"Time to move," said Burnout. Then he pulled himself up, and anchored the next step, beginning his assault on the cliff face.

They were about halfway up when they heard the unmistakable subsonic thrum of approaching helicopters.

In the approaching Lear-Cessna Platinum III, Ryan looked through the scratched macroglass. The flight from Hells Canyon had been uneventful and relatively smooth, giving him time to get nervous about seeing Nadja.

Can we ever be close again? he wondered.

The endless city sprawled over the land below. Corporate arcologies and Federal high-rises of blue and silver glass clustered together in the distance as the jet approached, their shine dulled by the haze of blood-colored smog. Darkening in the late-afternoon sun.

Surrounding the cluster, the sprawl lay like a tiger… brought down by a pack of hyenas. The huge beast had been harried and scarred by a thousand tiny wounds, until it lacked the strength to fight or flee. It merely lay there bleeding its life into the rust-colored Potomac.

Riot-caused fires burned all over the ruined areas of the city, sending black smoke into the air. Outside the central cluster, tenements and low-slung office buildings were boarded up. Few residents walked the streets in the aftermath of Dunkelzahn's assassination. The only pedestrians to be seen were rioters, tight groups of heavily armed Federal police, and corporate security.

Ryan knew this city was not unique; it could be any of a thousand just like it. A thousand individual names- Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore-but all one stretch of concrete and rebar. One never-ending metropolis that ranged from Boston to Atlanta.

It could be any city, but it wasn't. It was Washington FDC, the seat of government for the United Canadian and American States. The city where Dunkelzahn was assassinated. Until his untimely death two weeks earlier, the great dragon Dunkelzahn had been Ryan's master-his benefactor, teacher, father figure, and friend. Ryan missed the old wyrm.

"Bossman, we're going in to National Airport. Heart of the Federal cluster, and it looks like there are limos waiting on the runway. Miss Daviar must have pulled some serious strings to bypass security like that." Dhin's tusky growl was full of good humor this afternoon. Happy to have a break from the exhausting routine of Hells Canyon. "I just love having friends in high places."

Ryan nodded, though Dhin couldn't see him. Nadja, sweet Nadja, with all the shakedown from Dunkelzahn's will, she had enough clout to pull strings all over the world. Before Dunkelzahn's death, she had been the dragon's voice, translating his telepathic speech into vocals for the world. She had also managed his presidential campaign with intensity and extreme intelligence.

But now, in the aftermath of the assassination, Nadja had become the head of the Draco Foundation, a new megacorporation founded from the dragon's major holdings. She was also the current nominee for vice-president of UCAS. One tiny tug from her immaculately manicured fingers, and people in the farthest corners of the Awakened Earth jumped to do her bidding.

Ryan smiled as he thought about Nadja, the beauty of her face, her curvaceous body, her hard-line sense of duty, her keen intellect and ordered mind, her aura of command. All these things she had, and all of these things she had offered to him without reservation, with a deep abiding love and trust that threatened to take his breath away. It stunned him that a woman of such personal prowess could turn so gentle, so tender in those few moments they had alone together.

At least that was the way it had been before…

With a dull thump and the high whine of braking jets, the Platinum III kissed the tarmac. Ryan gathered up his suitcase, and stood, buttoning his double-breasted sharkskin suit coat. On the outside, he looked like any other high-powered exec, but underneath the corporate broker disguise, Ryan was unadulterated flesh and magically enhanced muscle. Beneath the Armante tailoring was an arsenal to make a weapon-fetishist drool with envy. Guns and darts, grenades and knives, all hidden from view.

The jet rolled to a stop, and Ryan moved to the front of the cabin, meeting Dhin as the ork exited the cockpit. In Dhin's gnarled face, Ryan saw a mirror of his own exhaustion. Dhin was dressed in a brown suit that seemed a bit too small for the big ork, straining at the bulge of his chest and arms, but Ryan knew that was deceptive. The suit very effectively hid the twin nickel-plated Savalette Guardian pistols under each armpit. Dhin's scarred lips cracked into a grin, showing yellow fangs and a broken left tusk. "End of the line-everybody off."

The big ork pressed the stud that triggered the pressure door. Dull, wet heat swam into the cool cabin, bringing a familiar stench to Ryan's magically enhanced sense of smell. It was the stink of the battlefield, a burned, dead scent that bespoke tremendous violence and suffering.

Dhin wrinkled his flat nose, wide nostrils flaring. "Smells like something died out there."

Ryan nodded. "Something did." Then he stepped into the humid, oppressive afternoon.

As he descended the short steps to the hot tarmac, Ryan was aware of Dhin following closely behind, could picture the ork's body posture, eyes scanning the runway for possible trouble, one meaty hand buried in his suit jacket, ready to pull a Guardian at the first sign of something amiss. Playing his corporate bodyguard role to the hilt.

Ryan reached the ground, training and instinct sending his body into full alert, his senses testing every turn of the foul breeze, cataloging every possible vantage point from the nearby buildings where a sniper could find an attack position, infrared vision scanning for heat signatures in places where there shouldn't be any. His hearing automatically tuned out the dull background noises that come standard with a bustling airport, searching for that elusive sound, the one that didn't belong, the one that spelled danger.

Ryan concentrated as he stepped toward the two limousines, and his vision shifted into the astral, searching and scanning for threats. He found nothing out of the ordinary.

The limos were jet-black Mitsubishi Nightskys, their sleek bodies glossed to a high shine that fractured the sunlight into a rainbow of reflection. The side doors were embossed with the Draco Foundation logo, the image lasered and holographic, making it three-dimensional.

Ryan shook his head. He would rather have landed at one of the smaller, less prestigious airfields, and journeyed to Dunkelzahn's Georgetown estate in something a little less flashy. Like an armored step-van. But in corporate and federal dominated downtown DC, this cover was less conspicuous than anything else.

The near passenger door of the lead limo opened, and a thin human with white hair stepped up to meet them. The man was dressed in a suit similar to Ryan's, though it hung loose on the older man's whipcord frame. He smiled. "Mister Mercury?"

Ryan nodded and took the man's outstretched hand, which gripped his own like a dead fish-limp, damp, and soft.

"I'm Maxwell Hersh, assistant to Miss Carla Brooks. She wanted to greet you personally, but her new position on the Scott Commission has made her extremely busy. She sends her regards, and hopes your trip was smooth and uneventful."

Ryan grinned for the first time that day. Carla Brooks, a.k.a. Black Angel-Dunkelzahn's former head of security-had never composed a sentence half that long which didn't contain at least six expletives. Now, Carla served as chief of security for Nadja and the Draco Foundation as well as being part of the Scott Commission-a primarily political committee that was investigating Dunkelzahn's assassination. Ryan was glad of it. There was no one better.