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Now, standing at the mouth of the cave, detonator in hand, Dodd wasn’t so sure

The waiting was never easy Once the shooting started a feeling of clarity always took over You’d die or you wouldn’t, you’d kill or be killed-it was one or the other and nothing in between You knehere you stood, and for those violent, heart-pu minutes, Dodd felt himself lifted on a wave of adrenaline that eradicated virtually everything about hiuely personal It could be said that in the chaos of combat, the man known as Satch Dodd ceased to exist, even to himself; and when the dust cleared, and he found hi, he experienced a rush of raw existence, as if he’d been shot fro that a person experienced too rets, anxieties, the whole range of possibilities the future contained-they all swirled together in the mind like a soup While half of Dodd’s attention was intently focused on the situation at hand-the detonator in his grip and the presence of his h which Henneman’s command to blow the hole would coh the chanal to explode the boical nausea, abate, igniting his power to act

The h the radio: "Blue Squad, all eyes Donadio’s going in"

So to the h

Seven hundred feet below, in the lightless caverns left behind when sulfide-rich waters had leached upward into the fissured limestone deposits of an ancient reef, Alicia Donadio was advancing on the signal That this signal emanated from the chip implanted in the neck of Julio Martinez, one of twelve death row inmates infected with the CV virus created by Project NOAH at the dawn of the present age, she had no doubt

Louise, she thought, Louise

The moment they’d touched down in the cave, this na to the records they had salvaged from the NOAH co a policeman, not the rape and one unrecorded, or else had never been connected to hi of the policeman was present also, a flash of violence like a white-hot spark, but within each of the Twelve lay a singular story-the one story that was the true essence, the core of who they were For Martinez, that story was Louise

According to her map, two tunnels led froesting their grandeur King’s Palace Hall of Giants Queen’s Chaht with Peter, and thus stay in coo no farther than the junctures at the far end of each passageway Beyond that, she would be on her own

King’s Palace, she thought So left"

As she proceeded down the passageway, thein kind She’d guessed right The walls pressed around her, shards of so under the raking beareat horde, like buried treasure, Martinez presiding Alicia could see it all plainly now; the i hold of herher neck; the precise demarcation of color above and below, her neck milky white, the skin of her face rosy and swollen with blood; the look of astonished terror in her eyes, and the cold finality of death’s approach It was all as clear as if Alicia had lived it herself, but then so this event in two directions si from her Hoas this possible? When had she acquired this attuneh Louise’s eyes she saw Martinez’s face A well-groomed man of precise features, silver hair swept back from his forehead to forh not precisely: there was nothing you could call a person behind his eyes, only a soulless vacancy The pleasure he was taking was an anianization of warm surfaces created only for his desire and dispatch Her name ritten plainly on her blouse, and yet his mind could not connect this na in thereal to him was himself She felt Louise’s terror, and her pain, and then the dark moment when the woman understood that death was imminent, her life at its end; that she would die without any acknowledgment from the universe that she had existed in the first place, and the last thing she would feel as she departed the world would be Martinez, raping her

Alicia had reached the juncture, a place called the Boneyard A strong s the membranes of her mouth and throat In the moist air, her breath puffed before her in an icy cloud The beep of the RDF, steadily accelerating, had become a continuous stream of sound

She knew then what she intended to do She had intended it all along The plan was a cover, an elaborate ruse to conceal her purpose

She wanted to kill Martinez herself She wanted to feel hi wasn’t as it should be just a few seconds before Alicia stepped froht There was no rational explanation for this knowledge; it si deep in his bones

"Lish, come in"

No answer

"Lish, can you read me?"

A hiss of static, then: "Stay there"

There was sonation, as if she were severing a rope that held her over an abyss Before he could respond, her voice returned: "I one

He radioed the surface "So, I’ve lost her"

"Hold your position, Jaxon"

Had she said the left tunnel? Yes, the left

"I’ative Stand pat-"

But Peter failed to hear the rest of Henne away