The pause lasted less than two heartbeats. Whatever mental strange flaw the name of Doma Reel had triggered in the double’s stolen mind was instantly smoothed over by its main directive: the physical termination of the original claimant. It adjusted its grip on the four-foot pinch-bar, shifting its weight forward as its muscles coiled with the terrible, unnatural strength of Milestone 7.
Hookhold.
Len remembered the sound of that grip tearing into the seasoned pine strut beneath the Tram landing earlier that afternoon. The creature didn’t need a crowbar to kill a man. Its fingers could crush walnut timber into splinters. Its tendons could withstand the dynamic shock of a five-ton high-pressure press without shearing. If those hands closed around his throat or his fractured forearm, the contest would end before his lungs could empty.
The hunter lunged.
It didn’t splash through the water. It glided across the surface like an iron weight sliding over greasy ice. The pinch-bar rose in a short, brutal line aimed directly at Len’s neck.
Len didn’t pull the trip-lever. Instead, he lunged forward, throwing his sound right shoulder straight toward the creature’s chest. His Level 5 Surefoot bit into the slippery dark rock blocks, giving him instant, solid traction where any ordinary man would have skidded into the black pool. He ducked beneath the dropping iron bar, the cold air of its passage whistling past his ear. Then he drove his right elbow hard into the duplicate’s chest bone.
