PETAR ROLLED OFF THE Koschei and spent a few moments gasping for air. On his back on the carpet, he dropped his head and rolled his eyes up and saw the inverted image of Jem carrying his mother and sister out of the living room. The older woman was still alive, although she was leaving a trail of blood behind them. He'd have to get her to a hospital.

The trio was moving only slightly faster than chilled caramel, so Petar gave himself some time to catch his breath and check himself for wounds. The light-deflector field had held longer than Petar had dared hope, but he was still disappointed to see it go. Fermion rifles weren't kind to quantum splitters. Or anything, for that matter.

On the drive down from upstate, he'd patched his shoulder where the Koscheis had hit it in the CIA building, but he'd just taken three more shots here in the Parsons' living room. The first had hit him in the exact same spot as the one he'd received knocking Brodham out of the way, right on his left shoulder. That had smarted.

The second fermion bolt had seared across his right cheek. Petar could handle a quantum shock more than probably anyone else on this planet, but a few inches to the left and it still would have been a fatal hit.

The third had torn directly through his lower abdomen.

When a fermion bolt strikes matter, it subdues its properties at the quantum level. According to particle physics, only one fermion can occupy a particular quantum state at any given time. The first fermion rifle Nikola Tesla built had been designed to sense the types of fermions in their path, then imitate them in a quantum instant before impact. The result? Whatever the bolt hit simply winked out of existence.

That was an issue: Nikola had been trying to subdue the Volosian natives, not erase them.

So the fermion rifles got an overhaul. Massively increased energy propellants. No more quantum imitation. In fact, Petar's father had reversed the sensors to ensure that the fermion bolts were different from what they were striking. Not much. A half-integer spin in either direction. But enough to avoid...unwanted fluctuations.

The final result was an instantaneous burst of energy, almost indistinguishable from the way a lead bullet would rend its target, followed by a slow decay of the matter struck. The wound would refuse to heal. Weeks, sometimes months later, the cells would break down into a mush. In a person, in anything organic, it would spread like a cancer. If untreated, the wound from a fermion bolt to the fingertip could destroy a person within half a year.

Petar had ways to treat a fermion shock. This planet didn't.

If his father invaded, the world would be caught with its pants so far down its ankles it'd only be able to see Tesla coming if it looked between its knees.

The abdominal hit had to be taken care of first. Petar gauged that he'd already lost a pint of blood from the gaping wound. He wiggled his fingers and a green light streaked from the inside of his right elbow down to his wrist. A thin, white fluid oozed from the tip of his index finger. He lifted his shirt up at an angle past FIRST ASSEMBLY CHRIS- and ran the index finger along the edges of the wound. It was about the width of a peach, the edges scorched black. With a thin line of the white fluid spread across the whole rim, Petar clenched a roll of belly flesh in his hand and squeezed the top of the hole against the bottom.

He laid his head back and ground his teeth. The pain was excrutiating, but he could feel it working. The nanobots in the fluid were stitching together the wound and excreting a boson film that would negate the after-effects of the fermions.

After a mental count of thirty, Petar released the skin on his stomach and checked to make sure the seal was tight, then repeated the process on his shoulder. Finally, a touch along the scatch on his cheek. The wound had barely released a drop of blood, but that didn't matter – it could still haunt him the rest of his life.

Briefly, Petar wondered if his father had tinkered with the fermion spin in his absence, but pushed the thought away. He didn't think the man wanted to kill his only son.

Not yet, anyway.

A shuffle from the adjacent room reminded Petar that he had to get moving. With a soft groan, he lifted his body off the living room floor. Every muscle ached. His wounds shifted painfully. His stomach was a broiling fireball of pain.

Just another day of saving the world.

The Koschei's fermion rifle lay on the carpet like a dead insect. Petar rolled to his knees and reached for it. Something whispered from beyond the wall. Sounded like "ash."

As Petar bent for the rifle, the Koschei's body moved. Before Petar could react, a metallic glint whipped out of the cloak. Petar's sight dimmed for an instant as something sharp buried deep into his calf, scraped bone.

Petar whirled and cracked his left knee into the Koschei's face, flinging the hood away. Its head was cocked sideways at a crazy angle where Petar had broken its neck. Its teeth flashed moldy yellow in a grimace as it plunged the knife deeper into Petar's leg and twisted it, snapping away ligaments like old rubber bands.

Pupilless ebony eyes shone pure malice into Petar's face. Impossible. Its spine had been shattered. Yet it was alive, its face streaked with cobalt luminescence tracing the capillaries of its cheeks and forehead. A thick grain of glow-stick blue culiminated in a delta along the outer corner of its right eye, reflecting a ghostly sheen out of the inky blackness of the Koschei's corneal film.

The Koschei reached up with its free hand and gripped Petar by the throat. It used both hands for purchase, one clamped over the knife in Petar's leg, one choking his airflow to a trickle. It pulled itself up and over Petar's body. Petar struggled, lashed out, but the Koschei's grip was iron.

Petar's breath was gridlocked in his throat. He couldn't get any air in or out. The Koschei's hand tightened, closing it further. Soon his trachea would simply collapse under the pressure. No more windpipe, no more Petar.

The Koschei's face came level with Petar's, the two forms horizontal on the freshly vaccumed berber carpet. Soulless eyes gazed into Petar's face, watched him flounder and gasp for air. A sliding footstep whispered through the wall from the adjacent laundry room. The Koschei glanced in that direction and licked his thin lips with a mottled black tongue. He would kill Petar, and then he would kill the family for the sheer pleasure of it. For getting in his way. For being there.

It would not be quick.

And Petar had led him here. Their deaths would only help to line his coffin, side by side with the CIA guards now draped in a cold morgue..

Gray at the edges. The Koschei blurred. Petar slapped. Deflected.

Most of the Koschei's weight was pressed down on Petar's good leg. His left leg. He could barely move it. The right leg screamed with pain at the slightest movement of either Petar or the Koschei, the knife an umbilical linking them together.

But the weight was on the left leg.

It wasn't much in the way of leverage, but it was the only chance Petar had. And it had to be soon – his muscles were growing weaker by the second. Koscheis had many ways to kill, but they took a carnal pleasure in strangulation. They used it every chance they got.

Slightly, with barely any noticeable movement, the Koschei shifted its weight more onto Petar's left leg. This was it. Petar would have screamed if his lungs weren't sealed. He kicked his right leg up, digging the knife deeper, and shoved the Koschei off balance. The grip on his throat loosened. That was all Petar needed.

His hand shot up to the Koschei's wrist. Twisted it loose. Kept twisting. Snapped the elbow. Rolled with it. Came up on top of the Koschei. Its face roared fury. Petar hoped it died in pain.

Gripping the Koschei's cheeks in both hands, Petar pushed with all his strength. The still-cocked head buckled. Its spine crunched like dry leaves. Petar twisted it further, a hundred and eighty degrees around. Straddling the Koschei's chest, Petar stared at the back of its head. With a weird sense of clarity, he noticed a small bald spot between the stringy black strands of the Koschei's hair.

Forcing air into his lungs, Petar slapped the Koschei's limp hand off the knife handle and slid the six-inch blade out of his calf. It was a black beryllium blade and its surface had been given a hydrophobic coating. It came out clean, not a drop of blood. The coating repelled liquid and kept the blade from sticking in its holster after you killed a man. These Koschei were full of tricks.

Petar stumbled to his feet and made his way to the kitchen.

Thanks for reading my story! Please VOTE and let me know what you think of it so far, then check out Chapter 10!