Desh moved. He snatched Ken’s knife with a speed and precision that could never be equaled by a normal man and flicked it toward the guard farthest from him with a smooth, practiced motion. The knife buried itself deep in the guard’s chest. The instant Desh released the knife he spun Ken to his right and into the path of the tranquilizer dart that Jim had sent racing toward him. Desh threw his human shield forward and into Jim in front of him, who shoved the dead weight of his tranquilized colleague violently to the concrete floor. As he did so, Desh was on him immediately, landing a vicious kick to his arm and sending his gun flying. The guard attempted a knifehand strike to Desh’s throat in combination with a palmhand blow to his nose, but Desh blocked both attempts easily. He had read the guard’s body language so precisely he knew the man’s intentions before he had begun to move.
Desh now read Jim’s defensive posture, and spotting an opening, wheeled around and landed a roundhouse kick on the guard’s chest, exploding him back against the staircase. Even as the kick was landing Desh calculated the exact distance to the staircase and the exact speed and force he would need to exert to achieve his goal. As the man’s head cracked against the staircase, he crumpled to the ground, unconscious, and Desh knew his calculations had been perfect.
Desh snatched Jim’s tranquilizer gun from the floor, stepped over Ken’s body, and crouched low under the open staircase. As he had expected, the guard who had remained upstairs bolted through the door to the basement and down several stairs holding an automatic rifle out in front of him. So much for non-lethal force, thought Desh.
The man expertly covered the staircase and entire basement with his gun. He took in the sight of Kira, still bound, and four bodies sprawled on the floor, but could detect no other movement, which he immediately realized suggested his adversary was hidden under the staircase.
His realization came far too late.
Desh casually sent a dart at point blank range through the opening between two stairs and into the guard’s leg. He collapsed and slid down four stairs before finally coming to a stop.
Desh was expert in several forms of hand-to-hand combat, and long practice had made his movements precise and cobra-strike quick. And this was before his mind was enhanced. With his thoughts so vastly accelerated, the guards’ quickest movements had appeared almost deliberate to him. He had been outnumbered four to one and he knew it hadn’t been a fair fight—for the four guards.
Desh rushed over to Kira. As he was cutting her free three loud, piercing tones emanated from her skull, startling her but having no effect on him.
Perfect, he thought. His timing had been exact. He ordered the sweat to cease pouring from his face and his blood to flow normally, and the color quickly returned to his face. He considered if Kira could assimilate his speech if he sped it up to more closely match his thoughts, but ruled it out: as intelligent as she was, he would need to continue to relegate a portion of his mind to creating a simulacrum of his old self.
“Are you sure you want to go?” he asked. “You’ll need to be sure Sam resets his device by ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Kira nodded defiantly. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.
Desh took her hand and led her through the obstacle course of scattered bodies and up the stairs. Sam had said there were four guards, but Desh wasn’t about to trust this number. He cautiously peered around the door, counting on his enhanced reaction time to get him safely through any ambushes. There were none.
They found themselves in the kitchen. “Wait here,” said Desh.
Before Kira could respond, he rushed off and canvassed the entire house, confirming they were alone, and returned to her a few minutes later. “I want to check the men downstairs for identification. I doubt I’ll find any but it’s worth thirty seconds.”
Desh bounded off and down the stairs, closing the door quietly behind him. He pulled the knife from where he had implanted it in the guard’s chest and checked for the man’s pulse. He was dead. Desh knelt beside the unconscious men, two in the basement and one on the staircase, and slit each of their throats in turn, careful not to get any blood on himself.
He isolated the memory of these murders and created a temporary dead zone in his mind so they would be hidden when he returned to his vastly inferior normal state, ensuring he would not be improperly burdened by them. He knew that the emotional, un-enhanced version of himself would never sanction the murders of helpless men.
This other Desh was an idiot!
The enhanced version had just ensured that when Sam returned, he would get zero information as to how they had escaped. They needed to keep Sam as off-balanced as possible. The more confused he was, the more intimidated by their magical escape artistry, the better chance they would have.
The stakes were simply too high for squeamishness.
37
Desh rejoined Kira on the first floor. “Did they have any ID?” she asked.
Desh shook his head. “None.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “Good news, though. I found our personal items and cell phones in a kitchen drawer.”