As Shahim saw John come twisting into view, his face angling toward him, the Agent recognized its features even as it registered the needlepoints already fully deployed from John’s left eye. With fear and astonishment racing through his mind, Shahim’s machine sub-consciousness noted the deployed and powered up weapons array that was targeting his own and automatically began to wrench at every muscle in his neck to try turn his head away from the weapons now zoning in on it.

He knew he must protect his array until it was fully deployed. He needed two-tenths of a second to complete it. But John’s initial gambit was too quick, and the first pieces to fall in this game would go to the Englishman.

As John’s hands grasped either side of Shahim’s head, he had barely a millisecond to lock on and target Shahim’s eye. He knew he only had one shot. Then his advantage of surprise would be mooted by Shahim’s fast responding systems. Finding the target and locking in, he fired everything he had, focusing his entire destructive wrath into the inch-wide aperture of his opponent’s left eye.

Shahim’s entire body registered the blow, alarms flaring as his still vulnerable weapons array superheated almost instantaneously. The sonic wave followed a millisecond later, smashing into his suddenly scorched eye socket. With the complex structures suddenly heated to extremes, the focused sonic punch brutally warped their intricate superstructure and they jammed in mid-deployment, their systems frying under the focused barrage.

It was an initial score for John, but they were already both thinking about their next moves, tactical options filing through their minds with probability analyses and damage potentials. John’s feet were already coming up on either side of the wall as his hands clenched on either side of his enemy’s head, getting ready for his next play.

Shahim sensed that he was about to be pulled bodily into the room by his neck. It was too late to stop it, so instead Shahim went on the offensive, thrusting two of his most powerful pieces on the board forward.

John felt the shift. Shahim’s head was suddenly no longer pulling away, but surging forward, toward John, and Shahim’s fists were now firing ahead like pistons.

John felt the dual blows register throughout his body like an earthquake, a seismic event that shook every structure in him. His vision actually shifted, his eyes momentarily realigning under the duress. He could redirect his hands downward, sweeping Shahim’s flying fists from his midriff, but that might allow Shahim to get away.