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  Considering this for a moment, Lakesh nodded, accepting Philboyd’s hypothesis. “Most likely. Then, what would you suggest has happened, Mr. Philboyd?” Lakesh encouraged.

  “The transponders can be switched off,” the astrophysicist proposed, “but they are very hard to find. One would have to know what one was looking for to do that. Alternatively, the signal could be jammed somehow, but that would likely create a trace echo—a null zone that would be as obvious as if the transponders were still functioning.”

  “What if it was a very wide null zone?” Lakesh asked.

  Deep in thought now, Philboyd shook his head. “We might have more trouble spotting it, but I don’t see it myself,” he reasoned. “That would take a lot of equipment to boost the jamming signal. It’s too elaborate for gun runners.”

  “An outside party, then?” Lakesh proposed.

  “Again, same notation,” Philboyd said. “And it’s too specific. It could not be by chance alone—it would take a targeted attack on our specific transponder frequencies to hide them.”

  “What about the Original Tribe?” Lakesh suggested. The Original Tribe were a group of technological shamen who operated from a hidden location in the Australian outback. They had clashed with the Cerberus organization one year ago during a mission to recover a reactivated doomsday device, and had subsequently marked the Cerberus operatives—and specifically Lakesh himself—for death. With their advanced technology, the Original Tribe had shown incredible ingenuity in infiltrating computer systems, and had even managed to remotely tap into the mat-trans.

  Philboyd looked uncertain. “They’ve been quiet for so long,” he said. “It just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Then what else could have happened?” Beth asked.

  “The transponder signals are bounced to us via satellite...” Lakesh began, still forming a working theory. “Could there be a problem there, Beth?”

  Delaney tapped her computer keys, engaging a systems check of the satellite uplink. “We’re still getting a strong signal in other respects,” she said doubtfully. “It’s only the CAT Alpha team that has dropped from sight.”

  “Well, if the satellites are still operational,” Philboyd realized, “then either the signal’s been blocked by a screen, or Kane and his team are somewhere beyond their reach.”

  “Off planet?” Lakesh said doubtfully. While Cerberus had mounted off-planet excursions before now, including battling with an alien mothership outside of Earth’s atmosphere and visiting the Moon and Mars, the abruptness with which Kane’s team had disappeared did not seem consistent with such a journey. For one thing, they should have reported in. “Recheck the data and replay the signals with an echo trace,” Lakesh decided. “Try to pinpoint exactly when and where they were when they disappeared. Brewster, backtrack on the satellite footage. Let’s see if we can eyeball our team from above and learn where they went to.”

  Brewster Philboyd nodded, removing his glasses for a moment to clean them on his tunic before he got to work on this new problem. It seemed that the mysteries were piling up today, one upon another.

  As he wondered what had happened to CAT Alpha, there was something else nagging at Lakesh as he made his way back to his desk. The report that Reba DeFore had provided concerning the components of their mysterious visitor, most specifically those nongenetic components that suggested protective clothing of some sort. Could that possibly be a space suit, the kind man had designed to walk on the Moon? If Kane’s team had been spirited off planet, was it possible that an astronaut had come to visit Cerberus via the mat-trans? And if that was the case, were the two things linked?

  Lakesh sighed heavily as he plucked up DeFore’s report for another check. There were just too many questions right now, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that the one thing they didn’t have enough of was time.

  * * *

  KANE DUCKED DOWN AS another bullet clipped the burnt-out car close to his ear, shrieking like a delirious child as it cut through the air.

  Crouched beside him, Grant and Brigid were both awaiting his decision.

  “Fight or flight, Kane?” Grant pressed. “Which is it?”

  He didn’t want to fight Magistrates, but if it was necessary, they needed somewhere they could defend, where they would be less out in the open. Kane’s eyes darted to the building behind him, the one from which they had emerged, its ruined wall showing the guts of four floors like some cutaway diagram.

  “Follow me,” Kane instructed, his body already in motion.

  Grant and Brigid followed as Kane dashed across the cracked sidewalk and darted through the wide gap in the first-floor wall. As they ran out into the open, the corpselike Magistrates picked up their pace, their determined strides turning into a sprint as they hurried after the disappearing Cerberus warriors. Another cluster of screaming bullets struck the ruins, several finding their path through the holed wall and into the shadowy rooms beyond.

  In the lead, Kane was first to see the ground-level room. Ill-lit by the cloud-obscured sun, it appeared to be a waiting room with vast banks of fixed chairs molded from plastic and scattered coffee tables at regular intervals. While the metal-bar structure that held the rows of chairs remained intact, the vacuum-molded chairs had melted in a radial pattern, its center somewhere in the street behind them. The room stank of smoke damage, its cloying scent had seeped into the walls and what remained of the furniture, saturating the air throughout.

  Kane ran through the decimated room, using instinct to navigate through the ruined chairs and tables in semidarkness, leaping over the knee-high metal bars that had once held more of the chairs. Grant and Brigid followed, their arms pumping as they ran for cover, screaming bullets clipping the furniture all around them.

  There was an entrance up ahead, Kane saw in the gloom, twin doors with circular glass panels in their upper levels. He ran for the doors, ducking his head as another burst of bullets came dangerously close to him.

  Kane took just a moment to glance over his shoulder. Grant and Brigid were paces behind him, and beyond them he saw the deathly Magistrates just beginning to make their way into the waiting room through the missing wall.

  “Heads down,” Kane shouted as he saw the Magistrates’ weapons glow, unleashing another burst of those nightmarish bullets.

  Kane’s partners did not need more warning than that. Both of them brought their heads low to their chests, ducking down behind whatever remained of the ruined chairs.

  Kane brought his Sin Eater around, firing a warning shot for the first time. He had hoped to avoid it, but the Mags were making good ground, getting closer with each step, relentless in their pursuit. The Sin Eater fired high, 9 mm parabellum bullets striking the ceiling in a shower of sparks.

  Incredibly the dark-clad figures kept coming as the sparks lit the room, not even so much as flinching, let alone slowing down.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Kane warned. “We’re not your enemy. Stay back and we can discuss this like reasonable...”

  The rest was cut off by the sound of the Magistrates’ matching weapons firing and another burst of screaming bullets zipping across the room as Kane and his partners sought cover.

  Kane was at the double doors now, his back pressed to them as the Magistrates approached like wraiths through the darkness. Kane watched their weapons discharge, noticing something for the first time in that gloom. The weapons kicked out a white residue that glowed in the darkness, swirling through the air like smoke. The smoke seemed to contain faces, mouths taut in screams.

  Chapter 11

  “Get down,” Grant shouted, grabbing Kane by the belt and pulling him to the floor.

  Kane looked startled as another swarm of the howling bullets drilled into the wall above his head.

  “What’s got into you?” Grant demanded. “You were just standing there.”


  “There’s something in the bullets,” Kane said, shaking his head to clear it. “Faces.”

  “Worry about that later,” Brigid said, sliding across the floor to join them. “We need to get out of here.”

  Before Kane or Grant could reply, Brigid pulled her shotgun around, bringing herself up on one knee and firing. The loud cough of the shotgun pounded at their eardrums as the weapon discharged.

  “She’s right,” Grant agreed, and Kane nodded.

  “Sorry, I just...zoned out,” Kane explained, the confusion evident in his voice.

  The shotgun’s discharge lit the room as Brigid fired again, blasting another shell at the oncoming Magistrates. They returned fire, their bullets screeching through the air as they hurtled toward the Cerberus teammates.

  Then Kane was through the double doors, Grant’s hand between his shoulder blades as he shoved his disoriented partner through. Brigid followed a second later, reloading the shotgun as she crashed through the doors.

  “What got into you, Kane?” she demanded.

  “I...don’t know,” Kane said, bewildered. “I saw something...in their blasts.”

  They were in a wide corridor that ran to a junction at one end and an abrupt stop at the other where the rubble of the wall had collapsed to block it. Light crept through the gaps in the rubble, illuminating the corridor. The whole atmosphere was heavy with that same burned stench. It had a tiled floor, but the tiles were blackened and stained with the rust color of long-dried blood in sweeping streaks, as if a painter had gone mad. Long light fixtures hung from chains, all of them dead, and there were gurneys shoved against the walls here and there. There were at least a dozen doors emerging from this corridor, along with a bank of three elevators, their thick metal doors cratered with impacts, one set wrenched entirely free and strewed across the floor.

  “Don’t know about you, but I’m guessing it’s a hospital,” Brigid said, looking around. “Maybe a military one. The waiting room, the stretchers...”

  Kane nodded, still struggling to organize his thoughts. The things he had seen in the expulsion of the bullets, the faces frozen in screaming agony, played again and again across his mind’s eye, hideous and terrifying all at once.

  Grant peered through the ruined glass portal of the left-hand door. “They’re still coming,” he reported over the sounds of impacting bullets. “We’re gonna have to return fire.”

  Kane shook his head. “Not yet. Let’s find cover and keep hidden.”

  “Better find it fast,” Grant warned, turning away from the doors as a burst of fire rattled them on their hinges.

  Taking the lead, Kane headed down the unlit corridor at a sprint, ignoring the doors leading from it in favor of the distant junction. “We’ll try to get to the far side of the building,” he instructed, his voice coming rapidly between breaths. “Keep moving away from the Magistrates.”

  Together, the three Cerberus warriors sprinted toward the junction, heading to the right on Kane’s instructions. Behind them, the sickly looking Magistrates had just broken through the double doors of the wrecked waiting room, and their guns whipped up as they spotted their prey. The weapons fired, spouting eerie puffs of whiteness that hung in the air for a moment, shimmering in the shafts of light creeping through the rubble behind them, ghostly faces drawn in agony amid the smoke.

  A moment later, screaming bullets peppered the far end of the corridor, but Kane and his two companions had disappeared, passing around the junction corner and sprinting through the ruined corridors of the hospital building.

  At the rear of the group, Grant peered over his shoulder as the bullets lashed against the wall, their screams dying with each impact. “That was close,” he hissed, redoubling his pace.

  The corridor here was narrow in parts, where a great hunk of ceiling had collapsed, and Kane had to weave past it, his pace seldom slowing. Above him, one half of the ceiling still held, but just barely, its lowest surface scraping above the hair on his head. Brigid followed, hefting the shotgun one-handed as she zipped through the narrow gap. In the rear, the wide-shouldered Grant was forced to go sideways past the collapse, but it gave him an idea.

  “Brigid,” he called, and both she and Kane slowed their pace momentarily to see what Grant needed. Grant was standing on the near side of the ceiling collapse, pointing at it with his Sin Eater. “I don’t have any charges. Use your shotgun to blast this thing shut.”

  Brigid needed no further encouragement. As Kane scouted ahead, she brought the 12-gauge around and targeted the partly collapsed ceiling. “Get back,” she warned.

  As Grant stepped aside, Brigid squeezed the trigger, and the old Mossberg design unleashed a burst of deadly fire, striking the drooping ceiling with a crash of splintering wood and plaster. Grant ran as the rest of the ceiling collapsed behind him, his arms pumping as he hurried to join Brigid.

  Up ahead, Kane had found a possible exit. His head appeared from a side room, calling his companions over as they raced along the corridor. They followed him inside, entering another waiting area of fixed seats and low tables. This one, however, had specially low seats in one section, and the scarred walls showed the remnants of a cheery mural, a cartoon version of a field with smiling flowers and cheerful bunny rabbits hopping across it. Like the rest of the rooms, this one was blackened with unidentified debris, rusty brown streaks smeared all over the floors and painted walls.

  “Looks like a children’s ward,” Brigid observed as she followed Kane through the upturned tables and chairs.

  “Which scratches your idea that it was a military hospital,” Kane pointed out.

  “Not really,” Brigid reasoned as he led the way. “Military brats get sick, too. I think with the mat-trans upstairs—”

  “Think later,” Grant growled from behind them both. “I don’t reckon that little trick back there is going to hold our playmates for long.”

  * * *

  BARELY THIRTY FEET AWAY, the four Dark Magistrates hurried in pursuit of their quarry as the ceiling fell down before them. Lined up, the four dark figures halted before the collapsed ceiling, eyeing it through rotted and putrescent orbs. Magistrate North, whose flesh was black with infection, skin rotted away from muscle, held his Soul Eater pistol up and blasted a burst of rapid fire at the barricade before him, sending a dozen shots screaming at the fallen ceiling in the space of two seconds.

  The rubble kicked and spit as the screaming bullets struck it, slugs vibrating across its surface in an angry tarantella, chunks of plaster and wood ripping from it in angry spits. But when he was done, the barricade remained intact, only the slightest damage showing across its rough surface, more dislodged pieces falling in place.

  The Dark Magistrates did not say a word, as the capacity for speech had departed them long ago. Instead, they conversed in a series of abrupt shrieks and hums, identifying the problem and settling on a solution with rapidity.

  A moment later, two of them turned back, returning the way they had come in search of another path through the ruined hospital. The others—North and West—remained at the collapsed ceiling, clawing at it with gloved hands as they searched for a way to lever the debris out of their path.

  They would catch these living perpetrators—catch them for their crimes against Baron Trevelyan.

  Chapter 12

  In the darkened wing of the children’s ward, Kane led the way through two rooms and into a third. Open plan in style, the rooms opened one into the next like Russian dolls, a waiting area leading into a smaller waiting room and that into a cluster of joined consultation rooms. The whole wing was constructed in an oblong, but there was wreckage all over, with holed walls and collapsed chunks of ceiling to be navigated around.

  As Kane led the way through the ruined area, Brigid realized why he had brought them in here. She could see tantalizing glimpses of a bank
of windows off to the left, obscured by the piled debris. An inviting lake glistened beyond.

  “There are no gaps large enough,” Kane growled, clawing at a handful of the rubble.

  “Then we’ll make one,” Grant suggested, pulling a large hunk of masonry aside. But as he pulled the stonework free it began to crumble, turning to sifting flecks as he moved it away. It was like trying to move shifting sand.

  “We don’t have time,” Brigid observed, voicing what they all realized. “Without tools, it’ll just keep dropping on us, filling in any progress we make.”

  “Dammit,” Kane cursed, searching around for another way through. “Come on, Kane,” he admonished himself. “Think—think!”

  Before Brigid or Grant could say a word, Kane was in motion again, hurrying back the way they had just come, launching himself toward a closed door that was partly hidden behind a fallen I beam. The door stood between two others, a narrow room lying beyond.

  * * *

  BACK AT THE ENTRY TO THE children’s wing, two dark figures were just entering, their shining Magistrate badges glinting like spilled blood in what little light infiltrated the waiting room. Magistrate North and Magistrate West had clawed through the fallen rubble in the corridor beyond, ripping piece after piece out of their way in a mess of dust and plaster. Their clothes were caked with dust, hunks of plaster falling from the creases as they moved and their helmets smeared with chalky residue.

  The two Magistrates strode into the children’s wing, twitching with alertness, searching for their prey by sound and smell. They moved through the room like prowling sharks, following some inherent instinct that drove them to their prey while, elsewhere in the abandoned hospital complex, their companions did likewise, seeking another route.

  * * *

  KANE TRIED THE DOOR AND found it locked. The handle turned but the door wouldn’t budge. Taking a step back, he kicked out, driving the cushioned sole of his foot into the door, heel first, just beneath the handle. There was a splintering of wood and then the door gave, the metal handle breaking off and falling away to the floor, the wooden frame splintering.