“But now, I have told you enough. I felt I would like to unburden to you, as you have been the worthiest opponents I have ever faced, and in a sense you have become my recruits, albeit unwittingly, as I shall be using you to spread my little disease across the lands, sending you in batches to my redoubts and letting you loose in your new locations to do my work on any you may care to meet. A plan stunning in its simplicity. You will, of course, be sent forth without weapons, as I will have to take precautions to insure the safety of my Illuminated Ones, just as I have taken precautions on my own behalf by stripping you of weapons before admitting you into my presence.”
It was now that the despot’s sense of overweening arrogance revealed itself as his Achilles’ heel. He had finished his discourse, and Mildred was assured that there was an antidote and inoculation against the pox. Her fears regarding the lack of people resident in this redoubt were also calmed. She looked at Jak and Doc, and as her eyes met theirs, they knew that she was satisfied. J.B., Ryan, Krysty and Dean also gathered this, and from the brief glances that were exchanged, it was obvious what needed to be done.
“You know something?” Ryan asked of Taschen, stepping forward and attracting the attention of the sec squad. “You really have got too big a head—even bigger than that fat body of yours. You should get out more, you coldhearted, fat bastard.”
“Hard words, my one-eyed friend, but my men will cut you down before you get near me,” the fat man grated, expecting an unarmed attack from Ryan.
Which distracted their attention from Jak for just long enough. The albino had been slowed by the ravages of the disease, but even with this handicap he was too quick for the sec squad to follow. Palming three of his leaf-bladed, razor-sharp throwing knives from their hiding places, he tossed two to Ryan and J.B., hilt first, so that the two men were able to catch them with ease. The movement of the knives flashing in the muted light of the room confused the sec squad, who froze. With fatal consequences.
The third knife was hilt to hand for the albino, whose arm, despite the slower reflex action, was still a blur as hand and eye combined in perfect alignment. The knife sped to its target, landing in the left eye of Emile Taschen, penetrating the eyeball, spilling the viscous liquid down his cheek as the point cut through the muscle at the back of the eye, and thence into the skull cavity and the brain itself.
Taschen half fell, half staggered backward, rolling his vast bulk over the desk, gurgling in pain and shock as the impact hit him and the receptor centers of his brain realized that the synapses were being extinguished.
“You can’t do this,” he gurgled in strained disbelief, his voice almost a strangled whine. “It’s too soon…I’m not ready yet…”
“Are,” Jak said simply and in a neutral tone as he vaulted the desk to where the stumbling Taschen had come to rest, behind the comp terminal from which he ruled his own little perverted universe. The albino followed his simple words with an even more simple action: removing the knife with a determined tug, so that blood and fluid poured out of the wounded eye and down the fat man’s cheek. Jak pulled back his head and finished the chilling with a swift slice across Taschen’s throat that caused blood to jet across the room with the beat of the man’s heart, diminishing in flow as the beat lessened until the fat man was still. It had been a simple task. Jak may have been slowed by the disease, but he was still infinitely quicker than his opponent.
The sec squad was still stunned by the sudden ferocity of the action, and the chilling of their leader. Ryan and J.B. were able to overpower their chosen opponents with ease, disabling them with kicks and blows that doubled over the sec personnel, making them easy targets for the knives to find a home and buy the farm.