Sam Fisher- Fighting Lynx

Lynx evad­ed the short, hard punch that came straight at her, flinch­ing away, but not fast enough to get off clean­ly. Tre­ble’s gloved knuck­les kissed her cheek­bone with a glanc­ing hit that took her mon­o­cle with it, rip­ping the de­vice from her masked face.

She ducked low, bring­ing up her gun, but Tre­ble slammed the heel of his hand into her so­lar plex­us, blow­ing the air out of her lungs in a pained rush. Lynx stag­gered back a step, and Tre­ble’s shad­owy form kept com­ing, out of the dark and into the half-light. He reached out and snagged her wrist, bend­ing it the wrong way. She hissed in pain and lost her grip on the Glock.

The gun fell at her feet, but Lynx had no time to think about it. Tre­ble moved on her, fir­ing rap­id blows out of the gloom that she de­flect­ed more by the sound than by see­ing them.

She tried to ex­tend the dis­tance, but he wouldn’t let her, keep­ing up the pres­sure, forc­ing her to dance to his tune.

An­ger flared, and Lynx used it to fuel her, feint­ing right, avoid­ing a chop­ping blow aimed at her throat. She pushed in clos­er, mov­ing in­side Tre­ble’s guard, and land­ed re­turn blows on his bel­ly, chest, and throat.

Her at­tack­er growled and lost a step as he soaked up the hits, pass­ing through a shaft of moon­light from a bro­ken win­dow. Lynx glimpsed a crag­gy, unshaven face hid­den be­hind in­sect-like night-vi­sion gog­gles, and a loose coat over matte black tac­ti­cal gear.

She kept up the mo­men­tum, us­ing her edge in speed and agil­i­ty. Tre­ble was eas­i­ly twice her mass, and one well-placed blow from him could put her down hard. But each hit she sent his way was guess­work and in­stinct. Fight­ing in the dim­ness was like box­ing smoke, and she couldn’t be sure if she could hold her own.

“Lynx…?” Buz­zard’s voice ech­oed be­hind her, and she looked with­out think­ing, snared by the dis­trac­tion. “You there?”

The wiry young man stood in the pas­sage, grog­gy and slow, sup­port­ing him­self with one hand up on the door­jamb. In the weak light, he looked pale and un­steady. What­ev­er Tre­ble had used to put him down, he felt the ef­fects of it.

The tar­get made a tsk noise un­der his breath and moved like light­ning. He snatched the seam of Lynx’s hood­ie and yanked her off bal­ance, pull­ing her to him. Press­ing her back to his chest, he put one arm at her throat and started the slow busi­ness of chok­ing her out.

Part of Lynx re­al­ized that Tre­ble had been tak­ing his time with her in the ex­change of blows, play­ing it out. At the same time, he had drawn a gun with his oth­er hand, bring­ing it to bear on Buz­zard.

Lynx tried to shout a warn­ing, but a strangled gasp emerged from her lips.

Tre­ble’s si­lenced pis­tol chugged, and a blue spark burst on Buz­zard’s chest. He gave a cry and fell out of sight.

The in­stinc­tive ac­tion for Lynx would have been to wres­tle the man’s hand away from her neck, to take a des­per­ate gulp of air be­fore she blacked out – but she fought down the an­i­mal pan­ic ris­ing in­side her and felt for her only re­main­ing weap­on.

Her fin­gers found the black pol­y­mer com­bat knife tucked into a sheath-pock­et at her thigh and pulled it free, twist­ing it around in her grip. Her blood thun­der­ing in her ears, Lynx put her en­er­gy into forc­ing the blade up and back, un­til the point pushed into the soft flesh of Tre­ble’s throat.

She ap­plied steady pres­sure against his Adam’s ap­ple, and felt her op­po­nent stiff­en. The slightest mo­tion of her hand would open his throat to the air.

Tre­ble’s grip slack­ened and Lynx fought the urge to stum­ble away and suck in air. She kept the knife in place, mak­ing it clear where the bal­ance of this fight now lay.

Tre­ble slow­ly put away his gun and spoke in a low voice full of rough edges.

“OK,” he al­lowed, then pressed a mi­cro­phone tab at his neck and re­peat­ed the same word three times. “Endex. Endex. Endex.”

- Firewall, Chapter 1