James Axler - Janus Trap

“Domi,” she said calmly, a pleasant smile lifting her lips for a moment before she moved the sword back and continued tapping chalk along its length.

“Hi, Shizuka,” Domi said breezily as she walked across the plateau to stand before the sitting woman. Shizuka thought that she could detect just the tiniest hint of disappointment in Domi’s tone, where she had perhaps hoped to sneak up on the warrior woman unawares.

Domi cut a figure like no other. She was barely five feet tall, with a tiny, waiflike frame. An albino, Domi’s skin was as white as the chalk that Shizuka used to dust her blade. Her hair was also white, with the slightest variation in color, like paper turned to ash, and cut short in a pixie style that framed her face. It was within that face that Domi’s most unearthly feature resided, however—her eyes, which were an angry, vibrant scarlet, like pools of blood, and seemed to burn into the soul of whomever she looked at.

Domi had appeared from the undergrowth around the plateau, dressed in a pair of denim shorts cut high to the leg, and a drab green abbreviated halter top that barely covered her small, pert breasts. Her skin and bare feet showed a few marks, where dirt had brushed against them, and Shizuka saw the bow and quiver of arrows strapped to Domi’s back. The young woman had been out hunting, not for any real reason beyond the pleasure of the early-morning solitude and the thrill of the chase. Domi was a true child of the Outlands, often distinctly out of place around others—particularly the scientific types who dominated the Cerberus facility—and a born survivor. Like Kane, Grant and Brigid, Domi had joined the Cerberus operation via a disrupted life in Cobaltville, in her case, as a sex slave to the repulsive Guana Teague. Since then, she had become a highly valued member of the Cerberus crew.

“What you doing?” Domi asked, gesturing to the blanket spread across the ground. “Picnic?”

Shizuka smiled, shaking her head imperceptibly. “Only as food for the soul,” she said, running another sheet of rice paper along the length of her katana to brush away the powder.

As Domi stood watching her, Shizuka reached for the bottle of oil and dribbled a few spots along the blade. Then she tilted the katana so that the oil ran along its length. With her free hand, Shizuka took the cotton square from the wooden box and began to clean the blade in a long, sweeping stroke along its length, following the lines of the grain of the steel.

“You want maybe some food for the stomach, too?” Domi asked. “’Cause I’m heading inside and I wouldn’t outright object to company.”

Shizuka waved her blade before her, feeling its familiar weight in her hand as it swept through the air. Looking up at Domi, she smiled. “That would be nice,” she said, sheathing the katana and placing the contents back in the little wooden box.

THE THREE CERBERUS rebels made their way across the grassy swells back to the hidden redoubt. As they walked, the rain started once more, a cold, lancing drizzle on their faces that dimpled the surfaces of the puddles and turned the ground to slippery mud beneath their feet.

Making certain that they were not being observed or followed, Kane led the way through the gap in the chain-link iron fence and stood there for a moment, waiting as the others stepped through and followed. According to his wrist chron it was almost 1:30 p.m., local time; the back-and-forth of their little escapade had made it a three-hour-plus effort. Still, with the instantaneous transportation of the mat-trans, they would be back at Cerberus in a few minutes—plenty of time to catch the lunch shift at the canteen and grab themselves a proper meal.

Grant yanked back the heavy door just a little—he had left it slightly open when they had passed through earlier—and rainwater had already pooled across the flat concrete flooring that stretched out into the lobby of the abandoned underground bunker.

“Do you have afternoon plans, Grant?” Brigid asked as he held the door for her.

He shrugged. “Shizuka,” he said, the hint of a smile on his lips.

Brigid winced at that, feeling that she had somehow invaded her friend’s privacy without meaning to.

Once Grant had closed and sealed the main door, they trekked through the silent corridors of the redoubt and found themselves back at the mat-trans room just three minutes after they had entered the complex. Kane checked the room briefly as they entered, assuring himself that no one had been there in their absence.

HALFWAY AROUND the world, in a cave that was hidden from the late-afternoon sun, Decimal River watched a blinking light flashing on his laptop screen. “They’re inside,” he announced, his eyes never leaving the screen.

“Activate the trap,” Broken Ghost said, her voice a whisper just behind the man’s tattooed shoulder.

Across from the ash-skinned assassin, Cloud Singer, the bloodred strips of cloth that she wore blending with the russet walls and dark shadows of the cave, felt a tiny shiver run up and down her spine in anticipation. To her irritation, the shiver reminded her of how it felt back when she could activate the implant, back when the dreamslicer still took the Original Tribe into the Dreaming World, before the Cerberus people had blocked their access with the master weapon, the Death Cry. Cloud Singer held her breath as she watched Decimal River’s nimble fingers race across the keyboard of his portable computer.

Decimal River watched the numbers on his screen race toward zero as the mat-trans unit was activated in Tennessee.

“They’ve primed it,” he said in a hushed voice. “Just a few seconds longer.”

Beside him, her head jutting forward as she watched the countdown, Broken Ghost remained utterly expressionless. Her voice betrayed no emotion when the readout went to zero and she finally spoke.

“Close the trap.”

“And could there be any particular significance to the name that you chose for the operation, Magistrate?” a man’s voice, clear and sympathetic, was speaking close to his ear.

Kane opened his eyes and looked around carefully. He was stretched out on a leather couch in a small office, the walls of which were painted a reassuring, rich butterscotch. He turned, looking at the man who sat in a chair beside his head, peering over his regulation glasses at Kane, a notepad resting on his crossed legs.

“I’m sorry?” Kane asked, confused.

Beside him, the man thumbed back two sheets of his notepad, and Kane saw the tiny scrawl that covered each page. “Cerberus, you called it, the hound of Hades,” the psychiatrist said, tapping the top of his pen against the notebook. “Do you think that has any particular significance?”

Magistrate Kane shook his head. “I don’t really remember,” he said. “What were we talking about?”

The psychiatrist offered a sympathetic smile. “Are you still perhaps confused after the gas attack? Magistrate Salvo told me that you were lucky to get out alive.”

Kane closed his eyes, letting the words wash over him as he tried to remember. It had been a regular PPP—Pedestrian Pit Patrol—down in the Tartarus Pits, which sat at the very bottom of Cobaltville, surrounding the Administrative Monolith. He and his partner, Grant, had been accompanying some newbie, couldn’t remember the name, checking ID chips and generally making their presence known, when someone had launched a burning bottle of something flammable—a molly—in their direction. It had been a long time since the Pit dwellers had openly attacked Magistrates like that, and the newbie had asked why they had targeted them today.

“We’re Mags,” Kane had said, the regulation helmet sitting low over his face, masking his features and adding to his stern appearance. “That’s reason enough.”