Chapter 8: The First Trial
507 Words
"If you want the crest, Drake," I said slowly, standing up from the head of the table, "take it."
The room went dead silent.
Jax took half a step forward, his eyes narrowing. "Leo, don't be a fool. He's been butchering people in the wasteland for three years."
"No," Drake grinned, a cruel spark lighting up his eyes as he drew a long, serrated trench knife from his harness. "The kid made his choice. A trial of steel. Right here. Right now."
The other lieutenants backed away, forming a circle around the long iron table. In the wasteland, law was enforced by blood. If a leader couldn't hold his ground in a brawl, he wasn't fit to command killers.
Drake paced like a wolf, spinning the heavy blade between his calloused fingers. "I'll make it quick, kid. I'll cut your throat so fast you'll think you're still in your little coma."
He lunged.
To the rest of the men in the room, Drake moved with terrifying speed—a blur of muscle and polished steel aimed straight at my windpipe.
But to me?
It was slow. Horribly slow.
In the nightmare abyss, shadow beasts moved at the speed of striking lightning. Traps sprung in milliseconds. My brain had been rewired through five hundred deaths to process threat vectors before a blade even moved an inch.
I didn't draw the gun on the table. I didn't even raise my hands to block.
I simply leaned my head two inches to the left.
WHOOSH.
Drake’s blade sliced through empty air, missing my ear by a hairsbreadth. The momentum of his heavy thrust carried him forward. Before he could recover his balance, my hand shot out like a steel trap, grabbing his wrist and driving it down onto the edge of the iron table.
CRACK!
"AAAGH!" Drake screamed as his wrist snapped backward. The knife clattered onto the cold floor.
Without missing a beat, I used his own weight against him, sweeping his foot and slamming his face hard into the solid metal table. Blood sprayed across the surface as his nose shattered.
Before he could hit the floor, I grabbed him by the throat, shoving him down onto the table and pressing his own snapped knife against his jugular vein.
The entire fight had lasted less than three seconds.
The lieutenants gasped, their hands dropping to their holsters in sheer disbelief. Jax stood frozen, his jaw slightly open.
Drake lay pinned beneath me, gasping for air, trembling as the edge of the blade pressed deep enough into his skin to draw a bead of red.
"You... how..." Drake wheezed, horror replacing the greed in his eyes. "You don't... move like a civilian..."
I leaned down close to his ear, my breath cold against his blood-stained cheek.
"I've died five hundred times, Drake," I whispered so only he could hear. "How many times have you?"
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