Chapter One

 

 

Ryan Cawdor lay in the gateway chamber of the matter-transfer unit at the heart of Redoubt 47, in the wilds of what had a hundred years earlier been the state of Louisiana.

 

"Who could?" he said slowly, his voice distorted, throbbing inside his skull.

 

Krysty Wroth's fingers squeezed his hand very hard, painfully. She was telling him something, shouting. But the jump was almost under way.

 

Almost.

 

A silhouetted figure stood outside the heavy door, someone tall and skinny, wearing black.

 

Ryan's grip on the present had almost gone, and he clung to consciousness by a ragged fingernail. Images floated through his whirling mind.

 

The massive dark brown armaglass door to the chamber was opening, closing.

 

Dark figure.

 

White hair.

 

Face close against his, with eyes that leaked bright blood. A skin like paper.

 

Old, immeasurably old.

 

Hissing words. " what you did...."

 

As blackness finally swallowed him up and his eye closed, Ryan's last sentient thought was that his nostrils were filled with the acrid stench of decay.

 

Of death.