The voice came over the radio, "OK, Rogers. Carlson will be here to relieve you in eight hours. Have fun."

"Yeah, you too, sir," security guard Walt Rogers replied into his radio.

He barely managed to keep the bitterness out of his voice. While the rest of the security team were going out to get blitzed by drinking into the early hours of the morning, he was stuck here on the night shift. Again. He had no idea how Carlson and Di Sophistro and Kinsey managed to get the chief to put the schedules together, but Rogers always seemed to end up with the night shift at the end of the week, while the rest of them hit the beers. He could always complain to the chief, but what was the point? They'd all been working here longer than he had. They were higher up the pecking order. Even after six months, he was still the 'new guy' and had to put up with this crap until they hired somebody newer. He sighed, and put his feet up on the security desk.

Trying to cheer himself up, he reasoned that at least the night shift was the easiest. Local anti-nuclear protesters staged rallies on an irritatingly frequent basis, but those happened during the day. None of them was quite desperate or dedicated enough to keep their stand going into the night. And most of the security was automated now anyway. There was no real need for any human presence. It was only in case there was some catastrophic system failure, somebody had to be on hand to report it. The electronic locks and scanners and defence turrets did his work for him. It made the job a lot easier. It also made it a lot more boring. Pulling a newspaper out of his bag, he settled himself in to pass the next eight hours.

It was probably only an hour later when the security console in front of him suddenly burst to life. He nearly fell out of his chair in surprise as alarms began blaring and red lights began flagging on nearly every sector of the security grid. Jolted into action immediately, he flung the newspaper aside and focussed intently on the security read-outs in front of him.

"What?!" he shouted. "That's impossible!"

Sensors showed that almost every sector of the reactor complex had been breached! But there was no way that could have happened without the external sensors first picking up something! What the hell was going on? He reached immediately for his radio, "Maximum security alert! All sectors breached! Cause of breach unknown! Security grid seems inactive! Send security teams now!"

There was no reply. Nothing came over the radio except the dull hiss of static. Damn it, the radio was out! There was no way to report what was going on!

It's OK, calm down, he told himself, it must be just a system error. There's no way the grid could have been breached instantaneously like that.

He reached for the operator's manual to remind himself how to perform a system diagnostic from the security console. He had only just flicked it open when he heard the footsteps. His head jerked up in alarm.

Uh-oh. Not good! There is somebody inside the reactor!

Rogers instinctively reached for the gun he'd only ever fired in training. Ha. Training! He had never been trained for a situation like this! The only scenarios covered in training had been those where he sat safely in the security office and called for assistance against any intruders who managed to survive the automatic defence systems. Apparently nobody had considered the possibility that the system might fail, and an intruder might actually confront him. He'd been confidently assured that nobody was that good. Now it seemed that somebody was.

Well, what the hell. He wasn't afraid. His father had fought in the Gulf, his uncle in 'Nam, and his grandfather in the D-Day landings. He wasn't going to back down like a coward from whoever had managed to get past the security bots and in here. Holding the gun in the two-handed grip he'd been taught, he walked slowly in the direction of the footsteps. They were in the corridor just outside, and approaching the door. He stood just off to the side of the door, weapon pointed at whoever attempted entrance.

The door was slowly pushed open. For a moment nothing happened, then slowly a figure glided inside the room. In an instant, Rogers took in the newcomer's strange appearance: clad from head to toe in loose-fitting black robes, with a black turban wrapped around his head, and only his eyes visible between its folds.

"Who the hell are you?" Rogers asked incredulously.

In the very same second, however, his mind reached only one conclusion and began screaming at him: Muslim! Now it began to make sense! Islamic terrorists had somehow gotten inside the reactor! He could only imagine how they had pulled it off, but it didn't take much imagination to work out what their intentions were. No doubt they were here to steal any nuclear technology they could get their hands on! Or worse, set the reactor to explode into a meltdown!

"Freeze, asshole!" he yelled, trying to sound braver than he felt. "Get down on the ground!"

The turbaned figure did not move. Rogers heard more footsteps from outside. Damn it, there must be more of them!

"I said get down!"

The man dressed in black finally moved, but not in obedience to the shouted command. Rogers saw his hands reaching inside his black robes, and guessed the guy had to be a suicide bomber reaching for the detonation switch. His instincts took over from his brain, and he pulled the trigger…once, twice, three times.

He was standing less than ten feet away from the Muslim, and at that range nothing should have been able to prevent the bullets smacking into the other man's head. And yet, in a fraction of a second, the terrorist had pulled from inside his robes two impossibly long swords, raised them in front of his body, and used them to deflect the bullets.

Rogers blinked. What he'd just seen couldn't possibly have happened. Nobody on Earth had reactions that fast. Caught in panic and indecision, he didn't know what to do. He did nothing. The Muslim likewise did not move, continuing to hold the two blades protectively in front of himself, his eyes narrowed and just visible between the swathes of the turban. The initial panic began to fade, but before Rogers could decide what to do next, another two figures appeared in the door.

Strange. These weren't Muslims. At least, not as visually obviously as the first one was. Both were young men, probably in their twenties. The first was wearing an outfit that was entirely a bland grey colour, and a pair of wrap-around dark glasses that rendered his eyes entirely invisible. The second wore a tight-fitting white body-suit, and was without doubt the most attractive human being Rogers had ever set eyes on. Rogers was married and had three children, and had never experienced attraction towards another man before, but even he could not deny that this kid's body was the most stunning…

Rogers shook his head to clear it. Suddenly he had the most incredible feeling of disorientation and dizziness. He tried to steady himself and focus on the intruders, but now there were six of them. There were two Muslims, two kids in dark glasses, and two gorgeous kids in white body-suits. No, wait, now there were only three. His eyes were glazing over and slipping into double vision. His mind was swimming, and he stumbled, falling to his hands and knees.

"Give me the gun," said the gorgeous boy.

The voice was low, commanding, and seductive. Rogers did not hesitate, reaching out and handing the weapon to the grinning twenty-something. He could not resist. There was nothing he wouldn't have done for this kid. The good-looking boy took the gun, and tossed it to the one with the dark glasses. Without looking, the third man reached out and grabbed the gun out of the air. Rogers staggered to his feet and tried to concentrate. The dizziness was starting to fade now. He could see clearly. He blinked, and shook his head to shake the cobwebs out of his thoughts. What the hell had come over him? He could see now that there was nothing special about this kid. He was just a young man in a white body-suit. There was nothing unusually attractive about him.

Rogers' mind snapped back into clarity. Never mind that! That didn't matter! They had his gun! Somehow they'd made him hand it over! What the hell had he been thinking? There was only one thing he could do now. There were more weapons in the emergency security closet. Taking off at a run, the guard headed straight for it.

"Dervish! Stop him!" the white-clad kid yelled.

The motionless Muslim suddenly burst into movement, cutting a dizzying, whirling path across the room towards the fleeing Rogers. Both blades slicing through the air like lasers, the Islamic swordsman closed in. Rogers fumbled with his key in the security closet, but managed to get it open, and grabbed one of the shotguns. Pointing it at the rapidly advancing Muslim, he pulled the trigger.

At the exact same second, the kid stopped whirling, dropped to his knees in front of Rogers, thrusting both blades outward. The security guard howled at the top of his lungs as his shoulders gave way to an eruption of unimaginable pain. The shotgun went flying out of his grasp, the shot he had fired embedding harmlessly into the wall. Through the shock and the agony he felt himself falling forwards on to the floor, and he scrambled desperately to get back on his feet, reaching for the shotgun. He couldn't feel his hands, and he couldn't lift himself off the floor. Blood was pouring on to the floor from somewhere, and an object suddenly appeared in his peripheral vision. Turning his head, he tried to get a better look. Why couldn't he move?

He screamed as he realised what the object was. It was his arm. Severed from his shoulder, and still clutching the shotgun, the limb filled his vision as shock and pain and fear drove every last shred of rationality and cohesive thought from his brain. He felt something against his side, as the Muslim's foot rolled him over. Now he could see his other arm, perfectly sliced from his body just like the first one. A hand grabbed his hair and lifted his head upwards. A face appeared in front of his eyes. The dreadful, harrowing dizziness had returned, but what was left of Rogers welcomed it, as it numbed some of the agonising pain.

"Now talk to me," said the voice – it was the gorgeous kid in white again. "What's the security code for the reactor core?"

"Alpha Pi Sigma, seven six eight," he mumbled.

"Thank you. That's all we needed to know."

The face disappeared. The dizziness went away. The pain returned. The kid looked normal again. Through a combination of shock, agony, and loss of blood, Rogers finally blacked out.

The young man in white glanced at the young man with the dark glasses, "All right, we've got the code. Start working on getting into the core."

Without a look in his direction, the other kid moved towards the security console. The Muslim was busy wiping the blood from his swords, and the white-clad kid said, "Nice work, Dervish."

"Thank you."

"Could you find somewhere to dispose of that?" he pointed towards the unconscious or dead security guard. "I just washed this outfit and I'd rather not get human blood on it."

"You can almost smell it, can't you?" the other agreed. "Humans. They're worse than pigs."

"Masquerade?"

The kid in white tapped his communicator, "Yeah, go ahead, Boss."

"What's your status?"

"We're gaining access to the core as we speak."

"Any trouble?"

"Nope," said Masquerade. "Dervish had to get his blades dirty, but nothing we couldn't handle."

"Right. The others will be with you soon."