Excerpt of Binary Knight - the Pawn

Now that I'm a little further down the manuscript, let me share an excerpt of it with you :)
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His footsteps slowed down. It took the other two a few moments to notice that he wasn't following them anymore.

"V? What is it?" Emma asked, sounding a bit more hesitant, but still trying to be upbeat.

"Alexander, what hospital was this again?" Nigel asked slowly. His mind was racing, calculating all the possibilities, but there were just too many variables. How probable was an attack at all? When? How?

"Bethlem Royal, how?" the orange-haired kid replied.

"You're getting one of your hunches, aren't you, V?"



"It's only a really vague hunch. Don't read too much into it", he replied, trying to keep irritation out of his voice. There was no point in upsetting Emma over something like this, no matter how much it irked him that she always put so much weight on his hunches.

A scream was cut in half in the direction of the lobby. Nigel felt a cold hand grasp at his insides. He had overlooked this completely. Why hadn't he trusted Haruhi?

"No need to read anymore. We'll see for ourselves!" Emma had instantly switched over to soldier-mode. The laid-back, relaxed attitude was gone and replaced by a dangerous slouch, like that of a tiger ready to leap. She strided towards the commotion with long steps, which were silent on the echoing tiles.

"Who's Haruhi?" he heard Alex ask in confusion as the teen scrambled after his aunt. The soldier tensed up. It was like she had forgotten about the two civilians, who were supposed to be escorting her.
"No, Alex, you stay back. Nigel will take care of you", she told him sternly, "Oh, and you brought my stuff didn't you?"

"Yeah", the surly teen snorted while giving Nigel a look that clearly judged his caretaking capabilities to be close to zero.

"Hand me my gun."

"What? I don't have a gun with me!"

"I told you to bring my stuff!"

"I can't be carrying guns into a fucking sanitarium! I'd get arrested!" Alex defended himself with bewildered eyes.

"Fine, I'll improvise", Emma hissed and strode off.

"You need a licence or something to carry those around, don't you?" the teen turned to Nigel to ask.

"Just come on", Nigel tugged at the boy's collar, following after the soldier more slowly. The sounds of his sneakers made him cringe with every step.

The commotion ahead was getting louder. Reaching the doors exiting to the lobby, Nigel pulled the teen down to cover, while trying to peek through the thick glass himself.

It was made a bit more difficult by the blood splatter on it. He could see limp bodies on the floor, painting the floor with sticky red. Panicked people were hunching behind desks, or clenching to couchs, trying to blend into their floral prints. Through the red haze of the splatter he could make out a black blob of a man.

It was a towering figure. Standing tall, but hunched at the shoulders, like a man used to duck under each doorway. A long katana rested it's tip on the floor, his grip on it loose, while his other hand was holding someone by the neck. A very nasty gurgling sound made by the poor bugger dangling a good foot above the ground made Nigel feel nauseous and what even colour he usually had on his face, must have escaped it by now. He had to turn away to take some deep breaths.

"Well, what's going on?" Alex hissed an urgent question.

"There's some lunatic loose", Nigel managed to reply without throwing up. The cracking sound heard from the other room conjured vivid images that he certainly didn't want to see. The thump on the floor wasn't much better.

"What about my aunt?"

Oh shit. He hadn't even stopped to look at who the poor bugger was. It was just like Emma to storm onto the scene, without firepower. And now the lunatic had her cold.

"What are you talking about, man?" Alex was getting really frantic. Nigel needed to calm the bloody down. He had been left in charge of the teen and he'd see that the kid would survive this. Perhaps not unscathed, but scars were sure to give him some cool-points with the girls.

"Honestly just shut up!" Alex's eyes were enlargened. Nigel shushed at him, the boy had raised his voice to alarming heights.

"Keep quiet, I'm going to secure us an alternative route out of here", the hacker hissed, again tapping his phone to gain access to the blueprints. It would only take Haruhi seconds to do the work.

"Fuck you, I'm not going to leave auntie there!"

"Wait, what?" Nigel couldn't react fast enough. Alex had already pulled the door open and slid through to the scene of mayhem. Nigel's scrawny fingers only cought a hold of the kid's trouser leg, which he hold onto like dear life. In this case of the teen. But damn that kid was strong, despite his famine looks. As Alex tried to pull his leg free, he also pulled Nigel to slide through the door as well.

The towering man clad in black from head to toe turned towards the two intruders. The sight of his face took Nigel's breath away. He was now staring straight at a face with no round edges, with parchment-like skin stretched over the bone and two coal-black holes for eyes. The thin, wide lips were tightly shut, and showed no emotion. Nothing except pure menace. Straight, light-suckigly black hair framed the face, blending perfectly to the long black coat. Only one image seemed to coincide with the apparition before him, an apparition now raising its blade.

"Reaper", Nigel croaked aloud before he could stop himself.

"No." The voice was dark, like that from a grave. "Merely a Pawn."

The blade swung from heights. Nigel acted on an instinct he didn't know he posessed. He scrambled to shield Alex with his own body, while smashing the phone he still held in his other hand to the tiles. Raw power always worked well for him.

A loud crackle boomed above them, locking his ears. The surge of excess static energy raised the hair of his neck and made him shiver. But the shield had worked. They were now inside a semi-transparent bubble, outside of which stood the black swordsman. He could not decipher if the hint on that skull-like face was of amusement or bemusement.

Out of the corner of his vision he could see a cat-like jump over one of the furniture. The soldier landed gracefully and used the blood-wet tiles to her advantage, sliding to kick her reinforced army boots into the chin of the swordsman. She didn't manage to trip him over, but she certainly drew his attention. And where Nigel would have froze, Emma was not one to be stupefied. She kicked him again, straight into the vulnerable spot that made the tower collapse to one knee.