Mara leads the way down the silent stairwell, and we do our best to keep quiet as we descend floor after floor. The jittery lights and stained walls remind us we're in the filthiest of the Ten Domes. Which doesn't make sense, when you think about it. Why wouldn't these people keep their dome as clean as Dome 1? Unless this is intentional—their way of showing appreciation for the government assigning them waste duty. In that light, the grime is almost respectable.
As we arrive at each floor, Mara steps into the hallway and gives it a quick scan for life signs with her visual augments. Then she shakes her head at us, and we continue downward.
I could search every floor below us in the time it'll take to descend the next flight of stairs. I whisper as much to Luther, who reminds me that this is Mara's world, and she's calling the shots.
Dome 1, city of the future, may be Mara Bishop's world. This desolate building? It's what I've been used to since All-Clear: searching ruins.
So I blast downstairs in a blur of speed that sends Luther, Bishop, and his daughter staggering against the wall of the stairwell, and I hurl myself up and down the hallways of every floor, busting doors open and finding nobody behind them—
Until I reach the second floor.
Halfway down the hallway, a door stands open. Inside, I find the dregs of what may have been the swankiest party in town. Half-drunk glasses, half-snorted lines of dust abandoned in great haste. Chairs and tables overturned, knocked over by a stampede of revelers.
A holographic wall glitches in and out of existence. Acting like a mirror one second to expand the room's size, then revealing a hidden chamber where a plasteel chair sits alone. Broken restraints and a pool of blood lie on the floor.
Mara storms in glaring at me, but her weapon is down at her side.
"Nobody here." I shrug.
"I can see that. And I thought I gave you a direct order."
"I don't take orders from you, Commander. We were wasting time. Now we know the entire building is deserted."
"You checked the first floor?"
Right.
I blast by her in a blur of speed and return a few seconds later. If there were any hairs on her head, they'd be waving crazily right now.
"All clear," I report with a crisp salute.
"Whose blood is that?" Sergeant Bishop steps past us into the semi-hidden room.
Mara scans it with her ocular implants. "Erik Paine. One of the Twenty." She faces her father. "Any further communication from Drasko?"
He shakes his head.
"Then we return to our rendezvous point," Luther says, nodding to himself. "Drasko knew to meet us there if all else failed. There's nothing to be done here."
I'm about to agree, but that's when I'm hit with a pulverizing force, and I drop to the floor against my own volition. Pinned there by some kind of energy field that burns my nerve endings when I try to resist. Glancing around, I find Luther, Bishop, and Mara in the same predicament.
So we were led here. Into a trap. That's just awesome.
"I had three bartering chips, and now I have four more." An unfamiliar voice and a pair of hard-soled boots approach us.
Was there another hidden chamber behind a fully functional holographic wall? Strange that Mara's augmented vision didn't pick up on that. High-end black market tech, I guess, designed to fool the best of the best.
"It's raining opportunity in Dome 10 today!" The languid voice chuckles while the gravitational field encapsulating me rises from the floor, carrying me right along with it.
Immobilized, I drift toward the room's rear wall where I dangle upright, suspended above the floor. Luther, Bishop, and Mara join me. We face a solitary figure, tall and broad-shouldered, with a spiraling tattoo covering most of his pierced, pale face. He wears the standard slicked-back hair and armored faux-leather suit of a fellow who prides himself on being the very dangerous sort.
"Who are you supposed to be?" Mara grates out. Apparently, even speaking is unpleasant while restrained by this field. Good to know.
"I am your opposite in every way, Commander Bishop. You embody the rule of law, the Chancellor's iron fist, while I am Eurasia's nebulous shadow lurking in the deepest dark, always just beyond your reach. I am everything your society doesn't allow itself to be. I am crime. I am disobedience. I am terror. I am treason."
He should add wordy to the list.
She strains to raise her weapon, grimacing with the effort. She manages to bend her elbow, her finger curled around the trigger. "I've heard of a low-level gangster named Trezon operating in this area. Heard he's almost as ugly as you."
He raises his hand, and I notice the device he's holding. It looks like a chrome baton, maybe thirty centimeters in length. He points it nonchalantly at her, and she flattens against the wall with a short cry, her weapon forgotten.
"What do you want?" her father demands.
"The famous war hero, Sergeant James Bishop!" Our far-from-gracious host grins, revealing a mouthful of pristine teeth. Almost have to respect anyone these days with a penchant for dental hygiene. "So glad to see you're alive. And I do apologize for interrupting what I'm sure has been a very heartfelt family reunion. But you see, a certain situation has come to light. Mainly due to a sorry excuse for an actor showing up on my doorstep and trying to borrow a few EMP grenades off me. As if I run a charity here! And if that wasn't bad enough, then his little girlfriend shows up, followed by a damned security clone that abuses half my clientele and scares everybody off before whisking her away." He shakes his head, glowering at the memory of
