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He was thick and solid, like an anvil on legs, with a chest like a beer barrel. He had a mind like a rat with rabies.
The drones didn’t tell me about their plan to attack the compound. Of course they didn’t. They were careful not to tell me, and they must have been careful not to think about it around me. But I felt it.
When they were briefing me and telling me the plan, I couldn’t tell what they were planning, but I could see all the places they avoided.
When one of the minor drones was describing the exit routes, my scalp prickled and tightened.
After that, I listened. Hard. I reached out. Pushed the thing, whatever it is. All I could be sure of was that something was very wrong about the planned way out. They knew it was never going to go the way that they said it would.
I found out why but, of course, it was too late.
Ratko was the target the drones had always dreamed of for me. But they were too stupid to know it. Of course, I was too slow to see what they really wanted from me.
Until I met Ratko.
Stephano took me into the big warehouse complex. Ratko was waiting for me in the middle of the labs and production facilities.
One peek inside the boiling, coiling snake pit of Ratko’s mind and I saw exactly who he was. I saw all the things he did. All the innocent lives he destroyed. And the bottomless pit of greed and cruelty inside him. I wanted to do it immediately and I still wonder why I didn’t.
My ‘cover’ was that I was there to negotiate the sale of precious rare-earth metals, mined and looted in the Congo, astronomically valuable in microchip production. He believed the story, and he believed me. I could feel that he was so powerful and arrogant, and so well-defended, he didn’t care. He had no need to fear anyone or anything.
He wanted the deal. But I saw inside what he wanted more. He had thoughts about me that shocked and repulsed me. So much that I couldn’t stand to feel them. I had to stop them. I always felt that I could do it to another person.
When I had a grip on that glow, the spark in someone’s mind, I always suspected that as well as feeling it, probing and tugging it, I could squeeze it. The drones always pushed me in that direction. But I never wanted to go there. I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to try, and, most of all, I guess I didn’t want to know.
So, I guess I knew the answer to that all along.
As soon as I felt what Ratko wanted, I squeezed. The blood drained from his face fast, and his knees sagged. Stephano stared at him, baffled. He said, “Boss?”
Ratko’s strength was immense. His arms and his chest bulged. His neck thickened and hardened like a red tree trunk, glowing in a fire His eyes bulged and blazed at me. His mind roared and thrashed against mine.
Pain seared from my crown to my core, and I felt like I would split in half. But I squeezed harder. His force sagged, and I even began to feel remorse. I wanted to let go.
His back bent and his arms reached out. He lunged at me and the force inside my mind felt like it would erupt, pent-up like an ancient volcano.
He lashed out with his mind, thrashing back at me. His hands clawed, and he launched himself at me. Stephano raised his rifle, but he didn’t have a clear target. Ratko was too near.
The force of Ratko’s rage filled my head and started to seep into my body. I strained every muscle and focussed on the heat in the center of him. And I squeezed. He swelled, pushing back.
And I squeezed. He roared and threw himself at me. Landed on top of me. Bared his teeth and gripped my throat.
And I squeezed, and the light faded as his hands closed off my airway as they tightened around my throat, and I squeezed.
And he stopped.
The bulk of him fell on me, heavy, soft and limp, like a sack of grain. I was stuck beneath his body. I couldn’t move.
Stephano stood over us, over me. Now he had a clear target. His gun was aimed at my head.
Like I said, I was lucky.
When you twist a powerful man from the inside, you turn his nerves and his muscles against him. You attack him from a direction where he has no defense. It hurts him a lot.
Stephano’s body was as strong as Ratko’s. Probably stronger.
But not his mind.
I twisted in the center of his mind. He yelped like a puppy and the gun clattered on the floor.
