Perception Fault by James Axler

Author:James Axler
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

The agony was like nothing Ryan had ever felt before. Every muscle, every nerve ending, every inch of his body was locked in tortured spasms. Even through the overwhelming pain, he tried to make his arm draw his Sig Sauer, but couldn’t. It was as though his fingers—hell, his entire arm—was locked in place where it was, unable to do anything but clutch the butt of his blaster. He heard a strangled, incoherent noise, and was shocked to realize that the tortured grunt was coming from his own mouth. His jaw clenched, tears streaming from his squeezed-shut eyes, Ryan could do absolutely nothing but wait for death to come.

As suddenly as it had seized him, the pain stopped, except for a heavy, tingling feeling in his limbs and torso. Ryan cracked his eyes open to find himself staring at the carpet—he’d fallen over and hadn’t even realized it. He felt like he had just run fifty miles, pulling a fully loaded war wag the entire way. He felt efficient hands on his body, expertly patting him down, taking his blaster and the knife at the back of his neck, and searching for any other hidden weapons. All the while, questions kept running through his scrambled mind: who the hell were these people? How did they get into their room?

“Well I’ll be a son of a bitch—these crazy things really do work, don’t they?”

Twisting his head, Ryan spotted Krysty standing a few feet away, arms up, a blaster aimed at her head by a masked man dressed in camouflage from head to toe. She moved her eyes left, right and back, indicating three men, then raised an eyebrow, her silent question clear.

Attack?

As he was being flipped over, Ryan managed to shake his head, telling her to hold off—for now. Although her Gaia power could probably reduce these three to a red, wet pulp, it took time for her to summon it, more than long enough for the gunman to put a round into her skull. Besides, if they’d wanted to kill them, they could have done it twice over already. The fact that they hadn’t meant they wanted something.

Although, truth be told, Ryan much preferred the Carringtons’ way of asking.

He turned his head to regard the leader, who was still sitting in the chair, watching him. In many ways he was the opposite of Carrington, short where the other man was tall, pale where the other was dark, with short, straw-blond hair and light blue eyes. They were both slim, but his gaze was as cold and dispassionate as the Denver leader’s was fiery and ardent.

He opened his mouth to speak, but was stayed by a knock on the door of the suite. “Ryan, you okay in there?”

The man didn’t move, but signaled the man holding the blaster on Krysty, who moved her forward with the pressure of the gun muzzle against the back of her neck. “Answer it and get him gone. You got one chance. No signals or funny business, or you both die before the cavalry comes.

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