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BLACK TIGER – HYPNOTRAPPED!
Part One By Ebonart
Contact: Ebonart.gallery@gmail.com
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Black Tiger is the star of two novellas on Smashwords
- Torment:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1163827
- Spellbound:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1354017
Check out some Black Tiger 3D erotic comics at
https://www.patreon.com/Ebonart
BLACK TIGER – He’s one of the few costumed vigilantes in the Rust Belt city of Iron Harbor. As a boy, Rico Ramirez was among a group of kids kidnapped by traffickers and sold to a rogue black ops team looking to create subservient assassins. His genetic profile was combined with a Siberian Tiger, giving him increased strength, agility, endurance, and animal-level senses. Rico became Black Tiger to fight directly with the criminal element like the one that ended his old life.
IRON HARBOR - The Upper East Side - 2087 CE
Black Tiger put his back to the warehouse’s cold, wet, brick wall, closed his eyes, and listened. He stretched out with his animal-sharp senses until he could hear movement and voices inside the cavernous interior. Echoes of echoes reached him, and he could recognize familiar voices. Among them was Marco Santos, the so-called King of The East End. The man was a one-stop-shop of crime. Drugs, human trafficking, money laundering, whatever it took to raise Santos’ bank account another decimal place.
He heard cars pull up to the loading dock, and the sounds of at least six men enter. Chief among them was Andrei Pozdnyak, up-and-coming bratva dude and Santos’ main rival for the territory they were in right now.
Pozdnyak’s masters had been moving eastward for five years. They already owned Iron Harbor’s waterfront and industrial areas. Now they had their eyes on the casinos Santos owned, as well as Santos’ lucrative trafficking operation.
Black Tiger listened to their meeting. It was not going well.
At the first gunshot, he was on the move.
Black Tiger kicked open the side fire door and went in, one gun up and ready. One punch took out the door guard, and two silent shots took out the lookout. Black Tiger stepped over the groaning man. He could sympathize. He’d been on the receiving end of stun ammo before and it was far from fun.
The inside of the warehouse was chaos. Predictably, both Santos and Pozdnyak had brought soldiers, and now those men were all trying to kill the other side. The overlapping chatter of fully automatic fire from both sides had sent everyone scrambling for hard cover, and now knots of hostiles roamed among the stacked cargo containers. There was shouting in four different languages.
Black Tiger smelled blood, cordite, and fear. He climbed to the top of a container stack and laid stomach-down on it. He moved to the edge. From there, he could track three groups. Two of them were Pozdnyak’s, one was Santos’. Andrei Pozdnyak was with the first of his groups. He did not have eyes on Santos, yet. Nobody was looking up, yet, so he took the opportunity to shoot two more gunmen. His subsonic shots were silent. No stopping power, but he was looking to incapacitate, not kill. Dead men can’t roll over on their boss.
That set off more shouting. Black Tiger rolled back out of sight and moved to another container.
It took this meeting to get Andrei Pozdnyak to crawl out of whatever hole he’s been in for the past year. I’m not going to have a better chance of taking him down , Black Tiger thought. If he lives through this.
Two more shots, and two more, and that left Andrei, two of his men, and two of Santos’ men. Santos himself was dead; he’d found the body behind a crate where the man had crawled to die. Black Tiger sheathed his gun. He’d done almost all he could do at range.
He lithely dropped to the concrete floor and padded towards Andrei’s position. He stopped when he heard an electronic whine from above him. He frowned and cocked his head. The sounds were at the very edge of his enhanced hearing. Four sources. One in each corner of the warehouse, positioned so that instead of interfering with each other, they complimented, producing an effect greater than any alone could.
All at once he felt like he was walking on the bottom of a swimming pool. The very air seemed to weigh him down. He looked up and saw both Andrei Pozdnyak and one of his men stumble from their hiding place and go to their hands and knees. Slowly, he went to one knee as the effect intensified. He couldn’t describe the feeling; it was like he weighed a thousand pounds.
“Move to the center of the warehouse,” came from above, the voice unfamiliar but clear.
Black Tiger felt himself stand up and then walk into full view of the gunmen. He could not stop himself. He struggled to disobey the command, but all that did was give him a pounding headache. He slowed, but still moved, his body refusing any command he gave it.
He took slow step after slow step, struggling against the compulsion. He could see the five other conscious survivors of the gunfight also converging at the same point, all struggling much as he was. One of Santos’ men was cursing in a steady stream of Spanish. One of the bratva men was doing the same in Russian. Andrei was silent. They all glared at him when he walked into view and joined them.
Black Tiger walked to the center of the warehouse until he stood in a rough circle with four men and one woman. She had been on Santos’ team. He clenched his gloved hands into fists. Trying to even lift his arms was almost impossible. A quick look around the circle showed everyone else except Andrei doing the same thing. He was standing stock-still, head bowed, hands open.
Not a bad idea. Conserve energy . Black Tiger stopped fighting it, and his body shifted slightly on its own.
Interesting. I’m in the exact same stance as Andrei, he thought. Whatever this is, it’s bypassing conscious thought and puppeting our bodies directly.
A costumed figure in grey and white walked out of the warehouse office area, moving normally, and closed on the group. A simple face mask concealed his features.
Black Tiger could see the man’s muscles move under the suit; the gear was armored very lightly if at all, much like his own costume save over the vital areas.
On the man’s chest was a red spiral design that, if you kept your eyes on it, slowly moved. Black Tiger blinked and tried to tear his gaze from it but could not.
“Good,” the man said. “Not as many subjects as I’d hoped, but good enough for my trials.”
Black Tiger growled back in his throat and tried to tell the masked man some facts about his mother’s ancestry but could not speak. He tried to move but could not. His muscles flexed under his skintight neoleather bodysuit but to no avail.
The man smiled tightly and walked over to Black Tiger. He reached out, and his gloved hand slid over Black Tiger’s broad chest, then raised up to tease his fingers over Black Tiger’s cheek and lips.
“Very good,” the man said quietly. “My tech is working better than I had expected, Black Tiger. You’re helpless, boy. You belong to me.”
