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nearby plants with dirt.
    * * *
    I NSIDE THE ALIEN artifact, Domi had made her way back to the hatch only to find it had sealed shut. The cabin was brighter now that the soil no longer obscured the viewport, and she could see a series of hinged panels or small cupboards running the length of the bobbled wall close to the hatch. They reminded her of the wall cupboards in the science labs at the Cerberus redoubt, doors for little glass beakers and Bunsen burners.
    Swiftly, Domi’s pale fingers worked at the panels to the side, opening each as she sought some kind of release button. Behind the fourth door she found a lever that seemed to be the equivalent of the bar on a fire door, yanked it once, twice, until it moved. Lights came on in the cabin and the lobby area, casting the interior in a soft blue light, but the door stayed resolutely closed.
    “Mariah?” Domi called, engaging her hidden Commtact. “Mariah, can you hear me?”
    Mariah didn’t answer and Domi cursed, recalling that the woman relied on the archaic handheld version of the personal radio system. This was one of those times where linked implants would have been ideal.
    Try someone else, then.
    “Cerberus, come in, Cerberus,” Domi called, shouting to be heard over the screech of metal all around her as the ship took flight. “This is Domi. Come in, Cerberus.”
    “Domi?” The comm officer replied. “Where—?”
    But before Domi could reply, the spaceship lurched violently and she found herself hurtling toward the decking that had been above her just a moment before. Her skull slammed against the metal-plate flooring with a resounding clang, ensuring that, whatever happened next, Domi would not be conscious to witness it.
    * * *
    M ARIAH WATCHED AS two streaks of golden lightning soared across the sky, pulling the blue metal spacecraft with them as they disappeared from view.
    “Domi,” she gasped, watching the empty section of sky that was all she could see through the canopy.
    The horse drumbeats continued loudly overhead, then dimmed over the next few minutes until finally, they could no longer be heard.

Chapter 3
    Bitterroot Mountains, Montana, United States, post-holocaust
    By the time Mariah Falk arrived back at Cerberus headquarters in North America, the operations room was already abuzz.
    She arrived in the mat-trans chamber that dominated one corner of the ops room, appearing from a multicolored whirlpool that had suddenly materialized inside the protective armaglass walls of the chamber. The whirlpool contained every color of the rainbow, and it seemed to spread upward from the floor in a conical shape and then down into the floor itself in a reflection of that fantastical cone.
    Within those cones, streaks of lightning charged across the impossible depths like witch fire as the interphaser unit cut a path through the quantum ether. This was the visual effect of the interphaser, a teleportation device designed by the Cerberus personnel, allowing them to cross great distances in the blink of an eye by tapping into the quantum pathways that were accessed by what were known as parallax points.
    The compact interphaser, just one foot in height, appeared at Mariah’s feet as she emerged inside the mat-trans chamber.
    “Where exactly was Domi when you last saw her?” Lakesh asked Mariah as she stepped from the mat-trans chamber. Mariah had sent a report ahead of her through the Commtact, outlining exactly what had happened before her eyes up to the point where the two golden lights had retreated, along with the spaceship with Domi still inside.
    Once she had finished her report, Mariah had requested advice from Cerberus and it was decided that she wait in place for a half hour in case the mysterious sky craft returned. She had anxiously done so, reporting in every five minutes to confirm there had been no change. In all that time, Domi had failed to respond to any hail from the Cerberus comm desk.
    Once the thirty minutes had passed, Mariah