Sakai flinched and her eyes flicked in his general direction, but all she said was, "Yes, sir." And then into the communications net: "All units, we are under break out situation. Repeat, break out situation. Initiate Plan Centerpoint. Repeat, initiate Centerpoint. All commands signal acknowledgment"

Kyle was watching Sakai, but then turned back to Soaring Owl as the man pulled his head back from what could only have been a retinal print scanner. Immediately, three monitors that had been showing redundant trideo images changed. One showed black, and the other two gave technical information and displays that Kyle didn't recognize. One of them, though, seemed to be the status for a vehicle of some kind.

All the monitors showed the Knight Errant troopers obviously withdrawing. And taking the wounded with them. The cluttering, buzzing, hissing horde of vile things continued to attack.

The van suddenly shook as something hammered against it. More hammering followed, and a couple of monitors began to flicker.

Soaring Owl looked up for a moment, then pulled a long optical cable from the console in front of him and connected it to his datajack. The displays changed, and the black screen brightened, giving the camera view of a drone inside a launch bay of some kind. The unit designator "Damocles" appeared on the monitor as did a fuel display.

"Signal command mat we have found the primary hive," Soaring Owl said as indicators on one of the monitors changed. The drone was powering up. "As per instructions I have initiated Damocles and am solely responsible for its detonation."

"Detonation?" Kyle spun to face him.

The man's hands were shaking. "We've found, god help us, the central hive. The main North American hive. Who the frag would have thought they'd have hid it in a city?"

"I don't understand."

"This is it. The most powerful queens are here. All the others are commanded from here. We must destroy it"

Kyle shook his head. "You can't know that. We've got to withdraw. Those bug things are all over the city by now. Eagle's going to need all your-"

"If we can kill the queens, the rest of the hive is lost. Directionless. We have to kill the queens. Now." Daylight was appearing on the drone monitor; the bay doors were opening.

"There's no way you can get down there. Your people are stopped cold. If the queens are on the bottom level, you're not even going to get close before the sheer number and weight of those bugs ground your drone."

"Close, Mr. Teller," Soaring Owl said, "only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and thermonuclear weapons."

"Mother of god, you can't be serious."

Soaring Owl finally turned toward him slightly as the drone lifted from its cradle and rose up out of the bay. "We have no choice. It's small, tactical, less than a kiloton, but it will reach them. That's what counts."

Kyle stepped forward. "I can't let you do this."

"It's got to be done."

Kyle took a step toward Soaring Owl, one hand extended, as the Knight Errant technicians in the cabin began drawing their sidearms. Kyle was faster-the spell forming in his mind, the energy shaped, channeled through his body-when the truck suddenly lurched to one side, knocking both him and Soaring Owl down.

Metal screamed as it was peeled away, and the living biomatter lining that had kept the spirits at bay tore away with it. Kyle's spell unraveled and he reached for his weapon focus as the beetle spirit that had torn open the roof of the truck screeched and dove inside, followed by the gleaming bothes of its brethren.

Kyle screamed too and fought for his life as the horde dove at them amid their own wild shrieking. His voice was drowned by their sounds.

Part II Inside the Chicago Containment Area After 22 August 2055

There was gunfire, and Kyle awoke suddenly into darkness. Cold, hungry, and filled with pain that shot through him like electricity, beginning somewhere deep in his left leg and ripping through and across his hip, and then up into his back. He tried to cry out, but the only sound that came from his parched throat was a harsh, guttural cough. His hand lay in warm water, and he dragged his body to it, painfully, slowly, finally rolling into its soothing warmth with a final grunt.

There came the sound of more gunfire, nearby, and he tried to open his eyes, but couldn't. Touching them with the one hand he could lift that high, he felt the lids sealed shut by what felt like clotted blood. He worked to clear them with the warm water, and that brought more pain but also faint glimpses of dim light.

Two more shots echoed through the air, and then a scream. It wasn't a scream of pain, but one of final, inevitable death. Kyle could see now, just barely, and discovered he was wedged behind a tipped metal garbage dumpster and lying in a pool of rain water spilling off from a roof edge high overhead. It was night.

His body armor was torn, soggy from the recent rain, and stiff in places where his own blood had clotted. He tried to stand, but couldn't-the pain in his leg stopped him. Even trying to pull himself up using the dumpster was more than he could stand. Kyle let himself slide back into the pool of water and lay there for a moment as a soft irregular drip from high above splashed his skin. He shifted so that it fell on his face.

Kyle was sure his leg was broken in at least two places.

Most of the rest of his body hurt too, but those pains seemed to be from wounds, tears deep through his body armor and into his flesh. He remembered the beetle spirit ripping open the roof of the Knight Errant command truck, and he remembered fighting against it and another spirit that flew with brilliant green iridescent wings, but he couldn't recall anything clearer than that.

He tried to focus his magic on his own body, drawing it through his True Self to begin the healing, but where the magic should have come as a torrent it only sparked, his command of it distorted by pain. He tried again, but this time his coordination of the forces unraveled even quicker. Kyle was too hurt to concentrate, even with the help of his foci. They were all there, he was-surprised to discover-the bracelets, the rings, and the amulet around his neck. Only his knife wasn't immediately at hand, but he could sense that his intangible connection to it was still intact. It was still active, somewhere.

It was then he felt another loss that was more an empty space where things had been. Kyle suddenly realized with utter certainty that he had no spirits, no elementals, bound to him. They were all gone, more than likely destroyed, though he couldn't be sure now. Then came the awareness of an even greater absence that almost swallowed him whole. Seeks-the-Moon was gone, lost. Their connection, omnipresent since the moment of the spirit's creation, was obliterated.

Kyle did not know how long he lay there, but it was some time before he felt the rain begin to pick up again, strong and warm. His body was weak, hungry, and on the verge of dehydration, but he needed to get to better shelter. If he was going to find it, though, it wouldn't be with the help of his nearly immobile body.

He relaxed as best he could, and after a moment his astral form slipped free of his pain-wracked physical being. Though he could still feel the pain, it was separate from him, distant enough that he could all but ignore it. Cautiously, he rose above the dumpster, rancid even in astral space, and extended his senses outward.

The streets were dark, dead, and cold, but splashed with the flickering lights and shadows of a number of fires blazing nearby. From the look of the area, he seemed still to be on Randolph, but across the road from the Knight Errant trucks, or rather what remained of them. Both were wrecked, and one of them still burned, a beacon of white energy in astral space. There was no other life to be seen, so he drifted cautiously toward the vehicles until he could see the dozen or so bodies among the wreckage, mangled and torn by either the attacking insect spirits or the explosion of the truck.