Chapter 53: "A Season of Fear"

(The following is the first installment of a series of excerpts of the new novel I'm currently writing.)

Special Agent Alexander Slam turned left at the corner and followed the corridor. They were now in the north sector of the facility. The hooting of the savage ninjas was not so loud at this end. Still, the sound was ominous enough. Dr. Rebecca Langstrom shivered tremulously.

“We should be out of here soon,” said Special Agent Alexander Slam tersely. “Security in the north wing is pretty light.”

“How did the ninjas find us?” the breathless Dr. Rebecca Langstrom asked languishingly.

Alexander Slam hesitated manfully before saying, “Your fiancé, Neville St. Johns. He has been working for the terrorist ninjas all along. He is a traitor to his own country, and now he has betrayed us as well.”

Dr. Rebecca Langstrom gasped as her lustrous hair glinted under the bright lights of the illuminated corridor. “That can’t be possible,” she said. “My father has been sharing research on the Centurion Project with St. Johns. Does this mean my father has been compromised as well?”

The steely glint in Alexander Slam’s eyes grew more grave and manly. “We don’t know everything yet. But we cannot afford to trust anyone at this point. Your father included.”

“This is insane!” cried Dr. Rebecca Langstrom, with more than a hint of languish in her voice. “My father is many things, but ‘traitor’ is not one of them!”

Alexander Slam looked at her with his rugged good looks. “We’ll know more when we hear back from Special Agent Barclay,” he said. “Until then, our first priority is to get you back to Special Agency Headquarters where you’ll be safe.”

At that moment, the air was shattered by the chilling hoot of a ninja assassin as a black-clad warrior dropped through the panels of the ceiling. The steely glint of his katana sliced through the air. In a split second, Alexander Slam rolled into a defensive posture, and then sprang like a coiled cobra, bringing his hands together with lightning force.

The katana halted abruptly, mid arc. Alexander Slam had caught the flat sides of the sword between the palms of his hands. The edge of the blade was only inches from Rebecca Langstrom’s languishing face.

Special Agent Alexander Slam gazed purposefully into the soulless eyes of the ninja while the ninja stared back, his eyes seething with soulless hatred.

Then, using lightning reflexes and demonstrating his expert training in hand-to-sword combat, Alexander Slam performed an axial reversal, and plunged the katana deep into the ninja’s neck, severing his cartoid deltial and making it impossible for the ninja to call out and alert the other ninjas.

The ninja crumpled into a silent heap at Alexander Slam’s feet, bleeding to death within mere seconds. Special Agent Alexander Slam eyed the prone body with a steely gaze. “Ninjas,” he said with manly terseness. “Gets ‘em every time.”