James Axler - Cradle Of Destiny

“Flashlight,” Kane noted.

“I’d show you what it does, but it’d take you a few seconds to get over the strobe setting,” Sinclair answered.

“What kind of candlepower does it put out?” Kane asked.

“Ten thousand,” Sinclair said. “It’ll still be sharp enough to leave a millennialist seeing spots for about fifteen seconds.”

“That should buy us enough time to get out into the open,” Kane returned. “Lakesh?”

The chief scientist of Cerberus frowned, but his decision process was quickened simply because of the swiftness of Kane’s decision. The former Magistrate was a man of action, but also one with an uncanny danger sense that had kept him alive in conflicts against menaces powerful enough to erase the solar system. “Bry, can we send them?”

Bry nodded and he and Morganstern exited the mat-trans unit. Kane and Sinclair entered the armaglass chamber with swiftness and purpose.

Kane wasn’t going to let Grant, his partner and best friend in the world, disappear into history without a fight.

GRANT AND SHIZUKA STALKED through the entrance into a well-lit corridor. The millennialists were too savvy to allow stretches of shadows to obscure the approach of enemies. It didn’t matter, since the hallway was empty of sentries, which made this approach all the more suspicious. For a brief instant, Grant wished Kane, with his uncanny point man’s sense, was by his side instead of the beautiful samurai Shizuka. She was highly skilled, but Grant had yet to encounter another with Kane’s instincts and reflexes.

The former Magistrate pushed the thought from his mind. Instead of occupying his thoughts with what could have been, he needed to concentrate on the here and now. His eyes and ears couldn’t pick up on minuscule details with the same razor-sharp precision that Kane could, but he hadn’t survived years as a Mag without relying on his own well-honed awareness. That’s when he saw the smears of mud tracking along the otherwise mirror-polished floors.

Grant slowed and Shizuka, shadowing close to him, did likewise, her attention falling to the mess on the tiles. Neither of them spoke, but they both realized that something else was waiting down the hall, out of sight. The smell of the mud was the same primal stench of jungle that they had passed through. The Tigers of Heaven had done their best to clear the road between the beach and the installation of the dangerous feral predators trawled from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, then utilized speakers producing uncomfortable infrasonic pulses to keep them away.

The speakers had made manning Thunder Isle much safer, but nothing was perfect, necessitating sidearms and a contingent of sentries on the island at all times, just in case a predator’s taste for human flesh was stronger than the discomfort that pumped through his eardrums every time he neared their world.

Those speakers, unfortunately, had a limited range. Behind the walls of the facility, anything carted past them would be unhindered, save by locked bulkhead doors, just like the one that sat at the end of this corridor. As Grant and Shizuka kept to the cover of a wall outcropping, minimizing their exposure to security cameras, they realized that something else could have been curled up in nooks down the way.

“Judging by the size of the mud smears, trailing off into man-size footprints, we’re looking at deinonychus,” Shizuka said.

Grant, who had grown familiar with the time-displaced dragons of Thunder Isle, nodded in agreement. “More than one, too. And check it out, feathers. Definitely those little ‘terrible claws.’”

The predators that they’d referred to were the height and weight of German shepherds, but were infinitely more dangerous, possessing intelligence and teamwork in addition to flesh-rending killing claws on their hind legs and mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth. The deinonychus were masses of muscle that could sprint at upward of thirty miles per hour, as well. All of that combined into an opponent that was a lightning-quick slashing wind that could bring down elephantine sauropods outweighing an individual raptor tenfold. The Tigers of Heaven had suffered losses because of these cunning, dangerous creatures, and Grant and his other Cerberus companions had nearly succumbed to their threat, as well.

“Damn consortium must have drugged them and brought them here to be guard dogs,” Grant grumbled.

As if on cue, a feather-crowned head poked out, cat-slitted eyes staring manically over a grin full of daggers. Though the deinonychus had existed millions of years before humans had even developed consciousness, there was something primevally terrifying about that wild, unhindered smile that reached down into the mammalian DNA and still resonated in modern humans. This was the cackling wyvern, a fanged cockatrice that was the horror of mankind’s nightmares, the source of myths and horror tales.

Another head, then a third, all looked down the hall, nostrils flaring, heads tilting and twitching inhumanly to locate the source of any sound.

Grant grimaced, realizing that even hushed, his voice carried to the sharp ears of the deadly predators. Shizuka tensed, knowing that they didn’t see all of their dinosaur opponents. A sudden movement would be the trigger to the raptors’ charge. The three hunters, given the height of their heads around the outcroppings they’d nested at, were crouched on haunches of coil-wound muscle that could launch them as swiftly as even Shizuka’s arrows.

One of the raptors padded warily into the open, body and head held low and parallel to the floor tiles. Grant could see the predator’s killing claws, three-inch-long hooks of gleaming black talon, cocked perpendicular to the ground, its other nails providing it traction in the polished corridor. The raptor’s thigh muscles flexed and swelled, the promise of blinding speed stored in the tightly clenched limbs.

Grant sneered. The dinosaurs were simple animals, no matter how dangerous they could be. They were pawns of the millennialists, who simply saw every living thing as their subjects. That these creatures, magnificent examples of an evolutionary line ended sixty-five million years prior, would either kill or die was of no matter to the conspirators. At the same time, Grant was not a man who relished killing animals unnecessarily and hated it even more when those creatures were used as fodder for cowards too lazy to fight their own battles. As much as the initial sight of the deadly predators had awakened instinctual horror in the pit of his stomach, these dinosaurs were not malicious or gleefully violent. The only adversaries whom Grant had ever encountered who had taken joy or pride in their violence were humans. The deinonychus hadn’t made a choice to be here and be killers.

Still, Grant wasn’t going to stay his hand, not with Shizuka’s life at stake. The Tigers of Heaven commander had similar feelings. While one of them could have possibly retreated back out of this corridor, the two of them would not be able to dive through the door without entangling each other. They had to stand and fight, especially since there were citizens of New Edo and Cerberus on the other side of the door the raptors protected.

Grant would make note to provide a little extra pain to the sociopaths who threw away lives like table scraps as he extended his fingers for a countdown. Shizuka nodded, understanding his intent. From the behavior they observed, there was a path that didn’t involve violence and would result in their betrayed presence and injuries inflicted at the talons and fangs of the deinonychus. As Grant’s index finger folded down into his fist, the two warriors stepped into the open swiftly and suddenly, so much so that the lone predator crouched in the center of the hall stepped back, startled into recoil.