Truth Engine by James Axler

were utterly defeated.
    Kane scanned the group until he spotted Lakesh kneeling among them, a well-built man of medium height who appeared to be in his midfifties. The man’s dusky face was bruised, and a trickle of dried blood could be seen below his aquiline nose. Lakesh held one hand to his head, as if in pain.
    Behind him, Kane felt Domi tense, and he held his arm out like a bar, blocking her as she began to scamper ahead. “Wait, Domi,” he whispered. “Let’s not get crazy.”
    â€œCrazy’s already here,” Domi hissed, her crimson eyes flashing in the flickering illumination of the overhead lighting. “Didn’t bring it, just going to fix it.”
    Grant stepped up behind the albino wild child, placing one immense hand on her shoulder with a gentleness that belied his strength. “Just play it cool for now, Domi,” he told her.
    For a moment, it seemed that she would react, unleashing the instinctive rage that simmered beneath the surface of her civilized personality. But she stopped herself, visibly relaxing, though the fierce anger was still clear in her face. Domi respected Grant, and had once harbored something of a crush on the man. Domi was different, and was never more aware of that than when she was among the Cerberus staff. But Grant had alwaystreated her with respect, and even now she knew he was looking out for her.
    â€œNo point revealing ourselves too soon,” he told her quietly.
    After a moment, the albino girl nodded, dipping her head and stepping back into the shadows of the far wall, the Detonics Combat Master ready in her hand.
    As Grant waited with Domi, Brigid sidled up to Kane, pressing her spine to the wall. Before them, the huge steel door was still rolling back on its hydraulic system, a slow and deliberate process. Brigid recoiled as she scanned the kneeling prisoners properly for the first time. Some had their heads bowed and several were slumped in such a way that they seemed to be barely clinging to life. Most wore the standard Cerberus white jumpsuit with a vertical blue zipper down the front, but for many the white was scuffed and dirtied now by the traumas they had evidently suffered. Several had obvious wounds, blood marring the torn material of their clothing.
    Brigid recognized Donald Bry kneeling close to Lakesh, his mop of copper curls falling over his face as he bowed his head in weary defeat. There, too, was astrophysicist Brewster Philboyd, his lanky frame bent over uncomfortably as he knelt before the guardsmen. Just a few hours earlier, Brewster had been providing recon information for Brigid’s field team via Commtact link; now he knelt in supplication before an enemy.
    As Brigid’s eyes flickered across the group, she felt a growing sense of helplessness at their plight. Here was Sela Sinclair, her face bruised and blood staining the front of her jumpsuit, her left wrist hanging limply at her side, clearly broken. Next to her was geologist Mariah Falk, tears silently streaming down her face as she knelt beside her colleagues.
    But as Brigid scanned the group, she noted that there were people missing, too. She tried to ignore the awful thought nagging at her mind—that the others were dead.
    Fifteen hooded guards wandered to and fro, patrolling a group made up of at least forty Cerberus personnel. Forty was two-thirds of the staff, Brigid realized. Behind them, sunlight streamed in as the main door shuddered to a standstill.
    â€œSo what do we do?” she whispered to Kane.
    His steel-gray eyes shifted from the scene playing out before them to the gun in his hand, assessing their chances. He wanted to tell Brigid that they could take intruders—thanks to firepower and training and some innate ability or luck they seemed to possess—and yet he knew that the other Cerberus people had tried, and he himself had been stunned by the near invincibility that their hooded foes appeared to possess.
    As Kane