Free Echoes by Jason Brant

under the overhang of the steps, almost a floor beneath us already.
    Now was my chance to find out the truth. Letting my mental defenses down, I latched onto his mind, sifting through his memories. What I saw proved worse than anything I could have imagined.
    "You craz—"
    Chuck became a blur as he spun around and grabbed my wrist. He slammed my hand on the railing hard enough to make me drop the gun down the stairwell. Twisting my arm with his left hand, he punched me in the chest with his right.
    The pain was immense as I fell back through the door and into the hallway. The carpet didn't provide much padding as my ass landed on the floor. The buttons on my shirt, already stretched to their limit, burst open. Stumbling up, I walked backward on the balls of my feet as Chuck followed.
    Sammy and Nami started calling my name from the bottom of the stairs.
    "Run! Don't come back up here!" I yelled as loud as my aching chest would allow.
    The elevator was behind me, but on a different floor. The stairs were beyond him. I had no choice but to stand my ground. Unfortunately, I couldn't win this fight if he was in a wheelchair and I had a chainsaw. Judging by the smirk on his face, he knew it too. He was too advanced of a fighter for me to use my ability on him to predict his movements. Highly trained fighters react on instinct, they don't follow a predetermined set of moves.
    He feinted forward, then threw a right cross that flew past my face as I moved sideways, into a left hook. My equilibrium went to hell as I staggered into a door with a do not disturb sign hanging from the knob.
    "Read the sign asshole!" a male voice yelled from within.
    Chuck threw a side kick at my face which I barely managed to avoid. The impact on the door caused it to splinter and bow inward.
    "Jesus!" the man in the room cried. The damage to his door must have persuaded him inside. "I'm calling the cops!"
    Wary of Chuck's power, I resumed backpedaling toward the elevator.
    As we squared off again I figured a good offense might be the best defense. Throwing a jab-cross-hook combination, the best I've got, had me swinging at air. Faster than I could react he moved to my right, punching me in the temple. He followed that with a spinning back kick that nailed me in the stomach. It felt like someone hit me with a sledgehammer.
    I tried not to focus on the fact that I just ate a spinning back kick thrown by a Chuck Norris lookalike.
    My limited boxing training didn't extend to defending kicks. His next blasted my left knee, crumpling me to the floor again. The leg began to stiffen at once. I started crab walking away from him, my limb dragging on the floor behind me. My left hand fell upon something small, cold and metal – the fork I had seen earlier. It wasn't a chainsaw but it would have to do.
    With a smile, he lifted his foot waist high and stomped on the same knee.
    A scream escaped me as my frantic hands grabbed at the damaged joint, the agony causing my vision to blur. Leaning over, he grabbed both sides of my ripped uniform and pulled me up until we were face to face.
    "No smartass remarks, tough guy? Nothing funny to say?"
    "Let me show you what I think of your sissy kicks," I said with a bloody smile. Then I jammed the dirty fork in his neck.
    Rearing back, he clutched at the utensil, his face not showing an ounce of pain.
    If I didn't get some distance between the two of us, he was going to break every bone in my body. Throughout the years I'd become fond of my bones, so that didn't seem like a good option.
    Pushing myself up on my good leg, I hobbled in the direction of the elevator. Chancing a peek over my shoulder, I saw him pull the fork out and throw it against the wall. I must have missed his carotid artery as the blood wasn't flowing as I'd hoped.
    "You may want to swab that with alcohol; I wasn't able to sterilize it first," I called back as blood spilled down my chin.
    Ten feet from the elevator, I heard the ding signifying it stopped on