Closers vs Church/Violin

And then the door at the far end of the hall burst open as a Closer came flying through, his limbs twisted, head twisted more than halfway around. The man struck the backs of the other Closers and dragged three of them to the floor. Everyone turned—the Closers and Top—to see two new figures enter the hallway.

A man and a woman. She was tall, with dark eyes that glittered like polished coal. He was a big and blocky man with tinted glasses and black gloves. She had two knives, one in each of her slim fists. He carried no weapons.

They each wore ungainly metal helmets.

The Closers raised their weapons.

And Violin and Mr. Church were upon them.

...

Violin moved like a dancer in a ballet whose story was about the end of the world. She lunged and pivoted, swept and leapt, ducked and pirouetted with a grace that made what she did both beautiful and appalling. Men screamed as she opened them and let their futures spill out. The walls seemed to almost glow with the bright red that flew like paint from the edges of her knife.

Beside her was Mr. Church, and never once had Top seen the big man fight. Church looked too old and too bulky to move with any kind of speed. A man Top always thought was well past the prime of life, past the point where he could wade into a battle and do anything but become collateral damage. As he watched Church fight, Top knew how very wrong he was. Top had never seen anyone fight like that. It was not karate or kung fu. If the fighting style had a name, Top was sure that it would be clinical. Mathematical. It was the opposite of Violin’s elegant destruction because Church fought with no visible sense of style. His movements were machinelike, cold, and ruthlessly efficient. They were equations of deconstruction that took the problem of an armed attacker and subtracted all of the things about the opponent that allowed him to be a threat. What was left was no man at all. It was a broken thing that was permitted to fall because even his usefulness as a shield was gone.

Violin’s face bore a smile of savage delight, and it was clear that she enjoyed the art of combat. For her this was gorgeous and she wrote a symphony in the screams she coaxed from horrified throats. Church wore no expression at all, except a cold disapproval etched into the lines around his mouth. These men stood between Church and what he wanted. That was it, that was the extent of the emotional connection.

And they died. Closers. Fierce and deeply trained. Armed and armored.

They outnumbered Violin and Church five to one.

And it did not matter at all.

--Kill Switch pg. 495-500, Kindle Edition.