was an adventurer, like us,” Brigid explained, leading them past the cabinet with the bullet inside, checking her portable scanner with a furrowed brow.
They stepped out of the room of curiosities and found themselves on a balcony containing an old-fashioned radio receiver. The balcony overlooked a huge area that stretched farther than they could readily make out. The area contained two desks and several comfortable seats, but the vast majority of it was dedicated to what appeared to be a scientific laboratory. The lab was stocked to an almost obsessive degree, featuring equipment whose nature Kane couldn’t even begin to guess. Above and to the sides, the walls and ceiling appeared to be made of pure ice, twinkling in place as the light played over its smooth surface.
“This is nothing like the schematics,” Brigid said as she consulted the palm-size tracker screen.
“Schematics can be wrong,” Kane reminded her with a shrug, his eyes still fixed on the level below them.
“Not these,” Brigid told him, tapping at the portable screen with her fingernail. “This is a portable sonar unit. It should be able to give us an accurate representation of where we are.”
“And…?” Kane encouraged warily.
“According to this,” Brigid said, showing Grant and Kane the display, “we’re standing in a wall. I mean, right inside a wall.”
Kane felt decidedly uncomfortable when he heard that, a jab of fear running through his spine. Irritated, he calmed himself, demanding that he behave rationally. “It’s just an empty, forgotten redoubt, same as dozens of others we’ve visited,” Kane stated firmly, making his way along the balcony toward a stairwell. The stairwell was built in a subtle curve that doubled back on itself, forming a double helix.
“What does it mean?” Grant asked. “Is your dohickey on the fritz?”
“It’s tracking us just fine,” Brigid assured them. “No, this is something far more subtle. I think that this place, this Laboratory of the Incredible, has stealth technology that can confuse tracking systems, so that it cannot be spied upon.”
Pushing back his hood, Grant ran a hand over his cropped hair and whistled. “When did you say this place was built?”
“I’d say 1920-something,” Brigid replied. “Nobody’s quite sure. Flag would disappear for months at a time, and there’s every possibility that he built this place in sections as he required it. Likely, I’d say.”
“Any idea how?” Grant asked.
“He used some kind of sonic drill, I think,” Brigid said. “A pretty powerful one.”
Kane looked around at the glasslike walls. “Stealth technology,” he said. “For a building. In 1920. You have got to be kidding.”
“Professor Flag was a scientist of exceptional ability,” Brigid reminded him as she followed down the stairwell with Grant at her side. “Years—perhaps decades—ahead of any of his peers.”
“So the guy was a genius,” Grant said.
Brigid considered Grant’s statement for a few seconds before she responded. “That term might actually be construed as an insult,” she said. “The man was extraordinarily intelligent. ‘Genius’ doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.”
Stepping from the curved stairwell, Kane walked a few paces across the laboratory and looked all around. “Any idea what this Flag guy looked like?” he asked as Brigid and Grant came over to join him.
“I’ve examined the photographs in the Cerberus database,” Brigid began.
“Let me guess,” Kane interrupted. “Six foot six, square jaw, short dark hair—military style?”
Brigid nodded. “Why do you ask?”
“Because he’s standing right behind you,” Kane said.
Chapter 4
Brigid and Grant spun, turning to face the stranger who stood where Kane was indicating. Grant’s Sin Eater handgun snapped into his hand, propelled from its hiding place at his wrist holster.
The Sin Eater was the official sidearm of the Magistrate Division, and both Grant and Kane had kept them from their days as Mags in Cobaltville. An automatic handblaster, the Sin Eater was less than fourteen inches in length at full extension and fired 9 mm rounds. The whole unit folded in on itself to be stored in a bulky holster just above the user’s wrist. The holsters reacted to a specific flinching of the wrist tendons, which powered the pistol automatically into the gunman’s hand. The trigger had no guard, as any kind of safety features for the weapon had been ruled redundant. Thus, if the user’s index finger was crooked at the time it reached his hand, the pistol would begin firing without delay.
Beside Grant, Brigid Baptiste’s hand whipped down to the hip holster where she stored her trusted TP-9 tactical pistol, a bulky, automatic handblaster in dull black finish. The butt was almost central to the unit, making it appear almost like a square block finished by the wielder’s hand.
Although Brigid’s training was recent, all three Cerberus warriors were schooled in numerous forms of combat, from hand-to-hand martial arts to the use of knives, pistols, rifles and antitank weaponry. Furthermore, all three had the honed, lightning-fast reflexes that familiarity, muscle memory and combat awareness brought. In short, Brigid, Grant and Kane could more than adequately acquit themselves in any given combat scenario.
Right now, however, combat was not required. Grant and Brigid relaxed as they saw the man now standing before them. It was Abraham Flag, all right, although to describe him as “standing” was not entirely accurate. He was held upright inside what appeared to be a glass cylinder. The clear glass of the cylinder was somewhat obscured by a bluish, misty gas that floated within, through which they could see that the man inside was naked. His eyes were closed and, despite standing upright, he seemed almost relaxed, as though in a deep, dreamless sleep. Large metal pipes fed the cylinder, and Brigid noticed a control podium off to the right. No noise exuded from the strange construct, but the misty gas drifted in languid, faltering curlicues within the tube.
Kane’s laughter came to their ears, as Brigid and Grant relaxed. “Boy, you two can really move when you want to,” he said when they glared at him, still chuckling as he spoke.
Grant holstered his Sin Eater with a casual flick of his wrist, while Brigid made her way across to the control podium that was attached to the strange cylinder by a series of wires and copper pipes. There were controls integrated into the flat surface of the desk itself, like paintings on the reverse of a glass pane, and a foolscap notebook rested atop the unit. Brigid brushed dust from the glass work top and looked at the information displayed there. A series of dials was set beneath the glass of the unit, their needles held steady at about the three-quarters mark on their respective gauges. Beside them, a seven-digit analog counter slowly turned, and Brigid watched for a few seconds as the wheel to the farthest right ticked past 3 and rolled on toward 4. Then she picked up the notebook and flicked through its pages, finding that it was full of calculations written in blue ink with an elaborate hand.
“What do we have?” Grant asked as he and Kane strode over to join Brigid at the podium.
“He’s a freezie,” she said. “Cryogenically frozen and held in stasis here since—” she ran her finger along the index page of the notebook before
