The storehouse of vehicles and weaponry alone had to be secured to prevent bandits from suddenly expanding their capability beyond those of their traditional victims.
“So, lizards to the front, stone men to the back and a hungry swamp all around,” Rosalia said. “Can’t say you don’t know how to impress a girl, Mag Man.”
Kane’s lower lip twitched, as if the smile her quip had inspired had hit the brick wall of reality.
This was not going to be fun and games. Kane and Grant no longer had the backup of Cerberus redoubt, and Rosalia, despite her fighting ability, was not capable of the same kind of brilliance that Brigid Baptiste could provide.
Outnumbered, hunted and cut off from their usual support, the outlanders returned to the boat, each oar splash bringing them closer to the dangerous mysteries within.
Chapter 2
Domi could tell that something was in the air as they got closer to the half-buried city in the sand. Somewhere beyond what was once named Las Vegas lay a sprawling facility, heavily guarded and shielded on all sides by nothing but inhospitable desert. The feral girl had been kept there once as a prisoner, taken along with Kane, who was pressed into stud service for the genetically deteriorated hybrids in the months before the barons’ ascendance to the demonic Annunaki overlords. It was there that Domi had overcome her hatred and bigotry toward hybrids, learning that the actions of a few powerful leaders did not paint the total picture of the whole race.
While they were barons, the nascent overlords were cruel and petty, but their health depended on transplant surgery and blood transfusions from unwilling donors. Now the reptilian giants sneaked through the shadows of the world, their minds and bodies complete but their support system shattered with the destruction of Tiamat, the living space leviathan who had awakened the genetic coding within the barons and their Quad V hybrid minions alike.
Domi remembered rows and banks of young hybrids, babies actually, soft and vulnerable, so fragile that they were placed in lexan boxes in sterile, airtight rooms lest an errant microbe strike their nonexistent immune system and kill them where a normal human would shrug the infection off after a few days of sniffles. Domi herself had known the hardship of a less than optimal physiology, though she didn’t think of it in terms of biochemistry, anatomy or genetics. She was an albino, so her fair skin was prone to burning unless she kept herself wrapped, and her ruby eyes—so keen at seeing in the dark—needed to be hooded by a ball cap and sunglasses lest the brightness burn out her pupils.
While she could have made use of a shadow suit, one of the high-tech field uniforms worn by Cerberus personnel, the skintight, advanced fabrics would stick out. Domi already had enough trouble, being a tiny, slender albino traveling with an enfeebled, aging Lakesh. The shadow suit would attract too much attention, something she couldn’t afford when the elderly scientist was slowly losing his brilliant faculties as well as his physical vigor.
It was little things that Domi noticed. Even the mind that had endured centuries of existence and treachery under the barons was slipping, memories fading after only an hour, and he grew tired far more quickly than before.
They looked like prey out here in the desert, a hunter-plagued landscape of cold-blooded bandits, robbers, psychopaths and other killers. Domi knew that there was little she could do to make herself seem larger and stronger, even though she was one of the deadliest fighters who called the Cerberus redoubt home. Behind her wraparound shades, her ruby eyes swept the desert, looking for signs of trouble. Stuffed in a tied-off belt around her hips was a powerful, small-framed .45 automatic, and on her denim-clad calf was a long, wicked fighting knife. She had a backpack with water, food and extra supplies for the long journey, and cradled in the crook of her right arm was something she’d rarely carried, though she’d trained with it.
Domi, through the redoubt’s supply stores, had access to hundreds of weapons of all manner and make. Domi was more feral than tame, and while she was deadly with the semiautomatic Detonics .45 in her belt, the hand blaster wasn’t something she’d need on a long, dangerous loop through the desert. Crucial was something that could reach out across the sands and take down attackers long before they got too close. Because of that, she had a Winchester Model 70, in 7 mm Mauser. The choice was simple for Domi, who had seen fellow outlanders in roving bands dealing with human problems and meat acquisition with equal ease using this caliber. While she’d have to adjust for rise and fall with a .30 caliber, like the .30-06 or the 7.62 mm NATO, the 7 mm shot flat, making it perfect for long-range work.
At close range, the 7 mm would smash through a human torso like the horn of a rampaging bull, something she’d also been familiar with, having seen raiders dropped with their rib cages crushed to splinters when hit at only a few yards. Domi had a box of one hundred rounds in her backpack, as well as spare rounds stuffed into a collar wrapped around the rifle stock, and a few more stuffed into belt loops. There were five in the rifle’s magazine, and Domi had learned long ago that it wasn’t the number of bullets you threw at a problem as much as it was the shots that stuck to an enemy. She wouldn’t spray as fast as she could shoot, and once things got even closer, then it was time to let her Detonics Combat Master speak in its earthy bellow.
“What’s happening?” Lakesh asked. Like her, he was wrapped head to toe against the desert sun, a loose hood drooped over his evermore gray hair. His blue, transplanted eyes looked across the horizon that Domi was watching.
“Nothing,” Domi answered. “Time to sit and rest. Have a sip.”
Lakesh glanced at her, his full lips turning downward in a frown. “You don’t have to baby me, love.”
The albino girl caressed his cheek, soft and wrinkled, and managed a smile. “In the desert, remember?”
Lakesh managed a snort through his large nose. “My mind isn’t completely addled.”
“Keep your strength up,” Domi urged. “We’re almost to the city, and who knows what’s waiting inside there.”
Lakesh nodded. “How long have we been traveling?”
“Couple days,” Domi answered tersely.
“There’s trouble,” Lakesh muttered. “I know you.”
“Didn’t say you for—” Domi began.
“I mean, I know you drop unnecessary wordage when you’re worried about something,” Lakesh said. “Under stress, especially ready for combat.”
“No fight yet,” Domi promised. “But it’s quiet. Too quiet.”
Lakesh took a deep breath, then glanced down at the rifle she cradled in her delicate-seeming hands. He reached out and rested his fingers over hers. “Why did we come here?”
“Fix your tangle brain,” Domi said. “Might find some one.”
“It was a year or two ago, right? Surely they abandoned Area 51, especially with the ascension,” Lakesh said. “Why make any use of a facility for breeding hybrids when—?” He paused and winced. “Tiamat is gone. Right?”
Domi nodded somberly. “Happened a year back.”
Lakesh’s brow wrinkled. “I wasn’t sure.”
“Remember old things pretty good. Now, more fused out,” Domi muttered.
Lakesh sighed.