Shadow Box. James Axler

they were bound by a mutual respect as warriors. “Brought some friends for you to meet,” Kane continued, gesturing to Señor Smarts and Rosalia, who stood beside Grant, her jaw jutting at a haughty angle as she observed the albino woman.

      “This is Rosalia and the gentleman is called Smarts.”

      Smarts took Domi’s hand and brushed it lightly with his lips. “Enchanted, señorita,” he said, his eyes meeting hers.

      After the introductions had been made, the group headed back to the camp where Decard and his team were stationed. It was a simple affair, just a bivouac created from a couple of sheets of tarpaulin propped over a small area atop posts pushed into the sand. Once he was close enough, Kane recognized the posts that Decard’s crew had used. They were the slender silver rods that the security force of Aten used as their primary weapons. The long poles were tipped by V-shaped prongs, and they were capable of unleashing a charge of energy that could fell a man, knocking him into unconsciousness or worse, depending upon the setting employed by the user.

      The makeshift nature of the camp reminded Kane of the shantytown that they had just left on the outskirts of Hope. Two armed guards nodded in acknowledgment as Domi passed, leading the group beneath the slanted roof sheets. The guards were Incarnates, and both came from similar stock. They were sturdy-looking individuals, their skin a shining coffee-bean brown from the sun. Their clothing was identical—naked but for loosely woven white linen kilts threaded with golden wire, coupled with glittering collars of hammered gold that embraced their necks. The only thing to differentiate them were the unique adornments on their faces. Both men wore masks that entirely covered their heads, remarkable helmets carved of painted and varnished wood. The mask of the sec man to the left bore a fierce caricature of a crocodile, its long snout pointing down to the ground, its rows of teeth highlighted in white paint. The man to the right wore the mask of a bug, an idealized version of a beetle, with large eyes and pincers that resembled the drooping lines of Grant’s gunslinger mustache.

      As Domi led the way into the small, makeshift shelter, Decard got up from his resting position on the floor and called to them. The tent was lit by three small, oil-burning lamps that had been placed around the floor space. There were more guards inside, eight in all, and several had removed their helms and were dozing.

      Decard was a fresh-faced young man, about twenty years old, and with close-cropped, sandy-blond hair. He wore the armor of a Magistrate, a familiar black polycarbonate exoskeleton, and it added a sense of authority to his five-foot-ten-inch frame.

      Both Smarts and Rosalia backed away when they saw the Mag armor, but Grant was standing behind them, and Rosalia let out a quiet yelp as she bumped into his chest. “Nothing to get worked up about,” Grant told her quietly.

      On closer inspection, they saw that the Magistrate armor was lacking the red insignia that usually graced the left pectoral; it looked to have been torn from the outfit.

      Decard himself bore a friendly expression as he walked across the tent to meet with his old comrades. The man walked with a slight limp, favoring his left leg as he came over to greet them.

      “Hello, Kane,” Decard said, acknowledging the other Cerberus personnel briefly. “Glad you could all make it out here.”

      “What’s going on, Decard?” Kane asked, not a man for small talk.

      “I was on patrol three days ago,” Decard explained as he led the way to the back of the small shelter, “when I came across a group of Roamers. Just a family, refugees, I think, crossing the desert. They’d set up camp quite close to the city entrance, and I brought some men out here to shoo them away.” Decard looked at Kane as though hoping for approval.

      Kane understood what the man meant. Decard, like himself and Grant, may have retired prematurely, but he still had the old Magistrate instincts. In Decard’s case, he had been accidentally caught up in a conspiracy involving the welfare of new hybrids, and had somehow found himself on the run. He had landed on his feet in the hidden city-kingdom of Aten, California, where he had gone native and married into royalty. Decard had found a better life than most Magistrates, and his world was generally far more sedate than that of Kane or Grant. Aten treasured its secrecy, a community hidden away from the harsh realities of the world, and Decard had become the de facto leader of the Incarnates, the guardians of the city. He still made patrols around the city-kingdom, though he used his skills as a diplomat far more often than his handgun these days.

      Kane nodded, encouraging the man to continue.

      “I was doing a surveillance swoop around dusk when I came across one of the same folks,” Decard told him. “Only this time she looked like this…”

      Decard gestured to a figure crouching on the ground behind two standing, helmeted guards. As the guards parted, Kane saw a young woman with long blond hair, probably still in her teenage years, bearing the swollen belly of pregnancy. Her hair was damp with sweat, curtained over her eyes, and she rocked back and forth on her heels, her jaw slack. Drool oozed down her chin from her open mouth.

      As Kane stepped closer, he felt something nudge him and saw that Decard was handing him a flashlight. “Go on,” Decard urged him, “she won’t bite.”

      Kane leaned down and switched on the flashlight, pointing it away from the woman before turning it gradually to illuminate her clearly. She just crouched there, rocking back and forth, not reacting in the slightest to his approach. “You okay, ma’am?” he said.

      The woman seemed to be ignoring him. She just rocked, back and forth repeatedly. Now that he was closer, Kane could detect a low humming, too, the noise coming from the woman, not her mouth but pushed from deep in her throat and out of her nose.

      Kane reached forward with his free hand and made to tentatively touch the woman’s face. She didn’t flinch, didn’t move at all, and before Kane’s fingers met with her he turned back to Decard. “Do I need gloves?”

      “Hell if I know.” Decard shrugged. He shook off one of his gloves and passed it to Kane. “Use this if you want.”

      Kane took the Mag gauntlet and pulled it over his right hand before reaching for the young woman again. Crouching before her, Kane used the black fingers of the glove to stroke her hair gently from where it obscured her face. Beneath her mop of hair, as he had somehow suspected, her eyes were wide open.

      Her eyes were blank, pure white orbs, white on white, all color drained away.