Before the Dawn

Chapter two Titanic night

Hanging suspended by a slender nylon rope, eight stories over nighttime Los Angeles, Max thought, Piece of cake...

The line tethering her to the building felt snug against her wasplike waist. Though a chilly wind swept over the city, colder than one would expect for early March, it barely registered on Max, upon whom weather had little or no effect. Her lithe, athletic body was sheathed in black formfitting fatigues, providing warmth enough for her genetically amplified body; besides which, her Manticore training in the frigid winters of Gillette, Wyoming, had toughened her far beyond any mere meteorological phenomenon she might encounter in LA. Her silky black hair, worn long since her escape from the compound, was tucked neatly under a black watchcap, and she made an anonymous, asexual figure as she played human spider.

Like the music that had once been made here, the record company that had originally erected the pseudo-stacked-disc structure (where she would soon be breaking and entering) was ancient history. After the Pulse, gangster groups had taken the building in lieu of royalties owed, following negotiations that were rumored to have been a literal bloodbath.

The ragtag street army that moved in to the old Capitol Records Building turned the structure into a fortress that had withstood all attacks... until the Big Quake of 2012, anyway. After that, a building that had once resembled a stack of records came to look more like a layer cake with the top four stories smushed by the thumb of a frosting-licking God.

A second generation of gangsters dwelled in the building — known now as the Cap — and this particular batch of criminals-since-birth were the ones Max planned to rip off this evening. The Brood, as they were called, would buy, sell, or trade anything — as long as it was illegal.

For instance, right now the Brood had in their possession the security plans for the Hollywood Heritage Museum, not far outside Brood turf on Highland, a reconverted office building (once belonging to a powerful “agency,” Max had been told — spies, she supposed) that held much of the remaining nostalgic artifacts of a city whose main business had once been (before the Pulse, before the Big Quake) entertainment.

Max knew the Brood planned to rip the museum off, and she and her own clan intended to prevent them from doing so... not out of civic-spiritedness, but to take down the score themselves.

After years of struggle, the sector police had finally fought to a stalemate with the Brood, penning them into an area bordered by the old 101 on the north and east, Cahuenga on the west, and Sunset Boulevard on the south. The Hollywood Freeway, the old 101, curved around the Cap and still occasionally bore spotty, sporadic traffic, vehicles driven by those brave (or foolhardy) enough to pass through Roadhog territory.

Hanging along the north side of the building, as casual and unafraid as a child on a backyard swing, Max looked down on the twinkling abstraction that was the 101 and watched idly as the Roadhogs chased after some unfortunate soul who’d had the bad judgment to try to run the freeway. She smiled a little, shook her head; how reckless, the young woman thought, as she dangled off the side of the tower.

Looking north toward Mount Lee, Max could see the fifty-foot letters that now spelled out HO WOOD, their whiteness stark even in the three A.M. darkness. The sign had read HO YWOOD when Max had arrived in Hollywood in 2013, barely a year after the Quake had decimated most of what the post-Pulse riots hadn’t. This latest revision struck Max as appropriate to a city of scavengers and street tramps of every stripe.

She checked her watch: it was time.

Securing a foothold on a window ledge, Max lowered herself onto her stomach on the steel awning above the seventh floor. On her belly, she spun and slowly crawled to the edge, her head hanging down as she peeked into the window.

She saw nothing but darkness.

Silently, she ticked off the seconds until Moody’s diversion would begin.

Moody — leader of the Chinese Clan, the group Max belonged to — had taken over in Max’s life (though she had never made the mental connection herself) the father-figure position that had once been filled by Colonel Donald Lydecker.

An old man by the standards of these short-lived times — fifty-five, maybe even sixty — Moody had piercing green eyes, a trimmed gray beard and mustache that contained flecks of black, his long silver hair combed straight back, usually tied in a long ponytail. His skin tone said he rarely saw light of day; and his nose — a twisting series of hills on the plain of his face — spoke of many breakings, while the thin, pink-lipped line of his mouth kept the man’s thoughts locked up tight. His black garments — black leather jacket, black T-shirt, black jeans — inspired Max to her own, similar style of dress.

The Chinese Clan were thieves, so named not because any of the members were of Asian descent, rather because they lived in what had once been Mann’s Chinese Theatre, the grandest of many local, abandoned movie theaters. The Pulse and the Quake had combined to effectively kill the motion picture industry, and theater complexes across America stood empty, their design difficult for any worthwhile purpose, some being turned into flophouses, fortresses, whorehouses, and even occasionally, if clumsily, a hospital.

The self-dubbed Chinese Clan had occupied the theater within days of the Pulse, and Moody’s youthful gang had staved off every effort — from both police and rival gangs — to evict them.

Five, Max calmly thought, four... three, her large dark eyes locked on the window... two... one...

An explosion rocked the world, a bright orange column of flame rising along the east side of the building like a fiery offering to the heavens!

The roar that followed a second later reminded Max of the artillery blasts during war games back at Manticore and, even as heat waves rolled through the building, for a second she froze, a chill slicing through her bones.

A second explosion, this one on the west side, sent flames shooting skyward, as well, orange and blue tongues licking hungrily.

Snapping out of it, Max could make out movement behind the darkened windows of the seventh floor. A door swung open, a light in the hallway suddenly illuminating the room, and Brood members poured out into the hallway, most likely believing they were under attack.

They weren’t far wrong, considering those fires burning below; Moody’s idea of a diversion seemed to Max to be just short of an all-out blitz on the Brood stronghold. Moving quickly now, unsure how long Moody’s fireworks would keep the gangsters occupied, Max lowered herself onto the sill of the seventh-floor window and went to work. Using a glass cutter, she etched a circle big enough to accommodate her slender form, punched it in, and then held the edge to maintain her balance as she undid her tether.

The lithe thief released her hold on the rope and the window, seeming to hang there for a second, then leapt headfirst through the hole and somersaulted onto the mattresses scattered across the floor, coming up in a fighting stance.

The room was empty, unless you counted the stench left behind by a dozen unwashed souls sleeping in what had once been an office for one. Only the desk remained from the furniture that had formerly marked this room as a place of business; it sat to Max’s left, one mattress on top of it and another underneath, one end stuffed under the desk so the owner’s head rested where a worker’s legs and feet had once been. In the Brood, this probably qualified as earthquake awareness.

Tiptoeing to the door, Max listened for any sound that might indicate she wasn’t alone on the floor. The information about the security plan had reached Moody through a Brood intermediary who apparently figured the bribe he’d solicited from the Chinese Clan was worth risking the wrath of his own gang.

According to the sellout, Mikhail Kafelnikov — the formidable, legendarily sadistic leader of the Brood — kept the museum security layout in a safe on this floor, in his private office at the far end of the hall.

The building, tomb-silent, appeared to have emptied as the Brood poured downstairs to check out the explosions. Moving into the hallway, Max’s hypersensitive hearing sought any sound — a creak of the floor, the squeak of a sneaker, even something as inconsequential as the breathing of a guard... nothing.

Nothing but the distant crackle of flames and raised voices, anyway, many floors below.

An eyebrow lifted in a little shrug, before Max took off into a short sprint that deposited her at the threshold of Kafelnikov’s office.

She really wanted to make sure that sinister son of a bitch wasn’t in — again, she listened intently, hearing nothing, then tried the door...

... locked.

Max considered picking the lock — she had the tools, and the knowledge — then decided her limited time would be better spent inside the office. Rearing back, she kicked the latch next to the knob and the door splintered with a satisfying crunch as it swung open.

Time is money, she thought, moving inside the empty room.

Empty of people, at least. This was a combination office, apartment... and arsenal. To the left, running the length of the wall, a rack displayed with pride guns, rifles, machine guns, and shotguns. Shelves above the rack held boxes of grenades, flashbangs, and a wide array of pistols. She could have easily helped herself; but ever since Lydecker had shot one of her X5 sibs that night in the barracks, Max had had an innate abhorrence of firearms. She hated the foul things then, she hated them now.

The wall opposite the guns, to Max’s right, was home to a monstrous round waterbed covered with silk sheets; next to it, like a disapproving parent, stood a tall stainless-steel refrigerator. The wall itself was a huge window, moonlight flooding the room with ivory. The center of the office, in front of Max, was dominated by a massive kidney-shaped desk, behind which loomed an oversized, thronelike leather chair. A large-screen TV rose like an altar to the right of (and behind) the desk, angled toward the bed. Behind the leather throne, an oversized portrait in oil of Kafelnikov (not very good) took up most of the wall.

Surprising there’s room for all this stuff, the young woman thought, and the ego of that bastard Kafelnikov...

Moody’s informant had said the safe that held the security plan was behind the painting. If the safe was as big as the portrait, Max thought, the dial ought to be about the size of a hubcap.

As she made her way around the desk, she slipped a switchblade out of her pocket and flicked the button, the blade springing open with a click. She found a metal wastebasket, turned it over, spilling refuse, and climbed up on it, and looked the Russian gang leader in his smug, superior face. Then, wearing her own smug smile, Max stabbed Kafelnikov in his oil-painted heart and sliced upward, the canvas ripping, as if the subject himself were crying out in agony.

The safe was where it was supposed to be, and the dial was normal sized. For as elaborate as Moody’s plan had been, this seemed to the experienced young cat thief a routine heist. Putting the knife away, Max tuned up her hearing, placing her ear to the safe’s metal door, and started turning the dial.

In less than fifteen seconds Max had the thing open; in five more she had found the security plans to the nostalgia museum, and in another second she had them tucked into her fatigues. A large pile of cash to the left proved too tempting, as well, and that disappeared into other pockets.

Moody needn’t know about that; she would call it a bonus.

Finally, satisfied with her haul, she turned to leave. That was when she sensed the first dog.

She had heard the Brood kept dogs to deter intruders, though Moody had been dismissive about these “rumors.”

But the big, black, beautiful beast, its shiny eyes and razor-sharp white teeth glowing in the moonlight, was no rumor. The dog, some kind of a Doberman mix, moved forward, in a low, suspicious approach, its muscles undulating like shadows beneath its taut skin. The animal growled low in its throat, a disquieting greeting.

“Nice puppy,” Max soothed, her hand reaching out toward the dog in a slowly offered, underhand gesture of peace, showing the animal an empty, unthreatening palm.

The dog snarled.

And the canine sentry was not alone...

She could hear their paws padding down the hall, and four more appeared in the hallway, and entered the room — very trained, none scrambling on top of each other — fanning out in almost military fashion, growling, holding their positions. Each was at least as big as the leader, with saliva dripping, fangs showing, the quintet snarling in unholy harmony as their leader edged closer.

Max rose to her full height. The soft approach had failed; so, making her voice loud and sharp, she said, “Sit.”

The lead dog barked once, the canine equivalent of Fuck you.

Max let out a long breath. “Your choice. I didn’t want to do this, but you’re asking for it...”

And cat prepared herself to meet dog, lowering into a combat crouch.

The first dog leapt and Max swiftly sidestepped it, the Doberman smacking into the wall with a yelp and a dull thud. As the second and third dogs came after her, separating to hit her from either side — a sophisticated outflanking maneuver coming from canines — Max jumped up on the desk, just as the two animals collided, and rolled away in a yelping ball of paws and claws and tails.

One of the two remaining in the military line inside the doorway flung itself at Max, who vaulted up and over, the dog’s head snapping back around to try to bite her as Max soared over it, hit the floor in a tuck, somersaulted to her feet, and sidestepped as the last dog lunged.

Rushing out into the hall, Max pulled the splintered door shut behind her; with the lock snapped, the door wouldn’t hold the animals back for long, and she knew the beasts would be hot on her heels. Their pissed-off barking said as much.

She ran to the elevator, wishing those doors would magically open before she got there, and... they did.

Only now she found herself face-to-face with Mikhail Kafelnikov and half a dozen members of his Brood. They all looked as pissed as those dogs, Kafelnikov especially.

Wait till he sees his portrait, she thought.

Tall and thin, the Russian immigrant was nonetheless well muscled, with close-cropped blond hair, penetrating blue eyes, and rather sensuous pink full lips. He wore a brown leather coat, knee-length, an open-throated orange silk shirt with gold chains, black leather pants, and black snakeskin boots.

Moody had said it best: Kafelnikov cultivated both the look and the lifestyle of a pre-Pulse rock star, which his late father had been, or at least so it was said. The son supposedly had musical talent, too, but just figured crime paid better than music, particularly in a time when the entertainment industry had gone to crap.

The Russian might well have struck Max as handsome if not for the expression of rage screwing up his features; handsome, that is, for a homicidal maniac.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, momentarily frozen in the elevator. Studying the small form in the watchcap, the Russian said, “It’s a girl... just a girl...” His boys surged out with him, even as he bellowed at them, “Who is this little bitch?”

Before she could respond in any manner (and words would not have been her first choice), she and the Russian and his men turned their collective head toward a crunching sound down the hall...

... and the pack of dogs burst through the already ruptured office door, and galloped down the hall toward them, fangs flashing, tongues lolling, saliva flying.

Turning back to Kafelnikov, Max said, “I’m the dog walker you called for — remember?”

And he winced in confusion for half a second, before Max delivered a side kick to the Russian’s chest that knocked the wind out of him with a whoosh and sent him reeling back into the elevator, taking his underlings like bowling pins with him.

Not sticking around to admire her handiwork, Max took off down the hall, the dogs dogging her heels. When she all but threw herself into the room she had originally entered, the lead dog was less than two feet behind her. Diving forward, arms extended in front of her, as if the waiting night were a lake she was plunging into, Max sailed through the round hole in the window, wishing she’d cut it a tad larger, the snarling dog right behind her.

She caught the waiting rope and swung in a wide arc away from the building. The dog, misjudging the hole slightly, slammed into the window pane, yiped, and reared back into the office, dropping out of sight. The other dogs, evidently having learned from their leader’s misfortune, stopped short of the window, their heads bobbing up in view as they barked and yapped at Max, dangling just out of the range of their jaws. One even edged its head out and took swipes at her, biting air.

But by this time Max was shimmying up the rope, and their snarls turned to growls as they watched in impotent rage as she disappeared toward the roof.

Below her, she heard voices. Still shimmying up, she looked down, and saw Kafelnikov’s pale enraged face, head sticking out of the hole in the window like a frustrated victim with his neck stuck into a guillotine.

“I’m going to kill you, you bitch!” he yelled.

“I don’t think so!” she called down, smug, calm.

His response was nonverbal, and he hit himself in the head, possibly cutting himself on the glass.

Laughing softly to herself, she continued to climb, knowing the Russian’s men were already on their way to the roof to intercept her. Looking down again, she saw Kafelnikov’s face had been replaced at the window by one of the Brood members from the elevator. A skinny guy with long dark hair reached tentatively for the rope and, just as he touched it, Max nimbly kicked off the side of the building, jerking the strand away from the guy’s grasp. He nearly tumbled out.

“You bitch!” he yelled, eyes wide as much with terror as rage.

These boys sure have a limited vocabulary, Max thought, as she kept climbing.

Beneath her, the guy ducked inside, then came leaping out into the night. He snared the rope, and his momentum threatened to rip the tether from her grasp. Surprised by his boldness, she could feel his weight at the far end of the rope, and knew the line wouldn’t support both of them...

“The rope won’t hold!” she called down, warning him.

“Fuck you, little girl!”

That limited vocabulary seemed suddenly ominous...

Feeling not so smug now, climbing even faster, she moved toward the rooftop, the guy now climbing the rope below her, chasing her toward the roof, heedless of the peril he was placing both of them in. As she looked up the last ten feet, she could see the rope straining against the twisted metal of the roof’s distorted edge. Beyond that, the stars hung bright and glittering in the sky, as if lighting her way, until they were eclipsed by a face...

... Kafelnikov’s.

Opening a switchblade with a nasty click, the Brood’s leader said, “Stupid bitch... I told you I was going to kill you!”

“I’m getting really tired of you boys calling me that,” she said. “Your manners suck...”

With no alternative, and that weight below her, she kept climbing, narrowing the distance between herself and the Brood members on the roof.

Kafelnikov bent down, the knife starting to slice through the thin rope. “Just be a couple more seconds... and then nobody’ll be calling you ‘bitch’ again, rest assured, my dear... Nobody’ll call you anything but dead!”

The Russian was carving at the rope, threads popping, his face a pale terrible thing just above her, closer, closer...

“Boss, no!” the skinny guy below her whined, but it was too late.

Kafelnikov’s blade cut the rope.

Max let go, the rope and the skinny guy tumbling down out of sight, a screaming man riding a snake.

But as she let go, Max launched herself upward, spearing the lapels of Kafelnikov’s coat in either hand. Just as gravity took over and started to pull them both over the edge, two members of the Brood grabbed their leader and just managed, barely managed, to keep him — and Max — from pitching to the pavement far below.

And so she hung there, holding on to his coat, Kafelnikov’s face only inches from hers — they might have kissed, though she found his breath (what was that, sardines?) offensive — and the other two Broodsters strained to keep their fearless leader from falling, their grip on their superior’s arms preventing him from doing anything to rid himself of Max.

Inexorably, gravity tilted them farther over the edge. In his panic, Kafelnikov fought to tear himself from the grip of his own men so he could try to pry Max’s hands from his coat; but his loyal boys were just too strong, and kept trying to pull him away.

Just as it seemed the skinny Brood leader and the shapely cat burglar would tumble through the night together, Max looked up at the Russian and smiled.

Kafelnikov’s eyes went wide in wonderment and rage — he might have been thinking, If only she were one of mine! — then Max headbutted him, breaking his nose, and almost prying him loose from his goons.

Blood sprayed and the Russian howled. Tearing one arm free, he swung wildly for Max’s face; but she simply let go of him...

... and his follow-through carried him back out of sight onto the roof with his two goons in tow.

As Max fell through the night sky, a falling star, she grinned, enjoying the rush of air on her face. Not only did she have what she’d come for, she’d gotten to bloody the nose of the Brood’s leader — not a bad evening’s work, so far.

As she passed the seventh floor again, she pulled the metal ring on her suit that deployed the chute and a tiny turbine blower that filled the chute with warm air and provided enough updraft to give her an easy descent and a relatively soft landing.

She had hoped not to have to use the chute off the Cap, as she might land in the midst of the Brood members below who had been summoned by the explosions to the street. The plan had been to wait on the rooftop till the sidewalks were empty, as the Broodsters filed back into the building, to investigate the site of the burglary. And then she’d float to earth.

But this would do in a pinch. No help would be waiting below, however — Moody and the Chinese Clan were nowhere to be seen as she drifted toward the street; that didn’t surprise Max... their job, after all, had been to provide a diversion. They’d done as much, and split. She floated to the pavement, touched down, turned off the blower, and wrapped up the chute.

Then she turned, to see Brood members swarming toward her, dangerous dimwits in tattered denim. The first one fell to a spinning roundhouse kick to the head, the second to a straight kick to the groin, the third to a right cross.

And then Max was running, the gangsters in pursuit. Turning the corner, she found herself flying down Vine Street with half the Brood behind her. She raced down the middle of the street, her shoes pounding on the shiny wet pavement. Just as she passed a manhole cover, Max wondered idly why the street was damp — it hadn’t rained today, hadn’t rained for weeks. As she heard the manhole cover slide open, Max stopped, pivoted, and dropped into her fighting stance.

Catching a glimpse of silver hair rising out of the manhole, the unmistakable nasty perfume of gasoline filling her flaring nostrils, Max suddenly knew why the street was wet...

She spun away and ran for all she was worth — which was plenty — even as she heard the whoosh of the gas igniting. Some of the Brood screamed, but she assumed it was more out of fear than pain. Moody wouldn’t let them get close enough to be caught in the fire... probably.

The idea was to stop the pursuit, not to incinerate the pursuers, though a few charred casualties wouldn’t have Max or Moody losing much sleep. Looking over her shoulder as she ran, Max saw the wall of flame separating her from pursuers who were folding back into the night, scurrying home to their tower of broken dreams.

And she saw that Moody had disappeared back down the manhole, as if he’d not even really been there, a ghost haunting what had once been Hollywood’s most famous street.

“Thanks,” she said to the night, and was gone.

Less than an hour later, with the security plans to guide her, Max negotiated the electronic locks and first-floor laser guards of the former office building and current home of the Hollywood Heritage Museum. Her new goal lay at the far end of the second floor, in a locked room guarded by more lasers, mines, and a special alarm under the object itself.

Only two guards patrolled the museum at night, and one of them was already napping at the security desk on the first floor.

There wasn’t supposed to be anything of real worth in the museum, strictly nostalgia on display; but Max — thanks to Moody — knew better. Many of the exhibits from the history of American filmmaking displayed objects of value only to wealthy collectors of pre-Pulse memorabilia. None of the kitschy artifacts could compare to the literal jewel that awaited her at the end of the hall.

The first floor contained many remnants of the days that the placards posted next to exhibits referred to as the “Golden Age of Silents.” The cane, bowler, and black suit of a “comic” named Chaplin, some kind of Arab outfit a feminine-looking actor named Valentino had worn in a couple of “silent” movies, and even a train engine that the placard proudly stated came from a Buster Keaton movie called The General.

Silently climbing the last few stairs to the second floor, Max found herself prowling a hallway whose placard boasted of material from the “Golden Age of Studios.” For a place with so many “Golden Ages,” Max thought, there seemed to be precious little actual gold around. Creeping along the hallway, keeping close to the wall, Max’s cat eyes registered the facility’s other guard, a heavyset fella heading for the far end of the hall, her enhanced hearing picking up his heels clicking on the tile floor.

She kept moving, sliding past raincoat-clad figures from a “musical” called Singin’ in the Rain, and a quartet of mannequins dressed as a lion, a crude robot, a scarecrow, and a pigtailed girl in a blue-and-white-checkered dress, holding a little dog; the latter grouping represented something called The Wizard of Oz, though Max couldn’t see how these characters had anything mystical or magical about them, and the only wizards she knew about were Harry Potter and his friends.

What waited in the room beyond the hallway had nothing to do with the “Golden Age of Studios,” but it was the most secure room in the building... so this, of course, was where the most valuable exhibit was housed.

Max watched from the shadows as the plump guard checked the door at the end of the hall, then disappeared into the stairwell, to continue his rounds on another floor. She waited to make her move, listening to the door click shut and the guard’s footsteps — he was going down — on the metal stairs dissipate.

Then she all but soundlessly sprinted (This is the Golden Age of silents, she thought) the last fifty feet to the exhibit’s door, circumvented the alarm, picked the numeric push-button lock, and took a long deep breath.

The lock and the alarm were the easy part. Mines, activated only when the museum was closed, lay beneath the floor, and lasers hooked to infrared beams crisscrossed the room with barely a foot between them. Taking one last look at the floor plan Kafelnikov had so thoughtfully provided, Max memorized it, tucked it away, and plotted her course of action.

She opened the door, slipped inside, and eased it shut behind her. The chamber was windowless and silent, reminding her of the solitude of the barracks at Manticore after lights-out. Half a dozen glass cases stood around the room, each bearing props from a movie called Titanic.

A tall display case in the corner contained a mannequin wearing an old-timey diaphanous white gown, while a similar glass case in the opposite corner held a mannequin of an attractive if baby-faced young man in a tuxedo.

Three long, flat cases were arranged in a triangle in the center of the room. One held silverware, another a model of a ship, and the third one was an arrangement of still pictures from the motion picture.

At the far end of the room, encased in a Plexiglas box, under a narrow spotlight, her prize caught her eyes: a gigantic blue diamond on a silver chain encrusted with smaller diamonds.

Max knew little of the film, which apparently was famous. Television was limited and very controlled in the post-Pulse era, and, anyway, she didn’t care for fiction... what was the point? Few people in made-up stories lived more interesting lives than she did.

But she did know — thanks to Moody — that although everyone back in pre-Pulse days had thought the great blue diamond, the “Heart of the Ocean,” was merely a film prop, it had indeed been real, a ten-thousand-dollar necklace commissioned by the director who later donated it to the Hollywood Heritage Museum.

“Its true value,” Moody had told her, “is known to few — why attract thieves... like us? And to the public... those who still care about silly ancient celluloid... the magic of the prop is enough to make it stand on its own as a tourist attraction.”

Funny, Max thought. In this town where dreams once were manufactured, one of the most famous artifacts was a fraud of sorts... because it was real.

Now the famed Heart of the Ocean lay only twenty-five feet across the room from her.

And if she could retrieve it, and get out of here with her skin, the Chinese Clan could fence it for enough money to set them up for years to come.

Her breathing slowed as she prepared for the final assault on her prize. She popped a huge wad of gum into her mouth and started chewing slowly, methodically. Withdrawing from fatigue pouches two good-sized suction cups with pressure-release handles, Max attached one to each hand with inch-wide nylon straps and looked up at the ceiling. She had less than two feet of open air between it and the topmost infrared beam.

The young woman leapt straight up, arms outstretched, suction cups sticking to the ceiling with a sucking kiss. Taking in a deep breath, then letting it out, Max pulled herself up until her neck was bent to one side and she held herself up with her arms akimbo.

Even for a soldier with her unique talents, the strain was severe.

Next she slowly pulled up her legs and stretched them out in front of her, as if in a ballet exercise. She now sat, head cocked to one side, hanging from the ceiling above the beams by no more than six or maybe seven inches. Moving across the room folded up like this would be no small feat.

Glancing down at the necklace, she formed half a smile. No guts, no glory, she thought, and that blue rock was serious, serious glory not only for her, but for her whole clan.

Releasing one suction cup, she held herself up, eased it forward as far as she dared, and attached it again with its tiny puff of a kiss. She repeated the action with the second cup and found herself a foot nearer the prize. The muscles of her shoulders bunched and burned, but with her breathing, she compartmentalized the pain, putting it out of her mind.

Few on earth could have done this. Max had had this ability since childhood.

Sweat trickled down her face, dripping onto her shirt front as she single-mindedly made her way across the room, still casually chewing the gum as she went. She had completed her action with the cups nine times now and not only did her shoulders burn, but her biceps, triceps, quads, hamstrings, and glutes were each in the middle of a three-alarm blaze of their own.

A voice in her head that sounded uncomfortably like Colonel Lydecker’s reminded her that pain was the price of achievement.

Shut up, she mentally replied, and kept moving the cups forward.

Finally, after what seemed like forever but had only been six minutes, she found herself directly above — if barely able to cock her head enough to see — the Heart of the Ocean.

She had maybe a foot and a half of clearance on each side of the Plexiglas box. As if the trip over here hadn’t been enough, now the job would get really tricky. In that tight space, she would have to remove the cubic foot of plastic, snatch the necklace without setting off the alarm, then suction-cup her way back to the door.

No problem.

Taking one hand out of a suction cup, Max snugged her knees up, then slowly rolled backward, letting her feet come up toward the ceiling as her head lowered toward the box. About halfway home, her body tucked into a sphere only slightly larger than a beach ball, she slipped her shoe into the empty strap of one of the suction cups.

Satisfied the strap had her securely, she let go with her other hand and swung her other leg up and into that strap. She now hung upside down, her head barely a foot above the necklace with its glimmering stone.

Working quickly, Max picked the locks on each side of the case, lifted the Plexi box straight up, withdrew the gum from her mouth and affixed it to the top of the lid. Then she rotated the thing so its top was down... and eased it toward the floor.

This was the part that worried her most.

Her arms were not long enough to reach the floor. She would have to drop the box the last couple of feet or so, and hope to hell the wad of gum held it in place and kept it from bouncing into one of the infrared beams.

Letting out her breath, Max released the box with as light a touch as possible. It dropped to the carpeting with a dull, barely audible thud, then rocked toward the beam...

... but righted itself, and stopped.

Step one accomplished.

Pulling a utility knife from a pocket, Max leaned in close to the displayed jewelry. Only one wire connected the necklace to the alarm, but she would have to work gently not to set it off.

Blood was rushing to her head, and she could feel her face growing hot, like a flush of terrible embarrassment... just a little longer and everything would be fine... fine...

Hanging there upside down, Max wished absently that a dash of bat DNA had been added to her genetic cocktail — then maybe this stunt wouldn’t make her so dizzy. Carefully scraping back the plastic coating on the wire, she exposed about two inches of gleaming brass strands, put the knife away, and pulled out a wire of her own with alligator clips at either end. Attaching the clips at both ends of the section she’d cleared, Max took out her wire cutters, slowed her breathing again, and clipped the alarm wire in the middle of the cleared section.

She held her breath for a few seconds... but no alarm sounded, no lasers blasted at her, and the mines didn’t go off.

Releasing the wire from the necklace, Max gazed fondly at the huge blue stone, and for the first time all evening, a true, wide smile creased her face. She lifted the necklace — feeling a real reverence for its value, if not its history — and gave it a quick kiss...

... then, as if her lips had done it, the alarm sounded.

And all hell broke loose.

“Shit,” Max whispered, her vocabulary of “forbidden” words far greater now than she’d ever heard from Colonel Lydecker.

The thief suddenly realized the necklace had also been resting on a pressure alarm — a security measure that had somehow not made its way into the Brood’s stolen plans. The alarm siren squawked like a gaggle of angry geese, a grating, obnoxious sound Max decided she would have hated even under innocent circumstances.

As opposed to these guilty ones...

The first laser drilled the stand the necklace had been on, and exploded it in a shower of wood and velvet, just as Max pulled herself up out of the way. Despite the mines in the floor, which were presumably now activated, choosing the lesser of bad options, she kicked her feet out of the suction cups, and dropped to the carpeting as lasers blasted holes in the room all around her.

At least where she’d alighted, there hadn’t been a mine...

Grabbing the Plexiglas shell of the exhibit, tucking it to her like a big square football, Max did a forward roll and popped to her feet just as a laser fired a blast at her face.

She dodged left, reacting with the lightning inhuman speed bred into her, though she nonetheless felt the heat of the blast as it shot past her right cheek, and she could hear her hair sizzle as her nostrils filled with the burned smell of it.

Leaping with all her considerable might, she flung herself onto one of the exhibit cases in the middle of the room just as another laser blast chewed the floor not far from where she’d been standing, setting off the small blast of one of the mines. They obviously weren’t meant to kill, only to maim.

That was a relief... she guessed...

She only had a few seconds now until the lasers would target her again. Hefting the Plexiglas box, she threw it halfway across the remaining distance toward the door. It hit, but the sound of its impact was swallowed by the explosion of another mine, and the box disintegrated, making shattering music in a cloud of black smoke.

Leaping to the safety of the crater she’d created, Max knew all planning, any strategy, had disintegrated along with that box... from here on out, she’d just have to stay smart and get lucky. She ran to the door, dodging and cutting all the way. To her great surprise, she wasn’t reduced to a bloody mess by another explosion — the number of mines must have been minimal, to keep the building damage down.

She twisted the knob and found that the door had autolocked when the alarm went off — another tidbit absent from the security plan.

The lasers were getting closer now, their aim improving as she stood motionless in front of the door, heat and/or motion sensors probably leading them to her. Another blast shot toward her and she sidestepped just enough for it to miss her, and blast the lock off the door, skittering halfway down the hall.

Max yanked what was left of the door open and leapt into the hallway, then ducked around the edge of the door as stray laser beams shot wildly down the corridor.

The two guards came running toward her, and Max realized they must have disarmed the mines in the hallway thinking she would be trapped in the exhibit room. Each carried a nightstick and a Tazer.

The nearest one was a muscular guy in his midtwenties, his face an angry mask. The farther one was the plump guy she’d seen testing doors, and he was older by at least twenty years and heavier by nearly a hundred pounds, and looked scared.

The muscular one aimed his Tazer and fired, but Max ducked under the dart, rolled forward, and came up, her right fist catching the guard under the chin, lifting him off the floor, and sending him sprawling across the hall, no doubt to wake up later and wonder how so small a “girl” had coldcocked him like that.

The plump one tried to look determined but the gesture failed when his chins started quivering. He fired the Tazer without aiming, then stood in bewildered fear as Max came up to him. A voice in his head probably told him to draw his nightstick, but another may have reminded him how little he was being paid, so he just stood there motionless, shivering like gelatin.

Max patted his cheek, and smiled sweetly.

Then she scurried off down the hall.

The thief could hear sirens in the distance when she threw open the museum’s front door, but by the time the cops got here, she’d be long gone...

... and the Heart of the Ocean was tucked safely inside her fatigues. Max couldn’t wait to get back to the theater to show the prize to Moody.

She would have felt like a king of thieves, if she hadn’t been... “a girl.”