Brigid nodded. “No problem. What button do I press?”

  “No buttons, I’m afraid.” Yuri smiled. “You see the pattern on the grid in front of you?” he asked as a backlit screen came to life before Brigid’s eyes. “You are now the launch mechanism, you understand?”

  She looked at the backlit screen. The pattern was an intricate swirl of blues and greens, with flecks of red and green scattered within it. A mandala, Brigid realized, similar to the one that had drawn her there. “You want me to…concentrate?” she asked hesitantly.

  “You are the launch mechanism, Brigid Baptiste,” Yuri stated again. A red light flicked on above his head, dull in the orange lighting of the cabin. “I think you had better hurry,” he added.

  “Company?” Brigid asked, focusing her attention on the mandala swirl on the glass plate.

  “It seems that the other soldiers have come back from their little jaunt,” Yuri said.

  The pattern of the mandala was intricate, but Brigid had almost memorized it already, her eidetic memory coming into play once again. “Yuri?” she asked. “What happens when we get back to the real world? I mean, it’s three hundred years since you had a body to return to.”

  Yuri shrugged. “I would rather not think about it,” he admitted. “I believe in your supraterrestrial threat, Miss Brigid. I believe in the Annunaki. And whether I am with you or not, I believe that the Death Cry will provide your ultimate salvation.”

  His words were sliding over her now, just distant noises as she plummeted into the deep trance triggered by the mandala.

  “Besides,” Yuri said as Brigid sank into the depths of her meditation, “what do I have left to live for here?”

  IN THE VAST, WHITE-WALLED room of the astral factory, the remaining Russian soldiers and technicians watched in amazement as the great bulk of the Death Cry shimmered before their eyes as though viewed through a heat haze, more liquid than solid. Two of the soldiers raised their Fedorov rifles and fired at the disappearing weapon. They were expected to protect it, and now it seemed that it was being stolen. Better that it be destroyed than fall into enemy hands, they decided. Their bullets cut through the air, but the Death Cry was gone. Only the scaffolding that had been built around its enormous shell remained.

  LYING IN THE SOIL AND GRASS, Rock Streaming thrust up both hands and wrestled the muzzle of Kane’s Sin Eater aside as he flipped his body like a fish trapped on dry land.

  Kane staggered, his toe leaving the warrior’s chest for a moment, and he stamped his boot down into the man’s leg lest he lose him again. Suddenly he was thrown from Rock Streaming, who had somehow used his grip on the barrel of the Sin Eater as a fulcrum.

  Kane crashed into the ground on his back and his breath rushed out of him. For a fraction of a second he thought that he had blacked out but he hadn’t. The blackness that encroached on his vision was a shadow, a colossal shadow of incredible magnitude, blotting out the sun in the sky above.

  Rock Streaming stopped battling to look overhead in awe at the massive object that filled the sky. It was incredible, almost too large to comprehend, a giant black cylinder with irregular bumps and protrusions along its vast length. It shuddered for a moment, fifty feet above them, stretching between the mountain peaks, somehow unreal, its image doubling and tripling until it finally manifested in its full, solid glory.

  The Death Cry had arrived.

  BRIGID’S EYES SWAM IN AND out of focus, the lit pane of glass that showed the mandala blurring and reforming for a few moments. She looked across to Yuri in the seat beside her and saw the glazed and terrified look in his eyes.

  “Did we make it?” Brigid asked, but he ignored her, staring ahead. “Yuri?” she barked. “Did we make it?”

  Yuri said something, looking at her then, but she couldn’t hear the words. The whole scene—the control room of the Death Cry, Yuri, the mandala—they were fading away, indistinct as passing clouds or memories of dreams.

  She was racing through the air then, weightless, like a wraith. She saw the mountains, Kane and another man looking up at her, at the looming shadow above. And she was falling, plummeting through the air. The grass came closer, the grass, the soil…

  Brigid saw the room, the little gray-walled box with the brass Cheka shield on the wall, the furniture pushed to one end, the carpet hanging from the pitons that Grant had hammered into the ceiling. And there, in the middle of the room, legs crossed and eyes closed, was a woman with red-gold hair and the trim, hungry build of a racehorse. The woman was familiar, the face from the mirror but inverted.

  And there were two other people in the room, close to the open door. A man that Brigid didn’t recognize was standing over Grant’s fallen body, swinging a vicious kick at her colleague’s face. The stranger was dressed in a shabby jacket, all strands of green and blue, and he wore a cylinder across his back.

  As Brigid watched, floating overhead, weightless, the man reached into the cylinder and whipped out a thin shaft of metal with a sharpened triangle at its end—an arrow. He drew back his hand in preparation to stab the helpless form of Grant through the eye, moving with savage determination.

  There was the blur of incredible movement then, as Brigid’s astral form dived back into her physical body, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  JUST AS RABBIT IN THE MOON brought the arrow down at the Cerberus warrior on the floor of the office, something hit him in the side and a woman’s hand grasped his wrist, halting the arrow’s movement.

  Shocked, Rabbit in the Moon looked around as he faltered toward the wall. The woman, the redhead who had been unconscious in the center of the little office, was awake, clutching his wrist with incredible strength, cold determination in her fierce green eyes.

  Her other hand swung around, connecting solidly with Rabbit in the Moon’s jaw, and he tumbled back, smashing his head into the wall behind him.

  He felt himself slide down the wall as the vision in his right eye turned once more red with blood. The woman had stepped away from him and he watched, unable to make his muscles move quickly enough as she swung one of her long legs at him, kicking him hard in the jaw on the exact same spot that her punch had connected.

  He lay on the floor, breathing heavily, his face a patchwork of pain, and watched as the woman turned her back on him and walked away toward the far wall. She knelt on the desk that sat flush with the wall and reached up for something that was hanging there.

  When she turned back, Rabbit in the Moon saw that she was holding a thick chunk of forged metal, a brass-colored plaque of some type, shaped like a shield. The way she held it made it clear that the shield was heavy.

  As the woman swung the hunk of metal at his head, Rabbit in the Moon dreamsliced out of Realworld, back to the Dreaming.

  BRIGID SWUNG THE CHEKA shield at the bloodied face of the tattooed man as he lay helpless on the floor of the office, but he winked out of existence the very second before the blow connected.

  Brigid almost tripped as the shield whisked through thin air, and she skipped several paces before reaching out to the wall to stop herself.

  A few steps across from her, Grant was wiping blood from his face as he struggled to get up off the floor. “Thanks for that, Brigid,” he said. “You couldn’t have timed it better.”

  “Oh, you could have taken him. I just thought I’d give you a hand.” Immediately after the words had left her lips, Brigid sagged to the floor.

  “You okay?” Grant asked as he got himself up to a kneeling position.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him. “My legs just…how long have I been sitting there like that?”

  “Nineteen, twenty hours,” Grant said, “give or take.”

  Once he had got himself to a standing position, Grant offered Brigid his hand and she took it gratefully.

  “Any idea where tattoo boy disappeared to?” she asked him.

  “Some kind of personal mat-trans,” Grant explained.

  “When all of this is done,” Brigid said as she hurried from the room, “I’m going to have to look into that.”

  Grant hurried after her, his face spattered with blood. “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “I came back with the weapon, the Death Cry,” Brigid told him. “It’s outside.”

  “Well,” Grant said, astonished, “nice job.” Then he stopped and turned back toward the lower end of the corridor.

  “What is it? Where are you going?” Brigid asked him.

  “Kane’s back there with…” Grant began.

  “No, he’s not,” Brigid assured him. “I saw him outside while I was flying through the astral plane.”

  Grant looked quizzically at Brigid for a moment, then he shook his head and laughed. “Do I need to understand what the hell you just said?”

  “No,” she assured him as she placed the polymer lenses over her eyes. “Let’s go.”

  With that, Grant and Brigid raced along the sloped corridor toward the strange ululating sound that was coming from its highest end.

  EVERYONE IN THE CERBERUS ops center stopped and stared at the satellite feed that was transmitting live from the Caucasus Mountains.

  “What the heck…?” Brewster Philboyd muttered as the huge black cylinder appeared from nowhere, cutting across the image like a thick vertical stripe.

  In two strides, Lakesh was at his shoulder and Donald Bry, Mariah Falk, Skylar Hitch and other members of the operating crew soon joined them, staring at the incredible construction that hovered between the mountains.

  “What is it?” Falk asked.

  “It just appeared out of nowhere,” Philboyd stated, not taking his eyes from the screen.

  Lakesh was already standing at the communications terminal, adjusting the controls and slipping a headset over his ear. “This is Cerberus calling Kane and Grant. Please respond.”

  IN THE SHADOW OF THE Death Cry, Rock Streaming threw his third successive punch at Kane. Kane held his ground, slapping the blow aside. He had the man’s measure; the warrior favored his right when he attacked, and Kane just had to time his defense while the tattooed man exhausted himself.

  As Rock Streaming tried to connect another unsuccessful uppercut, Kane’s Commtact came to life with Lakesh’s voice: “This is Cerberus calling Kane and Grant. Please respond.”

  Kane launched a left hook at the warrior before him, and the blow connected solidly with the side of the man’s head, forcing him to give ground. “This is Kane, Cerberus,” Kane responded. “I’m mixed up in something just now, over.”

  Kane waited the obligatory pause as his communication was bounced across the satellite network before he heard Lakesh’s voice once again. Rock Streaming dropped before him, trying for a leg sweep, and Kane leaped over it.

  “Our feed is back up and running,” Lakesh told Kane, “but we have a large UFO showing right above you, hovering over the mountains. Over.”

  “I’m outside,” Kane explained as he skipped backward to the strip of blacktop, putting a little distance between himself and his attacker. “I see it…”

  As he was speaking, Brigid’s fragmented voice interrupted him as she patched into the communication. “Lakesh, Kane. Brigid here,” she said. “What you’re seeing is the Death Cry…back with me. Over.”

  “Good work,” Lakesh responded, relief in his voice. “How are you feeling, Brigid? Over.”

  Rock Streaming swung a high kick at Kane’s head, and Kane weaved on the spot to avoid it before he cut in on Brigid’s health report. “People, we’ve got more immediate problems,” he explained, “namely a group of crazy tribal warrior types who seem to be able to disappear during battle. It’s really hacking me off. Over.”

  Even as he said it, he saw Rock Streaming wink out of existence. “Damn it!” Kane growled as he grasped at thin air.

  “Scans show a local field,” Lakesh explained over the Commtact, “similar to a mat-trans but utilizing some different sequencing—”

  Lakesh was still speaking, slipping into the scientific gobbledygook he loved so much, and Kane cut into his lecture, knowing full well that his words would take five seconds to reach the Cerberus redoubt and another five for the reply to come back. “That’s great, Lakesh. How do we stop it? Any ideas? Over.”

  AS KANE’S REQUEST CAME across the Commtact, Lakesh flushed with embarrassment and apologized. “We’ll start examining straight away, Kane,” he assured the man in the field. “Stand by. Over.”

  Lakesh snapped his fingers, attracting Donald Bry and other Cerberus techs to examine his monitor as he brought up the scan feed information.

  “One of them has just appeared,” Kane said over the headset. “No, make that two…three. Over.”

  “The data’s just coming through now, Kane,” Lakesh said as he watched the feed split into a component analysis. Lakesh’s field of expertise was the mat-trans, and the information before him revealed an interesting pattern.

  GRANT AND BRIGID HAD sprinted to the far end of the corridor, where the exit to the facility was located. Through the night lenses, they could see two figures waiting at the end, but as they reached them—two old, bearded men in ragged clothes—a third man winked into existence.

  Brigid recognized the tattoos on the man’s coffee-colored skin—very similar in style to the man she had pounced upon in the office a few moments ago, the one who had been attacking Grant.

  “Is there a whole army of these creeps?” Brigid asked as she reached for her TP-9 pistol, a reassuringly solid weight at her hip once more.

  Grant was raising the Sin Eater toward the strangers, ready to unleash a deadly attack. But before he had the chance, the group of three disappeared, and the strange moaning sound that had filled the corridor went with them. “Crap!” Grant cursed with a shake of his head.

  Brigid was rushing across to a room to the right, and Grant saw a pair of booted feet sticking out from the open doorway. It was Domi.

  When Grant reached them, he saw Domi lying flat on her back, her legs curled in the fetal position, hands clutched to her face. Brigid was on her knees beside the chalk-skinned woman, speaking gently to her.

  “What happened?” Grant asked.

  “Domi’s been hit,” Brigid said. “Look.”

  Grant leaned closer. He could see that Domi was breathing, and there was no blood, no signs of a wound. But the parts of her face that were visible around her hands looked stained.

  “Domi, it’s Grant,” he said. “What happened here?”

  Domi’s voice sounded bitter, her breath ragged. “Ass-hole had some kind of spray in his walking stick. Got me full in the face. Burns like hell.”

  Grant loosed a heavy sigh as he looked at his colleague lying in pain on the floor of the darkened facility. “Think you can move?” he asked. “Because, if not, we’re going to have to go on without you. Kane needs us.”

  Domi’s hands moved away from her face at last, and Grant saw what looked like a splash of paint across her eyes, nose and mouth. Beneath the dark lenses, her eyes were streaming with tears. “Go ahead and I’ll catch up,” she told him. “And if you see that old bastard, break both his legs to make sure he needs that walking stick for me, okay?”

  Grant nodded solemnly and led the way down the corridor toward the broken vent, Brigid just behind him. A little farther along the corridor, they found the young man, thin and reedy, who had whipped Grant’s Copperhead subgun from his hands. The man was lying in a pool of his own blood, his head lolled at an unhealthy angle and the majority of his throat had been destroyed by a single bullet. “Looks like she got a few hits in before they got her,” Grant acknowledged as he stepped over the corpse of Neverwalk.

  INSIDE THE CONTROL HUB of the Death Cry, Yuri’s hands rushed across the hidden controls, watching the warning light blink on again, off again, in that slow, repetitive manner that Russian technology favored. It gave the impression that the alarm was not urgent, but he knew it was.

  He glanced up at the dials above him, watching the counter trip over to zero, shouting a curse in his native tongue.

  Yuri could guess what had happened. A stray bullet from General Serge’s gun had to have damaged the controls of the firing mechanism. The Death Cry had been set on an irreversible countdown to unleash the scream. And Brigid, the beautiful woman from the future, had disappeared, called back to her own body as soon as she had entered the physical plane.

  Yet Yuri had not. No body to go to, he realized. He was in the future. Against all expectations, he had actually achieved some kind of immortality, or at least longevity, from his time in the astral factory. Only to have it snatched away from him with the Death Cry’s final shout, unless somehow he could stop it.

  The Death Cry was designed as a doomsday device. The whole system could be run by two people for the simple reason that everyone on board would die in its incredible blast.

  But, surely, Yuri’s brain told him, there must be a way to stop it. There must.

  KANE’S HEAD WHIPPED AROUND as his foe reappeared twenty feet away from him along the tarmac strip. Rock Streaming had been joined by two other men, both of them quite old, as far as Kane could judge, and Kane reported the reappearances to Lakesh over the Commtact.

  The one to the left was spinning an Aborigine bull roarer over his head, and its howling pierced the air, reverberating from the high sides of the mountains around them. The sound was familiar; it was the penetrating groan that Kane had first heard in the underground burrow when the strangers had appeared.

  To his side, the other man was holding what looked like a blade, but Kane knew now that it was a metal boomerang.

  Kane watched for a moment as Rock Streaming pointed at the Death Cry hovering above them, and the two old men nodded. The Sin Eater hung in his hand, and he wondered what his chances were of hitting all three of them before they disappeared. As he considered this, Lakesh’s voice piped up over the Commtact once more.