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seemed strange and ghostlike, as if a forgotten world had come back to haunt her.
    Pistol raised, Sela Sinclair stepped out onto the porch, its wooden boards groaning in complaint at her weight. She turned to Farrell and gave him a silent look of warning, indicating the creaking boards beneath them. Farrell nodded.
    Outside, three house lengths away, the two hooded figures moved through the undergrowth. They were not being especially stealthy from what Farrell could tell, but just hacked their way through it, two Stanleys searching for their Livingston.
    Sinclair edged forward, hunkering into herself as she stepped off the porch and out onto the overgrown front lawn. She was wearing dark clothes, a sleeveless vest-top in a black that had washed out to a green-gray, combat pants and sturdy boots. Farrell wore his Cerberus operational uniform, a white one-piece jumpsuit, but he had augmented this with a dark green windbreaker that blended—passably if not well—with the junglelike flora all around. He followed the sec woman as she made her way to the property boundary, passing a rusted pipe that had once formed the exhaust of an automobile, using the plants for cover, her eyes never leaving the hooded figures that approached.
    Sinclair stopped behind a clutch of sprouting reeds that had reached over seven feet in height, nosing at them with the muzzle of her gun to see the street. Farrell joined her a moment later, feeling his heart pounding in his chest, pulsing in his ears. The robed figures were moving efficiently along the street, checking left and right without slowing. Their clothes were just like the jailers who had held them captive in Life Camp Zero; there was no question in Farrell’s mind that they worked for the enemy.
    “Dammit, Sela,” he whispered, “they’re Ullikummis’s people. We need to get out of here right now.”
    A thin smile touched Sinclair’s lips. “We’ll be safe,” she assured Farrell, her voice low.
    Farrell watched the street from over Sinclair’s shoulder, glanced at the gun in her hand, back up the street. What the hell was she thinking? That she could shoot them both right here and now? What if she missed? The two recruits for Ullikummis continued making their way along the street toward them, as if sensing their presence. A shaft of sunlight cut through the plants and, just for a moment, Farrell saw the face of the woman of the group. She looked young and pretty, but her blue eyes seemed vacant, as if she was in a trance. He had overheard the Cerberus field personnel who had come into contact with Ullikummis’s troops describe them as “firewalkers,” as if their minds were locked in a hypnotic state, their actions not entirely under their own control. The way these two moved without discussion made him think there was something in that, like watching two puppets being moved across some grand stage, their strings hidden from his sight.
    Sinclair narrowed her eyes as she watched them, the Colt pistol held steadily out in front of her in a one-handed grip. Farrell watched as her other hand came up to add support to the grip, planting it firmly beneath the ball of her hand. Wait a minute, he thought. Is she nuts?
    “What are you doing?” Farrell whispered. “You can’t shoot them.”
    But Sela Sinclair wasn’t listening to Farrell. She was listening to the drumbeats as they pounded louder and louder, like a thunderstorm raging in her skull.
    The robed figures were just a house away now, standing there and looking it up and down like a parody of a newlywed couple choosing their first home.
    “They’re getting close. We should get out of here,” Farrell insisted, nudging Sinclair gently but urgently on the arm.
    Sinclair turned, a sudden movement like a lightning strike, and Farrell found himself falling even before he could acknowledge that she had tripped him.
    She jabbed the pistol at his face as he landed.
    “He’s here,” Sinclair said, enunciating the words clearly