Chapter 3 - The Awakening of the Beast
I slowly unbuttoned my flannel shirt and let it drop to the floor, revealing a tight gray thermal undershirt underneath. The extra weight around my middle wasn't fat; it was functional, heavy-set power built from decades of explosive core conditioning, heavy lifting, and combat muscle memory.
I rolled my shoulders, popping my neck with a sharp, echoing crack that cut through the silence of the gym.
"I was a Marine Corps hand-to-hand combat instructor for fifteen years," I said, my voice carrying a quiet, lethal weight that made Bruno’s smile falter for a fraction of a second. "I trained Force Recon operators, MARSOC Raiders, and over three thousand combat Marines in the art of terminating violent encounters in under five seconds."
I stepped forward, closing the distance between Dustin and me. "You're going to need more than three guys."
For a second, they hesitated. Then, Dustin laughed nervously, trying to regain his bravado. "Get him!"
The first guy lunged forward, throwing a wild, haymaker right hook designed to separate my jaw from my skull. It was sloppy, telegraphed street fighting disguised as MMA training.
Time seemed to slow down. Years of muscle memory took over completely. I ducked beneath his swinging arm with millimetric precision, stepping deep inside his guard. My palm struck his sternum with a concussive blast of kinetic energy that knocked every ounce of air out of his lungs. As he buckled forward, I hooked my leg behind his ankle and swept him hard onto the rubber mat, where he lay gasping like a stranded fish.
Before the second guy could even react, I pivoted on my heel, grabbed his outstretched arm, applied a lightning-fast joint manipulation hyper-extending his elbow, and drove my knee upward into his midsection. He screamed, dropping to his knees in a crumpled heap.
The gym erupted into panic. Bruno’s face drained of color as the reality of what was happening finally pierced through his arrogant haze.
"Kill him! All of you, jump him!" Bruno roared, pointing frantically.
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Three more fighters charged from the back mats, grabbing training batons and heavy weighted chains. But they were moving on adrenaline; I was moving on absolute geometric science. I ducked a wild swing, disarmed the nearest attacker with a sharp leverage twist, and used his own momentum to fling him directly into the path of his advancing teammate. They collided with a sickening thud, tumbling into a rack of medicine balls.
Dustin stood frozen, his eyes wide with stark, unadulterated terror, realizing too late that the clumsy old carpenter was actually a ghost from a nightmare he couldn't wake up from.
