And Kyros found something.

Finally, exhausted, they arrived at the ledge outside the cave just as the sun began slipping below the distant horizon. The sky was a deeper green now.

Ivan was surprised to see evidence of activity up here.

Debris ... piles of dirt and huge chunks of castaway stone were piled outside the entrance.

"Good place for an ambush," Jordan said, the last to join the group.

Ivan shook his head.

"He wants us ... me, anyway, alive. Knowing my brother, I'd say he's not likely to go for a direct assault."

"Why's that?" Annie asked.

Like Jordan, she never stopped looking around, as though she expected an attack at any moment.

"For one, we have what he wants. You have it, right, Annie?"

She nodded and patted a pants pocket.

Ivan thought to ask her if he could see it. Just to make sure.

Trust.

But he wouldn't put it past her to bring a fake.

Maybe that's what he would have done.

"And two. He knows he has us on his terms."

Jordan took a breath, clearly not happy with that. The gunner looked like he was about to say something, but instead he simply looked at Ivan, then away.

Ivan made a show of checking his weapon and then addressed the group.

"We ready?"

"For what?" Rodriguez said, his voice shaking, his eyes darting back and forth.

Guy's close to losing it, and we're not even in the cave yet.

"Okay," Ivan said, letting out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Let's go see what my brother's been up to."

36.

TRIP WIRE.

This sucks! Nahara kept thinking.

He'd seen enough people in neuro-collars before, but he'd never experienced it.

The worst part was that his mind remained perfectly lucid. He could hear and see and smell everything, but his sense of touch was gone.

He knew-rationally-that he was sitting in an SRV seat, but he had no sensation of his weight on the seat ... or the seat pressing against him.

When the gunner had punched him-sucker punched-his head had rocked back, but there hadn't been the slightest flicker of pain.

Spots of blood drying to a dark brick red splattered his shirtsleeve.

It took immense effort simply to move his eyes, and the inability to blink made them sting. He measured the impossibly slow passage of time by the progress of the sun and shadow that moved so damned slowly across the cabin wall and floor.

He had no idea how long he'd been here.

There hadn't been a "night," but then again, he had no idea what this planet's rotational rate was. A "day" could last hours or weeks beyond the standard twenty-four.

All the while, his anger-at Jordan and Annie, and at Kyros for luring him into this, and the others, the ones in the World Council who had arranged this transfer of data-grew stronger.

But no blame for himself.

He had a chance to make a fortune. To escape his life, his family, the work for the authority, so dull and boring.

He could escape.

He lost himself in such thoughts ...

But then at some point in the meaningless, timelessness of his situation, he saw something.

At first, he didn't believe it.

He was convinced a shadow had passed across the sun or that his vision was going after being strained for so long.

But a timeless moment later, he knew what he was seeing was real.

A shadow was cast across the floor at his feet, and up onto the wall. It was elongated but clearly the head and shoulders of a person.

And then-bracing himself for whatever was about to happen-the SRV hatch door was forced open.

He had company.

"You sure you don't want to sit this one out, Doc?" Sinjira asked as she turned to face Rodriguez.

He regarded her with a look she had seen all too often in her dealings with people-especially men, but more than her fair share of women, too.

"Are you kidding? Stay here by myself?"

She adjusted the chip in the node on her head and checked the levels on her handheld.

"This is going to be KC."

"KC?"

"Killer content..."

"Everyone ready?"

Ivan's voice, sharp and sudden, echoed in the cave opening.

Sinjira turned to face him.

The cave entrance ahead.

Rodriguez took a step back and, waving his hand loosely, indicated that she should go in front of him.

Polite ... or a coward who wants to be at the back of the line in case shit gets real?

It didn't matter because Sinjira was feeling just the opposite.

She wanted to be as close to the action as possible.

"I'm all set, boss. Cannot wait."

Ivan nodded, turned, and then led them into the cave.

Ivan saw the body first.

Huge ... probably four meters tall, stretched out to its full height.

The good news: it was dead.

The bad news: he had no idea what species it was ... had never seen anything like it before in all his travels.

He stopped short, so abruptly that Ruth bumped into him.

If the creature had been alive, the impact would have knocked his aim off.

I'll have to mention that to her ... watch out for my gun.

Ruth let out a surprised gasp as Ivan played his flashlight beam across the dead alien.

It was hideous. The closest thing Ivan could compare it to was an iguana ... a four-meter-long iguana with desiccated openings covering its body.

Evidently, it had been dead for some time. Its punctured, scaly skin was rotting and peeling away.

Apparently not tasty to scavengers, Ivan thought.

The belly of the creature had also split open, exposing a waxy, red honeycombed internal structure, looking more like shiny stone than flesh. The visible organs all black with rot ... and then Ivan saw that those organs were dotted with thumb-sized white "worms."

Waxy tubes the size of small snakes.

"What is it?" Ruth asked. She sounded so scared, even with it dead.

"Not sure," he replied. "Nasty, hmm?"

Ruth moved closer, bending at the waist to inspect it.

"Uh, it looks dead, but still I wouldn't get too close."

Her eyes looked at the seething mass of white worms, consuming what was left of the rotting flesh.

Annie stayed back, gun lowered at the thing as if expecting the worms to jump up at her.

Ivan saw her swing her flashlight beam around, pistol aimed, taking it all in.

"What the hell is this place?" she asked.

"Years ago, we camped up here ... when we first arrived," Ivan said.

"The Runners?"

Ivan nodded.

"Looks like there's been some excavating going on since then."

Ivan nodded again as he directed his flashlight beam toward the back of the cave, the light swallowed by the darkness.

The cave floor up ahead was littered with numerous motionless forms.

"We ... the Runners used Omega Nine as a base for a while ... until the miners showed up."

"What happened then?" Ruth asked.

Ivan shrugged.

"Nothing for a while. We left them alone. They left us alone."

"So what's in here?" Annie asked. She took a few tentative steps forward, her flashlight beam playing across the assortment of corpses. Dozens of different alien species in various stages of decay.

"Beats the hell out of me. It wasn't like this by the time I went to prison." A breath. The air ... even that smelled different here. "And Kyros didn't bother to send me any updates."