The Slayer had wanted to return to Denver early today, so Ross and Philips were just in time to greet Jessie, Darren and Deep on the helicopter pad. Ross was almost skipping with excitement now that the others had arrived from UAC Switzerland. He could hardly wait to introduce the Denver ARC to his friends (and Darren).

"C'mon, guys," he said without preamble. "Come meet the ARC operatives."

Back in the control room, Oppenheim seemed to notice Ross's eagerness, and suppressed an indulgent smile. "Formal introductions, please, Mr. Friedmann."

"Certainly, sir." He gestured to the blonde woman on his left. "This is technician Jessandra Gump. She prefers 'Jessie'."

"Do not call me Gump," Jessie warned them in an incongruously cheerful voice. "Ever."

"Jessie is the reason the Multinational Space Station survived that meteor shower back in 2146. She can fix anything electronic, with minimal supplies."

Jessie slugged him in the arm, almost making him stumble. "Aw, shucks, Friedmann. You're gonna make me blush."

The ARC's programmer Martin seemed to be blinking an awful lot. Jessie was a stunningly beautiful woman, and an incorrigible flirt. A lethal combination. Fortunately Ross had gotten over his infatuation with her more than two years ago, and she'd become his closest friend, save for Philips.

"You all met John Philips this morning –"

"Hey, again." The physicist gave them a friendly Remember me? wave.

"Darren Wright, our drone pilot –"

"Yo." Darren waved a casual hand and tossed his bleached-blond hair. It was meant to make him look like a surfer, but he couldn't quite achieve that effect without a tan. Or a surfboard. Or muscles.

"Darren, stop trying to bring 'yo' back. It's not going to happen." Ross pointed to the last newcomer. "And here you have Sandeep Ram, Research and Development specialist. If you're looking for outside-the-box technology, he's your man."

Sandeep nodded pleasantly. "Happy to be here." His snow-white grin always made you feel like he was genuinely glad to see you. The ARC staff smiled back.

"Jessie, Darren, Philips, Deep: I'd like you to meet Director Oppenheim – no, not that Oppenheimer – linguist Vera de Jong, programmer Martin Mixom – yes, that Mixom – and communications specialist Catherine Charbonneau." Ross decided not to add 'Yes, that Charbonneau.' Most people wouldn't guess her lineage from her surname unless Catherine chose to spell it out for them. It wasn't his information to disclose. Unless she kept stealing his snacks. Then everything would be fair game.

"It's my pleasure to finally meet you all –" Oppenheim began.

"When can we see The Slayer?" Darren interrupted. "Hayden said he was here. Gettin' kinda impatient."

"I believe you are laboring under a misapprehension, Mr. Wright –" Oppenheim started to explain.

"It's Doctor Wright. I have a PhD in Aerospace Engineering, thank you very much." His attitude said he would have been snapping his gum if he had any.

Ross gave him a disapproving look. "Everyone has a doctorate here, Darren. It's redundant to go around calling each other Dr. This and Dr. That."

"Everyone except you, buddy. You've been expelled from five graduate programs."

"Mister Wright." Oppeheim was no taller than the average person, but he suddenly appeared to loom high over the drone operator. "You are here by invitation only. If you disrupt my operation, you will be on the first aircraft back to Switzerland. Or, the first ground convoy out of Denver." That last one was practically a death threat. Nobody traveled by ground if there were any other way. Oppenheim's blue eyes seemed to glow. "Do not make me regret taking you in."

"Uh, yes. Yes, sir. 'Mister' will be fine."

"Good."

Ross felt renewed hope that the director would be able to wrangle Darren's immature personality as well as Hayden had. The drone pilot needed a firm hand or he became an obnoxious frat boy within a day or two.

"The Slayer is a specialist who comes and goes as he pleases. Details are extremely top secret. Even high-level staff like yourselves are on a need-to-know basis. If anyone with clearance below White Diamond asks for details, you know nothing. The fewer eyes and ears, the fewer leaks to the Cultists. All you need to know for now is that The Slayer is a supersoldier based out of Denver, and he's building a Slipgate at White Sands. The four of you will not be interacting with him very much. If you do see him coming, get out of his way. He doesn't brake for pedestrians. Ross, please show Jessie and Darren the drone hangar and then get them hooked up to the remote control console in here." Oppenheim pointed to one of the quarter-circle desks that made up the semi-circle rows of consoles facing the giant screen at the front of the control room. "Martin, load the coordinates for the first dig site into the console before they get back."

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, sir."

"Catherine, please stress-test the satellite connection for our meeting tomorrow. It's been postponed, so you're getting that extra time you wanted."

"Yes, sir."

"Vera, please double-check Martin's selected dig site to make sure the symbols will be disrupted just enough that the summoning circles won't work, but not so much that the enemy can easily find the flaws."

"Sure thing, sweetie." Being in her late eighties as she was, and an irreplaceable asset because of her talent with rare languages, Vera got cut quite a lot of slack by upper management. That included wearing fuzzy sweaters with felted kitten decals over her uniform and calling the director cutesy names.

"Mr. Ram, Mr. Philips, follow me and I'll show you to the labs."

Oppenheim strode off briskly with Philips and the still-smiling Deep. The R-and-D expert got adorably excited by new toys.

"What a jerk," Darren griped. "He needs to work on his people skills."

Jessie tisked at him. "Darren, don't be an unskippable cutscene. He's your new boss, and you interrupted him the very first time he started talking to you. If anybody was being a jerk, it was you."

Darren mumbled disagreements under his breath all the way down to the drone hangar, but seemed to be considering Jessie's point.

After bringing Ross up to speed on the developments in Switzerland, Jessie asked cheerily, "So what is it we're doing, Ross?" She winked at a workman touching up the paint around the hangar door – which The Slayer had kicked down several weeks ago before they gave him Black Diamond clearance – and the guy grinned like he'd been hit on the head with a cartoon hammer. "Why does the Denver ARC need a drone pilot and technician?"

"You, my fine friends, are going to mess up the symbols on a planet-wide pentagram so we don't get sucked into the Hell dimension."

"Shit," Darren swore softly.

"Yeah."

"Wow," Jessie said. "That's … wow. No wonder everything around here is classified. People would panic if they knew."

"Can't panic if you're already panicking, Jess," Darren informed her.

"There's constant anxiety, and then there's elephant-stampede panic. Anxiety can be managed. Panic will have people killing each other over half of a turkey sandwich."

Ross interrupted before they could get in one of their arguments where Darren got under her skin and she called him lame insults she thought made her sound clever, like "embodiment of a hangnail" or "stealth Lego", until they both stomped off in a huff.

He gestured grandly to a very small camo-colored drone with something flat attached to the underside. "Behold, Darren: your anti-summon weapon."

"A digging bot?" He sounded disappointed. Back in Switzerland, he'd been piloting much larger drones that dropped cluster bombs. "People use these to plant tree saplings, Ross."

Ross explained, "The symbols Oppenheim mentioned? We need to mess them up by adding more bits to the enemy's trenches. Slight alterations that will be hard to find and fix. The drone's got to be small enough to go unnoticed while you're doing it. I won't lie, it's going to be slow, delicate work, but it is crucial. I cannot stress enough how bad it would be if we got pulled into Hell and/or our planet cracks in half."

"Game over," Darren said.

"Adiós, muchachos," added Jessie.

"Exactly."

Darren clapped his hands together. "Well, in that case: let's save the world with a sandcastle shovel, my dudes!"

"Stop trying to bring back 'my dudes'."

"You know what's already back, Friedmann? 'Kiss my ass.' "


Vincent had set up a little speaker that ding-donged like a doorbell whenever someone touched the external door button. Hearing it go off, Lizzie looked up from her gardening with a delighted smile. "He's early."

She dropped the trowel, stripped off her gloves and was about to jog to the pressure doors when Vincent called in warning, "Lizzie."

She halted, only half-facing him. "Yeah?"

"We don't know that it's him," Vincent said patiently. "We haven't checked the camera yet. Just because Ayers hasn't told his company where he goes every night doesn't mean one of them couldn't get curious and follow him. Be. More. Careful." At her apologetic wince, he added more gently, "Please."

"You're right, you're right. Sorry, Vin."

"And check for the claw marks if you can't see his face. That rig is custom, sure, but his co-workers might have something very similar."

"Got it."

She came prancing out of the house again, followed by Charlie. "It's him! I'll go get him."

Vincent caught the sturdy little dog by his collar so he couldn't follow Lizzie outside. Charlie barked and yipped with excitement, but Harry slept like a rock and the noise wouldn't disturb his afternoon nap.

By the time Lizzie let Ayers in from the decon chamber – which had run out of decontamination spray a while ago because of all the foot traffic and was now just misting them with diluted rubbing alcohol – he'd removed the headgear and was combing his helmet hair into a presentable shape with his fingers. Lizzie thought the tousled-hair look really suited him, and was a bit disappointed when he smoothed it down again.

His default grim expression changed by degrees to a slight smile. Which then began to morph into a self-satisfied smirk.

She realized she'd been standing there silently with a huge grin on her face.

"I should be saying words!" she exclaimed. "Sorry! Sorry about that! Come on in!"

He watched her from the corner of his eye as he passed, looking a bit smug if she wasn't mistaken.

'Get it together, Khalid,' she scolded herself internally.

"We're finishing up the vegetable planting in the raised garden beds," she explained as they traversed the half-dozen chambers to the main cave. "But Vincent has a project for you, if you agree."

He nodded amicably. I am.

As soon as the internal doors hissed shut, Vincent released Charlie, who sprinted full speed at Ayers and launched himself like a missile. The merc stepped slightly to the side and caught the dog like a football, spinning around to disperse the dog's momentum. Charlie yipped happily and licked Ayers's chin.

Ayers sauntered toward Vincent in the vegetable garden under the special grow-lights, ruffling the exuberant little dog's fur as he went. Lizzie followed behind.

The back of his neck looked really nice. Muscular and smooth, one of the few places on him that didn't have scars, with dark hair swooping together in a perfect little V at the base of his skull.

'How does he have a handsome neck?' she thought incredulously. 'How is that even a thing? Who walks around with a good-looking neck? This is completely unfair. I can't even stand behind him.'

Vincent greeted the mercenary while he continued digging holes for the onion bulbs. "Ayers. Good to see you. Finished your landmine field early today?"

Yes.

"Back to the ol' high-explosive grind tomorrow?"

Yes.

"Claymores or Bouncing Bettys?"

Claymores.

"Nasty weapons, either way."

Yes.

"As much as I enjoy a good landmine demon-kill, thanks for deactivating them now that the attacks have stopped. There's an awful lot of refugees coming to Denver on foot. Nobody's gotten blown up by our own mines yet, but it was only a matter of time."

I agree. Ayers's face darkened. He looked as troubled by the thought of innocent bystanders as Vincent was.

Planting his own claymores years before had been nerve-racking work, even though the mines could only be activated remotely from his bunker by code-and-key locked switches. He had always considered them a last resort, since he'd expected the enemies in the apocalypse to be other humans. Harry, Ayers and Lizzie didn't know the mines existed, much less that the decon chamber was lined with twenty claymores facing inward. Vincent never used Bouncing Bettys, which were designed to horrifically wound large numbers of people so that even more of their comrades would be occupied with dragging them to safety. Even vicious mobs of looters didn't deserve to die like that. Two dozen claymores to the face would be a merciful, instant kill.

Vincent preferred insta-kill.

"So," he said in a welcoming tone, "I've got a project for you if you're willing."

Yes.

"Over here." He pulled off his gardening gloves and walked them over to the woodworking setup he'd unpacked from the lumber storage chamber. "You know how to use woodworking tools?"

Yes.

"I thought so. I've decided to build a library for real books at the back of the house." Vincent gestured to the two-by-four frame he'd already constructed. "The framing is done, but I want to have some nice decorative wood pillars for the bookshelf supports."

"Vincent," Lizzie protested again. "You don't have to –"

"Consider it an early birthday present, kiddo."

Ayers looked questioningly at them. Birthday?

Lizzie pretended to examine the library's framework. She'd been looking forward to the start of her fifth decade until a few months ago. "Every birthday's a victory," she used to say. Now she was suddenly shy about turning 40. Vincent was pretty sure meeting Ayers had something to do with it. Never mind that he was older than her. His presence had brought up all her old insecurities about her appearance again.

"Yup," she said, not really pulling off the light tone she was going for. "The big four-oh. Officially entering middle age."

"Pfft," Vincent said. "People live to be well over a hundred nowadays. Middle age has been moved up to fifty." They deliberately avoided the subject of humanity's recently reduced life expectancy.

She smiled unconvincingly. "Sure. I'll go see if Harry's awake. You two have fun setting up."

When she was gone, Ayers turned to Vincent with a querying look. What's up with her?

"You remember turning 40, right?"

Ayers waggled a palm. Kind of.

"See, that's what I mean. It's just another day out of the thirty to forty thousand we're given. But she's acting like she's going to wake up next week and immediately need a walker and a set of dentures."

The merc shook his head. That's not how birthdays work.

"Yeah, you and I know that, but convincing her of it is hard. That white stripe of hair is the only gray she's got, and it's not from age, but she keeps pulling on it and looking at it anyway." He pointed to the log. "Anyway, if you're comfortable with a lathe, I'd like you to turn this into something that matches this diagram here. She deserves something nice."

Ayers nodded. She does.

"I knew you'd get it. Anyway, the stuff's all set up here. You'll have to strip the bark first, obviously, and that's what these sawhorses are for –"

Ayers grabbed the ten-foot log with one hand and lifted it onto the apparatus.

Vincent whistled. "Power armor, eh?"

Yes.

"Nice. I was going to offer you safety gloves, but …"

Ayers lifted his gauntlet and made a grabbing motion with it. These will do.

"That's what I thought." He jerked his head at the garden as Lizzie came back. "Lizzie and I are going to finish up here. By the time you're done with the bark, it'll be another feeding time for the kits. Then we can have an early dinner and Lizzie and I will pick out some more wood for the floor."

"I like wood," she explained, then stopped in mid-step. "Uh, I mean, as a building material. It's very pretty I'm going to go over here and do several other things now." She turned away with a blush and went to rearrange the seedlings.

Vincent laughed silently into his hand. Ayers was also grinning.

"That kid, I swear," Vincent told him quietly. "Always with the Freudian slips." He pointed at the log. "Better get started on Lizzie's wood."

Ayers kept grinning, which he'd been doing a lot more of in recent days.

"God," Lizzie complained as Vincent joined her in the middle of the garden. "Why do stupid things like that keep coming out of my mouth?"

"Think of it as an ice-breaker, Liz. One of your many charms."

"Ugh. Can I return this particular 'charm' for a refund? Exchange it for something less embarrassing, like terrible body odor?"

"I think you're stuck with it, kiddo."

She grumbled, grabbing an old dish towel to clear the spilled potting soil off their work table. Her eyes drifted to Ayers, far enough away that he couldn't hear them but still within admiring range.

Ayers had told them not to worry because the suit was literally bomb-proof; another reason Delta-22 had been chosen to defuse the landmines. But she wondered if he was overconfident in the ability of his flexible undersuit to stop shrapnel. If he were crouching next to a landmine, that posture would expose the undersuit's joints at his elbows, underarms and inner thighs. The brownish-black material that shielded his pelvis and abdomen didn't look too sturdy, either. Come to think of it, how did he get out of his suit anyway? Whatever closures there were seemed to be tucked away under the hard armor plating, which made sense because you wouldn't want to find out mid-battle that your zipper had been down the whole time –

Vincent reached across her field of view on the pretense of grabbing a bulb planter from the tool bucket. "Lizzie, you are staring at his crotch."

She gasped indignantly. "I am not!"

"Blatant ogling," Vincent whispered back as he stirred the potting soil.

"I was just wondering how he gets out of such a complicated suit! I don't see any latches or fastenings."

"You were wondering how he gets out of it, or how you can get him out of it?" Vincent teased.

Lizzie slapped his arm with the rag.

He grinned. "Gonna have to start a yacht club at this rate."

"There are no boats!" she hissed.

"And yet the SS Horndog is clearly at full mast."

"Yachts start with SY, not SS," she snapped.

"Mmm-hmm."

"He can't hear us from way over there, right?" she whispered with concern.

"Nah. He'd have to have ears like a bat."

"Do you think he noticed me staring?" she asked worriedly.

"Let's see." Vincent glanced at him for a moment. "He's not looking at us right now, but I do detect a faint smirk."

"Oh, God," Lizzie groaned quietly. "He's going to get the wrong idea."

"What wrong idea?"

"That I think he's attractive!"

"You do think he's attractive."

"Of course I think he's attractive, but I don't want him to think that I want him to know that I think he's attractive."

Vincent blinked. "Is this what having a stroke feels like?"

"You know what I mean."

"I don't, actually. That entire sentence was a grammar pretzel."

"I don't want to give the impression that I'm hitting on him and expecting a response."

"Ah."

"I'm sure he gets enough of that at work. And off work. And any time he's around a human being who's attracted to people with XY chromosomes."

Vincent chuckled.

"What?"

"I think your fondness for him is making you underestimate the intimidation factor."

"Intimidation?"

"Lizzie, you took a shine to him right away – you even let him follow you home – because he was trying to save your dog from horrible monsters. And did save you and your dog from horrible monsters. That's the lens you see him through. But to the casual observer, he is a living tank who's armed to the teeth and shaves his face with a running lawnmower."

"He's … well … okay, yes, that's how he looks. But he's also Ayers, and people would notice that eventually."

"And Ayers is …?"

She groaned, burying her face in a clean part of the dish towel. "Will you think I'm a giddy schoolgirl if I tell you he's perfect?" said her muffled voice.

Vincent smiled down at the seedlings he was planting. "No, but I will think you've got a boat."

"Okay, maybe I will admit to having a kayak. A little one." She lowered the towel and played with the frayed edge, frowning. "That doesn't mean I'm going to do anything about it."

"I know. So, what makes someone 'the perfect man' according to Elizabeth Khalid?"

"Well, I think everybody can agree that the perfect man is honest, brave, compassionate, humble and gentle. Gentle his personal life, I mean. Especially with kids and animals. Being tall, dark and handsome doesn't hurt, either."

Vincent kept smiling. "I don't think you have to worry about Ayers misunderstanding your 'kayak'. A decent guy would not pressure somebody who isn't sure what they want, and he's a decent guy."

"I am sure what I want, Vin," she said softly. "No more relationships. I never want to go through any of that again."

Vincent was silent. They'd had this conversation before.

"You're the only man I completely trust," she continued. "Well, you and Harry, but he's obviously not a grown man yet. I'm sure you'll raise him right, though."

"What about Ayers?"

"I've only known him under the best of conditions, not under stress. Maybe he yells when he's angry. Or breaks things when he doesn't get what he wants." She snorted bitterly. "Or posts his dates on social media for imaginary internet points."

"If it's any consolation, odds are pretty high that the video guy is dead, and his Facegram account along with him."

"Yeah, that one is probably history, but … my …" Her face was pale. "He's still alive. I can feel it. He's out there."

"Have you checked recently? I'm pretty sure guard towers and razor wire wouldn't be able to stop a bunch of Pain Elementals from getting to him."

"No. Most of the internet went down the first day, remember? Even if it still exists, I doubt anyone is bothering to update the department of corrections database."

A loud bang interrupted their conversation, echoing around the large cave. Lizzie jumped, looking over at the wood shop to check that her soldier was okay.

Ayers lifted the splintered halves of the log apologetically. Oops. Sorry.

"Don't worry about it, son," Vincent called. "There's plenty more where that came from. Back of the lumber storage, on the left."

How on Earth had Ayers snapped a six-inch-diameter log? His rig had turned out to be power armor, but those had safeguards. He could not have applied so much force by accident.

It occurred to Vincent that the merc's fancy get-up might also have a directional microphone.

"Ahem. So, anyway," Vincent continued. "I guess you'll just have to spend more time with him if you want to find out what kind of man he really is."