The Thought Pushers (Mind Dimensions #2)(7)
It seems to do the trick . . .
Chapter 4
The attacker in front of us leaves his midsection exposed for a moment; it’s the last thing he’ll do in this fight, we think as we unleash the burst.
“You did it, kid,” Caleb’s thought intrudes. “Finally, we’re both in Haim’s head.”
“I got as much. You don’t exactly think in Hebrew, do you?”
“Right. Now shut the f*ck up and let me see this.”
The ‘burst’ is what we mentally call this quick succession of punches to our opponent’s solar plexus. We walk into our opponent as we strike, making the force of our punches that much more potent. We count twenty hits before he tries to block and stage a simultaneous counterattack.
Fleetingly impressed with his economy of movement, we grab his arm and use his own momentum to throw him off balance. He hits the ground, hard. Before he tries to pull us down with him, we kick his jaw—and feel the crunch of bone as the outer edge of our bare foot connects with his mandible. He stops moving.
He’ll probably be fine. A couple of rib fractures and a broken jaw are a small price to pay for the opportunity to fight against us. Anyone who tried this outside our training module wouldn’t learn a thing. They would die instead.
The training module is our response to the immense pressure from our friends at the Shayetet to teach our unique fighting style to their people. They know we’ve left Krav Maga, the martial art style of Israel, far behind. What we’ve developed transcends Krav Maga, transcends every fighting style we’ve ever encountered.
Fighting in these modules is a compromise. No death strikes, no aggressive groin assaults; no one dies in the training module. Such a compromise defeats much of the original intent, of course. This style was designed with a single purpose in mind: killing your opponent. Now much of our energy is wasted trying not to use the style as it was designed. Not killing our opponent feels unnatural, counter to everything we’ve spent our life working toward. A hollow imitation of what we envisioned. Much to our dismay, no one else seems to care about these nuances. They clamor for a school where civilians will learn this for their own amusement, refusing to understand that it’s impossible to tame this training. This is not a sport for civilians; this is life or death. Anything less dishonors the work we have done, the lives taken in the evolution of our unique fighting style.
“Ha-mitnadev haba,” we say in Hebrew, which, I, Darren, understand to mean ‘next volunteer.’
We recognize the man who comes in: Moni Levine. He’s a renowned Krav Maga teacher. They probably want him to learn from us in the hope that he can teach it afterwards. We hope that it works out somehow. We would welcome any opportunity to be left out of this futile teaching business.
I, Darren, disassociate as I have done during other Readings. This time is different, of course, since I still feel Caleb here. I feel his excitement. He clearly appreciates Haim’s fighting style more than I do.
“Don’t distract,” Caleb’s thought comes, and I let Haim’s memory absorb me again.
“Azor, esh li maspik,” Moni says after five minutes of brutal attacks. Not surprisingly, that means ‘stop, I have had enough.’
We graciously tell him he did well and that he’s welcome to return.
The next opponent enters. Then another. It must be ten or more in a row. None of them are a challenge. This is another part of the training that we hate. We fight almost robotically, letting our thoughts drift to the upcoming quick trip to the United States. We’re concerned that this training module will make us develop deadly habits, like thinking idle thoughts during a fight . . .
I, Darren, disconnect again, only to have Caleb mentally convince me to find another recent memory of the same kind. So I do. It’s nearly identical to the previous fight, but Caleb wants to experience it. And then another. And another.
We do this over and over, reliving at least a week—if not two or three—of non-stop fighting. It all starts to blur.
“I can’t take this anymore,” I think at Caleb eventually. The fatigue that I feel is not physical, but mental. Somehow that makes it more potent, inescapable. The human psyche isn’t equipped to do what we’re doing right now. I feel like I haven’t slept in years, haven’t rested in millennia. I’m forgetting the time when I wasn’t Haim. I can’t recall a moment when I was not doing this accursed fighting.
“Fine,” I get a response back. I feel a sudden, enormous sense of loss. It’s as though the whole universe imploded.
After a few confusing moments, I understand. Caleb got out. I’m here by myself—no longer part of the joint-mind being.
Not willing to spend a millisecond longer than I have to in Haim’s head, I instantly get out as well.
*
I’m back in Haim and Orit’s kitchen in the Quiet. I look in shock at Haim, who’s still frozen—with that wax-statue smile directed at his also-frozen sister. He doesn’t look nearly as dangerous as I now know he is. In that, he’s unlike Caleb, who always looks kind of dangerous with his badass manner and that gleam in his eye. And now that I’ve gotten a glimpse inside Caleb’s f*cked-up mind, I know that he’s even more dangerous than he looks.
I try not to think too deeply about what I just experienced. It’s too late, though; the violent images run through my mind, and I’m overwhelmed. It’s not Haim’s memories of the never-ending fight that do this to me. It’s Caleb’s. Those things he did to the Pusher are disturbingly fresh, replaying in my head over and over. I sit down at the breakfast table, in the empty chair next to Haim’s sister, and try to take a few calming breaths. If I wasn’t in the Quiet now, I think I would be sick.