He elbowed himself onto his back, snapping at air, rising to his feet just as the night-gaunt closed in on him. Feinting to the right, then swinging over the left, he delivered a spinning crescent kick to the right side of the black-clad man's head. The night-gaunt crashed into another statue, and the odor of sulfur exploded hi the air.

Kane reeled backward as he was showered with foul-smelling ash and blinded by the black mushroom of smoke billowing up. He inhaled a mouthful of vapor and succ.u.mbed to a coughing fit. His watering eyes registered a flash of light, like an errant reflection of the sun. He felt a dull impact on the center ofhis chest and he barely made out the chrome spider clinging to his shirtfront. Then a terrible stunning shock lifted him, flung him back and bowled him over. He fell as limp and cold as a corpse to the floor.

Before his body had fully settled, the air shivered with a shriek of rage from Domi, followed a fraction of an instant later by the ear-knocking report of her handblaster. The .45-caliber round struck the night-gaunt in the center of his back. The faceless man flailed forward, as if he had just received a kick.

The bullet exited just above his pelvis in a splattering welter of scarlet liquid ribbons and blue-pink intestinal tissue. The silver-k.n.o.bbed baton went skittering out of his hand.

Domi rolled back up on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet and turned to see night-gaunts crowding in around Grant's body, thrusting at him with the rods. Her first two shots struck a night-gaunt full in his featureless face.

The next one caught a smaller black-clad man in the right side of the head. The fourth shot was a little low, blowing a piece out of the thigh of a man. Domi instantly corrected for aim and put another round through his forehead. The back of the headpiece puffed out momentarily as a red mist squirted out around the edges of the mask.

The voice of the woman continued to shriek exhortations.

The rods in the hands of the night-gaunts on the gallery flicked back and forth between Grant and DeFore, spitting little silver eggs. Grant twisted his body in a painful contortion as a metal object pa.s.sed very close by him. It struck the floor and bounced.

Grant raised his pistol at a shadowy shape on the second level and squeezed the trigger stud of his Sin Eater. A 245-grain hollowpoint round pounded into the abdomen of a night-gaunt. The masked man went over backward, bent double around his belly wound and voicing a very human howl of agony.

The silver-tipped rod spun from his hand, falling and clattering across the floor.

DeFore shoulder rolled over piles of foul-smelling ash, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the fallen rod. She raised it hastily, surprised by its light weight. Her finger found a small trigger lever. Sighting down it, framing a night-gaunt before it, she pressed the lever. Nothing happened. Cursing beneath her breath, DeFore triggered a shot at the nearest night-gaunt. The .25-caliber round smashed into the back of his right hand. Although she saw no blood, the man cried out and the rod dropped from suddenly nerve-dead fingers.

Grant raced toward the staircase that led to the gallery. Holding the Sin Eater high, he started firing and kept the trigger down. The subsonic 9 mm rounds ripped through the air, ricocheting off the handrails with flares of blue sparks and keening whines.

He sprinted up the stairs, two steps at a time. Beyond the head of the stairs loomed stainless-steel vats, like vast caldrons. A grille-floored iron catwalk ran alongside them. On the far end he saw three of the night-gaunts. They saw him at the same time, and a trio of silver eggs flashed toward him.

Grant fell flat, banging his elbows painfully. He heard the little devices clanging into the sides of the vats.

One fell down right between his outstretched arms, and he glimpsed nasty little double p.r.o.ngs ex- tending from both ends of it. A thread-thin skein of electricity arced between the p.r.o.ngs with a faint sizzle.

With a muttered "f.u.c.k this," Grant extended both arms, holding his pistol steady, and depressed the trigger stud. The autopistol hammered in a staccato roar. He exercised no mercy, burning down thenight-gaunts, not stopping until the clip cycled dry. The three corpses lay in b.l.o.o.d.y, limb-twisted heaps.

Grant quickly changed magazines, outfitting the Sin Eater with another clip. It clicked solidly into place, then he shot the bolt and chambered the top round. He climbed to his feet and went back toward the stairway. He didn't look at the dead shadow men any longer than he had to. A faceless man wielding a rod rose up from beneath the catwalk. He pointed the silver-k.n.o.bbed tip straight at Grant's head.

Having no choice, Grant lined up the Sin Eater's muzzle automatically and fired six rounds. The stream of 9 mm bullets caught the man in the center of his stomach and rapidly tracked upward, punching him backward, then splitting his mask in two. Grant continued down the stairs, back onto the rotunda's floor.

The woman's voice cried out again, and the night-gaunts scattered into the murk. Then as suddenly as it began, the pandemonium of the attack ended. Several black-clad corpses lay amid black ash, leaking fluids that turned it into a scarlet-tinged muck.

Grant squinted through the haze, seeking a moving target. It was like trying to see through a sediment-clouded pond. Although he couldn't fully smell the cess-pit stink from the destroyed statues, the foul tang of sulfur was sharp on his tongue. He turned his head and spit.

"Watch it." Grant saw Kane straining to hike himself up on his elbows. His voice was a croak, his face covered by a sheen of perspiration. He struggled to rise, but only managed to shamble to one knee. He labored for breath.

DeFore leaned down, putting a hand under his crooked left arm. His hand was cupped almost protectively over the left side of his neck. Between clenched teeth, she groaned, "Don't tell me-"

"Yeah," Kane rasped, staggering erect. He lowered his hand and revealed the gleam of the metal spider on his neck, the hooks tipping its spindly legs embedded in the flesh. "I felt it crawling up there, but I couldn't do a d.a.m.n thing about it." He rubbed his chest and winced. "G.o.dd.a.m.n thing shocked me."

"Shocked you?" Grant echoed in a challenging tone.

Kane nodded dourly. "I guess when the thing first hits you, it delivers a jolt of current. While you're incapacitated, it attaches itself more or less permanently. Pretty clever, actually."

"I know I'm impressed," Grant rumbled sardon- ically. "I'm sure you will be, too, if you end up as part of this statuary collection."

Kane said nothing, knowing as all of them did that Grant was hiding his genuine concern under a veil of sarcasm.

DeFore examined the rod, peering into it. "This is just a hollow tube, except for a spring mechanism.

That's how the spiders are fired-just a spring. Nothing too complicated."

"That makes me feel a whole lot better," Kane said dryly, tentatively touching the device on his neck.

DeFore eyed it keenly. "Does it hurt?"

"Not really. Not yet, anyhow."Domi leaned down to touch the handle of her knife in its boot sheath. "We can mebbe pry it off."

Kane glared at her. "And you can mebbe leave it alone. For all we know, fooling around with it is what turns you to stone."

DeFore gestured to the motionless figures scattered around the chamber. "They're not made of stone. I don't know what causes the effect, but it's like their skeletal structures and internal organs are dissolved, leaving only an empty husk in the shape of the person."

She did a poor job of repressing a shudder of loathing.

Grant surveyed the area and growled, "Where the h.e.l.l did those night-gaunts get to?"

Domi pointed across the rotunda to the shadowed mouth of a corridor. "Saw 'em run in there."

Grant started striding toward it. "Let's find them and persuade them to take that G.o.dd.a.m.n thing off your neck."

Domi's eyes glittered like blood-drenched rubies in her white face. She whipped out her knife. She thumbed the serrated edge and showed her teeth in a savage grin. "When we catch 'em, let me be the one to start."

Chapter 11.

They followed the corridor along two turns, first to the left, then to the right, down a stairwell and a ramp. When they reached a T junction, the left-hand branch wasn't lit, but the right-side pa.s.sageway glowed with ceiling lights.

"That's some kind of sign," Grant observed dourly.

"Yeah," agreed Kane. "G.o.d knows what, though."

The four people strode down the corridor for approximately fifty yards before it led them past a small control room and then through an open door. The room beyond was dark, and the four people hesitated before entering.

"If the gaunts are in there," Kane said in a low voice, "they'll be able to track us by our body-heat signatures."

Grant regarded him suspiciously. "How do you know that?"

Kane lifted a shoulder in a dismissive shrug. "I checked out one of their masks. I forgot to mention that."

"Wonderful," Grant snapped. "As if I wasn't nervous enough already."

"We don't have much choice," DeFore interjected. "If Brigid is here, she's probably through the door."

"I know," Kane said uneasily. "I just wish there was some light."

As if on cue, a neon strip on the ceiling flickered on and cast a white light. The corridor beyond the doorwas broad, a flat gray in color and it exuded a cold impersonality.

Grant exchanged a quizzical glance with Kane. "Maybe you can wish us a rocket launcher the next time."

"Next time," Kane replied absently, stepping into the hall and a.s.suming the point man position.

The four people made their way carefully along the hall, Grant and Kane unconsciously walking heel-to-toe as they always did when entering a potential killzone. Kane noted there didn't seem to be any doors along the walls.

They traversed a vestibule that both Kane and Grant knew once served as a security checkpoint. The opposite wall bore a barred door. The bars were made of high-grade vanadium steel and were as thick as an index finger. The cross bars were three inches apart. The top, the sides and bottom of the gate were set flush in a concrete frame. The barrier was secured by a keypad electronic lock. Having encountered similar barriers before, he knew not even a high-ex gren could breach it.

Kane scowled and fetched the door a frustrated kick. To his surprise, it swung open on oiled hinges. He gave the electronic lock a swift examination. It had been disabled. He inhaled a deep, slow breath. The unlocked barrier didn't make him feel any better. He supposed the fleeing night-gaunts could have been too panicky to close and lock doors behind them, but he doubted it. He doubted the night-gaunts were even in this section of the facility.

They couldn't see the exact size of the place. It was certainly immense, nearly three times the breadth and length of the Cerberus operations center. It was trileveled, with banks of gla.s.s-covered consoles spanning all three tiers. The central area was enclosed by towering crystal-fronted panels that rose to a high vault, like ftoor-to-ceiling windows. Light danced across the surface of the panels, but Kane wasn't sure if it was reflected light or generated from within.

Most of the chamber was in semidarkness except for a pool of white light shining over three isolated man-sized canisters hanging above a free-standing console. The console faced a black gla.s.s panel twelve feet high, which looked like an optics test board. It was covered with winking lights in all colors, sliding illuminated bars, concentric circles twirling in dimly glowing dials, tiny LCD windows with numbers flashing behind them, bright columns with indicators moving up and down and blips pa.s.sing across grilled screens. Everything still functioned, all the circuitry still drawing on the nearly eternal power provided by nuclear engines.

As they moved deeper into the enormous chamber, they pa.s.sed an open door. Beyond it they saw the familiar arrangement of armagla.s.s slabs enclosing a mat-trans jump chamber. The semitranslucent armagla.s.s was tinted a ruddy red, the hue of glowing embers.

Kane gestured to it. "At least we've got another way out of here other than overland."

Before any of his companions responded, a cavernous voice boomed, "Good evening."

The voice caused Kane to skip around, raising his Sin Eater, trying to find who had spoken. A wild, searching gaze showed him nothing but the huge chamber. Domi, lips peeled back from her teeth in a silent snarl, swung the barrel of her Combat Master in short arcs. DeFore stared around with wide eyes, lights reflecting in little specks from her irises. She swallowed hard. Grant's only reaction was a frown, casting his deep-set eyes into little pools of shadow.The voice continued, "Miss Brigid's compliments to you. She trusts you are well, and she's sorry not to be here to greet you. However, if you follow my instructions you will be reunited with her very soon."

The voice was electronically altered, sounding like a ba.s.so profundo orator proclaiming from the bottom of a well, while gargling at the same time. Still, something about it struck a chord of unwelcome familiarity within Kane. He couldn't pin it down, but he was positive the familiarity didn't derive from a pleasant memory. Suspicion swelled in his mind.

"Who are you?" Grant demanded, his eyes flicking around the chamber. He saw no vid spy-eye or speaker.

"No, you won't see anything. At this moment I am an invisible power. If you do as I say, I will make myself visible."

Domi uttered a wordless scoffing hiss, swinging the barrel of her blaster back and forth. She marched toward the nearest computer console. ' 'Mebbe if I start shooting things, you'll show yourself."

"I was afraid you'd ask that," the voice declared with a note of sadness.

DeFore's eyebrows knitted at the bridge of her nose. "We didn't ask anything-"

Domi had gone only four paces before she cried out and went into a series of dancing convulsions. All of them heard the faint crackle of electric current as she writhed, trying to free her feet from the floor.

Within a second, they came free and she staggered back, cursing. She sat down hard on the floor. DeFore knelt beside her as the little albino lifted first one leg then the other, rubbing them vigorously. "Shocked. Hurts."

DeFore observed, "You can move your legs, so the damage wasn't severe."

Domi nodded grimly, ma.s.saging her calves, her lips compressed in a tight line. "Get yourself shocked like this and tell me it's not severe."

The pneumatic hissing of compressed air, the squeak of gears and a pair heavy, floor-jarring thuds resounded through the chamber. Kane knew instantly what had happened even before the voice stated, "You are now imprisoned. All exits have been sealed. You really have no choice but to do as I say unless you choose to remain here and perish of thirst or hunger. And there's not even a toilet for you ladies."

Kane declared, "The voice is taped. There's n.o.body here." He glanced around and saw a monitor screen on a computer console suddenly flicker with an image.

"However," the altered voice went on, "I antic.i.p.ated your reluctance to trust me, so I'm providing something of an inducement and also reminding you of a debt that has yet to be paid."

The eyebrows of Grant and Kane lifted. Warily, the two men approached the monitor. They regarded the image, and despite the high aerial perspective,they recognized the scene instantly. They had seen the tape before.

They saw the vast hangar at Area 51 during the last desperate seconds of the battle when Ramirez and his Mags turned on Grant and Brigid. Kane watched himself preparing to throw the implode gren with bullets kicking up sand and dust all around him.

A stray slug caught him in the arm, and despite his black body armor, the impact sent him staggering.

The gren dropped from his hand and rolled across the concrete pad toward the elevator cupola.

Suddenly, Domi darted out from the cupola, scooped the gren up in one hand and c.o.c.ked her arm back to throw it at the vehicle. Grant saw himself rushing toward her, and though there was no sound, he saw his mouth working as he bellowed at her to drop the gren.

Then her diminutive form was completely engulfed by a brilliant incandescent blaze of white light. Frozen in place, Kane and Grant watched as the tremendous suction created by the implosion yanked their bodies forward in headlong, clumsy somersaults. Then the scene broke up in jagged lines and pixels and faded from the screen.

Both men continued to stare at the blank monitor, their throats constricted, their mouths dirt dry. Kane was first to speak. "That's the same tape we saw on Thunder Isle...in the Chronos facility."

Grant nodded shortly. "And whoever has us trapped in here is the same one who s.n.a.t.c.hed Domi out of the implosion."

One corner of Kane's mouth quirked in a mirthless smile. "Who do we know who could do that?"

Grant's response was a husky whisper. "The same p.i.s.sant who can tinker around with the Cerberus mat-trans network?"

"And the only p.i.s.sant who calls Baptiste 'Miss Brigid.'"

The amplified voice interrupted them with a chuckle. "You see? Now, at the risk of making a rather obvious pun, we must not waste any more time. The gateway unit's destination codes are already locked in and ready to engage. All you have to do is close the door and you're on your way to me."

The sec door blocking the entrance to the mat-trans section slid upward. Grant eyed the armagla.s.s jump chamber, gnawed his lower lip for a thoughtful moment, then cast a penetrating look in Domi's direction.

She still sat on the floor, rubbing her legs.

He announced curtly, "Me and Kane will make the jump. Reba, you and Domi will jump back to Cerberus once we're gone. You know the destination code."

Both women favored him with incredulous stares, although relief shone briefly in DeFore's eyes. Domi staggered to her feet, blurting angrily, "No f.u.c.kin' I way! I'm going with you-"

"No!" Grant's voice hit a deep pitch of fury and 1 anguish. Kane was so startled by the violence of his Ireaction, all he could do was stare in nonplussed *

silence, listening to the reverberations of the one- *

word response echoing throughout the chamber. i DeFore stared at him, too. She had never seen the f normally phlegmatic and taciturn Grant display '

more than mild annoyance, even when attacked. He , took a step toward Domi, and DeFore hastily re- I gained her feet, moving out of his way. j Between clenched teeth, Grant stated, "You're i jumping back to Cerberus with DeFore. That's all j there is to it." His tone brooked no hope of debate.

Domi glared at him, her eyes snapping red sparks of rage. "I don't take orders from you, Grant. Not anymore I don't."

Grant continued walking toward her, his gait menacing and ominous. Demi's pistol came up, the bore on a direct line with his chest. He hesitated, examined the hollow, cyclopean eye of the muzzle and continued walking toward her.

"Stay back!" Domi shrilled, fear and anger vibrating through her voice in equal measure. "Touch me and I'll shoot you, I swear I will!"