Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Draden once again studied the layout of the room. He had excellent night vision thanks to the doctor genetically altering him when he was physically enhanced. The cat DNA edited into his genes made for some useful improvements. He measured the room in his mind, mapping it out, and then he used the wall again to navigate his way back to the front porch.
It shouldn’t have surprised him that the commander had murdered the elder and his family, including the woman he had obviously forced into his bed after killing her husband, but it did. This man had orchestrated the murder of an entire village, so it stood to reason he wouldn’t mind killing any of those in the little self-sufficient settlement.
Draden picked up the sword and, ignoring the front door, went under the house. Pushing the sword forward with one hand, he used his elbows and toes to make his way to the exact spot where the mattress was, although he could have crawled on his hands and knees easily. The floorboards were extremely thin. The planks forming the porch had bowed under his weight when he walked on them, threatening to break.
His strength was enormous, and so was the burning need to kill this man. He’d felt this way on more than one occasion. The drive was an actual need, like breathing, consuming him, almost taking him out of his body so that the rage was a separate entity. He was calm. Air moved in and out of his lungs steadily. He had become the perfect killing machine.
His entire focus was on his target. Nothing existed at that moment but the man lying on a palliasse a woman had made with her own two hands for her husband. Draden visualized her killer so clearly that the floor seemed to drop away and he stared through the boards and woven pad to the backside of the commander.
Taking a breath, he let his rage loose, the need that was living and breathing inside of him. Using every ounce of his strength, Draden slammed the sword straight up through the wood and thin cushion and right through the back of the man’s neck, severing his spine. The blade sliced through wood, straw, flesh and bone, burying itself to the hilt. Draden kept his hand on the hilt, waiting to make certain the commander was dead before he rolled to the edge of the porch, leaving the sword in place.
He slipped out of the village so he could take out the guards. There were plenty of them. They surrounded the little community from every vantage point. In each of the four corners there were two guards posted. He knew they were in communication. The modern technology and weapons, in spite of the fact that the commander had a sword—which Draden was positive had belonged to the elder—told him the MSS was well funded. Whoever had begun this movement had recruited locals who knew their way around the forest and a weapon.
Draden exterminated the forest-side guards one by one. He wanted more than one escape route. The terrorist cell was prepared for escape or defense by water. Boats were docked on the riverside. The village was inland, but only by a mile. He ran nightly, and he was fast. With his enhanced speed, he could cover that mile in well under three minutes even in the forested terrain.
He killed the two on the north corner next, leaving the bodies where they lay. He searched them for weapons and radios, taking whatever he found or destroying it. For a moment he was uneasy, feeling eyes on him. It should have been impossible to spot him, but he went to ground, going with his gut, rolling away from the bodies toward the next guard and staying as low as possible.
Once he was a distance from the two kills, he used the military crawl to make his way to the next guard. The man was watching the forest in front of him, just as he’d been told. He was careful, but the village was at his back. He thought the danger was the river and anything coming at them through the trees, so he scanned continually, never once considering that the enemy he feared was behind him, already creeping so close that if he stepped back, he’d step right into him. Draden rose up like the ghost he was, directly behind the guard, one hand covering his mouth while the other slammed the blade deep into the base of his skull, severing the spinal cord.
Two guards had been stationed at each of the four corners around the village. Between each set of corner guards were five men. Draden managed to take out two of the corners and all five of the guards between two of them. That left at least fourteen more guards. He was a machine, not feeling the grueling effects on his muscles as he made the slow crawl between targets, but the longer he was in the field, moving from kill to kill, the more he felt eyes on him.