Grace’s and Meridian’s Smith & Wesson and Desert Eagles.
But he stayed focused on Roz.
“Twenty…visibility reduced two hundred meters.”
They couldn’t see him. They relied on their vision to fight…he didn’t.
“Ten feet, up the pipeline.”
Gage flung his disk in a low sweep. The magnets snapped against the rifle muzzles raised in his direction, making it impossible to aim.
With his left hand free, he pulled his shock baton and rushed forward.
A man cursed, angry, his weapon no longer under his control as he fired in the wrong direction.
Gage crept beneath the fog, out of the line of fire until he was right up on his target.
He caught the enemy’s wrist, twisted downward in one brutal motion, a short pop marking the break that made him drop his weapon—the hand useless.
With his shoulder pressed into his sternum, he drove the man backward until he slammed into the wall.
He slumped, and Gage jammed the baton in the center of his chest. The current surged through him, locking every joint and muscle.
He heard the hostages a few feet away, huddled tight in a corner, breaths overlapping breaths. Their worry and anxiety thick in the air and overwhelming him. Some—probably the younger ones—were trembling so hard he could hear teeth chattering.
Their fear tugged on his heart. He wanted to go to them and reassure them, but he couldn’t, not until each threat was eliminated.
To his left, a guard struggled with his rifle, trying to remove the disk and force it to operate.
Gage rotated, using the momentum to bash his cane across the man’s hand, hearing the knuckles and bones crunch like splintering wood as he dropped his weapon. Without pause, he whacked the cane across the enemy’s cheek, jerking his head to the side so hard his neck popped before he rammed the blunt end into his sternum.
While his target was doubled over, spitting and cursing, Gage pressed the concealed mechanism, causing the cane toretract in sections as a blade snapped out, transforming it into a sword two seconds later.
“Please, God, no. I beg you, don’t kill me.”
Gage scoffed. “You dragged these people out of church, beat and tortured them…” Gage did three fast moves that sliced tendons and vital muscles in the guard’s thighs, forearm and biceps. “God’s no longer listening. I’m here now.”
The man howled, blood spraying from the gashes and splattering the damp leaves.
“Motion on your six, fast and closing,” Roz rushed out.
Gage dropped and spun around, snapping his cane back out mid-motion, sweeping a set of legs into the air. A broad back slammed into the ground at his feet.
The man recovered quickly, growled some expletives in another language and rushed him.
Gage whipped the cane’s shaft upward, felt it connect under the chin, and followed it with a brutal hook from his fist that shattered the guard’s jaw and loosened teeth.
Though his targets were mangled, broken, and crippled for life…he left them alive.
“Two more inbound, rifles up, flanking your three and nine.”
They were coming at him from both sides, but he was calm and centered.
He reached back for his mag-disk, his biceps coiling in anticipation, but before he could throw, a sharp hum echoed from the tree line.
Whistling metal sliced past his left cheek a second before another cut past his right.
Aluminum-carbon punched through meaty torsos with sickening thuds, crunching cartilage, and splitting bones as the bodies that’d been coming at him were thrown into the church wall.
