Killer Instinct

Chapter XIII

XIII.

"Here ya go," With a brief flare of power, I tossed a gagged and bound Apollo Henry across the grimy warehouse floor until he slid at Doug Spielman's feet.

We'd rendezvoused in the Meat Packing district as planned, after, of course, Misha and I had taken Apollo through the motions of implanting false memories of torture mixed with some actual torture, to bring him here with an actual six hours to spare.

Doug glanced down, and then up at me, a wry smile on the edge of his lips.

"I guess I've underestimated the two of you." Doug admitted, glancing between Misha and I. I rolled my eyes. He hadn't underestimated us. He had completely set us up to fail. I'd never been more grateful for being a double agent working for the Resistance until then.

"Sorry about it." I gave Doug my best grin that flashed all of my teeth and wasn't exactly a grin at all. Who I assumed to be his new puppy prodigy, Johnny Hilling stood on Doug's right shoulder, watching the proceedings with the unimpressed look of a well-trained soldier. Doug's assistant, the one who Branden was currently sticking his dick in stood on his left, computer tablet in her tablet as she took notes, monitoring the situation with a bland look of disinterest. She was pretty, I noted, dark hair, blue eyes, full lips. Our gazes met, and I got a sense of hyper awareness from her. She knew exactly what was going on around her.

Doug deliberately snapped his fingers, and all of Apollo's bindings fell off of him.

A beat of silence as Apollo glared around him, fury pouring off of him, radiating in fierce waves.

He reached for his power, unleashing it in the room, blasting everyone who was under Level 5 off of their feet. I stayed on my feet using sheer will power, a grim smile playing along my lips as Johnny Hilling went flying into the air, landing lithely on his feet a good twenty yards away.

Doug stayed on his feet, barely, looking slightly shaken if anything, by the display of power. Surprisingly, so did his assistant. Maybe she wasn't an assistant after all.

I sensed rather than saw Misha shift into a ready stance, sending his own blast of power hurtling towards Apollo. He electrocuted the shit out of him, causing Apollo to cry out in pain and anguish, falling to his knees.

"Enough." Doug commanded. "Let's give the Prince of Manhattan a chance to speak."

"I've got nothing to say," Apollo gritted out, his laser green eyes flashing with a fury that impressed and intimidated me. I'd thought that I had seen him angry before, but that had only been a quiet taste of what he had been capable of.

With a swipe of his hand, he summoned a fire ball the size of a watermelon and threw it at Doug, who caught it in his hands, intensified the fireball and threw it back with such speed, it appeared as though Apollo wouldn't be able to extinguish it before it blasted him in the face.

"Enough." I repeated my Doug's earlier sentiment, extinguishing the fire ball with a blink of an eye. "We can clearly guess who the better pyromaniac is."

Apollo bristled at the insult, while Doug gave me a simmering look of vehemence.

"I want answers." I told Apollo. "And you're going to give them to me. Or one by one I will break every bone in your body, burst every blood vessel that runs beneath your skin, rip your eyelids off of your face."

Apollo's look of fury didn't waver a bit. He truly was prepared to die.

"This won't kill you," I promised him, keeping my voice pitched low. "This will just be extremely painful. And of course, if you don't want to tell us, we'll just rip the information out and leave your and your ruined brain here for them to find."