The door slid shut behind me with a whisper of steel on steel, the sound swallowed by the cavernous dark. I was in the beast's heart. The air was cool and still, humming with the low thrum of servers and the faint, sterile scent of ozone. My own breathing was a thunderstorm in my ears.
My mission was simple, suicidal, and singular: find a communications console. Find a link to the outside world.
But my eyes, adjusting to the gloom, were drawn irresistibly to the center of the room.
There, suspended in the air like a captive god, was the source of the room’s only light: a massive, holographic tactical map. It was a breathtaking, terrifying thing, rendering the jagged mountain ranges and scorched valleys of this forgotten country in stunning, three-dimensional detail. Glowing icons pulsed
