Fiction: Laws of Time.

Danny was running. For his life. And that made the difference.
When you run for your life your skeletal muscles somehow defy the accepted norms of human limits and suddenly you become something more than human. And that’s exactly what was happening to Danny.
However it seemed as if his pursuers were not human either, for they kept up with him. Danny wasn’t surprised. The Russian soldiers had the reputation of being superbly fit. Danny knew that the chances of him escaping alive were dismally slim but his trained mind still calculated and showed a 7 % chance of success. So he thought of a plan. He had succeeded in worse situations.
He was running through the narrow streets of Ternopol in Ukraine with near zero visibility. He had come on a secret mission hired by an American he had never seen. The American had insisted on complete secrecy. Danny had approved because the American hadn’t seen him either. But that meant that he had no diplomatic cover. Capture most certainly meant terrible nights in the dark cells of some torture chamber and slow agonizing death. He had a small pill of potassium cyanide tucked is his sleeve cuff which he kept for such occasions. So before he executed his plan he risked a glance behind him.
A tremor seized his hand and his mouth suddenly went dry for along with the men following him he saw three dark shapes running towards him. He recognized them and remembered a line that his teacher had explained “When you see ‘em running behind you and you have no cover, then stop thinking (For him to tell Danny to stop thinking was really something because throughout the course, he had told Danny all about how to perfect the art of thinking and doing it quickly) and switch to plan GHIC. GHIC stood for “god here I come”). Those were unrestrained Doberman pinschers, the most terrible and vicious fighting dogs in the world.
The chance of his accomplishment of the mission was never more than one in a hundred and now, these had lengthened astronomically. His mind quickly tried to find a possible way out but registered a complete blank. His hand tightened around his Beretta as he forced his unresponsive mind to work furiously and kept on running.
Soon he could hear the panting of the Dobermans now gaining on him. He was about to turn around and fire as a last attempt, when a sea green light illuminated the dark night and the three dogs yelped and fell. He stopped abruptly and turned around to find the source of the light. He could just make out the faint outline of a man standing about 50 feet to his left. Never the one to assume anything, he raised his gun at the man though he had just saved him. The man did not budge but it seemed he simply disintegrated.
Regaining the control of his mental faculties, he wasted no time thinking about the unexplained phenomenon but checked the dogs. They were unblemished but unmistakably dead. But the men were still after him and it was quite likely that they had seen the green flash and were headed towards him.

He swiftly ran to where the unknown man had stood and was surprised to see an object lying on the ground. He hadn’t expected that and he hated it when unexpected things happened. He did not doubt his eyesight for a moment but half of his mind wanted to believe that all of it had been some sort of hallucination. He just did not believe that god really came and helped the earthly beings and on top of that he wasn’t even a believer.
It was some sort of weapon that he was sure of, but the likes of which he had never seen before. And he had seen quite a few because a complete knowledge of weapons is an absolute necessity if you are a mercenary. Picking it up he wondered if he could use it for then he would probably have a chance against the Russians. After a methodical examination he found a small label that read
“PUT YOUR HAND IN THE SOCKET “
If he had the luxury of time, he would have been very happy to scrupulously examine the weapon before he thrust his hand inside it but he did not and so he did as the note said.
Quickly but cautiously he inserted his hand in the socket and stood still, expecting something. Nothing happened. He swore softly and tried to move his finger. He felt as if his fingers were glued to the gun and although he wasn’t to know that, they actually were. He didn’t panic although fighting the Russians with his hand stuck in a useless contraption didn’t look promising. A shot cracked and he felt a bullet whiz pass his ear. He dropped to the ground now thinking about his next course of action.