LITMIR.BIZ

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his feet so as to make as little noise as possible. From the far end, where the vast laboratory stood, Brigid waited, TP-9 in hand, scanning the corridor and the doorway that led to the room beyond.

      Reaching the doorway, Kane held up his hand, instructing the others to wait but to hold their positions. There were definitely noises coming from the next room, people’s voices and the sounds of movement. Warily, Kane eased forward on silent tread and peered through the open doorway.

      The room beyond was roughly hexagonal in shape, approximately fifteen feet across, and with a ceiling that was much lower than the laboratory area, just ten feet above the flooring. Like the rest of the strange headquarters, the walls to the room appeared to be constructed of ice, but it was much darker than the other areas that Kane and his companions had visited, reminding Kane of snow turned to slush. Light came from overhead in a single beam that lit the center of the room. There, standing in the center on a pedestal, stood a glass cabinet, similar in construction to those that the Cerberus team had encountered in the room they had originally broken into. This one, however, had reinforced wooden struts along its edges. The cabinet held a single item—a knife. Kane guessed that the knife was fifteen inches in length, including the handle, and it appeared to be carved from stone. Even from this distance, Kane could see the writing along its blade, though he didn’t recognize the language itself. To one side of the blade, trapped within the glass cabinet like a fly in amber, a streak of darkness like a smear of paint seemed to hover in the air. As Kane moved his head, he saw the darkness glitter, like stars in the night sky.

      There were people in the room, too, a dozen of them. Although none of them wore a specific uniform, they all seemed to be of a type to Kane’s eyes. There were eight men and four women milling hurriedly about the room. One man was running a handheld scanning device over the glass display case, and several people were consulting laptop displays, running diagnostics as the information was fed to them. A tall woman was pacing the room impatiently, barking orders, while a broad-shouldered man watched her, shaking his head. Several armed guards stood to the edges of the room, looking uninterested in the whole affair, doubtless having already scanned the buried headquarters and found no one within.

      Kane realized with a start that these people had arrived here before the Cerberus team, and had either used or created a different entrance. Given the size of the Laboratory of the Incredible, and the snowstorm raging outside, it would have been easy to remain utterly unaware of any other intruders unless they actually crossed paths.

      “What about if we just break the cabinet, then?” the woman was saying, an irritated edge to her voice. She was tall—exceptionally so for a woman, almost certainly over six feet in height—with dark hair cut to fall just below her shoulders. She wore a formfitting outfit finished in matte-black leather, with red piping that accentuated her lithe frame. Kane could see a small pistol held in a holster at the rounded swell of her hip.

      “We’ll unlock it, Simona,” the broad-shouldered man said in a placating tone. He was dressed in a similar black outfit, and sported a holstered gun hanging low to his hip. His hair was almost entirely shaved, with just the dark hint of stubble across his scalp along with two plaits that trailed down behind his right ear, falling over his shoulder where their ends were clamped with two metal beads. “Calm yourself, there’s no rush.”

      “I just want to get out of here, Carver,” she said, stopping before him with her back to Kane and the doorway. “This place is…abnormal.”

      Standing this close, Kane saw that, like many tall women, Simona was strangely shapeless, with small breasts and only a slight curvature at her hips in the otherwise flat line leading from shoulder to ankle. It made her seem that much taller, and somehow more graceful as she moved, like a person designed by aeronautic engineers to reduce drag.

      “Heck, I didn’t think you’d scare so easy,” Carver said, his voice now rumbling with a cheerful tone. “Don’t tell me that wacky mirror freaked you out.”

      “It’s not fear,” Simona snapped. “Just a healthy desire for efficiency. The sooner we wrap up this op and get back to the Millennial Consortium HQ, the sooner we get paid, fed and off this fucking iceberg.”

      “You’re not really a winter person, are you?” Carver chided.

      “I’ve wasted three months in that damned tent, searching for this hole in the ground,” Simona growled. “I just want it to be over. Don’t you?”

      Reluctantly, Carver agreed.

      Standing a little way back from the doorway, Grant looked at Kane and raised his eyebrows as they watched the scene unfold.

      “Millennial Consortium,” Kane mouthed in response to his partner’s unasked question.

      Kane, Grant and Brigid had crossed paths with the millennialists on a number of occasions. Twenty-third-century scavengers, they were pirates who profited by salvaging old technology and either selling it to the highest bidder or using it to their own ends. Often, the millennialists would attempt to do both at once. The Millennium Consortium was a vast organization, with branches in several locations and the technology and resources to back up impressive operations the world over. In theory, the millennialists had noble aims: the furthering of humankind and a recovery from the sick days that had followed the downfall of humanity at the end of the nuclear ravages of the twenty-first century. However, in practice, Kane knew, they were a selfish organization, whose only true goal was power, a goal they would readily achieve no matter what—or who—stood in their way.

      Reluctantly, Kane stepped away from the doorway and, walking backward, made his way silently along the corridor, leaving Grant in place. At the far end of the corridor, Brigid looked up at Kane hopefully.

      “We’ve located the knife,” Kane told her, his voice low, “but there’s one hell of a complication.”

      Brigid raised one perfectly shaped, red-gold eyebrow.

      “Millennialists got here first,” Kane explained.

      “Damn,” Brigid spit. “How many?”

      Kane shrugged noncommittally. “How important is this thing? Be honest now, Baptiste.”

      “Why? Do you think you have a chance to snatch it?” Brigid asked.

      “I think they’re crap odds and we’re better off making a tactical withdrawal,” Kane growled, “but I’m willing to listen to counterarguments if you have any.”

      Brigid nodded toward the doorway at the far end of the corridor. “How many?” she asked again.

      “Twelve,” Kane said, “all of them armed.”

      Kane watched Brigid for a moment as the slightest crease appeared on her pale forehead while she thought. Then her eyes widened and she reached out to grab his arm, pulling him toward her.

      “I think counterarguments will have to wait,” Brigid said as the familiar sounds of gunfire shattered the quiet of the laboratory.

      Kane turned and looked over his shoulder. Grant was rushing toward him at full sprint, and the Sin Eater had materialized once again in the big man’s hand.

      “We’ve been spotted,” Grant shouted as he ran from the corridor amid a hail of bullets.

      Chapter 5

      October 31, 1930

      Isle Terandoa Naval Base, the South Pacific

      “Godkiller.” Abraham Flag repeated the word slowly, as though feeling its sharp edges with his tongue. “An ominous name for a weapon.”

      “Seems pretty weird to me, Professor,” Barnaby B. Barnaby said in his cultured New Haven accent.

      “It is hardly unprecedented to name a weapon,” Flag reminded his archaeologist friend. “Think of Excalibur, or Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer. There is a great symbolism to the naming of an item. Ancient people often believed that names were sources of immense power.”

      Little Ant was still poring over his notes. “But

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