James Axler - Dragon City

Beside him, Brewster Philboyd, another of the trusted Cerberus team, was running a diagnostics check on the expanding computer system. A tall man with a high forehead, dark hair and black-framed spectacles perched on his nose, Brewster was a trained astrophysicist who could generally turn his hand to most technical problems.

“How’s it going?” Grant asked as Philboyd caught his eye.

Philboyd held up his hands in mock despair. “It’s getting there,” he said begrudgingly. “Satellite feeds are scanning properly, but we’re still amassing the data.”

For years now Cerberus had relied on the data from two satellites in geosynchronous orbit around the equator, the Vela-class reconnaissance satellite and the Keyhole Comsat. The feeds from the two satellites provided empirical data from across the globe and also allowed for real-time communication via the Commtact units that many of the field operatives had had embedded beneath their skin. The task of monitoring these satellite feeds had been interrupted with the recent attack on Cerberus, and it was only now that Lakesh had begun to reassemble his team and initiate the arduous task of checking the information that had been stored in their absence.

Grant continued across the room, walking through the open doorway at its far end and making his way along a wooden-walled corridor that led the way through the building. He passed several doors, each one leading to private bed quarters that had been procured by Cerberus personnel for the duration of their tenancy. Grant arrowed toward one of these, pushing it gently open with a soft touch despite his imposing size.

Within, the drapes of the bedroom were closed, creating a cozy, dark atmosphere. A beautiful dark-haired woman sat in a chair beside the lone bed, her head lolling backward, a mangy-looking dog lying at her feet. As Grant walked in, the dog raised its head, ears pinned back to its head, and let loose a wary growl.

“It’s okay, boy,” Grant said, leaning down for a moment and offering the dog his empty hand to sniff. “Just me.”

The dog was some kind of mongrel, a scraggly-looking beast with more than a hint of coyote. It had the palest eyes that Grant had ever seen in a dog, orbs a white so pure they seemed faintly blue.

The woman in the chair had awoken, too, and she watched Grant through narrowed eyes. Her name was Rosalia, a stunningly attractive woman in her mid-twenties, with long dark hair that fell halfway down her back, olive skin and long, supple limbs. Rosalia wore a long skirt that trailed to her ankles, its flowering pattern scuffed with dirt, her dark top askew on her shoulders where she had slept in the chair. Working both sides of the law, Rosalia had recently found herself siding with the Cerberus team as they escaped the imprisonment of Life Camp Zero.

Grant took no notice of her. His dark eyes were fixed on the still figure lying alone in the bed. Kane had come to be Grant’s brother-in-arms over the years. An ex-Magistrate like Grant, Kane was a few years younger than the other man, and he looked terrible. His dark hair was ruffled, sticking to his forehead in sweaty clumps, and he had the dark shadow of a beard around his jaw now. And there was something else, too—a spiny protrusion growing on his face, circling and encrusting his left eye like bone before arcing over the cheek and pulling the corner of his mouth up into a sneer. Grant looked at Kane as he slept, eyes running across that hideous protrusion and feeling the frustration rising in his gut. Whatever it was, the growth had affected Kane’s vision, not simply blinding him but inexplicably triggering some kind of hallucinatory episodes. As such, it had left Kane grounded while Dr. Kazuko and the other medical staff investigated the nature of the intrusion to his flesh.

When he looked down, Grant saw that he had clenched his own hands into fists. He eased his hands open again, willing the tension from his body. “How is he?” he asked, not bothering to look at the woman he was addressing.

“He’s been asleep mostly,” Rosalia said, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb the room’s sleeping occupant. “Probably a relief.”

“I guess,” Grant agreed.

“What about you?” Rosalia asked softly, standing and edging toward Grant. “Any word on Edwards?”

“They’re still trying to figure out what the condition is,” Grant told her, “but they figure it’s stone inside his head. So it’s a safe bet they’re related. Which means the cure to one might just hold the cure to the other.”

Rosalia’s lips pulled back from clenched teeth. “Damn this Ullikummis,” she cursed. “What did Kane ever do to—?”

“Got in his way,” Grant interrupted. “We all did. It’s what we do. It’s what we’ve been doing for a half-dozen years. Had to take a casualty sometime.”

Grant didn’t tell her the other thing he was thinking. The third member of their cozy partnership—a trained archivist called Brigid Baptiste—had disappeared without trace, only to reappear in time to shoot Kane in the chest as he lay already wounded. That had occurred out in a cavern near the newly rebuilt settlement of Snakefishville, a cavern Kane, Grant and Rosalia had investigated as it housed an Annunaki artifact called the Chalice of Rebirth. While Brigid meant little to a newcomer like Rosalia, the woman had been a crucial member of the Cerberus team since its inception, and she shared a special bond with Kane himself—the two were anam-charas, so-called soul friends linked through eternity.

Rosalia made her way toward the door, encouraging her pale-eyed companion along beside her. “The dog needs some exercise,” she told Grant, knowing the man would want to be left alone with his best friend.

Grant looked at her and nodded sorrowfully.

“You’ll be okay here, right?” Rosalia asked. “I can stay, get one of the big tough samurai men to take care of this nuisance.”

“I’ll be fine,” Grant told her, “but thanks.” As Rosalia pushed through the door, Grant spoke once more, almost to himself. “You know, it’s the strangest feeling—finding out we’re not as immortal as we thought.”

Rosalia silently closed the door and left the ex-Magistrates alone.

Chapter 3

The silent drums were beating and Farrell looked wasted. He was a young man but he was looking old, his sunken skin drawn and pale where he had rapidly lost weight over the past few weeks. His gold hoop earring hung low on his ear, his goatee beard looked a little more ragged than normal and his usually shaved head was growing out in mismatched tufts of ginger and brown. But when Sela Sinclair looked at him across the dilapidated room they found themselves hiding in, the thing she most felt was not sorrow or worry or even desperation—it was hunger. Seeing a man that drawn, that sallow cheeked, made her stomach growl. She wanted so much to feed him, to just see him eat.

That was stress, Sinclair told herself as she looked at him. That was what it had done to him. Was doing to him.

Farrell had been a technician at the Cerberus redoubt, one of those perennial staff members who could turn his hand to any background task to keep things running smoothly. His favorite post had been running the mat-trans and he could often be found checking the diagnostics on the computer terminal linked to the man-made teleportation unit.

When Cerberus had come under attack, Farrell had been among the staff who had been caught with their pants down. Quite how Ullikummis’s forces had penetrated the redoubt remained a mystery to Farrell—hadn’t they had a security perimeter to stop this very type of attack? Somehow, whatever it was that they faced in this Ullikummis creature, it was a threat that could change the rules. And, like the rest of the complement of personnel at Cerberus, Farrell had been overpowered and imprisoned by those invading forces, incarcerated in Life Camp Zero to be indoctrinated into the ways of this new would-be master of the world, this new world order.