he asked hoarsely.
His damaged mind was locked onto one simple command. Sasha Sever stayed seated on the bunk, perfectly calm. He understood exactly what kind of creature stood before him.
You couldn’t reason with something like this. There was no deeper self to reach. This was blind force, like a landslide.
“Lom, step aside,” the old inmate said quietly. “This animal came for me. Don’t take my burden on yourself.” “No, old-timer. I’m staying.”
Lom didn’t even turn around. He clenched his fists until the knuckles went white. “If he touches you, I’ve got nothing left to stand on. I gave my word.”
Tugarin finally spotted Sever. He saw the glint of the dark glasses in the dim cell. “Meat!” he roared happily and lumbered forward like a tank.
Lom was strong. On the street, he had dropped men with one punch. In prison, he had ruled this pressure cell by force.
But next to Tugarin, he looked like a kid standing in front of a grizzly. Lom stepped in and drove a full-force punch straight into the giant’s jaw. The sound was dry and ugly.
Any normal man would have gone down with a broken jaw. Tugarin only twitched his head. He barely seemed to feel it.
He simply grabbed Lom by the throat with one massive hand and lifted him off the floor like a cat. “Don’t,” the monster growled. Lom choked, kicking helplessly in the air.
His swollen face turned blue fast. Tugarin tightened his grip, ready to snap his neck with one motion. “Let him go!” Vasya shouted.
Eyes squeezed shut in terror, he rushed the giant from behind and started pounding him with the metal cup. It did nothing. Tugarin swatted backward with his free hand, and Vasya flew into the wall and slid down unconscious.
Lom was blacking out. But before he did, he managed one last thing. He jammed his fingers straight into the giant’s eyes.
Tugarin howled. It was the one place on him that was truly vulnerable. He reflexively released Lom, dropping him to the floor, and clutched at his face.
Lom hit the concrete hard, gasping for air and coughing blood. He had bought Sever maybe ten seconds. Blinded by pain and fury, Tugarin stopped being merely a killer.
He became a berserker. He started smashing blindly at everything around him, swinging his heavy arms like sledgehammers. The bunks splintered under the blows. “Kill all!” he roared, groping for flesh.
Sever rose calmly to his feet. He looked small against the chaos. He had no knife. No shank.
But the old inmate knew anatomy. And he knew that real power wasn’t muscle. Real power was precision.
He stepped toward the raging giant. “Over here, you dumb animal,” Sever called in an icy voice. “I’m right here.”
Tugarin heard him through the noise and turned sharply, lowering his bloody hands from his face. His little eyes were watering, but he could still make out the target.
He raised a fist big enough to crush a skull. The blow that came wasn’t fast. It was simply unavoidable. The giant’s fist tore through the air exactly where Sever’s head had been a second earlier.
Sever didn’t try to block. That would have been suicide. He simply dropped under the arm, using the giant’s momentum against him.
The fist slammed into the concrete wall with a sickening crunch. Gray dust burst into the air. Tugarin screamed.
Even through all the drugs and damage, his body registered the breaking bones in his hand. For one split second, the giant froze—stunned by pain and by the fact that the target had vanished. That split second was enough.
Sever straightened behind him. His hand, rigid and flat, snapped sharply into the back of Tugarin’s neck—right where the skull meets the spine, into the nerve center.
It didn’t kill the giant. But it interrupted the signal from brain to body. Tugarin’s legs, which could have held up a small car, suddenly turned to water.
His eyes rolled up. The huge body swayed, took one clumsy backward step, and crashed onto the concrete floor. The impact sounded like part of the ceiling had collapsed.
Sever stood there breathing hard. Cold sweat ran down his forehead. His old heart was pounding, but he stayed on his feet.
Lom, propped on one elbow, stared with wide eyes. He had seen plenty of fights. He had broken men himself. But he had never seen a small old man drop a giant with one precise strike.
“You shut him off,” Lom rasped, spitting blood. “You turned out the lights.” Sever adjusted the collar of his prison shirt.
“His wiring’s bad,” he said. “He overloaded. He’ll be out for a couple of hours.” In the hallway, hurried footsteps sounded.
The major, hearing the crash, had assumed the job was done. The weapon had worked. Sever was dead. All that remained was to write it up as an inmate fight gone wrong. The steel door flew open.
“Well? Is it done?”
