Death Cry

Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. No code. No flash. Nothing.

Turning back to the live feed, Donald Bry leaned forward once again and ran his index finger across the lower right-hand side of the screen, where he had thought he had seen the code flash for a fraction of a second.

Farrell leaned over from a nearby desk, a quizzical look on his face. “Everything okay, Donald?” he asked.

Bry looked up, feeling awkward and suddenly stupid. “I thought I saw something for a moment,” he told the other operator, “but it was nothing. Just tired, I guess. Been looking at the old boob tube too long.”

Bry accepted when Farrell offered to cover communications monitoring for a while, and he got up to stretch his muscles and get out of the room for a few minutes, assuring his colleague he would be back shortly.

As Bry passed him, Lakesh was hooking a new monitor to the recovered computer. “Be sure you save some of the action for me,” Bry instructed Lakesh with forced geniality before exiting the ops center into the vanadium-steel corridor.

Outside the quiet hum of the operations center, Bry stood and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “What did I see?” he asked himself quietly, trying to remember. Whatever it was, if it had been anything at all, had flashed across the screen so quickly that it had to have been there for no more than a nanosecond, utterly subliminal. If it had been anything at all, he reminded himself.

Chapter 4

On the plateau outside the heavy accordion-style doors to the Cerberus redoubt, two figures were sparring. A rough circle had been etched in the dirt around them, stretching to a diameter of roughly twenty feet. The early-morning sun was rising over the mountain, casting long shadows across the ground as the two combatants paced the edge of the marked area as they prepared to battle.

The two figures could not have been more different.

To one side of the circle stood Grant, the dark-skinned, heavily muscled ex-Mag dressed in loose-fitting combat trousers and a dark-colored vest. His outfit was finished by a pair of scuffed, black leather boots, a souvenir of his Magistrate days.

Across the circle, her bare feet crossing each other as she walked around the edge of the temporary arena, her eyes never leaving those of her opponent, was Domi. Lithe and thin, Domi was an albino, her skin chalk-white and her short-cropped hair the cream color of bone. She wore an olive-drab ensemble made up of an abbreviated halter top that barely covered her tiny, pert breasts and a pair of shorts, rolled up high in the leg. The most startling aspect of Domi’s appearance, however, were her ruby-red eyes. The young woman weighed little more than a third of her opponent, yet showed no fear as she prepared to do combat with the bigger man.

“First outside the circle, toss or misstep,” she told him, “either counts as a loss.”

“I know the rules, Domi.” Grant smiled tightly. “Give it your best shot so I can toss your sorry ass out of here and get to the cafeteria in time to catch the decent breakfast chef.”

Domi’s pale lips parted in a frightening, feral smile. “In your dreams, Grant.” She laughed. “I’m saving my best shot for someone good. ”

With that, Grant loosed a cry of offended rage and charged toward her, his boots kicking up dirt as he closed the space between them. Domi watched calmly, balancing lightly on the balls of her feet as this relentless juggernaut of a man hurtled toward her, his head down like a charging rhinoceros.

She timed the leap perfectly, her hand whipping out to scuff momentarily across Grant’s left shoulder where he held it low to the ground. Suddenly she was flipping into the air, her feet at the highest apex as she pivoted off the ex-Mag’s body. As silent and graceful as a ballerina, Domi landed behind Grant, pulling her body into itself.

With Domi out of his way, Grant saw the edge of the circle in the dirt just three steps ahead of him and he rolled his body and slapped his right hand hard on the ground to bring himself to a bone-jarring halt. He slipped for a moment, his hand drifting perilously close to the circle’s edge, and managed to stop just short of the line.

As Grant righted himself, lifting his huge frame from where he had slid, he heard Domi bark out a single laugh. “Ha! You’re getting sloppy, old Mag man,” she told him.

Crouched low to the ground, Grant turned to look at the thin-framed young woman, his lips curling back in a snarl. She was clearly enjoying this rare chance to show off to one of her peers, but Grant was beginning to wonder how he had been talked into this morning sparring match.

Domi, like Grant, Kane and Brigid, had once been a denizen of Cobaltville, though her position as sex slave had been far less salubrious than that of the Magistrates and the librarian. But circumstance had thrown them all together, a little unit that made up the solid core of the Cerberus exiles together with Lakesh as their mission controller. These days, Domi was sleeping with mission control, but that was a different story altogether.

As a child of the Outlands, she was naturally a loner, used to relying on her own wits and often abrupt around others, making them feel uncomfortable. But now and then she missed true company, that inherent human need for social contact, and Grant and Kane had always shown nothing but respect for her despite her background.

Grant looked to where Domi stood in the center of the circle and he noticed Kane was now standing a little way back from the circle’s edge, over by the large doors to the redoubt. His eyes flicked to Domi once more, just standing there, waiting for his attack. Fine, he decided, you want an attack? You’ll get one.

Grant was a massive engine of muscle as he drove forward, swinging punches left and right as he closed in on Domi. She weaved back, ducking low, and swung her right leg out in a sweeping arc, attempting to trip the bigger man. The front of her calf slapped into the top of Grant’s heavy boot and just stopped, like hitting a solid metal bar.

Domi yelped in surprise, pulling her leg back and rolling her body out of the way of Grant’s pile-driver punches. Suddenly she was standing again, a blur of motion as she darted her outstretched hands at him, holding them flat, like blades.

Grant put up a rock-solid arm to halt her attack, blocking each blow between wrist and elbow as her hands flitted toward his face. He sensed the opening in her attack before he saw it, an old Magistrate instinct, and his right leg kicked out as he pivoted at the torso, dropping low to ensure that his foot made solid contact.

Grant’s kick slammed Domi just beside the breastbone, and she staggered backward, the wind knocked out of her. She looked down as she drew a calming breath, and saw that she was just one footstep away from the edge of the circle that she had marked out before Grant arrived.

“Not laughing so much now, huh?” Grant goaded as he centered himself and walked warily toward her.

“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling, “I’m still laughing on the inside.”

Grant stopped in his tracks, just outside of the range where Domi might reach him, and a wide smile broke out on his face. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

Domi thought for a moment and shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seemed the thing to say.”

Kane’s voice drifted over to them from the doors to the redoubt. “Blah-blah-blah,” he said, heckling. “Are you kids going to talk or are you going to fight? I came here to see blood, people,” he added, ensuring that they knew he was kidding by his tone.

Grant gave him a sneer before turning back to his tiny opponent. “You want to finish this?”

She nodded. “Ready when you are.”

Kane had stepped over to the edge of the circle, a little behind where Domi was trapped. He punched a fist into his hand and began counting them in. “This is it, people,” he announced, “Beauty versus the Beast. My money’s on Beauty there, but don’t take offense—I’ve known him a lot longer than I have you, Domi.”

“Har-har,” she responded, not looking back, taking a step closer to Grant. In a flash, Domi had spun her body, swinging first her left leg and then her right in Grant’s direction, repeating the action as he skipped back to avoid her kicks. Grant slapped her legs away from his face as he continued backward.

Grant timed Domi’s movements in his head, and suddenly his arm shot out and he grabbed her right ankle as it swung toward his face. Not expecting the move, Domi overbalanced and tumbled to the hard-packed ground, her momentum pulling Grant over with her.

Together, the pair of fighters slammed into the dirt, with Grant spinning to avoid crushing Domi’s birdlike frame beneath his massive build.

“You okay?” he asked her after a moment, letting go of her ankle.

Lying prone on the ground, Domi peered over her shoulder down the length of her body at Grant’s concerned expression. His vest was darker now, she saw, where sweat had pooled between his pectoral muscles. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she told him. “Thanks.”

Grant eased himself off the ground and stood over her, offering her one of his huge hands to help her up.

“Aren’t you going to finish me off?” she asked, confused.

Grant shook his head, pointing to the ground at his feet. “I stepped outside the circle when I rolled.”

Domi took his hand, a sour expression crossing her features. “Yeah, but you did that to avoid hurting me.”

Grant shrugged. “Still counts,” he assured her. “Besides, breakfast is becoming a nagging priority just now. Tough to fight on an empty stomach.”

Domi brushed herself down and watched Grant return to the redoubt and disappear into the darkness of the tunnel mouth. After a few moments, she turned to Kane, still standing at the side of the circle. “Did you want to see me?” she asked him.

Kane shook his head. “Nah, I just came out here to get some peace and quiet. Didn’t realize that fight club was in session this morning.”

Domi smiled shyly, the barest hint of color rouging her pure white cheeks. “You wanna fight?” she asked Kane after a moment.

Kane looked out over the plateau, watching as wispy cotton-candy clouds drifted slowly over the distant sky, before he reached for the top of his shirt and began unbuttoning it. “What the hell, why not,” he told her, tossing his shirt to one side. “But no pulling hair, okay?”

“I won’t if you won’t,” Domi promised him as she walked across to the far side of the dirt circle.