Massimo Rossini, Mo for short, stood shoulder to shoulder with Watley. He didn't know his first name. Didn't care to. Watley probably didn't know his either. Just the way it was.

"Talk about déjà vu," said Watley.

Mo wiped the visor of his helmet free of ash and stared ahead at the expanse of land. They stood in the median of a pine-tree-lined two-lane highway, much of it littered with abandoned cars and all of it gray and bleak. About a mile or so from where they stood the trees thinned, then ended. The road rose to a bridge that spanned the bay.

"Route 71, right?" asked Watley.

Mo nodded and pointed to a sign off to the right that had been partially concealed with overgrown vegetation. "Route 71. Takes you all the way in to the shore."

"Damn, Mo. I'd give anything to see the ocean. I mean, it's been years since I've seen it."

"The ocean's probably teeming with weird shit. The town might be impassable, too. Anyway, we're going north, to where he was likely headed."

Two rectangular metallic boxes lay behind them. Mo squatted and entered a code into the numeric pad on the one closest to him. Watley followed his lead and did the same to his. There was a hum, then a release of air and the boxes opened. He retrieved two handheld devices and gave one to Watley. Mo pressed the button labeled, "Initialize," and the metallic box began to hum again. A stand emerged from beneath the box, lifting it off the ground as two wheels rotated into position and a handle bar rose and locked into place.

Mo climbed aboard the cycle and Watley his. Mo lowered the handheld into a perfectly shaped corresponding groove in the fuel tank. Watley did the same.

"It's a key..." said Watley.

"Never ridden one of these?"

"Once. It was already initialized for me, though."

Mo wondered why in the hell they would send an inexperienced Hunter out on this sort of apprehension. But it was what it was. "It is a key. Lose it and you're walking."

Mo turned the throttle and nearly took off, but Watley waved him off. He was thumbing toward the machine.

Shit. Mo had turned off the mic in his headset. He was hoping Watley's inexperience would allow them to break protocol. He opened the mic.

"We have to scan out," Watley reminded.

Mo hesitated, considered taking off anyway, but thought better of it. The machine was watching. It would give chase. He wouldn't stand a chance. Not yet.

Reluctantly, he jumped off the bike and with Watley, went and faced the machine. It was larger than a man and except for the globe-head suspended in air between its broad shoulders by some electro-magneticenergy, resembled one. The globe was a dark, glass-like substance, although much thicker, similar in appearance to a large bowling ball. Massimo suspected it was far more durable than a bowling ball. From deep inside of it a thin, precise laser was emitted. The red light flowed across the curved visor of Massimo's helmet and stopped dead in the center of his right eye. The laser read the encoded information on the chip that had been inserted behind his eye and instantly his photograph, the date and time of departure was visible within the globe.

The machine spoke in a deep masculine, yet robotic voice. "Proceed."

When Watley had done the same, they mounted their bikes. The vehicles activated with a low hum, not a roar like a street bike. These were tools of stealth. They needed to be...Alex Dash was considered armed and dangerous.