Spin

It was too much to hope that life would get simpler, Ethan thought as he huddled low at the doorjamb, Miri bleeding beside him. When she said they were going to the main safe house to connect with the larger group, he felt a little hope.

Another bullet embedded in the far wall of the hallway. Fuck. Ethan was trained to kick people in the face, barefoot, not fight freaking mercenaries with guns. 'Who are these assholes' he thought to himself. He saw three men with a variety of guns on them when he walked into the room, as well as bodies on the floor, before Miri yanked him back into the hall. That is when they shot her.

'Should I leave her and make a run for the car?', he thought. She was breathing heavily, hunched around the wound. He wasn't an expert, but she didn't seem that badly injured. The car was probably already surrounded or something.... Pang! Splinters exploded in his face, 'am I shot?'.

Instead of falling backwards, he stayed low and sprinted into the room through the dust and gun smoke. Despite the wreckage and carnage around him, it was strangely quiet, as if the last bullet's sonic boom had pulled all the sound out with it. Had he breathed?

3 men were spread out in the space, but not really behind any cover, and held semi-automatic assault rifles. Helmeted, goggled, wearing slim dark clothing covered in belts and full pockets. Their gun barrels and heads moved in perfect synchronicity to track Ethan's progress as he approached the closest.

'Fuck, fuck, fuck, what am I doing' he screamed in his own head. Deep Breath.

His mind stilled and he realized that, at this angle of approach, he was open to all three's fire zone. You can't dodge a bullet that has been fired, he knew that, you can only not be where the shooter was aiming. He dropped and rolled to the side, even as the sound returned suddenly to the room.

He was still rolling, capturing a surprisingly 360 view of the room, as he hit a low table with his hip and stopped jarringly.

His breath was coming in ragged and hard, but didn't seem to be filling his lungs... he was in a room full of shooters, on his belly behind a table with no line of sight... and with no plan.

A bullet passed through the table, missing him by a few centimetres.

'Shit'.

Where were they now... he could remember where they were as he rolled by, but now they will have moved. 'I need to leave this cover and use the shooters to interfere with each other's shots... but if I raise my head to locate them, I'm dead'.

He stared at that bullet hole in the floor, followed it to the hole in the table, and his mind started filling in the gaps.... '25degree angle of fire, means he fired from approximately 4 metres away... which is a metre closer than he was to this location when I rolled in....'

Breathe.

In the span between breaths Ethan could see a wireframe of the room in his mind's eye. He knew where the shooter was. If he was still walking forward at the same speed, and similar angle of approach, then he was right...

Ethan shoved the solid table with his legs and arms, violently shifting it almost a metre, into the shins of the shooter. He toppled forward as Ethan launched himself towards him.

One arm was wrapping around the assault rifle, while his knee rose hard into the man's mid mass. It was a jarring collision, and very unexpected for the shooter. With his other arm, Ethan grabbed his head and pulled him down behind the table with a twisting motion, landing on top of the man.

His knife was in the man's throat once, twice, three times. Blood gurgled and sprayed, 'when did I pull this knife/... is this my knife?', but he didn't have time to think, he was already firing the dead mercenary's rifle over the table at the other shooters.

All Ethan knew about guns came from video games.... so he knew nothing. The hot, heavy metal in his hand was very foreign, nothing like the knives, swords, and other traditional weapons he did understand. He pointed, pulled the trigger... and was surprised by the sudden movement of the rifle in his hands, and how wildly off target he was.

Luckily the sight of him, and the shots, made the men dive further away. Ethan took that second's respite to try aiming again, he at least had a table. He fired a spray of bullets towards the closest man, not sure if any connected.

His ears rang, the room vibrated, and Ethan was vaulting the table that covered him. He spun counterclockwise, dove forward in a full somersault, and came up onto his knee with a twist that put him behind the furthest mercenary, facing him. The man's mouth was open in something like shock as Ethan pulled the trigger. The muzzle flashed from only a foot away.

"What the fuck!" the remaining mercenary said. He is a professional, trained on battlefields all over the world. 'That fucking kid dodged those bullets... before they were fired', was his last thought before he was hit in the chest, neck and head from a automatic fire.

The room is filled with the ghosts of gunfire, not that Ethan heard anything past the pulsing of blood in his ears.

"What did I do"... He wanted to just lie down and cry maybe, and his muscles were shaking with the adrenalin come down. Miri. He jumps up, fatigue forgotten, and runs out of the room.

She is there, moaning softly in a small puddle of blood. It looked like she used a shirt to press against the wound. She looked up at Ethan, "We have to get out of here now. Help me up".

Ethan was more than a little relieved she was taking charge. Despite the blood and bullet marks everywhere, the gun in his hand, the stains on his soul, he could almost pretend none of this was happening. He managed to help Miri up and guide her back to the car without ever looking into the safe house door again.

-------------------------------------------------------

"What do you think Master?" The words were spoken in a quiet, but strong, voice from a tall dark clad man. His light brown skin was smooth, but his eyes were grey and ancient looking. "Are humans finally evolving, or are these just more anomalies along the path?"

"It's too early to say. Humans are strange creatures. Their technology and science are advancing exponentially faster than their genes, but they are so reluctant to dig into the deeper mysteries of the universe and biology." The Master had a thoughtful look though, and, as peered at the 3D image of Ethan in front of him, the perspective shifted and rewound to the point he jumped over the table. He watched Ethan's and the mercenaries movements in slow motion, and the view started to fill with vector lines, time stamps and equations from classical physics. The master paid particular attention to Ethan's eyes during the entire sequence and noticed they were very unfocused for someone in that situation.

The Master squinted and the physics equations were replaced with statistics and probabilities. From the time stamps and the small muscle movements of the mercenary, cross referenced against Ethan's movements, it was clear that Ethan had started to spin out of the bullets' path 1/3rd of a second before the mercenary settled his aim. "Luck. Telepathy. Precognition... what are we dealing with here Gondo? A new Angel, a Demon, some kind of mutant, or just a human in over his head?"

"It's too early to tell Master, but isn't it interesting to see something happen after over 2000 human 'years'?"

"Interesting indeed. We may have to run a little interference if we want to see him develop further. We clearly aren't the only ones that caught the quantum event from this container," the Master said.

"I'll arrange for suitable distractions for the most powerful factions... the Malakim are already interfering, and I suspect the Nephilim are moving behind the scenes". Gondo's eyes stared intently at the image of Ethan. 'Yes, lets see what we have here...'

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