The Familiar held a razor-sharp, double-edged knife, which he thrust at Jondy's throat. Barely dodging the blade, she caught the back of his arm, sweeping at his feet with her leg as she twisted his hand. The knife slipped from his grip as he fell, but Mitchell lost no time in delivering an immensely powerful kick to her gut.

The blow nearly brought her to her knees, but instead Mitchell launched himself at her as, propelling her onto her back. He cast about for the blade but couldn't see it, so instead opted for simple strangulation, but before his fingers could close around her throat, she kicked him once in the back of the head with her right foot, then took advantage of his momentary disorientation by planting her left flat on his face, crushing his nose with a satisfying crunch and forcing him off of her.

Finally having a chance to catch her breath after the kick, Jondy coughed and wheezed a little as she clambered to her feet, then, spotting the lost knife at the same time as Mitchell, kicked it into the pit as she flung her elbow back, catching him just under the ribcage. The ability to block out pain didn't negate the need for breath in his lungs, and the winded Familiar swung blindly as he stumbled off-balance once again.

"You wanna break for coffee?" Jondy asked politely. "I'm getting kind of bored."

His furious scowl doing nothing to improve on a smashed and bloody face, Mitchell launched at her with a vicious onslaught of fists and feet, but his superior strength counted for nothing with a target he couldn't hit. Dodging and deflecting his every blow, Jondy took easy advantage of her opponent's temper, not once missing an opportunity to dance quickly around his attacks and land one of her own.

Each hit she landed would easily have felled a human opponent all by itself, but Mitchell kept coming, through cracked ribs, kidney punches that would have taken down a bear, and knocks to the head so powerful there should have been a flock of brightly coloured twittering birds flitting around his head. His total lack of composure made him easy to hit, but after ten straight minutes, Jondy began to wonder if he'd fall down before she wore her fists down to the bone.

Mitchell's companions were very accommodating. They announced their arrival outside the building by dialling his mobile phone, giving Jondy all the warning she needed. Dashing for the stairwell at the back of the building, she sped upstairs with Mitchell in hot pursuit.

Not long after the pair had disappeared, two more Familiars entered the burial site, and upon finding nobody in sight and spatters of blood all around, ran upstairs towards the distant sounds of a continuing scuffle. They went past the empty second and third floors, and were on the fourth, headed towards the fifth, when the sound of breaking glass, followed by a heavy pounding on metal and the startled yells of people on the street, led them to a nearby window.

Down in the street below, Ben Mitchell, either unconscious or dead, lay face-up on the roof of the van the pair of Familiars had been driving. A blond girl had managed to wedge open the side door, apparently damaged when Mitchell had landed on top of the van, and now pulled him down off the roof and tossed him into the back.

"The keys are in the ignition," one of the Familiars said to his companion, as the girl hopped into the front of the van.

The pair hopped through the window, one after the other. One went in a single jump from the fourth floor window to the roof of the van. The impact led to a sharp snap as she landed unevenly on her feet, and she was thrown off as the van began to speed away. Her companion, having first dropped to a ledge halfway down from the window, yanked her to her feet.

"Your leg?"

"Broken ankle," she responded absently, hobbling into the middle of the road. A station wagon screeched to a halt less than a foot from her. The driver's expression of shock at the near-miss and relief of being able to stop on time turned to stupid surprise and fear as the Familiar drew her pistol and shot him between the eyes.

Her companion moved to the driver's seat and pulled the dead occupant out of the vehicle, dropping him unceremoniously on the road. Once inside, he reached up and grabbed a small photograph that was attached to the mirror, portraying the now dead driver with a pair of kids at an amusement park, and threw it out onto the ground beside the dead man. A few stunned onlookers, all ducking behind cars and mailboxes and any other cover they could find, watched in horror as the Familiars sped away from the scene.

As they took off, the woman grabbed her right foot and twisted it sharply. She gave it an experimental flex, and was apparently satisfied. Flicking her phone open, she dialled in a number, and received an answer on the first ring. "This is Morgan," she announced the man on the other end of the line. "We have a problem."

Having finally taken Mitchell down with a thick wooden beam to the back of the head, Jondy had removed the unconscious man's phone from his pocket before tossing him out the window.

All at once driving, dialling, keeping a lookout for cops or other pursuit and stealing glances over her shoulder to make sure Mitchell wasn't waking up anytime soon, she waited impatiently for an answer on the other end of the line.

"Mole here," came the eventual greeting, just as Jondy noticed a blue wagon weaving rapidly around the traffic behind her.

"This is Jondy. Logan said to call you if I was coming to Terminal City."

"You're on your way now?"

"Yeah, but I got a problem. A pair of Familiars trying to drive up my ass, and another one knocked out in the back of the van I'm driving. I won't be able to use the tunnel entrance."

She waited as Mole muttered a few choice oaths which matched her own sentiments exactly. "What direction are you coming from?"

"Hang on a second." Slamming her foot down on the accelerator, she covered her eyes with one hand as she crashed through a barrier, the impact shattering what had been left of the windscreen after Mitchell's sky-dive. "I just passed the checkpoint from Sector Two into One," she announced, glancing behind her to see that the cops at the checkpoint were shooting not at her, but at the Familiars following her. "I'll be cutting into Seven in five minutes. I oughta reach Terminal City in about ten."

"You gonna drive right through the crowds?"

"Only if they're in my way when I get there."

Mole hesitated slightly, then said, "I'll deal with it. When you get here you need to keep driving until you're inside one of the buildings and out of sight, or the National Guard will shred you to pieces."

"Right. See you in ten."

Just before she hung up, she caught a snatch of something Mole was saying. "Um, Alec? Something I probably should've mentioned earlier…"

National Guard Corporal Julian Richards was in love with his job. The constant drills and exhausting physical training gave him frequent opportunity to show that he could be better than anyone else. It was an opportunity he never failed to take full advantage of, with top fitness reports since his first day and a track record for the base assault course that nobody had come close to. He loved the fact that the Guard had put him through college, asking only that he spend two years afterwards doing what he did best and enjoyed thoroughly. And, as he had discovered on his last trip to Korea, to his great surprise, and what some would consider a worrying lack of concern, he had a profound fondness for the pink mist of an exploding skull, seen through the scope of his rifle.

Having studied Communications, Cryptography and Linguistics in college, Richards was self-tutored in four languages, currently studying Cantonese, and had an uncanny knack for deciphering complicated codes in without a computer to aid him. With his application to become a fully-fledged Army regular simply waiting the formality of final approval, he was considered to be on the fast track to Black Ops. As far as Richards was concerned, the fast track wasn't fast enough.

Of the hundred or so Guardsmen posted between the Terminal City perimeter fences and the nearest checkpoint, nineteen were people Richards had served with since graduating college; three snipers like him, in separate buildings to provide as complete a kill-zone as possible; two 'heavies', big guys armed with big machine guns, one of whom sat in the same apartment as Richards, an M249 SAW perched on the sill like Julian's rifle; and a pair of seven-man assault teams, sitting in an armoured bus not far outside the fence. Unlike Richards and the other watchers occupying windows around the perimeter, the guys in the bus were pretty much at their leisure; equipped, armed, and ready to spring to action in a second, but probably playing poker or reading until something happened or they were relieved in a few hours time.

It had been the same every day for the past ten, since Richards and his unit had been posted here the day after the bombing; twelve hours sitting in this same window, rifle to his shoulder, scanning the crowd for potential threats. On their third day, Richards had spotted a guy moving up and down through the crowd, from one end of the fence to the other, over and over for no apparent reason. When the guy had reached into his inner jacket for a pack of cigarettes, Richards had spotted the pistol holstered under his shoulder. A few quick words into his radio, and the man had been quietly removed from the scene by the police. No other incidents in ten days.

Since the day after the bombing and the Mayor's announcement that the National Guard were adopting a policy of 'shoot first, kill to avoid having to ask questions', the crowds gathered outside Terminal City had been fairly peaceful, until just a few hours ago, when the media had announced that at least one of the Transgenics who had apparently been killed in the bombing was in fact alive and well. The news had sparked what looked like the beginning of a full-scale riot, but the situation had calmed considerably when the bus had opened up to allow the teams inside to exit. A police lieutenant had spoken briefly through a loudspeaker to 'subtly' remind the demonstrators of the Mayor's announcement, and upon having the assault teams pointed out to them, as well as a mention of an exaggerated amount of snipers in the surrounding buildings, the approaching tsunami placard-holding, furious (and apparently unemployed, as they hardly ever seemed to leave) malcontents went back to just chanting and screaming instead.

This was nowhere near the most boring detail Julian Richards had been assigned, but after ten days, totalling one hundred and twenty hours of sitting in a window scanning the crowd, he was beginning to wonder if there was really any point to his being here. Even the guy with the gun had been released the same day he'd been pulled from the crowd, after he'd turned out to be a DOD agent, there to meet a colleague who was assessing the necessity of the extra Guardsmen.

Just as Richards began to wonder, not for the first time, how this agent had come to conclusion that they were in fact necessary, when all they had done even now was stand there and look scary, depriving the cops and other sentries of what would probably been a welcome opportunity to break the tedium by breaking a few bones, he noticed a few of the demonstrators were suddenly pointing towards the fences. Richards followed their hands with the scope of his rifle. From among the neglected, rusting, crumbling buildings, a group of shapes emerged from the shadows. Six Transgenics, all armed, entered the open space between the buildings and the fences, just outside the potential range of any objects the crowds might toss at them from over the fence.

Just as Richards was about to radio in, a slow, deep voice came over the frequency they were sharing with the police. "This is Clemente. We've received a communication from Terminal City. Two inbound vehicles approaching the fence, coming in from Sector One, East Checkpoint B. First vehicle is a white van, and has been designated a friendly unit, under attack by the second vehicle, a blue station wagon."

"Friendly to them," said Ted Wallace, the guy sitting in the window next to Richards, his machine gun trained on the Transgenics who'd appeared before them. "What does that mean for us?" He didn't say this into his radio, but the cop had apparently already checked for an answer.

"All National Guard sentries and police officer are to clear the civilians away from the fences along the approach vectors of the vehicles," Clemente continued. "Snipers are to engage the second vehicle only. Heavy weapons and assault teams are to stand alert, but do not engage without orders. ETA is…two minutes."

"We're taking orders from a cop?" cried Wallace.

"Politicians put him in charge after that thing with that guy White," Richards reminded him.

"Who, apparently is part of some wacko cult who sound pretty much exactly like the Transgenics!"

"But it was this guy White who was causing all the trouble. All any of the Transgenics have really done so far is look ugly and lie about a couple of 'em being dead," said Richards as he realised that second supposedly dead victim was among those in the courtyard below. An instant later, he'd disappeared from sight, crouching behind a couple of barrels. The others had vanished too, spreading out and ducking behind whatever was handy.

The argument was cut off by the sudden sound of gunfire. Leaning forwards, Richards sighted the approaching vehicles as they sped around the corner at the side of the apartment building he was in, the station wagon only a second the van, which had had surely seen muchbetter days. Both car and van made a beeline directly for the fence, where the last few demonstrators had finally decided it was a good idea to allow themselves to be pulled aside.

The other snipers took their cues from Richards, who was acknowledged as being the best among them. He waited until the van had crashed through the chain-link fence into the courtyard, then took aim, not at the hand that was protruding from the passenger window firing a pistol at the van, but at the front tyre on the same side.

He popped the tyre with one shot, and whatever control the driver might have maintained was lost an instant later, when three more shots were fired in almost perfect unison by the other snipers, taking out the back one. The car spun wildly out of control, the side with the burst tyres lifting off the ground. It slammed at an odd angle into an old dumpster, and began spinning sideways through the air. It bounced and continued to spin over and over, completing three full flips before finally coming to a stop in the upright position. By this time, the van had disappeared, lost behind one of the old buildings.

At first it seemed both driver and passenger were out for the count. Down in the courtyard, the Transgenics began a slow approach, when suddenly the occupants sprang to life. The woman in the passenger seat was first, and all at once the four snipers fired, as in one movement, she flung the door open and sprang from the seat, diving for cover at the back of the car. It made no difference that her new position wouldn't have protected her from additional sniper fire as it would have from the Transgenics. Richards tagged her right in the head, silently noting that he now had twenty-one shots, twenty kills. The other three all caught her in the chest, high-powered rifles just like the one Richards had used to remove the back of her skull leaving quite a messy corpse flopping to the ground.

In the second it took the snipers to take the woman out, the guy in the driver's seat had come to, left his seat and vanished. Richards didn't know whether any of the Transgenics had gotten a shot off, but at least they'd seen where he went; all six were bearing down on the dumpster the car had hit. Richards sought out the second target – and found him just in time to see him raise a UMP and aim it in his direction.

"OPEN FIRE!"

A second after the short burst of shots from the unseen Familiar, the National Guard went nuts, aiming not only for the Familiar as he again darted past Alec's field of vision, but at the Transgenics, too. It was one of the guy's leading the assault teams holding just outside the smashed fence who gave the order, and nobody wasted an instant in following it.

Lin was immediately to Alec's right and they both ducked for cover behind the smashed car; he caught her as she fell, pulling her out of the Guardsmen's line of sight. She yelled soundlessly through gritted teeth, having been hit no less than four times with fire from an assault rifle. Alec could see right away that two of the rounds had been stopped by her body armour, but one had punched through to what was most likely a kidney shot, while the last had strayed lower, hitting her full on in the hip.

"Hang on!" Removing the Kevlar vest as quickly yet gently as possible, he checked the wound; the bullet must have found a chink in the armour, as it had gone right through Lin to get caught in the back of the vest. He checked the angle of the exit wound, and assessed that it might missed the kidney after all, with a little luck. Lin seemed to agree, as when she started using words again, the words she chose were: "Sadistic pricks! Why the hip, of all places?!"

"If it makes you feel better, I think they were trying to kill us," said Alec sardonically, pressing his hands down of the wound. "HOLD YOUR FIRE!" he yelled over his shoulder, at the same time hearing Mole cry out, "What the hell did we do this time?"

"One of their people is dead," Joshua called out. "Heard it on the radio before they started shooting." Zack was crouched down behind the wall beside to him, ready to leap out and return fire as soon as he got an opening. Alec gave a slight head-shake, which was met with eyes widened in a 'Why the hell not?' expression, but he stayed where he was, lowering the weapon ever-so-slightly.

"Cease fire!" The call was repeated along down the line of Guardsmen until finally the last of them stopped shooting. Alec chanced a quick look around the back of the car, and was glad to see that nobody tried to blow his head off. Clementè was standing next to the armoured bus, berating the man who had given the order to fire. Alec couldn't make out what he was saying, but judging by the uncomfortable movements of the other Guardsmen, it was far from being a friendly conversation.

Alec quickly signalled the others, all of whom sprang from where they'd ducked for cover, weapons at the ready. One of the Guardsmen cried out in alarm, but Clementè yelled at him to shut up, then said something else to his C.O., to which both assault teams responded by taking up positions for covering fire. It seemed the cop was the only guy there who was still thinking about the second Familiar. While the others began to seek him out, Alec called over his radio for a stretcher. A pair of X-5s came into view immediately, hurrying towards him, when suddenly the one holding the stretcher dropped it and reached for his gun instead.

Nobody managed to get a shot off as the Familiar appeared – from where, Alec had no idea - and tackled him from behind, driving his face into the concrete. His teeth rattled from the blow, and the entire left side of his face went numb. He heard Lin yell something incomprehensible beside him, and as he tried to push himself up to take a swing at the Familiar, he was hit again, his face once again squished between his attacker's hand and the ground.

No sooner had he heard the click of the hammer on his attacker's pistol, than the weight holding him down was gone. Alec turned to see Joshua standing beside him, and the Familiar flying through the air, landing with a thud and a splash in a puddle twelve feet away. The instant he landed, Mole was standing over him, blasting him twice in the chest with the shotgun. "Problem solved," he grunted in satisfaction.

The medics were gently hoisting a very angry Lin onto the stretcher and carrying her away, as Joshua extended a hand to hoist Alec to his feet as Mole strode over, shotgun slung back on his shoulder. "Keep getting smacked around like this, those pretty-boy looks of yours are gonna be beyond salvage," Mole commented, while Alec held a sleeve to his bloody face. "You're gonna wind up lookin' like me."

"What now?" Joshua asked, nodding towards Clementè and the Guardsmen.

"Definitely not a good day for public relations," said Alec absently.

"Well, you're the one who went on National Television and declared open season on anyone who got in the way of finding Max," Mole pointed out. "Not sure we can blame those guys for being a little on-edge, 'specially when one of their guys gets his head blown off."

"I'll talk to them. You get the Familiar from the van secured, and tell this Jondy girl not to wander off. Where's Zack?"

"Followed the medics back inside."

"I'll need to talk to him, too. And you," he told Mole curtly.

Mole shrugged lightly. "Figured as much."

"Joshua, can you go to the House to meet Sketchy and Gottlieb when they get here? I don't know what Otto's story is, but he's been playing some kind of game behind our backs. Take his gun away if he's carrying one, and have him wait in the Command Centre." Joshua nodded and hurried off, Mole heading slowly in the same direction.

As Alec made his way towards the hole the van had made in the perimeter fence, he glanced over his shoulder, where a team of six X-4s were spread out on the nearby roofs, all armed with some of the few assault rifles those in Terminal City had managed to procure – even though they had arrangements with a couple of small dealers, who of course had no idea they were selling weapons to Transgenics, there was very little cash to buy with, and over sixty per cent of those living in the biohazard zone were unarmed.

As good with their rifles as the team on the rooftops were, Alec hadn't wanted to risk them firing into the courtyard for fear of friendly fire if the situation with the Familiars had required being dealt with in close quarters, and had therefore ordered them to stay out of sight. He also hadn't wanted to chance panicking the National Guard. So much for that idea, he grumbled silently.

They'd made absolutely zero progress in the search for Max. The guys sent out to Pike Street to try and get a good description – or better yet, a snapshot or video feed – of the people who'd grabbed her, had come back shaking their heads. Lydecker, for all intents and purposes, was a ghost. And Logan still hadn't produced any results from his analysis of the cameras from the Sector Checkpoints.

As if one major crisis wasn't enough, Alec now found himself dealing with more disasters than he could count on one hand. Off all the people outside of Terminal City, he think of maybe five who actually cared about what had happened to Max, whereas everybody else was just calling for blood because they'd lied about her death. And mine, he reminded himself, feeling thousands of eyes boring into him as he approached the fence. Logan had declared war on the Familiars, and had apparently not felt any need to clue anyone in on his plans. Terminal City now had to deal with a Familiar prisoner, and worry about a possible retaliation or rescue effort. Max's amnesiac, quite-possibly-psychopathic 'brother' had shown up demanding answers, and now Gottlieb was apparently running his own game, too. If for no other reason than to not have to deal with all this crap, he had to find Max and bring her home now.

No other reason? a snickering voice from nowhere asked. Are you sure?

Shut up!

Aw, come on, the voice goaded. It might help take a little of that load off your back, clear your head a little. Why don't just admit why you REALLY want her back?

His reverie was interrupted by Clementè, who was suddenly standing in front of him. "Is there any chance you're going to explain any of this to me?" he asked. He didn't seem angry, but clearly Ramon was feeling a lot of pressure from his bosses, and the National Guard looked far from happy to be taking orders from a police detective.

"I already explained why we lied about Max," Alec told him. "As for what just happened here, I take it you heard about my buddy Sketchy."

"Yeah, I caught both of your media debuts," said Clementè, screwing up his face. "I won't be sitting comfortably for a month after the reaming I got from the mayor this morning. Wanted to know why I hadn't warned him about any of this. I told him 'I'm sorry sir, I didn't know. Nobody inside Terminal City seems to be telling me a goddamned thing.'"

Alec jerked his head away from the eavesdropping Guardsmen, and walked back towards the car the Familiars had been driving. Clementè ordered the soldiers to stay where they were, and followed.

"I didn't know about the article," Alec assured him. "Neither did Max. The reason she went out of Terminal City yesterday was to talk to Eyes Only."

"Cale?"

"Yeah. But somebody was tracking her. Our guys who went to the market found her bike before the cops got there, and brought it back. There was a tracer on it."

"How's that possible?"

"Donald Lydecker; the guy who used to run Manticore," Alec reminded him as the cop tried to connect the name to what he'd read in Sketchy's article. "We thought he was dead until the day of the bombing. He called Logan, said he had information he'd only give to Max. Somebody working for him could've tagged her bike while they were meeting."

"What would he want with her?"

"I don't know. Bargaining chip, maybe, to help him get in good with his former employers again. But with the timing – the very day Sketchy's article came out – there's another possibility. He could be working for Sandeman."

"That's the guy who created all of you?"

Alec nodded. "I don't know what his story is. None of us have seen him since we were all kids back at Manticore, but Joshua and Max have been trying to find him for a while, get some answers on a few things."

"And all the rest of the stuff in the magazine… this cult."

"There's two of 'em right there," said Alec, casually pointing out the corpses nearby. "The truth as far as we know it is what you read. There's more, but it's not really my place to say."

"Something to do with their crusade to wipe out humanity?" Again, Alec nodded in confirmation, impressed with how well Clementè seemed to be taking all of this.

"I don't know how much I'm going to be able to help you from here on out," the detective said with a heavy sigh. "Your little stunt on the TV this morning upset a lot of the wrong people, and things were complicated enough before we knew about superhuman end-of-the-world cults living among us. The mayor was talking about severing ties to Terminal City; pulling the Guard out, and let whatever's going to happen, happen. I don't know if he's actually that stupid. He's got to know how it'll end if anyone tries attacking this place."

"If we get a lead on Max… I don't know if I can trust Logan. If you'd asked me before yesterday, I would've said he'd do anything for Max, whatever the consequences. But I'm pretty sure his little side-project is the reason this is happening. He never said a word to any of us about it because he knew Max wouldn't have let him dangle a friend of hers in front of these guys as bait. He nearly got Sketchy killed…"

"And he did get Deborah Litvack killed. Your friends' editor," Clementè added, seeing the blank look on Alec's face. "She was decapitated, and from what the guys who were on the scene told me, she went through a hell of a lot before whoever got to her finished her off."

"Tell you what," Alec suggested. "The van that drove in here had an unconscious Familiar in the back; most likely the same guy who killed this Litvack. Apparently these guys don't feel pain, but we're gonna test that theory. Whoever was pulling his strings would have to be another Familiar. If we get a name, I'll call you. Maybe you'll be able to do some digging on your end, confirm the details. After that, me and mine clean up."

"You're talking about conspiracy to commit murder," Clementè warned.

"I'm talking about getting to the top of the food chain and making some changes. If there's any truth to their endgame, we need to know more about these guys. How many there are, who they are, and what they're gonna do."

For a long time, neither man said anything. Clementè paced up and down, his eyes to the ground. The same guys who'd brought Lin inside to get patched up returned to pick up the bodies of the Familiars. There were more than a couple of guys inside Terminal City who'd been boning up on the study of genetics since escaping Manticore; blood samples would be taken for analysis. The didn't have the equipment for that kind of work, but maybe Sam Carr could help arrange access to the labs at Metro Medical for one or two guys who could pass for Ordinaries. The bodies would then be incinerated.

It was almost a full five minutes before Clementè stopped pacing. He seemed very unsure of what he was about to say, and his own surprise at the words that came out of his mouth couldn't have been clearer. "You get a name, call me." He walked quickly towards the fence, as if worried he might change his mind if he didn't move quickly enough.

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Chapter Six: Sandeman, Jondy and Zack tell their stories.