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her.”

“Careful. Slans can wipe your brain.”

The driver paused to open a first-aid kit, withdrew a long syringe. “This should knock her

out.”

His partner blinked. “That’s three times the standard dose! It could kill her.”

The other man shrugged. “The reward’s the same either way, and she’ll be a lot less trouble

for us.”

Anthea understood how animal mothers in the wild fought to protect their young. As the

driver came close, looking for an opportunity to jab her with the syringe, Anthea reacted. She

didn’t think, didn’t even understand what her body was capable of doing. She kicked him

hard in the chest—and it was as if he’d tried to catch a cannonball. The man flew backward,

struck the windshield with so much force that he crashed directly through and onto the hood

of the ambulance. He sprawled there, bloody and motionless, most likely dead. Anthea didn’t

care. He had meant to murder her and the baby.

The other emergency tech recoiled, astonished at what he had seen. He grabbed a bright

red fireman’s axe mounted on the side panel of the ambulance. “All right. No more playing

nice with the slans.”

Anthea turned around and, using the same unknowable adrenaline force, she smashed

open the back doors. Carrying the baby in one arm, she bounded out into the streets.

The emergency tech shouted curses after her, scrambled to the swinging door of the

ambulance. “She’s a slan! Stop her! Stop her!”

But the streets were full of blood-streaked people running for shelter, while overhead,

strange angular spacecraft swooped low, dropping more bombs. Anthea ran out, disappearing

into the frenzied battle zone.

«
^
»

Inside Kier Gray’s palace (technically,
John Petty’s
palace at the moment) everything was in

chaos. Even before the first bombs started dropping, perimeter alert systems and distant early

warnings detected the enemies converging in Earth orbit.

“Mr. Petty, sir!” said a wide-eyed officer named Clarke. “There’s a full fleet coming

in—from space! Unidentified ship designs, definitely military.” In the past hour, the chief of

secret police had put Clarke in charge of monitoring the defensive systems and scanners in the

command-and-control center. With so many dirty slans hidden among the government, Petty

didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t already his own.

The young man bent over his curved screens, flicked toggle switches, and turned knobs to

adjust the focus on the cathode-ray tube. Under the sweeping arc of a radar beam, blips

showed up. “They’re spacecraft, sir, battleships. Backtracking their trajectory … it looks as if

they’ve come from Mars.”

“Invaders from Mars?” All his career, the great slan hunter had been trying to track down

their secret bases. He had uncovered and documented numerous slan redoubts, but knew he

could not account for the entire vanished race of mutants. Now it all became clear: They must

have fled Earth entirely and gone to Mars, leaving only a few stragglers—or spies—behind.

Since the devastating Slan Wars, human society—
pure
human society—had developed

television and radar, jet aircraft, but only a fragmented space program, a few satellites and

pie-in-the-sky plans for rocket ships. A long time ago, human civilization had been much more

ambitious, stretching their boundaries and approaching the stars. The Slan Wars had wrecked

all that, knocking human civilization back by many centuries.

But the insidious slans must have maintained their superior technology. All these years they

had been hiding on Mars, building up their invasion force.

Just like Gray warned us
! Before the first slan air strikes, guards had taken the deposed

President to a secure holding cell in the interrogation sector. Not wanting to let Gray anywhere

close to Jommy Cross, he had kept the President far removed from the other two slans, in a

completely different detention level. But Petty hadn’t decided what to do next with the

prisoners. He had to take care of it himself.

“Mount all of our defenses. Now that we’ve exposed what Gray really is, the slans must be

trying to free him.”

“But we only just arrested President Gray,” Clarke said. “If these ships came from Mars,

they launched days ago—”

“Don’t argue fine points with me. Just call out the military.”

The technician fiddled with his switches and displayed the incredible oncoming force on

the big screen. It took his breath away. “Um, sir—since we’ve arrested President Gray, and Jem

Lorry has disappeared, who has the executive authority necessary? Who’s in charge?”

“
I’m
in charge!” He lifted his chin. “It’s about time that someone with common sense, a

proven track record, and a hard fist started taking care of things.” He sounded as if he were

delivering a campaign speech.

Petty paced around the bustling stations in the command-and-control center, ignoring the

racket of alarms. “Summon all our troops. Get our aircraft in the skies, put soldiers on the

rooftops to man our anti-aircraft guns. Tell them to shoot down anything that moves.” He

ground his teeth together, then glanced again at the blips on the display. The enemy ships kept

coming, as if Mars had an infinite supply.

As the bombs started dropping from the skies, detonating in the streets of

Centropolis—possibly all across the world—Petty quickly saw that Earth didn’t have a chance

against this sort of attack. He would have to take unorthodox action, much as he hated to do

so.

His face flushed with frustration, he chose the three largest and most muscular guards.

“Follow me back to the President’s cell. I’m going to make him see reason. And if I can’t

manage that, then you three are going to help change his mind.” Perhaps they weren’t the

brightest men, little more than thugs, but Petty would do all the thinking. He just needed

someone who could break a few bones, if necessary.

The sheer racket of the alarms probably caused more confusion and fear than the actual

attack. Outside, the distant muffled rumble of explosions continued, barely heard over the

obnoxious, incessant alarms. The enemy intended a full-fledged invasion, and no doubt they

wouldn’t stop until most of the city was destroyed.

In the upper levels of the palace, functionaries, staff, and even a few political visitors ran

about in a panic. The streets were a stew of chaos. The surveillance cameras and periscope

viewers showed much of Centropolis already in flames.

He hurried along brightly lit tunnels and narrow passageways, accompanied by the guards.

If John Petty was going to rule the world, he wanted it to last longer than an hour or two.

His guards were armed with blunt-muzzled, large-caliber pistols. One slug fired from such

a weapon would tear a hole the size of a grapefruit in a victim; the secret police rarely worried

about simply wounding a slan prisoner. Right now, the guards would have to content

themselves with using blunt clubs, perhaps even sharp-pointed electrical prods. He needed the

“slan President” alive.

The burly guards stopped as Petty faced the other man’s holding chamber. Inside, Gray

paced and sweated, desperate to get out. Seeing the chief of secret police, he rushed to the bars.

“Why didn’t you listen to me? You have to let me out.”

“I don’t have to do anything, but
you
do. Remember who’s holding the cards here.”

“You’ll just be holding a handful of rubble if we don’t solve this.”

Grudgingly, Petty gestured for the guards to activate the cell’s unlocking mechanism. The

barred door rattled aside, and the slan hunter stepped into the chamber with his three guards

close behind him. “The slans are bombarding our city. Tell me how we fight against them.”

“They aren’t true slans. They are our step-brothers, tendrilless slans bred centuries ago to

move undetected among humanity. Now they mean to destroy both races.” When Petty gave

him a skeptical frown, the deposed President insisted, “It is the tendrilless ones you should

fear, not us. They have infiltrated your news media, your utility companies, your transportation

systems.”

“You’re trying to make me paranoid.”

“You had a head start on that all by yourself.”

“Why should slans hate other slans, whether or not they’ve got tendrils?”

“Many shameful acts have been committed by both sides, and all the while humans were

blind to it. Samuel Lann, the father of all slans, would disown every one of us if he were here.”

A small-statured mousy man dashed down the hall, panting. He wore the crisp gray

uniform and a blue armband of the palace service personnel, a courier. He clutched a scrap of

paper in his hand. “Mr. Petty, President Gray … uh, whoever’s in charge. I have an urgent

message! News.” He skidded to a stop and heaved great breaths. His face was red from the

effort of running.

The three guards glared at the mousy courier. Petty said, “Well, out with it, man!”

“Jommy Cross and Kathleen Layton have escaped. Those two slans are on the loose!”

The President saw his chance. While the others were startled by the announcement, he

lunged from the cot and wrapped his hands around Petty’s thick neck. The momentum

knocked the burly slan hunter back. “You fool, you’ve brought us all to ruin! We could have

set up defenses in time. Now how many thousands, maybe millions, are going to die?”

Two of Petty’s thugs grabbed the President’s arms, fighting so hard they ripped his shirt,

but finally they tore his hands free from the chief’s throat. Petty coughed and choked. Thick

red marks stood out on his neck. “How … dare you!”

“In order to achieve true victory, one must dare a great deal.” It was the voice of one of the

three brutish guards. He sounded unexpectedly erudite.

Rubbing away his blurred vision, Petty turned to look at the man who now stood in a

broad-shouldered fighting stance, his heavy-caliber pistol drawn from its holster. The wide,

blunt muzzle pointed directly at John Petty.

“What’s going on?” His damaged voicebox allowed no more than a rasp.

The guard continued to act strangely. “Once I kill you and Kier Gray, the humans won’t

have even a thread of hope. No one can lead them.” The pistol never wavered.

“You—you’re one of them!” Petty squawked.

“A tendrilless victory is assured.”

With an explosive sound, the gunshot echoed in the cell, but the burly guard merely

staggered, then stared in astonishment at the wet red hole the size of a grapefruit that had been

blown through his chest.

Outside, trembling at the door of the cell, the meek courier held his own gun in shaking

hands. The blast seemed to have deafened him, while the recoil had nearly knocking him

backward off his feet. “They … they said I was supposed to come armed before I delivered my

message.” The man blinked, not sure who he was supposed to explain himself to.

Petty dropped to his knees, weak and disoriented. “A slan—among my own secret police!”

“Not a slan,” Gray insisted. “Don’t be an even bigger fool than you already are. He wanted

to kill me as well as you. Look at the back of his head. It’s one of the tendrilless.”

The other two shaken guards grabbed the traitor’s head, probed among his bristly dark

hair, but could find no prosthetics, no makeup, nothing that covered the telltale signs of a

hidden slan.

As the guard lay choking in his own blood, he exhibited great strength, slan healing

powers. “You don’t have a chance against
my people
.” Then he died.

Petty glared at the remaining two guards, as if afraid they might pull their weapons and

open fire, too. He brushed at the droplets of blood that had sprayed on his clean uniform, then

whirled toward Gray sitting on his cot. “You were telling the truth.” It sounded like an

accusation. “You were telling the truth! There
are
tendrilless slans.”

“They are the ones you’ve always needed to fear,” Gray said.

Petty backed out of the cell and gestured to his guards. “Get the body out of there, and lock

him
in again.” He turned to the surprised and meek courier. “All three of you, stay here and

guard Gray.” This information changed everything. “I have to get back to the

command-and-control center. We’re going to need new battle plans.”