Ultima: Arrival




Comments? dustybottums2002@yahoo.com, and for artwork, Poser animations, and
fiction, visit www.mankillers.blogspot.com.

Warning: the following story is simple fantasy -- it contains moments of
(hopefully) redemption and redeeming sentiment. But it also has a notable
share of extreme, super-powered violence and interludes of a sexual nature.
So, consider yourself warned. If it isn't your thing, look elsewhere and good
luck to you. If it is to your liking, good, I'm glad you like it. There'll be
more of it soon. And now....let us begin our tale.

PROLOGUE

COM ROOM ALPHA

LUNAR BASE SERENITY SIX, 21:30 HOURS, YEAR: 2061

Brett Canton rubbed his eyes and yawned massively. He stretched as best he
could in the uncomfortable desk chair, his eyes watery and his head buzzing
from fatigue.

If we're gonna sit in front of them for hours, you'd think they would at least
be comfortable, he thought.

Before him, a massive bank of computer screens and digital readouts flickered
in the inky blackness of the room. The images on the screen changed as the
angles from the remote cameras would alternate, much like security cameras
back on Earth would. Of course, here they served a different purpose. On the
arid, frozen surface of the moon there were no thieves to guard against; here
they instead monitored the structural integrity of the lunar base itself.

The year was 2061. Mankind had finally committed itself to the exploration of
close-space objects, the moon among them. The usual struggles continued back
on Earth, with the minor changes the years can bring. The petty wars of Africa
had swollen and threaten to embroil the southern fringes of Europe during the
'30s, but had since fallen back as technology had finally made its way to the
heart of the continent and been fully accepted at last. The struggle against
religious fanaticism was slowly being won, not so much through the efforts of
the West but through the natural progression of civilization toward a slightly
more secular approach to government. Some factions remained, of course, such
as the Brotherhood of the Cloth, a sect that had staged a particular deadly
attack in 2046 that had killed over 2000 people in Rome, but the fires of that
conflict were in notable remission.

Technology had made huge strides since the turn of the century. The computing
power of industrial grade processors had increased geometrically; the average
Western kitchen of 2061 had more computer processing power than the antiquated
shuttle line of the now-defunct NASA. The US government had absorbed the space
agency in 2016, mothballed its aging shuttle fleet, and made it a separate
military division with close ties to the Air Force. The United States Space
Agency carried out research in the darkness of the void, and conducted tests,
constructed new facilities (including the three current lunar bases), and
served as the main means of transportation through near-Earth and deep space
alike. Space travel in 2061 was still cutting edge, but far more routine than
at any other point in history. A full third of the countries on the planet
launched men and devices into orbit on an almost daily basis, and there was a
near constant flow of men and supplies to the decade-old moon bases.

Just above the Earth, passenger jets routinely cruised at more than four times
the speed of sound; military aircraft approached speeds of Mach 10, their
pilots protected by advanced flight suits built to withstand the stresses such
speed put on the body of the occupant. The citizens of the first world drove
innovative passenger cars powered by either solar cells or a hydrogen/fusion
cell; climate change was still an issue but the ill effects of the planet's
human population had been addressed by 2030 and real, effective change enacted
by 2040. With the negative impact under control, Mother Nature went about her
work, and the scientific world marveled at the speed at which the planet
healed itself and regulated a more or less ‘normal' biosphere.

The human population of the planet had leveled out at just over 8 billion
souls. With the level of technology increasing quickly and its speedy
acceptance in lesser developed countries, the plights of famine and disease
were reduced to levels unknown in recent memory. By 2050 the world had entered
a time of shared prosperity the likes of which it had never known.

Of course, not all was perfect. The heart of man, above all things, is
deceitful; and the usual scourges of crime, narcotics abuse, war, and general
human ugliness still existed on a certain level beneath this outward exterior.

So it was in this world and this time that Brett Canton lived, and toiled
daily at his post as a communications officer at Lunar Base Serenity Six.

"Well, we don't see anything yet," the speakers crackled at him. Ridell's
voice was made tinny by the cheap microphone in his Exo-suit; the durable
material was strong and lightweight, but the military contractor had
definitely skimped on some of the more basic electronics.

"Roger that," Canton replied. He leaned forward in the dark and switched to an
alternate camera angle. The image on his biggest monitor switched to an
exterior view of the base; a long, three story wall of interlocking steel
pipes and aluminum stretched into the distance from this view, and a moment
later, four tiny figures emerged from its far edge.

"I've got visual on your crew, Steve," Canton said. He took a sip from his
coffee, long since cold, and grimaced. It as fitting, somehow, but it was
still irritating. It was so damn hard keeping anything out here hot.

"Hello, then," Riddell replied, his voice crackling with static. Canton
watched as one of the tiny figure waved an arm. ‘Still nothing, though."

Canton sighed. It as going to be a long night.

The surface of the moon was dry and dusty. The ground beneath was fairly firm;
Captain Steve Riddell had always thought it felt like he was walking on a
beach, the three or four inch deep soft coating shifting beneath his boots
much the way sand back on a Florida beach would.

The spacesuits he and his three companions wore were nothing like the clunky,
bulky outfits of the past. Exo-Corp, a military contractor based in Colorado
made them. They were lightweight, and as close-fitting as a suit could be,
adding only about 50% of the circumference of an arm or leg. This allowed for
much freer and more natural movement by the suit's occupant. The semi-rigid
plates that made up the long surfaces of the uniform were a tough graphite
composite that rivaled steel for toughness, painted a bright red to show
easily against the lunar landscape. The plates that covered the arms, legs,
and torsos were bound together by a tough material that flexed easily but was
nearly impossible to tear. The helmets were similarly constructed, and
attached to the torso with a motorized seal; the sensors worn on the neck and
head of the suit's occupant could transmit a signal to the suit itself for a
turn of the head; this way, rather than pivoting at the waist, the wearer
could turn his head naturally; the entire motorized helmet would turn with the
head of the wearer. All of these factors combined to make the most advanced
Exo-suit ever made, and the one most commonly used in space exploration.

So it was these suits that Steve Riddell and his men wore as they went about
their work outside of the base. Sensors in the outer wall of the structure had
detected a miniscule O2 leak, and the automated repair system of the lunar
base had alerted the required repair team within minutes. Leaks such as these
were common, but still deserved attention: the disaster at Lunar Base Alpha in
2054 has claimed the lives of 237 people, the single biggest loss of life in
space exploration, and it had begun with a tiny leak that quickly compromised
the structural integrity of the station. Conditions went from nominal to
deadly in moments; the entire structure suffered terminal decompression just
four minutes after the leak was first detected.

The design flaw had been addressed, but the very existence of a pressurized
structure in a vacuum combined with the risks posed by micrometeorites and
other variables made the occasional O2 leak unavoidable. This is where Riddell
and his repair team came in; their skills in low- and zero-G repair were the
subject of many a commendation by their supervisors.

The group of men trudged their way along the vast gray wall to their right.
They didn't bounce along on the lunar surface the way the Apollo astronauts
had; the Exo-suits were equipped with a devices in the boots, and gloves that
amplified the natural gravity of whatever environment they were designed for.
To Riddell and anyone else who wore them, the sensation the system afforded
was one of walking with small weights on each ankle and wrist. There was a
larger unit of the same function located in the lower, padded posterior region
of the suit, and Exo-suit wearers commonly joked that it was the one
responsible for "keeping your ass on the ground."

Gray panel after gray panel passed, and Riddell had just begun to wonder if
they had been called out on a wild goose chase. Then he saw it; a gentle puff
of dust, low, down near the ground. As he watched, he saw a brief jet of white
escape and disappear into the airless space around him.

He waved his teammates near. Tiny crystals of ice bounced off his helmet as he
knelt closer to inspect the miniscule leak; the natural moisture of the
exhalations of the base's occupants froze immediately upon escaping and
usually made the leaks easy to spot.

"Found it, Brett," Riddell said into his intercom. "It's a small one, looks
like it just opened up. It's not even constant, so there's something on the
inside obstructing the airflow, too."

Inside, Brett sighed in relief. Maybe the night was salvageable after all.
"That's great, Steve," he replied. As he spoke, above him and to his right, a
monitor flashed red briefly, and a soft indicator tone sounded a brief tone,
designed to be similar in sound to the old WWII-era submarine sonar pings. He
glanced up and caught a tiny fraction of a message, before it went back to its
normal readout.

Had that been a radar warning?

"Whoa, hold on a second." Brett scooted his chair to the right and his fingers
began dancing lightly over the various keyboards and screens around him. He
ran the program again, and changed the readout to a timeline view, and sure
enough, there was a brief anomaly there. "Hmm, hold on."

Riddell's voice as full of static. "What is it?"

"Not sure, just a sec. Ummm....looks like we've got a radar ping."

Outside, Riddell instinctively turned his eyes skyward, as did every member of
his crew. Meteor strikes to the moon were commonplace, and nearly a dozen
space explorers had been killed by space debris. One of them had been struck
by a micrometeorite smaller than the tip of a pencil, but the velocity at
which it was traveling had been sufficient to smash through the nearly
impenetrable Exo-suit chest plate like it had been tissue paper. It had blown
a volleyball-sized hole through man's chest so quickly that he was dead even
before the tiny fragment of iron had exited the rear of the suit and he had
depressurized. This event instantly came to Riddell's mind. Radar warnings
usually meant meteors...and sometimes, even a whole shower of them. The repair
might have to wait.

One filter. Now two. Scan again. Results. Filter three. Hmmm. Now check
original readout again. Damn.

Canton scanned the region once more; the powerful computers in the dark room
humming furiously. He checked the original readout one more time: sure enough,
there it was. A red spherical readout, encircled by slightly more pale
concentric rings; at three rings out (roughly 15,000 kilometers), he could see
it. A bright orange streak, very short, just crossing the marker. Then it just
disappeared. Weird.

"I don't know, Steve," Canton radioed to the team. "I got a ping 15K out,
small object moving fast enough to trip the sensors. But it just winks out."

"What do you mean, ‘winks out?'"

"It's just gone. It's only visible for a millisecond."

There was a pause as Riddell took this in. "Umm-hmm. What does this mean,
Brett?"

Canton sighed. Decision time.

"Okay, speed shows it's about an hour out. I'm thinking it's a meteor, I'd say
in the hundred pound range; we've got three possibilities. One, it is so small
its path will grav-warp and it shoot right by us. Two, it'll second-party
deflect, three.....well, three is that it'll hit."

"Odds?"

"I'm not Vegas, pal."

"But why did it just wink out?"

Canton sighed. The list of possible reasons was too long, but none of them
were likely. "Well, the particle or meteor or whatever it was might have
exploded. But if it did, we'd probably know about it, so that's most likely
out. Or we might be looking at a grav-abort; its vector might have changed due
to lunar gravity. Or it was intercepted by another, slower-moving body and
knocked off course."

"And that's all?"

"All that's likely. Technically, there's one other possibility."

"Which is?"

"Well...our system is designed to scan for objects of extremely high v
elocity, since they do the most damage."

"Okay."

"Well, there you go. The only way for an object's velocity to cause it to drop
off our sensors is...well, is for it to slow down. A lot, and fast. And any
sudden drop in speed would trigger a similar warning, even after the initial
contact is lost."

"Deceleration?"

"Um-hmm. From interstellar, messing-with-your-mind-warp-speed fast, all the
way down to, say, man-made, vehicle fast. Like, airplane fast."

Riddell's voice crackled over the speakers. "Well, that's kind of impossible,
right?"

Canton grinned. "Almost, buddy. Ain't gonna happen unless it's controlled by
external forces, and in deep space, it sure ain't likely, least as far as we
know. Course, if start seeing little green men..."

Riddell's voice answered without a pause. "I'll send ‘em your way, they're
probably looking for your mom."

"Nice. But it doesn't change the fact I've never seen a radar sig like this
one. So what's the plan?"

Outside, Riddell looked into the faceplate of the man closest to him, a man
named Morton. Morton returned his gaze, paused, and then his arms rose and
fell a bit. Riddell recognized the motion immediately: a shrug.

Screw it.

"Okay, what the hell, Brett. We're gonna stay and plug the hole."

Canton frowned. It made sense, and was probably the right decision. Still....

"Roger that. You're staying out and commencing repair."

The comlink fell silent, but Brett Canton's eyes remained on the viewer. He
was superstitious and didn't believe in hunches...but something just didn't
feel right about this one. He fell back into his seat, but his eyes never left
the monitor.

Lead was the key.

The heavy, malleable metal was at a premium in space. It was easily heated and
seemed created simply for one purpose: sealing holes. Riddell held the plasma
torch in two hands while the rest of his crew readied the lead blanks for
heating. The routine was fairly simple. One man would cut the excess material
away from a blown hole; another would heat the lead sheet. A third man would
load the molten material into a application gun, and a fourth would apply it,
much in the same fashion someone on Earth would use a caulk gun to seal a gap
in a wall joint. The warm, putty-like metal cooled instantly in the frozen
vacuum of space, setting less than three seconds after leaving the tip of the
heated application gun. It seemed wildly unscientific to the layperson, but in
all the years man had been in space, no better alternative had been found.

"Okay, ready?"

"Ready," Morton replied. He depressed a switch on the heating pad, and the
two-foot square sheet of lead melted into a sludge. He and another man began
loading it into the fourth's application gun. This man, in turn, held the
rifle shaped gun over the jet of oxygen and water vapor and nodded.

"Okay, cut atmosphere," Riddell radioed. Inside, Canton complied; the area was
sealed off by an airlock door . The jet of escaping material begin to fade.

"Here we go," Ridell said, and lit his torch.

The tip of the plasma cutter winked into sudden white-hot life, and the
faceplates of all four workers automatically darkened to block out the sudden
offensive light. Riddell cut into the thick metal siding of the retaining
wall, through the various layers of material designed to entrap the essential
atmosphere within; as he did, the forth member of the team, and man named
Malsky moved in with the application gun. But it was off, something as not
right, because -

Riddell barely had time to cut the torch before speaking. "Negative! Back..."

A sudden, explosive release of atmosphere blasted through the opening, tearing
the hole from a pinprick to a two foot maw in a flash. The sudden blast of air
knocked all four men sprawling, the power of the grav-units temporarily
overcome by the concussive force of the escaping atmosphere.

They lay there in the lunar soil, shocked but otherwise unhurt.

Riddell radioed first. "Okay, okay, everybody okay?"

Canton's voice crackled in. "Sound off."

"Riddell."

"Morton."

"Spaulding."

A crackling sound came from Riddell's earpiece, interspersed with the faint
sound of Canton's voice. "SSSSSS.......can you....damage....Riddell?.....-er."

"Repeat, base. Say again..."

Riddell got only more static as a response; with intermittent bits of Canton's
voice cutting in and out among the noise.

Morton pointed up the gray expanse of wall before them. "Look, Cap, there's
the culprit."

Above them and to the right, the ruined remains of an antenna array jutted out
at a strange angle.

Riddell nodded inside his helmet. "Yep. Nice. Damaged in the explosion, I
guess."

Morton frowned. "So, we're cut off? No com with base operations at all?"

Riddell sighed. "Not from this antenna anyway. We might get com back if and
when he thinks to cycle through to the other arrays, but they're small and
most of them are on the far side of the base and are line-of-sight anyway. Com
will get better, but I don't know when." His eyes glanced skyward, and he
sighed yet again as he as their job got harder by the minute.

"Damn it. Cooper. Look, there it goes."

They all looked in the direction Coop was pointing; there, fifty feet up and
already eighty yards away, the heated lead gun was spinning lazily as it flew
away from them in a gentle arc. Farther and farther it sailed, the parabola of
its path strange to the eye, given the decreased lunar gravity affecting its
course. It kept going...and going...and going...

The device finally disappeared over a small rise of dunes, easily four hundred
and fifty yards away.

"Shit. Okay. I guess we'll go back for the cart."

Cooper sighed. "Nah, boss, that's nearly as far as the gun. I got it."

"It's a long way, Coop. More'n a quarter mile, maybe half."

"This EXO has at least five hours of O2 left in it. No problem."

Riddell nodded inside his helmet. "Hot foot it, then, we've got a lot do."

"I'll go too," Morton offered.

"You just don't want to stay here and clean up all this shit."

"What? Your...signal...is...getting...weaker..."

"Yeah, laugh it up, asshole."

Cooper and Morton turned their backs to the base and began trudging out onto
the barren gray surface of the lunar landscape, and the rest of the team
behind them fell to picking up the pieces strewn about the area.

Canton sighed and sipped his lukewarm coffee. While a major breach had been
avoided, there was still room for disappointment. A tiny pinhole of escaping
atmosphere had blown out and turned into a major metallurgic repair job. It
meant much more time before he could -

His train of thought was cut short a brief flash on orange on a monitor and a
beep, followed by the familiar voice recording. "Warning: Foreign object radar
signature detected. Warning: Foreign radar..."

With practiced ease Canton turned the verbal alarm off and zoomed in on the
display of the radar signature. There it as again: bigger than a basketball,
smaller than an automobile...but this time moving even slower; no more than 40
or 50 kilometers per hour now. Wait...30 mph now...

"That's impossible," he whispered aloud.

Now 20....15....12....

Canton turned and simultaneously began typing commands and addressing the
computer verbally.

"Computer, zero target RS alpha, speed and trajectory."

In a flash the answer was apparent, the familiar orange thin pie-wedge of a
signature dipping down, superimposed over the familiar map of the lunar
landscape.

Right into the area occupied by Riddell's crew.

"Base to Riddell. Steve, come in."

11.....10....9....

"Goddam it Steve, can you guys hear me? Respond." He glanced at the monitor
for an altitude reading.

Zero plus 1400 meters...1250 meters....1200....

"Shit! Steve! Can you hear me? Do you read?"

Silence with short bursts of static was his only reply.

Canton flipped a red cover to reveal a small button inset in the control panel
before him. He exhaled and pressed it, and the room as bathed in an eerie red
glow.

Above and behind him, an alarm sounded; a high pinging sound like an old
doorbell, intercut with the robotic female voice intoning: "Alert. All rescue
and emergency crews report to command control areas immediately. Alert..." In
the heart of the base, the eight man space rescue team was already readying
themselves for deployment.

8 kilometers per hour....7.....Altitude, zero plus 950 meters....875...

For the first time Canton could remember, his alarm had turned into actual
fear. There was a four man team cut off from all communication out on the
lunar surface, with an unknown object headed directly at them. Canton ran
every diagnostic test he could, but still came up empty. Something was coming.

6 kmh.....5.....4....

775 meters......725....695....

He didn't know what it was.

3....

640....595....550...

He knew what it couldn't be, though.

Zero plus 495....450...400....390...

It couldn't be anything natural; it wasn't a meteor.

300....260....220....

2 kmh....

He watched the monitor with dread, a fine perspiration breaking out around the
crown of his head. No, it couldn't be a natural.

170....140....110....95....80....lower....

It couldn't be natural.

70....zero plus 50 meters...40....30!....20!....15....

Not natural.

10.....8....zero plus 7 meters!....6....

Unnatural.

2 kilometers per hour....1.....

Because natural things in space...

Zero plus 4 meters.....3.....2....1...

...don't glide in for a landing.

Zero.

The orange sliver on the monitor went out. "Radar Signature alpha lost.
Presumed impact probable," the robotic voice intoned. Canton took a deep
breath, closed his eyes, and with a brief series of typed commands, brought
the base's single biggest antenna array online. He opened his comlink, and
spoke, his voice betraying the forced serenity of a truly serious situation.

"Houston, this is Lunar Base Alpha, do you read. Houston, lunar base alpha, do
you read. Lunar Base Alpha reporting Zebra Alpha Echo, repeat, a code Zebra
Alpha Echo, over. Come in Houston. Emergency procedures. Confirm contact
procedures. Over."

Canton collapsed in his seat. He had just reported an emergency lockdown of
the moon base due to a positive radar contact with a unidentified object of
unknown origin, a first in space exploration. He tried to calm his nerves and
control his breathing; a reply would take a full four minutes.

A lot could happen in those four minutes.

"You see it?" Cooper asked.

"Did you hear me say, Hey, I see it?"

"Come on, Mort, cut me a break."

"Okay. Then that's a negative. I don't see it."

The gray expanse of the lunar surface lay before them, unimaginably cold and
barren. Stars shone above the horizon, bright and unblinking, their light
unimpeded by at atmosphere. The landscape was as inhospitable as it came: this
land was cold and dead. And just a quarter mile from the base, it seemed
devoid of all man-made objects, including that which they had come to find.

"Okay. I could have sworn it came this way," Cooper muttered. He glanced from
side to side as best he could in the helmet, the only sound in his ears was
the soft hissing of the canned air being pumped through out the spacesuit.

"Still negative," Morton added uselessly.

"Okay, okay. Damn. Okay. Listen, I'll the right side of this dune, you take
the left," Cooper instructed.

"But..." Morton began, and Cooper already knew the basis of his complaint.
When operating on the lunar surface, all USSA personnel were to work under a
strict buddy system. You didn't go anywhere on the moon alone.

"Yeah, yeah. But it's only what? 600 feet across? 60, 70 feet high? It's
faster if we split up."

Morton began making his way around the gentle upward slope of the dune, his
reply crackling in Cooper's ear. "If you say so. But I still don't like it.
They're gonna revoke your status if they find out."

"Yep," Cooper said as he struck off to his right. "They sure will. Right after
they get done revoking yours."

"Jerkoff."

"Dick."

Morton's helmet dipped behind the rise of the gray powder.

"Shithead."

"Assface."

Cooper heard Morton utter a short bark of laughter before the com clicked off.
He walked slowly, eyes scanning the ground around him. His gaze traveled up
the slope to his right; it was steeper here than Morton's side; bits of rock
jutted from its craggy surface, the stark brightness of the sun creating
sharply defined shadows in the distance in front of and above him. Still,
there was no sign of the sealing gun.

A click in his ear. A pause. Another click. His steps slowed, and stopped.
Morton's com was clicking in but he wasn't speaking.

"Mort?"

Another click, this time followed by a short burst of static. Another click.
More static, and nearly lost in the noise was Morton's voice.

"...here....Cooper. Not the gun, but I...know.....it is."

"What? Say again, Mort. Line-of-sight, I'm losing you."

Click. Static. "...moving...swear.....things......hey!"

Cooper's pulse jumped a bit. That last second had been an utterance of genuine
surprise. His breathing deepened and quickened, and he turned around at once.

"Morton? Come in! Mort!"

Silence was his reply.

"Alright, damn it. If this is a joke, I am so kicking your sorry ass..."

His right foot struck something irregular in the normally smooth surface, and
he nearly stumbled. He bent at the waist, and at his feet was the heated
sealing gun they had been searching for. It was partially covered in gray
dust; he blinked in annoyance, for he must have walked right over the device
without seeing it.

"Mort? Okay, I'm coming around, and I found the gun, so lets..."

Click. More static. Click. Another click. A quick burst of static, and buried
in it, a new sound, muffled and distorted from the helmet mic being
overdriven, and only a second in length before the signal was cut off and
silence descended once again. But a sound that simultaneously froze Cooper's
blood and made him drop the welding device he held.

It was the sound of Morton screaming.

The Exo-suit was a truly remarkable example of advanced engineering, but no
protective, self-contained controlled-environmental apparatus was ever
designed for athletic use. Even so, Cooper tried. He attempted to speed his
progress around the dune, and cursed the awkwardness of the suit and the low-G
environment. The powdery surface slowed his progress even further; it was like
trying to run in six inches of snow while wearing scuba flippers. After only a
hundred feet, his breath came in ragged gasps and he could feel the precious
seconds ticking away. After what seemed like an eternity, he rounded a rocky
outcropping and Morton's side of the dune came into view.

A body lay to hundred feet ahead of him, facedown and unmoving,

"Come on, Morty, talk to me," Cooper spoke into his comlink. "Talk to me,
man."

The crumpled for in the Exo-suit didn't move and Morton made no answer.

Closer...closer...Cooper's breaths came in great tearing sheets of air that
brined his throat. His arms and legs pounded from the exertion; he was
fighting not only the weight and awkward build of the suit but the artificial
gravity of the anti-grav units as well. Closer...closer...

"Mort?" He had reached his companion, and his voice was now more reluctant.
Mort still hadn't moved.

Slowly, Cooper knelt and touched the shoulder of the other man. He took a
moment to steel himself for whatever he was about to find, and slowly began to
turn Morton over. The body rolled easily; Morton's anti-grav units weren't
functioning, the suit was offline. Halfway, three quarters...and then Cooper
froze, his eyes went wide in horror, his breath locked in his throat.

He jerked back and stood in surprise; the form collapsing limply at his feet
to settle in the gray dust in a slow, awkward fashion, at one-sixth the speed
it would have on Earth. Cooper's adam's apple bobbed up and down, but no
intelligible sound emerged; only a wounded mewling sound came from his throat.
The initial shock of his finding was passing; he staggered back a few steps,
wheezing, then steadied himself. His gaze pulled back toward the direction he
had come, and he started off in a quick, determined stride. Something was
dreadfully wrong, and the rest of the team had to be warned.

"This is Cooper, come in Riddell. Riddell, this is Cooper, come in."

Only static was his reply as he trudged as quickly as he could, his face a
mask of determination now that most of his panic had passed. "Riddell, this
is..."

Ages ago, man may have had senses that have long since been forgotten.
Physiological reactions to fear or danger still existed, some explainable,
some not. But at this moment, several occurred to Cooper at once. His mouth
dried up instantly, his heart leapt into his throat, and the hair on his arms
and neck stood up stiffly. His breathing shallowed and nearly stopped, and his
heart went into a fast, galloping rhythm. It was a sensation anyone alone in
the dark, lost in the woods, or left in a vulnerable position has felt and
would recognize: for a reason that no scientific or rational person could
explain, Cooper knew he was being watched.

He froze, and turned slowly on his heels.

The gray landscape stretched before him. The dune, a combination of dust and
rock, rose gently to his right, and...

Something moved.

Something in the shadows, halfway up the hillside...from one rock to
another...silence. Stillness. Then again. Yes, movement!

Cooper's breath locked in his throat, his eyes wide.

And now closer - a flurry of movement on the lunar surface, down the slope,
straight in his direction, no, it couldn't be, nothing could move that fast in
the low gravity of the- his first clear view now as something passed the still
form of Morton...he could clearly see...

It was impossible.

He powered his body around in the direction back to the base, his heels kicked
up a cloud of dust as he struck off in a terrified attempt at a run, he
suddenly found his voice as he gasped out the cry of a frightened animal...he
could sense a presence near him, reaching for him, reaching out and out, and
he strained, he leaned forward, trying to escape its grasp with every fiber of
his being; he leaned out, his left arm extended, reaching, clawing back the
way he had come...and what came next occurred so quickly he never had time to
fully understand what was happening.

Touch. Grasping. Right arm. Held suddenly motionless; wrist, pressure, then
blinding pain, crushing! Pressure on right shoulder, at the same time,
downward push! Pressure! Sudden bright, tearing red sheet of pain as...

The Kevlar reinforced, nearly indestructible right arm of the Exo-suit tore
away from the torso of the uniform with Cooper's limb still in it.

In a little less than three seconds, several things happened: the great
scarlet explosion of blood shooting out into the vacuum of space froze into a
crystalline flood, the droplets forming ruby-like jewels as they shot away
from Cooper's body. The blood still in his body immediately raced to the
surface in a sudden and catastrophic reaction to decompression; the blood
literally began to boil in his veins. His breath whooshed out in a single,
split-second moan as his lungs first collapsed, then imploded; his rational,
thinking mind shut down as a gargantuan, nearly unknowable, expanding, tearing
bubble of pain began at his core and spread outward in milliseconds as his
body decompressed; and finally he knew no more as his eyes exploded from their
sockets to coat the inside of his helmet's faceplate in a gory flood. This
material and the rest of his body then froze solid in mere seconds.

Now released, the form that had once been Henry J, Cooper, of Xenia, Ohio,
fell at one-sixth the expected speed to the surface of the moon, where it
created a small, gentle cloud of gray film. The cloud, eventually settled by
even the weak gravity of the moon, fell slowly until the scene was covered by
a thin coating of the patient, abiding dust. Complete silence, cold, and
stillness descended on the scene, and above the hard light of the stars shone
on unflinchingly as it had shone since the beginning of time.

"What the hell is taking them so long?" Spaulding asked irritably.

"Don't know, maybe they can't find the thing," Riddell answered. He turned his
back on his coworker and knelt to pick up a few more scraps of metal, He laid
them on top of the small pile he cradled in his left arm. Metals of any kind
were at a premium in space, not even this debris could be wasted. He sighed as
his companion continued venting his frustrations.

"I just don't..."

The ground around Riddell flickered brightly; a bright, pale reddish flash
that made him squint instinctively against it, although by the time his eyes
reacted it has already passed. The image of his own shadow lingered in his
vision for a moment. Simultaneously, there was a quick squealing noise
followed by a crackle in Riddell's earpiece. This was immediately replaced by
silence.

He dropped the armload of light aluminum scrap and began to turn.

"What the hell was that? Spaul..."

He froze in mid-turn, taking in the scene piece by piece. His eyes were
attracted skyward by movement; above him, a thin gray vapor rose, spread and
quickly vanished into the pitch black sky. His vision tracked downward, and
when he saw the place where Spaulding had been standing, his first thought was
an alarmed one.

Meteor.

Brett's warning echoed in his ears. Damned if they had just lost a man to a
meteor strike. There was a dark, irregular star-shaped patch of lunar soil
where Spaulding had been standing. Under any other conditions it might have
been funny; it looked like an old cartoon here a bomb had exploded, its only
evidence a black blast ring three feet in diameter. But Riddell wasn't
laughing. And it dawned on him suddenly that it could not be a meteor strike
after all.

There was no crater.

Aside form the soil being slightly discolored, there as no sign of impact. And
besides, a strike powerful enough to vaporize Spaulding or knock his body into
orbit would have surely killed himself as well. Riddell squinted and looked
closer...something still stood near the center of the ring...

He took three tentative steps in the direction of the spot...four...five. He
now stood nearly on top of it. He leaned forward as best he could in the suit,
and tilted his head to get a better view of the object. His breath caught in
his throat a little when he recognized it for what it was.

It was a exo-suit boot, though horribly misshapen; it appeared as if the
rubber material that comprised the sole was completely melted; the red colored
material looked like it had been welded to the spot; the gray soil looked like
it had been fused into a small glass plate beneath the boot. The top of boot
was a ragged black line; it looked positively blasted and burned by a great
and sudden heat, and...

There was a foot still in it, the bone exposed, the skin likewise blackened
and twisted near the place it had been severed.

"Oh, shit. Oh, holy shit," Riddell breather softly. His stomach lade a slow
rolling leap deep inside him. His breathing came in slow gasps; he worried
that he might begin to hyperventilate, a potentially serious problem in a
space suit.

He still stood over the scorched ground when a dark form crawled across his
own cast upon the ground. Behind him....someone...or something...was rising
behind him, blocking him into its shadow...

Riddell turned as quickly as he could, his vision turning with his helmet, and
then, up, up...

A vaguely humanoid shape hung before him; he caught a fleeting sense of arms
and legs; his vision blurred by the brightness of the sun which glared just
over the edge of whoever - whatever- the thing was; it's rays spreading out in
globs of colored light...

His helmet visor darkened automatically to protect his vision, making the
figure before him even harder to see. A glimmer of light as he watched...two
lights...high up...where the figure's eyes should be...the dual sparks grew in
size and brightness; the white light, lightly hued with red edges, grew
brighter and brighter until it rivaled the brightness of the sun over the
shoulder; brighter still, dwarfing the brightness of the sun now, overcoming
even the safety measure of the helmet's visor; Riddell could feel his skin
burning now, the heat came through even the nearly impervious material of the
Exo-suit...brighter still, Riddell's eyes squinted at first, his hand raised,
his voice now a whimpering "Ugh...please..."

Incredibly, the twin suns grew brighter still, and Riddell squeezed his eyes
shut against the blinding, burning white heat but it was no use; even through
his eyelids he could still see the dual sparks burning their way into and
through him, brighter yet and the pain, the pain oh God -

Then the heat suddenly jumped to an even higher, totally unknowable level;
simultaneously, a strange blast, a crushing, sudden force exploded upon him,
and Riddell knew no more as his body exploded outward in dozens of flash-fried
pieces, each burning away to tiny cinders as they burst outward from the
center of the directed force. In less than two seconds all that remained of
him was a scorched piece of ground, with a small, milky patch of fused lunar
sand.

The twin sun subsided, and the shadow crossed the black smudge on the surface,
climbing, turning...and made its way toward the huge steel expanse of the
lunar base.

Inside, Canton was counting the minutes. Any moment would bring first word
from Earth; he needed something to do, he needed instructions...he had tried
to hail all members of Riddell's repair team, and had received no reply at
all...

A new sound joined the muted clang of the warning klaxon, a static-filled
wailing sound. Canton, relieved at having something to do, went to work on his
board to isolate it; first he muted the blaring of the warning klaxon; next he
checked all open comlinks, then...

He realized what it was as he saw it happen. Above him, to the right, was the
footage from the security cam...

The eight man rescue team was suited up and standing at the ready; as he
watched, the military team leader raised a hand and opened the emergency
airlock...

The picture quality was poor; it was a black and white, strangely blue-tinted
grain that only hinted at what was happening...but it was enough.

Canton watched as the hi-power LEDs set into the doors flash once, twice; on
the third flash the massive doors parted, revealing the exterior moonscape...

...and a silhouetted figure.

Canton saw the team jump in surprise, and then everything went to hell in a
second.

There was a flash of movement far too fast for the eye to track; the dark
figure seemed to spin and whirl into the room, and the entire scene dissolved
into chaos; Canton's control room suddenly filled with the sound of grinding,
squealing metal, loud bangs and thudding explosions, and the high pitched
wails and screams that Canton feared were those of the men. The airlock seemed
instantly filled with whirling debris, Canton thought madly of the cartoons he
had seen as a child where a fight was depicted as a cloud of dust with the odd
hand or foot sticking out of it. This scene was strikingly similar, the whole
time Canton's mind struggled with the thought of an outside figure causing the
mayhem.

A brilliant blue LED lit up his board. Over the din, he heard plainly:

"Serenity Six, this is Houston. We've got your Zebra Alpha Echo order, wish to
confirm. Over."

His hand slammed down into the com button.

"Serenity Six, Houston! Echo confirmed! Emergency confirmed...something's
wrong, we've got a meteor or something...something's wrong! I...I"

A loud, static-filled scream echoed in the room, and Canton turned to the
airlock monitor just in time to see an object - shaped alarmingly like a
disembodied human leg - rocket toward the camera, which instantly flickered
white and went to a salt-and-pepper swarm of static.

"Something is up here, Houston! We've got men down; something up here is
tearing his place apart! Some-"

A new warning blared, nearly deafening; the high pitched scream of the siren
echoed through the cavernous control center. Canton looked down into a readout
and seized the monitor in his hands.

Whatever it was, it was coming straight at him.

The steel bulkheads and blast doors, which had closed when he ordered the
alert, seemed totally ineffectively. The object was smashing right through
them without even slowing down, in fact, the thing appeared to be
accelerating. He could see the object on the readout, a red circle, tearing
through the heart of the base; as it neared him, he could first hear the
distant explosions and crashing sounds, then feel the dull thudding explosions
in the soles of his feet as the floor reverberated with the force of the
concussions. The various monitors on his display board showed blown bulkhead
after exploded door, and now the various flammable gases and substances used
in the day to day life of the base were catching; fire erupted in more than a
few of the displays. That is, where there was oxygen: The object was tearing
through the base and Canton could see his co-workers literally imploding in
the rooms where the instantaneous decompressions were occurring. Closer, and
faster! It would be on him in seconds. His mind went blank in terror and the
realization he was about to die.

"Houston!" he screamed, his eyes squinted shut. "Houston! Help us! Help..."

He would never finish.

He spun as it came upon him, and in the last second he had, Canton had the
impression of a huge explosion of force and flame as the steel door to the
room exploded inward. His body was instantly ruined by the concussion from the
blast; his mind numbed and organs pulped by the force. His dying mind had the
barest fleeting notion of a bluish object streak across the room, where it
exploded against the bulkhead; in this area of the station, this was the last
bulkhead separating the base interior from the vacuum of space.

The object streaked through the room in less than a fifth of a second; it shot
through the outer wall, punching a hole roughly three feet in diameter. Vapor,
flame, and debris shot along in its wake, dragged along by the sheer force
generated by its speed. The force sucked Canton's corpse from its position
toward the wall in an eyeblink where it impacted the steel in an upright
position. Rather than simply bend, the speed at which it was moving and the
force exerted on it caused the body to simply pulp itself; Brett Canton was
reduced to an atomized cloud, ejected at several hundred miles per hour into
the blackness of the lunar surface.

The fires that raged in the building were suddenly snuffed out; the base's
supply of oxygen exploded through the hole in seconds. Sound went it, as well
as the lives of most of the base's inhabitants. They proved to be the lucky
ones: The few who avoided sudden, explosive death were sealed in airtight
rooms, where for the next few moments, they would have to fight the dark and
encroaching cold of space. They froze long before their oxygen ran out.

Three quarters of a mile above the surface, a thin silhouette moved against
the brilliant, ice-like chips of starlight, swinging above the silent chaotic
wake in a gentle arc. After a moment, it moved gently, swooping in a track
carrying it skyward, higher, higher, where it finally slipped free of the weak
pull on the lunar mass. It looped through the empty space swiftly, silently,
slowly accelerating into the endless blackness before it; speeding toward the
bright blue world, partially covered in swirling white cloud, that seemed to
be waiting patiently for its arrival.

Earth.

PART ONE

INTERIOR OF A CUSTOM LINCOLN

EN ROUTE FROM MCLEAN VA TO WASHINGTON

Dick Gearhardt was nervous.

He wasn't sure where he was, exactly, or where he was headed. He was beginning
to have a pretty good idea of who he was going to meet, however.

The long, sleek black Lincoln had glided to a stop at the curb. He could hear
the regenerative braking system wind down, partially recharging the car's
small fuel cell. There was the tiniest of pauses, then the door opened and two
men in suits had stepped out and motioned toward the open door.

"Director Gearhardt." It as not a question.

"Yes," he had sighed resignedly.

The man just motioned with his right hand, and now the car sped through
traffic, the bulletproof, customized interior oddly silent. A long, black
glass partition separated the interior form the driver's compartment like a
limousine. After five minutes of complete silence, the same agent spoke again.

"Could you state the manner of your business again, Director?"

Gearhardt paused, swallowed, and spoke. "We seemed to have lost communication
with one of our lunar bases."

"Which base, sir?"

"Serenity Six."

"Crew?"

"273."

"What was the nature of the emergency?"

"I'm not at liberty to say."

Silence descended. A fine sweat broke out on Gearhardt's forehead, just below
his receding hairline.

Slowly the middle portion of the black glass separating the back of the limo
from the driver's compartment slid open. A man, obviously a government agent,
sat in the passenger seat, and he turned to face the USSA director.

"Director Gearhardt, you're correct to withhold that information at the
moment."

"Yes," was all he managed.

The man took off his sunglasses. The agent was in his early 40s, with a square
jaw and closely cropped dark hair - an all-American Fed if ever there was one.

"Director Gearhardt, just be aware that this is a major emergency."

"I suspected that, young man. The swift nature of your arrival after my
report..."

"Yes, well, expediency was required. You have the information we require?"

"As much as I have," Gearhardt said, and tapped the case he held on his lap.

"Very well, Director. You'll need it at the briefing."

"Briefing?"

Silence was his answer. Gearhardt paused, and drummed his fingers on the case
in nervous anticipation.

"And just who is going to be at this briefing?"

The agent slipped his mirrored sunglasses back on, and grinned humorlessly
before answering. Gearhardt's blood froze, it was the grin of a man who would
kill you as soon look at you.

"Everyone who needs to be," the agent said, and turned back around. The glass
slid slowly back into place and silence descended once again.

THE WOODS NEAR BONNIE LAKE

JUST OUTSIDE OF DUNCAN, OKLAHOMA

The deer's ear wiggled a bit, and Bobby Nelson could see the mosquitos fly
from around the animal's head. The new scope he had put on his rifle was
amazing; it let him see objects nearly two miles away in stark relief. It even
exceeded the range of his pulse rifle.

The man at his right elbowed him in the ribs. "C'mon, Bobby, take the shot."

"Easy, man. I don't want to screw it up."

Kurt, Nelson's best friend since childhood, sighed in desperation. "C'mon,
hoss, just do it. It's gonna get away. Just take the shot!"

"I said, I don't want to screw it up!"

"Take it! It's not like you'll hurt it by just wingin' it or something."

This much was true. The new pulse rifles had been developed during the last
major war, and had been built to allow a quick, ‘humane' kill, if there was
such a thing. Upon firing, the metallic round spiraled down the barrel as
bullets had for decades upon decades. But the pulse gun was manufactured with
thousands of micro-magnets in the barrel; as the round fired through the
weapon, it was charged with a lethal electro-static charge. No matter where
the round impacted the target, the animal (or soldier) unlucky enough to be on
the receiving end had two immediate problems: A conventional bullet wound, and
a sudden, massive electric shock that was designed to induce instant cardiac
arrest. The previous war effort had proven the weapon's effectiveness: no
longer were combating armies burdened with caring for those wounded with
firearms; now, a simple flesh wound, a knick or glancing blow, even a
richochet barely causing a wound at all was often lethal. The casualties were
massive; as much as the weapon was praised for winning the war, it was decried
as too efficient a killer.

It wasn't long before animal rights groups took up the call. If they couldn't
succeed in having hunting banned (which they couldn't), they would at least
see the weapon's technology adopted for domestic use. No more deer and elk
suffering a long, painful death after being wounded by a poor excuse for a
hunter.

Nelson placed this finger on the weapon's trigger. He breathed in, out. In...

"Come on, man, come on!"

"Shhh!" In...out...in...the leaves of the plants and trees around them swayed
in a sudden, gentle breeze. In...out...his finger slowly tightened on the
trigger; it pulled back when...

A tenth of a second before the gear clicked and the rifle fired, a loud peal
of thunder tore the sky. It sounded almost like an explosion; and Nelson saw a
flash of reddish-gold light upon his face, and even felt a brief instant of
heat on his cheeks in contrast to the crisp morning air.

The deer was gone in a blink; through his sights, Nelson saw the deer shoot
forward in panicked flight, and the spray of dirt just behind its haunches
where his round went astray.

"Goddam!" he cried. "What was that?" He thought for a second that it had been
a stray strike of lightning.

Kurt was rubbing his eyes. "Damn!...I don't know, hoss. There was a flash down
by the lake...ugh. I was lookin' right at it. Damn."

Bobby looked out, beyond where the deer had been, in the direction of the
mid-sized lake, here its serene waters were surrounded by adult trees and
foliage. Sure enough, not far from the water itself, even at this distance, he
could see the last bit of a shower of earth heading back toward the ground, a
black smudge at its base.

"Holy shit," he breathed. "Something...I think something hit over there."

"Huh?" Kurt leaned over, and Bobby pointed. "Oh, yeah, holy shit, yeah. What
was that?"

"Hell, I don't know. Maybe a meteor, or something?"

"A bomb? You were in the war."

"Doesn't make me an expert. But I don't think so, I didn't hear it whistle
coming down. Did you?"

Kurt shook his head. "Nope. Well...well, shit. Let's go have a look?"

"Well, duh!" He took his small walkie off of his belt. "Hey, Jack, did you
hear that?"

Jack Thompson, the third member of their group, answered after a brief burst
of static. "Heard it? Hell, I felt it! What was that?"

"Don't know, but it looks like something's over by the lake. Let's go take a
look, huh?"

"Be right there," was the reply, and in the distance he could hear the engine
of the antique Willy's Jeep fire up.

Kurt jumped to his feet and clapped his hands. "All right! Fuck the deer,
let's go bag us a meteorite!"

SECURE MEETING ROOM BENEATH THE PENTAGON

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Gearhardt had been nervous at first, but now the scientist in him as taking
control of his demeanor.

He had met the president before, of course. He had been appointed to his post
of USSA by the politician, after all. But still, it made for an interesting
character study all the same.

President William ‘Tank' Mason as seated at the end of the long, rectangular
onyx-topped table. A robust and hale man of 55 with a head of thick iron gray
hair, square jaw, and broad shoulders, his eyes gleamed with obvious
intelligence, even in the dim lighting of the room. Mason was nearly iconic in
stature; he came from modest roots and had gone on to pull himself up the
ladder of modern American life with nothing but his wits and sheer will.
Working in the factory while still in high school. Football scholarship.
Heisman candidate. Harvard MBA. Enlisted the day after graduation. Captain,
single-handedly won the battle at Vladivostok by leading a desperate charge in
a damaged Sherman III Plasma Tank while nursing a broken arm and 3rd degree
burns to his legs. Congress by 30. Senate by 34. Youngest man ever elected to
the Oval Office at 42 years. Average approval rating of 60%. Now halfway
through his fourth term, and a shoo-in to win reelection for his fifth (and
newly Constitutionally-mandated) and final term. A man that was listening to
his report with keen interest, and his look made Gearhardt feel as if he knew
something no one else in the room did.

"And that was the end of the transmission?" Mason asked, his gravel baritone
filling the space of the small, dark conference room.

"Yes, sir," Gearhardt replied. "The base's communications officer followed
emergency procedures to the letter. We are currently unable to ascertain the
cause of the emergency; at the moment, all we know is that the base is
unresponsive."

Mason nodded slowly. "And current USSA activity?"

"Again, we're following protocol for such an event. We're currently prepping
the next two lunar shuttles; we're at T-minus 72 hours for the first liftoff.
The second would go up 4 hours later."

Mason nodded again, and slowly turned to the man standing behind him, just out
of the cone of light given by the room's single light source. Mason said
something Gearhardt couldn't hear, and the man turned and spoke with the two
Secret Service agents who stood just inside the door. They paused, clearly
bothered by whatever was being asked of them. After a moment they nodded and
left the room, the door hissing shut behind them.

Now the only people in the dim room were Gearhardt, the aide (who Gearhardt
now recognized as Lew Aktinson, the President's Chief of Staff), and Mason
himself.

"Director Gearhardt...Richard." Mason said softly. "I want you to send those
shuttles quickly. Sooner than you think is possible. We have to have the
country see us trying to save those men up there."

"Trying, sir?"

Mason shared a glance with Atkinson, and nodded. Atkinson sat down and began
clicking away at a keyboard.

"Dick, we can't have this get out, all right? No CNN. No interviews in Time
Magazine."

"Mr. President..."

"No ‘classified sources.' We can't...it would not be allowed."

Gearhardt swallowed, his throat made a dry clicking sound. "Surely I don't
know what you..."

"It wouldn't be in the best interest of the country." Mason's steel gaze was
unwavering; there was no question of his intent.

"All right, Mr. President."

"Cue it up, Lew."

The room suddenly brightened as the 60-inch vid screen winked into life. It
was a video image of terrible quality, black and white with a strange bluish
cast; Gerahardt recognized it immediately as security camera footage, and
recognized the image it portrayed as well. He came right out of his seat and
approached the screen where it hung on the wall.

"That's the comm room of Serenity Six!" he exclaimed.

Mason only nodded to him. And once again to Atkinson.

Gearhardt watched in grim fascination as the image cycled up to full speed. A
man stood in the foreground, looking into the camera with a manic expression,
his hands a blur on the command module before him. Long streaks of static
whirled across the screen, and the audio was tinny and of poor quality, but it
was enough for Gearhardt to make out.

"...Something is up here, Houston! We've got men down!" the man cried. He
seemed to be near panic.

"Where did you get this?" Gearhardt demanded in wonder. Mason only silenced
him by gesturing toward the screen.

"...something up here is tearing his place apart!" the man went on. "Some..."

His phrase was cut off by a warning siren screaming into life, even on the
jumpy video footage, Gearhardt could see the man jump in reaction to the
sound. The officer on the screen leaned in closer to the camera and began
shouting of the din and chaos of the scene behind him.

"Houston! Help us! Help..."

He didn't get to finish. There was a crackling from the speaker, indicative of
a thudding explosion too loud for the microphone to relate, a shower of
sparks, and a sudden explosion of movement that happened too fast to track
with the human eye. The screen went blank.

"Where did this come from?" Gearhardt asked again.

"It as picked up by a communications satellite during the event; the signal
was too weak to make it to Earth on its own. Apparently the station was
already off line and had been running on battery power."

Gearhardt turned slowly, dread filling his heart.

"That's impossible. It would mean..."

"I'm sorry, Dick. They're gone."

"But..."

"They're gone," Mason said again with finality.

"But there's still a chance. Maybe if they had stepped down to reserve
power...if they were able to insulate themselves somehow, the cold..."

"They weren't killed by the cold," Mason said, staring at his hands.

"What?"

"Play it back, Lew. Single frames."

The screen brightened once more, and the sequence ran back in agonizing
slowness. Gearhardt could see the dawning panic on the face of the
communications officer, his heartbeat thudded dully in his temples, a fine
sweat on his brow. All dead...

Then, the final frames came, and slowed even more. They changed only when
Gearhardt hear Atkinson click through them. The last three frames told the
story.

3...Gearhardt could see the bulkhead behind the officer bulging outward, the
steel deformed noticeably.

2...now a gaping hole appeared, blown out in a ragged fashion, a dark streak
in the center of the room, the officer unchanged since it was too fast for him
to react...

1...the final, gruesome frame, the officer already being pulled away from the
camera toward the opposite wall. His face a rictus of shock...and pain. His
eyes already bulging unnaturally from their sockets, the first sign of sudden
decompression.

"Oh God," Gearhardt breathed.

"I'm sorry, Dick. They're all dead up there."

Gearhardt took a breath, and blew it out suddenly. "Then why the hurry-up on
the rescue mission. Why even go at all?"

Mason and his Chief of Staff shared a glance, and Mason paused before
answering. A troubling pause.

"Because we have to keep up appearances for the public. We can't cover up the
incident; the press is already on the story. But maybe we can disguise the
cause."

"The cause?"

Mason stared at his hands once again. "Dick, I need your word that this.."

"Mr. President, please."

"All right." Mason looked him in the eye, and spoke clearly. "Dick, we need to
talk to your people at SETI."

"What?!"

Silence descended once again, Gearhardt's eyes were wide and unbelieving.

"SETI."

"What are you talking about? Are you telling me you think
some...thing....outside of the base did this?"

"Second to last frame, Lew."

The screen brightened once again, and Gearhardt turned and examined the image
closely. The panicked look was back. The ragged hole in the bulkhead. Debris.
The dark streak...

The image began to zoom in, under Atkinson control. It began to pixelate, the
streak centering and growing larger but also less distinct.

"And now...if we filter the image..." Atkinson spoke for the first time.

Gearhardt watched as the image first stabilized, and slowly rendered. The
streak was bigger, clearer...he definitely got the impression of an object at
the head of the distortion.

"And again..."

Bigger....rendered...clearer...yes, yes, there was something at the front of
the streak. It looked almost like...

"And again..."

Bigger....could that?....

"Rendering..."

The image slowly came into focus, far from razor sharp, but clear enough to
make Gearhardt's heart nearly stop.

The Director of the United States Space Agency turned to face the other two
men, his expression one of shock and disbelief.

"That's impossible," he said.

THE WOODS NEAR BONNIE LAKE

JUST OUTSIDE OF DUNCAN, OKLAHOMA

Whatever it was, it had a made one hell of a hole.

The black smudge that Bobby Nelson had seen from a distance was much greater
than the trio had suspected. The scorched Earth was twenty feet in
circumference, the hole that was at its center was easily ten feet across and
who knew how deep; it looked as if whatever object caused it had kept going
for some distance, digging a tunnel that burrowed downward out of sight at a
45-degree angle.

"Holy shit!" Kurt exclaimed. "Hollleeeeee shit. What do you think caused
this?"

"I don't know," Bobby said. "It has to be a meterorite, right? I mean, what
else could it be?"

Jack trotted back to his ancient jeep and came back with a palm-sized digital
camera. "Okay, you guys get closer to the hole, for perspective," he said.

"What?"

"We've got to document this, guys," Jack said. "Somebody somewhere is going to
care about this, I guarantee it."

Kurt and Bobby stepped closer to the edge of the hole, each one measuring his
unsure steps by the other's progress.

"Come on, come on," Jack prodded.

"Hey, who knows if this thing is dangerous or not? What if there's a meteor in
there and it's like, radioactive or something?"

"We're probably safe," Bobby intoned.

"I'm just saying. Who knows where this thing came from, or what it's doing
here....or if it's dangerous."

Jack just rolled his eyes and began snapping pictures as Bobby and Kurt began
shifting their weight from foot to foot, angling their bodies in different
ways for each picture. And, being the fairly young men they all were, it soon
turned into what could be expected: they were soon more at ease, laughing, and
displaying faux bodybuilder poses beside the scorched earth.

Jack took the camera down from in front of his face, mildly annoyed. "Okay,
look, guys, I'm not sure the bicep flexing is going to go over too big with
National Geographic. How about we..."

Bobby looked back to his friend as the words trailed off on Jack's lips. Bobby
could see Jack's eyes, looking down and past him toward the hole, suddenly
grow wider in surprise (and maybe the hint of fear?) and his mouth stop
moving. Bobby spun on his heel and was aware that Kurt was moving with him,
they turned simultaneously to see what Jack was staring at.

Something was coming out of the deep hole that had been blasted in the earth.

Nope, check that, Bobby thought. Not something.

Someone.

As the young men watched, a hand emerged; long, thin, delicate (and definitely
human) in appearance, it emerged into the late afternoon sunshine. It looked
to be covered in a metallic gold glove; a glove so tight and thin that every
feature of the hand in it was visible. It seemed almost that the glove didn't
exist, it was almost as if the very skin of whoever was down there was
sheathed in that liquid, metallic gold covering.

As the trio watched, the hand steadied the emerging figure by lightly touching
the outer edge of the hole, and after the briefest of pauses, the figure
stepped out of the darkness of the hole to stand in the bottom of the impact
crater.

It was a woman.

The trio was stunned into silence, and Bobby knew instantly that it was for
more than one reason. On one hand, they had witnessed something crashing to
Earth and carving out an enormous and startlingly deep hole, next, that the
object causing the explosion seemed to contain a passenger - or was the
passenger, a part of his mind interjected madly - and third: the passenger was
easily the most beautiful woman Bobby had ever seen.

The woman was slightly above average in height (it was difficult to tell from
this angle, she stood in the bottom of the crater ten feet down and at an
angle of a little over 45 degrees. Her body was sheathed in some kind of
bodysuit or uniform; it appeared to be made of the same type of material as
the glove, but a different color. The suit itself was a deep shade of electric
blue, metallic in appearance; as she moved slowly from side to side, Bobby
could see a lighter shade of blue highlighted in the light, pivoting across
her frame with her movements. The metallic, nearly liquid appearance of the
suit combined with the highlights was disconcerting, and entrancing at the
same times. Bobby had never seen that kind of material before, or any kind of
clothing that tight. Indeed, it seemed almost as if she was actually naked,
her very skin a blue metallic covering. Every single rise, every curve, every
hollow, every ridge of her body was evident, highlighted in deep electric
blue.

And what a body! Even at this poor angle, Bobby could see her form clearly and
was amazed. The woman was obviously more heavily muscled than the vast
majority of women Bobby had ever encountered, yet she didn't have the
cartoonish, awkward look of the biggest female bodybuilders. Her feet, encased
in boots of the same metallic gold of the glove, were planted firmly on the
ground. Her calves bulged impressively as she stepped out, diamond-shaped and
somehow managing to look feminine and steel-hard at the same time. The gold
boot turned to the blue covering seamlessly just below the knee; above that,
her thighs swelled impressively. Through the blue material, Bobby could see
every dent and curve of her musculature clearly - her legs were incredible!
From the impressive muscle swell, they tapered in to shapely hips and a round,
impossibly firm-looking rear that Bobby could see flex gently as she turned
from side to side.

Her waist was trim and impossibly fit; again, every bit of otherwordly muscle
was toned and defined beyond anything Bobby had ever seen. The ridges plainly
evident through the blue material were all-telling: Bobby counted the ridges
sporting the brighter blue highlights of reflected light; wait, it couldn't
be! The muscles of her abdomen stood out in stark relief, and Bobby could
easily count the swells that made up a muscled

8-pack!

His eyes continued their journey; her chest was thicker and deeper than he
expected; and he was rewarded with what was, without a doubt, the best view of
cleavage he had ever seen. The center of her chest was either bare, or the
blue material that made up the suit was clear in this area, he couldn't tell
which. A wide gap, vaguely U-shaped, was at the center of the area; displaying
the area where her breasts fetchingly touched one another in a display of
incredibly firm, tight cleavage. The U-shaped cutout was wide, bordered by a
thin strip of the same gold material of her boots and gloves, and went from
just inside where he guessed her nipple would be, all the way across the same
spot on the opposite side, and dipping down to just above those miraculous
abs. Her full, perfect bust was one any starlet in Hollywood would kill for,
and rode firmly atop an obvious sheet of pectoral muscle; the round fullness
and seeming defiance of gravity by her chest attested to the strength below
its surface.

This was capped by an impressive span of shoulders; again, Bobby was amazed by
the woman's ability to be both incredibly fit and still feminine. Her
shoulders were easily the widest Bobby had ever noticed a female's to be, yet
there was none of the bulkiness of a competition bodybuilder. Her delts were
well-defined, tapering down into her upper arms, which swelled impressively
with obvious power. Even hanging by her side, her arms looked extremely
powerful; Bobby saw the sloping mounds of muscle that made up her biceps, the
horseshoe-shaped bulge of her triceps, the round, powerful girth of her
forearms and knew she was easily the fittest person, male or female, that he
had ever seen. The blue expanse of one of her biceps was broken by a gold
band, as was one thigh. The gold gloves, boots, and bands were matched by the
only accessory to her outfit: a belt, made of a shiny metal the same golden
shade, was cinched around her waist.

Bobby's eyes drifted upward, over the generous swell of her chest, tapering up
into a feminine, delicate, and yet strangely powerful-looking neck. He could
see her face, and knew in a flash that she was the most beautiful woman he'd
ever encountered.

Her hair was short, cut and worn in a style that Bobby found quite attractive,
but in a way that few women could pull off. It was cut closely to the back and
sides of her head, and the length gradually increased further forward on her
head. The front was parted on one side, and formed a length of hair that fell
down to one side, dipping down nearly over one eye. The woman possessed,
flawless skin; it was as smooth as fine porcelain with the barest hint of a
healthy tan. She had fairly high, proud-looking cheekbones; Bobby would have
guessed a northern European, maybe Swedish, heritage. Her jawline was
pronounced but not masculine in any way, her chin showed the tiniest, barest
dimple of a cleft, you had to stare to make sure it was really there.

Her lips was perfectly formed and full, but not overly so. She appeared to
purse them a tiny bit as she slowly turned from side to side and took in her
surroundings. Even the surface of her lips seemed metallic; highlights on the
deep ruby surface gleamed in the sun. And her eyes...

Her eyes were heavily shadowed in a dark shade, her long, curving lashes were
thick and black. Her eyes themselves were the brightest, clearest blue Bobby
had ever seen, it was like the iris of her eyes were made of a neon, ice-blue
color. As she turned her head, he could see the tiniest flashes of an
underlying shade there, a glint of gold...

...it was then he realized she was looking at him.

She had finished her examination of the crater she stood in below them. He
head was facing the trio as they stood on the crater rim, her beautiful face
tilted up to them, and Bobby's amazement was suddenly tempered; it was
replaced, in fact, by trepidation, and the slightest pang of fear.

Because she was smiling.

The right corner of her mouth was upturned in a grin, the glorious ruby lips
curving up to meet near the tiniest of dimples on her cheek. It was wrong,
Bobby knew it: everything about the situation was wrong. Beautiful women don't
fall form the sky and stand around in metallic blue bodypaint, smiling,
waiting for---and Bobby realized what it was that troubled him so much. Her
mouth wasn't curved in a smile.

It was a smirk.

"What the hell..." Kurt began, but he stopped as suddenly as he began.

The woman raised her arms up and out to her sides; Bobby was struck again at
her incredible build; he could see her underlying musculature shift, shimmer,
and move beneath the blue covering as she moved in her strange, unnaturally
graceful way. She raised her arms up and out, and turned her hands up,
gold-gloved finger spayed out, raised upward, all while staring at them with
that odd smirk on her face. Then, her calves seemed to bulge in her most
impressive muscle display yet, her body rose onto her toes...

Bobby hear Kurt hitch in a sudden, amazed breath, and knew he had made a
similar sound.

...because her feet had come off of the ground.

The trio of young men stood at the rim of the crater in awestruck silence as
the blue-clad mystery woman rose slowly, soundlessly, from the bottom of the
depression. In the space of twenty seconds, she rose from the bottom of the
pit to hang at roughly their eye level, her gaze never shifting from their
own, the odd grin never leaving her face. She didn't dip or waver in the air
at all, she hung in space like she was standing on an invisible pedestal.

She continued to rise, however, until she was nearly ten feet above them.
Struck wordless and nearly dumb by the sight before him, Bobby Nelson could
only think of a single phrase, and his mind ran it back to him, over and over.

My God, she's flying.

The woman now drifted toward them, turning, always looking down at them from
her new position. She slid closer, turning more, now her legs parted ever so
slightly; she was now descending, coming down to the ground only a few steps
from them, her feet now pointed straight down, anticipating meeting the ground
for the second time.

Bobby was getting a much better look now, and he could see he had been
completely wrong about her. She was more than beautiful, she was devastating.
The framing of her face, the grace of her form was so perfect and ideal that
she seemed to be the very essence of beauty, its very meaning, and it somehow
made her appearance seem almost...familiar, the way a beautiful melody of a
great song sounds like you had heard it before, even when hearing it for the
first time.

She was also bigger than Bobby had first thought. She was tall; very tall, in
fact, she looked to be at least 5'10, and Bobby suspected it might have been
more. Her shoulders were broader than he had first thought as well; she was
still not as comically muscular as a true female bodybuilder, but she was more
heavily muscled and curvy than the biggest of the fitness competitors he had
seen at the gym or on television.

He toes met the ground; she continued her gentle, unwavering descent.Her heels
touched the earth, and Bobby got a strange, unexplainable hint of a tiny,
millisecond-long period of transition when her full weight shifted from some
fantastic, unknown place or ability to her true, earth-bound center of
gravity.

"Wha....what..." Bobby stammered, and the woman turned her head left to look
at him directly. His words stopped, his mouth still moving soundlessly. Her
grin widened, but it wasn't her mouth that drew Bobby's stare, it was her
eyes.

The electric, icy blue orbs studying him shimmered in the later afternoon
sunlight. They seemed to positively ripple, and Bobby thought he saw fleeting
speckles of gold in there as well...yes...gold...Bobby was dimly aware that
his mind was failing; he could feel a strange, dark shroud encroach upon his
thoughts, smothering his will like a dense, heavy blanket. He had the tiniest
notion of this happening, and yet couldn't bring himself to care. He was sure
it was the strange woman somehow affecting his will, yet he didn't care and he
surrendered himself to the power willingly.

But apparently, whatever weird mental ability the mystery woman possessed, it
was a force she could direct only upon one consciousness at a time. While
Bobby slipped slowly, knowingly into his fugue, his friends Kurt and Jack did
not, in fact, they shook their heads as if coming out of a strange daydream.
When Kurt saw Bobby's expression and even posture start to sag, he suddenly
found his voice.

"Hey! What the fuck? Who are you?" he tried to shout. It came out forcefully,
but less so than he had intended.

The woman's platinum blonde-capped head swiveled in his direction so fast that
Kurt couldn't track its motion. Her face blurred for an instant, and she now
gazed at him, the strange smile still on her face.

"Umm...yeah...who the hell are you, lady? What the fuck are you doing to him?"

Bobby, meanwhile, sighed softly and shook his head, as if to clear it. The
world around him slowly came back into focus. He became aware that there was
some kind of quiet struggle going on between this strange girl and his best
friend.

"I asked you a question, bitch," Kurt nearly shouted. "I said, what..."

The woman's eyes sprang open a bit, suddenly, and Kurt's words died on his
lips. His eyes expanded as well, as if he had just been told something too
incredible to believe. Bobby stared on in grim fascination, a strange notion
that something was about to happen making him anxious.

The sun went behind a cloud for a moment, and in the sudden bit of shade,
Bobby could see them: twin shafts of pale golden light connected the woman and
his friend. Their eyes were literally locked together, and as Bobby watched,
the beams of light grew brighter, more distinct. He could see tiny shining
particles dance in each shaft, they appeared to be bits of golden glitter,
smaller than a dust particles but incredibly reflective, and they swirled in
the twin beams of light. Bobby saw them and realized that they were moving in
a general direction: most were racing from Kurt's eyes up the shaft to the
strange woman's own. The icy blue of the woman's eyes rippled and the gold
highlights grew in size; the irises of her eyes were now golden metallic disks
that seemed to spin as she gazed upon him.

Suddenly, a jolt of electricity seemed to run through them; the woman's frame
twitched, her impressive musculature tensed. The twin beams of yellow light
shimmered and grew much brighter and far more distinct. Kurt jerked as well,
but his reaction was far more pronounced than the twitch of the mysterious
woman. His whole frame went rigid as if he had been galvanized by electricity;
his eyes were thrown wide open, the thin ring of sweat on the crown of his
head had turned into a torrent that ran down his face and neck. He uttered a
soft groan, a low croaking sound that chilled Bobby to the bone; it was the
sound of suffering, of either seeing an unbearable sight or feeling a pain so
great it was nearly incomprehensible.

It went on for thirty seconds. Kurt continued twitching, his breaths coming in
quick, uneven ragged gasps. Bobby and Jack just stood there in amazement; the
combined shock of the woman's appearance and confusion over what was happening
was too great for them to overcome and replace wonder with action.

At last, there was a final, massive surge between Kurt and the woman. The two
golden beams grew much brighter, and flashed in a soundless explosion, and
were gone. The woman took in a breath, held it, and let it out in a long,
drawn-out exhalation.

Kurt moaned out an equally long breath, and fell to the ground in a boneless
heap. He lay there, staring into the sky, his breathing rapid, shallow, and
uneven, his hands and legs twitching every few seconds.

"Kurt!" Bobby knelt over his friend, and turned his head in his hands to
examine him. "Kurt," he cried out.

Kurt eyes looked into Bobby's own but saw nothing; it was the blank stare of a
blind man. As Bobby looked on, he could see the tiny red capillaries in the
whites of Kurt's eyes slowly rupturing, slowly spilling blood into the eyeball
which was already an alarming shade of pink.

"Oh my God," Bobby said, turning back to look over his shoulder at the strange
woman. "My God, what did you do to him?"

Her mouth opened, and for the first time she spoke, but her smile never faded.

"Calm down, hoss," she said, her voice full, throaty, a little deeper in tone
than Bobby had expected, but feminine, pleasant, and oddly musical. But there
was a tone there, a meter to her speech, that he found familiar. Hoss...

"Kurt?" he asked wonderingly. The woman laughed, a low, dangerous sound that
was as intimidating as it was alluring.

"No," she chuckled. "No...and yes, in a way."

Bobby just knelt over his friend, too shocked and overwhelmed to do anything.
Jack stood and stared. The woman directed her attention to him, and it was
obvious that Jack as entranced by her appearance; his staring eyes took in the
sight of her bulging legs, trim middle, and generous muscle-defined torso. The
smile left her face as her gaze settled on him.

"You." She said, her tone one of haughty contempt. "Yes, you. You may approach
me."

Jack winced a bit, but shockingly, his feet took one, then two small steps
forward. His expression and the soft grunt of effort that escaped his lips
hinted that maybe the notion of following her command was not entirely his
own.

"Closer," she chided, and indeed, Jack stepped closer, now only a few feet
away. His expression was one of dread, and of slowly dawning anger, all mixed
with exertion - whatever strange pull the woman had was obviously taking a
toll on him.

"Hmmm...yes..." She said as she looked him over. Her gaze drifted up to his
own once more. "You. You...want me, don't you?"

Bobby's mouth dropped open in silent surprise and wonder. With his attention
now on Jack's plight, he didn't notice Kurt's form twitch one last time before
drawing still, the entire surface of his eyes a deep crimson of exploded blood
vessels.

Sweat beaded on Jack's brow, only the sound of hoarse breathing escaped his
lips.

"Yes," the woman nearly chuckled. "You do. You want me so badly. To touch me,
to feel my body."

More ragged breathing from Jack, his body locked in some unknown hold.

"To feel my body. To...enter it. You want to make love to me." The woman's
attention faltered for a split second, as if she was searching her thoughts
for something she had heard long ago, and now sought to remember it. "To..."
her face lit up with a grin as she obviously recalled the thought and gazed at
Jack again.

"...to...fuck me, yes. You want to fuck me, don't you?"

Bobby merely knelt over Kurt's body in silent wonder, his mind reeling from
the events of the last few moments. His worry for his friends was foremost on
his mind, yet he couldn't help but notice the woman's startling appearance and
the obvious effect she was having on them, including himself. Whatever she had
done to Kurt was terrifying, and her words were crass, delivered in a tone
dripping with contempt, yet her overall effect was obvious and her assertion
was obvious. Jack shuddered visibly when she used the crude term, and the
tell-tale bulge that sprang from underneath his clothing affirmed the
statement. The woman's grin widened.

"Yes, you do. I can see you do. How nice. How...delicious. I'm flattered,
really. But...what if I didn't want you to? What if I only wanted to tease
you? What if I only wanted...to kiss you?"

The woman looked down to Bobby, who knelt below her, slightly to the left. Her
gaze was flat and uncaring, yet the smirk never left her face. She spoke now
to Bobby for the first time, and his blood froze when she used his name.

"Hey, Bobby. I want you to watch this. I want you to see what I'm going to do.
Pay attention."

"Wha....what are you going to do?" Bobby stammered.

"Silly boy. I think you know, old hoss." Bobby's heart hammered in his chest
as she spoke, the familiar term coming in phrases that were spoken in a
clipped meter that was all too familiar. "Yeah, you know what I'm going to do
to him. I'm going to hurt him. Badly. With nothing but my lips. Like this."

She stepped forward herself, quickly, and her golden-gloved hands came to rest
on either side of Jack's face, her own closing the distance between them until
their lips met in a kiss. Her touch was gentle, steering Jack through the
embrace; his body reacted visibly, his entire form shuddered. A small damp
spot appeared on his jeans over his still pulsing organ, a groan resounded
from deep inside Jack's chest.

The woman continued kissing him; in fact, the embrace became more frenzied the
longer it went on: Eyes closed, she worked her mouth greedily over Jack's, her
ruby lips smacking away madly, a brief glance of her tongue darting discreetly
to meet Jack's own.

Then, it slowed. She slowed to a stop, her lips still resting on Jack's. Her
eyes slowly opened, and her gaze was flat and uncaring. Her slick, red lips
moved once more, forming a round, solid seal around Jack's mouth, the grip of
her hands on either side of Jack's face grew tighter, and then she did it.

It was if time had slowed down to the barest crawl. After her minute-long
kiss, the millisecond she needed to inflict unimaginable damage was tiny, yet
in Bobby's eyes, every detail was obvious.

The grip of her hands tensed. The seal of her perfect mouth over Jack's was
total and complete. Jack's eyes finally swam back into focus, and he looked
upon the woman kissing him with real, actual dawning terror in his eyes.

The woman's chest suddenly swelled outward, her chest growing suddenly deeper
by the smallest of margins; her ample breast swelling upwards and outward. Her
shoulders straightened by a tiny measure.

She had taken a large, sudden breath in through her mouth, which was still
locked over Jack's own.

Time seemed to stand still indeed, and Bobby saw - and heard - every detail.

Jack's body spasmed wildly, yet he remained locked in place; the woman's
seemingly casual grip on either side of his face must have been fearsome to
arrest any movement. Jack's arms rose outwards suddenly, his hands hooked into
claws, his eyes wide in terror, and Bobby heard it; at the same second her
chest swelled, there came a thick, liquid squelching sound, muffled only by
Jack's own body.

The mystery woman released Jack, and he toppled to the ground backwards, where
his body twitched massively once...twice...then grew still, his eyes staring
past his executioner into the afternoon sky.

Bobby's gaze turned up to the woman, who looked first at Jack's prone form,
then slowly back to Bobby. He watched in horror as she grinned broadly, and
saw a tiny bead of liquid on her lower lip; it was a similar ruby shade.

Blood.

Her tongue darted forward to clean the glossy red surface. "Ummm," she moaned
softly. "Nice. He was very sweet." Her eyes fell to Bobby's face. "I'll miss
him," she said flatly, and laughed aloud in that strange, alluring yet
chilling tone.

The wonder, the indecision, the shock of the last few moments left Bobby is a
sudden flood. His friends were dead, on some basic, nearly unconscious level
he knew this already; the strange woman before him had killed his two best
friends with some weird ability, and with no more effort than he would swat an
insect, and seemingly with less remorse than that task would engender. The
shock and surprise left him in a rush, and was replaced with a single, burning
emotion.

Rage.

With a roaring, inarticulate cry, Bobby rose to his feet and charged the four
feet toward the woman, all rational thought struck from his mind; the combat
training given him by the military in preparation for the last war was
forgotten in an instant. There was no thought, no personality, only a mindless
need to exact revenge and strike out in anger...and self-defense.

Bobby swung his right hand in a quick, looping arc, bringing it down in a
primitive but powerful clubbing motion, instinctually aiming for the woman's
neck. The blow never arrived.

Turning to meet his charge, the blue-suited woman blurred into motion that was
too fast for the human eye to track effectively. A loud Thwack! echoed
throughout the scene, and Bobby fell silent, his eyes turning up to where his
right hand was, stopped in mid-strike, and held in the air by the woman's
golden-gloved left hand, locked firmly around his wrist.

"Now, now, Bobby, we can't have that," she chuckled, and squeezed.

It only took a second. Her firm grip on his wrist increased so suddenly it as
over nearly before Bobby was aware of it. Her grip went from firm, to painful,
to agonizing, to blinding, seemingly lethal in the blink of an eye.

His wrist broke with a sudden POP! In fact, more than three inches of bone had
been instantly pulverized, blood vessels compacted and tore, spilling blood
into the surrounding tissues. He screamed in sudden agony and dropped back to
his knees as she released him. His hand drooped comically, his wrist had been
crushed so massively and effectively that it was only skin that held the
appendage to his body at all.

Bobby cradled his ruined right arm to his chest, and tried to scramble away
from the woman. He skittered backward across the ground until he came up hard;
his back hitting a tree. He looked up and saw her stepping lightly before him.

"Come on, now, old hoss," she laughed. "We just started to play. Don't go
running off now."

"Who....argggghh!....who are you?"

Her grin widened. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"What did you do to Kurt? To Jack?"

"Oh, a little of this, a little of that. I just gave Jack a little kiss, is
all. But we kissed so long, I just had to take a little breath. Too bad his
lungs couldn't take it. Kurt taught me how to talk, although I find his
vocabulary somewhat limiting. I'm afraid I'm going to have to find some more
new friends to learn from."

"What? What the fuck does that..."

"Although..." he eyes gleamed blue-gold at him in delight. "...he did teach me
some things about you."

"What!?...what do..."

"Oh, Bobby, I think you know." To his horror, she knelt over him, bending down
to straddle his lap and chuckling, shrugging his left hand's efforts to push
her off with a casual flick of her wrist. She leaned forward, her ruby lips
only millimeters from his ear; he could feel her breath as she spoke, and
against his will, the appearance of this woman combined with the gentle
tickling of breath on his ear and neck were too much, he felt himself stir
massively against the touch of her hips. The powerful swelling of his groin
continued even after she spoke the words that struck rational thought form his
mind once more.

"He knew, Bobby."

Bobby's eyes widened in shock. The fearsome woman only chuckled again, and
gave him a quick kiss to the side of the neck before leaning back to regard
him again.

"Yes, Bobby. He knew. She told him. She told him, Bobby. You remember, don't
you? Four years ago? When he went to Denver on that business trip? He was gone
for five days..."

"No....no..." Bobby mumbled lamely.

"Oh, yes," she laughed again. "Gone for five days, your best friend since you
were six years old. He was gone for five days, and you and his wife spent
nearly three of them in bed. Together. In their bed. The bed of your best
friend. Shame on you, Bobby."

"Oh, God, no...no.."

"Yes. She told him, three months later. She cried when she did it. So did he.
But he never mentioned it, did he? Never mentioned it. Because he told himself
that he had forgiven you..."

"Uh....stop...stop, please..."

"But he never did, Bobby. Deep down, he never really did."

"Uhh.....no..."

"Deep down, he hated you for it."

Bobby's face crumpled, the tears flowing freely down his face. The shock of
the whole episode was too much, too great. In that moment, he stopped caring
about anything.

"Now. As tasty as what I got from him was, I need to know more. A lot more.
Kurt was far too simple for my needs. I need to know how to find your places
of...higher learning. How to find your local..."

She glanced to the side again, her eyes darting around as if she was
remembering something, but now Bobby knew what she was doing; she was combing
through Kurt's mind, somehow she had stolen his memories and was now combing
through it the ay somebody ran their fingers through a rolodex or a
dictionary.

"College!" she exclaimed, and her gaze settled back on him again. "Yes,
college! I need to know how to find your nearest college, your nearest
university."

Bobby groaned in weak protest; he was beyond caring about much of anything.

"And so much more. Your military...I need to know everything about your
military, the army."

She took his chin in her right hand, pinching it between her thumb and index
finger, turning his head to face her directly, her eyes now only a foot from
his own.

"And Kurt's knowledge of geography was very poor, too," she said ominously. "I
need to know...how...how do I find...Washington?"

Bobby moaned out softly, her fingertips tensed slightly and he groaned again
as his very jawbone creaked under her casual yet fearsome grip.

"So...I have so much to learn. Now open up, Bobby. Teach me."

Her eyes widened, and in his darkening world, Bobby saw her eyes shift from
icy blue to shining, gleaming reflective gold, he scarlet mouth upturned in a
smile. A strange golden halo appeared in his peripheral vision; the gentle
yellow light rippled and moved like a golden version of the aurora borealis,
and slowly closed in on the center of his world, and he did not care, he did
not mind, the golden light shimmered and he waited for the blessed fade to
black. Her voice grew fuzzy, indistinct, and it sound ushered him from all he
knew.

"...yes...that's it. Good...yes....be a good little boy."

SECURE ROOM NUMBER SEVEN

THREE FLOORS BENATH THE PENTAGON, TWO DAYS LATER

Maxwell Tyson was a little scared.

He had never run anything nearly as big as this operation, up until now he had
been merely an FBI agent and sometimes field office chief. Small offices, like
Laverne, South Dakota and the slightly larger office in St. Paul. Now here he
was, pushing 50 and tapped to head up what might end up being the largest
single operation in the government of the United States.

He sighed and plopped himself down in the chair and stared at the phone, which
blinked furiously at him.

How am I going to do this? He thought to himself. Goddam it.

The door to the tiny office opened, and Diane entered, he glasses dangling by
one arm between her lips as she pinched it nervously in her teeth. She was
reading the stack of files as she brought them to his desk - not a problem as
her security clearance actually rivaled his own. Even in his bewildered state,
he couldn't help but notice her. And why not, everyone else did. Diane Findley
was tall, probably 5'9" or 10", with a lean, trim form, attractive looks, and
startling green eyes that shone with intensity and intelligence. She was
young, only 32, and had been his assistant for five full years. While it was
her looks that got her mentioned around the office water cooler, Max knew it
was her smarts that kept her around. Diane was whip smart, and should have
been running her own office by now. She had never told him why her career had
been so limited. Max's wife had secretly wondered if Max and Diane had ever
had an affair - she had been right do so, the two of them had been instantly
attracted to each other and had slept together on and off from the start. But
even though it was wrong, Max knew in his heart that what he and his assistant
shared was different than romantic love; it wasn't the way he loved his wife.
His and Diane's lovemaking was always scheduled, it followed a staged pattern
and was always discreet and fairly tame - he suspected it was a combination of
release of work-related tension combined with some strange show of respect for
each other.

Whatever it was that was - and wasn't - between them, it wasn't important now.
Now they had much bigger fish to fry.

Diane handed the short stack of files to him. The ear bud that was just
visible through her auburn hair squawked audibly, she frowned and clicked a
button on the controller clipped to her belt. "Here you are, the latest
material from Gearhardt."

Max sighed. "Gearhardt, Gearhardt. Why is everything from Gearhardt?"

"Because nobody knows anything yet, sir."

He didn't bother to ask her to drop the official nature of their conversation.
He knew she wouldn't. Here, ‘sir' was at the beginning or the end of nearly
every statement. Later, if it was during one of the periods they were
together, which usually lasted a week or two at a time, it would be different
- just once, as they were in a lodge near Niagra Falls, she had said it. They
were entangled beneath the sheets of a cheap bed in a cheap motel, and she
looked into his eyes, softly biting her lower lip fetchingly as he slid into
her, and she had held him close and said "Yes, thank you...sir," into his ear.
And it had almost ruined the moment. What would be scandalous and irresistible
alluring to any other pair or co-workers single-handedly almost managed to
ruin the moment.

Almost.

Max refocused his attention once more on the files at hand. "More USSA memos."

"Yes."

"They're pretty...thick. It's hard to get through it all."

"Yeah, I know, there's a lot of jargon in there. Do you want me to explain it
to you?" It was an honest question, not an insult.

"No, that's okay. I should get up to speed here. What else has come in this
morning?"

"Umm...well, USSA satellite has tracked a few local radar sigs since Serenity
Six went dark," she noted, her finger tracing down a printout.

"Local?"

"Eathbound," Diane explained, and pointed to a graph on the page in front of
him. "See, the problem here are NEOs, and the sheer number of them."

"NEOs?"

"Near-Earth-Objects. Asteroids. Comets. Debris. Mostly rocks. Old satellites
and space debris, the orbits of which have decayed enough that they're in
danger of re-entry."

"And they're a problem?"

"Well, if our eyes are turned skyward, looking for incoming, they're a
problem. We're looking for one thing. One object, one...well, one thing."

Both of their gazes drifted over to the wall, where a poster-sized printout of
the same frame shown Gearhardt by the president was tacked up. The control
room of Serenity Six, in mid-destruction, a dark, vaguely and alarmingly
human-shaped figure at the forefront of the chaos.

"And what is that thing?" Max asked rhetorically.

"So we're looking for that one thing, maybe that size, and that's the
problem."

"Because of NEOs?"

"Yep. Because of NEOs. Earth gets hit by stuff that size all the time."

He frowned. "Really?"

"All the time. Every day. Hell, every hour. Most of it burns up in the
atmosphere, and we never see it, hear it, or know it. Every once in a while,
you can see an especially big or fast one burn up as it comes in."

"A shooting star," he said.

"Right. A really big one will actually hit, and it usually makes a pretty big
hole."

"How big?"

Diane sighed, and shrugged. "Depends. On size, of course. But mainly speed.
The faster it is, the bigger the crater. Ever been to meteor crater? Arizona?"

He shook his head. "Seen it in TV. Never been."

"Okay, well you know how big it is. That one was small, VW-bug sized maybe.
But it came in fast. And you can see what it did. If one that size came in
that fast today over Phoenix, it'd kill everybody, I mean, everybody, and
level the entire city."

"And these things come in all the time?"

"Well, obviously not that big, but every time a baseball sized space pebble
burns up in the atmosphere, USSA sees it, tracks it, tries to catalogue it.
And they don't have that much manpower to do it, so..."

"A pretty big backlogue, is what you're telling me."

Diane nodded, and parked her glasses on top of her forehead, nestled in her
dark auburn hair. "Right. SATCOM and the DD has us badgering USSA day and
night, every minute, every second. But I think it's a waste of time."

"Because of the backlogue."

"Yeah. We're far more liable to hear about an impact...or an arrival...long
after the fact, after a ground report."

"Jesus, Diane. How do you know all this stuff?"

"I read. Books."she finished, and he grinned at her. She returned it with the
barest hint of a smile. "Lots of books."

"Okay, lots-of-books reader. Seems like a solid theory. No offense, but why
hasn't anyone else thought of this?"

"None taken, and I'm sure somebody has, they just don't like what it adds up
to."

Max nodded. Selective blindness was the one thing that he hated about the
information game. It was sometimes far easier to cook up intricate,
interesting theories than it was to recognize an obvious truth, and government
agencies had turned it into an art.

"Okay, it goes into the next briefing, but only as one theory.."

"Float it, right."

"...and when does that one go out?"

"Zero nine-hundred, about forty minutes," she answered without pausing to
check her watch.

"Goddamn," Max laughed. "Sometimes you make me feel pretty unnecessary,
Diane."

"Stop," she said, and turned to go. "You're needed here as much as I am."

"Yeah? How?"

"You sign the papers," she said good-naturedly. She finished as the door was
closing behind her.

"...but mainly because I can't work the coffee machine, and you can."

LECTURE HALL 1024-A, CUSHMAN HALL

OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

"...and, that my friends, is why I believe we are close, so close to the
answer. Einstein, Feynman, even more modern minds like Hawking, have all
theorized as to the time frame of the discovery, but as of yet it has eluded
us."

The faces of the audience spread out before him, the light from the projector
only illuminating the first few rows. After that, they merged into a faces
merged into a mass of human interest, creating an intangible force that
thrilled him even as he ended a lecture that spanned a full three hours. The
sound of his voice, thickened slightly by a German accent tempered by twenty
stateside years, filled the hall, amplified by his lavalier microphone, and
echoed form the walls and high ceiling of the lecture hall. Hans Heifsling was
in his element.

"But soon. Soon, my friends. Soon man will possess the kind of knowledge that
will revolutionize the world in only ways we could have dreamed of. Imagine
the world of the mathematic tied to the world of the theoretical. Physics.
String theory, the subject of most of this lecture. Do you see what may come
of it?

"A whole new world, one ripe and bursting with possibility. A piece of
knowledge that would allow geometric expansion of man's capability almost
overnight. For the first time....for the first time, my friends, man...man and
his world...they may be...truly unified."

Silence. Then, applause. More. Then it came forth, a rushing tidal wave of
human sound that washed over him and made his decades of toil in labs
worthwhile. He smiled broadly, flashing the grin and distinguished good looks
that had landed him on the cover of Time and even People as the most
electrifying public speaker and most eligible bachelor, respectively, in
recent years. And on and on it came, the sounds that made it all worthwhile.

It was nearly two hours and several dozen autographs later when his hand began
to cramp. The line had finally gotten down to a manageable size; only a few
remained, in fact. The president of the university, a large, imposing woman of
55 stood nearby, quietly berating a member of her science department for some
perceived offense. Hans rubbed his aching hand, took up his pen, and turned
back to the table as he heard a copy of his latest book placed before him.

"And who should I make this out to...?" he began, as his eyes moved up to
regard the book's owner. His words died on his lips.

She was radiant. Blonde. A year or to older than the typical coed, maybe a
grad student? Faded jeans clung to her trim hips, an OSU sweater clung to her
curvy form; a white baseball cap pulled down over her platinum blonde hair.
Hans knew he was staring but was unable to look away.

"Doctor?" she said, her voice throaty and musical. "Are you all right?"

"Yessss....I mean, well, yes. Yes, a fine evening."

"Ummm...I suppose it is," she answered, a grin upon her face. "It was a
wonderful lecture," she offered.

"Did you like it?" he asked, setting the pen down, his eyes fixed upon hers.

"Very much. It was...quaint."

"Quaint?"

"Yes," she continued, "it was...entertaining to hear such simple theories
regarding the subject."

"Simple theories?" The university president had finished with her minions and
had returned to resume standing, hawklike, at Dr. Heifsling's side. "Young
lady, I can assure the good doctor's theories are among the most advanced on
the planet."

The young woman's eyes fell once more to lock onto those of the physicist.
"Yes," she said. "That's exactly why I had to come learn about them."

The remaining people in line had begun to shift their weight from foot to foot
and sigh in annoyance; the meeting had already gone on longer than any other
autograph session had before. The university president took a step forward,
her glasses perched low on her nose, and regarded the girl.

"And who are you, exactly, young lady?"

"My name is.....my name is Jenny Warrenton," she replied without breaking her
eyelock on the enraptured scientist. "Tell me, doctor, how are you feeling?"

"Oh, I'm fine, thank you. A little tired, perhaps..."

"And do you live on campus? Where did you come from? Orion hall? Gemini
house?"

The young woman did glare up at this, and her gaze was icy; President
Chidowski took a sudden involuntary step backward.

"Oh, it's much further away than that."

"Well...well you must move along before..."

"So tell me doctor," the woman addressed him again, "Tell me. How do you feel
exactly?"

"My hand," Hans said, raising his right hand for her to see. "I afraid
it's...sore, it's cramping a bit..."

"I see," she said, and gingerly took his hand in hers. He touch was soft, the
surface of her hands smooth and silk-like. "Um-hmm....and how is it now?"

The physicist's eye widened in sudden disbelief. "Why....why, I'll
be....how...?"

"Miss, you must move along immediately, or I'll have you removed. Do you
understand?"

"Tell me doctor, is there somewhere we could go? To...discuss your...intimate
knowledge...of the universe?"

"Miss! I must object to your..."

"Somewhere we could talk....alone?" Her voice was melodious, glorious.

"The office..." Hans managed, and gestured with his free hand without breaking
his gaze from hers.

"Excellent," she replied.

"You will leave right...NOW!" the university president had worked herself into
a fury, her face red, her hands closed into fists at her side. "Young lady,
you will stop this right..."

"No. You will stop," the gorgeous blonde student replied, and once again her
blue - no, gold - eyes met the president's, and her tone was icy, laced with
venom and a strange authority no grad student was ever meant to have. "You
will stop. Everything in you will stop. Do you understand?"

The gazes of college student and president locked, and the small crowd sensed
some indefinable thing passing between them.

"Do you understand?" she asked again, her tone firm and commanding.
Chidowski's breathing came in gasps, he brow furrowed in concentration.

"....yes," was her reply.

"Good," the student smiled back at her. "Then stop....now."

It was as if someone flicked off a light switch. Suddenly, with no warning,
Chidowski's eyes rolled up under her eyelids, and without a sound she
collapsed bonelessly into a heap on the floor, where she lay without moving.
There was a collective gasp, followed by the usual pleas for a doctor. The
noise of the commotion rose around them, but Hans never looked away, his eyes
were locked upon the blue-gold ones of the student before him. He heard her
voice once more, but this time her full ruby lips hadn't moved; no, instead he
heard her voice, clear and resonant, inside his own head. Inside his mind.

So, doctor. Is there someplace we can be alone?

"Yes," he said aloud, immediately.

Excellent. Shall we?

His haste was so great that his folding chair fell over backwards. The crowd
now milling about in a frenzy over the fallen form of the university
president. Hans paid no attention as someone first searched desperately for
Chidowski's pulse, then moved on to administer CPR. The only thing he knew was
that he was leaving, and she was with him.

THE WOODS NEAR BONNIE LAKE

JUST OUTSIDE OF DUNCAN, OKLAHOMA

The spotlight made a brilliant bluish-white cone of light which narrowed the
lower the helicopter got. But even from this distance, Mack could see the
scorched hole in the earth and the men who stood surrounding it.

The skid pads of the Bell 120 touched down with a gentle thump and he was out
of the door before the pilot even had time to kill the engine.

"Keep it running," he shouted over the wind and heavy chopping of the blades.
He trotted to the large, heavyset man in beige, who was obviously the
authority in the area.

"Are you Sheriff Miller?" Mack asked, his voice raised despite the distance
from the chopper.

"That's the rumor," the man replied. He was a very large man, at least 6'3",
and pushing 300 pounds. His white Stetson was parked on his head at a rakish
angle, the high forehead of a receding hairline bordered with gray tufts on
either side.

"Bill McManus," Mack said, and offered his hand.

Miller regarded his hand for a couple of seconds before he reluctantly shook
it. "Um-hmm. Suppose you tell me what this is all about?"

A flash of consecutive images ran through Mack's mind. The hasty briefing he
received, the mysterious photograph. The new set of orders that pulled him
from the FBI office in Omaha with no warning, and his orders to pickup USSA
Director Gearhardt and deliver him quietly to Washington. The word of the
tale-tale radar signature over the Midwest and now this...just what they had
been afraid of.

"Yeah, well," Mack said, his hands raised on either said, palms outward in a
half-shrug. It said everything he had to say, without actually saying it.

"Yeah, well, I kind of figured."

Mack stepped around the hole, gazing into the cavity with an oddly distracted
interest. "What do you think we have here, Sheriff?"

"Well, that's a good question. After much deliberation and some crack
detective work by my investigative team, I'd say we have a hole in the
ground."

Mack glanced up at this, his face carefully expressionless. Miller stood
opposite him, but his gaze was directed downward, his brow furrowed in
thought. The reply had been delivered flatly, without color. No pointedly
barbed stare. No anger at having his jurisdiction stepped on by a Fed. That
sealed it. Mack liked him immediately.

"And how long did it take them to come up with that analysis?"

"Oh, couple of hours, I ‘spect."

"Where are the bodies?"

Miller pointed, and began to come around the depression toward him. "Over
yonder there. "Found ‘em just like this."

"Have they been moved?"

"Goddam, son, don't you listen good."

The men lay in a near circle. The first was on his back, face up, his eyes
wide and staring. Mack leaned close, and his eyes narrowed when he saw the
whites of the dead man's eyes. They were a deep, blood-red crimson color.

"Wow, okay."

"I don't figure to know what would do that to a man's eyeballs," Miller said.
"Maybe if he got knocked on the head hard enough, but I don't see a wound.
Hittin' somebody hard enough to do that would like to crack a head in two, I
figure."

Mack nodded and glanced to the left, where the second man lay, also face up.
His eyes were shut, his face frozen forever in an expression of great pain.

"Well, look at this," Mack muttered, and took out a penlight from his pocket.
The small circle of light fell to the dead man's face. They could see tiny
crimson droplets on the man's lips, and one tiny bead on his chin.

"Yeah, we saw that back when there was still light," Miller said. "Don't know
what could have did that, neither. There's not a mark on him otherwise."

Mack nodded and took three steps to the final corpse. This man was facedown,
his arms and legs splayed out at wild angles.

"And him?"

"Yeah, well, like I said, we ain't moved him."

"You photographed it, though?"

"Yeah, our staffer did. Well, I guess that makes him your staffer now, since
your guys came along and took his camera and all," Miller said, and this time
his tone was laced with bitterness.

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry about that Sheriff, I really am," Mack said. "If it was
up to me, it wouldn't be this way."

"And what way is it, exactly?" Miller asked angrily. We find this thing, put
it on the wire, and here it is not four hours later and I'm talking to a
Bureau chief about it, and it's since been taken off the wire. What the blue
fuck is that all about?"

Mack just nodded. There was nothing else to say. "Well, what say you we turn
him over?"

Mack took hold of the man's shoulder and hip, grimacing at the feel of the
soft, cold flesh beneath the clothing, and slowly rolled the man over on his
back. What he saw made him grunt in disgust, he heard a half-muttered
obscenity from Miller.

The other two men had gotten off far easier than this one. The man's head was
completely deformed, it looked as if his cranium had been caught in some giant
vice. His face had been pushed in with enormous force, a deep dent eight
inches across had smashed in where his nose and upper jaw had once been, his
eyes now peered straight downward rather than forward.

"Good God," Mack said flatly. "What could do that to a man?"

Miller sighed. "I thought I'd seen it all. But I ain't." He spit off to one
side. "I don't know. His whole damn face is been pushed in, mashed flat." He
pointed to the top and sides of the man's head. "See that? See it all mashed
up, and then up on the sides. And out like this, right here?"

"Yeah."

"Well, whatever did it, did it slow."

"What do you mean?"

"Think about it." Miller made a fist with one hand, and seated it against the
palm of his other, which he held up flat in front of him. "Something hits his
face like that, hits it hard enough to do that...and splat. Cause why? It's
got to be moving fast to do that, that's why. Except it ain't. Cause if he had
been hit by something fast, it would have just smashed his head all to pieces.
Or at least would have cracked the bone all to hell. It'd be a damn mess. But
he ain't. Look here. The skin ain't even been broke. It's all clean."

"Yeah, okay."

"So whatever did this, did it real slow, so it didn't go all ka-plooey. It's
like his head was caught in a big damn vice, or caught in a machine or
somethin'. Somethin' that just pushed his damn face right in, nice and slow."

"Okay, I can see that. But I wish I didn't have to."

"Yeah, I hear you."

Several men in olive green rubberized Hazmat suits approached them and began
zipping the corpses into body bags. Mack stepped close to the sheriff, who
eyed him suspiciously.

"Listen sheriff, something's going down here and to tell you the truth, we
don't know exactly what it is yet."

"Okay."

"Can we trust your men here to keep this under their hats until we do?"

"I reckon you can."

Mack nodded. "It's appreciated, Sheriff. Now, we've got to get these bodies to
a morgue."

"Well, the county medical examiner..."

"Our morgue."

Miller pursed his lips, mildly frustrated, and nodded. "Yeah, all right."

Mack stepped away from him, and then doubled back. "I'll call you. Not today,
not tomorrow, but soon, and tell you everything I can."

Miller regarded him coolly without blinking. Mack's gaze matched his own, and
to his surprise, Miller found himself extending his right arm in a handshake.

"I believe you will, son."

"You've got my word on it."

"I reckon I do."

Mack nodded and turned back to the chopper, which was already three bodies
heavier.

The din of the crowd was muted now, the corridor brightly lit as their
footfalls echoed hollowly down its empty distance. Now she was leading him,
and his thoughts gradually swam into something that resembled coherence. His
gaze traveled up her arm, and drifted down her body as she led him; pausing on
each feature, the long, lean legs covered in tight, faded denim, the tight,
short sweater that bared the tiniest hint of skin at the waist and displayed
how tightly the jeans were cinched up. The legs pumping back and forth in a
fast, determined stride....

"Where are we going?" he managed.

She didn't answer, but instead just tugged harder, almost painfully at his
wrist.

They rounded a corner in the hallway, and came to a stop by a darkened oak
door. Hans glanced further down the hall, where about fifty feet away a
cleaning cart stood against a wall. Two men dressed in custodial attire stood
idly nearby, talking in hushed tones. Now, they glanced up to watch Hans and
his mysterious guest with guarded interest.

"Yes, this one will do," she said to no one in particular. She grasped the
round steel doorknob, but it fetched up tight at only a quarter of a turn.
"It's locked." She turned around to gaze at him, her eyes positively alight
with excitement. "You wouldn't happen to have a key would you?"

It was like a brick hit him when her gaze fixed on his own, coherent thought
was dashed from his mind. "I....uh...."

"Well, no, I guess you don't," she muttered, annoyed. "That's okay. We don't
need a key."

She grasped the doorknob with her right hand once more. Hans watched in
stupefied wonder as he could at first see nothing, then whiteness at her
knuckles as she gripped the knob harder. Then, she tensed her arm in sudden
effort, and Hans' mind lost its grip on reality. Through fuzzy sleeve of the
sweater, he could see her forearm bulge more than he would have thought
possible, the tendons on her wrist stood out clearly. But this was a fleeting
vision, his attention immediately fell to the knob.

With a loud, metallic squeal of tortured metal, the doorknob collapsed around
her fingers, and he could hear it tearing and crunching in on itself. With the
tiniest of tugs from her arm, the entire misshapen knob, the locking cylinder
and mechanism, and a six inch square of thick oak was ripped free of the door
with a wrenching crack. She dropped the twisted hunk of metal with an echoing
thud, and pushed the door to the darkened office wide open.

"Hey!" the shout came down the hall, accompanied by the clatter of trotting
feet on the linoleum. The two custodians were jogging toward them, the one who
had shouted with his arm extended a bit, the other pulling a walkie-talkie
form his belt as they approached. "What are you doing? Get away from there!"

"I'm sorry," the gorgeous blonde said to Hans, who still stood behind her in a
state of shock. "This will just take a second."

She turned back to the men that now approached her. The first, with his
outstretched hand, came within reach, but to no avail. With a movement nearly
too fast to track with the human eye, she blurred into motion. Her right hand
made a semi circle, smacking his arm with enough force to turn him completely
around. She seized his collarbone with her left hand from the rear, and Hans
saw her arm tense as it had on the steel doorknob. The custodian's collar was
not made of steel, however, and the clean POP! of breaking bone was clearly
heard. He shrieked a loud, high cry, and then she extended her right hand,
palm up, like a blade; the tips of her fingers buried themselves in the small
of the man's back. With a tiny, quick, savage motion, she powered her right
arm forward. A gruesome muffled pop echoed through the hall, and the man fell
to silence, his breath taken in pain as he threw his head back in silent
scream. She released his collar and he fell straight down, his legs boneless
and oddly akimbo as he lay on the ground, only his arms moving as he clawed at
the ground in obvious agony.

The second man was upon them, but fared no better. Her right hand continued
upward, where it sized him by throat. With no apparent strain or even effort,
she drove the claw-like hold skyward; the man's feet came off the ground,
still swinging in a running motion. His face instantly turned a deep shade of
red, his hands clung to her forearm as she held him two feet off the ground.

The man on the floor continued scrabbling with his hands, and now made a few
loud, choking screams of pain. The woman swung her airborne captive out of the
way and gazed down at the man at her feet. She raised a leg and placed one of
the fashionable brown hiking-style shoes she wore across the back of his neck.
Hans had a sense of that strange, wonderous power again as her thigh and calf
swelled suddenly. Her boot powered down; the man's jaw and chest was flush
with the floor and had nowhere to go but backward at a tremendous angle in no
time at all. His neck separated with an audible CRUNCH! and his voice fell
silent in mid-cry, his hands jerked and grew still.

The fearsome woman turned her attention back to the man she still held aloft.
"Buckle up, baby," she smiled at him. "You're going for a ride!"

Her right hand squeezed in suddenly with titanic force; there was a terrible,
grinding crunch of separated joints and crushed gristle, and he began bucking
wildly in her grasp, his eyes completely rolled up in their sockets.

With a casual flick of her arm, she swung the man's entire body to the side
and then behind her at great speed. She released his form and the corpse flew
across the twenty foot wide hallway in a blur, where it turned in the air and
eventually slammed, upside down and facing Hans and the woman, into the wall
near where the stone block wall and fifteen foot ceiling met. There was a
deep, loud reverberating thud from the impact, and the body fell in a loose
pile to the ground and the man did not move again.

Hans merely stood there in stupefied wonder, unable to process anything that
had just happened, regardless of whatever strange influence the woman had on
his mind. He had had just seen what appeared to be a gorgeous college grad
student crush a steel doorknob, rip a chunk out of a three inch thick oak
door, and slaughter two healthy men with her bare hands in less than ten
seconds. A tiny part of his mind, a deep, wholly scientific, nearly
unconscious part of his mind processed this information, and relayed nothing
more than a single, repeating thought with strange scientific wonder.

So this is what it feels like to go mad.

The woman didn't pause to examine her handiwork, she shoved Hans into the dark
office and stepped in after him, swinging the door shut behind her. The hole
where the knob had been was the only light source; it let in just enough light
from the hall that he could see a tiny reflection of the wetness of her eyes,
nothing more.

"Umm, at last we're alone now, Hans," she said in the dark, and stepped close
to him.

The sound of his name and the utter blackness of the room brought him out of
his strange mental funk, his mind cleared a little, and he struggled to speak
to the strange woman who had spirited him away so easily.

"Miss...please. I'm old enough to be your father," he managed, even though his
romantic exploits were almost as well known as his scientific theories.

There was a low chuckle in the inky blackness. "No, you're really not," she
answered.

"Miss..." he searched his memory for a second, "Miss...Warrenton, correct?
Miss Warrenton, please, this isn't right."

Another laugh came to his ears as she pressed her body against his own. Her
hands gripped his shoulders in a strong, nearly painful hold, her lips brushed
his cheek and closed on his earlobe. His body responded involuntarily, his
pulse quickening even further, his breathing sped up and came in quick puffs
of breath.

"Jenny Warrenton, yes," she said softly, her breath brushing past his ear.
"She was so sweet, so nice. She was very pretty. She had a nice body, too. Not
as wondrous as my own, but still impressive."

"S...s....she?"

"Umm, yes," the voice whispered in the dark. Her hands traveled down his
torso, seized his belt. In the dark he heard a strange, leathery flexing
sound, and suddenly his pants were loose on his hips.

"She was so very pretty," the voice went on. "That's why I picked her. She was
very fit...for a human. She spent a lot of time on her body, exercising and
keeping it toned and powerful...for a human. So I looked into her mind."

"Wha...what are you saying? What do you mean by all of this? Her mind?"

The woman's mouth closed on his ear again, and his body shuddered in reaction,
his eyes closing as she worked her lips against the sensitive surface.

"Yes...." The voice continued. "I looked into her mind. She had so much to
say."

Even in the dark, Hans sensed a change that he couldn't put his finger on.
When the voice came again, it was still the voice of the strange woman, but
there was strange quality to it, a slightly higher pitched, slightly more
nasal quality that it didn't have before, and when the woman spoke again, the
words came in a strange new meter with a cadence it didn't have before.

"Ummm, yeah, I had so much to say," she said. "So goddam much. About
everything. Like, about school, and life, about what I've done...Like, the
team, my classes. Yeah, everything. Every....one."

"Everyone?"

The woman pressed even closer against him, he could feel her hips against his
own, the feel of her firm, full breasts against his chest, and he could feel
the vibrations from deep in her form as she chuckled.

"Yeah....everyone," she said. "That's the best thing about college," she went
on. "Sure, there's classes, and the swim team....but there's also other stuff.
The fun. The parties. The...boys."

"Boys?"

"Ummm, yeah. So many boys. So, so many boys, so little time. I liked them. And
they liked me. They liked me a lot. I was very, very popular."

With a tiny surge of movement, one of her hands slipped past the loose
waistband of his pants and grasped his length in a firm tug. Hans gasped and
his legs went weak. He staggered a tiny bit and leaned backward against a desk
that stood just behind him. She kept the pressure of her body against him, and
began stroking his shaft in long, delightful strokes.

"Yeah, I was very popular," she continued. "I was famous in the frat houses.
Big tits, little in the middle. And an athlete, firm all over, with lots of
stamina. I could go for hours. For days," she groaned, and gave him an
especially strong tug.

It was too much. Even though he had just seen her crush the life from two
grown men with her bare hands, the very hands that now gripped him, the
combination of her touch, her voice, and the matter of her speech was too
much. He exploded hugely, he came in huge pounding waves, grunting loudly
involuntarily with the force of his orgasm. His eyes squeezed shut, his ears
ringing, he knew it was the strongest sensation of his life.

On and on it went, much longer than he would have thought possible. He came
around at last, the room still dark, the touch of the woman still against him.
Even in the dark, he knew she was delighted and could nearly sense her smile.

"Yeah, baby. That's what I'm talking about," she said, and giggled playfully.

She kissed him, her full lips smacking hungrily at his own, her tongue forcing
his mouth open and pushing inside to twirl against his own. Incredibly, he
felt himself instantly stiffen again, and once more her hand began stroking
his fill, pounding length.

"Ooooh, look at you," she grinned. "You're a lot of fun, tiger."

He'd had a taste, and it hadn't been enough. All of his wonder, all of his
trepidation left him suddenly and he gave into his base, carnal desires. Still
leaning against the top and side of the desk behind him, he pushed back
against her body with equal force; his hands closed around her trim hips and
slid upward, the fuzzy material of the sweater tickling his palms. His hands
continued until they rested on her firm breasts, which were perfectly formed
and sized, filling the cups of his hands and then some. Their round fullness
was entrancing, and in all his years and countless conquests he had never
encountered such fullness and uncanny firmness before.

The mystery woman raised her arms in what was, even in the dark, a very
familiar gesture. He felt the motions of her moving, and knew that the sweater
was coming off, and when she leaned back into him, he was rewarded with the
smooth, cool feel of her bare skin. His hands sought her breast again, and his
mind was dealt another blow - the nearly superhuman firmness and fullness of
her cleavage was entirely natural and unaided: she wore no bra. He heard more
rustling and knew that she probably now stood naked before him.

"Okay, tiger, time to put your money where your hands are," she laughed.

Her hand paused in its motions, and retreated. He felt a sudden, huge tug at
his waistline, and the dark room was filled with the sound of tearing cotton.
He felt his legs and groin bared to the air; what had she done? Did she just
tear his very pants off of his body?

Fear gripped him again as rational thought returned. He had just seen this
woman crush two men the way a person would casually swat a fly; he had no
doubt the men lay dead in the hall at that very moment. He had heard their
cries, heard the muffled cracking of bone in her fearsome grasp. He had seen
her tear an oak door apart with one hand, had seen her seemingly destroy
another woman by mere suggestion. Now, she was having her way with him and
there was a part of him that already knew there was nothing he could do to
stop it...even if he had wanted to. And this same part of his mind started
putting her story, her voice and its changing qualities, and her actions
together, and he didn't like what it was adding up to.

"You're not Jenny Warrenton," he said slowly.

He heard her laugh in the dark, and felt her hand touch his chest. A sudden
shove drove him up and backward until he was lying across the top of the desk.
In a flash, he felt her on top of him, straddling his hips, her hands on his
chest, his hands involuntarily on her breasts again.

"No," she said, her voice lower, fuller once again. "I'm not Jenny Warrenton.
But I learned a lot from her. She taught me...how to do....this."

She moved against him, felt her hand on him once again, and a second later,
any chance he had, any desire he had for escape left him forever. His shaft,
longer, fuller, and throbbing harder than he had ever felt it in his life, was
suddenly sheathed in an all-encompassing gliding grip of silken bliss. He
could feel her warmth, and knew he was inside this strange woman. He wanted to
push, to thrust even deeper into her, his hips began rolling on their own
accord in the familiar rhythm, but her hips pushed down against his own
painfully, bringing him to a stop as she pinned him to the desk with some
unknowable weight.

"Wait," she said. "Hold on, lover. Relax. Let me do the work. I want to show
you something. I want to show you what I can do. Jenny taught me a lot, and
she was good, she was very, very good, but even she couldn't do....this."

Hans' heart began to pound even faster. Something was happening...something he
had never felt before...something exquisite....but unnatural.

Deep inside her, something moved. Lots of somethings. He felt the length of
his shaft first touched, then caressed, and finally encircled by what felt
like a multitude of tiny filaments. The phantom, silken threads swirled around
him and formed thicker strands here, thinner ones there, all moving in a
concert of combined motion that robbed him of speech or even coherent thought.
The slick, smooth, strong grip swirled around him while unknown muscles
squeezed in around him, milking him in a sweet rippling motion, all while her
hips pressed down on his own and remained completely stationary.

He sighed and began moaning in German, his thoughts completely disjointed by
the wonder of what he was feeling. The slick, sliding grip around him pulsed,
harder, softer, swirling, all while gliding up and down. His hands roamed over
her body, and while her hips were not moving, he felt the vertical motion. His
palms traced her taut abdomen, and he felt the muscles there undulating
beneath his touch, rippling like waves on the water in conjunction with what
he was feeling.

He only lasted a few seconds. He came again, even more powerfully than the
first time. Huge, pounding waves ran through him; it was as if she was pulling
something vital right out of him and into herself. Spots danced madly across
his vision of the dark room, his breathing choked and uneven. On and on...it
was the longest orgasm he'd ever experienced. Finally, when he felt like his
heart would burst, it faded and he slumped on the desk, exhausted.

Except she didn't stop. If anything, her otherworldly, unnatural grip on him
tightened, and increased its pressure and motion. He groaned aloud, first in
exhaustion, then in amazement as he stiffened to his full length once again,
and then he cried aloud, even more forcefully than before, as he felt the
huge, cascading waves of yet another orgasm, this one only seconds behind the
last. Something inside her squeezed reflexively, and now her hold on him
bordered on painful. He squealed in discomfort and alarm, his hands now
pushing against her not for pleasure but in an effort to put distance between
them.

He might as well have been pushing against a slab of granite. Her firm body
seemed unmovable; he could feel the ropy cords of muscle beneath her skin. He
pushed harder, and was rewarded only with the sound of a giggle, and a renewed
grip on him inside of her.

His eyes were wide in the dark, out of pleasure, alarm and a measure of
outright fear. Her hands drifted across his chest and shoulders, softly
caressing his skin. The sliding, slick grip on him grew even tighter, painful
now, and began to roll across the width of him as it swirled toward his tip.
He heard a quiet, stealthy liquid sound, a strange squelching sound, and felt
something brush his upper thigh, then a sliding touch across his groin. His
skin broke out in gooseflesh and he sighed and leaned his head backward,
overcome. The strange, phantom touch slid across his groin...and he felt
something, long, tendril-like, drift across his scrotum and suddenly snake
itself around it; the tip of whatever it was slipped across the backside of it
and the sensitive skin there, while three or four coils gently tugged at its
base. This, combined with the swirling grip proved too much once again;
incredibly, for the third time in less than two minutes, he found himself
racked once more with a huge, pounding orgasm. This time, it bordered on
painful, the contractions he felt deep inside her grew stronger, more urgent;
the rippling, pulling sensation was more evident than before, and he felt the
strange grip actually pulling him, drawing as much of him up into her as
possible. He nearly blacked out: heart hammering, he tried pushing her off of
him once more, but she didn't budge and she actually began laughing at his
efforts; a low, derisive chuckle that chilled his blood. His dawning sense of
fear turned to a rising, bubbling terror and he tried to skitter away from her
backwards, but her weight was immovable and her fearsome grip tightened even
more. Incredibly, against all survival instincts, he felt himself stiffening
once more.

"God, no," he cried, pushing against her with all his might. "Please..."

The swirling grip on him rippled again, massively, and from deep inside of her
there came a muffled POP! and instantly a fiery lancet of pain filled his hips
and groin. He cried aloud in his native tongue once more, and the terrible
woman grabbed his wrists painfully in her expert hands. She pinned his arms to
the table, her form over him in the dark...yet...he could see her a little
now...a strange, golden shade of light was coming from somewhere, dimly
illuminating the room.

"Hmmm," she said softly. "You're speaking in German, I think. I don't know
what you're saying, doctor."

He tried to fight back, but her weight and strength was more than a match for
his own. She rewarded his struggles by squeezing her hands tighter; the skin
of his right hand burned from the friction and pressure of her touch, his left
wrist creaked and finally collapsed in a symphony of crackling of small
crushed bones. He hissed in a breath, gasping for air and relief. Her inner
grip tightened as well, another wave of fiery pain raced into him from his
groin, another muted, muffled POP! was felt as much as heard, followed by an
ominous gristly, grinding sound.

The light grew brighter, until he could see the office, but his attention was
fixed on the woman above him. Her eyes were huge, all-encompassing, staring
deep into his own even as she punished him, for what, her didn't know or care
and still she stared on, her blue yes - no, wait, her golden blue eyes, her
metallic golden irises burned into his own, even now the pain of his wrist and
pulsing agony of his organ faded, faded now and became merely background
static and the edges of his vision turned black and slowly began creeping
inward. Even now there was a tiny fraction of his mind that observed the
events in a detached, removed scientific style, cataloguing the sequence as
even he knew his body was shutting down, bit by bit.

"So tell me, doctor. Tell me how to speak German. Tell me...everything about
you. But mainly...tell me about your science. Your technology. Your
capabilities. Who else I would need to see to learn even more?"

The light grew brighter still, the golden discs of her eyes wide and staring,
boring into his own with a nearly physical force. He could sense his thoughts
coming apart, becoming less coherent, becoming fragments of concepts, pieces
of ideas. And he didn't care.

"Yesssss....that's it...tell me everything."

LINCOLN COUNTY MORGUE

3 HOURS LATER

The hallway was quiet, nearly empty. The sickly green light given off by the
fluorescent tubes above him made Mack feel slightly queasy. He rubbed his eyes
in exhaustion, wondering why the place had never switched over to industrial
LED lighting; it was so much cleaner and brighter and-

Ah, screw it, he thought. Just get some sleep.

He closed his eyes and tried to quiet his thoughts. The strange phone calls,
straight from the top. Meeting Gearhardt and shuffling him over to the
Pentagon. Then his deployment, and the instructions to relay anything he might
find through Max Tyson's office. The way those three Bonnie Lake bodies
looked. So much, so very much to absorb.

Amazingly, he felt his thoughts slowing and realized with sluggish speed that
he was actually starting to doze off. Thank God for small favors.

"Mack?"

Parson's voice cut through the haze, and his eyes snapped open, instantly
burning from lack of rest. "Yeah?" he mumbled.

"Well, I'm done."

"Already?"

"Pretty much. Gave ‘em the once over."

"Show me," he replied.

Greta Parson held the door for him as he sat up on the bench seat, got to his
feet, and shuffled through the door. She watched him with motherly interest
from beneath her wrinkled brow, the iron gray hair now turning white and
nearly matching the shade of her surgical apron. She had known Mack for nearly
twenty years, and had never seen him in quite this state.

"You okay, Mackie?"

"Yeah, just really tired, Doc. It's....it's been a long week."

"It's Tuesday."

"Don't remind me," he muttered.

"I thought maybe it was...you know. The thing? Your scar?"

Mack rubbed the small jagged scar that ran just behind his right temple, up
into his hairline. "What? Oh, this? Nah. That doesn't bother me much, not for
years now."

"Well, good. It was a shame about that accident."

"Yeah, I suppose," Mack said a little dismissively.

Parson paused and their eyes met. "No, I mean it. I don't get serious much,
but I'm serious about this. that was a hell of an accident, and you were lucky
to live through it. That big ol hunk of metal in there is proof of it. And to
think, I barely even left a scar."

"Well, you're a pro. That's why you make the big bucks."

"Yeah."

"And thanks. For that, and everything."

"Happy to oblige, Machie."

They went through two sets of doors and entered the old operating room that
had been converted into the morgue's autopsy room. The room itself was large,
tiled in a pale green surface, and dimly lit. Most of the light came from
hanging fixtures that focused a stark cone of white light over the five tables
that sat in the center of the room. Three of them had new occupants, all
covered in black rubber sheets.

"What were these guys doing, anyway?"

"Hunting, supposedly. According to wives, girlfriends."

"Umm-hmm. Hunting, or being hunted?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Doc."

Parson pulled back the first sheet, and Mack instantly recognized the first of
the Bonnie Lake bodies. The familiar ‘Y' stitch crossed his torso and ran down
his abdomen, his head had been shaved and the thin line of an incision was
visible around the crown of the head.

"Jackson Thompson, 36 years of age, Stevenson, Oklahoma. Data systems analyst
for a telecomm company. Single white male. No family history of disease."

"Okay. What's wrong with him?"

"He's dead."

"There's a reason you guys creep people out, Doc."

"All right, all right, Mr. Cranky. You not getting your beauty sleep?" She
crossed the room to the counter that ran along the back all, where various
chrome instruments and tools of dubious and sometimes sinister appearances lay
waiting. There was a series of plastic tub and bins there as well, and Mack
groaned softly to himself. This was always the hardest part.

"Told ya, it's been a long week."

"Umm-hmm. All right. Well, cause of death on this one was easy." She brought a
large plastic tub over and placed it below the corpse's feet. In it, Jack
could see what was obviously biologic material, but he lacked the knowledge to
identify it.

"Cause of death was extreme suffocation," Parson proclaimed, and gestured
toward the bin.

"Extreme?" Mack said doubtfully.

"Well, see this?" Parson pointed to a long, ribbed tube-like piece of matter.
"That's his trachea. Should be white, but it's not."

"It's red. Purple, almost."

"Right. Burst blood vessels. Leading down to these." She pointed downward in
the bin, where Mack recognized the familiar branching of the respitory system.
She nudged a small, flat, wrinkled sac the size of a roll of quarters that sat
where the tube ended. "See that?"

"Yeah. What is it?"

"That's his lung."

Mack's eyes opened in surprise. "What? You're kidding me."

"Do I look like I'm joking? Take my wife, please."

"But it should be bigger than that, right?"

"Much. The size of a slightly flattened football or so. But it should be
thick, round."

"What happened? Did it collapse?"

Parson shook her head. "Nope. A collapsed lung is just that, it's only
collapsed. It's the same size, it's just loose and flattened. Here, the whole
damn thing has been just...crushed."

"It's all crumpled up. Purple, too. More blood vessel stuff?"

"Yeah, but look how it's all crushed in...here...and here. See that?"

"Yeah."

"What does it look like to you?"

"You're the professional here. Thrill me."

"Okay. I think it got sucked. Like, pulled; sucked so hard it tore loose from
its moorings. It would explain why it's all collapsed the way it is, and it
would also explain the discoloration."

"It does?"

"Yeah, think about it. With enough suction, all the deep tissue blood is
pulled to the surface, causing discoloration. Redness, and if it's a powerful
enough suction, purple or black bruising takes place. Sound familiar?"

"Should it?" Mack asked.

Parson grinned. "Ever have a hickey?"

Mack nodded. "Okay, maybe years ago. But never a deep purple one."

"It's my theory, anyway."

"Okay. But what would do that?"

"You're the professional here. You thrill me."

"I lack adequate info as of yet, Doc."

"Then so do I." She flipped the rubber sheet back over the tub and the body.

"How strong would the suction have to be to do that to a man's lungs?" Mack
asked, his brow furrowed in troubled thought.

"I can't say for sure. I've never seen anything like it. I mean, it wasn't
just collapsed, you saw it. His chest was just...imploded. Like a squished
piece of fruit, but from the inside. Crazy."

"Well, hazard a guess. Are we talking a shop vac here, or what?"

"God, no. The human body is way tougher than that."

"Well, how strong then?"

"A rough guess?"

"Yeah."

She blew out a sigh. "Oh, a few dozen shop vacs, as you call them, would make
it difficult to breathe. A few hundred might cause the discoloration. But to
collapse the lung completely, to suck it into a hard little ball, tear it free
of its moorings...it happened quick. Like, instantaneously. Hard. Fast. I'd
say more like it was much more power, and quick. A second. Maybe a
half-second. And hard. A couple thousand 5 horsepower vacuums."

"Jesus!"

"Industrial strength," Parson said, and pulled back the sheet on the second
body. "Robert Nelson, 32, white male, Duncan, Oklahoma."

Mack's stomach flip-flopped at the sight of the crushed skull. "Couldn't you
do something about that?"

"Nope. Everything in that poor boy's head is crushed. Little, itty-bitty
pieces. All the king's men. Not even with super glue. I'm afraid the family's
looking at a closed casket service. Give you one guess on his cause of death."

"Nice."

"Yeah, we had to use his fingerprints to ID him, turns out he's ex-Army,
prints on file."

"Really."

"Yeah, he was a bit of a tough guy too. Wounded in the war, multiple
commendations. He was no pushover."

Mack caught her drift immediately. Whatever you wanted to say about what
happened to the men, you had to take these facts into consideration. Three men
were dead, and at least one of them was a decorated war veteran in his prime
who was armed with sophisticated hunting gear. Whoever - or whatever - had
done them in had hit them hard, fast, and without mercy.

Parson flipped the sheet over him, and went to the last table. This is the
most interesting one, though," she said, and rolled the sheet back. "Kurt
Dunwitter, 31, white male. No obvious trauma or physical injury. Other than
this."

Parson reached across the body's face and pulled one of the eyelids open with
her thumb.

"Jesus Christ," Mack muttered, and leaned closer to see. "Jeeeezus."

"Yep."

"What could do that?"

She closed the lid, and thought for a moment. "Lots of things can cause
similar trauma. I blow to the head can cause that kind of leakage into the
orbital area, but I've never seen anything like this. That thing is packed, I
mean, tight. I took the other one out and when I poked it, it blew like an
over-inflated tire."

"Thanks."

"Hey you asked. But I mean, it as filled, it was like every single capillary
in the entire organ ruptured massively at the same instant. It's crazy."

"A blow to the head could do that?"

"Well, theoretically, but it would be a huge severe injury. He would have to
look like his friend over there...he might have it too, but the face is so
ruined it's hard to tell. But to get this kind of result? He'd have to be hit
so hard that he'd hardly have any head left."

Mack looked the corpse over, noting the same familiar Y incision. "Okay. So
what killed him?"

"I don't know."

"Come on."

"Seriously, I don't know."

"Doc, please."

"Are you deaf, Mack?" she asked, too sharply, and looked at her feet when Mack
turned to regard her with surprise. "Looked him over and couldn't find
anything wrong with his body at all. Not a thing. No cancers, no coronary
troubles...the opposite, even. His arteries were as clean as a whistle. By all
rights, this guy should have lived to 130."

"You said his body."

Parson nodded. "Clever boy." She went back to the counter and returned with a
plastic tub. She removed the lid, and Parson reluctantly looked inside.

A gray lump of material swam in a shallow pool of preservative solution. It
was vaguely kidney shaped, about the size of a large grapefruit, and it was
perfectly smooth, the skin of it was taut and almost shiny.

"Umm...okay. What is it?"

"You ready for this one?" Parson asked, her eyes sparkling with excitement
over something new and unexplained.

"Doc."

"It's his brain."

"What?"

"Yeah, how weird is that?"

Mack leaned closer and now recognized the stump near the rear where Parson had
cut the spinal cord; the rest of the organ was foreign to him. It was devoid
of any feature whatsoever; there was not so much as a dimple on its surface;
the coloring was an even and unchanging shade of light gray.

"This is the part where you tell me you've never seen anything like this."

"Okay," she said flatly. "I know you hate it when I say this. Mack, I've never
seen anything like this."

"I hate it when you say that."

They stood there in the examining room, the dim cone of light shining down,
and shared a quiet moment of puzzled wonder. The silence set in, and Mack felt
a strange weight settle about the scene, and knew Parson was waiting, waiting
for him to say something, anything, about what was going on. He wanted to,
their professional relationship and personal friendship went back quite a few
years. But he couldn't.

"Damn it, Mack. Are you going to make me ask?"

"You know I can't."

"You sure?"

"I'm afraid so."

Parson nodded. "So it isn't just a run of the mill kind of thing."

"I can't even tell you that."

"Well in 31 years I've never seen, hell, never even heard of anything like
this. I have no clue about what could do this to three healthy men. Nothing
natural, anyway. Or unnatural, for that matter."

"Well..."

"No disease, no weapon..."

"Well, Doc, I..."

"No syndrome...Nothing exists that could do this, as far as I'm concerned."

"Nothing here."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"Nothing. I'm just saying, nothing here exists that could do this."

"Okay."

"Nothing here," he said again.

"Is this some kind of code?"

"Nothing here," he said once more, and made a palms-down pushing movement with
his hands toward the ground. "Here."

"Ummm...." She paused, and suddenly her eyes flew open in shock. "What?!"

"Nothing. I didn't say anything."

"Nothing here, as in....here?"

"I'm just saying that whatever it is, it isn't...local."

"Ohmigosh," she muttered, her eyes blinking in surprise. "Whoa....wait! Then,
how come we weren't alerted the second you brought these bodies in here?
Goddamn it, Mack, you asshole! What if it's some kind of new bug or something,
we could have been infected, we should have been..."

"Relax, the local authorities would have been affected long before we even
left the scene, so it was deemed a low contagion factor by...those above."

Parson paused, unsure, and slowly raised an index finger to point skyward in
an unsteady fashion. "Wait, ‘those....above?' Like, above?"

Mack frowned, confused, then actually broke into a grin and laughed aloud for
the first time in days. "Cripes, no. Above, as in, above in the chain of
command."

"Oh. Okay."

Mack ran a hand though his dark hair and sighed as the humor slowly left him.
He rubbed his eyes, and felt the brief reprieve from the stress fade.

"You're tired, aren't you?"

"Does the pope wear a big hat?"

"How long since you slept?"

"A while," he sighed.

"Come on, there's a cot in the back."

"I can't."

"You can. You will, or I'll declare you unfit. I am still a doctor, you know."

He smiled wanly and fell into step behind her. They had only taken four step
when his mobile rang, the sharp electronic sound shrill in the wide tiled
room. They shared a reluctant glance. He checked the display on the tiny unit
worn on his wrist, saw it was Max Tyson's office, and pressed the small button
on his device. He heard the tiny earpiece nestled against the drum of his ear
come alive.

"McManus," he said, and the tiny microphone imbedded in his earwig
transmitting his voice to Taylor's office thousands of miles away..

SECURE ROOM SEVEN

BENEATH THE PENTAGON

It was starting to work.

The plan had always been to prepare an umbrella strategy. No one had ever
given a lot of thought to the possibility of it ever really happening. Too
outlandish, some said. But others went about planning for it anyway.

And now, it might have actually happened. The moon base. The radar signatures.
Now, what looked like an impact crater. Three fresh bodies. It was starting to
add up, and the brass didn't like what it was adding up to. So they called up
Gearhardt and the eggheads at the USSA to start working out some conceptual
things and they called up Max Tyson to run things on the ground. He, in turn,
had brought in Bill McManus, the best field agent he'd ever met. Below them, a
small army of staffers that didn't really know how or why they were now on a
very high alert status.

The speakerphone sat before Tyson, blinking green. Max thought he could still
hear the commotion behind the sound of the man addressing him over the line.

"That's affirmative," the voice said.

"All right," Max replied, his voice betraying none of the dawning excitement
he felt. Damn, it was actually starting to work.

The plan called for containment. The center was always going to be the point
of impact, the point of first encounter. Upon that place, two concentric
circles were to be drawn, one 50 miles out, the next 120 miles out. A sudden,
massive deployment of every federal field agent in the area, all working in
toward the center. It formed an ever-tightening protective circle, a shrinking
umbrella, that would hopefully pin down whoever - or whatever - it was they
were looking for. And it was looking more and more certain that this was not a
false alarm.

"How long ago?" Max asked.

"Three, maybe four hours ago," the voice said in a hushed tone. In his mind,
Max imagined the plainclothes agent trying to observe the scene and speak into
his sleeve without drawing attention to himself, maybe disguised as a member
of the press. "Around 2300 hours or so."

Max checked the time, 0230 hours. Damn, it was working, they had gained nearly
a whole day on their prey. They had gone from a bungled discovery of the
bodies at the crash site, which was now under strict quarantine, nearly a day
behind the event, to a mere three hours. He glanced up at Diane and nearly
smiled, he could see the same excitement on her face as well.

"And confirmed kills?" she asked.

"Three confirmed so far," the voice muttered. A pause, the sound of a mic
brushing against clothing, another pause. "Okay. Three dead for sure, one of
them the OSU president. Two other boodies - they've just been taken out by
local authorities..."

In a flash Max nodded to Diane who was already up and halfway out the door.
She was dialing her mobile furiously, about to give instructions to intercept
the ambulance and take the bodies into government custody.

"And one missing," the voice continued. Diane froze, and spun slowly on her
heel to look back at Max.

"Say again?"

"One missing," the field agent repeated. "The speaker, the physicist."

"Heifsling?"

"I guess, that's the guy, he's gone?"

"Nobody knows where he is?"

"Sir, it's a mess down here."

"I understand that," Max said firmly. "We need what intel you can gather, but
don't blow your cover."

"Copy. But he's gone. I've heard two, repeat, two different sources,
presumably first-person sources, that said he took off right after Chidowski
went down."

"Christ, did he do it?" Max wondered aloud, and felt a small dip in his
spirits. Maybe this was a lot more simple than they had first thought.

"Negative," the agent replied. "I overheard witnesses telling the local
authorities that he sprinted out of here with someone else."

"What?!"

"Yeah, he left with somebody else, a girl. And somebody else said they thought
it was the girl that caused the whole thing, like there some kind of shoving
match or something right before Chidowski crashed."

Max stared unbelievingly at Diane, who matched his shocked gazed for a second
before re-dialing her mobile.

"Tell me someone knows this girl," Max barked, now on his feet, gripping the
sides of the desk for support.

"Negative so far."

His heart thudded in chest, the steady drumbeat of its rhythm beat in his
temples. "Okay, okay. Good work. Find out everything you can. Find this guy,
and find this girl. Find them now, find them...yesterday. Priority."

"Copy."

"All right, we're also going to militarize the whole thing, so be ready for
it. In maybe..."

"Twenty, twenty-five," Diane interjected from her own conversation.

"Copy, twenty."

"Okay, good work, Daniel. Now move it. Find these guys."

"Roger that."

The line clicked dead, the phone's LED flashed red once, and dimmed as the
unit went to standby status. Diane pulled her dark blue blazer off the chair
as she clicked her mobile off and opened the office door to leave. Max had
already donned his suit jacket and had grabbed his travel kit form his desk, a
small black vinyl case that held his identification and every kind of
documentation he might need in a field op. Together they left the office and
strode quickly down the nearly deserted, dimly lit corridor, each carrying on
their own conversations into their mobile com devices.

"The entire crew," Diane said, he voice firm, her speech quick and clear. "The
entire team. Well, wake them up, we're wheels up in...fifteen, twenty at the
most. The entire team. Right, okay."

"What are you doing in Omaha?" Max asked angrily, into his own comm device. "I
thought you were still near Duncan. What? Okay. Listen, Ok City, we need you
there. Now. No, like, fifteen- minutes-ago-kind-of-now. The OSU campus there.
We're locking it down. We've got something, maybe."

Diane began keying something else into her mobile, clicking the tiny buttons
on the wrist unit. They reached the elevator at the end of the hall, and Diane
punched the button; above them they heard the familiar whine of the mechanism.

"Okay. All right. Yeah, it's not far...it's..." Max glanced to Diane, who
answered him without looking back to him.

"452 miles," she said.

"450 clicks," Max said. "Right. All right, there's a military transport there
you can hop a ride on, it's faster....45 minutes?"

Diane considered it, and nodded, he lips pursed in an ‘Okay, I guess' fashion.

"All right. Good. Right. You're looking out for..."

"Hans Heifsling," she said.

"Heifsling, Hans," Max repeated. "Right, the physicist. Yeah, he went missing
after a lecture. Right. I don't know. But he may be with somebody."

A moment passed, and Diane could imagine what McManus had asked.

"We're not sure. But right now, he lit out of there with an unidentified
female. Right, yeah. It's a little premature, but we might have a target.
Yeah. Okay. Copy that. Go get ‘em."

He clicked the unit off just as the elevator arrived and they stepped into it.
Diane looked at him with a strange mixture of excitement and apprehension, and
Max knew the same expression was on his own face.

"Well," he said, "Let's go to Oklahoma."

SOUTHEAST 7th AVENUE

OKLAHOMA CITY

There were bright, gaudy neon lights everywhere; the street saw a lot of foot
traffic, however. It was now nearly 3:30 in the morning, yet the streets were
bustling with a throng of humanity. Oklahoma City had seen an explosion of
growth during the 30s; it's relatively cheap land prices was enticing to new
tech firm start-ups. Now it was a city that rivaled Tokyo for its nightlife,
its gaudy, colorful displays, and its entertainment.

She walked among them, her feet taking her through the crowd, her head
swiveling from side to side, taking it all in. She pulled the cap down as
tight on her head as it would go, trying to hide her face under its brim as
people brushed by, purposefully not meeting the gaze of any she happened to
pass.

It was a little frustrating, actually. To have to walk among such simpletons
as one of their number, to have to endure the very insult of pretending to be
one of them was an affront to a part of her nature.

But, by the same token, it was by her own choice, she reminded herself. It was
this way now, as it had ever been. As much as she detested having to disguise
her identity, her abilities and power, she enjoyed coming to know her enemies,
her prey, one by one, bit by bit. She had vanquished many a foe before
settling on her current pattern. The first ancient civilizations she had
encountered she had crushed so totally, so completely, and so easily, that
after the first few she had simply lost any motivation. It had been far too
easy to keep her interest.

Then, she had discovered new abilities she didn't know she had even possessed.
She learned to slowly infiltrate each society she had targeted for
destruction, she had discovered how to learn everything about that society and
how to turn its denizens against each other. Sometimes, she chose to cause
huge titanic shifts in their civilization that led to brutal civil wars, with
her immense, sweeping arrival heralding their doom. Other times, she would
simply instigate a series of events, and observe them from a distance,
sometimes taking weeks, years, decades even, to watch the seeds she had
planted take root and blossom into a beautiful strife of her own design.

Either way, she found it to be fitting. Only a being as powerful, as superior
as herself was fit to cleanse the scourge of humanity from the places she
traveled. Deciding the fate of countless, faceless millions, she traveled
through a vast expanse of space and time, enjoying every passing second of her
complete control of the lesser beings beneath her. For, after all, isn't that
what deities spent their time doing? Only one such as herself was fit for the
work.

She very much enjoyed playing God.

As it turned out, it wasn't a military transport at all.

The thin silver fuselage split the inky blackness at nearly 1200 miles per
hour. The cockpit was a tight fit, stuffed with four seats in to rows, gauges
and digital readouts on every possible surface. The pilot executed a steep
starboard turn, and suddenly increased altitude by 1500 feet to avoid an
particularly ominous thundercloud on the horizon, and in the second row
directly behind him, Mack's stomach did a slow, nauseating roll.

"How you doing, sir?" the pilot's voice crackled on the headset."

"I'm alright," Mack offered through gritted teeth.

"Good for you," the pilot replied good-naturedly, but Mack thought he sensed
the barest hint of a smile in the young man's voice. "Have you there in just a
couple of minutes."

While Tyson had been incorrect about the type of plane, which ended up being a
F-178 pursuit fighter instead of a military transport, he had been right about
the speed. The helicopter had taken him from the Lincoln County morgue to the
airfield in just twenty minutes, and once he had been introduced to the pilot
(who, to his alarm, Mack thought wasn't even old enough to shave), Mack found
himself airborne once more. The sleek fighter was famous for its speed, and he
didn't doubt it. It was beginning to look like the helicopter flight to the
airfield was going to be a longer duration than a flight from Nebraska to
Oklahoma City.

The plane lurched suddenly, and Mack did everything he could not to groan. His
blood pounded thickly in his temples and started to leave his head as he felt
the pilot pull the nose up to correct a sudden bout of turbulence, the speed
of the maneuver pulling a serious amount of sudden Gs. Then it faded as the
plane leveled out.

"Sorry bout that. Got some rough weather here. You'll be on the ground in
another ten minutes."

"Okay," McManus muttered, and squeezed his eyes shut.

She had had to duck off of the main drag suddenly, a small group of
college-age boys had been following her for several blocks, and carrying on a
conversation about the apparent exquisite nature of her derriere; comments
that had been called out just loud enough for her to hear. Her vision
intensified, suddenly very acute, her senses slipped unconsciously into a
state of hyper-readiness. But it was too soon. It wasn't time.

So she stepped off the street into an alley, out of the line of sight of the
group. In a flash she stood where a hastily-constructed plywood wall divided
the alley at the far end. Without pause, she bent slightly at the knee, and
with the tiniest of efforts and a tensing of her taut legs, thrust herself
skyward. Her body sprang upward, somersaulting forward once, arms out, and
cleared to the fifteen foot all easily, with five feet to spare. She arrowed
straight down, where her booted feet struck the ground with a satisfying thud;
her legs easily absorbing the impact with the barest hint of a bended knee.
She held her back to the wall, and listened.

They were only seconds behind her, but hadn't seen the superhuman feat she had
performed with no thought or effort at all. Four of them, all young, all
foolish. So filled with youthful swagger.

"Damn, man, where'd she go?"

"Fuck! That was the finest ass I've ever seen. I would've gotten me some of
that!"

"I didn't see her go anywhere, man, I mean....shit!"

"Okay, fuck the bitch, let's go back. The muthafuckin' night is still young,
fellas."

The sound of their retreating footsteps, nearly drowned out by their boorish
talk. She closed her eyes and fought the urge to turn back and end their
pathetic lives with a single strike. How she longed to see the shock and
horror in their dimming eyes reflected back at her as she watched them die at
her hands! She felt her pulse quicken, and she sighed a long, slow breath to
calm herself.

Not now. Not yet, she thought. It'll be better after I wait.

She opened her eyes, smiled at her own self-control, and strode out to the
corner of 6th Avenue. But soon, she thought to herself. Soon.

Evidently, the shops and clientele of 6th Avenue were very different from the
next street over. It was the boots that first drew her gaze.

The woman as tall, nearly as tall as her own form. But the woman was far
skinnier; in fact, she was too skinny. Small dark hollows were visible under
the woman's eyes, the incredibly tight blue minidress she wore clung to her
nearly emaciated frame. Her legs were encased in dramatic fashion; black vinyl
boots rose from a five inch stiletto heel to cling to her legs, ending at her
mid-thigh. A small black leather bag was slung over her shoulder, and a cheap,
foul-smelling cigarette dangled from her thin, pale lips.

She slipped into the darkened doorway of a closed shop, and pretended to read
an announcement pasted to the building's wall, a notice for a small concert by
some vitually unknown musical act. From there she watched the woman,
fascinated, for nearly fifteen minutes.

The vinyl-booted woman laughed, to no one in particular. She chain-smoked
cigarettes. Her expression changed from frown to amused grin with shocking
rapidity. She called out to passersby in the same gentle, self-mocking voice.
The voice and the lines on the face of the woman betrayed her age; she was
older than what her profession and dress would have hinted. Even from a
distance of one hundred feet, the college co-ed in the doorway could see every
detail of the woman's form clearly, and could hear every word she said to the
passersby, even the beat of the woman's heart.

"Hey baby," she said to a heavyset man passing her, "Looking for a friend?"

"Hi there," to a driver who idled by in a rusty pickup truck.

"Hey, you're cute," she half-sang to a passing throng of young men. "You guys
want to party?"

The woman in the doorway paused, looking into space, her eyes glazed in
thought. She searched the catalogue of knowledge she had gleaned from those
she had encountered so far...searching...the words came to her, and then the
meanings, and then the full connotations they brought with them. All in just a
brief moment. Her own voice answered her mental inquiry, a hushed whisper that
spoke someone else's thoughts, someone else's memories in her own voice as if
it had been her knowledge all along.

Junkie, her interior voice told her. Addict. Streetwalker.

Whore.

Her attention turned back to the booted woman, and she saw the woman was
engaged in a shoving match with some faceless man who had passed her.

"Get away," she heard the man bark, even from where she stood, her ears easily
picking up the sound even though no one else around her could have heard it
from this distance.

"Come on," the woman said in a raspy voice. "Don't cha like me?"

"I said get away!" the man cried, and this time gave the woman a real shove.
She teetered on her high heels for a moment, and then crashed into a trash bin
near the street with a clatter. Her bag fell from her shoulder and hit the
ground with a dull thwack.

"Hey, fuck you!" she screamed, those around her turning their head and
noticing her for the first time as they passed. "Yeah, keep walking! Fuck you!
And fuck all of you fucks, too!"

The woman fell to immediate silence, exhausted, near tears. Fuck. It was
Tuesday already. Or was it? Fuck, she didn't know. All she knew was that she
owed Fat Tony four hundred motherfucking dollars and if she didn't have it by
Thursday he was going to beat the shit out of her, maybe even kill her like he
did Charlene. That had been bad, and she didn't want to go out like that. And
her fuckin' teeth ached. Her fuckin teeth. What kind of shit was that? And she
needed a hit, needed it bad.

She began to bend over to pick up the loose pile that was her handbag, when
she heard a weird whistling sound, and felt the tiniest stirrings of a breeze.
She blinked, and when she opened her eyes, her handbag was being held out to
her by a young woman. A beautiful young woman. Tight jeans. Way too tight to
be comfortable. Tight little sweater number. Little belly showing, she could
even make out a little definition of some abs; fuck, of course. College
bitches always had fuckin abs nowadays. She had had abs once too. Just wait
till those bitches lived the real world for a year.

Little baseball cap, pulled down low. Platinum blonde hair sticking out from
under the cap, so bright and shining it looked as if it gave off its own
golden light and was spun from 14 carat itself. Bitches.

"Listen, bitch, you're gonna have to go find yourself some other spot, honey,
cause this is my muthafuckin..."

Her words stopped abruptly she her vision fell to the girl's face, and her
eyes locked onto the girls own. The prostitute's mind was consumed with a
huge, all-consuming thought that filled her head with a single concept, more
clearly structured that anything her drug-addled mind had known for years.

Oh, God, she thought. This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

The insanely beautiful woman just turned the right side of her ruby lips up in
a half-smile, and her blue - gold? no, blue - eyes gleamed at the hooker.
"Your bag," she said simply.

"Th-th-thanks," the woman stammered. She began to stare again.

"Hey, you look really tired," the college girl said to her, and her voice was
so nice, so fucking soothing...she could have fallen asleep right there if the
girl had asked her to.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am," the woman sighed, as if in a daze.

The girl's gaze grew even more intense. "Mmm-hmm. Listen, you want to come
with me somewhere?"

The hooker's eyes blinked rapidly like she was trying to shake off a strong
blow to the head. "I...I dunno. I ....God!...What's wrong with me? Ugh...I
don't know. I don't think so."

"Why not?"

The woman struggled to find words to speak, it was hard to do anything but
stare into those eyes forever. "Cause...I...I don't do things like that. I
ain't...ain't into that. I ain't never been with...with a woman."

The college girl laughed, delighted, and the hooker's heart fluttered a bit.
"Hmm, me neither," the girl said, and stepped closer to her.

The woman's heart rate skyrocketed. A high, pleasant buzzing began in her head
as the girl's lips neared her ear.

"It could be nice," the girl said, nearly whispering. "I could be so nice to
you. I could make this all go away so easily. Would you like that?"

"I...I..."

"Would you like that?" the girl asked again, but this time reached out to
caress the prostitute's upper thigh, just below the hem of the tight blue
minidress. The hooker gasped, her eyes closed, and her body was gripped in a
sudden flush of sensation.

Fuck me! Her mind said, far away. Oh, fuck! Did I just come?

"Yes," she sighed, without pause.

"I thought you would," the girl murmured, and stepped away. The girl pulled
her gently back toward the alley by a hand, her grip tight, firm, inexorable,
and completely unnecessary. "Come on," she said. "Come with me."

Twenty feet in. Twenty feet is all it took. Two dumpsters had been pushed back
there, providing some cover from those on the street. Papers and pieces of
trash were strewn about the ground; it must have been some homeless person's
residence. But the space was clear now, and it was away from the throng of
humanity on the street, away from the bustle, and the sound of the street was
muted big, stinking steel boxes around them.

The girl pulled her back into the space, and a casual flick of a single wrist
spun the prostitute around and sent her flying into the brick wall. Her back
slammed into the rough surface, her breath whooshed out in a moan; she gasped,
unable to talk from the shock, pain, and lack of breath. The college girl
stepped closer again, and the hooker now noticed the size and firmness of this
gorgeous young woman before her, the thickness of her arms, the width of her
shoulders, the taut roundness of her thighs, and for the first time thought
that she might be in a little bit of trouble. But these thoughts were wiped
away as the girl's left hand flashed out in a blur to first hike up the front
of her already too-short dress and first cup tenderly, then massage her
ever-moistening nest.

The hooker gagged; she couldn't breathe, and the sudden, all-encompassing
pleasure of the fearsome girl's touch made it impossible to think, let alone
take a breath. And above all this, those eyes! Those golden eyes!

"Now," the girl said knowingly. "I know you like this. What if I did this?"

The prostitute's eyes rolled up, and she actually struck her head on the wall
behind her as her body arched reflexively, but she didn't care. She didn't
know what the girl as doing, and she didn't care - all that existed at this
moment was herself and what she was feeling. After two full minutes, the waves
of heat faded, and her now sweat-soaked form slumped a little in exhaustion.

"Okay, I do for you," the girl smiled, "now, you do for me?"

"Wha...what do you want?" the prostitute stammered as their gazes locked for a
final time.

A blood-chilling chuckle, followed by a single word was her reply.

"Everything."

The throng of people on the street passed by, oblivious to what as transpiring
only twenty feet away. Like so many people of their day, the members of the
faceless crowd knew nothing of those around them, beside them, beneath them.
They didn't know what was happening only a stone's throw away, nor, if they
had, would they have cared. They hadn't known the woman, the girl, or anything
of what was happening as they passed. None had known the name of the
prostitute, and none would ever know.

And not one person passing by paid any attention to the muffled cries of first
pleasure, then of dawning alarm, that came down the short length of the
alleyway. Nor did they hear the last gasp of breathless wonder, or the final
flat, brutal crunch that echoed flatly in that little space.

The crowd moved on, oblivious.

The high-pitched whine of the engines as getting to him. Max rubbed the bridge
of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, his eyes squinted firmly shut.
He wondered when he would sleep again, he wondered when he would be home. He
wondered what Beth was doing at right now.

His nose picked up a strong scent, and his stomach instantly churned in
hunger. He opened his eyes and his vision came into focus on an object held
before him. Diane held the paper coffee cup patiently, he expression placid.

"You're reading my mind," he said, taking it from her.

"That's what I get paid to do," she said, and sat down next to the aisle, a
seat between them in the row.

The plane was nearly empty; the transport as the same model as a commercial
jet of the day but had a modified interior that leant itself to military or
government purposes. The lighting was dim, and the two of them were the only
passengers in the entire section of the trip.

"So what's out ETA?" he asked, knowing full well that even though they had
only been airborne for a few minutes, she had probably checked the information
twice with the pilot himself.

"About 90 minutes," she said as she looked through a hastily worded brief
displayed on her handheld electronic notepad. "NSA wants to know what's up."

"Of course they do." Max closed his eyes again, and tried to breathe slowly to
calm his nerves. "Their budget is really hurting right now. They could use a
little high-profile something or other."

She didn't answer. He could hear her clicking away at her device, searching
through briefings he never bothered to read, gathering intel he didn't need to
gather himself...mainly because she did it for him.

"Diane," he said softly.

She didn't answer. He opened up his eyes and looked over to his right at her,
watched her clicking madly away as her eyes scanned the page, her face the
same nearly expressionless mask that was so familiar; the look that made
people talk about her attractiveness that seemed muted by her strict adherence
to the job, to her duty.

"Ms. Findley," he said, only slightly louder.

She paused then, her fingers coming to a halt on the keyboard of the
electronic device. Her eyes briefly swiveled in his direction before returning
to the back of the seat in front of her. When she spoke, her voice was hushed.

"What?"

"Why are you busting your tail for me all these years, on a special assignment
detail, when we both know you could easily be a deputy director over at
State?"

She didn't answer.

Max looked in both directions, and saw they were still alone. He carefully
shifted his weight, raised the armrest, and slid into the seat directly
opposite her. She leaned away a bit, and he sensed that she might have even
gotten up if it hadn't been for the electronic reader on her lap.

"Diane," he said softly.

"What?" she replied, hushed, the first hint of annoyance on her face.

"Answer the question."

"You know the answer."

"Tell me again."

"No."

He half-smiled at her. "Maybe I need to hear it."

The ice cracked, she nearly smiled herself and looked at him sideways, the
strange, knowing-kind-of-glance she had, eyes narrowed, with that look that
made him stir somewhere deep inside. "Maybe you just want to hear it."

"But we're going out into the field. This could be bad. We might even die
tonight. Can't you reassure a dying man?"

She sighed, and turned to look at him directly. "Because you're a good man and
you have great things in you. You have the capacity to do great things in the
world, and maybe with my help you can do even more."

Now it was his turn to look away. "Great things, huh? I don't feel so great."

Diane glanced about the cabin, saw they were still alone, and leaned closer
in, her voice barely above a whisper. "Max, stop it."

"But..."

"Has it affected your life? Your life together?"

"Well...I..."

"I didn't think so. How long now?"

"Twenty seven years," he answered, the conversation rehearsed many times.

"Fine. Twenty seven years. And she loves you?"

"I think so, yes."

Her gaze locked on his own. "Okay. And do you love her?" His answer was
immediate.

"Yes. Absolutely. Completely."

"Problem solved," Diane said, and turned back to her digital display. The
drone of the engines seemed louder in that moment of silence, and Tyson spoke
again almost as much to break the quiet as anything else.

"But..."

She turned to him again, this time irritation mixed with exasperation on her
face, betraying her feelings for the first time in a long, long time.

"Look, Max. It's ...okay. This..." she made a back and forth gesture with her
hand, first to herself, then to him, and back again. "this is okay. It's okay.
Better than okay, it's a natural thing. It's natural, it's probably even good.
It's nothing."

"I don't feel like it's nothing," he said quickly.

Her expression slipped back into a stony demeanor, and her voice was flat and
toneless. "If I thought for a second you meant that, really meant that, I'd
take that deputy director job, and that would be it."

"It's not that," he offered.

"I know. It's guilt. This thing is good, it's fun, and you feel guilt because
you love your wife. You're afraid it would hurt her."

"Yes."

"But it isn't. It won't."

"You don't know that," he said. "She doesn't ask about you anymore. I think
that's a bad sign."

"It probably is," Diane admitted. "It probably is."

"But...I think I still don't want it to end," he said.

"Okay," she said flatly, and turned once more to her readout device. She
clicked it off, the device whirring softly to stop. She secured it in the
pouch on the seat back before her, and settled back in her seat. "If that's
how you feel. If you're sure."

"In fact," Max said softly, and after a quick glance, stealthily slid his had
onto her knee, just below the hem of the course blue military-style skirt she
wore. "I may need help to forget the guilt I feel."

She took his left hand in her right, gently stroking it. Her left hand softly
caressed his forearm, and slid across the surface of his cotton sleeve, and
under it, just under before his elbow. The left side of her mouth turned up in
the tiniest hint of a smile, which Max answered with his own, before she
looked away.

Her thumb and finger tensed in the meat of his forearm suddenly, hard, and her
right hand pinched his skin in the hollow between his hand and wrist, turning
it sideways and down in a slight, awkward angle. Max's entire forearm went
numb, and a thin line of heat, not yet painful but extremely uncomfortable,
throbbed up from his wrist. He hissed in a breath and held it for a second,
his face caught in a playful half-smile.

"Hey now," she said softly. "Watch it mister. Keep your hands to yourself, or
I might have to hurt you."

"Okay, okay," he muttered, a single bead of sweat breaking out on his brow.
She let him go, and he could feel the blood racing back into his limb, back
toward the pressure points she had used against him. "Damn," he half laughed.

"Umm-hmm," she said. "First in my class's self-defense course, remember?" She
stood up and stepped into the aisle to go. She took a step away, paused, and
then stepped back, and leaned over the seat she had left, he mouth close to
his ear. This time, she did whisper.

"If this goes well, you know, quickly, it'll be late. It'll turn into an
overnighter."

His eyes turned to her, the half-smile returning.

"We may end up with some spare time," she continued. "Who knows? Maybe I could
hurt you some more."

With that, her face expressionless, her tone unassuming, she spun on her heel
and made for the cockpit once again. Max blew out a long, slow breath, and
hoped desperately that the tasks before him would be over very, very quickly.

Carlton Pettigrew III was, by most measures, an angry man.

Angry enough to lie and cheat his way through a swanky prep school. Angry
enough to excel in the rigors of the football field as much as he did in its
classrooms. Angry enough to use his emotion as a fuel to propel himself
forward through life with implacable force. Through a law program to a degree,
served up with honors. Through his first few firms as a corporate lawyer,
defending their interests in cases all over the country. Through not one, not
two, but three marriages; the third which was likely to end with very soon,
maybe with the death of that bitch by his own hand, if he had anything to do
with it.

This same dull, thudding anger had done two things, essentially. It had made
him a fortune, a vast wealth of money and professional respect at a young age,
only 40 years old. It also made him extremely unpopular. He was a
self-confessed, grade-A, 100% pure asshole.

He didn't lay claim to such a title lightly. It made him a social outcast, for
one thing. Not that he minded. People were sheep, and were there only to fuel
him with money, power, and the means by which to entertain himself. He fought
his loneliness by seeking out confrontation, whether it be on the subway, on a
bus, on a plane. Anywhere, and over any thing. He had once reduced a flight
attendant to tears over the level of interior noise on a plane that was built
in a city she couldn't pronounce and had no part in the manufacture of. He had
once berated a police officer so badly (and gone on to defend his own abuse
case so thoroughly) that the city's police force had an unspoken "no pull
over" rule for his luxury sedan. It was this same, mindless anger that made
him do what he did in his spare time, when he could get away from the tedium
of his everyday life.

What he did when he was alone with one of those bitches.

The sedan cut through the crowded streets noiselessly, its electric engine
propelling it through and around the throngs of humanity that still walked the
streets at nearly four o'clock in the morning. The same goddamn throng of
sheep that angered him everyday, and whose insectile addictions fueled the
companies that paid him exorbitant amounts of money to defend in court. As he
passed them, he simultaneously hated them and thanked them. Carlton Pettigrew
was indeed a complicated man.

He turned his auto on 6th Avenue, and as he did, his lights splashed across
the very thing that he had come for. A blind, wild, mindless lust filled him,
his pulse quickened. He saw it, he wanted it. He was going to have it. There
would be no denying him. He was Carl Pettigrew III, after all.

His car slid to a stop by the curb directly beside her. The passenger side
window slid down soundlessly, and he took a second to soak her in.

She was incredible. What she was doing on this street corner, he didn't know.
She had to be lost. She had to be one of the high-dollar ones he had read
about, the kind that got tens of thousands for a night.

But she wasn't dressed like it. A cheap blue stretch minidress clung to her
like a second skin, the hemline barely covering her crotch, the firm, delicate
looking pale half-moon shape of her ass visible from behind. Her legs were
encased in thigh-high black vinyl boots, her feet arched in high stilettos;
making her legs flex and flare impressively when she made the slightest of
movements. Indeed, the dress clung to her so tightly that he could make out
the firm ridges of her impressive musculature right through it. Her shoulders
were slightly broader than what was thought of as classically beautiful, but
that's the way Carl liked his girls. She had some meat on her; she could take
a little bruising. Or a lot. Maybe a whole lot. Carl's heart sped up even
more.

He could see her arms and shoulders, what shoulders! but not her face. The
people passing her on the sidewalk were noticing her too, but she seemed to be
avoiding contact, mostly. She just stared around like some dumb fucking cow,
and didn't even notice his car only three feet from her.

"Hey!" he barked. "Hey, you."

Through the open window he watched that exquisite ass swivel around as she
turned toward his car. Oh yeah, baby. Hell, yeah.

"Yeah, you Come here."

The thick thighs flexed, he saw a defined but still feminine quad ripple as
she took a step toward the window, then another. She grasped the bottom of the
window frame in her hands and leaned into the car, her face coming down into
his view for the first time.

And holy shit! What a face! Goddamn, it was like she was a supermodel, or
something. For a moment, Carl's thoughts faltered. Her incredible, firm body,
her outrageous beauty were almost too much. He blinked and shook it off, the
weird mixture of lust and disgust returning to him quickly.

"Hey, get in the car," he ordered.

The woman just looked at him, her eyes fixed on his, and her perfect, slick
ruby lips slowly rose in a closed smile.

"Hey, are you deaf? I said get in."

"What for?" she said, still smiling. Her voice as full, throaty. Hot.

Good, he thought. I like her voice. I wonder what she'll sound like when she's
saying my name. Begging me.

"What do you mean ‘what for?' I said get in the fucking car!"

"Hmm, such language. Talk like that, you might hurt my feelings."

"Listen, get in or I'll hurt more than just your feelings."

Incredibly, the woman laughed. She laughed!

"You trying to turn me on?" she asked.

His entire field of vision had turned a crimson shade of red. "Did you...are
you fucking laughing at me?"

"Maybe," she said, and took a drag off of her cigarette.

"Ohmifuckinggod," he muttered in soft wonder. This trash had no idea how dead
she was already. "Listen, get your fine ass in the car. Now."

"Say please."

"Are you a fucking cop?"

"Nope. I'm not a fucking cop. I just want you to say please."

His eyes were wide in disbelief, rage, and amazement. "You what?! Listen, get
in the fucking car, or so help me God, I will get out, put you in here, take
you somewhere, and do things to you that you will never be able to tell anyone
about." His amazement only increased as he watched her smile broaden, then
relax as she turned deadly serious, and leaned even further into the car.

"You promise?" she asked, staring at him intently, the tip of her tongue
actually making an appearance to moisten her full bottom lip.

"Oh, sweetheart," he said to her, his face a combination of rage and lust,
"You have no idea."

"All right," she replied, and opened the door. His heart fluttered in a fury
of mixed emotions, anticipation and rage. The woman's glorious back side swung
around into the car. With a seeming single graceful swing of her hips, the car
door closed with a click and she was beside him, the warm, delightful, clean
smell of her skin at war with the stink of the cheap cigarette she had tossed
onto the street.

He shifted the car back into drive, and stared at her intently. She saw his
gaze slowly travel over her body, and arched her back slightly; his eyes
lingered over her chest and then locked onto her eyes. She had to be careful -
not yet...not yet...

"What is it, lover?" she asked.

"I think I should warn you," he said slowly, his voice filled with quiet
menace. "I like to play rough. Very rough."

She grinned. "Do you, now."

"Yes, I do. Very, very rough. In fact, I can't guarantee your safety."

"Ummm....sounds exciting."

"That doesn't scare you?"

She matched his gaze with her own. "You don't see me leaving, do you?"

He smiled at her, a grin that would have scared any reasonable woman, and most
men, half to death. "Good." He pulled the car into traffic, careful to take a
long route back to his special apartment. He concentrated heavily on driving,
and so he couldn't see the woman's expression as she answered his next
question, an expression that would have made his thinly veiled threats as
serious as a child's tantrum. "So, you like to play rough, too, huh?" he said.

"You have no idea," she said softly.

The unmarked black sedan sped through the city streets, nearly causing an
accident at every corner. Mach hadn't realized how much Oklahoma City had
grown; the newest tech boom had evidently been very beneficial to the city's
economic base. Here it was pushing four a.m., and the streets were bustling as
he imagined New York City's must have been, before the KT-4 outbreak. Who
knows, maybe someday they would be again.

Mack groaned as the car darted through a busy intersection, pedestrians diving
from its path. He had thought the worst part of the trip was over when he had
stepped form the cockpit of the fighter, but he had been wrong. The big-eared
blonde kid driving the agency car was even younger than the pilot had been,
and drove his machine with even more aggression. Mack though that the black
Ford could have given the F-178 a run for its money in the quarter mile if the
kid was given half a chance.

As impressive as it was, it was much the same as many of the cities he had had
to travel to as part of his job with the agency. St. Paul. Omaha. Jackson.
Atlanta. Portsmouth. St. Louis. Laramie. All huge commercial centers which he
usually viewed from the air, and watched the ant-like people and vehicles
below continue their daily (and sometimes meaningless) activities as his
flight would descend toward the ground. Mack wasn't getting any younger, and
at times like that he had begun to question if he was truly happy with his
duties, if maybe if it hadn't been for that damn accident, that steel plate,
the USSA application, damn it all.

He pushed the wandering thoughts out of his mind and focused on the issue at
hand; he knew that ahead of him, federal agents had begun locking down the OSU
campus and started the process of militarizing the situation. About an hour
behind him, Tyson was still airborne, gathering intel and rushing to the same
location. Probably had that frigid bitch Findley in tow, as usual.

Ornate, classical style buildings with an art deco flair began to fade from
the blur that was the city streets on the other side of the window to his
right. Bright, gaudy colorful neon signs replaced them, the throng of people
grew thicker, porn shops occupied more corner business fronts than not.

Got a whole other section of town, here, Mack though, and sighed, trying not
to let the scene get him down. Instead, he fell to his old law enforcement
instincts; he watched the people, their faces, the cars he saw. Where were
these people all going? Who were they? Why were they going there? He searched
the lines on their faces, their style of dress, the expression and set of
their eyes for every clue they gave away, or for every hint they tried to
hide. It was practice, both for his police work, and maybe for that book he
told himself he might write someday.

A XXX club here. A homeless woman sleeping on a sewer grate over there. Next,
a well-dressed man with a tightly rolled package under one arm, ducking
hurriedly into a cheap hotel of dubious reputation. A young couple having a
shouting match in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, and no one paying them
much attention. A kid who could have been no older than 10 - goddamn it - on a
rusty bicycle, selling flowers out of a woven basket tied to the handlebars. A
huge thong of people waiting in line to get into a club with darkened windows
and thumping bass he could hear even through the window and at this speed. A
blonde in a blue dress who was obviously a prostitute with a totally
outrageous body - damn! - sliding into a fancy silver sports sedan. A Korean
woman pulling a metal grate down over her shop's exterior. Just a blur of
humanity seen at 90 miles an hour.

He sighed once again, closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and wished he had
something to drink.

He had kept it dark until she was all the way inside.

Pettigrew could hear the click of her heels on the floor behind him. This was
his favorite part. Well, almost.

Every fiber of him tingled. He could nearly taste the electricity that seemed
to flood through him, made every nerve sing from his toes to every fingertip.
He had brought her here, through the back alleys and up the freight elevator
to this place, this gigantic space that he rented for a song (and a threat of
disclosing some very nasty information about one of his clients at the law
firm). A long, interlocking series of rooms down a long hallway lined by brick
on either side, all leading to this, his special room. The one reserved for
very special occasions. The room with the toys. The special walls. The padded
floor. The...how shall Carlton say it?...the special, modified furniture.

But maybe most importantly, the one with the large laundry chute that sent
straight to the basement. The chute that was unused by anyone but him in the
nearly deserted building. The one that had a very peculiar odor when you
opened the door. Yes, this was the special room indeed.

But now, he had a funny feeling. He could already feel something was wrong.

But everything had been perfect so far, a part of his mind answered. Perfect!
The hunt. The score. The pick up. Sure, she was a tasty little bitch. She had
quite an attitude. And she had managed to really piss him off, and that was
going to cost her. Big time. And was he looking forward to taking out his rage
on her. Holy shit, what a body! As they had arrived and she slithered out his
car, hips rolling side to side in an exaggerated sexy walk, he had felt a
stirring far below that he normally didn't experience until after...well,
until after the good part was over, when his hands hurt, and there would be
nothing but him, silence, and the joy he would take in the last frenzied
moments. But damn! As she stepped out of the car, he noticed her broad
shoulder, the delts working as she leaned out and pushed of from the seat and
dash. The thighs swelling gently as she stood. The thickness of her back and
shoulders, the swell of her bicep. Goddamn! He hadn't noticed it at first, but
as they walked from the garage to the elevator, he marveled at her build,
which was far thicker than what he had first thought. Well, so much the
better. Maybe she would hold up better than the others. Maybe she would last
longer than the rest.

But something was off, now. Walking into the completely pitch black room,
using only his voice as a guide, she should have slowed. She should have
stopped by the crack of light under the door, the way they usually did. The
way they did when they were suddenly afraid, when they sensed that maybe
things were about to go very, very wrong. When they smelled the acrid odor of
old sweat, and the more faint, but far more unsettling scent of something
else, something deeper, something primal beneath it. And then it would be too
late.

But not this one. Not now. She strode boldly into the dark, her heels clicking
away behind him. Even when they reached the padding and the sounds of her
footfalls were muted, she said nothing, and followed behind him. Hmm. The
bitch was built like a brick shithouse, but she was pretty fucking dumb.

But that wasn't it. A deep seated, vague sense of unease rose in him, a bit at
a time, and its very presence angered him, as almost everything else did.

He stopped, and instantly so did she. Weird. He was going to stop and seize
her when she ran into the back of him, but she didn't

"End of the line, bitch," he said low, slowly.

She didn't reply.

"I said, end of the line!"

Silence.

Red fury gripped him. "Answer me, you fucking bitch, or I swear you'll regret
it."

Only the sound of silence and the deep thudding of his hammering heart
answered him.

"I swear to God, if you don't say something to me right now, I'm going to make
you pay."

Silence. Wait...no....no...a sound....it couldn't be! No!

She was laughing at him.

Her low, throaty chuckle was quiet, barely audible, but he heard it. He heard
it, and the sound of it tore through his brain like a runaway train. Hot waves
of fury beat about his temples and his heart leaped into his throat. Deep
breaths hissed in through his nostrils, and out through his mouth,
instinctively, his hands curled into fists and at that moment he could have
strangled a wild rhino to death. It was all he could do to speak, and when he
did, he spoke in a low, ominous, deadly voice.

"Okay, fine. Play the brave one. Be brave as I smash your head. As I ruin that
pretty little face. You'll be lucky if you even remember how to laugh as I'm
laying into you. Let alone after. Cause there won't be an after. This, right
here, right now, is it. No more. There's nothing more for you. Did you think
it would end like this? Are you happy? Sad? Sorry there won't be more days
ahead of you? Take a second, right now, and pray. Be sorry for whatever bad
shit you've ever done, because honey, if there's a God, you're going to see
Him right fucking now. I'm going to wrap my hands around you and twist until
something snaps, and when it's over, when you're done, when you're just a pile
of meat and bones, I'm going to get off all over what's left of you, maybe a
couple of times. Then it's down the chute. Then it's into a trash bin. Or
maybe out into a field. Either way, it's done. So, tell me, bitch. What do you
think of that?"

A few precious seconds ticked by, each one an eternity in his state of
anticipation. To his shock, and first hint of dismay, there was no crying. No
sobbing. No pleading. Just quiet. Then, the tiny wet click of her mouth
opening, the first tiny segment of exhaled breath passing her lips to form
words, and when she finally did speak, finally did answer him, her words
struck the confidence from him, increased his unease, and left him in a state
of amazement and dawning confusion.

"I think you're painfully mistaken," she said.

A few more seconds of quiet ticked by. Quiet, that is, except in the confines
of Carlton Pettigrew's mind. There, a red rage, a boiling fury unlike anything
even his completely unbalanced mind had ever known, was rising, already
cresting into a wave, already becoming a primal force he could never hope to
fight.

"Lights!" he snarled, and the computer-governed, voice-activated overhead
lights came on, dimly illuminating the big room.

The space of the main room was impressive by any standard. Maybe once it had
been a huge bank of offices, or maybe a storage space for some manufacturing
company on a different floor of the building. Now, it was nearly completely
bare; it was about fifty yards square, with a very high ceiling, the metal
girders of which were rusty and exposed. The each wall and most of the floor
was covered in a dark gray athletic wrestling mat, about an inch thick, which
gave a small amount under a person's weight. Carlton had found that its padded
thickness wasn't enough to keep a fall from hurting, but was mostly effective
at preventing serious injury...unless that was the specific intent, that is.

A wrought iron rack hung on the far wall, and a small array of strange and
mostly sinister looking weapons hung there; a small mace, a staff, 2 whips,
and various implements of a questionable and threatening nature were stored
there as well. In one corner stood a pair of simple plastic sawhorses, an
overstuffed and discolored leather recliner, and a worn gymnastics pommel
horse which sported a disconcerting addition: two lengths of thick chain were
secured to its handles, a shackle of the end of each set of steel links.

All of this was visible, and was meant to strike terror into any female
visitor that as unlucky enough to see it. Carlton's eyes were focused in the
woman's direction as the lights snapped on, and he anticipated the sudden
shock of the dim cones of light just barely making the horrific scene visible.
But he as denied even this small pleasure.

The woman's own gaze seemed fixed on him even before the lights had clicked
on. Now that they stood only four feet apart in the center of one of the dim
cones of light, Carlton saw that her eyes never wavered, they never wandered
about to take in the impressive width and depth of the room, the height of the
ceiling, the quiet menace of the hanging devices. Her eyes were fixed on him
the entire time, and his confidence wavered again.

"So...what do you think of the place?" he asked, an unsure smirk on his face.
Her own expression was curiously blank, and didn't change. She didn't answer
him. "Answer me!" he barked, his frustration making him forget her singular
reaction to his play space.

Her gaze was unwavering. She made no motion, no attempt at an answer.

"Don't you know what this is?!" he cried, his voice breaking at the end in its
hysterical shout. He heard the weakness in it, in that crack, and it only
fueled his rage all the more. "This is the end. Don't you know what it is I do
here? What this means?"

"Tell me," she said finally, softly...and seemingly unafraid.

"Can't you tell? Don't you see?! Don't you know?" he screamed at her, cords
standing out on his neck.

"Yes."

"Then tell me, whore! Tell me! Tell me, what am I going to do? Hmm!? What am I
going to do? What am I going to do right now?!" His rage boiled past his
breaking point when he heard her answer, delivered in the same quiet,
controlled tone she'd used all night.

"You're going to die," she said. "Horribly."

He attacked. The mindless, animalistic rage that powered him knew no limits,
the sociopathic tendencies fully unleashed like they never had been before,
his massive id allowed to run amuck uncontrolled and unfettered. He sprang
forward, already in mid-air and twisting, his right hand pulled back, further
than his chest, and with a screaming inarticulate cry, he swooped down at her
unmoving form, blasting the left side of her jaw with a huge, vicious right
hook, arcing down and in, exaggerated by the descent of his large, athletic,
heavy form.

The blow struck home. Her head snapped to the side. His hand sang from the
impact, the familiar numbness already sinking deep into his knuckles. He
grinned and waited for the inevitable shriek, the coming collapse as she fell
in a liquid feminine heap.

But it didn't happen.

Her blonde head snapped to the side, paused, and swiveled slowly about to face
him again. His mind reeled. No redness. No blood. No teeth. No drop to the
padded mats. What the fuck was going on? That shot would have knocked most men
out, and maybe killed the weaker of their numbers. And here she stood, like he
hadn't even touched her?

And slowly, she smiled, her eyes narrowing.

"Try again," she said slowly, unafraid.

He screamed his strangling cry again, pivoted, and blasted the same spot with
an even harder blow, this time his entire forearm tingled from the force;
again her head snapped around, but the staggering fall he expected still
didn't come. Again her head turned back to him, and now the smile was wider
still.

"Last chance," she said softly. "This time, I'll be ready for it. Want to try
again?" she asked sweetly.

Pettigrew screamed once more, reared back a full 90 degrees, and powered his
right hand forward in the hardest punch he'd thrown in his life, a whistling,
deadly right hook that most prizefighters would have been proud of, that would
have dropped all but the very biggest men to the ground with a broken jaw and
a concussion. His hand arced out and slightly down, where it blasted the side
of her jaw with deadly force, in the same spot as before.

Except this time, her head didn't move.

Not an inch. Not a millimeter. Her expression didn't change, and her head, her
neck, her whole body stayed absolutely immobile, her skin didn't even dent
when his fist made its horrible impact with her face.

He might as well have punched a granite statue.

The first three fingers of his hand broke with at the same instant with a POP!
sound. Three of the small, fairly delicate bones across the top of his hand
shifted and snapped free of their connective tissue. His wrist fractured in
three places. His right radius suffered the worst damage: The force of the
impact cracked the bone along its width, and the forward momentum of his heavy
form combined with the stone-like, unforgiving nature of this mystifying woman
drove the inertia of the blow up his arm in a devastating greenstick fracture;
the bone stayed intact but cracked all the way to its opposite end at his
elbow.

"Aaaaaaaagghhhhhhh!" he screamed, and staggered back a step, his right arm
held against his belly, his left already covering it protectively.
"Ahhhhh....oh...my God....ahahhhh!"

The smile didn't leave her face. She only regarded him coolly, and slowly, she
extended one black booted leg forward and took a step toward him. Incredibly,
and for the first time in his adult life, he involuntarily took a step
backward, this time in wonder, pain...and the first dawning sensations of
fear.

"Is this where you brought them?" she asked, still advancing slowly. She took
another step, and he began to back away, groaning with pain, sweat pouring
from the crown of his head. "Is this where you brought them to be slaughtered?
Hmm?"

"Uuugghhhh," was all he could muster. It was hard to think. He must be going
into shock. He continued to back away.

"Don't bother answering. I know it is," she said, still stepping slowly toward
him. They were now past the mid-pint of the room, and passing out of the dim
cone of light given off by the industrial LED overhead. "I know this is where
you brought them. I know this is where you brought all of them, all the ones
you hated. What you did to them. Before. And after," she went on.

"Ugggghhhh....wait....wait...how....."

"Wait? Is that what they said to you, as you came at them? Hmm?"

"Ughhhhh..."

"Women like the last one. The one they found in that ditch in Smithfield?"

His eyes went wide, became huge saucers of shock. "....How...how?"

"I read you, pulled a bit from you before I even got into your car. You were
so fixed on me, on my body, my appearance, that you didn't even realize it. I
didn't have to pull much from you. Or look too deeply; it's all over the
festering rot you call a mind." She reached out her right hand, and extended
her first finger. He scrambled backward a little more quickly, but her digit
still touched the center of his chest as she stepped forward.

"uuugggghhh....no.....how did you....what?"

His head swam for a moment, a strange darkening of his vision unlike anything
he had felt before; he nearly collapsed from a wave of dizziness and nausea,
but it passed as quickly as it had come.

"Ah, the firm," the woman said. "Starnes, Pickford, and Associates. With
offices in Oklahoma City. Seattle. San Diego. With a central office in Miami."

Even his grunting now ceased. Who the fuck was this woman, and how could she
possibly know this? And how could she still be standing, let alone winning
their confrontation even with hitting him once?

"These people, this Starnes, this Pickford. Tell me. Are they important
people? Do they hold sway over others? Are they familiar with even those more
powerful than they?"

He clutched his broken arm close to him and didn't answer. He locked his mouth
shut, concentrated on keeping his teeth clenched. But those eyes...

"Yes, yes they do. Excellent. And you will tell me...what I need to know about
them....won't you?....yes. Oh, excellent."

What? What was going on? Who was this woman? What was he doing here, and who
was he, anyway? Something was happening to him, he felt strangely disconnected
from his thoughts. All he could focus on was the blinding pain of his
shattered right arm.

"Enough. Stop your pathetic mewling about your limb. It is a trivial matter,"
she spat with contempt. Her finger jabbed at him a little, and he skittered
back, only to realize he could go no further; with a thump, his back fetched
up against the padded wall. He flattened himself out against it as best he
could, still clutching his forearm with the other hand, jaw clenched shut in
pain. The woman stopped as well, her booted feet shoulder- width apart, hips
cocked to one side. She brought her left hand down to rest on her hip in a
cocky, assured fashion, the right was still extended, the tip of her finger
still touching the center of his chest.

"You fear me now, don't you? You fear what you don't - what you can't -
understand. The senseless, paralyzing fear of an animal."

The force exerted by her single digit grew. It was now pinching and painful.

"Because that what's you are. You are an animal. A fascinating one. An
interesting species, to be sure. But just an animal."

The muscles of her arm swelled a bit, pouring more power into her one-fingered
hold. With a new dawning sense of alarm, Pettigrew realized he was having
trouble drawing breath. Something deep in his chest creaked ominously. He rose
to his tip toes, trying to escape her fearsome one-handed dominance, but there
was no escaping her grasp.

"You think I'm doing this in retribution? For those women before now? No," she
said, her face a mask of impassivity. "No, to me, they don't matter. To me,
they merely are as you are - insects." She tensed her arm a bit, and something
in his chest gave way with a muted, brittle snap.

"Aggghhhhhh," he gasped, his breath driven from his lungs as she compressed
his breastbone with a single finger. For the first time in his entire life,
Pettigrew used what little air was still in his lungs to beg.
"P...P...please...don't."

Another surge of power, another crack, this one louder, thicker-sounding. His
words were cut off with a grunt of pain and lack of oxygen. Pettigrew rose
even higher, and his mind spun even more out of control when he realized that
he was now completely off of the floor; this woman held his large, heavily
muscled form pinned against the wall, now a foot off of the ground, with a
single finger.

"No, to me none of this matters...but there are those your affairs would cause
concern. Those your deeds would cause....anger. Perhaps one of them...Sharice,
maybe?"

"Uuuuhhhhhh....w...wh....who....."

"Hmmm....yes. Sharice. Perhaps we should see what Sharice would think of you."

From his new position above her, pinned by her outstretched, steely finger, he
watched her eyes dart to the side and pause as she slipped into thought. Then,
just as quickly, she turned back and her eyes narrowed into slits, her grin
widening.

"Oh, Sharice doesn't like you at all. Oh, no, no, no. You're just like the
rest of them. Pawing over her body. Touching her. Fucking her. Then maybe
beating her. But you're even worse. You did more than beat your girls, didn't
you? Hmmm....Sharice doesn't like that at all. Sharice thinks you should be
punished. Severely."

"Ahhhhhh.....who.....Sharee...."

The woman chuckled; a low, throaty sound. When she spoke, Pettigrew's fear
turned from fear of immediate pain to the icy fear of death, of his own
ending.

"Why, Sharice was the woman who gave me this bag. These lovely black boots.
This tight blue dress. The woman I met just before you first saw me. The woman
I took into the alley and learned so much from. The woman...whose neck I
broke. The neck I snapped so cleanly, easily, with only one hand and almost no
effort at all."

The pressure from her finger increased, the last remaining air was pressed
from his chest. A dark stain spread out from his groin as he lost control of
his bladder, from confusion, lack of oxygen, or terror, he didn't know.

The woman's nose wrinkled at the sudden ammonia-like odor. Her eyes flashed
back to him, the distaste on her face clearly evident.

"Should I show you what Sharice would have done? Hmm? What Sharice would have
done to you, to Fat Tony, to all the rest, if only she had had the ability?
The power? Even a fraction of the power I possess? Hmmm? Should I let Sharice
punish you?"

He could only hang in space, pressed between the wall and the unimaginable
force of her single finger, mouth open, gasping for breath that wouldn't come.
She leaned forward the tiniest bit, eyes narrowed to slits, and spoke softly.

"Yes," she said.

The muscles of her arm and shoulder swelled and tensed suddenly; her finger
pressed into him with a sudden titanic jolt. From deep inside his chest he
felt as much as heard a loud, meaty crackle; a sudden flower of painful heat
blossomed inside his chest. His head arched backward, mouth open in a
breathless scream.

Then he was on the ground again, her fearsome touch gone. He opened his eyes,
his world spinning, and he sucked in a single massive breath. A fresh pain
stabbed at his chest as a jagged end of one of his now broken ribs tore at his
left lung, tearing a hole in it the size of a quarter.

He started to exhale in a high squeal, but didn't even have time to complete
this simple task. In a flash, the terrifying woman took his tie, collar, and
his heavy shirt front in a wadded grasp in her right hand, and with a single
massive tug, jerked him airborne once again, this time with much greater,
sudden force.

Pettigrew's neck jerked backward in sudden massive acceleration, nearly to the
breaking point. His body was now in the air, free of her grip, his mind
reeling.

With a single motion, the woman grabbed him, and tossed him up and to the
side, over her shoulder and behind her. Incredibly, Pettigrew's 230-pound body
flew through the air, turning upside down, and whistled across the entire
width of the room. He shot across the empty space to slam back first, upside
down into the padded wall nearly fifty yards away in just under three seconds.

The impact was barely softened by the padding on the wall, it compressed
against the tremendous impact and Carlton felt the concussion blast through
his body. He fell the ten feet to the floor where he lay in an unmoving heap.
Everything was wrong, he could sense his systems failing, his comprehension
was growing fuzzy and indistinct. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he was
filled with dread and the indefinable sense that something was wrong, beyond
painful; something was wrong inside of him, and that it was probably too late
to repair it. But he would try anyway.

He staggered to his feet only to see the blonde in the skintight blue
minidress float quickly across the room, six inches above the floor, to stand
before him once again. The fact that he had apparently just seen the woman
levitate across the room didn't even register with him. He was consumed only
with the fading impulse to survive.

He pawed weakly in her direction with his left hand. In a blur of movement,
she seized his wrist with her left hand, squeezed it with an iron grip which
broke it cleanly with a loud, popping SNAP! sound; she tugged him toward and
then past her, still maintaining her hold; she drove her right elbow into his
midsection, which folded around her arm with little resistance as what little
wind he had gathered whooshed out of him in a rush. She seized his left
shoulder with her vice-like grip, her steely fingers squishing into his
normally tough muscle like it was putty; she sought out the delicate joint,
and held it fast. She still held his left wrist in her hand, and with a sudden
tensing of muscle, she tugged it out and upward. His shoulder separated with a
thick, liquid tearing sound, the sound of connective tissue creaking and
snapping away from the bone. He cried out a strange, breathless and wordless
utterance.

Without pause, her left grip tightened even further, and with a sudden jerk of
unimaginable force, drove his arm downward while rotating her grip vertically.
As a result, his forearm bent 90 degrees downward while his upper arm and
shoulder didn't; his elbow joint hyper-extended and snapped with a clean,
sharp report.

He jerked in response, but his actions were now silent. There was no breath in
him to make a sound, nor, if there had been, would his mind have been capable
of processing the kind of pain he was in. He was beyond sensation, and in the
final few seconds that it took the fearsome woman to dismantle his apparently
frail body with her seemingly superhuman strength, the twitching and jerking
responses his body made were purely instinctual ones.

The woman's left hand released his crushed wrist and shot inward. Her
fingertips seized a handhold at his abdomen, pushing the defined muscle out of
the way until they touched the hardness of the bony ridge that formed the
bottom of his ribcage. With a grin, she powered inward; her fingertips pushed
in and up, her thumb clamped down over the top. In essence, she was gripping
the bottom of the ribcage through his skin. With a casual flick of her wrist,
a CRACK! ran through his torso as she snapped off the last three ribs. His
body jerked again in response, his eyes rolling up in their sockets. Her right
hand sized the back of his head, cradling the round occipital bone in a tight
but somehow surprisingly gentle grasp. With no warning, she powered down with
her arm, bending him over at the waist and driving his head downward with
terrific force. At the same time, her left leg rose in a blur, bent at the
knee, the thick thigh swelling with power. She drove his head into her knee
strike, her limb striking his forehead with a meaty, hollow-sounding THWOCK!
sound. His body jerked once, massively, and became limp in her inescapable
grasp. She moved her right hand around to cup his jaw from behind. Her left
grasped his belt, and with no sign of effort whatsoever, lifted him bodily
into the air where he hung suspended before her. The muscles of her arms and
back stood out in bold relief as she began her final torment.

She pulled back with her right hand, hard. At first Pettigrew's head bent
back, until the length of travel was used up; she could feel the delicate
vertebrae of his neck grinding together. He whimpered weakly, the last
vestiges of life fleeing his body.

She powered her left arm up in a bicep curl, the leather of his expensive belt
creaking but holding his weight easily. She bore down with her right, pulling
his head and neck backward from behind him, forcing his back to first arch,
then begin doubling back on itself. She reached the limit of its range of
motion, her eyes narrowed, but her grin betrayed her true emotion. She made a
tiny increase of power from her seemingly inexhaustible reserves into the
maneuver, and was rewarded with a loud, clear POP! as Pettigrew's spine split
at the T-4 joint.

The rage, the anger, the sickness, the fear...all these things fled from
Carlton Pettigrew III's body in a darkening rush. His mind, a confused and
quivering mass of gray tissue, swollen and half-smoothed, couldn't fully
process his ending, and the circumstances that had brought it about. All he
knew is that his suffering was over. As he felt her dragging his neck back,
back, arching it in a direction it was never intended to go, he had his last
clear thought as a thinking, living person.

How did it come to this? How is this possible, and how-

POP! His spine burst with an explosion of calcium powder, and his darkening
field of vision, a view of the ceiling, darkened further, and sank rapidly
into blackness, and then oblivion.

His body was twitching. Nerves no longer connected to the brain that had
governed them were firing in a final, mad attempt to stay functioning. She
smirked even further at this, and with a curl of her ruby lips, powered her
arms together in a sweeping surge of muscular power.

The man's body bent in half, backward, just below the shoulder blades, with a
second-long gruesome symphony of cracking bone and tearing tissue. She
released her right hand's hold on the now oddly-shaped jaw; she shook the body
with her left hand the way an angry puppy might shake a bone. The upper half
of the man's body, held on only by skin and some thin, bruised surface muscle,
flopped in her grasp, doll-like. With an appreciative nod, she was finished.
The event was over, and she was already bored.

With an easy wave of her left arm, she appeared to casually toss the man's
body away from her. But whatever unknowable strength she possessed made mere
appearance deceiving; the man's body shot across the room at an incredible
velocity, spinning, legs and arms and upper torso fluttering about, where it
finally impacted the pommel horse with enough velocity to knock the heavy
device over with a reverberating thud, spilling several of Pettigrew's toys
off the wall in a loud crash. Then, stillness.

Delightful.

She smiled to herself, and straightened the incredibly tight dress on her
impressive frame. Now, she thought. What's next?

Ah, yes. It was time to continue up the chain. Up the structure of power and
influence. She had gleaned enough from Pettigrew's twisted mind to know that
his profession and his standing in it were highly-thought of, and his social
and political position had been a powerful one. And, if he was powerful and
exerted influence over others, then it stood to reason the men she now knew as
"the partners" would be of even more importance. A word came into her mind,
stolen from the dark recesses of Pettigrew's memory. The location of his
firm's home office.

Miami.

She nodded to no one but herself, and smiled in satisfaction. So far, this
experience was going nicely. It was looking like her plan stood a good chance
of coming to fruition, that she would be able to pit these simpletons against
each other and watch the ensuing chaos before she would reveal herself to them
fully.

After which, she would end them. She would end them all.

"Lights," she called out, and the voice-sensor triggered. The room fell into
its regular darkness, hiding the disarray her wrath had caused. The lack of
light didn't affect her vision, she saw everything nearly as well in the dark
as she did in broad daylight. She strode to the door, cast one lingering look
about the lovely chaos she had caused, and shut it as she left and made her
way back to the elevator.

Behind her, darkness lay against all surfaces in the play room of Carlton
Pettigrew III, his body a twisted, mangled mass buried in a corner, and
abiding silence was the room's only occupant.

The OSU campus was a disaster in the making.

"Goddamn it," Mack breathed to himself as the car pulled around to the lecture
hall. Military transport trucks clogged the road. By the look and sounds of
the area, an observer there would never know it was only a little over an hour
until daybreak. Olive-wearing GIs milled about everywhere, and much to his
dismay, Mack saw the first telltale signs: microphones.

"Looks like the press is here, sir," his young driver warned.

"Yeah. Great."

"Should I circle around, or you want to shove through them?"

Mack considered this. With something this big, maybe transparency was
important.

"Right here is fine," Mack sighed.

Already a throng of people rushed the car. He barely had time to step out of
the car before an overzealous local reporter shoved an orange foam-covered mic
in his face.

"Sir! Sir! Do you have any idea what..."

"Who are you sir?"

"Do you have any information regarding the whereabouts of Dr. Heifsling....?"

The first few questions became a deluge of voices. Mack raised the collar of
his standard issue black overcoat, obviously agency issue. He held up his
hands, palms outward. He hated this part.

"Okay, listen up people. We don't know hat is going on here quite yet, but as
soon as we do, we'll let you..."

"If you don't know what's going on, why the big military dust-up?" a clear,
strong voice called out above the shouts.

Mach turned in the direction of the speaker. The reporters, sensing that this
might be their opportunity, parted slightly so one of their numbers could be
seen clearly.

She was a little younger than Mack's own 36. Maybe 30. She was small, probably
only 5'2", with a bob haircut, raven black hair framing a pretty face. Her
eyes were large, and even from a matter of some feet, Mack was struck by the
icy blue brilliance of their color.

"Well, until we can ascertain exactly what is going on here, we thought it
would be wise to consider all possible threats."

"We?" The other reporters had fallen into silence, and scribbled away madly as
he spoke.

"The authorities in charge," Mack answered, but even he heard his own tone
beginning to falter.

"Which authorities? Local? State? Federal?"

"I'm not at liberty to say at his time."

"Because the initial tendency, given the expediency of this Guard deployment,
would be the Federal angle."

"Miss, I really can't say."

"And you are?"

"Really, there's important work to be done here, so I'd just like to..." Mack
began weaving his way through the throng reporters as her final question hung
in the air behind him.

"Stating your name doesn't give away which Federal agency you work for, sir.
Would you care to comment?"

He was waved through the front door and shook of the bright flashes of the
cameras. The door closed on the din of their questions.

The interior of the lecture hall had been transformed from its earlier scene
of chaos. Very few people populated it now, and the sound of his footsteps
echoed as he approached the area designated as the signing table. A large
woman lay on the ground, a sheet covering her legs and hips, obviously pulled
back for a brief examination. Her expression was locked, eyes wide, mouth in a
vague "O" shape. Under any other circumstances, the her fixed look of surprise
would have been comedic, but there was no one to laugh here.

"Hell of a thing, ain't it?" a voice said near his elbow, and Mack instantly
recognized the twangy drawl.

"Boots!" he cried, and spun on his heel, hand out.

Kenneth "Boots" Cochran matched Mack's grin with his own. Cochran was two
years Mack's elder, but looked five years younger, and stood 6'4" in his
stocking feet. The trademark black cowboy boots which he wore with his
agency-issue suit gave him another two inches, and it had been on more than
one occasion that he had used that added height for intimidation during a hard
interrogation. Dallas born and raised, Cochran was never found with his
particular footwear and the black Stetson he wore outside. Of course, both
items were against agency policy, and he was fined a small amount from each
paycheck for ‘standard dress code violation.' He paid the fine automatically,
and Mack knew his friend had no intention whatsoever of ever ending the
practice. Shit, Mackie, Cochran had said once in his slow, rumbling drawl, a
Texan without boots and a hat ain't worth half a goddamn now, is he?

"It's good to see you," Mack said as they shook.

Cochran just grinned in return and motioned back to the body. "That's the
university president right there. She just up and fell over."

"Medical history?" Mack noticed a faint pink tinge to the woman's eyes with a
nagging sense of urgency.

Greeting over, they were all business and fell into the familiar evidence
athering phase. Subconsciously, Mack breathed a mental sigh of relief. Enough
with that public speaking, media-relations crap. Time for some detecting.

"Nothing special," Cochran replied. "Small family history of heart disease,
but that's all."

"Well it's not out of the question here, she's a pretty big woman. Heavy."

"Yep. Roomy.Reportedly went down after some kind of verbal spat with the
speaker and a girl."

"Girl?"

"Witnesses say tall, blonde, athletic build, mid-to-late 20s."

"An I.D. is too much to ask for, right?"

"One witness claims she said her name was Jenny something-or-other."

"Checking it against enrollment, right?"

"Um-hmm."

"How long before a med examiner is here?"

"Half hour. There's two more down the hall this way."

Mack fell into step beside his friend and had to hurry a bit to keep up with
Cochran gigantic stride.

"So how you been, Mackie?"

"Good. Tired. Busy."

"You settle down yet? How's Susie?"

The ghost of a grimace crossed Mack's face. "I don't know."

Cochran just nodded, impassive. "So, it's like that, is it."

"Yeah, just like that."

"Too bad."

"Yeah. And no. I don't know." He sighed a bit. Then knowing the answer
already: "What about you?"

"Fuck, no."

"Didn't think so."

The rounded a bend in the corridor in time to see the photographer snapping
the last of his photos. Two men lay in twin heaps, one against a wall of the
corridor, the other in the center of the aisle, the bodies only a few feet
from each other.

"Wall boy first," Mack asked.

"It's obvious," Cochran offered, and pointed skyward. Mack gazed up and saw a
red fan-like shape on the wall, high up, near the ceiling. "That's obvious
blood spray."

"Weapon?"

"See, that's the thing. One, nobody heard a report. And it couldn't have been
a pulse rifle, ‘cause the magnetic field they generate would have short
circuited half the lights in the building. And we can't find a projectile
wound on the body, just blood on the back of his head, and bruising
everywhere."

Mack bent over, and gently went to turn the body over. Cochran as right, there
was tacky red fluid all over the man's head and shoulder. As the body steeled,
Mack pulled up on the front of the man's uniform to inspect his face, but the
dead man's head rolled grotesquely to the back and side, far more than the
normal range of motion would allow.

"Oh, Christ!" Mack exclaimed, and set the body down.

"Yep. Sorry ‘bout that, yeah, he's got a broken neck, too."

"I'd say. The way his head's rolling around, I'd say he's got a bunch of ball
bearings in there. This one?"

"Same thing. Bad neck, that one looks stepped on. Trauma to the lower arm."

Mack frowned. "Yeah, but why are his legs all spread out like that?"

"Don't know."

"You sure aren't good for much, are you?"

"S'pose not."

Mack gazed intently at the scene. The position of the bodies. The obvious
injuries. The ones not apparent but he suspect they might have, given their
condition. He looked back the way they had come down the hall. Up the
direction it as going. The cleaning carts further up the hall. He was starting
to have the first faint notions of a theory, but he didn't like where it was
going.

Cochran watched him in silent appreciation. Cochran was a good field agent,
better than average, somewhat limited perhaps by a nasty streak of
independence (hat and boots included). He had seen a lot in his time in the
field. But McManus was something else. On more than one occasion Cochran had
seen him solve a case before they had even arrived at the scene; the man's
capacity for deductive thought was almost eerie.

Once, in while working a detail in Chicago, they had been assigned on a case
to help out the local authorities on a case everyone thought was based in
tenement fraud (a federal case) and murder. A slumlord, tired of complaints,
had carved up an entire family. Three kids, two of them very young girls.
Cochran's stomach had turned many a time during that case. Anyway, the entire
office had been so sure that it had been this slumlord that they had
practically convicted the guy before he was even arrested.

But Mack hadn't been so sure. He had been struck with some vague sense of
unease about the arrest, and he continued working the case long after everyone
else had moved on. The field office director was even on the verge of ordering
him off the closed case when something in Mack's head went off like a light
bulb. He brought in some forensic examiner that he had worked with in the past
to re-examine the bodies, that sour old lady that he had worked with out in
Nebraska. She was good, though, and she found something everyone had missed:
small, rough cuts across the bone in every victim.

Two days later, the slumlord was free, and a neighbor the floor above the
family was in custody. During the investigation, Mack and Cochran had
interviewed everyone in the dank, dingy building, including the neighbor. No
problems. Nice guy. Friendly. But something about the event must have stuck in
Mack's mind, some kind of weird subconscious connection. Because the when they
interviewed him in his apartment, the guy had been cooking, and he had used an
electric reciprocating knife to cut a roast while they spoke. Mack sweet
talked his way into a warrant, went back up there, asked the guy for the
knife, checked it to the cuts, and bingo! Perfect match. Mack visited the guy
again, this time Cochran and two other agents were with him. When Mack asked
him if her had killed the family downstairs, the guy said yes, and offered
them all some iced tea.

The guy beat his head against the wall, talked to people who weren't there.
The next moment he was completely lucid. Crazy as a shithouse rat. Based on
that first interview, no one, and Cochran meant no one, would ever have
through twice about the guy.

But not McManus. Mackie had something, some weird thing. Cochran knew he
didn't have it, and he didn't mind. He suspected that whatever strange mental
touch his friend had also kept him up more nights than he would ever admit.
And alone, for most of them.

And it was that same strange look, that same strange feeling now as Mack
stared around, up, down, and all around the hallway. Something wasn't right,
something didn't fit, and Cochran was content to wait for his friend to sort
it out, to enjoy the moment of discovery.

He didn't have to wait long.

Mack's gaze slid down the opposite wall, and froze at hip level.

"Had anyone been in any of these offices?"

"Not that I know of."

"They locked?"

"I think so,"Cochran answered. "Why?"

Mack slowly pulled his coat out of the way and drew his stun pistol from his
holster. "Because that one isn't," he said, pointing.

Cochran followed his gaze. The door on the next office over was closed,
nothing seemed amiss...wait. He could see a dark line where there seemed to be
a defect in the wood. It looked oddly warped, as if...hold on. Shit. He drew
his weapon as well when he finally noticed the dented, mangled doorknob.

"Somebody's ass is going to be in a sling for not seeing that," Cochran
promised aloud.

Mack crept over to the door, keeping low, and knelt gently before it to pick
up a few small specks of material on the floor. He glanced over his shoulder
and held them up to Cochran's questioning eyes.

"Splinters," he said. Cochran nodded and crept silently to the opposite side
of the door, his weapon out, held in two hands at the standard ¾ ready
position. Mack touched the collapsed surface of the metal doorknob lightly,
the dented knob was cool to the touch, its texture so smooth it nearly felt
greasy. Smooth, that is, except for the long, narrows impressions left on its
surface. Something about those impressions...

He nodded to Cochran. Ready?

Cochran nodded back. Let's go

Mack turned the mangled knob the best he could, and started to give the door a
shove open. He had barely put any effort into it, however, when there came a
soft wooden crunching sound. The entire doorknob assembly fell forward into
his hand, the splintered remains of a square section of heavy oak door still
bolted to it. A ragged hole, filled with the darkness of the room inside,
stood silently before them.

Mack expression was one first of surprise, then a wince of expectation. For a
moment, he fully expected to hear the low, distinctive electronic report of a
pulse gun fired at a close distance, or maybe the sharp crack of a standard
firearm. But it didn't come, and he knew then that the room was not hiding
whoever - or whatever - it was they were chasing.

He sighed, stood, and held the ragged, mangled mess out in his hand for
Cochran to see. His lanky friend stood to his full height and shook his head,
a half-smile on his face.

"I'll be damned. What could do that?"

Mack didn't answer, he just pushed the door to the office open. He as about to
step inside when he heard the door at the end of the hall burst open, and the
sound of quick footfalls came just ahead of a familiar voice.

"Mack? You down here?"

Cochran turned to face his friend, his face betraying some of his wonder.
"Tyson is here? What is he doing all the way out here? We're a long way from
Washington."

Mack half-shrugged, unsure of what to divulge. Cochran's office had been
mobilized, but only for the sake of timing; evidently he had not been included
in the loop.

Max Tyson rounded the nearest corner, practically at a jog. Findley was only a
step behind, followed by three unfamiliar men, a tall, balding man in a blue
suit and to regular GIs in olive fatigues.

"Max," Mac said while they shook.

"Good to see you," Tyson answered. "You got here quick."

"Yeah, thanks for that one. I owe you. When I pay you back, you won't see it
coming."

"Okay. Ken." Not ‘Agent Cochran,' not ‘Boots.' Oh well, Mack thought, I guess
it's the hat.

"Good to see you," Cochran answered civilly. "Hey, Diane," he offered.

Findley only nodded to Cochran and Mack both, expressionless. She stood behind
Tyson, and stepped aside quickly as the balding man knelt over the first of
the bodies outside.

"M.E.'s here," Tyson explained simply. "So where are we?"

"Well, these two are down, and we saw this..." Mack handed over the ruined
lock mechanism. "Getting ready to check the office, we don't suspect any
hostiles."

"Okay," Tyson agreed. "Long gone by now, I think. But we're closing."

"Closing on what?" Cochran wondered aloud in his booming grumble. "I'm fixin'
to just pack up my boys if I'm not let in on the joke, fellas."

"Routine..."

"Okay, see ya." Cochran holstered his weapon and began to turn away.

"You stow that attitude, Ken." Tyson's voice took on the tone of a commanding
officer. Everyone present could hear the unspoken menace of rapidly
approaching consequences in it.

"The call to mobilize double-time? The circus outside? Dead bodies on a campus
in the middle of the night? And no one will tell me why Uncle Sam wants to
make a federal case out of it. I can't do my job this way, mymen and I might
as well not be here."

Tyson blew out a breath, his brow furrowed. He couldn't be too angry with the
man; as much as personal irritation he felt with Cochran, he had to admit that
he was a good field operative and deserved to be treated as such.

"Rated A-4," Findley said quietly behind him.

"Same as mine," McManus said, showing which side of the debate he came down
on.

Tyson sighed again in frustration. "Al right you bastards. This is a goddamn
mutiny, you know." Then, with an irritated wave of a finger toward the GIs:
"Get them the hell out of here. You tell him, Diane."

When the olive-garbed pair had gone, Diane took Cochran to the side, and
quietly related the basics of the case, quiet enough to keep it out of the
medical examiner's earshot. Mack watched as Cochran rolled his eyes at first,
then calmed, grew disturbed, and finally, as his friend looked up to him and
matched his gaze, his eyes betraying his quiet alarm.

"All right," the M.E. said, and stood. "This man died from a broken neck," he
concluded aloud, to no one in particular. "I'd like him covered though. And
the other," he continued, and strode across the hall to the office door.
"Perhaps in here there is a..."

"Wait!" Mack half-shouted, and started to reach for the passing man's arm, but
was too late.

The man pushed the damaged door wide open and turned on the light before
Mack's cry registered. The light clicked on, and he froze, his eyes fixed on
the scene before him.

"Oh," he said simply. The others crowded around behind him to see.

A man's body lay on the desk in the center of the room. The floor was littered
with trinkets, books, and papers that had no doubt once been on top of the
heavy piece of office furniture. The man himself was naked except for a pair
of black dress socks. A pile of clothes on the floor...shirt...shoes...heavy
pants that looked as if they had been run through a shredder....a thick, black
leather belt that had been either cut or torn in half...The man's mouth was
open, and...

"His eyes," the M.E. said quietly.

With a grim familiar feeling, Mack stepped into the office and looked closely
at the man. It as was as he feared; the man (who he recognized as the
physicist Heifsling) had twin crimson orbs where his eyes should have been.

The four of them now surrounded the big desk, all staring at his face with
morbid curiosity. It was Findley whose gaze drifted down the body, and who
hissed in a sudden breath of discomfort.

Aside from Heifsling's eyes, his head was unmarked. The same could be said for
his chest and shoulders. But the skin had taken on a swollen, purplish hue on
his abdomen. But below that was the real story.

He must have died quickly, in the throes of some unknowable passion, for at
least one part of the limp body still had some rigidity to it. A quick glance
showed what had caused Diane to gasp, however; some unknown trauma had
occurred, some weird injury that had affected the entire region of his body.
Heifsling's member, still semi-rigid as it lay against his lower belly, looked
strangely...elongated. It was bruised massively, and the entire middle third
of it looked...pinched. It looked constricted, noticeably smaller, like a tube
of toothpaste with its center crushed. Its discolored length gave way to his
waist and hips, which were similarly discolored. This area was even more
swollen, the skin looked shiny to the touch.

"Good Lord," the medial examiner said. "What could do this to a man?"

"That's your job to find out," Tyson replied.

"Yes...yes. Right. All right, let's...let's get him onto the floor," the M.E.
answered, and he and Mack grasped the shoulder and back while Cochran and
Tyson scooped up the corpse's legs. On the count of three they lifted, but the
body sagged weirdly in the middle, awkwardly, and as they cleared the desk it
became apparent it was going to be a struggle for them to maintain their hold
on the body. It half rolled, paused, then turned completely over in their
grasp. There was an unnatural, gruesome liquid sound as the body bent
backwards, almost double, at the hip. With a barely controlled thump they
brought the body to rest on the floor.

"What the hell!" Tyson exclaimed in wonder.

The examiner's hands instantly went to the soft, swollen flesh of Heifsling's
hip region. He probed with his fingertips, his face frozen in a mask of
confusion, then soft wonder.

"Well? Tyson demanded. "What is it?"

"His...his..." the man stammered. "I can't...there's no bone. I mean, there
is, I can feel it, but it's everywhere. In chunks. His entire....yes. His
entire hip area. The pelvis. It's like his midsection has been completely
compressed, like in some industrial machine. The bone has been pulverized. I
can x-ray image it at my lab, but I can feel it plain as day. What kind of
machine could do this? And why is his body here?"

"Good question," Tyson said as they stepped into the hall, leaving the
physicist's body in the care of the physician.

Findley stood stiffly, staring at her shoes, her back to the opposite wall of
the corridor. Her expression was the same impassive one she usually wore, but
her complexion had taken on a definite green, sickly hue.

"You okay?" Tyson asked in passing, and she nodded.

Cochran gazed around the corridor, the door, the lock assembly, the bodies on
the floor, the one inside the office. He was starting to see what had given
Mack so much pause, but he wasn't able to put his finger on it yet. Mack
watched him, nodding, seeing his friend putting it together.

"You guys going to share?" Tyson asked. "I mean, I know we came into this
movie after it started, but..."

Mack backed up several steps, and seized Cochran's tie in his left hand.
"Sorry, Boots. You're gonna be the good doctor."

Mack stepped quickly up the hall, dragging Cochran behind him. "Up the hall,"
he said, "And pausing. Office door, locked. Custodians..." He made a gun shape
with his right hand. "Bang. Bang. Two down. Then, inside." He gave his friend
a gentle shove, and Boots fell back into the open office door. "Then...whoosh.
Who knows?"

"So what killed him?"

Mack glanced around the hall, and pulled what remained of the office door
closed. He picked up the lock assembly, and held the wooden scrap and mangled
doorknob out for all to see. "See this? And the Heifsling, in there? Crushed
midsection. These guys?" Mack stepped over the bodies on the floor of the
corridor. "Broken necks, both of them, I bet. And this one..." he pointed to
the dull crimson on the body, and then at the smear on the wall, "hit up
there. He wasn't shot. That's not a blood spray, not at all. That's a blood
splat. He hit the wall up there, and I mean, he hit it hard."

Tyson frowned. "Okay, but what could send a guy fifteen feet up a wall,
and..."

Mack shook his head. "Not what. Who."

"Huh?"

Mack held out the door lock assembly once more. "See this knob? Crushed. Kinda
like Heifsling."

"All right, but..."

"And...look at this." He pointed to the crumpled region of the doorknob, the
shape of the marks. "See these? And these are in steel. Tough, manufactured,
tensile, tamper-proof steel. Crushed. And look..." he covered the knob with
his hand, the mark disappearing beneath his grip. "See?"

Tyson shook his head. "No."

Mack's shoulder's dropped in exasperation. "Okay. Well, I...wait, Diane, come
here for a second."

She stepped closer, reluctantly, and Mack held out his hand to her. He took
her right hand, and placed it over the crumpled steel as the men leaned in to
see.

"I'll be damned," Tyson murmured.

The long dents in the steel surface of the doorknob hadn't had any obvious
significance until Findley's delicate female hand was on top of it. Now, they
could all plainly see Mack's point. Findley's fingers fit the dents perfectly,
the origin of the marks were now obvious.

"The girl," Tyson said.

"The girl," Mack agreed.

"Oh, boy oh boy oh boy," Cochran exhaled. "Is this...is this really what we're
talking about? Is this all tied into what you're here for?"

"Too soon to say," Tyson said, his gaze falling back to Diane's hand filling
the crumpled furrows in the steel, "but I think it's a start."

Cochran shook his head. "I can't believe it. You mean to tell me that...you
know..." He motioned with his head, then with a flick of his eyes, both
skyward. "You know? Is that what you're telling me?"

"Either way, we've got to say something to that media circus outside," Mack
advised. "The story will just get hotter the later we let it sit. The sooner
they know Heifsling's dead, the sooner they'll go home."

"I agree," Diane spoke up. "Best to defuse the situation before the day
starts, and by the end of the afternoon, it's on page two already."

"Great, good idea," Tyson nodded. "When do you do it?" he asked McManus.

"What? Wait, no. What? Are you kidding me? The agency has people for that,
people who know how to handle the press. Get one of them in here."

"Are you giving me an order?"

"No, sir, I just..."

"Listen, Mack, nobody here knows the situation like you. And you're a smart
guy. You know what to say, and what not to. Just make it quick, and defuse
this thing, and we can concentrate on....other more important things," Tyson
said, motioning to the two bodies on the floor.

Tyson and Findley left to back to the lecture hall lobby, leaving the medical
examiner to his work, and apparently Mack to his speechwriting. Cochran shook
his head in wonderment, looking first at the scene and then to his friend.
Slowly, a tiny smile crept into the edges of his mouth. He turned to go back
to the lecture hall himself, and called to Mack over his shoulder in his
rumbling drawl.

"At least straighten your tie. You're gonna be on TV."

The flashes didn't seem quite so bright this time, Mack supposed it was
because the sun was actually starting to brighten the morning sky. All the
same, the throng of reporters continued throwing questions at him far too
quickly to understand them all.

"Okay, as I said before, that's all we're willing to say at the moment."

"But, sir, when will you..."

"It's not a matter of sensitive material, and..."

"Sir, from what field office did you..."

"I..."

"And how many agents are here on the OSU campus, sir, and how long..."

"Please!" Mack shouted, and at last a quiet spell lingered long enough for him
to address the crowd. "Please. Thank you. Now, if you wall would be a little
patient, I have a prepared statement that should answer at least some of your
questions. At the end of it, this press conference will end, and we will not
be taking questions. Understood?"

Quiet.

"All right. The following is information released by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, dated for 5:30 a.m. this morning. Guest speaker and physicist
Hans Heifsling was found dead today after..."

A small collective gasp rose from the crowd, and Mack paused for just a second
to let the news sink in.

"...after a speaking engagement. Apparently, there was an emergency of a
medical nature, and also dead is OSU president Johanna Chidowski, 55."

A second, louder gasp.

"The exact causes of death are yet to be determined. When the correct
diagnosis is made, it will be released through normal media channels. Thank
you."

A shouted barrage of questions, far louder than before nearly overwhelmed him.

So much for diffusing the situation, he thought.

"Can you tell us what killed them, sir?"

"When will the medical examinations be complete?"

"Are there any other casualties, sir?"

"What condition are the..."

Mack held up his hands and began to back away from the crowd, back toward the
shelter of the lecture hall's crowded doorway. His eyes fell to the front of
the throng of reporters, and his gaze was met by a familiar one; it was the
diminutive brunette who had grilled him when he had arrived hours ago. She
raised her microphone, and he smiled a good-natured, politician's smile and
went to wave her off when he somehow heard her voice over the clamor.

"...and are these deaths somehow related to the body found earlier last night
on campus?"

He froze, his smile fading. The roar of the crowd faded as well, and the
reporter waited for her answer, microphone extended.

"What body?" Mack asked in genuine surprise.

"Campus police haven't contacted you about the student death last night?" she
continued.

Mack's lips mashed together in involuntary irritation, and a dozen cameras
caught his surprised reaction. "Your government at work," the headlines would
read later that day.

Mack backed toward the door, but this time waved the reporter toward him with
his hand. "You, come on."

She watched him questioningly, without moving.

"Come on, I said! Let's go."

She sprang forward, motioning to the heavyset cameraman beside her to follow,
but Mack waved him off. "No, not him. Just you."

The reporter glanced over her shoulder, concerned, but the cameraman just
shrugged and waved her forward. She approached him and Mack held the door for
her as she entered the lecture hall. He followed her, spun on his heel, and
with the help of the GI serving gas guard duty, slammed the door against the
howling mass that tried to follow them in.

The air here was delightful.

It buffeted her body, the breeze gusting against the smooth skin not covered
by her clothing. Such strange clothing, some of it uncomfortable. She longed
for her own bodysuit, for its smooth, cool touch; the one she had been so
accustomed to for so long. Someday she would wear it again, to be sure, but
for now she had to be content in Sharice's blue dress and long vinyl boots.

She closed her eyes and listened to nothing at all, the silence here was
beautiful. No dirty, stinking, festering crowds or throngs of diseased
humanity existed here to ruin her moment. She inhaled a great breath of the
clean, ice-cold air, her lungs unaffected by the air's incredibly low
temperature, relatively low oxygen content, or the freakish speed at which it
was moving. Or, at which she was moving, to be more exact.

The woman extended her arms out in a delicate motion, hands flat, fingertips
extended. This is a nice world for me, she thought. I am even more powerful
here than I have ever been. And that's quite a statement.

Arms still extended, her body turned in a slow, lazy roll. Far, far below her,
sunlight twinkled on the crest of a wave. Even from this incredible height,
she could make out the individual droplets of water surge and spring free from
the whitecap; she saw the sunlight captured, prism-like, in a multicolored
display of beauty in each drop. Yes, she thought, lovely. I think I shall stay
here for quite a time. I should extend my visit as long as I can, so I can
enjoy every fruit of this place. So I can enjoy cleansing this place of its
infection.

A thin white wisp of cloud streaked silently by her, and she watched past her
booted feet as it curled, tendril-like, around the invisible air disturbances
caused by her speedy passing. She smiled in delight, and did a slow, lazy
somersault forward, rolled slowly to an even plane. She arched her back, arms
still extended; a swan dive position moving horizontally instead of
vertically. The sun was nearly directly above her now, and she could easily
see her on shadow passing over the waves far below.

She heard it then, a new sound, and even with her freakish speed, agility, and
tremendous strength, it was almost too late. Her head snapped up and stared
straight ahead, in the direction of the sudden high-pitched whine.

There was a break in the wisp if cloud, and without warning, a huge silver
bird appeared, its manufactured nose adorned in red and blue paint designs,
blasting through the sky at a speed that as far greater than her own current
one. It was headed straight at her.

Her eyes instantly seized upon in, and in her mind, the entire scene slowed to
a crawl as she reasoned her options out in the barest hint of a second. The
aircraft would be on her in a second, an impact inevitable. Or was it?

With a sudden but relatively sudden effort, she rolled to her right, and the
nose and fuselage of the plane shot by, less than two feet from her body. Her
enhanced vision and speed of observation let her see a few of the vehicle's
occupants as it blasted by; and she saw as one young man's face turned
abruptly sideways as the two airborne bodies passed; he had seen her. Probably
no more than a blue and flesh-colored blur, but he had seen her all the same.

As it turned out, two feet wasn't enough.

The plane shot by her, all noise and smoke and fumes, and the at last the tail
section approached, the tail section with the two side-mounted GE 684-D
SmartFuel jet engines. Her head turned to the right just in time to see the
impact coming.

Her seemingly invulnerable body fit through the front cowl of the engine
easily, they were more that seven feet in diameter. Her form shot through the
engine many times faster than a bullet through a gun; the huge engine exploded
in a debris cloud of torn metal, shards of graphite composite material, and
then, finally, flame, as the hot components of the disintegrating engine
ignited the airborne droplets of fuel.

The plane instantly reacted, the huge aircraft dipped to the left and began
losing altitude immediately, the onboard countermeasures keeping the fire from
racing up the fuel supply line. Instead, the ragged stump where the engine
used to be sizzled, smoked, and the brief flame blew out; deprived of oxygen
by the great (although falling) speed of the plane.

She, on the other hand, was completely unharmed. She decelerated to a
standstill, where she hung in the air, the small, vague sensation of
indefinable effort in her lower body intensifying to keep her aloft. She
opened her eyes and watched the plane, already a number of miles away; she saw
the smoke, heard the whine of the other engines increase to a roar as they
struggled to make up for the sudden loss of thrust; she even heard, dimly, the
cries and hysterical shouts of the pathetic creatures onboard. With a squint,
she saw the flaps on the starboard wing go up, the speed slowed, and the plane
righted itself, slowly, saving itself from a spinning dive. It was clear that
the plane was going to be able to continue its flight.

If she allowed it, that is.

She hung in the cool air of the altitude, considering her options. While she
had survived the impact unscathed, the fragile clothing of this place had not.
The tight blue minidress that had managed to stay on her body as she had
accelerated skyward had not been able to withstand the impact of the metal
craft, it hung on her body in tatters. Even the lovely black boots had not
escaped injury, for several large holes had been torn in the tough vinyl
material to reveal her smooth, perfectly unmarked skin below.

She had a decision to make, and it took only a second to arrive at it. She had
damaged the plane, and she was certain that at least one passenger had seen
her, perhaps more. True, she would be reported as merely a figment of
imagination, or an undefined blur by a cabin window, but all the same...it was
a chance she could not - would not - take. It didn't fit into her plan for
this civilization and its people.

With a lean to the left, her flight resumed, this time backtracking in the way
she had come. She pulled her body level on the horizontal once again; this
time, her hands held out before her, palms down and at full arms length. They
cut the air, knife-like, this was a time for sheer speed and velocity.

Her calves, thighs, buttocks, and lower back all tingled with exertion; they
tensed, swelling to their full muscularity, and the vague sense of effort
seemed almost to push an invisible and nonexistent propellant through her
lower body. Her speed increased, the wind whistling past her ears, the
singing, then screaming. She tensed her body even more, and suddenly a white
cone of air disturbance formed around her head, rippling, causing a strange,
loud tearing sound in the atmosphere. She tensed her body even more, and felt
a sudden surge of acceleration, even greater than the first. The white cone
exploded and fell away behind her as she powered past the air's ability to
impede her forward speed. She could dimly hear a low, constant rumble behind
her as the atmosphere collapsed a thunderclap into the void left by her
passing. Now even her arms and shoulders joined in the strange pushing
sensation, and she could sense her velocity increasing, fast, faster, faster
still. Tiny pieces of blue fabric roughened, separated, and tore free; it was
only seconds before what remained of her dress was blasted off of her body by
her tremendous speed.

Ahead of her, she could see the plane once again, limping through the sky. A
thin trail of smoke trailed behind it, the engines whining and flaps adjusting
to the changes in wind direction and speed the way it wouldn't have had to
with its full power at the ready.

She smiled, and increased her velocity even further.

With a tiny movement of her hands and an odd, breathless sensation in her
chest, her course shifted, over the course of five miles, her altitude dropped
more than three thousand feet. Still she accelerated, now watching above her
as she pulled relatively even with the wounded airplane. It was time.

In the course of split-second, she did several things. She angled her hands up
sharply, and a tiny white fan of abused air ripped the atmosphere beneath her
palms. Her direction changed almost instantly. She now shot vertically, her
velocity already twice that of the wounded plane. She focused her vision on
the aircraft, and an area directly in the middle of the body of the plane,
directly between the two wings.

At that moment, she focused all of her strength into whatever instinctive
power propelled her through the sky. Her lower body bulged massively in a
flex, and unimaginable amounts of immeasurable power surged from her, through
her, and out of her, pushing her muscular form skyward with titanic force.

It took only a few seconds for her to close the distance. Her eyes clearly saw
the point of inevitable impact, her mind slowing the scene for her to enjoy.
Unafraid of what was sure to be a tremendous explosion, her eyes opened wide,
and her lips drew back in a smile. A millisecond before the impact, her hands
folded into two fists held before her, twin agents of destructive force the
likes of which no one from this world had ever known.

The passengers of the airliner never know what hit them.

"So, am I in custody, or something?" the reporter demanded, her startling blue
eyes flashing fiercely at him.

Mack watched her from the seat opposite her, consumed with a dawning sense of
confusion. "What? Of course not."

"Then why couldn't my cameraman come along?"

"Beacause...this is a sensitive investigation, and until we can...until we can
ascertain exactly what has happened...what has occurred here, we...uh..."

Her eyes flashed at him again, her lips pursed to the side in obvious
irritation.

"Because we said so," rumbled Cochran from beside him.

The reporter's eyes darted to Cochran, then back to Mack. "Mmm," she grunted.

They sat opposite each other in the back of the heavy military transport, on
bench seats separated by about four feet of dark space, with no windows, and
lit from a single light above them. The ride was terrible, the conditions
cramped, the transport itself stank of fuel fumes and an underlying odor of
sweaty Marine. Still, Mack could still feel her stare, and finally gave in.

"Okay, okay, look. What's your name?"

"Leigh."

"Seriously?"

"Do you see me joking right now?"

"Leigh what?"

"Harper."

"Okay, Leigh Harper, my name is William McManus. I'm a field agent for the
FBI, have been for about 11 years. It's nice to meet you."

"It's nice to be be kidnapped by you."

"We're not kidnapping you."

"Funny, because I didn't ask to be shoved in here."

"Nobody did any shoving," Mack said.

Her blue eyes darted in Cochran's direction, and Mack met his gaze,
exasperated.

"Well, maybe a small shove," Boots offered, his fingers held an inch apart.

"Basically, you seem to know an awful lot about what's going on here, and so e
wanted to ask you a few...."

"Yeah, it's a little disconcerting," Leigh said. "You guys are supposed to be
the big boys, but you didn't even know about the other death on campus."

"Yes," Mack offered, his ears turning the slightest shade of red.
"Disconcerting isn't the word I'd choose. There's a lot going on at the
moment, and it appears our communications with the local authorities isn't
what it should be."

The young woman paused, measuring Mack's face, watching his eyes. He returned
her gaze without disguise, but without weakness, without looking away. She
nodded a little, slowly.

"Okay."

"So, what do you do, Ms. Harper? Who do you work for?"

"KOTV. I'm on the local beat. City news, things like that. Campus events,
usually."

"KOTV, hmm?" Cochran asked.

"KO is OK," she replied with a slight eyeroll.

"What?"

"KO is OK. That's the slogan. KOTV. OK, as in Oklahoma."

"Right."

"Yeah, I know."

Mack paused, his expression unchanging. "That's kind of a crappy slogan."

"Yeah, I know."

"Respectfully."

"Of course," she said flatly, and the tiniest hint of a smile cracked her
demeanor.

Mack saw this but didn't acknowledge it. "So, is this standard operating
procedure? Are you always covering things like this in the middle of the
night? Or do you just, you know, have trouble sleeping?"

"A little of both," she said. "There's been a lot going on lately in the OSU
science department. We had a big shake up..."

"We?"

"Well, they. I guess. I'm on the campus so much that I feel like I'm still a
student."

"You're not?" Mack asked, and out of the corner of his eye he could see
Cochran's head going back and forth between them as if he was watching a good
volley at a tennis match.

"Oh, God, no. That was in another state. And, eight....wait, nine years ago.
If you count both degrees."

"Both?"

"Um-hmm."

"In what, if you don't mind me asking."

"One in privacy, the other in minding my own business," she answered with the
hint of a grin.

"Okay. Fair enough."

"You know," she offered after pause. "If you don't mind me asking, when's the
last time you slept?"

Mack started. "What?"

"You just looked really, really tired."

He nodded and shrugged, eyes almost comically droopy. "Yeah, it's been a
little while," he managed.

The truck rumbled along, bouncing over some bumps in the pavements, each one
seemingly made more severe by the spartan nature of the military suspension.
The lack of padding on the hard plastic seat didn't help either, and Mack
actually felt his tailbone getting sore after only a few moments on the road.

"Sorry for the bumpy ride," he said, and was surprised when she shook her
head.

"Don't be," Leigh said. "I'm used to it. I've ridden in one of these things
before."

"You have?"

"Yeah, Army brat. My dad was in the army, had a field artillery command for
years outside of Seattle, then later near here, in Lawton. Used to shuttle the
family around in whatever was handy, a couple of times it was one of these
beasts."

"Army brat, huh?"

"Yep."

"Family?"

"One brother, one sister. I'm in the middle?"

"Your folks?"

She shook her head. "Dad's gone, heart attack three years ago."

"Jeez, I'm sorry. I didn't mean..."

"It's okay."

"Heart, hmm?" Mack wondered aloud. "Don't they have a pretty good handle on
all that stuff, now? I mean, couldn't they have...you know, done something?"

"Usually," she said, nodding. "But he was a big outdoorsy-type, you know? He'd
taken a couple of days, gone off in the woods over on the eastern side of the
state, and went off by himself, so here was alone when it happened. They said
it was really quick, and that it had probably been a congenital thing, like a
birth defect or something. It just decided to go, you know?"

Mack nodded. "That's too bad."

She nodded in return. "Well, he got around, you know? He never complained
much. He saw some neat things, neat places that some don't get to see.
Traveled. Japan, stuff like that."

"Japan?"

"Where he met my mother."

"Your mother's Japanese?"

She nodded, and then it hit him. He had noticed it from the moment he had
first seen her, that there was some small, indistinct feature that he couldn't
put his finger on. She was on the smallish side, sure, with jet-black hair cut
in a shorter, fashionable style. But here, at this distance, and with her
offered info, he could make out the barest hint of almond shape to her eyes.
She gazed back at him and he noticed then, really for the first time, how
attractive she was. Not movie-star gorgeous, but plenty enough to turn heads
in most places, he would wager.

"You don't really look Asian," he said, to explain away his close examination
of her features. "And your eyes are really blue. I mean, really blue."

She smiled politely. "Well, Mom is only half herself. She grew up on the base
at Okinawa, and my grandfather stayed over there after they closed it. He was
a big blond German-American farm boy, I guess that's where the eyes came
from."

"They're quite striking, if you don't mind me saying so."

"Thanks, Agent McManus."

"Bill, please. Or just Mack."

"Okay. And I'm Leigh."

"And I'm going to be sick," Cochran interjected with a wry grin. "Jesus, who
should I call to do the catering?"

Mack shot him a friendly glance of annoyance mixed with an equal part of
amusement. He looked back to their guest and he grinned a little when he saw
she was actually blushing, and was surprised at how cute he thought that was.

Whoa, boy, his mind said slowly. Take it easy. No time for this stuff.

"What about you?" she asked, smiling through her embarrassment. "Do you like
being a field agent?"

"I don't think anyone's ever asked me that before," Mack said, in genuine
surprise.

"Well, do you?"

"I don't know. Can I get back to you on that?"

"Sure. We'll include it in the interview."

"What interview?"

"Here it comes," Cochran rumbled, eyes rolling.

"The one we'll do tomorrow night. Over dinner maybe?"

Mack laughed a little and took on the manner of an old western sheriff, his
chest puffed out comedically. "Well, now, little lady, we'll have none of
that. I'm on duty right now."

"Okay, then it'll be strictly professional."

"Sure it will," Cochran said softly.

"Well, I can't guarantee I'll still be in town by tomorrow night. But if I
am...I'll be there. Just name the place."

"Okay, sounds good. But where would you be going?"

"I don't know. I'm...well, I guess now it's ‘we're,' right, Boots?...anyway,
we're on a case that's kind of got us hopping all over the place."

"Really."

"Really, really. Hence the no sleep thing."

"Okay."

"You know," Mack said in mock seriousness, "I was in a fighter plane this
morning. Last night. Whenever that was."

She nodded, in equally mock admiration. "Wow," she said slowly. "I'm
impressed."

"Don't be," Cochran added. "He threw up. Twice."

Mack's head swiveled in his friend's direction, his expression one of mock
dismay. Cochran just raised his hands and shrugged his shoulders.

"The pilot called. Sorry."

They shared a grin and Leigh pointed, unsure, at Cochran. "He called you
‘Boots?' Wait. Okay. I get it."

"Umm-hmm."

"You must be a Texan."

"By the grace of God," Cochran's deep voice rumbled personably.

"How long have you two worked together?"

"A while," Mack confessed. "Off and on, different offices. We trained at
Quantico together."

The transport heaved, bounced over a particularly big bump, and screeched to a
halt. Cochran had already opened the door by the time the driver's voice
crackled over the overhead speaker.

"We're here."

The residence hall was far more plush that Mack had ever thought one could be,
it stood in stark contrast with the Spartan existence he lived in his own days
at university. The ceilings were high, the hallways clean, swept, and
uncluttered, the lights bright to the point of seeming nearly antiseptic, like
a hospital.

"Nice place," Cochran offered.

Leigh followed behind the pair of agents, trying to observe more than being
observed. She had instantly like McManus and his friend, but she had no
illusions about their profession or the position she had been given by chance.
It was her professional sense of observation that allowed her to notice the
total absence of other reporters in the building, and she was determined to
protect her inroad by not calling attention to herself. Besides, none of it
washed. A missing physicist, who turned up dead? A minor shouting match of
some sort at a college, and an apparent heart attack? No, a dead coed? Sure, a
nasty business, but still no reason for federal involvement, for a National
Guard rollout. Something was up, and the longer it went on, the more Leigh
wanted to be in on finding out what it was.

"I'll say," Mack agreed. "What would a place like this run per semester? Per
year?"

"Don't know. We'll get the figures, the facility director and three R.A.s are
getting debriefed right now."

Mack nodded and followed the uniformed GI down the hallway. They paused
outside the second to last door.

"This is it," the young soldier offered.

"Thanks," Mack offered. "Could you keep everybody out of here till we're done
in there?"

"Sure," the young man said, and took his position by the door. He glanced at
Leigh, then questioningly back to Mack.

"Don't worry, fellas. I'm just glad to be along."

"If it checks out, we'll let you in."

"No problem." Leigh crossed to the other side of the hall and sat down on the
floor. "Take your time."

"Time seems to be one thing we don't have," Mack said grimly to Cochran, and
then the pair stepped inside the door.

It was going to be a hot day.

The sun shone down upon them, yellow and sizzling, and Douglas Trimball
squinted his eyes against it. The smell of coconut oil was strong in his
nostrils, suntan lotion always reminded him of trips to the beach when he was
a boy, when you could lay out in the sun but couldn't go into the water
because of an algae or bacterial bloom. Thankfully, those days were over, the
water cleaner now than it had been in a long, long time, and he watched now as
the bright sunlight slashed through the first few feet of Gulf water, turning
it a lovely greenish-blue hue.

His boat (although technically, most would have called it a small ship) rocked
gently from side to side, the ice in his glass tinkled as it mimicked the
motion. The Water Lily, out of New Panama City Beach, was a 340 foot vessel
that drew appreciative stares when he would pilot it near the marina, before
relenting the final approach to the trained captain under his employ. The
rapidly emerging biotech market of the '40s had been very, very good to
Douglas, and he enjoyed spending his days on the gently rolling sub-tropical
waters of central Florida.

He heard a splash in the water beside the boat, and with a lean he saw the
lean form of his wife, nearly thirty years his junior, paddle by. The shiny
black stretch material of the imported swimsuit clung to every considerable
curve of her surgically enhanced frame, and Douglas smiled to himself
appreciatively. He knew what the other fellows on the board said, about his
careless, cavalier spending habits, about his choice of current investments,
and of course about Kaylee. Trophy wife, they would all snicker. He's pushing
60. What is she, all of 25? 26?

Absolutely, he would respond. She is a trophy wife indeed. Life has given me a
beautiful trophy, he said often. I guess that means I'm the winner.

Kaylee looked up to where he sat on deck in the lounge chair. She waved, her
face half hidden by her enormous (and enormously expensive) designer
sunglasses. "Hey, baby!" she called playfully.

"Hi, sweetheart."

"Why don't you come in here for a swim with me?"

"There's a pool at the stern, you know," he laughed.

"Yeah, but all that chlorine...ugh!" she spat in disgust. "I'd rather swim in
the ocean. It's cleaner."

"Yeah, you and everything else."

"Awww...you afraid of sharks, baby?" she called.

"Yep. That and whatever else lurks in the blue depths."

"Okaaaaay....your loss. But I could make it worthwhile," she called, her smile
widening.

"Tell you what," Douglas said, standing. "I'm going to have me another drink,
and maybe by the time I'm done with it, you'll be finished with your little
swim. You'll climb back on board, and you'll have to shower all the salt off
you down in the stateroom. That's a pretty big job," he said in mock
seriousness.

"Oh, yes. Yes it is," she answered back, equally grave. "How will I ever be
equal to the task?"

"Well, with hard work and perseverance," Douglas answered, "but that won't be
enough. No, I suspect you will need my help in the shower today. Are you
prepared to accept my help?"

"Yes," she called back. "I am prepared to take you aid, and whatever else you
intend to give me."

"Excellent."

"As soon as you make a new drink, and finish it?"

"As soon as I make a new drink and finish it."

"Very well," she said, and before turning away to paddle onward, she pushed
her sunglasses onto the top of her head, and finished with "Make it a small
one."

Douglas grinned broadly as he watched her arms cut the water, the round globes
of her buttocks working as she swam further out, toward the stern of the boat.
Yes, life is good. He turned and focused his attention on making a new Alabama
Slammer. A very small Alabama Slammer.

The water really was wonderful. It always cooled her off when the day grew too
warm. It was just a shame that Douglas never...

What was that?

Kaylee stopped paddling, concerned. Water had splashed into her eyes a little
bit, obscuring her vision into an unfocused mess. She put the polarized
glasses back on, and tried to focus on the spot in front of her. She had seen
something, something strange. She would have sworn that something, something
big, had dropped clear out of the sky to splash down about 200 feet ahead of
her. She raised the glasses momentarily, rubbed her eyes a bit, trying to
blink the salt water away, and looked again. Yes, something had, she could
still see the faint traces of rings on the water where it had struck. Well,
wasn't that odd. What could have...

A quiet unease sank into her then, and she began a slow backpaddle toward the
boat, very slowly, trying to concentrate on whatever it was out there. Shark?
Her mind asked, confused. No, sharks don't fall from the sky, so far as she
knew.

The unease increased, she felt....watched. Observed. Gooseflesh broke out
across her arms even in the warm Gulf waters. She increased the rate and force
of her paddling a little. Something wasn't right, something she couldn't put
her finger on...

And then she saw it: a light, flesh colored mass was moving in the water,
straight ahead of her. Just under the surface of the water. Only fifty or 60
feet away now. And it was moving! Moving straight at her, and apparently with
great speed; the object made a bubble of moving water on the surface, and left
a noticeable wake as it arrowed through the water...

...straight at her.

She turned quickly, and began beating the water in sudden, frenzied, efficient
strokes. She didn't know what the thing was, only that it scared her and that
she felt some kind of weird menace in its presence, and in her heart she knew
that it was already too late if the thing did indeed mean her any harm; there
was no way she was going to be able to close the distance to the boat before
it reached her. But she tried anyway.

She opened her mouth the shout fro help, but did it in mid-stroke, her mouth
filled with seawater. She spat in out, sucked in a breath, because she could
feel it now, very close to and slightly below her, something was reaching for
her, she sucked in a breath and shouted...

"Dou --!"

Her cry was cut off as she felt something close on her ankle, and a massive
shock of a brutal tug crashed through her system. Her body jerked downward,
massively, suddenly, and the water closed over her head.

"Yes, honey?" Douglas called from the wet bar. "Did you say something?"

He finished making the drink, and tested it. Perfect. He tipped it back, and
drained the glass in three huge, gulping swallows as he heard the small
splashings of Kaylee coming out of the water on the stern swim ladder behind
him. He hissed out an appreciative breath, and placed it in the small
stainless steel sink. "You ready for that shower? Hmm? Honey?" he asked again,
and turned. And froze.

A woman stood by the ladder, but it wasn't his wife.

As amazing as his wife's very expensive body was, it didn't come close to the
appearance of this new stranger. This woman was taller, even more voluptuous,
and thicker; not from strategically placed implants and injected collagen,
however, but instead from well-defined muscle. She stood on deck, hands on her
hips, all long sleek legs, wide shoulders, powerful, yet feminine-looking
arms. She simply looked at him and smiled oddly, apparently amused by his
shock. He took a moment to process his surprise and immediate appreciation for
her body, after which his attention was seized by an alarming realization.

The woman was wearing Kaylee's clothes. The sunglasses. The vinyl-like stretch
material of the one-piece swimsuit. Kaylee's clothes.

"Where's Kaylee?" Douglas asked in wonderment.

"Over there," the woman answered, her voice low, throaty. She waved her hand
in the starboard direction.

Douglas looked in that direction, saw nothing; he narrowed his eyes, looked
harder, and his heart nearly stopped when he saw a pale white patch floating
on the surface, bobbing in the gentle roll of the Gulf waters.

"What?! Kaylee!"

"Can you tell me, please, how to get to Miami?"

"What?!" Douglas scrambled to the side of the deck, his hands gripping the
rails. "Kaylee!"

"You must relax, she cannot hear or answer you," the woman said. "Please, can
you tell me how to get to Miami, by direct route? It's very important to me."

"What the hell is going on? Who are you?"

"So far I've only learned very general senses of direction, you see. No one
knows how to get directly to one place, exactly."

"Kaylee!" Douglas shouted again, panicked.

The brow of the strange woman furrowed in obvious irritation. "You will answer
my inquiry, human. Call her name once more and it shall be the end of you."

Douglas' mind reeled. The woman, his wife, the confusion, her request...none
of it made sense, and the only thing he could think of was the safety of the
woman he loved.

"Kay--!" he started to shout.

The woman beside him became a blur of motion. She seized the front of his
thick Panamanian cotton sailing shirt with her left hand, and with a seemingly
impossible jerk of her arm, lifted him bodily from the deck with no apparent
effort. His eyes turned in her direction just in time to see her right hand,
drawn back to her shoulder level, fingers curled inward, palm out, facing him,
draw back further, pause, and begin its deadly journey toward his face.

The woman's palm strike exploded just under the tip of Douglas' nose, the
immeasurable force of the impact blasted his thoughts of his wife, his
consciousness, and even his life from his body. His cranium cracked in half in
an instant; the extreme force of the woman's fearsome blow was transferred
from her deadly hand into his head, which proved to be a vessel far less able
to contain it. The force exploded out the back of his skull, bone fragments,
blood, and small, nearly atomized pieces of soft tissue exploded outward
instantly behind him in a fine crimson spray. She dropped his body
unceremoniously, where it crumpled to the floor and twitched madly for a
moment.

She surveyed the boat for a moment, her eyes veiled behind the dark glasses
but still able to see a level of detail undreamt of by a normal human. Nothing
of any use she could see. Surely there were more passengers on a vessel this
size...her vision fell to the dark tinted window in the door which led down to
the galley and forward staterooms of the boat....and paused.

Inside the door, Barry Deacon, the boat's full-time captain and sometimes
pilot, watched the woman through the UV-protective tint. His mouth was still
wide open in shock and surprise, his eyes wide and staring, heart hammering in
his chest. His mind still couldn't process what he had seen, a strange female
had just boarded his craft and killed its owner, making his head actually
nearly explode with a single blow...

Years of experience at sea kicked in; as he stared, his hand raised the ship
to shore transmitter to his mouth. "Coast Guard, come in, this is Water Lily,
vessel out of New Panama City, Florida registering a mayday. Say again,
mayday, mayday..."

He kept talking, mouth moving, giving his exact coordinates, not listening for
a reply, only talking, repeating his call for aid; it was during this call
that he saw, dawning terror, a change in the aspect of the woman. It was hard
to tell, but her head titled in his direction...

He felt their eyes lock, which was impossible. Her sunglasses, for one. The
thick, reflective-style tint on the cabin door. It was impossible for her to
see him, let alone lock her eyes on his own. But a part of his mind knew that
that was precisely what she had done.

"Mayday..." he continued.

"What is your emergency?" a voice finally crackled over the speaker.

Barry's blood turned to ice in his veins as he saw the woman fix her gaze on
his own through the door...and as one side of her mouth turned up in a slight,
menacing smile. She took a slow, almost lazy step in his direction.

"Mayday," Barry repeated, his eyes never leaving the form of the woman slowly
approaching the cabin door. "Mayday. This the Water Lily. New Panama City
Beach. Mayday....oh, God....please help me..."

The dorm room was as posh as the rest of the facility. Expensive draperies
ordained the windows, a large Vid-Wall dominated the living room area. Fine,
expensive clothing lay strewn about, as if it had been torn from dresser
drawers and carelessly tossed about.

"She's in here," the agent in charge of the investigation directed them toward
the bedroom. Mack thought he recognized the man, and the agent must have seen
his inquiring glance, for he extended his hand. "Steven Denton," he said.

"Right, right!" Mack exclaimed, shaking the man's hand vigorously. He had
known him, after all. With a name to go with the face, Mack instantly
recognized Denton, a ten-year agency vet. He had met him at a training
seminar, one that had been supposed to teach field agents the basics of self
defense. Mack had passed the course, but just barely. The biggest impression
had been made by Denton, who had served as instructor.

It had been rumored that Denton knew every martial art known to man, had once
been on trial for killing a man with his pinky, blah blah blah. Mack chalked
it up to mere yarn-spinning by bored undergrads, but by the time the class was
over, he had to wonder. In the single sparring match he had witnessed, he had
seen the trim Denton move in ways he would have thought impossible, twisting,
spinning, jumping to avoid contact and to land blows of such crushing power
that the match had to be called only seconds into it. Mack still had
reservations about what his friend Boots called "Kung Fu crap," but there was
no doubt Denton's abilities left a big impression.

"So, what brings you out here? Last I saw you, you were still an instructor,"
Mack offered as they walked down the apartment's short hallway.

"Yeah, it was starting to get a little stale," Denton answered. "I needed to
get back into the field. So they shuttle me around, doing special
assignments."

"Maybe you just ran out of asses to kick," Cochran said, and Denton smiled.

"Yeah, I suppose," he grinned back.

"Still into...?" Mack asked, and adopted a half-assed karate pose.

"Sure, it's more than just a hobby. It's a way of life."

"All right. I hear that. So you've got a belt, or something?"

Denton grinned. "A few, I guess."

"A few?"

"I'm...well. The people I train with anymore are pretty much beyond the belt
thing."

Mack nodded. "Okay. Monks? Ninjas? And I'm not making fun here, because you
could probably kick my ass while you took a nap."

"Let's just say they're an interesting group. Besides, anything I can use to
stop people that would do...this," Denton said, and gestured toward the
bedroom doorway.

The large, plush bedroom was filled with a gigantic four post bed. The
coverings were a deep, dark purple velvety-looking material, with fancy sashes
and scarves decorating the posts. Mack's eyes darted over the scene, taking it
all in...the bedding, the room, the scarves, and...good lord. Were those
handcuffs?

"Uhhh...are those...?" he asked, pointing to the chrome steel manacles that
were bolted into each edge of the bed's headboard. "Are those what I think
they are?"

"Wow," Cochran muttered. "Ride ‘em, cowboy. Or, cowgirl."

"We're collecting info on her now," Denton offered. "Jennifer Warrenton, age
21 years, from Secaucus, New York. She was a good student, not great, on the
swimming and dive teams, and if the reports are accurate, the interviews...she
was...how shall we say it...fairly free with her...affections?"

Mack and Cochran nodded slowly, taking in the entire scene.

"The cuffs aren't all," Denton continued. "We searched the place and found a
steel chest under the bed. It was full of...well, of, you know. Things.
Bedroom things."

Mack looked at him, eyebrow raised.

"You know. Toys."

Mack nodded.

"She was very popular," Denton finished, his voice strained. The job had never
sat very well with him, and talking about the sexual proclivities of a dead
coed made him uncomfortable. He saw the totally blank, impassive nature of
McManus and Cochran, and at that moment he wished he had some of their
detachment. It made them better agents. But did it make them better people?

"I know it's not exactly fun. But you're doing a good job. And you're doing
good," Mack said. "You know that, right?"

"I suppose," Denton finished, and pointed.

The girl herself was on the floor on the other side of the bed. The trio
stepped around the foot of the bed, and saw the girl laying there, naked, her
arms extended above her head, her legs open in a wide, loose position. Denton
hung back a bit, Cochran averted his gaze for a moment, but Mack took in as
much of the scene as he could.

She had been a tall girl, athletic. Long, honey blonde hair. Firm, toned body.
She would have been strong, she would have fought if something terrible had
been going on. Mack bent over the body, looking for trauma, and didn't see
any.

"No marks?" Mack asked.

"None that the medical examiner found," Denton confirmed. "Nothing but the
eyes."

"Shit," Mack breathed. It was as he feared, the girls's eyes were open,
half-rolled up under their lids, but the white of her eyes had turned a
shocking deep crimson shade, the color of thousands of burst capillaries.

"The M.E. couldn't determine the cause of death without a full autopsy,"
Denton said.

"I can," Mack answered grimly. ‘Interior trauma to head, accompanied by severe
cerebral hemorrhaging."

"How could you know that?" Denton asked, a mix of minor irritation and soft
wonder.

"Call it a hunch. Is there anything else? Anything odd he may have found?"

"Well, the M.E. said she had been sexually active not long before the time of
death."

"Active?"

"Yeah, she had probably been active within minutes of death. Maybe even
during."

Mack frowned. "And how does he know this?"

"He says it was readily apparent that she died in, quote, the state of extreme
sexual arousal, unquote. Apparently, there was a great quantity of...fluids."

"Fluids?" Mack asked sharply.

"All hers, by the examination. No semen found. No evidence of forced
intercourse."

Mack nodded silently, considering, and then leaned further over the body,
taking a long, slow look at the girl's eyes. They were such a dark shade of
red that he could barely discern the position of the iris of each.

"What is it? What the story with the eyes?" Cochran wondered as much as asked.

"I don't know. The ones by the lake were the same way. As bad as this one."

"What lake? There's others?" Denton asked, and Mack and Cochran shared a
glance.

"Do you think it's a virus, or something?" Cochran asked.

"Viruses don't break necks and tear down doors," Mack replied, still meaning
over the girl's prone form.

"Broken necks? What virus?" Denton asked, louder.

Cochran spoke after he and Mack shared another look. "Should I phone it in?"

"We could use some more help," Mack agreed.

"Help with what?" Denton said, louder, irritated. "Talk to me, fellas."

"I'll give Tyson a call at the campus," Cochran said, and left the room.

"Tyson? Max Tyson? Director Max Tyson?"

That's the guy," Mack said.

"He's here? In Oklahoma City?"

"As we speak."

Denton blew out a breath, considering this new information. "Then, this has
got to be tied into something big. Way bigger than just this. Way bigger than
just some missing guy. Anybody can see that."

"Dead guy. We found him," Mack said, standing up. "He was way worse off than
this...but his eyes were the same. But you're right. This is bigger than just
some guy. Or some coed. A lot bigger, and you're going to be in on it,
probably whether you like it or not."

Denton nodded slowly. "Okay. Operation: ‘Freak out Agent Denton' seems to be
successful so far, Bill."

Mack smiled, suddenly remembering just how exhausted he really felt. "Sorry.
Just trying to prep you for what you're going to hear. It's going to be quite
a shock." Suddenly Mack froze. "And you're also right. This is big...and
anybody can see that."

"Yeah..." Denton said, nodding, waiting for Mack to finish his thought.

"And there's a television reporter out in the hall who is probably chomping at
the bit to get all of this on the air."

"Okay. And?"

"We can't have that. Not yet. It's too soon, and I think Tyson's right, I
think the umbrella plan is working. We're catching up to whatever's happening.
The circle's drawing tighter."

"You realize I have no idea what you're talking about," Denton said, brow
raised.

"Yeah, I know," Mack smiled. "But trust me, you will soon. And then you'll
wish you didn't."

Denton watched him silently as Mack left the room.

At just after noon, the regional Coast Guard office in Tampa, Florida received
a mayday from a large pleasure boat 120 miles off the coast near New Panama
City. The radio operator, a woman named Jenna Tavarez followed protocol, by
activating the recording device built into the radio and trying to respond to
the call. Halfway through her response, the signal was lost.

Tavarez followed procedure; she began to compile the information into a new
contact report, and sent the information she had gained on to her superior.
She relayed the message to the Guard's port facility, where a Lockheed R-336
HoverJet was fueled, crewed, and departed only six minutes after the call as
received, headed for the coordinates carried by the mayday signal.

It had gone pretty much by the book, Jenna processed anywhere from 10 to 20
such calls per week. It was the following three hours that made this one
different.

The HoverJet was ordered back to the port only 25 minutes into its flight. Her
report was confiscated and dubbed classified, her shift was ended early and
she was relieved of her duties for the entire week to come. Much to her
growing alarm, she was taken into federal custody and taken to a secure
location by a trio of dark-suited, grim-faced men who offered her no
information at all, and who debriefed her over the course of the afternoon,
over and over, making her tell the details of the call time and time again.
The afternoon was a frustrating and scary one, her story did not change, and
judging by the aspect of the agents, they either didn't believe her or didn't
like her answers. It was with a sense of dread that she listened to them tell
her that they had to hold her overnight, for "continued questioning." She had
to relay that message by phone later that night, and she hated the defeated
tone she heard in her own voice when she answered her husband's question of
when she would be home.

"I don't know," she said in a small voice.

"And that's why you can't stay here," Mack finished.

Leigh Harper's eyes studied his own closely, and he felt a strange, knawing
sense of discomfort. Her clear blue eys searched his face for a twinge, a
tweak, an indication that he was lying. He hadn't been, he had only...left
important parts out of his explanation.

"So she really is dead," Leigh said slowly.

"I'm afraid so," Mack agreed.

"And Heifsling is dead too."

"Yes."

"And she died the same way he did?"

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to."

"I don't know what you mean."

Leigh's gaze wandered about the interior of the military transport. The clean,
barren but functional surface of the vehicle may prove useful in battle but it
sure made it boring to look at. She nodded, replied, and her eyes darted back
to gauge Mack's reaction.

"You should get a new line of work, Agent McManus. Bill. Mack. Whatever it is
they call you."

"Oh? And why is that?"

"Because you have a lousy poker face."

"Okay, I'll take it under advisement."

"So, basically, you've got a TV reporter in on a case that may be much bigger
than it first appeared, and you're telling her that she's being removed from
it because there's too much going on that is classified, too much that is as
of yet unknown?"

"Ummm....yes." It came out more like a question.

"So you want me away form the story, because there's actually too much story."

"Pretty much, yeah."

Leigh nodded and sighed. "Nice. Figures. That's the Federal way, isn't it? Got
to make things difficult."

"You know, you're talking about my bread and butter there."

"Sorry. Didn't know you were so thin-skinned. You probably think the Fed does
a pretty good job, huh?"

"Sometimes. Maybe most times. Believe it or not, the government does act in
the best interests of the people more than you might think."

"I have my doubts."

"Doubts can be healthy."

She looked back at him quickly at this, the faintest hint of a grin on her
face.

"What?"

"You're an interesting fellow, Agent McManus."

"Thanks...I take it that my chances at that dinner are still alive?"

"Alive, maybe. But maybe with a touch of the flu."

"Well, that's not so bad."

"And with a bad cough."

Mack smiled at this, and started thinking of a graceful mode of sending her on
her way, when suddenly the door opened and Cochran and Denton piled in.
Cochran smacked the forward bulkhead of the vehicle with his large hand twice,
and the vehicle lurched forward roughly.

"What?" Mack asked, alarmed.

"We've got another one," Cochran rumbled simply, and his vision fell on the
figure of the reporter tucked into a corner of the transport. "Aw, goddamn it.
She's still here?"

"Nice to see you, too."

"You said you were going to get rid of her."

Leigh's head snapped in Mack's direction, a comical look of mock surprise on
her face.

"Not...you know..." Mack made a finger-and-thumb gesture to his temple, "Not,
‘get rid of her.' Just find a way to escort you home."

Leigh nodded. "Mmm-hmm. What did you mean, ‘another one?'"

Cochran just shook his head, irritated.

"Another one?" Leigh repeated and looked between Mack and Cochran, but they
only returned her gaze with a mildly concerned, flat stare. "But..." she
began, and fell silent when her vision fell upon Denton, the new agent of the
bunch. His tall, thin frame seemed as tense as a coiled spring, but his face
was a pale, sickly white. His eyes had a restless, gaunt appearance. He looked
like a man who had just been given the worst news of his life.

Leigh Harper was no newbie; she had been doing her job for nearly a decade,
often working closely with federal agents and other law enforcement
operatives, and never before had she seen so many of them stunned into a
worried silence so quickly. She knew that whatever story was breaking was a
big one, maybe a huge one, and part of her was glad she was right here, right
in it.

But truth be told, another part of her was worried. Worried she may have
already seen and heard too much to be let go without...well, that's where she
chose to leave that thought, a nebulous sense of unease based on a
hypothetical. She settled back into her uncomfortable seat, and tried to make
herself as small and unnoticeable as possible.

It took nearly 35 minutes to reach their destination, and no one spoke the
entire time.

For maybe the first time in his professional life, Max Tyson was a little
unsure about what to do.

The cautious sense of optimism he had allowed to let himself feel on the way
to Okie City was slowly unraveling; it seemed that for every inch they
tightened the noose around whatever - or whomever, as he was now thinking -
they were pursuing, the further away that target seemed to get. At every turn,
there was more bad news, and usually a body to go with it. So far he was able
to keep it together, but his one serious fear as that it would spin very badly
out of his control at any second.

"Okay, it'll have to do," he heard Diane say to some faceless subordinate, who
immediately turned and headed toward the makeshift center of operations they
had set up in an office adjacent to the college lecture hall. The last of the
bodies had been picked up, and there wasn't much left to do besides design
some kind of media relations strategy and wait for the McManus' field
assessment of the latest body, the one in the warehouse downtown.

Shit! Downtown! And if the time of death came back as the time he expected, it
would turn out that they were closer than they ever would have guessed. Hell,
they had probably passed their quarry as they sped toward the university from
the landing strip.

Thank God for her, at least, Tyson thought. I'd be up shit creek without
Diane. His thoughts went immediately from his coworker to his own wife,
dutifully waiting in their Georgetown townhouse for his return, and he felt
his ears and face blush, the familiar burn of a deep personal shame. As nice
as what he and Diane had was, he wasn't sure how much he could justify it any
longer. Yes, she was a beautiful woman, but he truly did love his wife, and he
was slowly finding the strength to control himself. Either way, it was one
more stray thought he could have done better without at the moment.

"What's wrong?" Diane asked as she approached him.

"Hmm?"

"Your face. Bad news? What's up?"

"Oh, nothing, just really tired."

"Okay," she said, unconvinced. "Nothing yet from Mack and Cochran. You know,
they still have that reporter with them."

"Yeah, that could turn out to be a real hassle. Something might have to be
done."

Diane just studied his face closely, expressionless, waiting for him to go on.

"Not like that!" he exclaimed quickly.

"Okay."

Now it was Tyson's turn to examine an expression. He searched her face, and
saw only cold reasoning. A calculated rationale. Jesus. If it came to that, if
it really came to that, Diane probably wouldn't have a problem giving the
order. Hell, she could probably do it herself, she had the same training as
any field agent and knew her way around her sidearm. But it was her ability to
detach herself that was most important. Yeah, Diane could do it, easy. The
thought chilled his blood just a little.

"What?"

"Nothing," Tyson said, and turned away, troubled. It was then that the same
subordinate she had just been talking with threw down his headphone and
sprinted across the room toward them.

"Sir! Secure channel from Washington asking for you."

Tyson slipped the heavily insulated earphones over his head and spoke directly
into the large comm unit's mic. "Tyson."

"Max. We've got a problem." He recognized the voice: it was Lew Atkinson, the
President's Chief of Staff.

"Tell me about it."

"Bigger than you think."

"Okay."

"Is your end of this conversation secure? On speaker?"

"Headphones. What is it?"

"Two hours ago, a mayday was relayed from a pleasure boat in the Gulf of
Mexico. It didn't make much sense, but it was relayed to our sector office
anyway. You'd better hear it."

"All right."

Without warning, a static-filled transmission was replayed to him over the
radio. It as hard to make out the words at first, but they became clearer as
the message went on.

"....City Beach. Mayday, this is a mayday...Oh, God. God! Please help
me...(static)...them both! Oh, God....she's killed them
both...she's....please...(static)...No!"

The message cut off abruptly with a sharp human screeching sound, a thump, and
then static, and Tyson's blood turned to icewater. He could see Findley
watching him closely.

"You get that?"

"Yeah, I got it."

"What do you think?"

"It could be anything," Tyson said, somewhat hopefully. "Anything at all. Did
you find the vessel?"

"All we know is that it's located, only two corpses aboard; we're debriefing
the radio operator that received the call, but she might not know anything."

"Okay, well, I don't know what you ant me to do with this..."

"Max, there's more."

"All right," he said slowly, squeezing his eyes shut.

"Half an hour before that...well, we lost a plane."

"What!?"

"Civilian. An airliner." Max didn't speak, he just waited for Atkinson to go
on. "No problems at all, then a few seconds of confusion, the pilot radioed in
that he thought they had lost an engine, that it had exploded, and
then...well, nothing."

An airliner? Christ.

"How many?" Tyson asked, his brow furrowed in deep thought, lips pursed in
frustration.

"It was full. 221."

"Jesus. Oh, man...and where?" he asked, afraid of the answer.

"About one hundred miles north of the boat's position. A little west."

"God damn it. And you're going to tell me..."

"The third point on that line is Okie City."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"All right, give me the coordinates of the most southerly incident, the boat,
right? Yeah? Okay, go." Tyson grabbed the pen that Diane was already holding
out and scribbled down the figures. "Okay, yeah, right. Copy that. Out."

Tyson slipped off the headphones, and handed the slip to the radio operator.
"Here, radio the plane we just came in on and tell him to refuel and be ready
to go wheels up toward these coordinates in fifteen minutes." Tyson nodded
toward the door and Diane fell in next to him, coat bundles under one arm, her
heels clicking smartly on the tile floor. "Bring our car around, right now.
And get these fucking press people out of here!" he barked, pointing at the
last few stragglers parked at the lecture hall's entrance.

"You won't believe this, Findley," he told her as they strode toward the door.
He raised his wrist and spoke quickly. "McManus, Cochran, come in."

Mack wasn't sure if it was fatigue or the slowly building nature of their
pursuit, but a deepening sense of unreality was starting to wash over him. The
warehouse was a huge space, nearly gymnasium sized. Once again, they had a
familiar pattern: a corpse, beaten into a near boneless consistency, eyes full
of exploded blood vessels, and an impressive smear high up on one of the
walls. Whoever they were chasing was either one serious badass, or they liked
to carry a trampoline around with them.

The crime scene was one of the worst Mack had ever seen. Down the hall was a
smaller room, outfitted with a dentist's chair. What a high-powered,
high-profile corporate lawyer needed with a dentist's chair was anybody's
guess, but the chair wasn't the issue. The freak had lined the walls and most
of the ceiling with photographs. Photographs of himself. Photographs of girls.
Photographs of himself with girls. Photos of him...doing things to the girls.
And in some of the photos, the girls didn't look...whole.

"What do you think, Mackie?" Cochran asked him under his breath, as local law
enforcement types scurried about the scene. Normally the federal forces would
have seixed control of the building, but the situation was getting worse, not
better, and Tyson had though it was better to keep as low a profile as
possible for the moment...not that the military escort and presence at the
college was helping.

"What do I think?" Mack asked. "I think she was here. And yeah, I think it's a
she. The fingermarks in the steel. This guy, obviously a sick freak, the girls
in the photos. They look like pros to you?"

"Oh, yeah," Cochran answered.

"So I figure he picks up our gal with only the worst intentions, and she turns
the tables on him."

Cochran nodded. "Okay, but why?"

"I don't know. Yet."

The pair walked over to the far corner of the dingy room, where an overturned
pommel horse of all things (Mack noticed the handcuffs bolted to the frame of
the thing with a mounting sense of dread) lay on it side. Sprawled in the
corner was the nearly unrecognizable form of one Mr. Pettrigrew, one of the
most prominent lawyers in town. The district medical examiner was slowly
taking stock of the scene while it was being photographed; Denton stood
nearby.

"What's the news?" Mack asked him.

"Well, he's been beaten," Denton replied, his face ashen. "Badly. Worse than
anything I've ever seen."

"Well, you're Mister Hand-to-hand combat guy. How bad was it?"

Denton shook his head. "It's crazy. His got fractures. Multiples. Everywhere.
But there's no evidence of a weapon, there's no metal rod laying around. But I
just can't imagine that somebody is powerful enough to beat a man to death
like this. He's practically boneless, like a piece of chicken."

Mack grunted uncomfortably at the colorful analogy. Cochran just shook his
head.

"Remember what I said about that damn doorknob. Wouldn't have believed it if I
hadn't seen Findley's fingers slip right into them creases."

A dull throb of pain slowly crept into Mack's forehead, the makings of a
powerful headache. He rubbed the small scar behind his right temple
distractedly.

"You okay? Your head hurting you again?" Cochran asked.

"No, it's not that, just a headache. I haven't slept in about two days,
remember." He rubbed his temple with his fingertips as they watched the medics
lift the oddly limp form of the lawyer onto a gurney. "What have we got on
this guy?"

"Nothing yet," Denton said. "At least, nothing illegal. Sure, he was pretty
much known as Asshole-of-the-Century, even to the other guys at his firm, but
that's it. Of course, it seems he had...hobbies...that weren't exactly
pleasant. Or legal. I think somebody saved a whole lot of girls by punching
this guy's ticket early."

"Hmm," Mack grunted, still rubbing his temple, fingertips tracing the rough
edge of a scar just behind his hairline there. "What firm was he with?"

"Starnes, Pickford, and Associates," Denton replied, the info at the ready.

"I don't know them."

"Corporate law, mostly. Big clients. Politicians. CEOs. Here's the kicker:
they represent a lot of contractors, including military ones. Remember the gas
leak thing in Iowa, about ten years ago? Those farmers that were killed?"

"Oh, yeah. Those bastards got off scott free."

"Courtesy of yours truly."

Mack's brow furrowed in thought and he nodded. "Okay, that's good to know.
Now, if only..."

His earwig brayed a short burst of static in his ear and suddenly he could
hear Tyson's voice. "...McManus?"

"Go," he said into his mic.

"Airstrip in 15. We've got problems. Big ones."

"Like?"

"Can't say in an unsecured transmission. Just be at the airfield, we're wheels
up in 15 minutes."

Mack shook his head in frustration, and made a circling motion with his hand
as he trotted to the door; Cochran and Denton both saw the signal and were
following him out. Mack rolled his eyes and sighed when the latest realization
hit home.

"Shit. Max, what are we supposed to do with that reporter? She's still with
us."

He could nearly hear Tyson's teeth grinding together in frustration.
"I...Christ. Okay, she comes too."

"What!?"

"You heard me. She comes too. Mack, listen. I don't know how much longer we
can keep this thing quiet, okay? Diane...Findley just handed me a memo from
the USSA. An amateur radio operator and skywatcher in Hilo, Hawaii just called
in asking why he hasn't heard the daily transmissions from the Serenity base
in days. And this thing that just happened, well, it'll be everywhere soon.
You understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes."

"Good, then you know we're going to have to try to spin things very soon.
Maybe this reporter can help us do that."

"She's just a local from..."

"I know who she is, we looked her up and she's climbing the corporate ladder,
there was interest from a national news bureau last year and she turned them
down. But that's beside the point."

Mack's heart sank. He had liked Leigh almost instantly, something that didn't
happen often, and he loathed the notion of trying to purposefully manipulate
her, however important the task might be at the moment.

"Mack? Is that going to be a problem?"

"No. No, it's not."

Martin Pickford Jr. loved this feeling.

The young girl squirmed in her seat before him, her blue eyes not able to meet
his own for more than a few seconds at a time. When she spoke, she stuttered
so badly she as almost unintelligible.

"T-t-the meeting is...uh, the meeting is...is s-s-scheduled..."

"For 5 p.m. this evening, is it not?" the tall, gaunt figure before her
barked.

She attempted to voice an affirmation, thought better of the troubled syllable
she managed to speak, and decided to merely nod.

Pickford shook his head sadly from side to side, the harsh fluorescent light
of the office interior shining on his thick head of silver-white hair. "You
should really practice your interpersonal skills, my dear," he said to her,
almost tenderly.

She nodded, eyes wide, the look of complete and total fear etched upon her
pretty face.

"Or we might have to have you terminated."

She gasped. "T-t-terminated."

He nodded. "Terminated." It was all Pickford could do to not break into a grin
of delight at her reaction. He was pretty sure she had actually stopped
breathing.

"You'll never work anywhere. In this town. Or any town," he added, "again.
Ever."

She stared up at him, her face a mask of terror and horror, still not
breathing, her shining eyes the only hint that she was made of flesh and blood
and not marble.

"But do carry on," Pickford instructed sweetly. "For now."

He strode past the receptionist's desk, hearing the breath whoosh out of her
in a rush, and smiling to himself. The long meetings with the senior partners
were very tiresome; he was not looking forward to tonight's upcoming marathon,
and so he took what small cruel pleasures he could throughout the day. His
petty tortures were reknown throughout the firm; as grand as the payscale was
for his senior employees, the daily punishment he inflicted on his ‘little
people' were even more impressive.

He had worked a long time, his whole life, to have the kind of power he
possessed, and it thrilled him to no end to exert it, whether it was in a
courtroom case, or a street vendor. Life is power, he told all the young
associates of his firm, and power is life. Don't ever forget it. And they
never did, for he lorded it over their heads every day of their working lives.

He entered the boardroom, a long, narrow room of dark oak paneling, and sat
down at the head of the massive table; a dark, impressive affair made of black
walnut, as hard as iron and nearly as heavy. He flipped through tonight's
agenda half-heartedly, and then turned his gaze toward the row of windows that
made up the eastern wall of the office; below him were the roofs of the
surrounding buildings, beyond those, the pale gray width of the A-1A
expressway, beyond that, the clear tropical blue of the south Atlantic. With a
turn of a dial on the table, the entire wall of windows turned a frosted
white, blocking out the view so her could concentrate fully.

He glanced at his watch, and sighed. Two more hours.

Leigh was pissed.

The whine of the engines was matched only by the sound of the air whipping
over the plane's fuselage at nearly 600 miles per hour. Leigh sat in one of
the oversize leather chairs at the front of the plane, her arms crossed, her
face an almost comedic version of a child's pout. She glared at Mack intently,
as he was the only other person in the compartment. Mack sat before her, hands
splayed out in a helpless shrug.

"So put yourself in my position, that's all I'm saying."

"You could have let me go," Leigh said petulantly.

"How, exactly? It's not standard operating procedure to call up the director
of a federal bureau and explain that you're overriding his orders."

Her eyes turned, taking in the compartment, and paused on him. "You could have
tried."

Mack sighed. "Look, Leigh, I just..."

"Harper."

"What?"

"My name is Harper. And that's a Ms., to you."

For some reason unknown to him, Mack reached a point where his mouth
disconnected from the part of his reasonable, rational brain.

"Look. It's like this. Something is going on here, something way bigger than
what we may have first thought, way bigger than me or the people on this
plane, and sure as shit way bigger than you. Now, I'm a little tired, and I've
just about had it with the spoiled child routine. I'm sorry if you don't like
being ordered to do something, I really am, but that's the way it's got to be,
and besides, there's a part of you that is professionally obligated to follow
this shit up, and even on top of that, there's got to be at least some little
bit of natural human curiosity that you'd like to see this thing through. Am I
wrong?"

Leigh just blinked at him, her eyes wide, shocked.

"I thought so. So, sit up here, stop demanding your ‘freedom,' and maybe
you'll be able to see us get to the bottom of this."

Mack stared at her, instantly sorry for losing his cool, and for the volume at
which he had just talked to - hell, shouted at - her . He didn't have long to
wait.

Incredibly, a small, cautious smile began to spread across Leigh's face.
"Wow," she said slowly. "Nicely done."

"What?" he barked back, confused.

"I haven't been told off like that in a long time."

"Whatever."

"No, seriously. And you're not wrong, completely. What you said. I kind of do
have to see this through. I just don't like being ordered to do it."

"I know. That's the part I am truly sorry about."

She nodded. "I believe that."

Mack now smiled back thinly, defeated. "I bet this sure beats your normal
beat, huh?"

Leigh's grin widened, and she nodded. "Yeah, riding around on federal jets
sure beats interviewing yet another blonde coed who thinks her life is sooo
hard, and who has no idea about big, bad lawyers who aren't among the living
anymore and...hey. Hey, what is it? What's wrong?"

"Say that part again."

"Lawyers?"

"No...the blonde thing."

"Huh?"

Mack slowly rose to his feet, his eyes wide. "Hold on a sec."

He turned and left Leigh alone with her confusion. He passed through to the
larger conference compartment in the rear of the plane, and drew the folding
door shut behind him.

Tyson turned his gaze up to Mack, a map spread out on the table before him.
Findley sat next to him, her finger pointing to a map of Oklahoma; Boots and
Denton sat in recliner chairs nearby.

"Boots, this lawyer guy."

"Pettigrew."

"Yeah, what firm is he with again?"

"Starnes and Pickford," Denton offered.

"Right. And he lived at that warehouse?"

"Some of the time, yeah, according to some evidence we found," Boots said.

Mack nodded his head, already knowing what his conclusion was going to be.
"And his car?"

"The one in the garage. That little silver thing. Import. Italian, I think,"
Boots replied.

"Yeah," Mack sighed. "Yeah. Well....shit."

Tyson eyed him catiously, his brow wrinkled in thought. "Mack? What is it?"

Mack considered it once more, then nodded to himself as much as answering the
question. "Yeah," he said. "I've seen her."

It had been like something out of one of those really old spy movies, you
know, the ones with the old British guy. The beach scene?

That's the thought that first ran through the mind of Zak Hummel as he sat in
his plastic reclining chair, his eyes locked on the perfect specimen of the
female species as it rose from the tropical aquamarine blue waters before him.

It had been a good day, a great day, in fact. He and his girlfriend of 3
years, Lori, had packed up a trunkload of beach supplies and headed for their
favorite spot of sun-kissed shoreline. He had once preferred the manic crush
of activity that went along with South Beach, but now that he was a couple of
years older, he'd rather spend the day at this more secluded stretch of white
powder sand. He suspected Lori didn't, but she didn't say anything about it,
she just went along with his suggestion out of deference for his wishes. See,
secretly, Zak believed Lori would rather go where the crowds were, because she
was into it. The attention. Their reactions.

Because Zak and Lori were professional bodybuilders.

They had taken turns spreading the protective oil on each other; the compound
allowing a healthy-looking tan to form while blocking nearly all of the sun's
harmful rays. The deep tan coloration helped accentuate muscular definitions
at shows, not that either of them needed it. Yes, Zak thought to himself, he
was sure Lori still liked the attention her physique gave her.

And it was quite a physique. Lori was tall, nearly six feet; with bright
blonde hair, and shoulders wider than most men her height. Her body was
diamond hard and every muscle bulged with obvious power; guided to their
fullest potential by hours upon hours each week in the gym and the careful
portioning of the latest nutritional supplements. Many man-made compounds had
taken the place of hormonal extracts and steroids over the last 30 years or
so, and Lori made judicious use of most of them; while her size and bulk was
extreme and exceptional, she was still womanly in appearance. The prescription
cocktail she used to train didn't change her voice, or cause a thickening of
her jaw or any of the old tell-tale signs of steroid use. Lori just appeared
to be a huge, muscular and awesomely fit woman, just the way Zak liked them.

As big as Lori was, Zak dwarfed her. Two time winner of the state bodybuilding
title, his huge mass rippled even when performing a small task of little
difficulty. Opening his beach chair? A symphony of muscular movement, biceps
swelling, deltoids shifting. And he noticed Lori over his shoulder, watching
him hungrily, biting her lower lip in anticipation. Beach days were good --
especially here, more removed from the crowds, where they could afford to be
slightly more...overzealous in their affections.

But Lori did like the attention, the crowds. He had been at it longer, a pro
since he was 22; now at 35 his enthusiasm for the sport and everything that
went with it was waning slightly. He liked being fit, he liked feeling
healthy...but no longer was he driven by the need to impress other people the
way he had once been. But not Lori.

No, Lori had only gone pro four years earlier, and was just entering her peak
years. And he could see it on her face, in her eyes, when someone would marvel
at her build. A woman in line during a hotel check-in would lean over and
exclaim something like, "Oh my, look at you! I wish I had that kind of
energy!" Or the look in Lori's eye when she would set up a college frat at a
local bar by challenging all of its young, macho male members to an
armwrestling competition, all while full knowing she could beat all of the
young men easily, most of them two at a time if she had wanted; Zak watched
her do it time and time again, and saw the sparkle in her eye and the flush in
her cheeks as she powered the inferior men's arms down with a single flex.
Yeah, she got off on it. A lot. Well...so be it. She was young, he was willing
to wait for her to gain a little perspective about it.

These were the thoughts in his mind as he looked out across the water...and
then it happened.

About fifty yards out, a woman's head appeared abover the gentle rolling surf.

Blonde. Gorgeous.

Then shoulders. Chest. Hips.

She was walking through the surf, approaching the beach at their little spot.
Lori was facedown on her own reclining beach chair, tanning her back; she
couldn't see their approaching visitor.

Zak didn't move or speak. He didn't think he could have if he had wanted to,
anyway. It felt almost as if the eyes of the strange woman and his own had
been locked together somehow. Closer she came, until she was only fifteen feet
away, the water at her ankles. Her clothes were the most shocking part of her
appearance; she wore what looked like an expensive bathing suit, or, it had
been at one time; now it simply hung on her impressive frame, frayed and
tattered by either use or great stress upon it.

She was gorgeous. The kind of Earth-stopping beautiful that took intelligent
men in its grasp and turned them into gibbering idiots. And it wasn't simply a
'hotness' borne merely out of sexual desire; it was something deeper,
something more spiritual. Oh, dear me, part of Zak's mind wondered to itself.
Won't you look at that.

As beautiful as the woman was, she had a body to match. Thicker, broader, and
more heavily muscled than most women, she sported the frame of a fitness
competitor or figure model; she was nowhere as hugely muscled as Lori
was....yet...somehow...something...there was some undefinable thing about her
that Zak couldn't name, some kind of impression, some kind of hint of extreme
health, of formidable strength, of authority. As silly as it might have looked
to an observer, Zak sound himself equally intimidated and enthralled by her.

"Baby, can you hand me the lotion?" Lori asked, her voice somewhat muffled by
the towel under her face. Then, when he didn't respond, she turned her head.
"Hey, baby, could you--"

Zak saw Lori's eyes widen in surprise when she saw the strange woman who stood
at the edge of the surf, wordlessly watching the pair of muscled beachgoers.

"Uhh....well. Okay," Lori sputtered. "Are you going to introduce me to your
friend?"

"I don't know her, either, babe."

"Um, okay. She just showed up."

"Uh-huh."

Lori nodded absently. She too was taking in the appearance of the woman, her
impressive build, her curvy, firm form. But she reacted a little differently
than her boyfriend had.

"So, you got a name, sister?" Lori asked, her voice tinged with venom. The
strange woman's eyes didn't stray, however, they remained locked on Zak's own,
taking in his form, his face, wandering over his thickly muscled body.

"Hey! I asked you a question." Lori was up now. Zak still didn't look away,
and for a reason he couldn't describe, he hoped Lori would back down, not
challenge this strange woman. But it wasn't to be.

"Hey, damn it. Talk to me. This is our spot. If you want to go to the beach,
head over to A1A where the rest of the crowds are and you--"

"This is your man?" the woman said, her voice low, throaty, oddly musical.
Still she only stared at Zak.

"What?" Lori asked incredulously.

"Is this your man?" the woman asked again. "Is he...yours?"

"You mean, my boyfriend?" Lori asked, her brow furrowed, her hands closing
into loose fists a bit. No, no, no, Zal wanted to tell her. Don't do it. I
don't know why, but please Lori don't mess with her, please don't do it.

"Yes." The woman spoke in a strange cadence, as if she were constantly trying
to remember the words, the way a foreigner would use English, but without an
accent.

"Yeah, he is," Lori spat smugly. "Why?"

The right corner of the woman's mouth rose in a slight grin. "Because I like
his body."

Lori's mouth opened involuntarily in shock. "What?"

The woman smiled this time. "I like his body very much."

Lori took a step toward the woman, thrusting out her broad chest, hand
clenched into fists before her, expanding her muscled bulk into a form as
large as she could muster. "Hey, listen, bitch, I don't know where you're from
or what you're used to, but here, you don't just walk up to..." She reached
toward the woman with her left hand.

That was as far as she got.

The woman's smaller, more delicate-looking right hand rose slowly, calmly, to
grasp Lori's far larger left hand; the woman held Lori's hand in a light grip
between her thumb and two fingers. With a slow, slight movement and with as
much effort as a grown man makes in lifting a feather, the woman made a small,
turning motion with her fingertips. The event was so improbable, given the
respective sizes of the participants, that it seemed like an optical illusion,
like Lori's huge hand and muscular forearm had been replaced by boneless,
rubber substitutes.

Lori's hand bent backwards suddenly; the bones in her hand and the connective
tissue in her wrist shattering, tearing apart in a second with a loud CRACK!
Her hand was wrenched so far back that the tops of her fingers touched her
forearm.

Lori squealed in pain and was driven to her knees in an instant. "Ahhhh!" she
cried. "Zak! Ugh! Help me! Get this bitch off me! Oh, God! My hand, my arm!"

He couldn't move, though. He wanted to help her, or at least he thought he
did, but he was unable to move. Maybe out of shock, maybe out of horror...but
maybe out of curiosity over what this strange, fearsome woman would do next.
He was under some kind of weird thrall, and he knew it. Ever since their eyes
had locked, something hadn't been the same for him.

The strange woman turned her gaze back to Zak, and her brilliant blue...wait,
no....gold? eyes focused on the thickening bulge barely hidden by his
swimsuit.

"You like this," she said simply. "You like seeing me punish your woman. A
woman who is larger than I am and would seem far more powerful. Yet I can do
this...so easily."

The woman tensed her hand again, a muted creaking, grinding sound came from
the broken joint, and Lori moaned softly, her teeth bared in obvious pain, her
eyes squeezed shut against the sensation.

Zak only stared...and then, to his own shock, he nodded.

"Would you like to see me punish her further?"

He nodded again, and heard Lori whimper in pain and soft wonder.

"Would you like to see me...break her?"

"No....no no no..." Lori muttered through the blinding haze of pain.

He nodded, and the strange woman nodded back, with a soft, blood-chilling
chuckle.

She released her hold on Lori's boneless, flopping wrist and cradled the left
side of Lori's skull in the palm of her left hand, and made a fist with her
right. She extended the first two fingers of her right hand, much the same way
a child would mimic a pistol, and placed the tips of these under the right
side of Lori's jaw, halfway between the ear and the chin.

"No....please.." Lori pleaded.

"You heard your man. He's mine now," the woman said. "As are you."

With a tiny burst of strength, the woman's fingertips drove into Lori's
throat, not far, maybe an inch -- the rapid, half-second long manuever didn't
even break the skin, but the sound signaled the catastrophic damage it caused.
The was a ghastly, meaty tearing sound from deep inside Lori's neck,
accompanied by a muffled POP.

"Hurk!" Lori gagged, and her body spasmed hugely, once, and then it was over.
The woman released Lori body, where it dropped to the sand and twitched madly
for a full ten seconds. When finally it was over, the woman turned her gaze
back to Zak, still seated on his lounge chair. With a wave of her arms, the
tatters of the bathing suit she wore fell away, and she stood fully naked
before him, the most glorious specimen he had ever seen.

"Finally," she smiled at him. "We're alone." She stepped toward him.

Possibly the schock of her appearance had worn off, the shock of Lori's sudden
death...maybe it was the threat of his own demise or a sense of
self-preservation...either way, Zak's sense returned to him, and he broke out
into a cold sweat as the woman drew near to him.

"Wh....wh...what are you going to do?"

"Oh, I think you know," she smiled at him, and she straddled the chair. Her
left hand flashed down to gently caress the bulge pushing up against his tiny
swim trunks.

Zak shuddered, moaned, and closed his eyes, his mind in disbelief as he came
powerfully, massively, before his shorts were even off. Who was this woman?
How could she have done that to Lori? How did she make him come with a single
touch?

When the waves of sensation finally waned, he opened his eyes, she was still
above him, a strange smile on her face.

"I...I'm sorry," he stammered. "I couldn't help it."

She just gave the same ominous chuckle again. "Oh, that's all right, my silly
little man," she said. "There's plenty more where that came from." She leaned
in closed, cradling his face in her hands, and her ruby lips met his, and all
thought of escape left him.

Nearly an hour later, it was almost over. Zak's once hugely muscular and
impossibly healthy body was broken and crushed, bleeding on the sand. His
whole body sang a chorus of misery. There was a dull, thudding, completely
terrifying bone-deep ache that came from his groin; he refused to look down
for fear of what he might see there. His one good eye swiveled about, trying
to take in the scene, his mind refusing to give up, still trying the survive.
A foot came into his vision, and his eye spun upward, and he saw her standing
above him, hands on hips, watching him.

"You are an interesting race," she said, her voice cold and detached, but
betraying an odd, nearly scientific wonder. "I have hurt your body in more
ways than you could possibly imagine, yet still you try to live, even though
the rational part of your mind tells you death is inescapable." She shrugged
and retreated a few paces. "Hmm. No matter. I mustn't be delayed any longer.
But first..."

Her hand rose, and turned over, palm up. Even in his delirium, Zak could see a
tiny square of something in her palm, a tiny square of relective blue metal.

"The clothing of your world leaves much to be desired," she said.

She began to rub her hand over her body, much the way a person in the shower
spreads soap over her body...but instead she pushed the blue square along with
her hand....first down her left forearm...

And incredibly, a streak of the material was left behind. It was an electric,
metallic blue shade, and was heavily reflective of the light that danced on
it's surface. He watched in silent, agonized wonder as the
woman....smeared...the strange material over her entire arm. As she neared her
wrist, the shade changed; the blue abruptly turned to a brilliant, deep golden
hue. She rubbed her hands together briskly, and the material began to look
like golden gloves, the division between the blue and gold was that sharp. She
prooceeded to rub the material over her entire form; legs, thighs, feet,
abdomen. The gold appeared once more halfway down her shins, and covered her
feet and toes as well. From a distance, it would appear that she wore boots.
Zak could see her exquisite musculature flex and dance beneath the material as
she moved; it was indeed a covering of some sort, but it was razor thin, and
did nothing to hide the incredible muscle tone the woman possessed.

The gold material appeared once more, in an exaggerated 'V' or 'U' shape as
she smeared the square across her torso; it formed a border around a cutout
that bared her spectacular cleavage. Then she took the square in her
fingertips, and begain pulling it apart, twisting it from side to side, and
pulling it out into a strip of blue metal which she then used to slide across
her back, the way someone would use a towel to dry off.

In moments she was finished, and stood before him in a brilliant metallic blue
suit with gold trim that appeared to be some kind of costume or uniform.

"Wh...who are you?" Zak managed to choke out.

She smiled down at him, with a look that seemed almost like pity. "Does it
matter?" she asked, knelt, and took his wrist in her hands. She put her right
foot against his throat, stood, and gave his wrist a tiny tug with one hand.

Zak's massive but ruined form tried to follow her tug, tried to go in the
direction of her pull; all the momentum from her tiny but irresistable tug was
transferred to the one point that couldn't move - his neck, braced by her
foot. There was a deep, plainly audbile CRUNCH as his c-2 vertebrae gave way,
and Zak Hummel knew nothing more.

The fearsome woman grinned with cold satisfaction at the sound, but the the
moment was short-lived. Her eyes narrowed, her brow contracted in a frown.
Time was short, she had to move on to her next destination as she followed the
chain of power like she had so many times before.

She crouched low, performing an impressive deep knee bend, held the position,
and turned her head skyward. She paused, focused her energy, and exploded into
motion. She sprang upward as her long, sleek legs straightened and propelled
her up, her arms at her sides, forearms rising in a curling motion; a deep
THUD was heard as a concussive blast ring formed where she had been standing a
millisecond before, the beach chairs, coolers, and the corpses of their owners
were thrown many yards by the force of the air suddenly filling the void left
by her motion: by the time she had moved a foot, her form was already passing
the mach barrier; a deafening thunderclap and rapidly shrinking speck in the
sky were all that remained.

They were running.

The ramp wasn't even down all the way to the tarmac yet, and the first of the
agents leapfrogged it and was hoofing toward one of the many cruisers parked
at attention. Max and Findley came next, with Mack, Boots, and Denton behind,
followed by of lower-ranking field agents, around a dozen. As they ran, Mack
glanced ahead, and was impressed by Max Tyson's amount of political pull:
Behind the row of agency cruisers, three military transports waited; through
the windows Mack could see what was easily thirty men waiting, pulse guns at
the ready. So this really was it, after all.

The agents piled into the cars and in seconds were leaving trails of smoking
rubber, screaming past the parked planes and onto the highway ramp leading to
the Interstate, the sunlit ocean in the distance, gleaming in the late
afternoon sun.

He never shouted, he never wavered. His tone was always one of calm, focused
reason, which made his remarks all the more shocking. All the more
dibilatating. All the more hurtful.

Martin Pickford was a master. He had ruined more egos - and lives - in his 64
years on the planet than anyone else he had known. It was his job. His gift.
One that he was paid handsomely for during his courtroom career; one that
served him even better now...as head of the firm, he exerted his will upon
those under his command, as well as those who found themselves in his debt.
Celebrities with embarrassing arrests. Corporate fat cats with bad books.
Scientists in need of funding. Politicians with secret...proclivities.

The entire board sat before him, expressionless, listening to his quiet
tirade, mute out of duty, respect...and fear.

Martin Pickford paused just for a moment, and smiled. Then, the lesson
continued.

It took only seconds to arm themselves. Sidearms were checked, loaded. Leigh
sat among six government field operatives, her eyes wide as they prepared. She
paused, considered asking just what exactly they were up against, and thought
better of it. She had seen enough to know that these men and women surrounding
her were fit, extremely capable, and well prepared...and completely in the
dark, with only a vague notion of what they were up against. Asking anything
now would only spoil the odd quiet that had descended in the vehicle.

Her eyes met Mack's, and he tried to smile reassuringly, and she returned the
gesture, but when he looked back at the floor of the vehicle, she saw his
reluctant smile fade, and she didn't like the expression that replaced it.

"So, this is why we have been called here today, my...friends," Pickford
finished. "It should be obvious to all that the present situation is entirely
unacceptable."

A strange, quiet high-pitched whine sounded briefly, and he paused.

"Entirely unacceptable. In fact, I would go as far to say that -- "

The whine faded, but was now replaced by a smell. An odor came to his nose,
very faint, then stronger, then much more strongly. It was acrid, biting. Like
burning plastic.

"Uh. Yes," he said, annoyed at the interruption. "I would say...I..."

Then, amazingly, one of the partners leaned over to his right, and murmured
something softly to the woman sitting there.

"Excuse me...Clawson, is it? Mr. Clawson, is there something I can do for
you?" Pickford intoned, and all eyes swiveled to follow the scene, like some
sort of tennis match.

"Well...sir..." Clawson stammered.

"Yes?"

"Well..." Clawson fell mute, and simply pointed.

Pickfors followed his gesture, turning around to do so. Clawson was pointing,
pointing at the wall of windows that Pickford had dialed to their most opaque
setting. One of the panels, six feet wide and the height of the ten foot
ceiling, the one directly behind Pickford, had darkened from a stark white to
a foggy gray. As all eyes in the room focused on the one window, the center of
it darkened even more...more...now a black patch a foot wide appeared, and it
actually began to bubble as the acrid smell of burned chemicals grew stronger
in the room.

"What the devil is going on here?" Pickford demeanded softly.

The silence was deafening.

Leigh sat stone still in perfect silence, taking in the scene. It wasn't as
she had expected. the quiet determination that showed ont he face of each of
the agents as they--

There was the sudden squeal of burning tires once again, and the passenger
compartment lurched; they all braced themselves for the sudden stop. Boots
already had the door open before Mack could turn to her grimly and utter a
single phrase.

"We're here."

The chemically treated surface of the glass bubbled furiously; the members of
the board mumbled a series of collective phrases and some who had been sitting
closer to the window than other actually got up and moved to the side, all but
Pickford himself, who stood staring at the black spot in surprise. What was
causing it? Could it be a fire?

"Could it be a..."

Before he could finish, it happened. A tiny flame appeared at the center of
the bubbling black spot, now two feet wide and spreading. The flame appeared,
winked out, appeared again, and this time held steady. Pickford squinted, and
now he could see a tiny spot of late afternoon daylight through a tiny hole
now burned in the specially treated glass. His thoughts instantly turned to
fire and the lack of the safety glass's integrity: they were more than forty
stories up, after all.

"Perhaps-" he began, but that was all he had time to say.

The heat from the window came to them then, and a few of the partners uttered
a cry of rising alarm, some turned for the door; all were now standing.

The black spot expanded sudeenly, and the tiny hole expanded suddenly in all
directions as well, suddenly, peeling back on itself and growing the way a
hole would burn in a plastic cup when its held over a flame. The hole peeled
back, revealing the afternoon sky outside...and...the room fell silent when
its occupants saw the impossible vision before them.

The blonde woman hung in mid-air, ten feet from the window, not rock steady
but close to it, like she was suspended by a mildly elastic cord. But there
was no rope to be seen, only her striking appearance, her costume of electric,
metallic blue, and the fleeting impression of a pinkish flash of light near
her face, fading in an instant as they took in her appearance. The woman took
in the room and the people in it with a quick glance, but then her eyes fell
to the senior partner who still stood closest to the window, and her eyes
locked on his. The corner of her mouth rose in a lopsided grin, and her
shining, ruby-red lips parted as she spoke a single word.

"Hello," she said softly.

The pack of agents scrambled up the steps and paused near the immense glass
doors to the conrete tower before them. All glanced about nervously, each
trying to hide the fact they had all drawn their sidearms and already held
them at the ready. But something wasn't right, something was...

"Wrong, this is wrong," Max Tyson said. "There's nothing here. It's too quiet.
Maybe we were wrong, maybe we missed something about--"

THOOOOOOOOOOOM!

His words were cut off by a deep, reverberating THUD that came from somewhere
above them, yet shook the ground as surely as an earthquake. The people moving
about the business district's street staggered awkwardly for a moment, then
stared skyward as the sound of a huge, tinkling CRASH was heard.

The group of agents looked up as well as the military transports pulled up and
the olive-suited soldiers appeared.

Mack could see what had caused the sounds; high above, black smoke roiled
skyward as the blast expanded, and muti-colored flashes of light dance about
in a glorious, multi-hued cloud as...

"Glass!" Mack screamed, and dove to the ground, pulling Leigh down with him
and shielding her with his body.

Most of the agents paused for a split second, then followed his example. Boots
dove to hug the side of the building - smart - and Mack saw Findley and Tyson
grab each other - uh-hmm, very interesting - and kneel, hands over their
heads. The soldiers were slower to react.

By then it was too late. Mack averted his gaze as three floors worth of
shattered 1/2-inch thick windows rained down upon the street. The public cried
out with a collective shriek and began to scatter. Good, it would make Mack's
job easier.

Mack could feel the smaller bits rain down on him, a larger one sliced the
back of his hand open and he hissed in a breath at the hot, bright sliver of
pain. Bigger pieces were falling now as everything seemed to slow down to
resemble a film played back at 1/4 speed.

He hugged Leigh tighter beneath him, trying to shelter her. From the corner of
his vision, he saw a soldier drop his pulse rifle and clutch his right eye
while he fell to his knees. The rifleman next to him started forward to help
when a huge sliver of glass, easily six feet square, struck him on its edge,
just to the right of his head. The pane of glass was razor sharp, extremely
heavy, and traveling at near terminal velocity; it was a matter of simple
physics as it struck the soldier at his right collarbone.

Mack averted his eyes with a grimace, but not before he saw most of the show:
The soldier's body split in half like a cut chicken; the two halves fell in
opposite directions to lie on the concrete like some gruesome science display.
Mack heard Leigh moan and knew she had seen it too.

As quickly it had started, it was over. The shower of faceted fragments was
over. The group stood quickly and they all subconsciously took stock of their
number. Most were standing, some untouched, some -- Boots among them --
sporting nasty cuts, some curled on the ground, holding arms, legs, and heads
while pools of crimson spread beneath them, and a few others, three or four,
didn't move at all.

BOOOOOM!

Another thud resounded above them, and Tyson sprang forward to the door. "Come
on!" he shouted, weapon drawn. And they followed.

The lobby of the corporate building was in chaos. Employees of every stripe
stampeded this way and that, all screaming, all in a panic as they ran across
the fine marbled floor toward every available exit. They created a sea of
humanity that the arriving agents and soldiers had to swim against, a human
tide that had to be fought, sometimes with real force. Mack shoved a
middle-aged woman aside with a shot to the side, and felt instantly guilty at
the look of confusion and genuine hurt she gave him before she was gone,
pushed outside by the panicked throng.

Eventually the tide lessened as most of the people had gotten out. They paused
to orient themselves...

"Where--" Mack started, and a sound came to them, a high, hysterical scream,
growing louder. They all glanced back the way they had come just in time to
see a man's body fall from above and strike the granite steps they has just
ascended; his scream was cut off abruptly as his body cracked off the ground
and rebounded a full foot before coming to an end in a broken, exploded mess.

"Oh, my God," Leigh murmured, her eyes wide and wet, her hand over her mouth.
"Oh, my good God. What's happening?"

"Elevators!" Tyson shouted, and the group was agian in motion as another deep
THUD ran throughout the building, shaking the very walls.

"What if...emergency...trust them?" Findley panted as they ran down the length
of the lobby.

The first agent to the bank of elevators keyed the 'up' button, it lit up and
no less than three banks of door slid open soundlessly. Tyson paused, but only
for an instant.

"We trust them," he said, and stepped into the first one.

"Sir!" The ranking soldier said, his men falling in behind him, about thirty
strong. "We can't all..."

Tyson stole a glance at the series of lights at his right. "Meet us at the
top, soldier," he said. "Executive suite, forty-third floor. Better hurry."

The young solider's face set in grim determination as he turned on his heels
and motioned his men toward the stairwell on the opposite side of the room.
"Stairs! Now!" he barked. "We go up!"

The doors slid shut and the cubicle lurched into motion. Mack felt like he
left his gut on the bottom floor, a strange metallic taste in his mouth. He
was aware of Leigh pressed between him and the wall, and he felt her touch his
arm, and bury her face against his back. He was instantly sorry that she was
there, they should have found a better place for her, except there was no
time...

And time was up. Another deep, reverberating THOOOOOM echoed, louder this
time, and the entire elevator rattled loudly, the interior light flickered and
went out. Someone gasped, maybe Tyson himself. But then a bell rang softly,
and the doors parted, dispelling the darkness.

Capt. Sean Canton was sweating profusely, his breath coming in huge gulping
heaves as he lurched up the steps, his men behind him. His arms burned from
holding the heavy pulse rifle in front of him, so he slung it over a shoulder
and rounded yet another landing. With a some dismay, he noticed the sign on
the concrete wall.

Floor 21.

The brightness was overwhelming.

It was a blinding golden light, touched with bits of red and pink, and each of
the agents in the arriving elevators held their hands up, trying the block out
the sudden flare of brightness. They stepped out nervously, unsure of what to
expect, stepping into the hall...

...except it wasn't a hall. Not anymore. As the initial shock of the
brightness began to fade, Mack realized something was wrong, something was
fundamentally off about this whole blasted thing, about this whole room...and
then it hit him. There were no walls left. The entire floor was one huge,
gaping room; no walls remained, only steel and concrete pillars designed to
suport the weight of the building's roof; no outside walls remained either,
all the full length windows had been blasted out, and the bright sunlight of
the setting sun shone brilliantly into the gutted structure.

Except it wasn't gutted...tables and hairs were strewn everywhere, some
smashed to bits, some still intact but tossed into huge piles of debris. And
as the flare faded from its inital intensity, Mack could see people. People
everywhere. Dead people. People in pieces.

His heart lept into his throat and he raised his sidearm instinctually; the
other agents around him did the same as the scene hit home with them as well.
they fanned out quickly, hyper-alert, pulses pounding. What the hell could
have done this?

A tiny sound, came to them then, a small, choking sound. A tiny gasp. The
group spun in its direction, hands shielding their eyes from the red orb of
the settng sun, now straight ahead of them as they looked toward the west side
of the building. At first the glare made it impossible to see anything, it was
too bright to make anything out of the shimmering light. Then, Mack had the
beginnings of an impression of a silhouette in its center, a man-shaped figure
in the middle. He squinted his eyes against the brightness, and the entire
group inched closer; they now stood in a loose fan-shaped semicircle around
the figure, twenty-five or thirty feet distant...Mack clicked the safety on
his handgun off, his finger settling on the trigger...

Canton's legs burned, his lungs felt as if they had been filled with fire.
Somehow, he found the strength to continue, and as he saw the sign reading
Floor 27 pass by him, he actually attacked the stairs anew, taking the first
few steps two at a time. His men hung with him, mostly, and together they
surged onward and upward.

...just as the last edge of the sun sank beyond the distant horizon. The glare
dropped off a bit at a time, and then suddenly was gone, replacing the harsh
glare of the sun's passing with the pleasant afterglow of early twilight.

Magic hour.

Mack's eyes widened, his mouth opened in shock...and recognition.

Leigh froze, unable to move.

Max Tyson took a single, uneasy step backward.

Diane Findley simply froze, statue-like, her weapon held rock steady before
her.

For the first time in his life, Boots Cochran gasped aloud in surprise.

Floor 30...it felt like his legs would give out at any second....floor 31.

A woman stood before them.

The metallic, electric blue uniform she wore shone brilliantly in the slowly
fading sunlight; it clung to her frame like it had been painted directly on
her; every crease, every hollow of her awesome build was plainly visible. She
was tall, at least 5'10", maybe more, and strongly built: broad, her build was
thickly muscled, yet not exaggeratingly so. She had an outrageous figure, as
if her designer had slammed an amatuer bodybuilder and a playmate model
together in an attempt to make the perfect female form, and had succeeded.

She was stunning, in every sense of the word, and the awestruck group of
agents realized that she wasn't alone.

Her toned arms were raised skyward, and they saw that she was holding the body
of a man aloft, above her head, her arms fully extended. On of her
golden-gloved hands was gripping the back of his neck tightly, the other held
a firm grip on the back of the man's belt. He didn't move, save for a tiny
gulping motion of his mouth. With a rising dread, Mack saw that the old man's
eyes were the same crimson shade he had come to know so well.

And for a shocked moment, no one moved or spoke.

It was somehow fitting, Mack thought later, that it was the most visible
female member of their number to first find her voice. Diane Findley stepped
forward, her firearm raised and at the ready, the sights trained on the blonde
woman's forehead. She was collected, calm even; only the tiniest angle of her
eyebrows, lowered in a frown, belied her level of stress. She spoke, her tone
assured, commanding.

"Freeze! Federal agents!" she barked.

The blonde woman's eyes seemed to swirl in their sockets, sometimes a
reflective gold, sometimes a shockingly iridescent electric blue. now they
turned to regard Findley quickly, taking in her whole form, the gun, the
distance, the self-assurance.

The blonde woman's lip turned upward a bit, and Mack was thunderstruck. his
hypothesis was being borne out, but it was still amazing to physically see it.
he had suspected that something...someone had arrived at the crash site by the
lake, and the subsequent killings and evidence left int heir wake had
convinced him that it was a humanoid subject capable of passing for an average
citizen, and the incident at the college had hinted that he should be looking
for a female of the species. And the deaths themselves indicated someone of
great physical strength...but to to actually see this woman, a being of a
nearly impossible build and stunning appearance stand before a group of armed
federal agents, holding a fully grown man above her head with no apparent
effort, and then smirking about it?...it defied his sense of reason, of
reality.

And it also worried him greatly.

"That's enough!" Now Tyson had collected himself enough to speak. "Federal
agents, and you're under arrest!"

The woman only regarded them with the same outward appearance of vague
derision. The old man with scarlet eyes croaked once more, and shuddered
visibly in her impossible grasp.

Tyson shouted again, this time louder, motioning with his gun. "You! Put that
man down! Now!"

The woman's smile widened, paused, then her eyes narrowed the tiniest bit,
changing her expression from one of whimsy to barely concealed malice.

"All right," she said, her voice full and throaty. "I was done with him,
anyway."

And then she did it.

Much later Mack would think that this was the moment, the millisecond, where
the whole damned thing spun wildly and completely out of control, the moment
where his career, life, and entire world changed on a fundamental, base level.
The moment that made Leigh shriek out the word "No!", that made Tyson freeze
in mute impotence, that made Findley do what seemingly no other member of
their party could do: open fire with her pistol.

The stunning blonde woman before them tilted her head up to gaze at the man
she held above, and with no more effort than a man takes at doubling a single
sheet of newspaper, she folded his body in half; her hand holding his neck met
the hand holding his belt in an eyeblink, his back bent back on itself, his
abdomen rose skyward, his spine first creaked, then shattered with a pulpy,
ginding crackle that was clearly audible in the big room.

"No!"

Another member of the team grunted loudly, Tyson shouted an incoherent
command, Mack saw several men turn their faces away, eyes squeezed shut
against that which they had just witnessed. The air of the room erupted in a
din of shouted commands and exclamations; verbal chaos ensued.

"Freeze!" Tyson bellowed.

The woman threw the ruined form of the old man to the ground where it bounced
and rolled like a sack of meat, devoid of any sentient movement. She didn't
just drop the man, Mack noticed, she threw him, hard, straight down to the
floor, a little to the side. She did it the way a grown man would throw down a
pillow. What were they up against?

The sequence of events that followed happened very quickly.

With only a milisecond's pause, Findley fired, four shots roared from her
handgun, only a half second apart. Mack heard the reports, saw the woman's
head dip very slightly, saw even the tiny movement of skin in the center of
her forehead, saw how the skin moved slightly...but the hole never appeared
and she didn't go down.

What the hell?

Amazingly, he also heard something else: the telltale mettalic whine of a
ricochet...many of them.

An agent to the left of the woman grabbed his shoulder with a holler and went
down, Tyson and Findley looked in his direction. Another agent opened fire,
and then many did, even Mack began squeezing off rounds.

The top floor - what was left of it - became a ballastics hell on earth as
more than a dozen federal field agents unloaded their sidearms. The muzzle
flashes, normally strobe-like, created a near constant brightness, the flat
CRACK of each pistol shot amplified by the ones echoing around it.

And through it all, she just stood there, hands resting arrogantly on hips
that were cocked slightly to one side. Incredibly, Mack even noticed her
short, platinum blonde hair waver momentarily, nearly imperceptibly.

Bullet went through it, he thought incredulously.

The pistols filled the air with their miniature thunder, and the bright, high
PING! of a ricochet rang out with every fourth shot or so; two more agents
fell, one with a small neat hole in the center of his forehead. After a few
seconds, the roaring of the pistols ceased, to be replaced with the dry, flat
clickings of empty magazines. More than a dozen agents. Full mags. Over a
hundred rounds. And she was still standing.

And she was smiling.

There wasn't a mark on her. A sense of unreality washed over Mack and the
entire crowd, a dangerous sense of wonder and disbelief that made them forget
the few important lessons of combat they had been taught. As a result, when
the agents regained their senses enough to act, most of them did the wrong
thing.

"Get her!" the agent to Mack's left cried, and charged forward, arms extended,
hands forming claws.

'Get her?' Mack wondered to himself. Are you kidding me?

Apparently the call to arms worked, for a number of the men surged forward.
The man who made the call reached her first, his hands grabbing her right
shoulder and forearm. Her head jerked in his direction, and her ruby lips rose
in a slight snarl. Then she exploded into motion, a whirl of deadly movement
that Mack would spend considerable time trying to forget.

With no effort at all she broke the man's grasp and her own hand clamped under
his jaw. Her forearm tensed, swelling with a hidden musculature her feminine
form belied; a sharp, shockingly loud CRACK echoed in the room as the man's
jawbone broke visibly. He squealed, but only for an instant. With a similar
swelling of her bicep and shoulder, the stunning woman propelled his body
upward in a blur of motion where the agent's head, shoulders, and abdomen
smashed into the ceiling with a crunch. His body hung there, suspended in the
framework above the fiberglass tiles.

Another man seized her left side, and without even turning to face him, her
left arm flashed into motion, pivoting up to smash the back of her hand into
his face. The man died with an inarticulate grunt; the force of the blow drove
his body backwards, his feet dragging the floor, arms extended by the
momentum, where thirty feet later he sailed out of one of the broken windows
and disappeared from sight.

The next few seconds were a chaos of confusion and human death. Leigh screamed
and collapsed backward, sliding down a wall in terror as her legs gave out
under her. Somewhere behind them, Mack heard the door to the stairwell open,
and the contingent of soldiers lurched out, gasping for breath. Findley calmly
reloaded her sidearm. Tyson barked orders.

And the woman killed people, one by one, with her bare hands.

One man approached her head on, only to have the woman slap his hands away
with a sweep of her left arm, the way an adult brushes off an insistent child.
The woman then leaned in, pivoting, and her right fist pistoned up in a
flashing, picture-perfect uppercut that caught the agent in the middle of the
underside of his jaw. The superhuman momentum of her strike was transferred to
the agent's head; as his head snapped back, the top of his head literally came
off, a chunk of skull shaped like a beanie flew skyward as he collapsed
without a word.

Another man dived in from the side; in an economy of motion, the woman brought
her fist, still skyward from her uppercut, down in a clubbing motion. It
struck the charging man on the top of his head, and Mack actually saw the
man's eyes bug out of his head for a second from the force of the blow. The
man went down to smash into the ground face-first, his back arching
unnaturally and his feet still kicking in the air.

Another man approached from the front, only to find himself wrapped in the
woman's powerful-looking arms. She coiled her blue-encased arms around the
man's torso, trapping his arms at his sides. She flashed an evil grin at him,
and hoisted his weight from the ground with no apparent effort. With a sudden,
explosive flex, the man's head bent backward, the only hints at the pressure
extered on his body were his sudden reddish complexion, the veins bulging on
the side of his neck, and the horrible, liquid croak that came from his
screaming mouth. After three seconds of this torture, the woman flexed again,
harder, her arms swelling to untinkable proportions, and her fists drove into
the man's back with a sudden surge. A meaty CRACKLE echoed as his spine
shattered, and his struggles ceased.

Time passed like this, second after second, more and more of their number
falling before her. Mack glanced to his right, just in time to see Denton
joint their ranks.

The lanky agent threw his empty weapon aside and leapt in front of the woman,
his body seeming light and better balanced than the rest of his fellow agents.
He held his arms out in front of him, in a prepared martial arts stance. If
any one could take her, Denton could.

He spun like a top, doing a full spin, his foot lashing out to blast her chin
in a perfectly-placed kick. Her head snapped back as Denton landed, at the
ready once more. But the woman didn't seem fazed by the blow, in fact, she
seemed almost appreciative of Denton's ability. She nodded at him the tiniest
bit, Denton's brow furrowed in wonder. That kick would have knocked out a
normal man, maybe killed him.

The room erupted with a bright flash of golden light, Mack and the remaining
agents held up their hands against it. He squinted through the glare, and Mack
could see twin beams of bright shining golden light connecting the woman's
eyes to Denton, who shook and shuddered visibly. And as quickly as it had
come, it was gone.

Denton staggered back three steps, all of his seemingly inhuman grace now
gone. His shambling steps were uneasy, his knees weak. He fell backward to the
floor, and Mack watched in horror as Denton spasmed in his death throes and
his eyes turned crimson as they filled with blood. Mack lookd back up to the
blue-suited woman, and his heart nearly stopped as slow realization hit home.

The fearsome woman was amazed. Her expression was one of complete shock, of
someone told a new, startling fact or theory. Her eyes were open wide, her
mouth a comical "O" shape. Slowly, she raised her golden-gloved hands before
her face and ever so slowly closed her outspread fingers into hard,
deadly-looking fists as her expression went from one of wonder, to
understanding, to enjoyment....and finally to icy malice.

"Outstanding," she said quietly, in a tone laced with murder.

The crowd of agents were over their shock of the golden blast of light, and
now they surged forward, this time aided by the arriving group of soldiers,
who could not fire into the mass of federal agents crowding around the woman.
As they drew near her, the woman turned sideways slightly, squared her
shoulders, bent her knees the tiniest bit, and raised her hands in a stance
that Mack instantly recognized.

"No!" Mack screamed. "Stay away from her, for God's sake --"

But it was too late, and in the chaos of the moment no one heard.

As it turned out, her apparent immeasurable strength had made her an
impossible foe. But now, since she had somehow used Denton, somehow gained his
ability, the efforts of the agents and soldiers went from pointless to tragic.
Mack's arms dropped to his sides in a sudden realization of the hopelessness
of their situation as she whirled into deadly motion once more.

Her previous attack, as amazing as it had been, had been a mere prelude.

She strode forward and slammed a forward kick into an agent, who shot backward
ten feet to crack audibly off a concrete pillar. The force of the impact
actually bounced his already dead form forward, where the fearsome woman
flashed out an arm in a clothesline that seperated the man's head from his
body. She threw her elbow back, a flash of blue movement that drove a man's
face four inches deep into his skull. She leapt into midair and seemed to hang
there as she executed a picture-perfect scissor kick...as well as the soldier
that was the kick's target. Her muscled leg cut the air with hiss in deadly
spinning back kick; when her blow connected with its target, a soldier's head
detonated like a bomb had been placed inside of it, his body staggered back a
few paces on its own accord before falling over. A double chop reduced the
neck of an approaching agent to a width of an inch, his tongue jabbed out
comically as he died. She took a one step surge, flipping forward, her body
cutting the air with a clearly audible WHOOSH; she planted her hands on the
ground before flipping up to land squarely on the shoulders of a huge machine
gunner. His hands came up, trying to pry her off him, but she siezed his
wrists and snapped his forearms simultaneously with the tiniest of wrist
pivots. A muffled wail rose from between her blue-suited thighs; still holding
his wrists, she increased the pressure from her thick legs, locking her ankles
together. Her shins extended now, and the gunner fell to his knees. Still
harder she squeezed, her thighs swelling with untold power, and finally with a
slow, even movement she powered down until his head was removed from his neck
with a liquid tearing sound to drop to the floor with a thud. She then stepped
off his shoulders as his body dropped to the floor in a heap, and moved on to
her next target. The woman continued her assault as the men died screaming,
her every movement a graceful, inescapable dance of death.

A tug at his elbow; Mack spun to find himself looking into the wide eyes of
Boots, who stood at his elbow. In front of them, the echoing THUDS of
impacting blows reverberated throught the room, and bodies took flight from
the center of a rapidly shrinking crowd of uniformed soldiers.

"What do we do?" Boots shouted of the din of shouts, gunfire, and screams.

Mack could only look at him, mute. Suddenly Boots cried "Look out!" and shoved
him aside; Mack caught a blur of motion from in front of them, and then heard
a crunching inpact as the body of a man -- Mack recognized him immediately as
Canton, the C.O. of the squad -- slammed into his friend. Both men bounced
into the closed doors of the elevators and fell to the ground in a tangle of
arms and legs.

Mack glanced back at the carnage in time to see the blue-suited woman deliver
a devastating side kick to a soldier's midsection; he leaned forward, probably
already mortally wounded. The woman spun at the hip, her arm a blur as she
dealt him a backhand blow to the face. His death was now assured; the impact
resounded with a sharp CRACK and then a muted crunching sound as his head
rotated nearly 150 degrees on his neck. He fell in a shuddering heap.

Mack leaned down and turned the men at his feet over. Canton was either
unconscious or dead, Mack couldn't tell which. Boots' eyes were open, and as
Mack knelt next to him, he moaned softly.

"You....owe me one," he wheezed.

"Are you okay?"

"Hard...to...breathe," Boots coughed, and then grinned weakly, his teeth
smeared with reddish foam. "Never been....better."

"Can you walk?"

Boots stirred, and then shook his head. "No...but... can...crawl."

Mack nooded and sidestepped over to Leigh, who still cowered against the wall,
her face in her hands. "Come on!" he shouted, grabbing her arm.

Leigh shrank from his touch, her eyes as wide as saucers and her makeup mixing
with her tears to run down her cheeks in a torrent.

"Come on!" Mack shouted again, "Move! Now!"

Leigh staggered to her feet, dazed, and Mack dragged her to where Boots lay.
He had pulled himself up from the floor to lie propped up against the steel
doors.

"Boots!" Mack cried, "You have to get her out of here!" He reached to the
right and stopped; the elevator call button was already lit. He glanced back
to Boots, who smiled weakly, and who tumbled backwards into the passenger
compartment as the steel doors behind him slid open.

"Go!" Mack shouted, and shoved Leigh into the elevator as another soldier
whistled past them with a scream.

Leigh hit the far side of the elevator, collected her self, and stepped
halfway back, her hands outstretched. "No!" she cried, her face a mask of
terror and sadness. 'What about you?"

"I'll be okay!" Mack shouted back.

"No!" she screamed, with real anguish in her voice, and then she reached out
for him, her fingers barely inside the door, and unbelievably, Mack found
himself reaching for her with his own hand.

The steel door slid shut, cutting off her final cry.

"Noooooooooooo....."

And then he was alone, trapped at the top of a Miami high rise with a woman
who seemed to be a bulletproof killing machine. He holstered his pistol with a
sigh, and turned on his heel, his eyes darkening. "Okay. That was a good
idea," he muttered to himself.

Leigh staggered back as the doors closed and fell into Boots' lap, who grunted
in pain when she landed on him.

"Boots!" she cried though her tears. We have to go back! We have to get him!"

He tried to speak, gave up, and just shook his head.

"But...we can't....we can't just...leave him!" she wailed, and began weeping,
her hands hooked into claws, grasping the front of his jacket.

Boots patted her back, and hissed out a few choice words as best he could.
"Don't...worry. Mack...smart. Really...smart. He'll....be okay."

But she shuddered as she wept in his arms, and as much as he was loathe to
admit it to himself, Boots had more than a little doubt in his mind.

The carnage was slowly drawing to a close, not because a dozen federal agents
and three times that many U.S. soldiers had gotten the best of their opponent,
but simply because there were fewer of them left alive to fight.

Mack staggered back to the field of play, where half a dozen men crouched in
some half-assed version of a firing line. Three knelt, reloading while three
stood behind, emptying their weapons. As Mack joined them, he saw that one of
the remaining was Diane Findley, her face grim as she calmly reloaded her gun.
Then she stood with the men at her side, and begain squeezing off shots in
rapid succession, her form nearly flawless.

Not that it mattered. Mack watched as the blue-suited woman, up to her knees
in bodies, turned to face them, grinned, and began taking slow, menacing steps
in their direction. The hail of bullets didn't even seem to faze her; Mack
could hear them strike her form with high, metallic PING! noises and richochet
off into space.

Then there was a break in their fire as most of them were reloading. One of
the soldiers in the front of their line was too focused on kneeling and
getting a fresh magazine into his rifle, and hadn't seen the woman approach.
He looked up just to see her golden glove fisted heading for his face in a
yellow blur.

To Mack, who was futher back, the blow was extraordinary. The woman had really
wound up for this one, and as she pivoted forward, her arm became a blur; her
fist struck home with a hollow THWOCK! and the soldier's head exploded, nearly
becoming a cloud of atomized particles. His body fell to the side and spasmed
wildly on the ground as the woman shook the gore from her hand with a flick of
her wrist.

The next soldier stood and charged, his mind finally loosing all sense of
reason, his 'fight or flight' instincts overwhelming his grasp of what was
truly prudent. The woman merely grinned, and when the soldier got near enough,
she flipped her wrist forward lightly, the tip of her middle finger striking
the center of his forehead with a sound like that of a man punting a football.
The soldier's eyes rolled up in the classic manner of a sudden concussion, and
sagged as his body began to fall. The woman didn't allow it, however, she
reached across his body and gathered as fistfull of his uniform collar in her
right hand, and the front of his ammo belt with her left, and with no apparent
effort, lifted the unconscious man bodily from the ground.

Mack took in the scene, the thoughtful, nearly scientific area of his mind in
overdrive.

The woman stood there, holding a full grown man at arm's length at a 90-degree
angle in front of her, her musculature sharply defined under the shimmering
surface of her metallic blue uniform. The mysterious woman regarded him, and
the rest of their number, with an expression made up of equal parts bemusement
and disdain, and she rolled her shockingly blue eyes in their direction as she
spoke.

"Enough," she intoned, her voice low, slightly husky. "I grow weary of your
feeble efforts."

Her right leg flashed into motion; she raised it quickly, bending at the hip
and the knee. The taught, rounded thickness of her thigh struck the soldier's
back with a loud bass THUD! but there was no give in her arms, which were like
immovable iron pillars that still held him aloft. The energy of her superhuman
blow drove his body upward; he bent double over her thigh as she folded him in
half, his spine shattering with a crystalline CRUNCH! She unceremoniously
dropped the man's prone form to lie in a heap on the floor.

This time, there were no cries, no threats, no answering gunfire. The
remaining soldiers only stood in shock of their utter faliure to even wound
this strange being before them.

"I desire to know more about your capabilities," she said matter of factly,
and balled up her fists, resting them on her hips. "You," she said, her gaze
falling to the man nearest her. "You will tell me everything you know about
your military capabilities."

The man's lips curled in distaste. "The hell I will."

The woman's expression darkened at the man's insolence."You will tell me,
now," she repeated, slower, more ominously. His answer was just as deliberate.

"Fuck you."

The woman smirked in response. "Yes....well," she said, and then grinned. She
drew in a deep breath, her already striking chest ballooning out even futher,
and then something Mack couldn't have expected happened.

The woman's brilliant blue eyes appeared to ripple, to shimmer as if they were
vibrating at an enormous frequency in their sockets. The blue tint to them
wavered in a liquid, fluid motion, and they took on a yellow hue, then a
bright, metallic gold color, the same golden chrome-like finish of her hands
and feet.

The shift of her eye color wasn't the most striking part of her more subtle
attack, however. Twin shafts of pale golden light leapt from her eyes to those
of the enlisted man, whose body jerked massively as if a huge electric shock
ran through him: his arms rose form his sides and he rose to his tiptoes, his
mouth an open "O" shape, his entire body quivering. Mack could see tiny flecks
of reflective matter, like golden glitter, or shining fragments of dust,
barely visible, racing from the soldier's eyes to the twin golden irises of
the strange woman. There was a brief flash as the two shafts of light
intensified, then, as quickly as they had come, they were gone.

The effect on the soldier was catastrophic. He moaned softly, staggered back a
step, collapsed, and began convulsing. Mack knelt over him, and watched in
horror as the man's staring eyes turned a shade of crimson so dark it was
nearly black. The man uttered a drawn out, gasping choke, and died.

The loud, flat crack of a pistol shot rang out, jerking Mack out of his haze
of nearly scientific observation. Findley stood, feet shoulder-width apart,
her sidearm in front of her, a tiny whisp of smoke rising form the barrell.

The strange woman turned her attention to the only remaining female in the
room. "Pathetic," she intoned, her brow furrowed. "You efforts are pathetic,
human."

Of all of them, Mack realized that Findley had been the only one who had
followed her orders, who had resorted to the techniques they had learned in
their exhaustive training. And now, even with all their modes of combat used
up, she still clung to their code. Her face was relaxed, even bordering on
expressionless. But her body was tight, focused, ready for whatever may come
next. Only her voice betrayed her true emotions.

"Maybe. But maybe I'll get lucky, bitch."

Findley squeezed off another round. The strange woman blurred into motion, her
arms flashing through the air in a blur. Mack felt his stomach drop another
level as the woman raised her fist in front of her, slowly unfurling her
fingers to reveal a 9mm round, perfectly preserved, for Mack and Findley to
see.

That's impossible, Mack thought stupidly.

"Oh, shit," Findley said softly through clenched teeth.

"Yes," the woman smiled, and flicked her hand in Findley's direction.

It was like she had been hit by a high-powered rifle. The bullet struck
Findley in the center of her chest, just to the left of the breastbone. It
exploded into several fragments; each particle pulverized bone on its way
through her chest, tore a ragged hole in the thick muscle of her heart,
chipped the left side of the thorasic vertebrae, and finally blew a hole out
of the center of her back, big enough for a child to put its hand into.
Findley shuffled two steps backward, her mouth open, her eyes glassy. Her arms
dropped to her sides, and her gaze, frozen in a mask of disbelief, went from
the hole in her chest to her strange tormentor, and back again.

The blue-suited woman strode forward, closing the distance between herself and
Findley, who somehow managed to stay standing. "Now, now," she said. "You have
delayed me quite long enough." She came to a stop before the incapacitated
agent.

Mack was still frozen in a fit of indecision, wonder, and shock. he and the
three remaining soldiers could do nothing but look on in mute horror.

The woman paused in front of Findley, and her golden-blue eyes dipped down to
one side. She looks like she's trying to remember something, Mack thought at
once. Classic memory recall.

The woman's gaze snapped up briskly, and now her expression changed once more
to one of icy malice, tinted with deep glee. "Well, wouldja look at that," she
said, her tone and inflection familiar, but the meter and rhythm of the speech
completely different than it had been even seconds before. "I bet that hurts.
Well, you shouldn't have made me so mad, you stupid cow."

Findley turned her blood-speckled face to stare at her opponent, the light in
her eyes fading, her efforts to speak growing weaker as her mouth moved
soundlessly.

"Here, sweetie. let me show you what I do to people who make me angry," the
woman smiled, and then pounced like a tiger at its prey.

It took only seconds, and on a day of horrors it would be the one thing that
Mack could never fully get over. The woman seized Findley's wrist and began
raining blows of such power and ferocity upon the gunshot agent as to make the
other soldiers cower before her in fright, and for Mack to actually feel the
concussive nature of each blow through his feet in the very floor of the
ruined boardroom.

A gut punch liquified Findley's midsection. A chop from the knife-edge of the
woman's hand nearly severed Findley's head from her body. A savage, single
pointed-finger attack drove deep into Findley's right eye, all the way to her
attacker's third knuckle; a gout of thick gore followed after the weapon's
removal. A savage jerk on the wrist served two purposes: Findley's shoulder
popped out of joint with the thick sound of tearing gristle, and it made Mack
realize that the only reason the woman held Findley's arm was to keep the
mortally wounded agent from flying away from the force of the her blows.

On and on the attack went; to Mack's tortured mind it went on for hours. In
reality, it was less than a minute, but in that time the blue-suited woman
pummeled Findley's body with more than 50 blows, each shattering bone,
liquifying muscle and organs, and tearing tendons from joints. The soundless
nature of Findley's reaction, added with the boneless way she flopped to and
fro, made it seem as if the mysterious woman was taking her frustrations out
on a lifeless doll, rather than a grown human woman.

Finally, the blows ceased, and the woman seized Findley's upper arms, just
outside the shoulder joints, her golden gloved fingers covered in the wounded
agent's blood, which beaded up and ran off the golden gloves in rivulets.

"You like that, you bitch? Huh?!" the woman barked, and to Mack's ears it was
the rage of an immature teenager. But apparently a teenager who had the power
to do anything she wanted.

The woman's fingers pressed into Findley's shoulders like the agent's skin and
underlying muscle was soft, uncooked bread dough. Still deeper and harder they
pressed as the woman tightened her grip, then Mack could hear the deep
creaking and crackling of splintering bone and sinew.

"Who's the bitch now?" the woman yelled, her voice booming.

With a final surge of power in her unimaginably strong grip, the woman powered
down and jerked her hands outward while maintaining her grip. There was a
thick, primal tearing sound, like the roots of a sqaure yard of thick turf
being pulled out of the ground at once. The blue-suited woman's hands flew
outward to the side, and Agent Diane Findley's arms went with them.

Blood seeped from the ragged stumps of Findley's shoulders; her pulse was far
too weak to send the huge freshets of material Mack expected to see.

The attacking blonde still didn't let up; she seized Findley once more, and
with a pivot and swing of her hips, combined with a quick flash of arm
movement, Findley's shuddering form was laid across the broad back and
shoulders of the attacking woman. The blonde held her left hand in a gripping
claw on Findley's forehead, the right was across Findley's thighs in a classic
backbreaker stance.

"Now, finally," the woman intoned, her voice now in the calm, nearly impacable
tone she had sported before the attack began. "Say goodnight."

"No!" Mack bellowed.

The fearsome woman pulled down with both hands, her superhuman musculature
bursting with obvious power. A symphony of grisly CRACKS, POPS, and deep,
fundamental tearing sounds blasted from Findley's body in a second of
mind-bending, earth-shaking, body-breaking volume. The woman smiled as she did
it.

Findley shrieked. As her body broke, it was if this was her final statement to
the world that had brought her to so much pain and grief. It was ear-piercing
and shockingly loud in the room, a sound seemingly filled with lifetimes of
torment. It was easily the most horrific thing Mack had ever heard, the hairs
on his neck and arms rose in protest at the unearthly wail that issued from
Findley's lips.

And then it was over.

The remaining soldiers surged forward, probably brought oout of their shock by
Findley's banshee-like cry. Two of them sprang forward. The woman's gaze
snapped in their direction. With a burst of movement, she swung Fiindley's
corpse from its perch across her shoulders, spinning it down and behind her
back as she maintained her hold on Findley's ankles. From his position, Mack
could see it even if the soliders couldn't.

The woman used Findley's body like a huge club, swinging the weight of it
around in a quick, deadly arc, maintaining a two-fisted grip on the lower leg.
The body whickered through the air with a hiss, and the head and upper body
struck the men with a grisly CRUNCH. Both men were propelled up and backward,
where they smashed into the closed steel doors of the elevator. They slid to
the ground and did not move again.

"You! I will know your mind!" the woman spat, and again her eyes shimmered
blue to gold, and the twin shafts of light sprang forth to connect with the
face of the last remaining soldier. He gagged audibly; the twin beams
intensified, and then winked out. The solider spasmed, but remained standing.

"Thank you. You knew much more thanyour friends. You must be...an officer,"
the fearsome woman grinned.

The man just gagged, his eyes turning a deep crimson.

The woman's smile broadened, and Mack now saw a new light in her eyes, a
bright, white-hot sun erupting where her pupils should be. Twin pencil-thin
beams of white light shot from her eyes to strike the dying soldier; a bare
milisecond later a larger, wider cone of light, this one more red in color,
traced the length of the deadly beam, so close together as many would have
though them a single burst of energy.

The beams struck the soldier's torso; Mack closed his eyes against the flash,
and still saw the shape of the beam in an afterburn on his retinas. He could
feel the great heat of the woman's new weapon; it was if he was suddenly
standing near a huge bonfire. His skin burned and he shrank away from its
heat. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone.

He slowly opened his eyes, and saw the soldier was gone...well, most of the
soldier was gone. The man's legs still stood where he had been; they had been
cut off in mid-thigh, and the cloth of the military dress was singed black, as
was the flesh visible there. It was if the man had been cut in half by an
industrial laser...except that his upper half was just...gone. Mack gagged at
the sudden greasy, acrid smell in the air, the putrid smell of burnt meat.

And then he realized he was the last one left.

Mack's heart stopped as the woman looked straight at him. No one else was left
standing in the room. They were seperated by perhaps fifteen feet, and the
bodies of eight or nine soliders that were sprawled on the blood-slicked
floor. The woman grinned broadly.

"Hello, handsome," she said, her smile widening. "What do you know?"

Mack shrank backward as the woman took a step toward him.

"No one else remains," she said softly, a bemused, nearly gentle smile on her
face. But Mack knew better, the expression she wore wasn't what it seemed.

She's like a cat who's had her fill of cream, he thought.

"I learned much today," she continued, taking yet another step closer. "A
great amount."

Mack's back touched the elevator doors: he could go no further. The woman took
another step toward him and stopped, now only six feet or so seperated them.

"But I still crave more," she said, and Mack saw her eyes shimmer once more.
He tried to close his eyes to it, but she was too quick. A sparkling golden
halo appeared around his vision, and all he could see was the twin gleaming
disks of her eyes before him.

"Now give it to me," she said softly.

The golden halo around the edges of Mack's vision grew still brighter,
pleasantly blinding, flecks of sparkling material floated across his eyes. A
high, gentle buzzing sounded in his ears, and Mack felt as if he had suddenly
had a little too much to drink; the feeling was a pleasant one. The gleaming
disks of her eyes opened even further, the light grew ever brighter, and....

"Come on!" Leigh shouted, her voice tinged with grief and now a rising fury.
"Let's move it, Cochran!"

She pulled mightily, and Boots' semi-conscious form slid a few inches across
the marble floor of Starnes & Pickford's lobby. Her blouse was torn, dirt was
smeared across one cheek, and she had somehow gotten a sticky red fluid (in
her heart she knew it was blood, but she didn't want to believe it) splashed
across her back and down one leg. In the distance she could hear the wail of
approaching sirens. Good. Backup.

Not that it'll do any good, she thought. It'll just be more cannon fodder. Now
get away form here at once! Move move move!

"Move it, soldier!" she spat, and kicked off her heels, her bare feet touching
the cool surface of the floor. She locked her arms under the much bigger man's
own from behind his slumping form, and with a deep grunt of effort she pulled,
hard, muscles straining, back muscles burning, her legs quivering with the
effort.

One step backward....two...now three, gaining speed. She gritted her teeth in
a grimace of physical effort, her breath coming in great gasps between steps.
Three....four...

Slowly, one agonized step at a time, Leigh dragged the unconscious body of
Boots Cochran across the great hall of the building's lobby, through the front
door, and down the steps to the edge of the street. As she got to the curb,
whatever strength she had found in her legs left her; her knees wobbled and
she collapsed, breathing hard, head on Boots' chest. Just before she closed
her eyes she saw the first of the rescue vehicles pull up in a screeching
halt.

"...about time," she said weakly.

...and nothing happened.

Mack blinked quickly, twice, three times, and some of the faint, pleasant high
buzzing in his head dropped away.

But in front of him, the tormentor of his colleagues stumbled for the first
time. Her smile faded suddenly, her expression curiously blank. Then, slowly,
her brow furrowed in mistrust, and then a stronger expression: a frown.

She looked at him again, more dlieberately. This time, she balled her
golden-gloved hands into fists, her arms held out to her sides, slightly bent
at the elbow, striking musculature flexed in vivid detail. She took in a huge
breath, chest swelling, and held it, and another blast of the golden light
shimmered around Mack's vision, stronger, even brighter this time. But Mack
stood his ground, batted his eyes, and fought back. He could feel a strange
sensation, one not so much tactile as mental; he could feel a force, a
presence pushing against his mind, against his own sense of awareness. But he
could fight it, he grimaced and squinted his eyes to narrows slits and pushed
back. It didn't take long before the woman relented in whatever strange attack
she trying to use on him. Her eyes widened in wonder at her seemingly
inability to destroy him at will the same way she had Denton, and so many
others. Her eyes wide, eyebrows turned down in a frown, her mouth open in
surprise, she stared at her hands, as if they had somethign to do with the
power she evidently did not hold over him.

"What...I....I don't....How? How can this be?" she asked no one, in utter and
complete wonder. Mack's scientific style of observance jumped into overdrive
once again.

Look at that. She can't do whatever it is she has done to the others. Why not?
Is she weakening? I doubt it. So it's me, it must be something about me. I
wonder...but look at her. She is completely, fundamentally rattled. She
literally cannot fathom the idea that she can't do this.

The woman looked at him again, her expression one of confusion and wonder.

No, more than that. She cannot fathom the concept that there is
something...anything...that she cannot do. My God, who is this woman? Where
has her power come from? And what kind of emotion is she bound to have at her
evident failure?

Rage.

The gorgeous and terrible superwoman's expression turned from complete
confusion to one of furious anger in a second. Her brow drew down, he eyes
narrowed into evil-looking slits, and her lips curled up in a savage snarl.
Her hands balled into deadly fists once more and she took her first step
toward Mack's position.

Oh, shit.

In a flash of metaalic blue, she was before him. One of her gloved hands shot
up to gather a handful of his suit, jacket, and collar, and with no effort she
hoisted his frame to hang two feet above the ground. Mack felt as if he was
dangling from a construction crane; he squirmed and twisted in her grip but
her arm remained rock solid with no perceptible movement at all.

"What have you done, human?" she demanded, her question given in wondering
snarl.

Mack's mind reeled, he didn't know what to say, and if he had, he wasn't sure
if he would have been able to speak. His clothes were bunched awkwardly around
his torso and the pressure made breathing difficult.

"Unnnhhh....I.....unnh....I..."

"Speak!" she demanded, and shook him the way a terrier would shake a rat, his
body snapping this way and that through the air. Even in this disorienting
torture, a part of his mind continued to marvel at her power...what strength!
To hold him in mid-air and shake him so! It was unbelievable.

"Unnnhhhh...." was all he could manage.

The woman held her right hand before her, and the golden fingers hooked
themselves into a claw shape. She slapped the hand down onto the lower left
area of Mack's chest with a thud, and Mack instantly felt her grip dig into
him as she applied pressure. It felt as if his chest had been seized by a tiny
hydraulic press; the heat and friction of her grip sizzled with heat, the
force ached against the shallow bone of his ribcage; his entire torso sang a
sudden, overwhelming chorus of agony as all conscious thoguht was driven from
his mind.

He screamed. Not a horror movie scream, not one of shock, surprise, or even
terror. His mouth fell open and a terrible, primal wail of timeless misery
issued forth.

The woman smiled broadly at the sound coming form him, and released her
fearsome grip. Mack hissed in a breath, his streaming eyes wide open in shock.

"Now...you will tell me, human. Why can I not read you?"

"Unnnnnhhhh....I....I don't know," Mack choked out.

She tilted her head, making the angle of her vision narrower: mack recognized
it immediately as a movement made in disbelief. Icy terror seized him as she
raised her hand in the now all-too-familiar claw shape once more. He held hi s
hands up before him, his feet kicking in mid-air.

"Wait! No! Wait, I'm telling the truth. I don't know!"

He saw the indecision in her eyes as she wavered.

"Believe me, I wish I knew why you can't...read me," he stammered.

She cast her suspicious gaze into his eyes again. "Oh? And why is that, worm?"

His gaze met hers and he willed himself up a dose fo courage he wasn't sure he
had. "Because if I knew, I'd tell everybody, and maybe we could stop you."

The moment hung there, as if time had stopped. Not a movement, not a sound.
Even Mack's heart seemed to stop beating....until...

...she smiled.

"Delightful," she said, and began walking across the room, still holding him
aloft as she did so. "It was my hope to find someone - anyone - with the nerve
to oppose me. Certainly not in a physical sense," she added, and raised him up
and down twoce, rapidly, to emphasize her point. "Someone with the courage to
at least try to stand up to me. So far, I've found your race to be
particularly pathetic," she intoned with a wry, dismissive expression.
"Exceedingly weak. Hmm....but you!"

She glanced up at him and smiled. Mack looked down and realized that she had
crossed the room, and now stood at one of the openings made by thge shattered
windows of the boardroom. In fact, Mack's very own form was now held mostly
over the ledge; in the fading light of the day he could see the rescue trucks
arriving, like toy vehicles on a diorama, far below. He felt weak in the pit
of his stomach; he bent his legs up atthe knee as if that could somehow help,
and actually felt his scrotum tighten in fear. He was sure she was about to
drop him to his depth.

"...you are different. I can't read you, apparently. Although, I feel that in
time, I will be able to. And you were able to muster courage, even after I
caused you great physical pain. Curious."

Mack looked down into her gaze, and his vision. went past her, to focus below
her. His mind reeled as he saw at least two feet of empty space below her feet
as well. She floated off the ground and slowly drifted toward the shattered
window, and then through the opening. They both hung outside in space, she
under whatever strange power she possessed, he by the sheer force of her
supporting grip. His arms and legs waved about in a rising panic, pinwheeling
about. His rational mind came back to him, and he clamped his hands around the
forearm which still held him aloft.

It was like trying to hold onto to iron coated in a thin layer of soft
padding. The metallic blue suit was slick, nearly to the point of feeling
greasy, and was apparently micro-thin; he could feel every furrow and angle of
muscle beneath the covering as if it wasn't even there. Indeed, it was if the
blue material were her very skin itself.

There was no give to her skin whatsoever, his hands clamped around her arm
with all his strength, and it felt as if he were holding onto a marble statue.
As she floated further out from the building, she smiled at him once more, and
lowered his body, bring him face to face with her, her gaze only inches from
his own.

"I'm going to let go of you now, worm."

"God, no!" Mack spat, and struggled in her grasp once more, but stopped when
he heard her quiet 'tut-tut' sound.

"You are a curious creature, human. I will let you live for a time, long
enough for me to study you in detail. Long enough for you to amuse me. To
entertain me. But I will not go out of my way to protect you from harm."

Mack was dumbfounded, worried, and and, amazingly, a little intrigued.
"Meaning?" he asked quietly.

"Meaning," she answered, bring him so close that her outrageous bosom pressed
against his chest, "that when I let go of you, you had better be holding on.
Unless you too possess the power of flight."

Her fingers released their curled tension, and Mack felt the tiniest surge of
downward movement as he slipped from her grasp. In a flash, he reached out to
her, wrapping his arms around her, his right arm over her shoulder, his left
under her right. After a second, he added his legs for good measure: he raised
his legs up and wrapped them around her waist, crossing his ankles and locking
his feet together just above the swell of her buttocks.

The woman held her arms out to the side, and her body slowly slid though the
air until it was nearly on the horizontal; Mack watched the scene around him
turn with a corresponding roll of his stomach. Underneath his grasp, he felt
her amzingly firm, tense form harden even further, he sensed rather than felt
some strange phantom force coursing through her, down through her abdomen,
through her hips and thighs, pushing them forward as the sound of wind
increased and passing skyscrapers blurred as their velocity increased quickly.
Obvious her callousness and the stunning acts of ferocity he had witnessed her
perform sickened him, but he had little choice; he closed his eyes against the
sight, and buried his head on her shoulder, the way a frightened child might
with its mother. Against the skin of the side of his face and neck, he felt
movement where they touched, and he knew she had smiled.

"Hold tightly, human," she said bemusedly, "We are about to travel much, much
faster."

Mack groaned softly, and tightened his grip as much as he could, holding on
until his arms and legs burned from the effort. He heard her chuckle softly,
and then the passing wind was too great as it first whistled, then screamed
past his ears. he tried to close his mind against the sound, and his own
growing fear, and waited for it to be over.

THREE HOURS LATER

Leigh sat on the step of the Starnes and Pickford Building, her nerves as
rattled as her clothes were smeared with dirt and caked with drying blood. She
had never been this tired in her life, it was a weariness that went past
exhaustion, it was a fatigue that sat heavy on her bones and actually seemed
to hurt in some strange undefinable way. The authorities that had arrived
(many of them federal, by their look) had not allowed her to leave, not that
she had anywhere to go. She had even tried to curl up on the steps and rest,
but to her dismay she found that sleep would not come.

She had seen Boots Cochran off safely in an ambulance, and then settled down
to watch the medics bring the rest of the survivors out. That didn't take
long, there weren't that many of them. She recognized very few of them, but
among them was the young man with blonde hair and a mustache that she
recognized, he had been the commanding officer of the squad of soldiers that
had been massacred so easily. What had his name been? Carson? Curtain. Some
kind of C name. He had been holding his ribs but had walked out under his own
power. He was lucky.

Then the medics had gone on to collecting corpses. This had taken considerably
longer.

First, the more intact ones had come out on gurneys. Then, in pieces. Finally,
the medics had moved on to body bags. It was messy, heartbreaking work.

Suddenly a hand fell on her shoulder and her breath froze in her throat; she
jumped to her stand unshakily on her feet and spun around.

Max Tyson stood before her, hand raised outward. "Hey, whoa, easy. It's just
me."

Leigh blew out a breath, trying to slow her pounding heart. "Mr. Tyson, it's
you. Oh, God...sorry,...I...I'm very tired," she said, rubbing her eyes with
her hand.

"Yes, it was a bad day...a bad day for many of us." Tyson gestured with his
right arm, which was bandaged into a temporary cast, and the large bandage
stuck on his forehead.

She looked up at him, her face locked in a questioning expression. "Mr.
Tyson...did you....did anyone...well..."

Tyson looked at her kindly, and slowly shook his head. "I'm sorry, no. No one
found any trace of agent McManus."

Leigh nooded and loked at the ground, surprised at the depth of her own
feeling.

Tyson noticed. "You...you like him, miss?"

She nodded again, and looked up, her breath hitching in her throat a bit.
"Yes. Yes, I think I do."

Tyson nodded. "I can understand that. He's good man, a good agent, and a good
friend. Perhaps...maybe there's hope. We didn't find him. Maybe he's still
okay."

Leigh nodded again. "Yes...maybe. We can hope, right?"

"Sometimes that's all we can do," Tyson said. "Do you have a place to stay
here...Leigh, right?"

"Yes...I mean yes, Leigh, but no, I don't, I'm afraid. I left all of my things
back in Okie City, I don't have anything with me, not even my ID."

"That's all right, don't worry. We're going to get you checked out by the EMTs
really quick, and then one of our operatives is going to get you into a hotel
for the night, all right? Courtesy of the US government. Okay?" he smiled
thinly, trying to be helpful in spite of his own fatigue.

"Great. Thank you."

"Don't mention it. Then sometime tomorrow we can debrief you and then we'll
get you home."

"With all due respect, sir, I'd like to stay a bit longer and cover this, I
mean, this is maybe the biggest story ever and --"

Tyson's raised hand stopped her.

"Okay, slow down. We can talk more about that later, all right? Right now, we
all just need some sleep. And I don't think I have to tell you that this all
stays between us, right? No scoops sent in...anywhere. By order fo the highest
authority. The Highest. Understood?"

Leigh nodded. She paused a moment, and looked into Tyson's eyes.

"Director Tyson...what...what are we dealing with? What...what is she?"

Tyson sighed, and his gaze didn't drop from her own. "I don't know," he said.

Leigh frowned, and nodded.

A scuffle of activity now came from the doors of the building, men scrambled
this way and that around a gurney, the scene lit by headlights and portable
lamps set up in the street. An ambulance, lights flashing, was backing up, its
rear wheels actually touching the building's last step.

"What's going on?" Tyson wondered aloud, taking a few slow steps toward the
scene. "They got all the bodies out already, didn't they?" he asked Leigh, who
had fallen in behind him.

"Yes," she said. "At least half an hour ago."

"Then what the hell is going on?" Tyson asked, and stepped up to the gurney.
"You, you men! What's this about here--"

Tyson's words stopped in his throat when he glanced at the gurney's passenger.

To any other person, she would have been unrecognizable. A pale blue blouse,
bloodied and torn, hung on her pathetic frame; her shoulders a ruined mess;
her face was a one-eyed horror, a huge black, gaping wound where one eye had
once been.

"Oh, my God!" Tyson choked. "Diane! Oh, oh, God..."

"Get her in the van!" one of the gurney's attendants barked, and actually
started pushing Tyson and Leigh back. "Sir, miss, I'm sorry, but you'll have
to stay back..."

"My God, is she alive?" Tyson asked, the faint gleam of hope in his eye.

"No, no sir. No way. She's gone, I'm sorry, she's definitely DOA," the man
said, his hands warding them off as the gurney was loaded into the ambulance.

Leigh's stomach lurched when she saw another attendant walking briskly toward
the vehicle. In each hand he carried one of agent Findley's arms. Leigh turned
away, her hand over her mouth.

"Sir, you're going to have to back up now," the man said, and turned to close
the doors of the ambulance. He trotted around to the passenger side, got in,
and with a brief blast of siren, the truck pulled away from the curb.

"Wait! Where are you taking her, then? Where...."

Tyson's words died as the truck sped away. He watched it until it turned off
to the right, three blocks down...and frowned. Where....where had he heard of
the name on the ambulance's back door? It was a corporate name, he knew...yes.
Where had he read it, and why? He repeated the name over and over in his mind,
so he would remember it.

CyTech Industries.

He felt a hand on his left arm. He glanced down to where Leigh stood next to
him. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Yeah, well..." Tyson said, and sniffed back a tear that threatened to crack
his so far controlled exterior. "yeah, we lost a lot of good people. A lot of
good people." He waved an agent over, a slim, young woman with a blonde
ponytail and glasses, smartly dressed in the standard issue federal field
agent's suit, and pointed to Leigh.

"Agent, this is Leigh Harper, the journalist that came here with us from
Oklahoma City. remeber what we talked about?"

"Yessir," she answered.

"Good, well, I leave her with you then," Tyson said, and glanced once more at
the path the ambulance had taken. Then he focused on Leigh as he stepped away.

"Good luck, Ms. Harper, and try to get some rest. I'll be speaking with you
again tomorrow."

"All right. Thank you, again."

"Absolutely." nd as Tyson stepped way, he paused, and turned back. "Ms.
Harper? Don't forget. there is always....always...hope."

Leigh nodded. "Yes. Yes, there is. Thank you."

Tyson nodded gravely, turned, and walked back tot he throng of people
surrounding the improvised command tent. Leigh paused, turned her head
skyward, and sighed a little. Well, Mack...where are you? she thought.

"This way," the blonde agent said, motioning toward a sleek black car at the
curb. "Any idea where you'd like to stay?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" Leigh asked as they stepped up to the car.

"Well, you need a room, and in a sense they gave me the government's credit
card. I imagine we could get you a room just about anyplace."

Leigh smiled wanly. "Oh, any place with a shower and bed will do," she said.

The agent nodded and slipped into the driver's seat.

"Not that I'll need it," Leigh continued as she fell into the passenger seat
and buckled herself in. The agent pulled away from the curb and into the night
traffic. "Nope," Leigh finished. "I'm pretty beat, but I think I'll be up for
days, after everything I saw today."

Eight blocks later, the agent made a left turn, then a gentle right, and
settled into the flow of traffic. Beside her, Leigh sat in her seat, slumped a
little to the right, fast asleep as the car drove on, deeper into the night.

END PART ONE

TO BE CONTINUED