Death Cry. James Axler

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.

      As he stepped into the circle and dropped his body into a fighter’s stance, Kane felt the nagging doubts of the past few days ebb away. It felt good to be alive.

      B RIGID WAS BESIDE Lakesh in the ops center while Brewster Philboyd sat before them, tapping at the keyboard Lakesh had attached to the recovered computer. They had spent three days trying to decode the encrypted information, and every false lead had sapped just a little of their enthusiasm for the task.

      The question remained: what was stored on the hard drive and would it be worth this effort? Lakesh had one answer, and Brigid consoled herself that his was the wisest way to look at the problem. “It doesn’t matter what’s in the files,” he had assured her. “This is a scientific investigation to find out the truth—that there is something in the files.” In their ceaseless quest to find out what that something was, Brigid wasn’t entirely sure that any of them had gotten enough sleep.

      An astrophysicist, Brewster Philboyd was in his midforties and wore black-rimmed glasses above his acne-scarred cheeks. His pale blond hair was swept back from a receding hairline, and his lanky six-foot frame towered above many of the other scientists in the redoubt. Philboyd had joined the Cerberus team along with a number of other exiles from Manitius more than a year before, and had proved to be a valuable addition to the staff. He was the first to admit that he wasn’t a fighter, but Philboyd was as determined as a dog with a bone when a scientific or engineering problem crossed his path. He had stepped in to help with the Grand Forks database when he overheard the exasperated cries coming from Brigid and Lakesh on the second day of attempting to probe its files.

      “This stuff was really important two hundred years ago,” Brigid said, “but for pity’s sake, couldn’t they have put a time-sensitive release on the damn coding?”

      “There’s every possibility that it’s just as important today,” Lakesh said, chastising her lightly before turning back to the streams of code that whizzed across the screen,