NEVER DIE TWICE a novel by Fletcher Rhoden

The pressboard panels fell spinning from the high ceilings to the tellers and loan officers and customers below. One panel fell within inches of Victor Tremont’s head and the head of an old woman he’d escorted into and out of the bank every week for twelve years. He reached up and blocked the panel, a rod of pain shooting up Victor’s right forearm.
When the cables descended, one from each of the eight gaps in the ceiling, Victor knew the panels hadn’t merely fallen; they’d been kicked out. And he knew who was behind the attack.
“Always a gentlemen, eh, XL?” The voice was thick, low, rumbling and scratchy, distorted by a wound inflicted by Victor himself years earlier. “Even in these... reduced circumstances.”
Victor wasn’t sure if his old foe was sarcastically referring to Victor’s broadened waist, his lard-caked muscles, the straggly gray horseshoe of hair around his pouchy, sagging head. He could just as easily have been taking a shot at the uniform, the cheap silver-plated badge, the patch on the shoulder with the name of the private security company for which he’d worked undercover all these years.
“Show yourself, Parallax!”
“First, you must defeat my ninjas.” Parallax’s gurgling laughter seemed untouched by the years.
A ninja slid down each cable. Three hurled Chinese throwing stars at Victor, the spinning silver discs catching the light as they raced toward him.
Victor tumbled, the back of his head and rounded hump rolling on the cold tile floor. His hips landed flat, a mistake he could feel ringing from his tailbone up his spine. But the throwing stars were close behind, thumping and thudding into the express deposit box.
His heart pounded, sweat creeping down from the few stragglers of hair still clinging to the top of his head. His blue polyester shirt was plastered to his wide frame.
Victor grabbed a black plastic pen chained to the island and yanked it, the chain popping and sending its miniature silver pearls jumping across the stack of withdraw slips. Victor didn’t take the time to aim. He didn’t need it. Victor flung the pen at a forty degree angle in front of him and to the left.
The pen landed with a juicy thud in the ninja’s chest, throwing stars falling out of the assassin’s stunned, dying hands.
“Well, I guess it’s true,” Victor said, eyebrow raised. “The pen really is mightier than the sword.”
Victor curled his right hand into a tight fist and pulled it back behind his ear. His old knuckles cracked when they struck one ninja’s cheekbones.
“Look out,” the old woman cried, “behind you!”
Another ninja was nearly upon him, a long hissatsu glimmering in his hand. The point of the blade was locked on Victor’s collarbone and plunging fast. Victor sidestepped the advance, missing the deadly tip. He grabbed the ninja’s left arm, bringing his knee up to fracture the ulna below the elbow. The crack of the bone preceded the ninja’s the release of the dagger to thud against the thin pile carpeting.
The back of Victor’s right fist slammed into the ninja’s face. He tossed the sagging, useless ninja into three other ninjas as they lurched toward him. All four black-clad assassins tumbled backward. The crowd gasped, admiration swelling their horror to near ecstasy. Victor hadn’t heard that sound since his youth, his peak. To hear it again made his certain death all the more worthwhile.
Victor stepped into the attack, the three remaining ninjas taking him on together. A side kick deflected one ninja, a roundhouse follow-up sent another reeling into the elevator just as the doors closed. All the old moves were coming back to Victor, the sting on the side of his blade hand as he chopped at his opponents was a welcome reminder of his latent skills and long-gone victories.
A windmill block diverted another ninja’s attack, an uppercut lifting him off his feet.
Victor looked around at the sudden calm, the ninjas who weren’t lying lifeless only groaned and struggled to regain their footing. One got as far as his left knee before falling to his face with a defeated moan.
Applause burst from the eager smiles and tear-streaked faces of the customers and bank employees. The swelling of gratitude flushed through Victor’s veins, warming him even beyond his elevated heart rate. The chill of the air conditioner had already cooled his sweat-soaked shirt, but an even colder sensation pressed against Victor’s conscience.
“No more games, Parallax,” Victor called out, hushing the crowd’s grateful buzz. “Come out, come out, where ever you are!”
“Never!” Parallax cried out, his disembodied voice banging against the walls as more ninjas streamed down those cables, each with another ninja on the cable above him.
The customers’ and employees’ cries filled Victor with a tremble that sent his spastic bladder racing. Bank manager Reginald DeWitt stood with his tellers, his face a blank stare as if he’d already accepted his own death.
No, Victor grunted in his mind’s ear, I won’t let that happen!
And salvation was only a few feet away, leaning up against the island counter in the middle of the lobby.
With another tuck and roll, Victor grabbed the TZ-19 experimental laser rifle. It felt heavier than the fifteen pounds it was said to have weighed, the steel casing and rubber-gripped handles gave it a cold, powerful feel.
The trigger gave with the slightest touch, and while the blue laser leapt straight and true from the crystal barrel, there was not even the slightest kick. The first few shots missed their targets. But the explosions that burst from the corners of the room, smoke and sparks leaping from the wounded walls, sent all three floors of the building shuddering.
The next three shots did not miss.
The ninjas burst into balls of cloud and sparks when the blue lasers struck them, falling from the cables and dropping their weaponry. One took a laser in the neck, cleanly separating his head from his body and cauterizing both wounds for a nearly bloodless kill.
Victor shot again, aiming from the hip and bringing the ninjas down one after another. Smoke filled the room, burning Victor’s nostrils. Planks of paneling swung on single nails and fell from the damaged walls.
Their bodies piled up three feet deep. The TZ-19 got hotter fast in Victor’s grip. The civilians cowered under the low drift of smoke. Parallax’s ninjas kept sinking down from the ceiling to meet the last of Victor’s blue lasers.

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