Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #11 February 2015 | Page 52

was one such advantage. It sharpened Abdiel’s already heightened senses, and allowed him to perceive the slightest movement and hear the faintest noise with crystal clarity. He could distinguish every raindrop as it burst against the window at the far end of the room, even detect the cockroaches scurrying inside the walls around him. Training his senses on his opponent, Abdiel could smell the pheromones of fear flowing out of his every pore, and could hear his enlarged heart as it raced, struggling to pump plasma through his fat clogged arteries. Taking another measured breath, Abdiel tuned into the organ’s frantic rhythm, thump-squish-thump, thumpsquish-thump, it reverberated like a drum in his ears. Thump-squish-thump. Colony 024 Reduk, Shamek 23:57hrs Abdiel’s sympathetic nervous system surged into action. Despite his superhuman ability to regenerate, the seven inch razor grasped tightly in Marqus’s hand posed a very real threat to his life. If Marqus was somehow able to land a lucky strike and sever Abdiel’s head from his body, he would almost certainly perish. But it wasn’t fear that spurred the adrenaline that coursed through his veins. Fear was a human condition and although Abdiel possessed the same primitive hypothalamus as Marqus or any other man, there was one key distinction - control. “Put down the razor, now!” Abdiel commanded, reigning back his physiological reaction by controlling his breathing. Even though Pure-Blooded Angels looked down upon Hybrids like Abdiel for once being human, the deficiency had some benefits. The fight or flight reaction PAGE 52 Shifting his weight to his back foot, Abdiel waited patiently, using all of his senses like a radar to detect the slightest shift in Marqus’s body. Any change in his posture, his breathing, his heart rate, would telegraph his next movement. Thump-squish-thump, thump-squish… THUMP… THUMP! Marqus’s heart skipped a beat. There was a flash from the razor’s deadly edge as it sliced through the air directly for Abdiel’s throat. But Abdiel was too fast. Ducking beneath the circular strike, he rose up to smash Marqus’s ribs with a devastating right hook. Even though Abdiel had restrained himself, his opponent’s ribs gave way under the immense force of his strike. The energy from the blow made Marqus’s fat ripple across his body in a fluid shockwave. Before Marqus’s synapses could have even processed the pain from the first blow, Abdiel had already shifted his position again, taking hold of Marqus’s right hand and twisted it onto itself. Marqus’s wrist snapped back, catapulting him into the air like a rag doll. Flipping a full 360 degrees, Marqus crashed back to floor like a meteorite; the razor he had been holding in his hand dropped harmlessly to the floorboards with a metallic clink.