“This is a hospital. Your father is dying. Spend time with him instead of picking fights with the staff. ” Crofton laughed, a harsh, jagged sound. “You’re a coward, just like the rest of them. Just a weak little man in pajamas. ” He reached out and shoved Dougal in the chest with both hands.
It was a hard shove meant to send Dougal stumbling backward into the charting desk, but Dougal didn’t stumble. He simply absorbed the kinetic energy, dropping his center of gravity a fraction of an inch, rooting himself to the floor. To Crofton, it felt like pushing against a concrete piling. Crofton looked momentarily confused, his hands dropped. Dougal looked at him, his eyes dead flat.
“That was your one,” Dougal said. “Do not touch me again. ” For a second, the sheer authority in Dougal’s voice penetrated Crofton’s rage. A primal instinct, buried deep in the evolutionary hindbrain, warned Crofton that he was standing in front of an apex predator. But the silence stretched and Crofton’s bruised ego screamed louder than his survival instincts. He couldn’t back down now, not in front of his father.
“Screw you,” Crofton spat, and he threw a right hook. The punch was technically sound. It had speed. It had torque generated from the hips. And it was aimed squarely at Dougal’s jaw.
In a cage, against an opponent wearing padded gloves and expecting a sporting exchange, it might have been devastating. But Dougal Marshall was not a cage fighter. He didn’t fight for points, belts, or applause. For 12 years, his mandate had been violence in its purest, most absolute form. Survival and elimination.
Before Crofton’s fist had traveled halfway to its target, Dougal was already moving. He didn’t block the punch. Blocking was a waste of energy and a concession of momentum. Instead, Dougal stepped inside the arc of the swing, moving diagonally forward into the left, slipping past the fist with a millimeter to spare. Crofton’s punch hit nothing but empty air, carrying his momentum dangerously forward.
In the span of a single heartbeat, Dougal’s hands moved with terrifying fluid precision. His left hand snapped up, the web of his thumb striking the sensitive nerve cluster on the inside of Crofton’s extended right bicep. It wasn’t a strike meant to break bone. It was a strike meant to shut down the circuitry. Crofton felt a blinding electric shock shoot up his arm to his neck.
