The Thought Pushers (Mind Dimensions #2)(5)

We Split, and the car alarm, along with other ambient noise, disappears.

Now that we’re in battle mode, our need to kill the man in the car—the Pusher—is overwhelming. It overtakes our whole being. We rarely get a chance like this. A righteous, completely justified kill. No way will we face an attack of conscience over this. No, there won’t be any lost sleep, or even an ounce of remorse this time. If anyone ever deserved to die, it’s our current target.

This Pusher has been trying to damage the Readers’ gated community for weeks now. He’s responsible for the bomb that our men are disarming at this very moment.

So many Readers could have died. On our watch. This possibility is so unthinkable, we still can’t fully wrap our head around it. And it was all avoided by mere chance, by a lucky discovery. We saw the telltale signs inside the mind of that electrician. We don’t dwell on what would’ve happened if this had gone undiscovered. The only consolation is that we would’ve died along with the victims, given where the explosion was set to take place. We wouldn’t have had to live with the shame of being Head of Security and allowing such a thing to occur.

Of course, the chicken-shit Pusher did none of the work himself. No. He mentally compelled the staff at the community instead.

Rage wells within us again when we focus on how these nice, regular people got their minds f*cked with, simply because they happened to be contractors, plumbers, and gardeners working at the Reader community. We seethe at the injustice of it, at how they would’ve been blown up along with the Readers, collateral damage in the Pusher’s eyes. We would never resort to such a maneuver. The idea of collateral damage is among the things that made us eventually leave Special Ops.

Our rage grows exponentially as we remember what Julia told us she gleaned while Reading Stacy, the bartender—what this slime did to her. The metaphorical rape of Stacy’s mind, making her try to hurt the people she worked for, wasn’t enough for him. The f*cker took it a sick step further and made it literal. He decided to mix his unholy business with the abominable perversion of pleasure, making her do such twisted things . . .

We take a deep breath, trying to suppress our rage, which is beginning to overflow. Rage is not helpful in combat. At least not in the style of fighting we have cultivated. We need to be assessing, analyzing, and then acting. We know that historically, berserkers always died, albeit gloriously, on the battlefield. That’s not our way. In fact, we practice something that can be said to be the opposite of blind fury. We call our style Mindful Combat. It requires a degree of tranquility. We take some more deep breaths. We mean for one person to die today, and he is in that car. We need to live on so we can hunt down and kill anyone else who’s part of this crime, this conspiracy.

We’re watching the man in the front window of his car. We’re wary. We recognize people like ourselves, former military, and this guy’s body language screams Special Ops. The way he parked away from any good sniping spot, the alert way he’s sitting. All these clues point to elite training. But this guy is not from the Special Activities Division, our own background. We’re pretty sure of that. He might’ve trained with the Recapture Tactics Team—though this * probably Pushed to get his way in, at least at the psych-profiling stage.

Taking a final deep breath, we shoot out the passenger window and punch the frozen Pusher in the face, knowing that the physical contact will bring him into our Mind Dimension. Killing him here is the goal. Doing it slowly, if possible, would be a bonus.

We prepare to shoot as soon as he materializes—but he doesn’t. We’re taken aback for a second. He should’ve materialized in the backseat, we think momentarily before a sharp pain in our right shoulder grabs our full attention.

Strangely, the Pusher seems to have materialized outside the car. We don’t recall anyone ever becoming corporeal in the Mind Dimension this way. There’s no time to wonder how it happened, or where he got the knife that’s now lodged in our shoulder. With this injury, our whole world becomes focused on one thing only: survival.

The burn in our shoulder is excruciating, and just holding the gun in our right hand feels like torture. Doing our best to ignore the pain, we turn around and try to fire at the attacker. He anticipates the move, and with a twist, manages to get free. If not for our injury, there would be no way he’d get away with this, but as it is, a moment later our weapon clinks as it falls to the ground. His other hand reaches into his coat pocket.

It’s time for a desperate maneuver.

We head-butt him—a move so dangerous that we normally discourage our people from using it.

The blow brings stars to our eyes, and a sense of disorientation, but it seems that the risk was worth it. The Pusher clutches his now-hopefully-broken nose. This is our moment.

Using our good left hand, we punch him in the nose—which he’s clutching with his hands—and with the injured arm, we reach into his coat pocket.

We grab his gun, lift our right hand, and let it come down. Using the injured hand this way, with the gun as a makeshift club, hurts us less than a punch would have. The heavy gun handle lands on the same weak spot on the Pusher’s nose.

He doesn’t pull his hands away. The damage to his nose must be severe.

He tries to go for a low kick, hoping to hit our legs. We move out of the way of the attack, take the gun into our left hand, and take it off safety.

We shoot his left upper arm first. He makes a strange gargling sound.