CORE Malfunction
an excerpt

Unfortunately, things were not looking up for Clay. Any thoughts of turning the chamber pot into a weapon were smashed when it had been retrieved later by means of a magnet held at the bottom hatch on the door. Now he was being interrogated about the nature of his gear. Luckily, they thought that he hadn’t yet planted any explosives because of the leftover charges that were still in his pack. Now he was being questioned about his screwdriver. There was nothing special about it at all, but the fools at the base probably read too many spy novels and thought it had some special hidden function. The scientist he had seen in the lab before, Schollz, he thought, was waving the tool in his face, trying to extract what the true nature of the device was. Well, might as well humor the good doctor. “Okay, doc, I’ll show you what the screwdriver does,” Clay said in as bored a voice as possible.
“Ah, no. You’re trying to trick me into giving it to you so you can do something bad to me because you think I’m foolish enough to hand it to you so you can take advantage of my ignorance. You may think you’re clever, but you’re really not!”
“Is that so?”
The doctor was surprised and supremely annoyed at this offensive attack on his superior intellect. “Yes, that’s so, you…you…you spy!”
Clay rolled his eyes. I guess I’ve found the class nerd. “Okay, doc. You got me. It’s a device that can shatter glass through ultrasonic vibration –“
Schollz interrupted giddily, “Aha! I knew it! I knew it must be something like that. The blade serves as the vibrating piece and the handle must contain the power supply! But how…to…turn…it…on…,” Schollz was inspecting the screwdriver extremely closely and trying to twist it open, or maybe find an activation ring, it was difficult to tell.
“Doc, it’s fingerprint activated. Here, give it to me. I’ll show you.”
Schollz glared at Clay for a moment, then, very reluctantly, he handed the screwdriver blade first to the captured agent seated in front of him. Clay took it slowly, not wanting to show his expectation.
The scientist snapped, “Well? Show me the real function of this device!”
Clay felt bad for Schollz and what was about to him.
“Okay, here goes.”
Clay’s hand, gripping the screwdriver like a club, lashed out, smacking Schollz in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. The screwdriver circled back around, smacking the scientist in the side of the head this time, knocking him out of his chair and into the wall of the cell, rendering him temporarily unconscious.