Divine Artifact in a Scientific World

"I want to be excited about spending the night with you out on the lake, but I can't help but worry a little," said Katie. "Dad almost never says things like 'leave now' and it's always serious when he does."

"Maybe your dad knows something we don't," said Jack. There really wasn't anything else he could say that wouldn't also expose his secrets. Once she accepted his soul bond, he could explain.

They had left the docks area and were passing between pairs of red buoys. After passing a pair of larger buoys, Katie pushed the throttle forward another notch.

The yacht accelerated from a speed equivalent to a fast walk to a speed closer to a slow run, and the gentle breeze passing through the flying bridge picked up to a chill wind.

Katie rubbed her arms, then pointed at one section of the C-shaped couch and said, "Can you lift that seat and grab me a jacket?"

He grabbed the edge of the couch seat and lifted, finding that it was also a lid for a storage compartment. Inside, he found a stack of folded bright yellow jackets.

He grabbed one and handed it to Katie before grabbing one for himself. He'd been fine before, but with their increased speed, it was a bit chilly.

While physical world Jack watched Katie navigate the buoy-marked channel to open water, his soul space self used his remote-presence technique to watch the unfolding drama inside the yacht club ballroom.

Five panel vans roared through the parking lot and screeched to a stop in front of the yacht club entrance.

Men with masks, brandishing AK-47's, jumped out of the vans and swarmed the terrified valet attendant.

Two of the armed men grabbed the attendant; one gagged him while the other zip-tied his hands behind his back.

The rest of the men rushed through the door and down the hall into the ballroom.

As soon as they entered, they spread out, and one of them yelled, "Hands in the air! Do what you're told, and no one gets hurt."

Five of the girls screamed, two turned like they wanted to flee, and one passed out.

Several of the men took a few steps towards the thugs, including Kevin and Jason, but then stopped when the thugs leveled their rifles at the men.

Darrel initially looked surprised, then angry. His plan was for only two or three thugs to perform the kidnapping, but instead eight had shown up. He was probably angry that the thugs had ignored his instructions.

Darrel shook off Lily's frightened grip on his arm and stalked towards the thugs.

As he passed Kevin and Jason, he said loudly, "Let a real man handle this."

Then he reached behind his back, stuck his hand up under his tracksuit top, pulled out a pistol, and pointed it at the lead thugs.

Click! Click! Click!

Three sharp clicks echoed through the ballroom.

The lead thug glared at his rifle before yelling, "What the fuck, Jamal?!"

The thug standing to the right and behind the lead thug replied, "I swear I changed the ammo!"

Click!

All the thugs, who had been looking accusingly at Jamal, snapped their attention back to Darrel.

Click! Click!

Darrel pulled his trigger two more times, but nothing happened.

With a look of confusion and growing fear, he racked the slide on his pistol, discharging the chambered round, then pointed his pistol at the lead thug and pulled the trigger again.

Click!

Several more unspent rounds clattered to the floor as Darrel desperately racked the slide and pulled the trigger on his pistol several more times.

The lead thug looked on with growing amusement as Darrel desperately tried and failed to fire off a single shot.

Almost languidly, the lead thug reached behind himself and pulled out a massive pistol of his own.

BOOM! Click. Click.

Several girls screamed, and the rest of the partygoers flinched at the sudden loud noise.

A cone of red mist exploded out of Darrel's back and painted the floor for several meters behind him.

Unlike in the movies, the force of the shot didn't blast Darrel backwards. Instead, he wobbled in place for a moment, looking down at the small hole in his chest in disbelief, then crumpled to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut.

Instead of being pleased, the thug was looking at his hand cannon in annoyance. Unlike the rest of the room, he'd noticed that only his first trigger pull worked.

Click. Click. Click.

He aimed at Darrel's crumpled form and pulled his trigger three more times.

"What the fuck?!" he muttered.

Oh, shit! Thought soul space Jack as he watched the thug glare at his hand cannon.

Besides the fake rifle ammo, Darrel had also provided the thugs with some fake .45-caliber pistol ammo. But there wasn't enough to replace all the real ammo in all the thugs' pistols. So, he'd removed all their ammo and spread what little fake ammo was available across all their pistols.

He also replaced all of Darrel's ammo with fake ammo.

When he got to the lead thug's dessert eagle .50-caliber hand cannon, he'd just removed the ammo, having nothing to replace it with.

What he hadn't thought about until that moment was that each pistol might have a round already chambered.

While the lead thug glared at his uncooperative hand cannon, soul space Jack frantically revisited each thug's pistol and removed any chambered round that he found.

Fortunately, he's started with the pistols nearest the lead thug, because the lead thug dropped his Desert Eagle and reached a hand towards the thug on his left and made a 'give it here' gesture.

The left-hand thug reached behind himself and pulled out a pistol and handed it grip first to the lead thug.

The lead thug took the pistol, pointed it at Kevin, and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Kevin had flinched when the thug pointed his borrowed pistol at him.

But when the pistol failed to fire, a look of utter rage suffused Kevin's face.

A metal baton appeared in Kevin's hand, and he lunged towards the lead thug.

Before the lead thug could even react, there was a flash, a loud THOCK! and the lead thug crumpled to the ground, a bright red divot visible on his left temple.

At the sight of Kevin dispatching the lead thug with one solid strike of his baton, Jack's only thought was, Damn, I need to get me one of those.

Several thugs reacted by pulling out pistols of their own and trying to shoot Kevin.

Click. Click. Click.

What followed was a whirlwind of motion as Kevin utterly destroyed the remaining thugs.

Several thugs pulled knives but got their wrists broken for their trouble, followed immediately after by a quick THOCK to the skull.

Less than a minute later, the last thug dropped to the floor, and Keven turned to scan the room, breathing heavily.

At that moment, five armed men stormed into the room. They were wearing dark suits and looked vaguely like the men that had accompanied Old Man Wallingford during his encounter at the clothing store.

I bet these guys were sent by John, thought Jack.

He checked outside and saw two black SUV's screech to a halt outside the club and eight armed men in dark combat uniforms jumped out.

And those are probably the men Orin sent, he thought.

Back on the yacht, Katie asked, "Wait, if it's serious, should we have invited Kevin and them to join us?"