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spring from the very best, carefully selected stock."
Kane didn't respond. In anticipation of the baron's next words, his limbs began to tremble. Baron Cobalt
noticed, because his smile widened.
"You face an interesting problem. Much of that superior genetic human material derives from your father.
If you kill me, you'll be committing fratricide, after a fashion. A sin that, I recall from old religious
teachings, immediately consigned souls to eternal damnation. Do you want to be damned?"
Kane gritted his teeth, battling the soul-destroying sickness threatening to overwhelm him.
"Why are you here, Kane?"
"To find the truth about you, about humanity. I had to find out if you and your kind actually existed or if
you were some strain of mutant."
"I am human, Kane. The new human."
Kane studied Baron Cobalt's face, the golden eyes bright with intelligence, the too smooth skin, the high
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forehead, the small ears set too low on the head.
"No," he said. "You're outside of humanity."
"The humanity you know is dead. The new humanity is taking its place. All a matter of natural selection.
Nature taking its course."
"Nature didn't create you."
"Sometimes nature must be prodded. Believe me, Kane," Baron Cobalt continued, his musical voice
sounding notes of kindness, of compassion, "I sympathize with your shock, your disorientation. You
would have been indoctrinated eventually into these secrets. Not even Salvo has been to this part of the
installation. Return with me to the ville, and you will take his place in the Trust. You will occupy an
exalted position. You will not be serving me or the Archon Directorate, but the new humanity . We are a
highly evolved breed, and our numbers are growing. We find rewards in life that our forbears were
incapable of appreciating. This is our world now, and nothing can be done to arrest the tide. Stop
opposing us. It will do you no good. Accept our kind as we have accepted your kind."
A strange heat made Kane's voice thick, his tongue feeling clumsy. "My father and all those others did not
volunteer to serve or to help create a new humanity. You enslaved them, stole their lives and their
identities. No matter how highly evolved you claim your breed is, you still need lowly humans to survive.
You need lousy humans like Reeth to supply you with fresh meat. So, explain to me, Lord Baron, how
does all that scheming and stealing and double-crossing make you superior to us apelings? You're no
different than the lowliest Pit boss in the worst slaghole of Tartarus."
Baron Cobalt's hands came up, his long fingers clutching at Kane's wrist, trying to tear his hand away
from his throat. In a rage, he barked, "You'll die, I'll have you dismembered while you're still alive"
Kane chuckled. "Look at you. You're puny, your body is fragile. You have to be sustained by artificial
means. You and the Archons are so terrified of us, you trick us into living down to our basest impulses,
then condition us to be ashamed of the very positions you forced us into. No, you're not superior. What
you are is a race of jealous, dickless cowards."
The fury in the golden eyes burned hot and molten. The baron struggled wildly, kicking at Kane's legs,
long fingers flailing at his face. He fought like a trapped animal, crushing his knuckles on Kane's armored
chest, mashing toes into his shin guards. Kane held him easily and laughed.
"I rest my case, Lord Baron. You can't beat us. You may have won a battle, may have won a lot of battles
throughout history, but this is a war that's been waged for thousands of years. But humanity always
manages to get back up one more time after the Archons have knocked us down. No matter how
blasphemous it sounds to you, we'll get up again and we'll kick your genetically superior asses out of our
lives, our futures, once and for all."
To emphasize his words, Kane slowly squeezed the baron's throat. Baron Cobalt's face grew dark with
congested blood. His pale tongue protruded past his thin lips. Kane maintained the pressure until the
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baron's slim frame shuddered and sagged.
Kane opened his hand, and the baron dropped limply to the floor, on his right side, splashing into the
standing puddle of blood and chemicals. Kane gazed down at him, not sure if he'd choked the life out of
him or not, and at the moment, not giving much of a damn.
"New humanity," Kane muttered, looking down at the soiled, scrawny figure at his feet. He spoke into the
helmet comm link. "Grant?"
"Right here."
"You heard?"
"Your side of it." His voice was strained.
"Where are you?"
"Where you left us."
"Stay there. I'm"
A pulse of sound drove into Kane's head, penetrating his helmet and eardrums like a white-hot nail. He
reeled in a sudden blaze of pain, his scuffling feet unsteady and seeking purchase in the puddle around
him. A bass humming sound, almost physical, tightened around his brain like a steel vise.
He managed to keep from falling, shambling around in a half turn to see a quartet of hybrids approaching.
The one occupying a center position wore the gray metallic suit and he held a slender silver wand in his
right hand. The wand was about three feet long, and it hummed and shivered, its gleaming length
somehow blurred.
The man with the wand said calmly, "I've seen him before, in the Cliff Palace."
The one beside said, "Subdue him or kill him."
Kane raised his blaster. The tip of the wand dipped toward him. Shrieking violence filled his head, and he
collapsed, hammered to the floor by the storm of pain.
He caught himself on his elbows, steadying the Sin Eater in a double-handed grip. His first target was the
man with the wand. He worked the trigger.
The gleaming rod swept out, fanning in a hazy semicircle. It hummed, popped and Kane heard the sharp
clang of impact, then the whine of a ricochet. The slender man stood unharmed and smiling a gentle,
patronizing smile.
Kane fired again, a 3-round burst, aiming for the middle of the high, unlined forehead. Again the wand
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