“There are dozens of the suits here.”
	“You haven’t put my Spartans in some of those antiques?”
	“No. Their trainers are using them for their own safety,” Mendez replied. “When the Spartans recovered from microgravity therapy, they were eager to get back to their routine. However, we experienced some—” He paused, searching for the right word, “… difficulties.”
	He glanced at his passenger. His face was grim. “Their first day back, three trainers were accidentally killed during hand-to-hand combat exercises.”
	Dr. Halsey cocked an eyebrow. “Then they are faster and stronger than we anticipated?”
	“That,” Mendez replied, “would be understating the situation.”
	The tunnel opened into a large cavern. There were lights scattered on the walls, overhead a hundred meters up on the ceiling and along the floor, but they did little to dissipate the overwhelming darkness.
	Mendez parked the Warthog next to a small, prefabricated building. He jumped out and helped Dr. Halsey step from the vehicle. “This way, please.” Mendez gestured to the room. “We’ll have a better view from inside.”
	The building had three glass walls and several monitors marked MOTION, INFRARED, DOPPLER, and PASSIVE. Mendez pushed a button and the room climbed a track along the wall until they were twenty meters off the floor.
	Mendez keyed a microphone and spoke: “Lights.”
	Floodlights snapped on and illuminated a section of the cavern the size of a football field. In the center stood a concrete bunker. Three men in the primitive Mark I power armor stood on top. Six more stood evenly spaced around the perimeter. A red banner had been planted in the center of the bunker.
	“Capture the flag?” Dr. Halsey asked. “Past all that heavy armor?”
	“Yes. The trainers in those exoskeletons can run at thirty-two KPH, lift two tons, and have a thirty-millimeter minigun mounted on self-targeting armatures—stun rounds, of course. They’re also equipped with the latest motion sensors and IR scopes. And needless to say, their armor is impervious to standard light weapons. It would take two or three platoons of conventional Marines to take that bunker.”
	Mendez spoke again in the microphone, and his voice echoed off the cavern walls: “Start the drill.”
	Sixty seconds ticked by. Nothing happened. One hundred twenty seconds. “Where are the Spartans?” Dr. Halsey asked.
	“They’re here,” Mendez replied. Dr. Halsey caught a glimpse of motion in the dark: a shadow against shadows, a familiar silhouette.
	“Kelly?” she whispered.
	The trainers turned and fired at the shadow, but it moved with almost supernatural quickness. Even the self-targeting systems couldn’t track it.
	From above, a man free-rappelled down from the girders and gantries overhead. The newcomer landed behind one of the perimeter guards, quiet as a cat. He punched the guard’s armor twice, denting the heavy plates, then dropped low and swept the target’s legs out from under him. The guard sprawled on the ground.
	The Spartan attached his rappelling line to the trainer. A moment later the writhing guard shot upward, into the darkness.
	Two other guards turned to attack.
	The Spartan dodged, rolled, and melted into the shadows.
	Dr. Halsey realized the trainer’s exoskeleton wasn’t being pulled up—it was being used as a counterweight.
	Two more Spartans, dangling from the other end of that rope, dropped unnoticed into the center of the bunker. Dr. Halsey immediately recognized one of them, although he was dressed entirely in black, save his open eye slits—Number-117. John.
	John landed, braced, and kicked one guard. The man landed in a heap … eight meters away.
	The other Spartan jumped off the bunker; he flipped end over end, evading the stun rounds that filled the air. He threw himself at the farthest guard and they skidded together into the shadows. The guard’s gun strobed once, and then it was dark again.
	On top of the bunker, John was a blur of slashing motions. A second guard’s exosuit erupted in a fountain of hydraulic fluid and then collapsed under the armor’s weight.
	The last guard on the bunker turned to fire at John. Halsey gripped the edge of her chair. “He’s at point-blank range! Even stun rounds can kill at that distance!”
	As the guard’s gun fired, John sidestepped. The stun rounds slashed through the air, a clean miss. John grabbed the weapon’s armature—twisted—and with a screech of stressed metal, wrenched it free of the exoskeleton. He fired directly into the man’s chest and sent him tumbling off the bunker.
	The remaining quartet of perimeter guards turned and sprayed the area with suppression fire.
	A heartbeat later, the lights went out.
	Mendez cursed and keyed the mike. “Backups. Hit the backup lights now!”
	A dozen amber floods flickered to life.
	Not a Spartan was in sight, but the nine trainers were either unconscious or lay immobile in inert battle armor.
	The red flag was gone.
	“Show me that again,” Dr. Halsey said unbelievingly. “You recorded all that, didn’t you?”
	“Of course.” Mendez tapped a button, but the monitors played back—static. “Damn it. They got to the cameras, too,” he muttered, impressed. “Every time we find a new place to hide them, they disable the recording devices.”