making it an ideal place for a psycho-physio connection. "You guys don't wear gloves, huh? I thought I saw you in gloves earlier. I guess you're hands are just that ugly."

He snorted and tightened his grip on me, causing something to crack.It probably would have been painful, if my nerves weren't so preoccupied with trying to get through to him. He leaned in close enough for me to feel his breath on my face. "I could break all your bones right now with this hand."

With my left hand, I grabbed my gun as quickly as I could and shot at the place where his breath came from, deafening my ears and his with the barrel so close to our heads. But he was too quick and dodged it, letting go of my shoulder and pulling away. For a moment,I felt relieved. But with his pressure off my shoulder, the pain flooded in. All my blood drained out of my head, and I collapsed on the ground for only a second. When I regained consciousness, he had picked me up by my hurt shoulder and held me like a piece of trash to throw away.

Once again I grabbed his wrist and tried to make a psycho-physio connection with him. He had no awareness of what I was doing, which made it just a little bit easier than breaking through. But I found it hard to have any impact on his nervous system, when I couldn't keep myself from panicking. My ears rang from the gunshot and the static. My head throbbed and my shoulder burned. I desperately fought for control over my senses.

Thinking that I was just trying to squirm away from him, he laughed and said, "You're much too weak to fight back."

"Well, I know that," I said. "You're twice my size." Talking back to him actually boosted my confidence just a little. Maybe it distracted me from all the horrible parts of this situation. Either way, I had a moment of clear, focused thought, and got him to relax his grip on me, letting me fall to the ground. I kept my hand on his wrist and worked on changing his attitude about fighting me just like Mikkel had done the other night with those Townies, but that was a much more difficult task and he twisted his hand out of my grip.