“So what do you suggest we do?” asked the woman to Kane’s side. “Run away like scared little girls?” In her mid-twenties, the woman had an olive complexion, with long dark hair that trailed halfway down her back, and a wicked glint in her chocolate-brown eyes. Rosalia had been Kane’s almost-permanent companion over the past few weeks since an altercation up in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana.
The final member of the group—an imposing man with dark skin, short hair and the grizzled look of a fighter—chuckled at that, turning to the woman. “If you really believe that then you don’t know Kane so well, Rosie,” Grant said, his voice a deep basso rumble. “Me, either,” he added after a moment. “We never ran away from anything.”
Grant had been Kane’s combat partner for longer than either of them cared to admit. A little older than Kane, Grant still deferred to his colleague in moments like this, trusting the other’s uncanny instincts to keep them safe. He brought his hand up, brushing it against the drooping gunslinger’s mustache that he wore over his top lip, feeling the dark growth of stubble that was forming all around it.
Brushing her hair from her face as the wind caught it, Rosalia shot Grant a contemptuous look. “From what I’ve seen so far, all you Magistrates are the same. Big men when you’re safe in your villes with your special armor on and backup just a street away, but you run like schoolgirls when you’re faced with anything you didn’t plan for.”
The three of them were hunkered down at the edge of a ridge overlooking a ramshackle settlement constructed of wood and sun-dried clay bricks, with several struggling fields as its surround. Made up of two dozen buildings, the little run-down town was locked in the gully between two towering cliff faces, their sandy orange sides bright in the midmorning sun. A thin ribbon of river wended its way through the center of the town like a main street, and people could be seen moving along its edges.
The trio on the cliff top wore shadow suits weaved from a high-tech armorlike material that could deflect blunt trauma and act as a self-contained environment, keeping its wearer hot or cool depending on the needs of their surrounds. Over the shadow suits, the three of them were dressed in indistinct clothing that showed the wear from long days on the road. Kane wore a beaten leather jacket in a tan color turned dark with sweat and dirt, Grant a long black duster with a bullet-blunting Kevlar weave in its thread, and Rosalia was wearing a beaten-up denim jacket with loose threads dangling from its cuffs and collar and a light summer skirt that swished just above her shapely ankles, which in turn were encased in black leather boots.
Kane checked the map again, running his hands across the creases to brush away the dusty sand that had blown across it. “Damn ville wasn’t on the map. Must have sprung up in the last eighteen months. But our next closest parallax point is fifty miles eastward,” he explained. “We’re looking at a heck of a trek, and we’d have to find a way across the Rio Grande.”
“The big villes have been vomiting out people for a while now, forcing little shitholes like this to crop up all over,” Rosalia told them both, pushing her dark hair out of her face as the wind snatched at it. “You Magistrate men seldom notice what’s going on in front of your eyes,” she added contemptuously.
Kane shot her a look before turning back to watch the people moving around in the ravine below them. Twenty-four buildings meant maybe seventy people in total, he guessed, could be more as a refugee settlement, but it seemed as if it had taken a while growing up. The structures certainly looked sturdy, perhaps it had been here for years—who could say?
Grant turned his eyes from the settlement below to Kane. “Let’s keep our heads down and act friendly to the locals,” he rumbled, pointing to the little town between the cliffs.
With that, the imposing ex-Mag pushed himself up, snagging the cloth knapsack sitting behind him in the dirt and hooking it over one of his massive shoulders before leading the way down the steep path that led to the gully. The others followed a moment later, but Rosalia stopped at the top of the path for a moment, peering behind her.
“Come on, stupid,” she huffed, irritation in her voice.
From close by, a dog came tromping out from behind a crop of drooping bushes, their leaves wizened from lack of water. The carcass of a cony lay behind the bushes, and the dog had been sniffing at it, wondering if it could still be eaten. The dog was a mongrel with mottled fur and a long snout, and Rosalia suspected that it had more than a hint of coyote in it. Most remarkably, it had the palest eyes that she had ever seen, their irises a creamy washed-out white like mozzarella cheese. She had “owned” the dog for seven months, finding the creature wandering alone out in the Californian desert. In all of that time, the woman had never given the animal a permanent name, hoping to avoid any attachment.
“Stupid mutt,” Rosalia cursed as the dog trotted along at her heels down the dust path. “Always thinking about your stomach.”
A dozen paces ahead, Grant was talking with Kane, polychrome sunglasses protecting their eyes as they walked into the sun, keeping their voices low.
“You look worried, old friend,” Grant observed as Kane fiddled with the Sin Eater pistol he habitually wore at his wrist.
Once the official side arm of the Magistrate Division, the Sin Eater was an automatic handblaster that folded in on itself to be stored in a bulky holster strapped just above the user’s wrist. Even at full extension, this remarkable pistol was less than fourteen inches in length, and it fired 9 mm rounds. The holsters reacted to a specific tensing of the wrist tendons, powering the pistol automatically into the gunman’s hand. The trigger had no guard; it had never been foreseen that any kind of safety features for the weapon would ever be required. Thus, if the user’s index finger was crooked at the time it reached his hand, the pistol would begin firing automatically. The absolute nature of this means of potential execution was a throwback to the high regard with which Magistrates were viewed in the villes—their judgment could never be wrong. Though no longer a Magistrate himself, Kane had retained his weapon from his days as one in Cobaltville, and he felt most comfortable with the weapon in hand.
Grant, too, had one of the remarkable blasters hidden beneath the sleeve of his Kevlar duster, though he carried other weapons, as well, secreted in the lining of the long coat. Primary among these, Grant carried his favored Copperhead close-assault subgun, tucked just out of sight.
Kane shrugged at Grant’s observation as the pair shuffled sideways along a narrow section of the steep pathway. “I just don’t like entering new places these days,” he said. “Seems things are getting more and more hostile.”
Then, as Kane spoke, his booted heel slid on a loose stone and he began to slip toward the edge of the path. “Whoa!”
Grant instantly reached out, grabbing his friend in a firm grip just above his left wrist. “No need to expect trouble,” Grant said as he pulled Kane back onto the path. “And I’ve always got your back if things do turn nasty.”
“Humph,” Kane grumbled. “We used to say the same thing to Baptiste—and look how that worked out.”
“We’ll find her, Kane,” Grant assured his partner. “If she’s out there, we’ll find her.”
Kane nodded. “Damn straight we will.”
Until recently Brigid Baptiste had been the third member of their field team, accompanying Kane and Grant on numerous adventures across the globe and beyond. Baptiste was a gifted archivist with remarkable talents. However, in a recent attack on the Cerberus redoubt—the headquarters from which Kane and his companions had operated—Baptiste had gone MIA. Despite their best efforts, her current whereabouts remained
