The monster held in place for a moment

Then the huge beast staggered, a brief three-step dance across the sand, before bellowing another of its unearthly banshee wails, boiling saliva pluming around its face.

Kane watched in horror as the monster threw the crocodile-masked Incarnate to one side, and the man went head over heels before slumping to the ground, covered in sand. At the same time, the monster seemed to turn, to spin in place, its reverse-hinged legs kicking up great clumps of sand, moving faster and faster.

A blur, and then nothing. The creature was gone.

Kane rushed over before Brigid could stop him, ignoring her pleas to be careful. There was a hole in the ground now, a roughly circular tunnel that appeared to go straight down. Kane could hear scrabbling down there as the nightmarish creature disappeared from view, and he kept his Sin Eater trained on the opening in the sand for a long moment, debating in his mind whether he should follow.

Shadow Box

Outlanders®

James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks to Rik Hoskin for his contribution to this work.

“Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live?

Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the

spark of existence which you had so wantonly

bestowed?”

—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818.

The Road to Outlands—
From Secret Government Files to the Future

Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.

Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.

What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.

Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.

In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.

Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology…a question to a keeper of the archives…a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.

But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?

Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.

Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.

For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.

After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.

With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 1

A dog’s carcass lay in the middle of the street in the town called Hope. Rats surged around the corpse like a flowing river, yanking off strips of flesh with their needle-sharp teeth.

Brigid Baptiste suppressed a shudder and turned away from the revolting spectacle as she and Kane and Grant followed their diminutive guide through the narrow, twisting streets of the shantytown.

Hope was located somewhere along the southern coast of California, close to what had been the border with Arizona. With the recent fall of several baronies, the small Outland villes had been swamped with refugees seeking food and shelter. Eighteen months ago, Hope had been a quaint fishing ville with a population of less than two hundred. Now its populace had swelled to over five thousand and a vast, makeshift settlement had formed at its outskirts.

Theft and murder were daily occurrences; what people wanted they simply took. That wasn’t the whole story, of course. Many of the refugees had come to Hope genuinely looking to create a better life for themselves and their families. But crime had escalated over recent months, and Hope had become a destination for scoundrels of every stripe to hide out and carve a niche for themselves, free from reprisals.

Kane, Grant and Brigid had come to Hope chasing a rumor. Word had it that a black marketer called Tom Carnack possessed some very valuable salvage and was offering it to the highest bidder. Carnack presided over a whole tribe of loyal brigands, and he rarely left the safety of his base in the Hope shantytown.

The Cerberus crew had heard that Carnack was currently in possession of the genetic material from the baron reproduction program. The rulers of the baronies had been hybrids of human and alien DNA, and they had governed with an iron fist. More recently it had come to light that these strange hybrids were in fact the chrysalis state of a higher form of life, a warlike alien race called the Annunaki whose goal was the absolute subjugation of humankind. The ever present threat of the return of the Annunaki hung heavily over every human being on the planet. The objective of the Cerberus team had always been to safeguard humankind. Carnack’s promise of reborn barons did not bode well.

“They should have called this pesthole Hopeless,” Grant muttered as he stepped over the dog’s carcass, punting a rat out of the way with his toe. Dressed in a long leather duster, Grant was a wide-shouldered man with a towering frame, every inch of which was muscle. With skin like polished ebony, Grant wore a drooping, gunslinger’s mustache. His coarse black hair was shaved close to the scalp. Beneath the matte-black duster, Grant wore a shadow suit, a black, tightly fitting one-piece garment that served as an artificially controlled environment and offered protection against both radiation and blunt trauma.

As a Magistrate in the barony of Cobaltville, Colorado, Grant had been schooled in many forms of combat and tasked with keeping the strictly tiered human population in its place. Several years ago, the huge man had been convinced that his job was predicated upon a lie, and he had resigned with explosive finality.

Kane looked at his partner and nodded. “It was probably a nice place once,” he said quietly. Like Grant, Kane was an ex-Mag from Cobaltville. Wearing a washed-out denim jacket over his shadow suit, Kane was built like a wolf, all muscle piled at the upper half of his body, his arms and legs long and rangy. His partnership with Grant dated back to their days in Cobaltville, and many considered them an inseparable—and unstoppable—team.

The third member of the group, Brigid Baptiste, was another exile from Cobaltville. She had been an archivist, a faceless cog in the bureaucratic machine that kept each barony running smoothly. However, her friendship with Kane, coupled with her insatiable hunger for knowledge, had placed her on the wrong side of the conspiracy to subjugate humankind, and she had been forced to leave Cobaltville along with the ex-Mags when they were enlisted in the Cerberus operation by Mohandas Lakesh Singh.

Brigid was a stunning woman, tall and athletic. She tied her long, red-gold hair back in a ponytail, swept away from a high forehead that suggested strong intellect, while her full lips spoke of a passionate aspect. Her skin was pale and flawless, and her piercing emerald eyes shone as she took in the details of their nightmarish surroundings. Brigid’s real weapon was her eidetic, or photographic, memory—an ability to instantly remember the finest details of anything she had observed.

Like Grant and Kane, Brigid wore a black one-piece shadow suit over her curvaceous body, with tan boots and a brown suede jacket contrasting its stern appearance. A strip of frayed tassels ran across the back of the jacket, midway through her spine, while the boots’ Cuban heels added a further two inches to her already statuesque height.

The three of them had been following the boy through the streets for more than ten minutes now. He led them from the outskirts of the shanty community through its warrens to its stinking, rat-infested center. The boy had no shirt and no shoes, and his ribs could be seen clearly drawn along the taut skin of his pigeon chest. He wore a knife at his waistband, the naked blade shoved through a belt loop of his trousers, now and then catching the light as he jogged ahead of them. Brigid had been unable to tell if he could speak English; he had greeted them enthusiastically at the outskirts of the wreckage they called a town, nodded and gestured for them to follow him, but his only words had been, “Carnack, yes-yes, Carnack.”

The implication was he had been sent by Tom Carnack to find them, or at least he knew where Carnack was hidden—a fact that they had next to no chance of uncovering on their own. Grant had offered the boy a ration bar from the meager supply he had stashed away in his coat pockets, and the boy had eagerly accepted it, tearing at the foil wrapping and gorging on it with sharp teeth as he ran into the stinking, claustrophobic alleyways of the shantytown.

Finally, the boy led them down a tight alley so narrow that they had to walk single file. Grant was forced to walk sideways to squeeze his wide shoulders through the tightest parts. Three-quarters of the way along the alleyway, the boy pushed back a curtain that covered a doorway and glanced back at his charges before ducking inside, indicating that they should follow. Kane led the way inside, and the three teammates found themselves within a low-ceilinged reception area where two burly, scarred individuals held some heavy-duty automatic weapons on them with studied disinterest.

“You wait here,” the boy told them before disappearing through another curtain into the room beyond.

The sweet, cloying stench of marijuana filled Kane’s nostrils as he glanced at the weapons the guards held. Big-barreled automatics ending in wide muzzles like a shortened version of the ancient blunderbuss, they were a type he didn’t recognize, most likely cobbled together by a local gunsmith.

His eyes flicked to Brigid, standing to his left, and he saw her watching the door through which their guide had disappeared. Her body was relaxed, giving the careful impression that all of this was just another day, nothing out of the ordinary. Behind him, Kane could hear Grant’s steady breathing as he stood before the entry door to this ramshackle shelter, ready for a hasty exit if need be.

The curtain before them swished back and the boy returned, accompanied by a short thin man wearing a purple velvet frock coat, a loud Hawaiian shirt and a pencil-thin mustache. Kane mentally tagged the man as “Velvet Coat,” and watched as he produced an eight-inch white baton and approached the Cerberus field team.

“You have weapons?” Velvet Coat asked in English dripping with a thick, Mexican accent. He had used some sort of oil to slick back his black hair, and the scent of it assaulted Kane’s nostrils as he stepped closer.

“Sure do.” Kane nodded. They were all well aware that meeting with this crime boss would necessitate their disarming, but bringing weapons to the scene at least allowed for the possibility of using them. Besides which, everyone knew that entering the ville of Hope unarmed was foolhardy, and Tom Carnack’s people wouldn’t have expected otherwise. “You want them?”

“Slowly, if you please, and one at a time,” Velvet Coat told Kane, sweeping his gaze to address them all as the boy came forward with his empty arms outstretched to take the weapons from them.

Kane pulled a .44 Magnum pistol from the shoulder rig hidden under his jacket, and Grant did the same, producing two pistols—a Heckler & Koch and a dented .38 Police Special with a corroded finish that looked as if it had spent a hundred years in a swamp. As the sentries’ guns turned on her, Brigid slowly reached into the leather holster slung low on her hip and pulled out her TP-9 pistol. The TP-9 looked factory new, its matte-black finish unmarred, and both Velvet Coat and one of the sentries nodded their approval.

Once they were finished, Velvet Coat held the white baton before him. “You mind?” he asked Kane. “Just a precaution, nothing personal.”

“Go ahead.” Kane nodded. “It’s a shitty world, and if I were you I’d do the same.”

Kane held out his arms as the man ran the baton up and down his sides and between his legs. The baton made a low electronic ticking noise, like a Geiger counter, until Velvet Coat nodded and smiled at Kane. “Okay, you’re clean,” he confirmed, and Kane brought his arms back down and stepped aside.

Velvet Coat moved across to Brigid, who adopted the same position as Kane with her arms stretched out from her shoulders, tugging her jacket open. She stood almost eight inches taller than the mustached man, and Velvet Coat’s eyes narrowed for a moment as he admired the way the shadow suit clung to her breasts, before running the weapons sensor over her limbs and torso.

Then he moved onto Grant, who tried to look disinterested as the man ran the baton down to his feet. As the baton reached about to the level of Grant’s knee, the clicking was replaced by a shrill whine. Velvet Coat leaped backward, and the sentries raised their guns and targeted Grant’s head, stern expressions on their faces.

“Your boot, señor?” Velvet Coat said. “You will remove this for me.”

Grant lowered his arms very slowly, his eyes never leaving those of the man, very aware that he stood in the sights of two guns. “Whoa, okay,” he said, “everyone just calm down.”

“Your boot, señor,” the man stated again, his irritation barely suppressed. “Or you can forget the deal and we kill you and your friends right now.”

“Now, let’s not be hasty,” Kane began, but the man in the velvet coat held up a hand to quieten him.

“Your colleague has something in the boot there, a weapon,” Velvet Coat explained as he backed toward the curtained doorway, far away from Grant.

Grant lowered his arms slowly, trying to keep his tone calm. “It’s just a knife,” he said. “Clipped to my boot. For camping.”

“We came a long way to see you,” Brigid added. “Camped out for three nights in the Outlands.”

“Man’s gotta cut firewood somehow,” Grant explained reasonably.

“Vamonos.” Velvet Coat nodded very slowly, the slight trace of a smile on his lips. “You remove and hand over the knife,” he said, “and if I find you hiding anything else…” He left the sentence unfinished, but the implication was clear.

Grant knelt and pulled his pant leg up to reveal a scuffed leather boot that ended a little way up his calf. There was a six-inch-long, brown leather sheath there from which the handle of a knife protruded at an angle. Grant unclipped the sheath, not bothering to remove the knife. As he did so he smiled inwardly—it had been a ploy to keep up their appearances. The last thing they had wanted to do was advertise themselves as representatives of Cerberus, here to gather intelligence and shut down Carnack’s little DNA trading post, so they had come here posing as traders themselves. And any trading party worth its salt would try to sneak just one weapon into a meeting, no matter what the rules were.

Grant stood and handed the sheathed knife to the shirtless young guide, who placed it atop the little stack of guns he had amassed.

Velvet Coat stepped forward once more, watching Grant warily as he raised the baton. “Arms outstretched, please, señor,” he said, and Grant obeyed, waiting as the man ran the baton carefully over his form three full times before he was satisfied.

As a rule, Kane and Grant would each be carrying a Sin Eater pistol each in its distinctive wrist rig. The Sin Eater was the weapon of the Magistrate, a symbol of office as much as a devastating hand cannon. But its very recognizability would have caused problems in this environment, and any rationalization about acquiring the Sin Eaters from storage or from killing Magistrates was too risky to chance. They had opted instead to arm themselves lightly with fairly common pistols that wouldn’t draw any undue attention to a supposed group of traders.

Once the trio had been disarmed, Velvet Coat pushed through the curtain into the next room and held it to one side to usher the three Cerberus warriors through.

Kane turned back and shot a look at their young guide as he knelt to stash their weapons in a chest in the corner of the anteroom. “Careful with those,” he told the boy. “Family heirlooms.”

The boy smiled and nodded, but there was no recognition in his eyes. Kane suspected that he hadn’t understood the words.

“Come,” Velvet Coat said, “no tricks.”

Kane pushed past the dirty curtain and found himself inside a far bigger room. The area was ill-lit, its walls draped with sheets of orange and tan, billowing in the draft and leaving Kane with a confused and uncertain idea of the true size of the room.

The floor space seemed to cover about eighteen square feet. To the back of the room, facing the curtained entry, a young man sat low upon a smattering of cushions, slumped into their enveloping folds and cramming his mouth with berries dipped in syrup. There were two other men in the room, both well-armed and wearing fierce expressions. An attractive woman dressed in shimmering fabrics was dancing in one corner to a light jazz recording piped into the room at low volume, close enough that the man on the cushions could reach out and touch her.

“You would be the interested party,” the lounging man announced, still watching the dancing girl.

“That we would,” Kane said, impatience in his voice, “depending on what deal you’re offering here. All we’ve heard so far are rumors.”

The man’s head turned and his blue eyes met with Kane’s. He was perhaps twenty-five, lean with sunken eyes but just a little puppy fat around his jowls. He had dark hair, cut short and prematurely balding, and his chin was dark where he hadn’t shaved. With his sharp features and swift, twitching movements he reminded Kane of the rats they had seen in the streets outside.

“Rumors are tricky things,” the man said cheerfully. “Never really know what the cack you’re being told. I’m Tom.”

Kane bowed his head slightly and Grant and Brigid did likewise.

Carnack gestured that they take a seat on the cushions before him. “No need to stand on ceremony. We’re all brothers under the skin and on and on.” He smiled. “You fellas got names, I take it?”

Taking the lead, Kane kneeled on the cushions before Tom. “John Kane,” he said, “with my partners, Grant and Brigid.” This was a lie. Kane had no first name, and nor, in fact, did Grant. Magistrates were born with one name, bred to take over their father’s position in the Magistrate Division in the illusion of continuous service. The need for first names was a luxury Magistrates never enjoyed.

“Nice to meet you, John, Grant and Brigid,” Carnack said genially. “So, why don’t you start by telling me these rumors and we’ll see if we have any common ground or if you’re just pissing your time away.”

As Carnack spoke, the woman draped in shimmering silks continued to gyrate provocatively to the soft music, but Carnack appeared to have dismissed her from his mind, suddenly all business. She was tall with straight brown hair and long, shapely legs, and Kane found himself distracted by her movements for a moment.

He blinked and turned his attention back to the trader. “They say you have access to a baron,” he stated. “A young baron, ripe for training, for molding. Mentally, I mean.”

Again, this wasn’t entirely true. The rumor that had reached Cerberus was that Tom Carnack and his brigands had access to hybrid DNA blueprints and the technology to regenerate barons from them—cloning tech or birth pools or whatever. That part of the story changed in the telling from place to place. Since the hybrid barons were sterile, the only way for them to reproduce had been through artificial techniques.

“Well, you’re half-right, friend.” Carnack nodded, smiling widely. “What I’ve got is, well—did you hear what happened out in Beausoleil?”

Kane rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t get out there that much, but I heard there was some kind of aerial bombardment.” In actuality, Kane and his colleagues had walked through the rubble just a few months ago. “Maybe leveled the whole ville.”

“That’s pretty much the long and short of it,” Carnack told them. “See, the barons had some sort of disagreement and they started taking shots at one another. Don’t ask me what it’s all about, I couldn’t give a monkey’s, I can tell you. The bottom line is, the nine baronies are in turmoil, right?”

Kane nodded, encouraging the man to continue.

“Happens that I knew some folks what were in the flamin’ ville when they started bombing Beausoleil.” The trader smiled. “Almost got themselves barbecued. One of them has got half a head of hair now—you couldn’t miss him.”

Kane suppressed a smile at the man’s friendly charm. “So, what is it you have?” he asked.

“Well, once the bombing was over there was stuff there that was just ripe for the taking, see?” Carnack explained. “High risk, you know. Magistrates trying to keep out independent traders, honest folk like you and me. Anyway, I happened to acquire some genetic material, very nice stuff. Hybrid DNA. You know what that is?”

Grant snarled. “Yeah, flyboy,” he growled, “we know what it is. Nature’s building blocks for making new barons.”

“Spot on, my friend, spot on.” Carnack laughed.

“So, what use is this DNA?” Kane asked.

Carnack adjusted the cushions beneath him and sidled a little closer, holding his hand up to mask his words from the dancing girl. “World’s going to hell in a handbasket, friend,” he told Kane conspiratorially. “The baronies are all blowing up, and I figure the whole game of marbles is up for grabs for those that want it. Strong people, leaders, like you and me. Am I right?”

Kane dipped his head in a slight nod. “Right. So what do I do with this baron DNA? Just add water?”

“If you want to make baron soup.” Carnack guffawed, slapping his thigh loudly. “You’re having a laugh, right? Just add water? What are you, a clown?”

“Then what use is this DNA to me?” Kane asked, his tone somber.

“Like I was saying,” Carnack told him, “the world’s changing and everything’s up for grabs. But you try setting yourself up as a baron, friend—people will lynch you from the nearest tree. They’ve been indoctrinated, see?” He tapped the side of his head. “In their heads. These ville-raised twits all think that the hybrid barons are their natural leaders—it’s like law of the jungle or something.”

“So,” Kane said, “if I had a baron of my own I could call the shots.”

“Exactly,” Carnack told him. “If your crew want to live like barons, you set up your puppet in the position of power and you pull his strings. Welcome to John-Kaneville.” He looked at Brigid and a smile crossed his lips. “Mind you, your friend there can pull my strings anytime, if you catch my drift.”

Brigid smiled tightly at him, narrowing her eyes and saying nothing.

“Suit yourself.” Carnack smiled back before turning to address Kane once more. “So, I’m talking a small fortune for the DNA. On top of that, you’ll need birthing pods. Now, I’ve got a lot of DNA but only one set of the pods. For them you pay the motherlode, and it’s a rental—there’s no buyout option. You get me?”

“And then what?” Grant asked. “DNA in the pods makes us a baron?”

The trader shrugged. “Well, that’s the catch. We’ve got the equipment, but we’ve yet to produce a real live hybrid.”

Brigid leaned forward, suddenly interested. “How are you operating it?”

“What’s that?” Carnack asked. “How do you mean? The thing’s set up with plenty of juice but, honest, all we’ve had come out so far is dead babies. Ugly nippers, too.”

“You have whitecoats operating this? Scientists?” Brigid urged.

“Some, but they’re still working out the kinks,” Carnack admitted.

“So, why would we go in with your organization on this?” Kane asked.

“It’ll work,” Carnack assured them. “Might take another ten goes to get it right, but it’ll work. And if you want to set up a barony, you’ll need a baron. That’s science right there, my friends. Once it works the price triples. Get in early and you nab a bargain, set yourselves up for life.”

Kane gestured to Brigid. “My colleague here is a scientist.”

“Geneticist,” Brigid said by way of clarification as the trader turned to admire her once more.

“What say you to a forty percent drop if she can get your tech working?” Kane suggested.

“Friend,” Tom said, smiling, “if she can get my tech working, I’ll bloody well marry ’er.”

“Forty percent discount will be sufficient.” Brigid smiled patronizingly. “When can I look at the birthing pod?”

Carnack’s eyes lost focus for a moment, and he looked at Velvet Coat, who stood beside the exit while he thought. “Now you’re asking,” he said. “Let me go work out some details. You wait here. I won’t be a minute.”

Carnack stood from the cushions and stepped past the dancing girl, stroking her hair and kissing her cheek before disappearing through a gap in the veils that hid the contours of the walls.

Kane sat still, watching as the man disappeared. He wanted to turn to address Brigid and Grant where they knelt behind him, but the armed guards were still in the room, along with the dancing girl and Velvet Coat. This was too easy. If they could get access to Carnack’s alleged birthing pod, they could assess whether this was a genuine threat and if it was, maybe destroy it then and there.

“Seems like a nice guy,” Grant muttered under his breath after a few moments, and he felt the eyes of Carnack’s men turn on him, watching warily.

“Just watch the pretty girl, Grant,” Kane suggested out of the side of his mouth, and they sat there in silence once more while the long-limbed beauty continued her sensual dance before them.

After a moment, the dark-haired woman leaned down and stretched her arm out to Kane. “You like what you see, yes?” she said, flashing dark eyes at him.

Kane smiled. “You’re very pretty,” he told her, his eyes flicking back to the curtains where the negotiator had disappeared.

“Would you like to dance?” the girl asked.

“I don’t think that would be such a good idea,” Kane admitted.

“Tom won’t mind,” she assured him, leaning in close. Kane felt her warm breath on his cheek as she whispered in his ear, “I’m just his little fancy. You can have me if you want me. Big, strong man like you.”

Kane looked at her, admiring the way that the silks clung to her curved figure like liquid. “I really don’t think that I should,” he told her quietly.

As he finished speaking, Tom Carnack stepped back into the room brandishing a scarred Kalashnikov AK-47 rifle.

“What’s going on?” Grant asked as the other guards in the room leveled their handguns at the Cerberus teammates.

“I’m sorry, Mr. John Kane,” Carnack explained, “but Señor Smarts there recognized you the second you walked in the door.”

Standing in the doorway holding a tiny revolver, a single-shot .25 with a pearl handle, Velvet Coat mock bowed as Kane looked at him. “I can sniff out a Magistrate at fifty paces, señor.”

“What…?” Kane blustered, pulling himself up from the floor. As he did so, the dancing girl swung one of her long legs over his rising shoulder and shoved him down to the cushions so that he was lying on his back. He lay there looking straight up her torso, her legs to either side of his head.

“You should have accepted that dance, Magistrate man,” she told him, shifting her palm to reveal a shining stiletto blade. “I would have killed you so beautifully you would have wept for me to continue.”

Chapter 2

Lying beneath the dancing girl, Kane flicked his eyes to Tom Carnack. “You think we’re Magistrates?” he protested. “This is a joke, right? Little bonding exercise. No, I get it. It’s funny.” He tried to shift his weight and get the dancing girl off him but she crushed her thighs around either side of his head and gave him a warning look.

“You keep squirming, Magistrate man, and I’ll pluck your eyes out,” she told him, bringing her blade down toward his face.

Carnack took another step into the room and pointed the AK-47 at Kane’s groin. “Now, you have to appreciate that we outlanders have our own special way of dealing with Magistrate scum like you,” he snarled.

“Whoa, whoa,” Kane said. “Let’s all just take a step back and talk about this.”

“Yeah,” Brigid chipped in as she knelt on the cushions beside Grant, warily watching the two armed guards. “You’re making an awfully big mistake.” Unnoticed, her hand reached down and her fingers felt around the heel of her right boot.

“Know what?” Carnack said as his gaze took her in. “You, I might just let live. If you’re interested in a new position.”

Brigid shook her head and laughed. “I’m not your type. You’d only get bored of me.”

Suddenly her hand flicked forward as she tossed the Cuban heel from her boot at the man’s face. Before Carnack could react, Brigid, Grant and Kane turned away and the heel exploded in a dazzling flash of brightness and noise.

His ears rang and spots swam before Kane’s eyes as he opened them and looked around the room once more. Above him, the dancer was shaking her head, eyes balled tight against the sudden pain that Brigid’s flash-bang had caused. In the enclosed space and semidarkness of the tentlike room, the flash-bang had an awesome effect, like staring at the sun through a telescope.

Kane tossed the dancing girl off him, slapping her to one side as he stood. “Let’s get out of here,” he said as he turned to his companions, who were warily getting up from the floor. Even with their eyes closed and their heads turned away, the effects of the flash-bang in the little room had still been strong. Heaven only knew what Carnack’s crew had to have been thinking right then.

At the door, the velvet-coated Señor Smarts was reaching for his face, his tiny handgun forgotten as tears streamed from his eyes. “I’m blind, I cannot see,” the effete Mexican wailed.

Grant stepped across to him and punched him solidly in the jaw, knocking the man backward into the wall hidden behind the drapes. Smarts slammed against it with the back of his head and crashed down to the floor, unconscious.

A second later, alerted by the noise of the flash-bang, the two burly guards from the anteroom stormed in through the part in the curtains. Grant dropped to the floor and angled a swift leg sweep, knocking both of them onto their backs. He lunged at the closer man, left hand held flat, and rammed him in the throat, bruising his windpipe and sending him into instant unconsciousness.

The second guard struggled to pull his gun out from under him and began to raise it in Grant’s direction, but Brigid was already beside him. She kicked her right leg out and up, knocking the pistol from the man’s grip. He yelped in pain as the gun disappeared over his shoulder and through the curtain back into the anteroom. Then Grant swung a powerful fist into the man’s face, crushing his nose in an explosion of blood. The man shook his head, droplets of blood spraying left and right, struggling to get to his feet so that he could take on Grant. The ex-Mag drove another jab at the man’s face and he slumped back, his head lolling on his neck, unconscious like his companion.

Meanwhile, Kane had walked across to Tom Carnack, who was doubled over and clawing at his face with one hand, tears streaming from his eyes. Kane grabbed the Kalashnikov midway along its barrel and yanked it from the man’s grip with a single, mighty heave. At the same time, Brigid and Grant disarmed the two other blinded guards.

“Okay, Tom and Tom’s people,” Kane announced. “I want you all to listen up. See, you really did make a mistake. We’re not Magistrates come to haul you in. But we’re also not the kind of people you can just screw over like this. So now we’re negotiating ourselves some new terms.”

Carnack’s face was bright red, and his bloodshot eyes were open but unfocused. “Go screw yourself,” he snarled.

Kane swung the heavy barrel of the Kalashnikov into the man’s face, connecting with a loud crack and knocking the smaller man onto his back. “I don’t think we need any more of that attitude,” Kane spit. “Here’s how it’s going down. You, me and my associates are going to walk out of here together, and you’re going to take us to wherever it is you have the hybrid DNA and the birthing pod stashed. And in return for handing them over, gratis, I am going to be very generous and let you live, on the basis that you close up shop here in Hope. Okay?”

“What are you?” Carnack growled, wiping blood from his mouth where the blow from the Kalashnikov had loosened a tooth. “Some kind of joker? You’re surrounded by a whole bloody ville of my men. I ain’t going to give you squat, buddy. Squat, got it?”

Kane smiled humorlessly. “If you tip-off your men, if you so much as breathe funny once we leave this room, I will shoot you in the head. You understand?”

“Do I look like an idiot? You’d never get out of Hope alive, Magistrate,” Carnack stated bitterly.

“Ninety seconds ago you had a gun pointed at my crotch and your gal pal here was about to take my eyes out,” Kane told him. “I’m thinking that this here is a step up. Now, on your feet, we’re leaving.”

Tom Carnack spit a gob of blood to the floor as he slowly lifted himself from the disarrayed cushions. Kane noticed there was a single broken tooth shining amid the splash of blood.

Grant slipped through the curtain back into the anteroom while Brigid kicked back her foot until the heel of her left boot snapped free. Kane looked at her and she shrugged.

“I’m not running around on one heel,” she told him. “That’s a sure ticket to spinal damage.”

“I didn’t say anything.” He held the Kalashnikov steady on Carnack.

Then he raised his voice, calling to Grant, “Everything okay out there?”

Grant’s head popped through the drapes a moment later, his brow furrowed with concern. “I got into the trunk but the kid’s disappeared.”

Carnack nodded knowingly. “Benqhil has gone for help. You’re dead men,” he snarled.

“Yeah, pal,” Kane said, dismissing him, “heard it all before. Distribute the weapons and let’s move, Grant,” Kane urged, shoving Carnack toward the rift in the drapes.

As they left the room, the dancing girl writhed on the floor, still clawing at her eyes. “Did you hear? They’re taking Tom. Are you all buffoons? Stop them.”

Her pleas went unacknowledged—the guards in the room were either unconscious or still blind and deaf from the flash-bang.

Outside, the chest on the floor of the anteroom stood open, its lock smashed in two where Grant had either pulled or kicked it apart. Grant handed Brigid her compact TP-9, and she checked its ammo clip was still in place before she led the way into the street outside. The TP-9 was a midsized semiautomatic weapon, roughly the length of Brigid’s arm from wrist to elbow. The bulky pistol had a grip just off center beneath the barrel, and a covered targeting scope across the top for pinpoint work. The whole unit was finished in molded, matte black.

Grant clipped the sheathed knife back on his boot and shoved the corroded Police Special into an inside pocket of his black leather duster, keeping the Heckler & Koch in his right hand. He offered the .44 Magnum weapon to Kane, who shook his head.

“Seems a shame to lose the Kalashnikov,” Kane told him, “but it would be bastard conspicuous out on the street.”

While Grant held both pistols on their blinded prisoner, Kane removed the clip from the AK-47 and pocketed it before tossing aside the empty rifle.

“They’ve probably got spare ammo,” Grant warned.

“Of course they have,” Kane agreed as he took the .44 Magnum weapon from his partner, “but they’ll be blind for a couple more minutes yet, and I intend to be long gone by the time they’ve reloaded it.” With that, he shoved a firm hand between Carnack’s shoulder blades and pushed him through the curtain into the tight alleyway after Brigid. “Keep going forward, fast as you can,” Kane told him, “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

“I can’t see anything, you idiot,” Carnack screamed at him as he batted at the wall in front of his face.

“So, run your hand along the wall if it helps,” Kane suggested. “Just keep moving.”

Brigid Baptiste waited for them in an alcove across the main street at the end of the alleyway, the TP-9 cradled in her hands, partially hidden by the shadows. The whole shantytown reminded the three of them of the Tartarus Pits back in Cobaltville, the ghetto level that sat at the base of every ville structure, both metaphorically and physically, supplying cheap labor and offering dire warning to those who disobeyed the baron.

The whole ville stank of human waste, and people watched warily as they made their way into the light. None of the street people looked well fed. By contrast, the physically powerful Cerberus warriors had to have looked like gods to their eyes.

“We got a way out of here?” Grant asked as he mentally checked off the people milling in the street, reassuring himself that no one was taking any undue interest in their progress.

“Our best bet is to head for the docks and pick up a boat there,” Brigid said.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Kane asked her.

Brigid smiled, tapping the side of her head with her empty hand. “I saw satellite recon photos before we came,” she told them. “I’ve got a pretty good idea of the layout of this rathole. Soon as we get back on the main thoroughfare I’ll find us the right route.”

Kane pushed Carnack between the shoulder blades again as they rushed through the narrow streets. “Keep moving,” he growled, his finely tuned senses alert, warily watching for signs of possible attack.

“Oy,” Carnack yelled behind him, “careful, fella. I can’t see, remember? What the bleeding eff was that thing, anyway?”

“Just keep quiet and keep moving,” Kane told him sullenly. “Your eyesight will come back soon enough.”

“That’s reassuring,” Carnack muttered, rubbing at his eyes as he rushed forward. “Right now it sounds like everyone’s underwater, too, you know? You’re a bunch of frackin’ idiots.”

They had reached an intersection and Brigid had stopped, looking down each of the routes, trying to fit them together with the map in her mind.

“Come on, Baptiste,” Kane urged as he glanced over his shoulder, checking for pursuit, “let’s hurry it up.”

“This way,” she decided, her long legs kicking out as she raced off to the left.

Carnack just stood there, refusing to move. Kane shoved him once more while Grant covered their backs with the Heckler & Koch.

“All right,” Tom Carnack yelped, “keep your hair on. I’m disabled, remember?”

“About that,” Kane said, checking his wristchron. It had been three minutes since they had exited Carnack’s lair, almost five since Brigid had unleashed the flash-bang. Ample time for Carnack to recover, at least enough to see shapes and blurs. “How’s your vision?” Kane asked him.

“Completely scragged,” Carnack complained.

“You’re faking,” Kane told him. “You should have recovered by now. If you’re deliberately slowing us down I’m going to shoot you in the foot and carry you the rest of the way.”

“Genius,” Carnack said, snidely. “That’ll only slow you down more.”

“That’s my problem,” Kane growled, whipping out his .44 Magnum pistol and pointing it at Carnack’s stumbling feet.

There was a loud report as he pulled the trigger and buried a slug in the ground between the trader’s feet. Carnack leaped aside, pulling his hands over his ears.

“That’s your warning shot,” Kane told him. “The next one hobbles you.”

“All right,” Carnack cried, hands up in the air. “I can see colors and shapes. It’s still a bit messed up, though, so I’m going to go slow. Okay?”

“Speed up,” Kane responded, “and keep moving.”

They turned another corner into a wide thoroughfare, stepping past a man with a burned face and a begging bowl who was lying in the middle of the street. Between the tightly packed shanty buildings Kane saw a glint of sunlight reflecting off water.

Brigid waited while her companions caught up. “We’re close,” she told Kane as he grabbed Carnack’s collar to halt him. “There’s a series of jetties down there. It’s where the ville folk fish from. Or they used to.”

Kane nodded, peering behind and checking to see if anyone was following.

“There’s an unmanned motorboat off to the left,” Brigid pointed when Kane turned back. “Just a little way along from the pier.” Her finger pointed to a small fishing scow with a tiny covered bridge.

“You’ll never make it.” Carnack laughed fiercely. “My people will ex the lot of you the second you step out there.”

Brigid grabbed the man’s stubbled chin. “Sorry, Tom. We’re home free,” she told him. “Didn’t you hear—they’re not coming for you. There’s no honor among thieves.”

“Scratch that,” Grant chided from the rear of the group. “We’ve got company.”

Brigid and Kane looked in Grant’s direction and saw four dark shapes weaving along the narrow street at high speed: three motorcycles and a quad bike followed by a billowing plume of dark exhaust.

Carnack looked at Brigid and laughed. “Before the end of the day I’ll have you right where I want you, red,” he said, “bunny hopping across my lap.”

“Keep moving,” Kane said, ignoring the man’s vile comment.

More people were milling where the streets opened up onto the waterfront, and Brigid looked back at Kane as she took them in. “It’s too crowded, Kane,” she told him. “Someone’s going to end up getting hurt.”

Kane checked behind him for the approaching gang members, then shoved Carnack toward Brigid. “Cover him,” he instructed. “I’m going to clear us a path.” With that, he strode forward and raised his pistol in the air, pumping three shots into the sky in quick succession. “Everyone get out of here,” Kane shouted over the frightened cries of the crowd.

They didn’t need to be told twice. Everyone ran to the edges of the ramshackle street, ducking into doorways and clearing a path for Kane and his team.

Behind him, Kane heard gunshots as Grant began firing at the approaching marauders. He refilled the chambers of the .44 Magnum pistol and turned to face the enemy.

Beside Grant, Brigid raised her TP-9 pistol and blasted off a stream of shots down the street as the motorcyclists and quad riders approached.

Seeing his chance, Tom Carnack took a step away from her, his bloodshot eyes fervently looking around for an escape route. Suddenly, he felt Brigid’s elbow slam into his gut and he doubled over, his breath exploding out of his mouth in a coughing whoop.

“Stay still,” she told him, thrusting her free arm around his throat and holding him against her hip in a headlock. Carnack continued to cough and splutter as Brigid pumped the trigger of her pistol, firing shots at the approaching gang members.

Their attackers were the same guards they had seen in Carnack’s trading pad. The velvet-coated Señor Smarts sat on a motorcycle behind one of the guardsmen from the main room, a spooky-looking man wearing a bandanna across his head and goggles over his eyes to protect them from flying grit. Beside him, his partner was riding alone on his own motorbike, spinning a chain in one hand as he powered the throttle. A pace behind them, the dark-haired dancing woman rode her own bike. There was a scabbard attached to the side of the bike, the shining hilt of a sword sticking out beside her right knee. Bringing up the rear of the group, the two large guards from the anteroom shared a quad bike that belched a thick cloud of black exhaust into the air around them. While one drove, the other raised a Kalashnikov autorifle and aimed at the Cerberus field team. The muzzle flashed as the guard launched a stream of bullets into the narrow street.

Kane, Grant and Brigid each pulled back, finding what little cover they could at the sides of the street, backs against the walls, with Brigid and her prisoner standing close to Kane. On the other side of the street, Grant took careful aim and his bullet clipped the shoulder of Velvet Coat, almost toppling the bike as he reeled in pain.

Then the vehicles were upon them.

Kane held the .44 Magnum pistol in a two-handed grip, steadying his aim as he blasted three shots into the driver of the quad bike. The man slumped in the saddle and the bike veered off to the side, crashing through the flimsy walls of one of the ramshackle huts that lined the street.

Brigid took aim at the second bike, the one with the guard wielding the chain, as it bore down on her. Carnack’s struggling tipped her aim, and her shots skewed wide. Suddenly, the bike was next to her, zipping past at a ferocious speed, the guard’s chain spinning through the air with an audible thrumming. She ducked back as the bike passed, and her eyes widened as she saw the chain whip out and snag Grant’s ankle, pulling the big man off his feet.

“Eyes front, Baptiste,” Kane’s bellowing voice warned from behind her as Grant was dragged off onto the pier. She looked back and saw the dancing girl’s sword cleave the air at waist height, just barely missing her while the other bike skidded to a halt a few steps ahead.

As the sword cut the air beside him, Kane’s empty hand shot out and tangled in the woman’s long brown hair. In a fraction of a second, the motorcycle tipped up as the dancing girl was yanked from the saddle, still clinging to her sword.

She appeared to be falling backward, but her momentum dragged her ahead, pulling Kane into a stumbling run for a moment before her snagged hair ripped from her scalp and he let go. She crashed to the ground, slamming hard against it on her back as her bike sped away, the distinctive note of its two-stroke engine rising as it raced out of control.

She was quick; Kane acknowledged that much. She had hit the ground hard, but she rolled and was standing before him in less than two seconds. She stood low, adopting a fighter’s stance as she held the heavy sword behind her, readying for attack. There was blood in her hair, and she gritted her teeth in a fierce smile as her eyes met with Kane’s.

The bandanna-wearing guard had pulled his bike around, kicking up dirt as the tires tore against the makeshift road surface. Brigid struggled to target him with her TP-9 while Tom Carnack squirmed against her side in the headlock. She seemed only able to watch as the motorcyclist pulled a revolver from his jacket’s inside pocket and aimed it directly between her eyes.

Meanwhile, already thirty yards away, racing down the rough wooden slats of the fishing pier, Grant found himself dragged behind the rider of the other motorcycle, his right ankle caught up in the chain that the man held. His back slapped the splintering pier beneath him, tossing him in the air before dropping him back down hard against its surface, knocking the breath out of him and giving him no time to recover.

Realizing that the slats were evenly spread, Grant timed his breaths and tried to focus his vision on the jostling view of the rider. He was momentarily tossed into the air once more, and as his shoulders took the brunt of another hard landing, Grant raised the pistol in his hand and aimed down the length of his body at the motorcycle, praying he would manage to avoid shooting his own foot off.

The Heckler & Koch spit, and three bullets flew through the air. The first one hit the rider just behind the ear, causing him to turn the handlebars violently and forcing the motorbike into a skid. The second shot went wide, flying over the top of Grant’s target, but the third bullet hit the bike beneath the saddle, drilling through the chassis and into the fuel tank.

With a blossoming explosion, motorbike and rider caught light as it sped off the side of the pier with Grant still dragging behind it.

The motorbike and its flaming rider hit the blue-green waters of the ocean with a splash, before sinking immediately beneath the waves and pulling Grant along with them as the flames were extinguished.

“Oh, crap,” Grant snarled as his head ducked beneath the water and he felt himself plummeting toward the bottom.

Back on the pier, Kane watched as the bike caught fire and Grant disappeared off the side of the wooden structure, dragging behind it. But there was no time to react—the dancing girl was already upon him, swinging the wide blade of her sword in a sweeping arc intended to rip his chest in two. Kane leaped backward, barely an inch out of reach.

“Looks like we get to dance after all, Magistrate man,” the dark-haired woman announced, her eyes flashing.

“I’ve got two left feet,” Kane replied, raising his pistol and targeting her head with the heavy Magnum handgun.

And then, with no warning, the ground started shaking, rocking the whole, flimsy ville of Hope. Kane and his beautiful opponent staggered before falling to their knees.

Chapter 3

Pulled down by the weight around his ankle, Grant held his breath as he sank beneath the waves. He opened his eyes, feeling the salty sting of the ocean press against them as he plummeted from the surface. Beneath him, the rider and the motorcycle were sinking rapidly, and the rider still clung to the length of chain that was wrapped around Grant’s ankle. The ex-Mag fought for a moment, trying to swim away from his sinking adversary, but the chain was cinched tight and he would have to disentangle himself before he could escape.

Grant looked back down the length of his body, watching the darkness of the ocean envelop the bike and its rider. He discarded the Heckler & Koch, letting it drift away from him on the current as he twisted his body in an effort to reach for his trapped ankle.

The darkness was closing around him now, and his chest was starting to yearn to take its next breath. Soon it would be hard to see the chain.

As he scrambled over himself, plunging his arms toward his weighted foot, Grant felt something slam his body beneath the water, as though he had hit a solid wall. He was thrown about in the ocean depths, spun and shunted, as the wall of pressure hit him. Light followed by darkness, then light again, his breath blurting from his mouth in a rush of bubbles, and suddenly Grant could no longer tell which way was up.

Beneath him, or at least at the end of his foot, the rider clung to the chain as his motorcycle was wrenched from under him, and Grant watched in astonishment as the heavy two-wheeler seemed to dance around then disappear over his head.

Suddenly another wall of pressure collided with Grant’s body, and he seemed to pirouette in the dark waters of the Pacific. He felt something pull at his foot as he was tossed around, and suddenly his assailant’s face rushed before his eyes before spinning away.

THE MAN IN THE bandanna and goggles was about to pull the trigger of his Beretta when the first tremor hit, shaking the ground violently and throwing Brigid and her prisoner into a staggering, graceless dance.

Brigid heard the gun blast, watched the bullet speed over her head as she toppled over, releasing her headlock grip on Tom Carnack. A moment later, the dirt track of the ground was rushing toward her face and she thrust her hands forward, still clutching the TP-9, and braced for impact.

When Brigid let go, Tom Carnack found his feet wrenched from under him and suddenly he was in the air, sailing across the width of the street. His brief flight was cut short as his frame slammed against the side of one of the makeshift huts, knocking a thin, plywood wall into splinters before he caught the structure’s metal support pole in midstomach. His breath spluttered out of him as the brigand leader sank to the floor inside the ruined little hut.

The gunman, meanwhile, found his bike and rider, Señor Smarts, dragged away beneath him, and the handlebars clapped into his pelvis, sending a wave of sudden agony through the top of both legs before flipping him to the ground. His jaw hit the dirt road with a resounding thud, making his ears ring once more.

The motorcycle still beneath him, Señor Smarts became tangled with the vehicle as it flipped over itself, again and again, sliding along the street as though at the top of a sharp incline. Smarts’s head cracked repeatedly into the ground as he was dragged backward.

Close by, at the entrance to the pier, Kane and the sword-wielding dancing girl were brought to their knees by the sudden shock. Kane reached forward, his left palm slapping into the wooden slats of the pier as he tried to halt his fall. Beside him, the dancing girl rolled forward, taking the brunt of the fall on her shoulder before turning to face him, still kneeling.

Kane saw the startled look in her eyes, and he was about to question her when a second tremor ran through the pier and he felt the ground shake where it touched his legs and steadying hand. Before his eyes, the dark-haired swordswoman toppled over and rolled down the pier. All around, people and loose items were being tossed about, and Kane heard the crash as several of the poorly constructed buildings collapsed.

Kane clawed the ground as it rumbled beneath him, throwing him onto his side. He lay there, facing the pier as the shock wave thundered through the ground. Abruptly, the pier beneath him disintegrated, and Kane reached frantically behind him to secure a grip on the ground as the whole structure crashed into the ocean, the dancing girl and a handful of fishermen dropping with it. As the pier fell, Kane saw the rising wave behind it, growing from twenty to a monstrous forty feet as he watched, rolling toward him with unstoppable force.

Kane braced himself as the wave crashed over him, the weight of water blocking out the sunlight for a moment before the surge of water crashed down and smothered the seafront buildings.

Kane’s grip was broken as the wave swelled all around him, and he found himself being shunted along the street before being pulled backward toward the ocean along with several dozen locals and their belongings as they were caught up in its ferocious torrent.

GRANT FOUND HIMSELF caught up in the immense wave as it crashed down on the buildings that lined the beach. It was like flying, the water streaming all around him, pushing him unstoppably onward as it tossed him high in the air. He gasped, gulping in air and seawater as he hurtled ever onward, and he saw the motorcycle and, separately, its rider, race away as they were caught up in other parts of the colossal wave.

Suddenly, the wave lost integrity and the ground was rushing beneath him, fifteen feet below. Grant looked ahead and saw sunlight glint off of the corrugated tin roof of one of the huts, and, quicker than he could acknowledge it, he was shoved into the roof and sent rolling over and over until the whole single-story structure collapsed in on itself.

BRIGID WATCHED AS, caught up in the huge wave, Grant’s familiar form sailed overhead and crashed into a wide hut a little way along the street. She held herself low to the ground as the tremor subsided, remaining there for a few seconds until she was certain that the shock wave had passed.

When she looked up again, she saw that the structure that Grant had hit had collapsed in on itself, and a number of the ramshackle buildings along the street were in a similar state of disrepair. Whatever had hit them had hit hard, like a heavy stone being dropped in a pond, the ripples spreading across its surface until its energy was finally spent.

Carefully, Brigid got back on her feet and, steadying her grip on the pistol with her free hand, checked the street. The motorcyclist who had pointed the gun at her head was nowhere to be seen, nor were his bike and passenger. Tom Carnack lay amid the rubble of a building that now stood on the beachfront, where a minute earlier it had been three buildings back. His eyes were closed, and blood was oozing from a wound around his hairline above the right eye.

The street itself was three inches deep in clear water, swells of foam bobbing along here and there as it ran back toward the ocean.

The pier was gone, and Brigid checked the faces of the shocked and wounded who were recovering all around, trying to locate Kane. Neither he nor his lithe opponent were to be seen, and Brigid tamped down the urge to rush to look for him. Grant was just down the street, and she needed to ensure that he was okay first. Plus, assuming he was all right, the two of them could cover more ground in the search for their teammate.

Still clutching the TP-9, Brigid jogged along the street, her boots splashing in the carpet of flowing water, until she reached the collapsed building that she had seen Grant thrown through. Her hearing was coming back now, after the colossal crashing of the huge wave had briefly deafened her, and she could hear screaming and crying coming from all around. The burned beggar was gone; he and his bowl had presumably been washed away. Children were running around in the street, a naked toddler wailing as he stumbled through the road, looking for a friendly face.

Brigid leaned down and scooped up the unclothed toddler, lifting him to shoulder height and looking to make sure that he wasn’t wounded. “There, there,” she told him quietly, “it’s okay now. It’s okay. Hush now.”

Carrying the child over one shoulder, Brigid kicked rubble aside and made her way into the remains of the collapsed hut. “Grant?” she called, raising her voice. “It’s Brigid. Are you here?”

She listened for a moment, watching the rubble for signs of her partner. Grant’s familiar voice came rumbling from across to the right, and Brigid saw the wreckage move and his hand appear above the mess. She rushed across the rubble, taking care not to trip as she balanced the toddler close to her chest, and leaned down to help shift the debris.

A moment later, Grant was struggling out of the shattered remains of the building, water pouring from his coat and his skin caked with pale dust. He wiped a hand over his face and smiled at Brigid. “What the freak just happened?” he asked her, a snarl replacing his smile.

Brigid shook her head, rocking the toddler in her arms. “I don’t know,” she told Grant. “Felt like maybe a bomb blast, but I didn’t hear the explosion. Earthquake maybe?”

“You think?” Grant asked.

Brigid shrugged. “The San Andreas Fault runs through here,” she speculated. “If you look at the old maps, you’ll see that it pretty much wiped out most of the West Coast a couple of centuries back, after the nukes fell.”

Grant nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll see if I can raise Lakesh and get some intel,” he told her. Then the huge ex-Mag looked around. “Where’s Kane?” he asked.

“He was on the pier when it dropped into the sea,” Brigid said, clambering over the rubble and back onto the waterlogged street.

Grant shook his head angrily as he followed her. “This day just keeps getting worse,” he growled. With that, he activated the Commtact that was embedded subcutaneously behind his right ear and patched through to Cerberus headquarters.

“This is Grant in the field, Lakesh, Donald? Are you guys receiving me?”

There was a brief pause and then Donald Bry’s friendly voice came to Grant, uplinked to a satellite from the operations room in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana. “Hey, Grant, how are things? Mission accomplished?”

The Commtact units were top-of-the-line communication devices that had been discovered in a military installation called Redoubt Yankee several years before, and they had become standard equipment for the Cerberus field operatives. Commtacts featured sensor circuitry incorporating an analog-to-digital voice encoder that was subcutaneously embedded against the mastoid bone. Once the pintels made contact, transmissions were picked up by the auditory canals, and dermal sensors transmitted the electronic signals directly through the user’s skull casing. Theoretically, if a wearer went completely deaf he or she would still be capable of hearing, after a fashion, by using the Commtact.

Permanent usage of the Commtact would involve a minor surgical procedure, something many of the Cerberus staff were understandably reticent to submit to, and so their use had stalled, for the moment, at field-test stage. Besides radio communications, the Commtacts could be used as translation devices, providing a real-time interpretation of spoken foreign language on the proviso that sufficient vocabulary had been programmed into their data banks.

The Commtacts could be uplinked to the Keyhole satellite, allowing communication with the field teams, which was a considerable improvement on the original design parameters of the communications technology.

“Mission parameters may have changed,” Grant responded. “We think we were just hit by an earthquake. At least, we’re hoping it was an earthquake. You have any info at your end?”

“I’m bringing up the feed data now, Grant,” Bry’s voice came back crisply over the Commtact.

At the Cerberus redoubt in Montana, Donald Bry had access to a wealth of scrolling data from satellites and ground sensors. In his mind’s eye, Grant could almost see the man working to bring up all the available data and extrapolate a logical conclusion.

“No evidence of any aerial bombing raid, Grant, but it might be an underground test, of course,” Bry suggested after a moment’s thought.

“Of course,” Grant replied, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

Ahead of him, Brigid was standing at the edge of the damaged pier, looking over the side at the roiling waters below. People were rushing about, their clothes soaked through, desperately searching for their friends and families.

Bry’s voice piped over the Commtact once more. “Grant? I’m going to speak with Lakesh and Dr. Falk, see if they have any insights into the data we’re receiving. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Cool,” Grant replied laconically as the transmission ended.

Brigid was scanning the water, the toddler clambering over her shoulder, his face still red where he had been crying. “What did Cerberus say?” she asked, not bothering to turn to Grant.

“They’re not sure yet,” Grant told her as he took in the mass of frightened faces that bobbed in the water. “Bry says there’s no evidence of aerial bombing. Beyond that he’s as in the dark as we are.”

“Earthquake,” Brigid said. “I’ll bet you.”

The water poured between their feet as the Cerberus teammates scanned the water for their missing colleague. Parts of the pier bobbed about amid the people that had been caught up in the enormous wave; almost the whole structure had been reduced to worthless driftwood in the space of five seconds. A strut of the pier still stood at an angle, no longer connected to the shore. As Grant’s eyes brushed over it he spotted the familiar lean figure of Kane clambering up its leg and securing himself against it with one arm before reaching with his free hand into the water and pulling a woman up by the arm. He was fifty yards from them, surrounded by water.

Grant tapped Brigid on the shoulder and pointed to the figure. “Kane,” he stated.

“Got him.” She smiled. There was a special bond between Brigid Baptiste and Kane, something more fundamental than a mere emotional connection. They were anam-charas, soul friends destined to be together no matter what configuration they found themselves in, friends throughout eternity.

Still holding the TP-9, Brigid rubbed a reassuring hand over the toddler she was cradling over her left shoulder before she turned to face Grant. “Whatever happened, there’s a lot of hurt and frightened people out here, Grant,” she told him. “We need to start helping them, set up some kind of program for medical treatment.”

“What about the mission?” he asked, and then he checked himself. “No, skip it—you’re right. Let’s take the slope down to the beach and start hauling people out of the water.”

Brigid agreed and together they made their way to the waterfront, which was now littered with the debris that had just recently been a ville called Hope.

WITH ONE ARM stretched around the strut of the pier and his feet resting on the little ledge that surrounded its foot, Kane inhaled deep lungfuls of air before reaching back into the water. The dancing girl was bobbing a little way over from him, eyes closed, floating on her back. He stretched out and guided her to him, lifting her up onto the small sill of the strut. “You okay?” he asked as her eyes fluttered open and she spluttered for breath.

Her sword was long gone, but as soon as she saw him, her mouth broke into a snarl and she spun around, reaching for his face with hands formed into claws. As she did so, she began slipping from the ledge and Kane reached out to steady her. “Take it easy.” he told her. “Fight’s over.”

“What are you talking about, Magistrate man?” she spit as he held her firmly by the shoulder.

“Something hit us, I think,” he explained. “Whatever it was it’s done plenty of damage. Look.” He pointed to the coastal ville stretched out before them.

The dancing girl followed where he had indicated, and Kane heard her sharp intake of breath. The makeshift shanty structures of the settlement had been ripped apart by the tidal wave, and at least seventy percent of the ville had been reduced to rubble. From their vantage point they could see people running about like ants, desperately searching for missing loved ones.

“What happened?” the dark-haired woman asked, be wildered.

“I have no idea,” Kane admitted. “Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter right now. Some of these people will need help getting out of the water. Can you swim?”

“What?” she responded. “Saving people and their shit? Is this, like, the Magistrate code?”

“No,” Kane declared, fixing her with his no-nonsense stare. “It’s called being a fucking human being. Now, can you swim?”

She nodded, chastised.

Kane looked out at the people struggling all around them in the water. “You’re young and fit,” Kane told the dancing girl. “You get in there and you save some lives, you understand?”

She nodded once more and followed Kane as he dived into the churning waters.

TOM CARNACK WATCHED as the redhead and the dark-skinned Magistrate—or whatever he was—disappeared down the slope leading to the beach. He felt cold and nervous, on edge, and there was a pain below his ribs where he had collided with the metal strut.

Slowly, carefully he grasped the pole that had winded him and he pulled himself up to a standing position, albeit bent over like an elderly man. Teeth gritted, he winced as pain ran through his gut. He had to have taken quite a hit, though the memory was abating, already vague and insubstantial.

Carnack looked around, taking in his surroundings. He remembered that there had been a loud noise, and the world had turned upside down as he was tossed through the air before…He shook his head, trying to piece the episode together. He was standing in the collapsed ruin of a hut. He could make out the square of the floor plan, what looked like a two-room dwelling constructed of the flimsiest of materials. Sheets of plywood were split and splintered. They had doubtless formed the walls of the habitation before whatever it was had knocked them over. Was it him? Had he done this?

I have to get out of here, Carnack realized, his thoughts slow and fuzzy. His head ached, a low-level buzzing, like when he hadn’t had enough sleep, or sometimes when he’d had too much. He stood there, doubled over himself, his hand clinging to the metal pole that had once supported the roof of the hut, and he drew in a long, slow breath, feeling the clawing pain as his diaphragm moved. Whatever had just happened had given him an opportunity for escape, and Tom Carnack was one man who knew when to exploit an opportunity.

In a stumbling, lurching walk, Carnack made his way back into the ruins of Hope, disappearing among the frightened crowds.

THE SUN HAD SET and risen and set once more, and a half moon was rising in the clear sky at the end of their second day in Hope. Kane, Grant and Brigid had worked solidly through that first afternoon, organizing a temporary camp for the survivors of the quake and providing what little medical attention they could for the wounded. A lot of people had been shaken up quite badly by the massive earth tremor, but there were only nine reported deaths, mostly where the makeshift buildings had collapsed on people, although two more had drowned in the savage tidal wave that had followed the quake.

Kane had watched with growing admiration as the swordswoman, whose name was Rosalia, had turned her attention to first rescuing those people stuck in the water who had either never learned or were too panicked to swim, and then helping to entertain the lost children by teaching them the flowing movements that came naturally to her as a dancer.

“You have quite a way with children,” he remarked as they sat eating breakfast together after that first, long night.

“Children are the same as men,” she told him with a malicious gleam in her eyes, “easily captivated by simple movements.”

Kane laughed at that. “Well, I suppose it depends on who’s doing the movements,” he admitted.

The dozen or so lost and unclaimed children had slept in a storeroom behind the main hall. Kane watched the roll of her hips as Rosalia walked to the room to wake them up. As he watched, the dark-eyed woman looked back at him over her shoulder, and her hair fell over her face, adding to her exotic allure as she offered him a warm smile before leaving the hall.

Señor Smarts had offered to help, too, once he had recovered from the pounding his body had taken when he had been thrown down the street astride the motorcycle. Initially, he had wandered the now brackish streets in a daze, but when he had heard that people were getting organized at the robust church buildings, he had arrived at the door and asked how he might assist. Along with Brigid, Smarts had helped organize a reception system at the church hall where lost family members might be found.

The steady stream of lost and weary people seemed never-ending, but finally, as the sun disappeared over the horizon for the second time since the quake, their numbers started to dwindle as people began making their way back to their ruined dwellings and thinking about picking up their lives again.

While the church hall was quiet, Brigid peeled back the bandage that was wrapped around Smarts’s head and took a proper look at the wound there. “You took quite a beating,” she said, dabbing at the dried blood with a damp cloth while Grant looked on.

Across the hall, Kane was busy with the onerous task of helping frightened relatives identify the handful of dead bodies. Rosalia was sitting with five children, telling them an old story she recalled from her own childhood. There were other locals there, too, officials and selfless do-gooders who had stepped in to man the recovery operation with no thought of their own concerns. It was remarkable how well the locals and the refugees had pulled together, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in adverse circumstances.

Señor Smarts shot a fierce look at Grant as he addressed Brigid. “I think your friend shot me,” he told her.

Grant looked apologetic. “Well,” he said, shrugging.

Smarts held his gaze a moment longer before his expression mellowed a little. “What’s done is done, señor,” he admitted, “and I’m sure I was intending to do the same given the circumstances of our meeting.”

Kane joined them as Brigid sterilized and dressed Smarts’s head wound from the church’s meager supplies. “Yeah, about that,” Kane said, “what made you think that we were Magistrates?”

“It’s obvious.” The olive-skinned Mexican smiled. “You and Señor Grant here have a certain manner about you, a way of walking, your heads held high. An air of authority, arrogance that comes only with the badge of office.”

Kane smiled bitterly, shaking his head as Rosalia walked over to join the group, having finally found a family to take care of the last of her young charges. “I’m not a Mag,” Kane told Señor Smarts. “We’re not Mags.”

The man smiled again in a display of yellowing teeth. “The way that the three of you took command here, organizing and taking care of the local people, tells me different, señor. If you are not Magistrates, then you almost certainly trained to be, at some point in your past.”

Grant flicked a warning look at Kane, as if to tell him it wasn’t a topic of conversation worth pursuing.

After a moment, Kane spoke again. “Any idea what happened to the rest of your crew? Where Carnack disappeared to?”

“I’m sorry, Señor Kane.” Smarts sighed. “I was unconscious for quite a while. When I realized what had happened I felt it my duty to help out. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Very admirable,” Grant muttered before he stood up and took Kane to one side. They stood together, looking at the devastation outside the open church hall doors for a few moments, and then he spoke to Kane in a low voice. “This doesn’t change anything. That hybrid DNA is still in the hands of their extended clan. We can’t ignore that just because these two helped out.”

Kane nodded, a haunted look in his gray-blue eyes. “No good deed goes unpunished,” he said quietly.

“You reckon the girl knows anything?” Grant asked.

“I’d guess Smarts is Carnack’s majordomo,” Kane reasoned. “If anyone knows the location of the gang and the DNA, it’s him. But Rosalia is more than she seems. I’d dismissed her as a—” he shrugged “—companion when I first saw her, but the way she came at me with that sword yesterday afternoon—she’s trained and she’s deadly.”

“We’ll take both of them back to Cerberus,” Grant suggested. “We can interrogate them there, see what we turn up.” He glanced back at the Mexican in the loud shirt and stained velvet coat, and at the dark-haired enchantress who stood beside him. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll be more forthcoming after all that’s happened.”

Kane chewed at his lip thoughtfully for a moment. “I wouldn’t bet on it,” he told Grant.

As the two ex-Mags were striding back to where Brigid taped gauze to Señor Smarts’s head, their Commtacts came to life and the three Cerberus teammates heard the voice of Dr. Mohandas Lakesh Singh inside their heads.

Lakesh was the nominal leader of the Cerberus exiles, although his suitability to that role was somewhat contentious. Their early meetings with Lakesh had shown Kane, Grant and Brigid that the accomplished cyberneticist had orchestrated a Machiavellian plan to destroy their lives in Cobaltville, albeit for the greater good, and his methods had often proved to be supremely devious. However reluctantly, Lakesh had conceded his single-minded control of Cerberus and its exiles undermined the united front necessary to battle the Annunaki and the threat they posed to humankind.

Lakesh’s mellifluous voice piped directly to their ear canals with crystal clarity. “It seems that we may have an additional problem, and I wondered how the three of you would feel about taking a little detour to look into it?”

Kane held up his index finger to let his companions know that he would deal with the transmission. “Kane here,” he said. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Decard has just got in touch with us from over in Aten,” Lakesh explained. “He’s stumbled across something on one of his regular patrols, and he thinks we might want to take a look.”

Decard, like Kane and Grant, was also an ex-Magistrate. He had been adopted into the strange culture of the hidden city-kingdom of Aten, out in the wilderness of the California desert. His path had crossed that of the Cerberus crew on several occasions. Initially hostile, the people of Aten had come to respect the Cerberus exiles, and Decard had proved himself to be a faithful friend and valuable ally.

“Did Decard say what it was?” Kane asked, aware that the ex-Mag wasn’t one to jump at shadows.

“He seemed mystified,” Lakesh explained, “but the report he gave describes a group of people who apparently have no independent will. He called them ‘mindless, soulless wretches.’”

Kane considered this for a moment before responding. “Don’t want to be callous here, but is that such a big deal?” he asked.

“It is when the same people were vibrant and very much alive just three days earlier,” Lakesh told him, “or so Decard indicates.”

“Okay,” Kane agreed. “We’ll arrange transportation and get over there before dawn. Warn Decard that we’re bringing a couple of stragglers with us, and we might need to use his hoosegow.”

“I’m sending Domi over there now via mat-trans,” Lakesh replied. “She’ll pass on the message and meet you close to Aten. Take care.”

“Will do.” Kane signed off. He turned to the others, who had been able to hear the whole conversation on their own Commtact. “Well, troops, looks like we’re moving out.”

Señor Smarts, who had only heard Kane’s half of the conversation, smiled tightly. “Leaving so soon?” he said in a patronizing tone.

“Yeah,” Grant growled, reaching for the man’s elbow and helping him up, “and you’re coming with us, Charlie.”

Kane looked across at Rosalia the dancing girl and smiled. “You, too, Princess.”

Chapter 4

The five of them skulked through the alleyways of Hope, hidden in the shadows of the ruined ville. Kane walked close to Señor Smarts, leading the party, the Magnum handgun held tightly in his hand. Behind him, Grant accompanied Rosalia, pulling her by the elbow, his own pistol hidden under the folds of his leather duster. Brigid brought up the rear a few paces behind the rest of the group, her handgun drawn and held low, muzzle pointing to the ground.

As they made their way to the outskirts of the shantytown, Rosalia’s eyes flashed with anger. She pulled from Grant’s grip and strode ahead, catching up with Smarts and Kane. She glared at Kane. “Where are you taking us, Magistrate man?” she demanded.

“We’re needed elsewhere,” Kane replied laconically, while Grant reached for the woman’s elbow once more.

Rosalia pulled away and glared fiercely at them both, standing in place until Brigid caught up. “After all we have done for you,” Rosalia snapped, “you still treat us like…criminals?”

Grant suppressed a laugh when he heard that. Kane looked at him sternly before addressing the dancing girl.

“We need that hybrid DNA,” Kane explained, “and right now, the two of you are our only link to finding it.”

Brigid made eye contact with Rosalia and Señor Smarts as she joined them. “We all have a lot of admiration for what you both did back there,” she told them, indicating the buildings ruined by the quake. “You stepped in to help when it was needed. We don’t need to be enemies. Perhaps we can reach a mutually beneficial agreement with regards to the DNA.”

Smarts reached up to scratch at the gauze that had been attached to his head before stopping himself with a pained intake of breath through his teeth. “This puts us in a difficult position, señorita,” he lamented, his eyes warily watching the shadows around them. “It would be inadvisable for Rosalia and I to engage in dealings that might be considered traitorous to our group,” he added quietly.

Kane nodded in understanding. “Would that still hold true outside of ville limits?”

Smarts considered this for a few seconds, smoothing down his pencil-thin mustache while, Kane noticed, Rosalia’s dark eyes scanned the alleyway in a predatory fashion. “Perhaps,” Smarts said eventually, “we would reconsider our position if placed in such a situation.”

Kane smiled. “Then let’s keep moving.”

“And where exactly is it that we are going, Señor Kane?” Smarts asked.

“Just a little walk in the desert,” Kane explained. “Friends out there need our help, but you can just watch if you want.”

Rosalia looked at the half-moon rising in the sky. “It is almost midnight, Magistrate man,” she told Kane, “not a good time to be walking across the desert.”

“Gets mighty cold out there,” Smarts added.

Along with his companions, Kane had arrived in Hope from the desert. The three of them had used the interphaser to jump close to the ville location, but they had still been forced to walk the last eight miles for the sake of appearances as much as anything else. That had been in the daytime, in the rising heat. At night the temperature in the California desert dropped significantly, and the chill wind could catch a traveler unawares.

“There’s never a good time to cross the desert,” Grant said practically, tilting the pistol in his hands so that it caught the light for just a moment. “Hence the argument’s over.”

“I think not,” Smarts told them. “We could borrow a vehicle from one of the people here without too much trouble.”

“By ‘borrow’ you mean steal?” Kane asked. “We don’t do that.”

“Señor Magistrate,” Smarts argued, “many people here have lost their homes, their loved ones, some even their lives. The loss of a cart, an automobile would be of little—”

“Doesn’t matter.” Kane silenced him with a firm look. “You have legs, so we walk.”

Rosalia smiled. “We have reconditioned Sandcats,” she said, “ideal for desert travel.”

“And where would these Sandcats be?” Kane asked.

“Back at the base,” Rosalia said lightly, gesturing toward the depths of the shantytown labyrinth. “If we went there, we could—”

Kane held up a finger to stop her. “No. Nice try, but we won’t be walking into any traps tonight. Now, let’s get moving.”

Kane and Grant urged their charges on as Brigid sank back to cover the rear of the party. What Kane hadn’t told Smarts and Rosalia was that he had his own special transport located outside the ville. They weren’t safe here, and he had feared being overheard, but soon enough the group would be traveling a whole lot faster than the two street thieves could imagine.

IT WAS THREE in the morning by the time the group stopped. The ville was long since behind them, now just a speckling of lighted dots on the far horizon. Ahead and all around, Death Valley and the empty California desert stretched relentlessly onward. Stars twinkled in the night sky, and the cool air seemed to drill through their bones as the group strode across the open sand. Rosalia shook, cold and miserable, hugging herself as she pulled Smarts’s bright frock coat over her shoulders. Smarts himself was cold, too, but he prided himself on being nothing if not a gentleman.

“Where are we heading, señor?” Smarts asked, looking at the distant rock formations, the endless swathe of sand around them.

“We’re almost there,” Kane assured him.

“It has been a long day,” Smarts told Kane. “We could stop. If not for ourselves, perhaps we should consider the ladies?”

“We’re not going much farther,” Kane told him.

Then he raised his voice. “Baptiste?”

Brigid had drifted a little farther behind the others, and she was looking around carefully as they crossed the bleak desert. “It’s just over there,” she called back, pointing with the muzzle of her handgun toward a rising sand dune.

Kane held a hand to stop Smarts and the rest of the party, while Brigid ran toward the dune that she had indicated.

“Be a minute, people,” Kane explained, ignoring the quizzical looks of his captives.

Exhausted, Rosalia sat on the dry sand and shook her head. “Magistrate clowns,” she muttered under her breath.

Hearing this, Grant smiled and caught her eye, shaking his own head in chastisement. “Oh, you are in for such a sweet surprise,” he told her.

Smarts’s head twitched like a bird’s as he watched Brigid disappear behind the dune. “What is going on?” he demanded.

Deciding that there was nowhere his prisoners could run to, Kane placed his handgun back in his low-slung hip holster before addressing the small Mexican. “It’s time we traveled in style,” he said.

Smarts narrowed his eyes, peering at the dune, his head jutting forward, until Brigid reappeared carrying a small case. The case was caked with sand, which Brigid brushed away with her hand as she approached. Smarts realized immediately that this item had been hidden out here, buried somewhere in the empty, featureless desert.

Brigid stopped before them and knelt, placing the case on the ground. Then she began to work at its twin catches. The carrying case folded open and a squat, broad-based pyramid-shaped object was revealed. Made of a dull metal that shimmered with the blurred reflections of the bright stars, the pyramid’s base was barely one foot square, and its peak was about twelve inches above the ground. This was the interphaser.

“What is this thing?” Smarts inquired.

Kane smiled tightly. “A little shortcut,” he said enigmatically.

Smarts gestured around them at the featureless desert. “You left this thing here, yes?” he asked. “How could you possibly find it? It is a—what you call it?—needle in the haystack.”

“Brigid’s our needle finder,” Kane said as Grant helped Rosalia to her feet behind him.

Smarts looked baffled as he assessed the beautiful woman with the shimmering red-gold hair.

Brigid smiled and tapped the side of her head. “I remember things,” she told him.

The Cerberus team had opted to bury the interphaser in its protective carrying case close to where they had first appeared in the desert. This was, on reflection, much safer than carrying the astonishing piece of technology into a covert meeting with Carnack’s merciless thieves and brigands. They had needed no marker for the location. One of the advantages of Brigid’s phenomenal memory was her ability to recall the smallest details of anything she had seen. While the desert appeared featureless and largely unchanging to most people, Brigid would recall the tiniest details, a ridge here, a dead tree stump there. Finding the burial spot for this particular treasure chest was as easy to Brigid as finding the toes on the end of her feet.

The interphaser interacted with naturally occurring hyperdimensional vortices to create an instantaneous teleportation system. In simple terms, the little pyramid opened dimensional rifts through which one could travel from point A to point B, despite the two points being dozens, hundreds or even thousands of miles apart.

The Parallax Points Program provided a map of these naturally occurring vortices, which could be found around the world and even on other planets.

The success of the interphaser was the combined work of Brigid Baptiste and a Cerberus scientist called Brewster Philboyd, and had taken many months of trial and error to achieve. While a useful device, their interphaser still depended on the location of a parallax point, as opposed to the mat-trans units, which had been installed in military redoubts. As Grant had put it when they had arrived in Death Valley with an eight-mile walk still ahead of them, “What good’s having a personal mat-trans if we still have to walk halfway?”

While Brigid readied the pyramid-shaped device, Kane probed the sand around them with the toe of his boot until he found what he was looking for. He kicked at the sand and used his instep to brush it away until he had uncovered a flat, stone disk. The stone disk was approximately two feet square and showed cuneiform carvings around its outer ring. Brigid stepped across and carefully placed the interphaser unit in the center of the stone ring.

“What is that?” Smarts asked once more, absolutely out of his depth with the progression of events before his eyes.

“We think it was some kind of grave marker.” Kane shrugged. “Probably Navaho or Apache.”

“Or whatever those peoples called themselves way back when,” Brigid added, mostly to herself.

Rosalia took a step closer and peered at the stone circle with the pyramid now protruding from it. Then she looked at Smarts, a quizzical frown on her beautiful brow. “What is all this?” she asked him.

“I admit,” Smarts responded, “to being mystified. Seems the Magistrates don’t want to share their secrets today.”

Kane confirmed with Brigid that the interphaser was ready for use, then he turned to address Smarts and Rosalia. “Okay, here’s the skinny,” he began. “What we have here is a transport network like you folks can only dream of. The whole thing is instantaneous—”

“Like a mat-trans only portable,” Smarts broke into Kane’s explanation with a knowing smile.

“You’ve used a mat-trans?” Kane asked him, intrigued. The mat-trans units were mostly the realm of Cerberus and similar covert outfits who had penetrated the secret military redoubts to access the hidden technology there; their existence was hardly common knowledge.

“I have seen them in action once or twice,” Smarts confirmed.

“Good,” Kane affirmed. “That makes it easier for all of us. Rosie?” he asked, turning to the dancing girl.

She nodded, her face solemn. “I am aware of the mat-trans machines,” she said quietly, “though only through anecdotal evidence.”

“These are smaller,” Kane explained, “and there’s no chamber to enter. But they function in much the same way.”

He encouraged the pair to step forward, closer to the foot-high pyramid resting on the stone circle on the ground. The stone circle was a parallax point, and would work as a secure entry point for their jump.

Grant stepped across from the others, so that the team now formed a rough circle around the interphaser as the stars twinkled in the sky above.

Still kneeling, Brigid tapped out a brief sequence on the interphaser’s miniature keypad. As she stood, a waxy, illuminated cone fanned up from the metal apex of the foot-high pyramid. It had the appearance of mist, with flashes of light swirling within its depths.

Smarts’s jaw opened in astonishment as the cone of light grew larger, taking over not just more geographical space, but, in some way, swamping his mind like the onrush of a migraine, blurring everything around him to insignificance as it overwhelmed his comprehension. A glowing lotus flower blossomed from the base of the pyramid. The radiance stretched into the night sky, filled with sparks of lightning witch fire.

“Just walk into the light,” Kane’s calm voice came to his ears, and Smarts turned from the cone of brilliance to look at the hard face of the ex-Mag. The light was dancing in Kane’s gray-blue eyes, playing across the stubbled chin and sharp planes of his face.

“I don’t think this is such a good idea, Señor Kane,” Smarts admitted, rising fear in his voice.

Then Grant’s bearlike arm whipped behind Smarts, slapping so hard across his back that the little Mexican stumbled forward. “Man up,” he heard the dark-skinned man say, “you’re going first.”

There was a rush of sensation, energy crackling all around him, colors so bright and vibrant that Smarts didn’t have names for all of them. And then his senses rebelled at the unfamiliarity of the situation, and the next thing Smarts saw was his shadow grow as he stepped out of the cone of light behind him. Then he was joined by his four companions.

They had arrived.

“Did we do it?” Rosalia asked, her voice breathless with wonder.

“Sixty, seventy miles in a footstep,” Kane assured her. “We did it.”

“Sixty-eight miles,” Brigid confirmed as the interphaser powered down, its lotus blossom of colors sucked back inside the unit like liquid swirling down a drain. She crouched beside the device, which now rested on an otherwise unremarkable section of sand, and placed the carrying case beside it, undoing the catches. There was another circle of stone there, almost entirely buried in the sand, its cuneiform markings long since worn away.

Having packed up the interphaser in its carrying case, Brigid scanned the sky around them, looking at the constellations and assessing their position in her head.

Kane triggered the Commtact and spoke in a subdued tone, “Domi, we are on-site. Please respond.”

A few seconds passed before Domi’s enticing, husky voice was audible over the subcutaneous Commtacts.

“Hi, Kane. I’m with Decard’s team. We’re sending up a tracer on three.”

“Aten should be somewhere over that way,” Brigid decided, pointing off to the east.

Almost as soon as she said it, they saw a scarlet-colored firework whoosh into the sky, leaving a bright point high over their heads as the flare beacon floated on the wind currents.

“Guess that’s them.” Kane smiled.

IT TOOK ANOTHER fifteen minutes to cover the ground on foot, but Kane, Brigid, Grant and their two prisoners finally found their way to the temporary campsite that Decard’s crew had set up among the windswept dunes.

When she saw them approaching, Domi broke into a run and met the Cerberus team halfway.

“Madre de dios!” Smarts exclaimed as Domi raced toward them, startled by the woman’s unique appearance.

Though a fully grown woman, Domi still had the diminutive frame of a girl just entering her teens. Her limbs were thin and birdlike, yet she was a superb athlete and robust hand-to-hand combatant. Most significantly, however, Domi looked like no one else that Smarts had ever seen. She had the chalk-white skin and bone-white hair of an albino, and her eyes blazed a burning ruby-red like the flames of hell. She wore her hair in a short, pixieish style, enhancing her skeleton-like appearance, and she had chosen the briefest of clothes—a halter top and cutoff shorts—leaving her midriff, limbs and feet bare. Her clothing was beige, matching the sandy desert beneath the dark sky, its light color making her white skin seem somehow more pale than ever.

Like the other members of Kane’s field team, Cobaltville played a prominent part in Domi’s past. Domi had been forced into sexual servitude in the lowest echelons of the ville. She had grown up as a wild child of the Outlands, and her wits and decision making still had something of the instinctive to them.

“Kane,” she cried, running up to the ex-Mag and wrapping her arms around him. Kane hugged her back, looking like a giant holding a tiny, china doll. “I heard you ran into that quake over on the coast. You’re okay?”

As Domi let go of him, Kane nodded. “I think the quake really ran into us,” he told her with a smile. Kane and Domi had a strange history between them, but above all else they were bound by a mutual respect as warriors. “Brought some friends for you to meet,” Kane continued, gesturing to Señor Smarts and Rosalia, who stood beside Grant, her jaw jutting at a haughty angle as she observed the albino woman.

“This is Rosalia and the gentleman is called Smarts.”

Smarts took Domi’s hand and brushed it lightly with his lips. “Enchanted, señorita,” he said, his eyes meeting hers.

After the introductions had been made, the group headed back to the camp where Decard and his team were stationed. It was a simple affair, just a bivouac created from a couple of sheets of tarpaulin propped over a small area atop posts pushed into the sand. Once he was close enough, Kane recognized the posts that Decard’s crew had used. They were the slender silver rods that the security force of Aten used as their primary weapons. The long poles were tipped by V-shaped prongs, and they were capable of unleashing a charge of energy that could fell a man, knocking him into unconsciousness or worse, depending upon the setting employed by the user.

The makeshift nature of the camp reminded Kane of the shantytown that they had just left on the outskirts of Hope. Two armed guards nodded in acknowledgment as Domi passed, leading the group beneath the slanted roof sheets. The guards were Incarnates, and both came from similar stock. They were sturdy-looking individuals, their skin a shining coffee-bean brown from the sun. Their clothing was identical—naked but for loosely woven white linen kilts threaded with golden wire, coupled with glittering collars of hammered gold that embraced their necks. The only thing to differentiate them were the unique adornments on their faces. Both men wore masks that entirely covered their heads, remarkable helmets carved of painted and varnished wood. The mask of the sec man to the left bore a fierce caricature of a crocodile, its long snout pointing down to the ground, its rows of teeth highlighted in white paint. The man to the right wore the mask of a bug, an idealized version of a beetle, with large eyes and pincers that resembled the drooping lines of Grant’s gunslinger mustache.

As Domi led the way into the small, makeshift shelter, Decard got up from his resting position on the floor and called to them. The tent was lit by three small, oil-burning lamps that had been placed around the floor space. There were more guards inside, eight in all, and several had removed their helms and were dozing.

Decard was a fresh-faced young man, about twenty years old, and with close-cropped, sandy-blond hair. He wore the armor of a Magistrate, a familiar black polycarbonate exoskeleton, and it added a sense of authority to his five-foot-ten-inch frame.

Both Smarts and Rosalia backed away when they saw the Mag armor, but Grant was standing behind them, and Rosalia let out a quiet yelp as she bumped into his chest. “Nothing to get worked up about,” Grant told her quietly.

On closer inspection, they saw that the Magistrate armor was lacking the red insignia that usually graced the left pectoral; it looked to have been torn from the outfit.

Decard himself bore a friendly expression as he walked across the tent to meet with his old comrades. The man walked with a slight limp, favoring his left leg as he came over to greet them.

“Hello, Kane,” Decard said, acknowledging the other Cerberus personnel briefly. “Glad you could all make it out here.”

“What’s going on, Decard?” Kane asked, not a man for small talk.

“I was on patrol three days ago,” Decard explained as he led the way to the back of the small shelter, “when I came across a group of Roamers. Just a family, refugees, I think, crossing the desert. They’d set up camp quite close to the city entrance, and I brought some men out here to shoo them away.” Decard looked at Kane as though hoping for approval.

Kane understood what the man meant. Decard, like himself and Grant, may have retired prematurely, but he still had the old Magistrate instincts. In Decard’s case, he had been accidentally caught up in a conspiracy involving the welfare of new hybrids, and had somehow found himself on the run. He had landed on his feet in the hidden city-kingdom of Aten, California, where he had gone native and married into royalty. Decard had found a better life than most Magistrates, and his world was generally far more sedate than that of Kane or Grant. Aten treasured its secrecy, a community hidden away from the harsh realities of the world, and Decard had become the de facto leader of the Incarnates, the guardians of the city. He still made patrols around the city-kingdom, though he used his skills as a diplomat far more often than his handgun these days.

Kane nodded, encouraging the man to continue.

“I was doing a surveillance swoop around dusk when I came across one of the same folks,” Decard told him. “Only this time she looked like this…”

Decard gestured to a figure crouching on the ground behind two standing, helmeted guards. As the guards parted, Kane saw a young woman with long blond hair, probably still in her teenage years, bearing the swollen belly of pregnancy. Her hair was damp with sweat, curtained over her eyes, and she rocked back and forth on her heels, her jaw slack. Drool oozed down her chin from her open mouth.

As Kane stepped closer, he felt something nudge him and saw that Decard was handing him a flashlight. “Go on,” Decard urged him, “she won’t bite.”

Kane leaned down and switched on the flashlight, pointing it away from the woman before turning it gradually to illuminate her clearly. She just crouched there, rocking back and forth, not reacting in the slightest to his approach. “You okay, ma’am?” he said.

The woman seemed to be ignoring him. She just rocked, back and forth repeatedly. Now that he was closer, Kane could detect a low humming, too, the noise coming from the woman, not her mouth but pushed from deep in her throat and out of her nose.

Kane reached forward with his free hand and made to tentatively touch the woman’s face. She didn’t flinch, didn’t move at all, and before Kane’s fingers met with her he turned back to Decard. “Do I need gloves?”

“Hell if I know.” Decard shrugged. He shook off one of his gloves and passed it to Kane. “Use this if you want.”

Kane took the Mag gauntlet and pulled it over his right hand before reaching for the young woman again. Crouching before her, Kane used the black fingers of the glove to stroke her hair gently from where it obscured her face. Beneath her mop of hair, as he had somehow suspected, her eyes were wide open.

Her eyes were blank, pure white orbs, white on white, all color drained away.

Chapter 5

After a moment, Kane turned away from the woman, removing his gloved hand and letting her blond bangs fall back over her face. He turned to Decard with a look of concern. “Do you know what’s wrong with her?” he asked.

Decard held up his hands. “No idea. I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said. “She’s running a high temperature, just like the others we found.”

“There are others?” Brigid spoke up.

“There were eight in the original party that we chased off,” Decard told her, “and we found three of them running around out here at dusk. I say ‘running,’ but I don’t mean that literally, of course,” he added.

“‘Mindless, soulless wretches,’” Kane quoted from the report that Lakesh had passed on to him over the Commtact when they had received word back in Hope. “Isn’t that what you said?”

Decard took his glove back from Kane as he spoke. “It wasn’t intended as a medical diagnosis,” he said with good humor, “but it was about the best way I could think of to describe them.”

Brigid Baptiste produced a pair of thin polymer gloves from her jacket pocket and placed them over her hands. They were disposable gloves, transparent and reaching just past her wrists. Then she crouched before the pregnant woman and started speaking to her softly as she gently pushed back the woman’s hair. “You said there were others?” Brigid asked Decard, her voice calm.

“Two others. What you see here is pretty accurate to how they were,” Decard said. “We found the three of them wandering about the desert here, aimless as a leaf on the wind, just walking around in circles. I think they’re a family, or at least they were.”

“Where are the others now?” Kane asked.

Decard placed an arm around Kane’s shoulders and pulled him toward the closest opening of the bivouac. “Let’s talk about that outside,” he said quietly.

Leaving Grant, Domi and the Incarnates to watch their prisoners, Kane and Decard stood outside the tent waiting for Brigid to join them.

“Her temperature’s running at 108,” Brigid said as she walked out of the tent, brandishing a pocket thermometer that the Incarnate medic had loaned her. She sounded astonished. “She must be burning up inside.”

“Not burning,” Kane said solemnly, “melting. Can a body even take that kind of temperature?”

Brigid nodded slowly. “The human body can take greater extremes than we give it credit for,” she said, “but I don’t like her long-term chances, especially with the baby.”

Decard interjected at that point, all humor drained from his face. “The other two went like that,” he said quietly, “first they were walking about like they’d been concussed, then they sat down, mumbling and drooling.”

“And then?” Kane prompted.

“They’re dead, Kane,” Decard told him.

“Shit,” Kane spit as he noticed the mounds of earth where Decard and his team had buried two bodies. “What have you stumbled on here?”

Decard shook his head. “We’re four miles from Aten,” he said. “Far as I’m concerned, this is the very limit of my jurisdiction. I called Cerberus in because I don’t have the time or resources to deal with it. Figured maybe you do.”

“That’s mighty brave of you,” Kane growled.

Decard looked away, refusing to meet the man’s gray-blue eyes. “We look after our own, Kane,” he said, “that’s the rule of the Outlands, and you know it. These freaks get closer to the city and I’ll do what I have to, but I’m in way over my depth here.”

“What if it’s a plague,” Kane said, “an airborne virus, something you can’t just pretend doesn’t exist? What then?”

Decard paced across the sand for a moment, head low, absorbed by his thoughts.

“I’ve got four people and two prisoners,” Kane urged. “We need manpower, and your people are on the scene, Decard. Will you help us?”

Decard’s gaze swept past Kane and Brigid, and he looked off into the distance. “None of this can be brought back to the city,” he said quietly. “No prisoners, none of the infected. I am not having this spread through Aten.”

“None of us wants that,” Brigid assured him.

“I’m out here with a twelve-man team,” Decard said. “You get me and them and that’s it. Okay?”

Kane nodded. “You just keep your gun loaded.”

“Don’t worry,” Brigid told them both. “We’ll find out what it is. No one else needs to get hurt.”

BACK INSIDE the bivouac, Rosalia was peering at the far end of the tent, watching the pregnant woman rocking back and forth on her heels. “What is wrong with that lady?” she asked in an urgent whisper.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Domi said. “Friends of ours found her wandering the desert, figured we’d be able to help.”

“And what is it that you do?” Smarts chipped in politely.

“None of your nose,” Domi said, flashing him her feral smile.

Leaving Grant with the prisoners, Domi made her way to a small, tan-colored rucksack to the side of the tent and rummaged through its contents. A moment later she returned with a Sin Eater handgun in a black leather holster. “Thought you might need this,” she told Grant. “Brought one for Kane, too.”

Grant shrugged out of the right sleeve of his coat and clipped the wrist holster to his right forearm. The Sin Eater was the official sidearm of the Magistrate Division, and the weapon with which Grant and Kane felt most comfortable. Less than fourteen inches in length at full extension, the automatic handblaster folded in on itself to be stored in the bulky holster just above the wrist. The holsters reacted to a specific tensing of the wrist tendons, snapping the pistol automatically into the user’s hand.

The trigger of the Sin Eater had no guard; the necessity for any kind of safety features had never been foreseen when the weapon had been assigned to the infallible Magistrates. While both Grant and Kane were schooled in numerous forms of unarmed and armed combat, the Sin Eater was an old friend, a natural weight that their movements accommodated, like wearing a wristwatch.

Smarts watched with amusement as Grant finished clipping the Sin Eater in place. “I said you were Magistrates, did I not, señor?”

Grant looked at him, no hint of amusement or pity in his features. “Why don’t you help yourselves out here and give us the information we want about the hybrid DNA. You can see that you’re nothing more than deadweight to us right now. You give us the info and we’ll let you walk out of here, no questions asked.”

Smarts nodded slowly, considering the offer. “I would need to discuss this with my colleague, you understand?” he said, indicating Rosalia.

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