fighting the fog disappeared; one hand reached up, clawing at the air in the hope of grasping some anchor, but the robotic claw stilled and was sucked into the darkness.
Smaragda turned and raced off a side trail between the trees. Whatever the smoke was, it seemed to have trouble flowing through and around the trunks of the forest. She swerved and wove, bounding over fallen logs and branches. She regretted lifting the visor so that she could see the midnight horror that expanded onto the road as leaves and fronds slapped and slashed at her face and eyes. She struck a tree trunk at full speed while half blinded by a leaf raking her naked eyeball.
The impact jarred her, but she seized the trunk, using it to maintain her footing.
She glanced back and saw that there were three tentacles winnowing their way around trunks, stretched out at far back as she could see through the trees. Smaragda raised her M-16 and opened fire. Rifle rounds shattered the eerie silence that had fallen in the wake of the last Spartan’s disappearance, but they did nothing to dispel the living darkness stretching and seething after her.
Smaragda turned and ran again, having paused only to slide down her eye shield, leaving the advanced optics out of the way.
Smaragda ran for as long and as hard as she could.
Within an hour she was at the coast, on her knees, her chest burning, shoulders aching, trying to vomit but having nothing to spit up.
Twenty-two people were now gone.
She was the lone survivor.
She pulled off her helmet and, for a moment, thought something else had come after her. A sheet of white spilled down over her eyes and she screamed in shock.
Then she realized why she was so stunned.
Before the smoke her hair had been as dark as a raven’s feathers.
Now the tresses that she could see were as pale and wispy as silken icicles.
Trembling, Smaragda looked around for the boat that had brought the expedition.
“Live to tell what happened,” she said in a terrified murmur.
“Live to tell what…happened…” she repeated.
Tears drenched Smaragda’s cheeks as she struggled to her feet.
Domi crouched deeply as she faced off with the man in black. Perfectly balanced in her hand was the handle of one of her favorite knives, its flats gleaming under the harsh lights. She was a small woman, hardly five feet in her bare feet, and Domi was almost constantly barefoot. Her body looked thin and frail, her complexion was white as bone and her hair was wispy, silvery and trimmed short so as to provide little more than peach fuzz for an opponent to grab on to. Most startling about Domi was her eyes, ruby-red gems that denoted the cause of her pale flesh and translucent hair.
The girl was an albino. And yet she was facing off against a man a foot taller and easily a hundred pounds heavier than she was, her muscles tense, ready for battle. In the centuries before skydark, the cataclysmic nuclear Armageddon that drove humankind to the brink of extinction, albinos had been considered frail. Indeed, as a child, she had been, but surviving in the deadly world outside of the villes, in the harsh wilderness between tiny islands of civilization, had hardened her.
She was thin of limb, yes. But her muscles were corded tight and had strength and swiftness within them, making her akin to a panther. Her “claws” were her knife and her “bite” was a deadly little .45-caliber Detonics Combat Master, which she didn’t have access to now.
The big man in front of her was powerful, armored, and even inside that armor, had a lightness on his feet, bouncing on the ground in a taunting dance, making it apparent that he expected her to charge him. He was dangling himself as bait, waiting for her to commit to an attack before he turned it around.
Domi was a survivor, though. Before she’d begun to learn how to read under the tutelage of Lakesh and Brigid Baptiste, her school had been expanses of desert or gnarled, predator-stalked forests. Her teachers had been the cruel and the powerful, seeking to use her as meat or pleasure or, in some grisly cases, both. And the feral albino girl had been a quick student, passing every test thrown at her.
This was not the first time she’d faced the armored brute in front of her. His head was encased in a glossy but tough helmet, shielding his face and preventing her from seeing if he was blinking or shifting his glance. Without a view of his tells, Domi was partially blinded, at her usual disadvantage. With nothing to betray her enemy’s thoughts, and even his body language distorted by the bouncing dance he shuffled, all of her usual cues as to where or when to strike or even to defend were gone.
The brute lunged. He had his own blade, twice the length of Domi’s, almost a short sword that looked normal-size in his massive fist. The movement startled the wild girl, but even when reflexively responding to the sudden rush, Domi’s body reacted with speed and agility. The edge of the knife whistled through the air and she could feel the brush of wind off its cold, unyielding dagger on her bare upper arm, the lethal edge missing her by fractions of an inch.
Domi’s swift sidestep planted her left foot down hard for support, bracing her so that she could kick up with her other leg, the knee striking the big knife-man in the side. She’d aimed instinctively away from the bulletproof polycarbonate shells that shielded his abdominal muscles and into the ballistic cloth side panel. The impact was more than sufficient to elicit a grunt from behind the opaque black visor of her foe’s helmet.
Domi brought her knife around, finding a brawny shoulder and stabbing into it. Even as she plunged the blade down, she wrapped her other arm around his, snaring it tightly to give her leverage on him and to make her harder to reach with his free hand. The armored brute lurched erect and Domi’s feet left the ground. Now she was riding a bucking beast, and just to make certain he couldn’t shake her free, she wound her muscular legs around his forearm and wrist.
Suddenly the brute not only had to deal with the bulk of his armor and the throbbing pain of her stab, but also the unbalancing, unsettling weight of the feral girl.
“Dammit!” Edwards shouted as he toppled off balance, bringing them both down to the exercise mat.
Domi stabbed again at the ballistic cloth between the polycarbonate plates that would have provided protection against slashing, stabbing steel. Fortunately for the former Magistrate, Domi’s knife was a blunt-edged aluminum copy, meant for training. Even though its edges were soft, rounded, unable to cut anything softer than mud, when you stabbed someone with the tip, it still was hard, unyielding metal slamming into soft flesh.
And it hurt, much to Edwards’s dismay.
“I thought these things weren’t supposed to injure you,” Edwards grunted as Domi slithered off his arm.
“Not normally,” Domi replied, her verbiage clipped as she was still brimming with adrenaline from the training session. “But ’m not normal.”
“You can say that again, runt.” Edwards looked her over. He was used to her dropping pronouns and adjectives while stressed or energized for combat, so was not worried about her suffering some sort of episode or being too out of breath. Indeed, the comment about her not being normal showed she still retained
