Villain. Майкл Грант

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      But the loose grip of astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper changed that. During a 2008 space walk, astronaut Stefanyshyn-Piper had accidentally let go of a briefcase-sized tool kit.

      Because ASO-6 was smallish, it picked up a bit of a wobble when it smacked into that orbiting space garbage, and went off in a different direction than its original trajectory. It hit water thirty miles off the coast of the Kings Bay submarine base in Georgia, just north of the Florida line.

      The water wasn’t deep by Atlantic Ocean standards. The rock would likely be recoverable. But the vessels intended to carry out the recovery were all about two thousand miles from the location, a trip that would take them days to complete.

      In the meantime the Coast Guard cutter Abbie Burgess was dispatched to monitor the scene.

      Fourteen hours later, with the undersea research flotilla steaming toward them, the Abbie Burgess sank, with the loss of twenty-one lives.

      The only radio message to be heard from the Abbie Burgess was, “Oh, God! Oh, G—”

      A Coast Guard helicopter sent to the scene found only a few bits of floating wreckage. And no bodies.

4

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AND COMING IN AT NUMBER ONE . . .

      BRIGADIER GENERAL GWENDOLYN DiMarco did not like the office Tom Peaks had vacated at the Ranch, the secret research and development facility in the hills east of Monterey, California. It was too bland, too office-like, too normal.

      Normal. Not a word to be applied to Tom Peaks himself, who had salved his hurt feelings at being demoted by taking a large dose of the rock and turning into a massive, fire-breathing, magma-vomiting, reptilian creature who’d burned down much of the Port of Los Angeles before being dragged into the channel by an even more bizarre and dangerous creature created out of starfish DNA.

      Peaks had concealed the crazy within, and perhaps, DiMarco thought, his dull, cubicle-like office was part of the disguise. She had chosen a space closer to the action, and the action at the Ranch was all underground. Anyway, she’d never been much of a sun worshipper.

      Her office now was a singular structure occupying one end of the great cavern, the combination cave and excavation that hid all their work from electronic eyes on satellites and drones. On Google satellite maps, the Ranch looked like what it had once been: an older, repurposed army facility.

      Should call it the Iceberg, not the Ranch, DiMarco thought, nodding with grim pleasure at what she took to be a rather clever joke. Because more of it was underwater than above. Although not water, but land, earth. Dirt. Or at least a giant hole in the dirt. So, an iceberg if you meant that . . .

      Well, DiMarco knew she was not a natural wit.

      Her office was a long rectangle originally built as a construction office for the contractors who had excavated and built the massive underground facility. The location had the great advantage of being up high on a granite outcropping that formed a shelf a hundred feet above the cavern floor, just twenty feet below the jagged stone roof. She’d had it totally remodeled, of course, so the old corrugated-tin cladding had been replaced by reinforced concrete eight inches thick. The small, dirty windows that had been enough for the construction supervisor had been replaced with a single long window, twenty-four feet from end to end and six feet tall. Level 8 bulletproof glass, of course, just a hair over six centimeters thick, and capable of shrugging off five rounds from a high-powered sniper rifle.

      Within the Bunker—as DiMarco’s office had been instantly nicknamed—were just two interior walls. One, on the left end, closed off DiMarco’s adjutant, secretary, and security detail. On the right end DiMarco had her private bathroom. But occupying fully two-thirds of the square footage was her own office, dominated by a massive steel desk partly made of armor recovered from a Russian tank that had come to misfortune in Ukraine. The desk was painted olive drab, a very military contrast to the rest of the office, which had expensive Persian carpets and rich mahogany bookshelves stuffed with everything ever written about the Perdido Beach Anomaly and the emerging field of exobiology, and a great many books on arcane aspects of genetics and the hacking of same.

      Major Mike Atwell, DiMarco’s adjutant, walked in, five long strides from his own office, stepped off with careful precision to bring him just before her desk, where he executed a pivot that faintly snapped his heels together, and lay the morning briefing book on her desk.

      The paper copy was a formality, of course; DiMarco already had the digital version open on her computer.

      “Have a seat, Mike,” DiMarco said.

      Atwell, a thirty-one-year-old West Pointer with not one but two PhDs—genetics and military history with a focus on China—was a man who would never manage to look as good as he should in his impeccably tailored uniforms. He was getting full at the waist, had shoulders that were more vertical than horizontal, and had been cursed with a face that screamed “nerd.”

      “Let’s run down the top-ten list,” DiMarco said.

      Atwell nodded and began from memory. He might not have shoulders, but he had prodigious recall.

      “We are well beyond ten at this point,” Atwell said, earning a sharp look from DiMarco, who hated being told what she already knew. “Vincent Vu, who calls himself Abaddon the Destroyer, has been spotted subsequent to the Port of LA battle, as himself, as a kid, at a 7-Eleven in Long Beach and a Target store in Glendale, as well as appearing as Abaddon and, for reasons that remain obscure, destroying half a mile of used car lots. Three dead.”

      DiMarco nodded. “I’m not sure Vu is target number one, but go on.”

      “In second place, your predecessor, Tom Peaks. He’s being called Dragon in the press. Sometimes Burning Man or Hot Lizard in social media.”

      “He’s number one,” DiMarco said. “You can’t just assess according to damage done, you have to consider the mental capabilities as well. Vu is genuinely mentally ill, and a teenager to boot, who knows nothing and certainly has no larger plans. But Peaks?”

      “Yes, ma’am,” Atwell said, though he was far from convinced that ill was any better than evil. “In third place we have Shade Darby, with her super-speed. Very powerful and very smart, a bad combination. We’ve analyzed the videos, and the best guess is that she can hit speeds in excess of seven hundred miles an hour, which, depending on atmospheric conditions, can mean Mach 1, the speed of . . .” He let that trail off, seeing the warning look from DiMarco, the look that said, I know what Mach 1 means.

      “Next up, Dekka Talent. She’s very powerful, reasonably bright, and more experienced at actual physical combat than any of the others, and probably more than any soldier currently serving in uniform, frankly. In the media they’re calling her everything from Catstein to Catzilla to Lesbokitty.”

      DiMarco nodded, and her upper lip disappeared behind her lower lip, a clenched-jaw expression that often preceded an angry eruption.

      No eruption this time. Not yet.

      “Fifth place is Aristotle Adamo, aka Armo.”

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