DATE: The Year 9027 (Planet: Castai III)
NOT so long ago, in another creation of God… the sky burned red and so did his emotions. A lone figure watched from his perch as people scurried to their homes on the streets below; curfew was approaching. Military personnel were stationed in threes on every major street corner to help ensure that everyone obeyed.
He watched them, down on the street beneath him; hating them. A security camera's gears whined as it swiveled on its mount next to him, looking for miscreants. He was almost in view, but not quite.
They weren't going to see him tonight. He would be a shadow, a nightmare that strikes and is gone before the senses can capture it. Orin would be angry, of course. He had been before, but now he was older, now he was ready.
The cloning facility was in view above the other rooftop-that place where monsters were bred. The Horva were their footmen; brute forms of men made for the purpose of crushing their enemies. That's what they used to kill my people.
It was a good place to start a rebellion-take down their cloning shop and cut off their source of expendable soldiers. The only trouble was he didn't really have a how for the plan.
The next rooftop was all the way across the two lane street below. When no one appeared to be looking, he leapt away from the ledge, flipped over end once and landed on the rooftop ledge across the street. Barudii kinesis was a wonderful thing, if you were the good guy. And he wanted to do some good for his fellow Castillians tonight. Maybe they would be ready to rise up to the challenge then.
He could sense the motion of the cameras on the roof and spotted them easily. He waited for them to leave a spot in their visual field for him and then he ran through to the other side of the rooftop.
The cloning facility was there just beyond a large intercity highway-the jump would be too much. Traffic was off of the streets with the onset of curfew; he could run across now. Tiet dropped off of the building, a full two hundred feet to the pavement below-yes, Barudii kinesis was a wonderful thing.
While in the air, Tiet noticed a Vorn soldier was emerging from a side door below. He adjusted his fall slightly and came down right behind the man. His hand cupped the soldier's mouth and with a quick jerk of his arm, the neck snapped. He dropped the enemy to the ground as the body went limp. He left him, hoping to be long gone before anyone discovered the body.
He ran across the empty lanes of traffic to the fence on the other side. He jumped over its barbed wire top without effort, but another layer of fencing stood on the other side. This one was electrified, according to the signs. No bother-he jumped the height of it again. This was almost too easy, he thought.
ON a security panel inside the clone complex, a warning flashed and data begin to pour onto the screen. The night security officer looked the information over. Sometimes small animals would trigger the pressure relays located all over the grounds of the complex; but not this time. The weight given at the trigger point was one hundred and fifty five pounds; way too big for one of the usual nocturnal animals active around this time.
He punched in his security code to activate the silent alarm and brought up some other scanning and video devices on the display. It took a moment, but then he saw him. A man was entering the building through one of the air vents. He brought up a schematic for the complex and zoomed in on that particular air duct. It went through an area of the detention center and then came out near the main laboratory area. This is almost too easy.