Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 144908 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144908 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Master didn’t move, keeping the wall at his back and Boris on his left. That meant he only had to deal with two of them immediately and the guards. The third had to get around the body of his fallen friend before he could actually be of some help to his friends.
Kir “Master” Vasiliev had been in this scenario too many times. He knew their moves before they made them. They might be faster than any who had come before, but Sorbacov’s sick trainers had forced him to learn these tactics in very brutal ways. That fourth school, the one he’d attended, had had its own prison on the grounds. The instructors had plenty of opportunities to teach a young boy how the prison system worked. How corrupt the guards could be. How complicit. How the inmates could be beaten, raped or killed by other stronger, more powerful prisoners in just such setups as this one. He’d learned all of the various setups because he’d lived through them all.
His training hadn’t been simulated. Unlike other children who had been sent into the prison to be “trained,” he hadn’t died. He’d survived. He’d become a warped, scarred, dead soul of a man with a hefty criminal record. He was the only member of Torpedo Ink that still had that record, and it was ongoing. Absinthe could get rid of the charges eventually, but they were still out there, looking as if he had been freed on technicalities.
He waited, knowing what was coming, and there it was, without warning: the familiar adrenaline rushing through his veins like a drug. The need for violence. The only time he felt alive. He wasn’t like Reaper and Savage, or even Maestro. He didn’t need or want to take an opponent apart. That wasn’t his thing and never would be. No, he needed the actual war, the fight, the pounding of fists, the slash of the knife, the precise blow of the foot sending so much power and energy through a human body that the shock shattered internal organs.
He had spent a good portion of his life behind the walls of some kind of prison. That had been his specialty, what Sorbacov had him trained for. He was the chameleon, able to, even as a teen, get into the right block, assassinate the right prisoner and never have an ounce of suspicion directed his way.
In order to gain those skills and accomplish the mission, again and again, he’d been beaten and raped repeatedly from the time he was a toddler. He’d learned to kill. To make weapons out of nothing. To make himself into a weapon. To endure pain and put it to use. Pain kept him sharp when he was completely on his own in those hellholes. Pain fed the anger and craving for violence so that it raged in him and made him stronger mentally and physically. Now that his companion was here, racing through his veins, he moved with blurring speed.
Master kicked Avgust, the largest of the four assassins hiding in prison, so hard in the kneecap they all heard the sickening crunch. Adrenaline-laced joy rushed through his veins. These were the only moments left to him now to actually feel, as disgusting as it might be. The edge of his boot caught the assassin in the side of the head deliberately as he swung around in a flowing motion toward Edik, one of Avgust’s partners. The blow snapped Avgust’s neck, killing him. He wasn’t important to the interrogation anyway.
Master spun away from Edik’s homemade knife, catching his wrist as he did so, completely controlling his arm with his superior strength and the momentum of both their bodies. He plunged the razor-sharp blade into Edik’s throat, dropping him, and then going straight for Longfellow, who stood just one scant foot away, his mouth gaping open. Slashing the blade across the guard’s throat, Master kept moving with blurring speed, having gone over and over the moves in his mind, knowing what he had to do to survive. He slammed his fist into Shorty’s throat, putting his body weight behind the blow, going in for the kill.
There was one prisoner left standing, and two alive. Boris was still on the floor, unable to stand. Still coughing. Master had killed four men in under a minute.
The remaining assassin, Ludis, faced him with disbelieving eyes. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded. He was the acknowledged leader of the group, the one Master needed to answer the questions he’d been sent in to ask.
Master calmly walked over to Boris and snapped a front kick to his left temple with the toe of his boot, again putting his body weight behind it. The angle allowed him to slam Boris’ head into the concrete wall so hard they heard the fracturing, as if the skull were an eggshell. Boris tipped over, his breath coming in ragged pants, his eyes wide open in shock.