Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,27
us. I hit it with my fist, knocking it to the side, shattering the window of a nearby car. Another one came from the Omega monster as he wound up and pitched it, and I slapped it out of the way. I felt the pain in my hand and hoped I could keep up. My meta reflexes allowed me some leeway, but not much; it was all I could do to keep the bricks from hitting Kat.
The next I caught too late and it exhausted most of its force against my forearm. The face of the man from Omega was a wreck from his trip through the wall, off-axis from the impact and swollen. I knew it would heal, but for now his lips had shifted several inches to the right and blood was flowing down his shirt, which had a rip halfway down his abdomen, revealing a muscular stomach that I might have found appealing on a less violently disagreeable man.
He winged another block at me and I knocked it aside with my good hand as I closed on him. He paused and his hands went to his face, feeling it, fingers tracing the lines around his jaw and nose. I couldn’t see much reaction because I presumed his facial nerves had suffered some damage, but there was a pronounced twitch and more eye motion as he touched himself. “You...” he said, and his words were slurred by the movement of his jaw, which bounced up and down as though it were a garage door off its track. “You...did...this...”
“I didn’t,” I said, as he grabbed another block and came at me with it like a club. “But I must say, it’s quite the improvement. Before you were just an ugly son of a bitch; now, you’re ugly and you can’t speak worth a damn.” I caught his forearm with my good hand as he brought the weapon down hard enough to cleave my skull from my body with it. I slammed a heel onto the instep of his foot, and he did more than grunt this time, he let out a little yell. I dodged the retaliatory backhand and let go of him as he pulled the concrete block above his head again. I ducked out of the way as he brought it down and shattered it onto the sidewalk, sending fragments in all directions. I kicked him in the knee as I sidestepped and it buckled with the force of my attack.
I hit him behind the ear with a punch that caused him to falter, his eyes crossing slightly. He whipped another fist around but I stepped out of the way, keeping light on my feet and using my speed to outmaneuver him. “Come on, Shortbread,” I said lightly, glad that Kat had healed me, “you’re getting your ass kicked by a Thin Mint.” I hit him in the face with a roundhouse kick as he turned; I heard snapping sounds from his jaw after the impact and his face realigned. He stared at me through a droopy eye and I didn’t hesitate before kicking him squarely in the groin. He doubled over, his knees finally hitting the ground and I kicked him in the head, which ricocheted off the concrete, sending a spiderweb of cracks down the terrace wall as he fell over. “You might have to call your boss and tell him Operation Stanchion is still on, since you failed—”
He scissored out with a kick that took my legs from under me before I even realized what had happened. My back hit the sidewalk and my head bounced against the grass. I lay there for about half a second while my brain assessed what he had done. “Or not.” I rolled my weight to my shoulders and bucked, vaulting back to my feet in a martial arts move that Mother had taught me to master when I was eight. I raised my fists as the hulk got back to his feet, menace in his eyes. “Busting through the door when someone knocks? That’s taking the get-off-my-lawn attitude a step too far, old man.”
“Do you...ever...shut up?” His accent dragged the words, even through his broken jaw. I had caught a hint of it before, on the porch—Eastern Europe, I would have guessed, though I couldn’t be certain now.
I didn’t answer, instead doing a backflip onto the higher terrace as he came at me in a shoulder-down charge. I kicked him in the side of the head and