in his muscles. He didn’t need to hang a face or a name on the person he was saving. He was there to save humanity, there to save himself and others like him. It wasn’t a war; it was basic survival.
A S L AKESH ATTACHED a new keyboard to the recovered computer in the ops center, communications expert Donald Bry, sitting several seats across from him, thought he saw a quick flash of code whip across the monitor at his workstation.
A round-shouldered man of small stature, Bry wore a constant expression of consternation, no matter his mood, beneath the curly mop of unruly, copper-colored hair. Bry was a long-serving and trusted member of the Cerberus crew, acting as Lakesh’s lieutenant and apprentice in all things technological.
Bry leaned forward in his seat, peering at his computer monitor, waiting for whatever it was to reappear. His monitor was linked to the Keyhole communications satellite, allowing Cerberus to remain in touch with field operatives and to pass information to them as required.
As he watched the surveillance image with thermal overlay taking up the main window on-screen, he urged whatever it was that had flashed up to reappear. When nothing happened, he began typing frantically at the keyboard, then slid his chair a few feet along the desk to review the past forty seconds at a separate monitor to his left.
Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. No code. No flash. Nothing.
Turning back to the live feed, Donald Bry leaned forward once again and ran his index finger across the lower right-hand side of the screen, where he had thought he had seen the code flash for a fraction of a second.
Farrell leaned over from a nearby desk, a quizzical look on his face. “Everything okay, Donald?” he asked.
Bry looked up, feeling awkward and suddenly stupid. “I thought I saw something for a moment,” he told the other operator, “but it was nothing. Just tired, I guess. Been looking at the old boob tube too long.”
Bry accepted when Farrell offered to cover communications monitoring for a while, and he got up to stretch his muscles and get out of the room for a few minutes, assuring his colleague he would be back shortly.
As Bry passed him, Lakesh was hooking a new monitor to the recovered computer. “Be sure you save some of the action for me,” Bry instructed Lakesh with forced geniality before exiting the ops center into the vanadium-steel corridor.
Outside the quiet hum of the operations center, Bry stood and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “What did I see?” he asked himself quietly, trying to remember. Whatever it was, if it had been anything at all, had flashed across the screen so quickly that it had to have been there for no more than a nanosecond, utterly subliminal. If it had been anything at all, he reminded himself.
Chapter 4
On the plateau outside the heavy accordion-style doors to the Cerberus redoubt, two figures were sparring. A rough circle had been etched in the dirt around them, stretching to a diameter of roughly twenty feet. The early-morning sun was rising over the mountain, casting long shadows across the ground as the two combatants paced the edge of the marked area as they prepared to battle.
The two figures could not have been more different.
To one side of the circle stood Grant, the dark-skinned, heavily muscled ex-Mag dressed in loose-fitting combat trousers and a dark-colored vest. His outfit was finished by a pair of scuffed, black leather boots, a souvenir of his Magistrate days.
Across the circle, her bare feet crossing each other as she walked around the edge of the temporary arena, her eyes never leaving those of her opponent, was Domi. Lithe and thin, Domi was an albino, her skin chalk-white and her short-cropped hair the cream color of bone. She wore an olive-drab ensemble made up of an abbreviated halter top that barely covered her tiny, pert breasts and a pair of shorts, rolled up high in the leg. The most startling aspect of Domi’s appearance, however, were her ruby-red eyes. The young woman weighed little more than a third of her opponent, yet showed no fear as she prepared to do combat with the bigger man.
“First outside the circle, toss or misstep,” she told him, “either counts as a loss.”
“I know the rules, Domi.” Grant smiled tightly. “Give it your best shot so I can toss your sorry ass out of here and get to the cafeteria in time to catch the decent breakfast chef.”
Domi’s pale lips parted in a frightening, feral smile. “In your dreams, Grant.” She laughed. “I’m saving my best shot for someone good. ”
With that, Grant loosed a cry of offended rage and charged toward her, his boots kicking up dirt as he closed the space between them. Domi watched calmly, balancing lightly on the balls of her feet as this relentless juggernaut of a man hurtled toward her, his head down like a charging rhinoceros.
She timed the leap perfectly, her hand whipping out to scuff momentarily across Grant’s left shoulder where he held it low to the ground. Suddenly she was flipping into the air, her feet at the highest apex as she pivoted off the ex-Mag’s body. As silent and graceful as a ballerina, Domi landed behind Grant, pulling her body into itself.
With Domi out of his way, Grant saw the edge of the circle in the dirt just three steps ahead of him and he rolled his body and slapped his right hand hard on the ground to bring himself to a bone-jarring halt. He slipped for a moment, his hand drifting perilously close to the circle’s edge, and managed to stop just short of the line.
As Grant righted himself, lifting his huge frame from where he had slid, he heard Domi bark out a single laugh. “Ha! You’re getting sloppy, old Mag man,” she told him.
Crouched low to the ground, Grant turned to look at the thin-framed young woman, his lips curling back in a snarl. She was clearly enjoying this rare chance to show off to one of her peers, but Grant was beginning to wonder how he had been talked into this morning sparring match.
Domi, like Grant, Kane and Brigid, had once been a denizen of Cobaltville, though her position as sex slave had been far less salubrious than that of the Magistrates and the librarian. But circumstance had thrown them all together, a little unit that made up the solid core of the Cerberus exiles together with Lakesh as their mission controller. These days, Domi was sleeping with mission control, but that was a different story altogether.
As a child of the Outlands, she was naturally a loner, used to relying on her own wits and often abrupt around others, making them feel uncomfortable. But now and then she missed true company, that inherent human need for social contact, and Grant and Kane had always shown nothing but respect for her despite her background.
Grant looked to where Domi stood in the center of the circle and he noticed Kane was now standing a little way back from the circle’s edge, over by the large doors to the redoubt. His eyes flicked to Domi once more, just standing there, waiting for his attack. Fine, he decided, you want an attack? You’ll get one.
Grant was a massive engine of muscle as he drove forward, swinging punches left and right as he closed in on Domi. She weaved back, ducking low, and swung her right leg out in a sweeping arc, attempting to trip the bigger man. The front of her calf slapped into the top of Grant’s heavy boot and just stopped, like hitting a solid metal bar.
Domi yelped in surprise, pulling her leg back and rolling her body out of the way of Grant’s pile-driver punches. Suddenly she was standing again, a blur of motion as she darted her outstretched hands at him, holding them flat, like blades.
Grant put up a rock-solid arm to halt
