TWO RIDERS WERE APPROACHING

By Dale Glaser

The ragtag army, hundreds strong, stood in rank and file that showed not a highly disciplined attention to regimental detail but rather the practiced ease of a unit that had been tested by the unrelenting rigors of combat and emerged capable of moving, acting, and even thinking as one. It was a fighting force that had never known peace, born in a fiery cataclysm and surviving through sheer will and instinct. The armor and weapons borne by the soldiers had been cannibalized from the scraps of technology remaining after the nuclear holocaust that had wiped out the previous civilization, and the humble origins showed, but the soldiers themselves gave the scavenged equipment a certain dignity in their proud carriage.

A few paces ahead of the front line, the four seniormost commanders conferred. “What say you three?” asked Lucanus, fanning the gigantic, serrated mandibles that emerged from the underside of his squarish head. “Can this emissary be trusted?”

“What matter if he can or cannot?” asked Blattel, twitching his thick brown antennae. “If his word is good, we have naught to fear, and if he be false, our warriors shall wreak a thousand-fold vengeance.”

“Then I hope him to be a betrayer,” Pulex asserted, his bristly proboscis quivering. The bellicose officer was powerfully built but hunchbacked, and the claws at the tips of his long forelegs scraped the ground. “I yearn to test his mettle against my own.”

“And I for one will hope instead for peace,” countered Thysan. The tallest of the foursome, even discounting the graceful silver-blue antennae crowning his head, placatingly moved a slender leg toward Pulex, who sidled away. “I anticipate Pulex will be disappointed, though none of us may know the future for certain. Yet for now, I trust the emissary.”

Lucanus nodded. He turned away from his fellow commanders and faced his troops, raising both his forelegs and both his midlegs in a gesture indicating that hostilities were no longer imminent. The soldiers gave no outward reaction, but Lucanus understood that his signal had been received. He pivoted again and raised his flat black eyes upward. “Hear me, Charles Little Sky of Earth!” the leader of the army called out. “On behalf of all of Neo-Terra, I accept your proposal! Your Earth shall be spared an invasion and colonization by our people, and we shall return to our own world. We expect you to fulfill your promises by no later than five moonrises from now! If you do not, there will be no more talk, no more negotiations, only your utter destruction!”

Charles Little Sky nodded gravely. “We are in complete agreement. Five moonrises. Is your army ready to depart?”

“We are,” the warrior-elder confirmed.

Charles Little Sky laid his right forearm across his office desk and spread his fingers vertically. A shining disk of light, brilliant white at the center and tinged with coruscating violet at the edges, spiraled open in front of his palm. As the portal stabilized, Lucanus, Blattel, Pulex and Thysan led their army toward it. Four hundred insectile warriors, each less than one inch tall, marched across the polished teak surface of Little Sky’s desk and into the glowing aperture. When the last of the Neo-Terrans had vanished through the opaque white face of the portal, Little Sky relaxed his hand and the disk vanished.

“I apologize for the delay,” Little Sky sighed as he leaned back slightly in his chair. “Some of the duties of my position take precedence over others.”

The person he addressed turned away from the massive, wall-spanning bookshelves opposite the desk. In addition to an impressive collection of rare editions, the shelves supported various objects of curiosity, including a helmet the exact size and shape of Magneto’s infamous headdress but carved from highly polished obsidian, a fist-sized pyramid of a dull and smoky yellowish-brown hue, and a color photograph identified by the engraving on its frame as the Inauguration of President Thomas Fireheart by Chief Justice Madeline Joyce Frank on January 20, 1996. “It’s all right,” the admirer of the mementos replied unassumingly. He was a slim, dark-complexioned young man in his late teens, dressed in khaki pants, a maroon shirt slightly too large for his frame, and a navy and gold patterned tie.

Little Sky glanced at the flatscreen PC monitor on his desk, then back at the young man. “Ibrahim al-Bazzaz. Got a nickname you go by, something your friends call you?”

“No, sir,” Ibrahim said. “I … don’t have too many friends.”

“Ibrahim, then,” Little Sky nodded. “Let’s get right down to it. What can you tell me about those items you were looking over while I was negotiating with our invertebrate guests?”

“They’re … very interesting?” Ibrahim ventured.

Little Sky stood up. He was taller and broader than Ibrahim, and more imposing still thanks to his form-fitting uniform, bronze-colored semi-reflective material with white martial piping, stretched over strategically positioned pads. As he walked out from behind the desk, he said, “I’m sure that your curiosity was piqued while you were waiting for your interview, but I’m not making chit-chat. This is the interview, now, and I’m the type who prefers practical demonstrations to the getting-to-know-you. Tell me everything you can about this.” He picked up the obsidian helmet.

“It’s a single seamless piece carved from a larger stone,” Ibrahim began after studying the item for a few moments. “Strong and intimidating by design. Whoever made it was an expert. A master.”

Little Sky stared at the young man. “Now tell me something only you could see.”

Ibrahim raised a hand to his chin and tapped the soul patch under his lower lip. “There’s a trace of energies clinging to it,” he said. “Mutant energy echoes from extended proximity exposure.”

“Whose energies?” Little Sky asked.

“No one I recognize,” Ibrahim admitted. “The closest would be Polaris or Magma, but neither of those signatures is exactly right.”

“Not bad,” Little Sky said, returning the helm to the shelf. He picked up the pyramid and handed it over. “This?”

“This looks … burnt out,” Ibrahim suggested. “Scorched and spent. The energy left in it is practically zero …”

“But …?” Little Sky prompted.

“But it’s a powerful kind of energy. It’s not mutant bio-energy, it’s something more … fundamental, or primal, I guess.”

“True enough,” Little Sky confirmed. He traded the inauguration photo for the pyramid. “How about this?”

Ibrahim considered the picture frame in silence for several seconds. Finally he said, “There’s just the barest, faintest crackle around the edges, like low-grade static electricity. I noticed it on the helmet and the prism, too. Other than that, it’s just a photo in a frame. Metal, glass, paper.”

“Metal, glass and paper from Earth 1C7.2.3 to be exact,” Little Sky corrected. “The fact that it’s originally from an alternate dimension is probably what causes that faint static aura you’re seeing. Frankly, I’m impressed that you can see it at all. Dr. McCoy spoke highly of your abilities in his letter of recommendation, but still managed to undersell you.”

“Thanks,” Ibrahim said as he fought the urge to grin like a highly praised teacher’s pet.

“What do you say we take a tour of the facility while continuing the interview?” Little Sky recommended. Ibrahim willingly followed the older man out of the office and into a modest waiting area with several utilitarian couches and a small desk, behind which sat what appeared to be a mythological monstrosity, a woman’s head atop a snake’s body.

“Director Little Sky,” the snake-woman greeted him pleasantly. “Messages for you!” With the tail end of her serpentine body, she delicately lifted two small pink sheets from the desk and held them out to Little Sky, who took them and quickly scanned them. Standing near the desk, Ibrahim could see the snake-woman close up. Her face, its aquamarine color notwithstanding, resembled a pretty twenty-something human remarkably closely, and she seemed to be wearing eyeshadow, blush and lipstick in various shades of teal and emerald. Her hair was long and straight, a slightly darker shade than her skin, and a wireless telephone headset was partially obscured by it. Her sinuous body was completely limbless, but once she handed the message sheets to Little Sky she proved adept at moving a mouse and typing with the tip of her tail. “And you just received a meeting request from Agent Hawthorne, something about capital re-investment.”

“Thank you, Prithita,” Little Sky said. “Can you find some room in my schedule next week for a sit-down with Hawthorne?”

“I’m sure I can if I look hard enough,” the snake-woman smiled.

“Good. Oh, Prithita, this is Ibrahim al-Bazzaz,” Little Sky gestured to his companion.

“Um, hi,” Ibrahim managed, just barely stopping himself before extending his hand for the customary handshake.

“Oh, you’re applying for the Assistant Director position?” Prithita asked.

“It’s more of an aide-de-camp,” Little Sky interjected.

“Well, good luck!” Prithita beamed. Little Sky and Ibrahim left the waiting area and entered a wide corridor formed of dark curving metal panels occasionally interrupted by reinforced doors.

“Notice anything interesting about my administrative assistant?” Little Sky asked as they walked.

Ibrahim cocked an eyebrow quizzically before remembering that the interview was still being conducted. “Oh. Magic energy, definitely, some of it innate and some of it kind of splashed on top.”

“What about the alternate dimension static aura?”

“That I couldn’t see,” Ibrahim admitted. “Is she from this dimension?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Little Sky confirmed.

Ibrahim considered for a few paces. “Is she from a different time period?”

Little Sky let out a low whistle. “They really do teach critical thinking at the Xavier Institute, don’t they? You’ve hit on it, she’s from Lemuria, which was part of Earth before it vanished tens of thousands of years ago.”

“So how did she end up here?”

“Most likely a wizard cast some kind of primitive banishment spell on her. Rather than actually piercing any true dimensional barriers, it just tossed her up the timeline a few dozen millennia.”

“Do you get that a lot around here?”

“Surprisingly, yes.”

“Why do you say ‘most likely’ that’s what happened? Hasn’t she told you how it went?”

“Prithita’s an interesting case. She’s one of our great success stories, actually. When she arrived here she was savage, violent … we had to keep her in semi-permanent lockdown,” Little Sky explained. “But we successfully rehabilitated her. She’s quite happy here now, and she’s the best assistant I’ve ever had, but her memories of Lemuria are fragmentary at best. That’s the way she prefers it, and that’s fine with me.”

A pair of male agents wearing uniforms similar to Little Sky’s passed by going the opposite way down the corridor. The agents did not salute the director, but respectfully tilted their heads slightly. Little Sky returned the silent greeting, and as he and Ibrahim approached an intersection in the corridor he noted, “The hallway we’ve just come down is the administrative wing, mostly offices, nothing too exciting. We’ll head that way,” he pointed down the perpendicular corridor running to their right, “in a few minutes, but first …” Little Sky turned left.

The corridor ran less than ten feet before ending in a vault-like doorway with massive interlocking teeth like a vertical jack-o-lantern scowl. Little Sky entered a sequence of numbers on a keypad and laid his thumb on an analyzer screen. Mechanical tumblers within the doors shifted with heavy thuds and the doors slid smoothly apart. Little Sky led Ibrahim into the area that had opened before them.

“This is the front half of the quarantine area,” Little Sky said. “The voluntary half. Each suite here can hold up to eight adults comfortably for an indefinite period of time, during which we can either run tests to determine if the q-subjects are carrying anything nasty, or, if there’s no need for tests because we know without a doubt they’re carriers, we can treat them. The suites have semi-automated scanners and sterile pass-through systems for our benefit, and most of the comforts of home for the q-subjects’ benefit.”

“Why eight per suite?” Ibrahim asked.

“It’s a bit chicken-or-the-egg,” Little Sky replied, “but our field teams tend to be eight members apiece. So if a field team needs to be quarantined, they can go through it together.”

“Are any teams in voluntary quarantine right now?” Ibrahim inquired, glancing around at the solid walls on either side which were occasionally interrupted by large beveled quadrangles, framing more blank wallspace, with a small electronic monitor beside each.

“Yes, but not one of ours,” Little Sky said. He and Ibrahim had proceeded past a half dozen blank frames when Little Sky stopped and pressed a button under one of the monitors, holding it down for a few seconds. A moment later the wall within the beveled frame slid downward, revealing a thick, transparent window and a view of the suite within.

A teenage girl stood near the window, her hand withdrawing from the privacy screen controls inside the suite. Her blonde hair was pixie cut, and she wore a uniform with a provocative mixture of whimsy and menace: a tight, bright blue minidress, thigh-high white leather boots, and white armored shoulder braces. Past the girl, Ibrahim could see three more figures in the suite, a man in an easy chair and a man and a woman on a couch. All three were watching television, though they had looked up and waved nonchalantly when the wall had lowered, and all three were wearing uniforms of the same bright blue and white as the young girl at the window. The men’s uniforms were identical, blue bodysuits with white gloves and white mid-calf boots; the man in the easy chair was a blond with a familial resemblance to the teen, while the man on the couch was older, completely bald and African-American. The uniform of the woman on the couch was comparable to the men’s from the waist down, but her top was a blue bustier, leaving bare her clavicles, shoulders and arms except for her gloves. The woman’s hair was long, lustrous, and a vivid shade of raspberry. In addition to the common colors, all of the uniforms had a white 5 in a white circle centered on their chests.

“Director Little Sky, look, it’s almost gone!” the girl at the window said, her voice reaching the corridor by way of an electronic speaker. She pulled a handful of hair back behind her ear to show Little Sky her jawline, where several gray and black strands dangled, seeming to emanate from under the girl’s skin.

“Looks good, Val. I’m sure you’ll all be out of here and on your way home soon,” Little Sky said with genuine pleasure. “Is your father available for a word?”

“I think so, hang on,” the girl said. By the time she had turned away from the window and started moving towards the back of the suite, she was yelling, “Dad!”

Ibrahim looked at the monitor beside the window and his eyes quickly skimmed down the readout. FANTASTIC FIVE — EARTH 1D5.0.9.0.8 — MR. FANTASTIC (REED RICHARDS) HUMAN TORCH (JOHN STORM) POWER MAN (LUCAS CAGE) JEWEL (JESSICA JONES) MARVEL GIRL (VALERIA RICHARDS) — QUARANTINE TIME: 6 DAYS 19 HOURS — THREAT LEVEL: LOW —

Mr. Fantastic, wearing the same blue and white uniform as the Human Torch and power Man, emerged from one of the suite’s rear rooms and approached the window. Ibrahim recognized him immediately, despite the fact that this version of the renowned scientist and superhero sported a neatly groomed beard. “Good morning, Director,” Mr. Fantastic nodded.

“Morning,” Little Sky returned the greeting. “This is Ibrahim, I’m showing him around the Hollow today. Ibrahim, Dr. Richards’s team arrived here almost a week ago and basically saved the whole world by giving us enough warning to fight off an invasion from a fungus-dimension.”

“More of an infection than an invasion, per se,” Mr. Fantastic pointed out. “The dominant saprophyte lifeform is fairly mindless, and even the advance mycelium raiders …”

“Da-a-a-ad,” Marvel Girl groaned, expressing the embarrassment only a parent can inspire in a child.

“Thanks for the warning,” Ibrahim put in. “I guess, on behalf of … all of us.”

Mr. Fantastic smiled. “Just doing what comes naturally.”

“Ibrahim’s right, we are in your debt, and I’m here to try to increase the amount owed,” Little Sky took control of the conversation again.

“Something I can help with?” Mr. Fantastic asked.

“I hope so. We were visited today by a military delegation looking to colonize our world by force since theirs is not far removed from a nuclear holocaust. I managed to convince them to stay on their own Earth by assuring them I could help them reclaim a livable habitat.”

“I see,” Mr. Fantastic stroked his beard. “I could give you some schematics for isotope-stabilizing terraform reclamation drones. They’ve never been past the mental blueprint stage, but the principles are elementary enough. Would that suffice?”

“Can you throw in something for dealing with giant rampaging centipedes?” Little Sky pressed.

“I was going to say give me twenty minutes to sketch out the unit design, but … better make it twenty-five,” Mr. Fantastic decided.

“Deal,” Little Sky agreed. “Thank you.”

Little Sky escorted Ibrahim to the far end of the corridor, where another imposing doorway blocked their passage. “Involuntary quarantine?” Ibrahim asked.

“That’s right,” Little Sky confirmed. The access passcode was more elaborate this time, and the doors parted more slowly. The area revealed was a narrow passageway lined with windows, none of which had the benefit of privacy screens. The lighting in the involuntary quarantine corridor was more subdued, as well, an effect which Ibrahim supposed was intended to induce a somnolent calm but which seemed rather more sinister.

Ibrahim stepped forward, looking into each cell. To his left was a cell furnished with only a cot and basic plumbing apparatus. A hugely muscular figure sat on the farthest corner of the cot, back against the wall, head down, legs drawn up, arms dangling over knees. Shadows obscured most of the potentially identifying details of the body. To Ibrahim’s right was a nearly identical cell, although this one was missing a cot. In its place was a slab of copper-green metal set at an oblique angle to the floor, crowned with what appeared to be an array of batteries and electrical cords. In the center of the cell, a creature paced in a tight circle, a cybernetic cat-man with predominantly feline facial features, one robotic leg and two robotic hands, and sleek violet fur interrupted by circuit-etched panels. The cat-cyborg stared through the clear partition at Ibrahim, and Ibrahim returned the gaze steadily until the first two cells were behind him.

The next cell on his right brought Ibrahim to a halt, as he knew its occupant. They had never met, but like most students at the Xavier Institute, Ibrahim had more than a passing familiarity with the X-Men. Attendees of the all-mutant campus tended to idolize the more famous former students, regarding them as role models, or nursing crushes, or sometimes both. Ibrahim had hung a poster above his dormitory bunk, a stunning photograph of the woman known as Rogue wearing a string bikini and sunning herself in the Savage Land. Now she was less than a foot away, on the other side of several inches of transparent yet unbreakable polymer.

And yet it was a cruel perversion of the X-Man, despite the superficial similarities. The woman slumped against the wall of the cell wore the same curve-hugging green and yellow uniform and brown bomber jacket Ibrahim was familiar with. Her long chestnut hair with the trademark burst of white at her forehead framed the same girlish face. But the costume was in disrepair, with foul discolorations staining it. Beneath the costume, Rogue’s curves were somewhat diminished, her body bordering on emaciated, and her cheeks were hollow, making her face appear prematurely aged, while her eyes were glassy and almost lifeless. Her hair was lank and scraggly, and the shock of white was mostly obscured by a segmented cap of mottled dark brown. As Ibrahim watched, the cap opened two bulbous and utterly alien red eyes, blinked them rapidly, then closed them again. Ibrahim fought to repress a full-body shudder of revulsion.

Ibrahim had lowered himself to a squatting position near the parasite-afflicted Rogue. He reached out to steady himself against the narrow wall panel between her cell and the next, when the inhabitant of the third cell threw itself against the window. A gargantuan bat, its body proportionate to a full-grown man and its wingspan wider than the polymer face of its cell, slammed into the transparent surface and snapped a mouthful of deadly-looking fangs wildly. Neither Rogue nor the parasite atop her head reacted in any outward way, but Ibrahim fell backwards and retreated in an awkward crab-walk, until his shoulders bumped into Little Sky’s legs.

“I trust the point here is sufficiently made?” Little Sky asked as Ibrahim stood up.

“That depends,” Ibrahim said truculently. “Was the point to scare me, or depress me?”

“Those were two possibilities,” Little Sky admitted. “But the point was to show you exactly why A.R.M.O.R. exists, and what we’re up against. Sometimes those things are terrifying, sometimes horrifying; nightmare fuel, or desecrations of things we care about. And in here,” Little Sky swept his arm, encompassing the entire quarantine in the gesture, “this is really just the tip of the iceberg. Bat demons from Yann? Mechano-cats out of the Land Within? A Brain Hag with all of Rogue’s mutant powers at its disposal? Those are the slow days. When a power-mad sorcerer from R’Vaal decides to raise an army of the dead, or the Doctor Doom from 1B9.0.9 figures out how to replicate subservient Venom symbiotes, and they turn their sights on our Earth, that’s when we have to push ourselves. To push back. There are an infinite number of potential threats that could end our world and just being aware of them is not an easy burden to bear. But A.R.M.O.R. has to do more than be aware of them. We have to stand in their path, in the ways that almost no one else can.” The director looked at the young man meaningfully. “Can you handle it?”

Ibrahim took a deep breath and answered, “Yes.”

Little Sky pointed toward the voluntary quarantine area. “Out of here and on with the tour, then,” he said, leaving unspoken the extent to which he believed the applicant’s answer.

Ibrahim and Little Sky traversed voluntary quarantine and returned to the main corridor, following its length until it opened onto a curving catwalk of black mesh steel running high around the perimeter of a huge arboretum. The leafy tops of mature trees nearly touched the underside of the walking surface. “This area,” Little Sky explained, “most people just call the Park. It helps make the Hollow somewhat more self-sufficient in terms of air quality, and a little bit of food supply in some gardens over that way. Agents use it for recreational purposes, as well, of course.”

As Little Sky conducted Ibrahim along the catwalk, Ibrahim looked down into the verdant scene below. In clearings amid the myriad varieties of trees, he could make out figures walking along stone paths or sitting on benches. Most were wearing the same bronze and white uniform as A.R.M.O.R.’s director, but a few were dressed in civilian attire, or the reflective kaftans and exotic animal skins and luminous manteaus that indicated otherworldly origins. “Are those visitors, the ones who aren’t agents, all here on … business?” Ibrahim asked.

“Some of them,” Little Sky affirmed. “Others are more like permanent guests. Anyone who shows up here with hostile intentions is either sent back where they came from or locked up in quarantine. We might not send them back because they’d be too dangerous on the loose, but sometimes one factor or another completely prevents the return trip and takes the decision out or our hands. The same applies to non-hostile arrivals. We send them home if that’s what they want and if we’re physically able. Everyone else gets scrubbed through voluntary quarantine and then, it’s up to them. Some choose to stay here and work for A.R.M.O.R. Some wait for us to find them a means to return …”

Little Sky was interrupted by the arrival of two agents, male and female, approaching with determination and haste. The man wore the traditional A.R.M.O.R. uniform, supplemented with a large sidearm and holster, as well as iridescent green wraparound sunglasses, bisecting the deeply dark skin of his strong face. His black hair was cut close to his skull. The man stood over six feet tall, but was only half the height of his female counterpart, who was fair-skinned, with wavy light brown hair that barely reached her shoulders and came to a prominent widow’s peak above her face. On either side of the peak, small flesh-covered horns arose. The woman’s outfit resembled a Roman centurion’s battle armor and cloak, yet followed the same bronze and white color scheme as the other agents’. “Director,” the man said as the pair of agents intercepted Little Sky and Ibrahim. “You’d better come with us to the teleporter bay. Advance sensors picked up a potential incoming and it’s big and bad.”

“How big and how bad?” Little Sky asked, although he was already moving down the catwalk again, flanked on either side by his agents.

“I’d tell you if I knew, sir,” the man answered. “The sensors overloaded.”

“I see. We’ll have to …” Little Sky stopped both his sentence and his footsteps as he turned onto a spoke of the catwalk that connected the main loop to another corridor. He looked back at Ibrahim. “Are you coming?”

Ibrahim had been concentrating on his own mutant perceptions of the two A.R.M.O.R. agents: the man’s entire muscular body was coursing with ionic energies, while the giantess’s horns projected fountains of gravitons. Jolted from his reverie, he said, “Well …I mean … this sounds like official business, and I …”

“And you are an official part of the team,” Little Sky finished for him. “The job is yours if you want it, Ibrahim. Your abilities are as impressive as I had hoped they would be, and I believe they could be highly useful in this organization. Your references, especially from Henry McCoy, are excellent. Your interview’s over. If you’re on board, follow me.”

Ibrahim moved to catch up to the others; as he did Little Sky quickly made introductions with the two A.R.M.O.R. agents. “This is Ibrahim al-Bazzaz, my new aide-de-camp. Ibrahim, this is Agent Nyokong and Agent Vega. They oversee security at the Hollow.”

The male security officer pivoted and walked backwards, matching his director stride for stride, and smiled convivially at Ibrahim. “You can call me Yaphet,” he offered. “And you can call her Kate, because Vega isn’t really her last name, it’s just the planet she’s from. And really she’s from Vega Superior but you can imagine how fast we’d all get tired of calling her Agent Vega Superior. So it’s Kate, although that’s not really her first name, which is K8. They don’t go in much for the social niceties on Vega Superior, and that’s why I have to take care of all that for both of us. Don’t take it personally that she hasn’t even said hello yet.”

“Hello,” Kate said flatly, without looking back at Ibrahim.

Yaphet smiled a little more broadly. “That’s some kind of new speed record for friendliness. She must be sweet on you.”

Ibrahim could only shake his head slightly as he tried to process the towering woman’s alienness and her counterpart’s garrulous behavior. Agent Nyokong had come across as all-serious when delivering the news to Little Sky, but now seemed much more relaxed, as if his cares had been transferred entirely to the director. Little Sky, in fact, was steely-eyed as they arrived at the teleporter bay area. “Incoming?” Little Sky asked brusquely, the commanding request for details implicit in his tone.

A uniformed technician stood up and crossed the room. “We’re still working on reconstructing a composite image of recoverable data from right before total sensor failure, sir,” she said. “But some of the infostreams are contradictory. It’s almost a Hemera-class dimensional fusion that undoes itself before full …”

The technician’s analysis was cut short by a concussive blast that filled the teleporter bay. The dozen or so A.R.M.O.R. agents in the area, including Little Sky’s entourage, were thrown off their feet or out of chairs and sent sprawling around the room as the anomaly manifested in mid-air like hundreds of magnesium flares running backwards in time, blinding blossoms of white that appeared from nowhere and rapidly curled inward, imploding to nothingness. Once the flash and roar had subsided, two figures remained where the heart of the anomaly had been, one presumably human, one decidedly not.

The human was tall and broad and to all appearances male, although well-concealed by a head-to-toe black bodysuit and a full cowl. Opposite him was a monstrous creature with thick gorilla-like limbs that were triple the size of the man’s and ended in splayed talons at the ends of the hands and feet. The creature was covered in shaggy gangrenous-colored fur, except for its pale and scaly belly, and the shape of its head reminded Ibrahim, from his vantage point on the floor, of nothing more than a giant aardvark with the addition of a mouthful of wicked tusks and an eerie orange glow in its eyes.

If either of the two deposited by the anomaly were disoriented by the experience, they did not show it. The sickly green monster raked at the ebon-clad man but its claws found no purchase in the other’s flesh. The man for his part balanced on one leg and side-kicked the beast while digging into a small pouch on his belt. Boot sole connected with snout and elicited a furious howl, and the monstrosity raised both its massive hands overhead to deliver a crushing response. But the man in black had found the object he sought in his pouch, and flicked it toward the beast’s exposed belly. A black and white feather quivered along the quill that embedded in the monster’s flesh, and the monster took one lumbering step forward before collapsing. In a moment the color began to drain from the beast’s entire body, until its fur, claws and eyes were all uniformly the color of parched sand.

“That was my last Akbaalia feather,” the man in black said to no one in particular. His voice sounded worn and tired. Then he looked up at the assembled witnesses to his arrival. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to keep it out of here. I tried.”

Yaphet and Kate had regained their feet and drawn their weapons, which they now aimed at the man standing over the inert monster. “Mind telling us who you are, stranger?” Yaphet asked.

“You should be more concerned about them,” the man nudged the monster with his boot. “This was only the first. More Undying Ones are coming.”

“Undying Ones,” Little Sky said, coming up beside Yaphet. “A name like that must refer to either their physical longevity, or their capacity for raw hatred of all things good and sane.”

“Yes to both,” the masked man answered.

“Of course,” Little Sky nodded. “I’m not usually one to make my head of security repeat himself, so I’ll pose the question again myself. Aside from the bearer of a warning about Undying Ones, who are you?”

The man held out his left hand in a gesture of compliant harmlessness and reached for his mask with his right. He pulled off the cowl and revealed a face recognized by everyone in the room, with the characteristic eye shape and cheekbone structure shared by most of the Kisani tribe. The lines at the corner of the mouth were slightly deeper, and the hair was longer and beginning to gray, but in total the identity was unmistakable.

The man in black was Charles Little Sky.

To Be Continued…