Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #11 February 2015 | Page 52

was one such advantage. It sharpened Abdiel’s already
heightened senses, and allowed him to perceive the
slightest movement and hear the faintest noise with
crystal clarity. He could distinguish every raindrop as
it burst against the window at the far end of the room,
even detect the cockroaches scurrying inside the walls
around him.
Training his senses on his opponent, Abdiel could
smell the pheromones of fear flowing out of his every
pore, and could hear his enlarged heart as it raced,
struggling to pump plasma through his fat clogged
arteries.
Taking another measured breath, Abdiel tuned into the
organ’s frantic rhythm, thump-squish-thump, thumpsquish-thump, it reverberated like a drum in his ears.
Thump-squish-thump.

Colony 024
Reduk, Shamek
23:57hrs
Abdiel’s sympathetic nervous system surged into
action. Despite his superhuman ability to regenerate,
the seven inch razor grasped tightly in Marqus’s hand
posed a very real threat to his life. If Marqus was somehow able to land a lucky strike and sever Abdiel’s head
from his body, he would almost certainly perish. But
it wasn’t fear that spurred the adrenaline that coursed
through his veins. Fear was a human condition and
although Abdiel possessed the same primitive hypothalamus as Marqus or any other man, there was one
key distinction - control.
“Put down the razor, now!” Abdiel commanded, reigning back his physiological reaction by controlling his
breathing.
Even though Pure-Blooded Angels looked down upon
Hybrids like Abdiel for once being human, the deficiency had some benefits. The fight or flight reaction

PAGE 52

Shifting his weight to his back foot, Abdiel waited
patiently, using all of his senses like a radar to detect
the slightest shift in Marqus’s body. Any change in his
posture, his breathing, his heart rate, would telegraph
his next movement.
Thump-squish-thump, thump-squish… THUMP…
THUMP! Marqus’s heart skipped a beat.
There was a flash from the razor’s deadly edge as it
sliced through the air directly for Abdiel’s throat.
But Abdiel was too fast. Ducking beneath the circular strike, he rose up to smash Marqus’s ribs with
a devastating right hook. Even though Abdiel had
restrained himself, his opponent’s ribs gave way under
the immense force of his strike. The energy from the
blow made Marqus’s fat ripple across his body in a
fluid shockwave. Before Marqus’s synapses could have
even processed the pain from the first blow, Abdiel
had already shifted his position again, taking hold of
Marqus’s right hand and twisted it onto itself. Marqus’s
wrist snapped back, catapulting him into the air like a
rag doll. Flipping a full 360 degrees, Marqus crashed
back to floor like a meteorite; the razor he had been
holding in his hand dropped harmlessly to the floorboards with a metallic clink.