“Shut up,” Trent snapped without looking back. He stopped just behind the yellow line directly behind Arthur’s seat.
Arthur remained seated, his back to Trent. He slowly reached up and turned off the interior lights of the bus, leaving only the dim amber glow of the dashboard and the swirling white snow in the headlights. The sudden darkness changed the environment instantly. It went from a public transit vehicle to a claustrophobic shadowed tunnel.
“Turn the lights back on, old man. I want them to see this,” Trent growled.
Arthur finally stood up. When he turned around, he didn’t square his shoulders. He stood slightly bladed, his left foot forward, his hands resting loosely at his sides. In the dim amber light, Trent couldn’t see the driver’s eyes behind the aviators, but he felt an inexplicable sudden coldness radiate from the older man. It was a feeling Trent had never encountered in the gym. On the mats, even against tough opponents, there were rules. There was a referee, there was a clock, there was a mutual understanding that both men got to go home to their families afterward. The man standing in front of him had none of that energy. Arthur was projecting an aura of absolute, terrifying finality.
“I won’t ask you again,” Arthur said, his voice barely above a whisper, yet carrying perfectly over the rumble of the engine. “Sit down.”
Trent’s ego violently rejected the sudden spike of fear in his gut. He lunged forward, throwing a heavy looping right hook aimed directly at Arthur’s jaw, intending to knock the driver out cold in a single highlight-reel strike. To Trent, the punch was lightning fast. In the regional MMA circuit, it was a strike that had dropped a dozen men.
To Arthur Pendleton, the punch moved like it was submerged in molasses.
Arthur didn’t block. Blocking was for point fighting. Arthur evaded, slipping his head a fraction of an inch to the left, allowing the heavy fist to sail past his ear, crashing harmlessly into the Plexiglas barrier behind him. Before Trent could retract his arm, Arthur moved.
It wasn’t Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It wasn’t Muay Thai. It was the brutal, horrifyingly efficient science of military close-quarters combat, designed not to score points, but to instantly dismantle the human nervous system and neutralize a lethal threat in a confined space.
Arthur’s right hand shot up, his palm striking the inside of Trent’s extended elbow. There was a sickening pop as the joint hyperextended. Trent opened his mouth to scream, but the sound never materialized. Arthur stepped into Trent’s guard, entirely ignoring the young man’s size advantage. He drove his left forearm like a steel bar directly into Trent’s throat, specifically the vagus nerve on the side of the neck. The strike wasn’t meant to crush the windpipe. It was meant to overload the brain’s blood pressure sensors.
