4
COBRA II
Gideon was bound and blindfolded, suspended upside down — a prisoner trapped and helpless in his own dead armour. Somewhere people were laughing, one moment close and then suddenly distant, always mocking. “Who’s there?” When he tried to speak the words wouldn’t come, “Where am I? What’s happening?” He could hear his words inside his head, but they made no sound. Then the whispers started.
“Baddo man.”
“Kaoteck baddo man.”
Gideon recognised the voices right away. It was Cobras Four and Five. It was the Khalifas. “NO!” he yelled into the darkness. “You’re dead!”
Only silence answered him.
The air turned to freezing fog and another voice hissed in his ear, “You watched me die.”
It was Warwick Bayna, the first of the Cobras to fall. She hadn’t survived the infusion of chemi
