found there, shaping them to their own ends, for their own amusements. And when the toys had begun to lose their luster, the Annunaki had unleashed a great flood to wash away the remnants of this childlike race called humanity and begin anew. New forms of terrestrial subjugation emerged, and humankind was once again exploited by the alien master race.
Nobody really knew how long the Annunaki had shaped world events, and no one really understood why an all-powerful race would take so much time over what were, to them, little more than insects. And yet, the Annunaki had set events in motion to build up the Earth only to have the great civilizations destroy each other in another cataclysm, this time seemingly of their own making. Where water had failed the first time, fire took its place.
The planned nuclear holocaust had served a simple purpose, akin to leaving a field fallow so that the crops could be better harvested in the next cycle. The small percentage of the population that survived that fateful day in 2001 reverted to a state of savagery that ensured only the very strongest survived.
Two hundred years after that first nuclear strike, the Annunaki had reappeared as the overlords, reborn in new bodies formed from the chrysalis state of a mysterious ruling elite called the barons. As far as Kane could understand it, the whole trick had been pulled through a computer download; an organic computer on a starship called Tiamat found orbiting Earth, utilizing vastly superior technology to regenerate the godlike Annunaki pantheon. But for all intents and purposes, it was just another file download, a saved memory opened and accessed once more.
And working with Brigid and Lakesh had taught Kane that one file download meant that you could do another. And another and another and another. Tiamat had taken a crippling hit during a recent squabble between different factions of the alien Annunaki, and their tight grip on the affairs of Earth seemed to be relenting, but Kane suspected—as did all of the Cerberus exiles—that the chances were good that a backup file of Annunaki personalities was just waiting to be downloaded. The threat had abated temporarily, but the war was far from over.
Grant was right. He had Shizuka, the beautiful leader of a society of samurai warriors called the Tigers of Heaven who inhabited Thunder Isle in the Pacific. She was a noble warrior, every bit as brave and formidable as Grant.
And who did Kane have? Who was his fight for?
“The hell with it,” the ex-Mag muttered, turning toward his own quarters to take a hot shower to loosen the kinks in his muscles. He didn’t need to hang a face or a name on the person he was saving. He was there to save humanity, there to save himself and others like him. It wasn’t a war; it was basic survival.
A S L AKESH ATTACHED a new keyboard to the recovered computer in the ops center, communications expert Donald Bry, sitting several seats across from him, thought he saw a quick flash of code whip across the monitor at his workstation.
A round-shouldered man of small stature, Bry wore a constant expression of consternation, no matter his mood, beneath the curly mop of unruly, copper-colored hair. Bry was a long-serving and trusted member of the Cerberus crew, acting as Lakesh’s lieutenant and apprentice in all things technological.
Bry leaned forward in his seat, peering at his computer monitor, waiting for whatever it was to reappear. His monitor was linked to the Keyhole communications satellite, allowing Cerberus to remain in touch with field operatives and to pass information to them as required.
As he watched the surveillance image with thermal overlay taking up the main window on-screen, he urged whatever it was that had flashed up to reappear. When nothing happened, he began typing frantically at the keyboard, then slid his chair a few feet along the desk to review the past forty seconds at a separate monitor to his left.
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