LITMIR.BIZ

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a cybernetic upgrade, something like one of the mechanical suits his field team had encountered in Greece just months before.

      Through luck or skill, the millennialist remained on his feet as Kane’s Sin Eater spit bullets at him. Then, in a blur, the man lunged at Kane, leaving the ground in a jump that took him several feet into the air. There was no time for Kane to react as his opponent’s pointed right foot snapped out and drilled him in the side of the head.

      For several seconds Kane’s head reeled, and he felt as though he was falling. Even as he recovered his wits, Kane received the guard’s follow-up blow—a brutal kick that caught him in the ribs, rolling him across the floor.

      As Kane reeled from the blow, he squeezed his eyes shut and sought his focus, stilling his mind and ignoring the stab of pain in his side.

      A flurry of movement, and the millennialist was lining up a spinning kick with Kane’s head as its ultimate destination. Instinctively, Kane sent his Sin Eater back to its holster and reached above him with both hands. His hands grasped that approaching foot, which seemed nothing more than a blur, grabbing the ankle and snapping it backward. The attacker shrieked as he toppled back, his trapped ankle acting as the fulcrum to his plunge. The millennialist struck the floor solidly with the back of his head, and Kane released his leg and scurried forward, scrambling over his foe’s fallen body.

      Kane’s right fist pumped forward, smashing the millennialist across the face, caving his nose in a burst of blood. As the guard’s head reeled from Kane’s first blow, the powerful ex-Mag pulled his right arm back as though for another swing. As he did so, Kane unclenched his fist and commanded the Sin Eater back from where it had retreated in his wrist holster just seconds earlier.

      His eyes blurred in double vision from Kane’s first, thunderclap blow, the Millennial Consortium guard saw Kane’s fist approach his face a second time and saw the hard, black shape of the pistol forming within it like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. Then Kane’s hand seemed to flash in explosion as he unleashed the full extent of the Sin Eater’s unforgiving fury at his opponent’s head.

      Kane leaped back from the bloodied corpse, turning to see how his partners were faring. Brigid came running toward him as her own foe lolled against the shattered distillation equipment. Behind her, Kane could see Grant scrambling between worktables as more of the millennialist soldiers spewed from the far corners of the stadium-sized laboratory.

      “There could be a thousand treats on that hard drive,” Kane told Brigid through gritted teeth. “We can’t nab all of them. Now, let’s get up the stairs and make sure we’re alive long enough to grab the next one.”

      Brigid continued running toward the staircase. She was annoyed, but she knew that Kane was right. Besides, there was every chance that Cerberus could acquire the blade from the Millennial Consortium at a later date—albeit at a high price. Reluctantly, Brigid led the way up the spiralling stairs toward the upper level. Kane scrambled after her, and a moment later Grant joined them as they hurried up the circling staircase.

      “They’ve stopped shooting,” Grant said over the Commtact, relieved.

      Kane peered over the high, icelike banister as he ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. “But they are following,” he said.

      “Guess they want to make sure we stay away,” Grant proposed as the Cerberus trio reached the top of the strange stairwell. “You know we could pick them off from up here,” he added, glancing back down at the scrambling figures who were fanning out across the lab, checking every area with grim efficiency.

      Simona was bellowing fierce instructions, ordering her men to check everywhere to ensure that there were no other intruders in the buried laboratory.

      Shaking his head, Kane jogged along the balcony toward the doorway of the trophy room. “Let’s just keep moving before we run into their backup,” he advised.

      Ahead of Kane, Brigid was passing through the open doorway into the room at the apex of the buried Laboratory of the Incredible, heading back to the point through which the three of them had entered. As she moved into the trophy area, Kane’s words from just a moment before proved horribly prophetic. An arm snapped out from off to the side of the open doorway, grabbing Brigid around the throat and wrenching her off her feet before she knew what was happening. She swung the TP-9 pistol around and her finger jammed against the trigger, unleashing a spray of 9 mm, 158-gram subsonic bullets that sputtered around the brightly lit trophy room.

      Kane bolted through the doorway after their companion, and saw Brigid move so swiftly to one side that he thought she had fallen.

      “What the—?” Kane began as he heard the TP-9 spitting fire and saw Brigid being yanked backward, her heels sliding along the floor.

      Brigid had been grabbed by a large man dressed in a thick coat with a fur lining, Kane saw. The man was over six feet tall, built like a grizzly bear and wearing a scarf and goggles that obscured his face. A Calico M-960 subgun hung from a strap over his shoulder. The long-barreled automatic rifle featured two handgrips for better control of the field of fire, and it was the preferred weapon of the Millennial Consortium. Kane took it for a sure sign that this man was with the other people they had encountered in the glacial fortress. And that could mean something else, too, Kane realized, his heart sinking—there may be even more millennialists just waiting to pounce on them.

      TRAPPED IN THE huge man’s grasp, Brigid was struggling to find her footing, her boot heels scraping across the white floor as she was dragged backward away from the doorway. She finally unhooked her finger from the TP-9’s trigger, and the weapon went silent. She tried to gain purchase on the hard floor, but found that she was being pulled back so quickly that she couldn’t even regain her balance for a second.

      Kane raised his Sin Eater, stilling his mind as he took aim at the man pulling his companion across the floor.

      The huge millennialist dragged Brigid between the glass display cabinets of the room, swinging her this way and that, using her as a human shield to prevent Kane taking his shot. “Try it,” he growled, “and you’ll execute your girlfriend, chum.”

      Kane held still, the Sin Eater tracking the man’s movements as he continued yanking Brigid to and fro.

      “Now, why don’t you put your gun down,” the millennialist suggested, reaching for his swinging Calico subgun with his free hand.

      “Better yet,” Kane snapped back, “why don’t you put my friend down and we’ll settle this like men.”

      Just entering the doorway to the huge trophy hall, Grant’s voice came to Kane, urgency in its tone. “Kane, they’re coming up the stairs. Boxing us in.”

      Kane’s eyes flicked around the room, taking in the curiosities that stood silent vigil in their glass boxes. Trinkets and tablets that glistened beneath the miraculous lighting from overhead: bones and stones; here a chunk of masonry shaped like a wing, there a frayed rope wrapped around itself in a knot as thick as a person’s torso.

      Behind him, Kane heard the familiar sound of a Sin Eater as Grant blasted shots at the approaching enemies.

      “Kane,” Grant urged as the first of the millennialists reached the top of the double-helix staircase and dived against the far wall for cover. “Time’s run out.”

      “Not yet it hasn’t,” Kane growled, and the Sin Eater bucked in his hand as he fired a single shot at the millennialist holding Brigid.

      The bullet cut through the distance between Kane and his foe, slicing three long strands from Brigid’s red hair as it passed her and smashed into the face of the man holding her. Immediately, the guard staggered backward, his grip faltering around Brigid’s neck. Brigid didn’t need any further opening than that. She was already regaining and shifting her balance, struggling forward and flipping her assailant over her shoulders. The man crashed to the floor in a heap of furs and trailing scarf.

      “I’m fine, Kane,” Brigid called across the trophy room. “Let’s go.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned

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