Vecto casually walked toward the base. An invisible wave emitted from him, flowing through the complex, then bounced back, transmitting an image into Vecto's mind. His Magnetic Zero Imager created a three-dimensional Lapton Map of the buildings, detailing the exact locations of the highest-ranking soldiers-216 of them out of thousands-as well as the outlying structures. Not that he needed a map. He knew the place by heart. To think that only a few dozen of these military soldiers actually become members of the SS6 Formation.

"Come on, come on!" Brail yelled. "Put up barricades!"

Vecto strode toward the complex and watched as soldiers lined up, as snipers readied their guns on roofs, and as thick barricade walls burst from the ground, towering in front of the complex. The walls exploded in sections from below the earth, locking in place as they rose one after another, forming a hexagonal fort around the three-mile-radius training grounds.

Then the shield formed, sprouting from the center as a funnel and cascading as an umbrella over the base, settling past the barricades. Vecto stopped in front of the shield as it touched down and looked up at its height.

"Marvelous," he said. He took his Mind Messenger, a small boomeranglike device remotely connected to his mind, and laid it in one hand. Then he ejected a tiny capsule from a compartment in his foot and placed it in his other hand. He calmly attached the Mind Messenger to the object and let it fly in the air.

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"What's he doing?" Brail asked, watching Vecto from the wall. "He'll never get through the shield!"

"Object ascending!" a voice over comlink yelled. "It's scaling the shields. Wait, it's speeding up."

Can that thing actually fit in the shield's release shaft? Brail wondered.

"It's flying above-heading for the center . . . it, it's flying up?"

Or is it? Brail thought. He mused on the double standard of the shield-nothing in, nothing out. They couldn't fire through, nor could it; but if it traveled the shaft . . .

"Correction, it disconnected its wings. The object's falling toward the shaft," the voice continued as the soldiers waited in helpless silence. "Confirmation. It's a missile, only an inch wide. Wait, it's riding the shaft!"

But how powerful? Brail asked himself.

"Scanning explosive content . . ." the voice said, as if reading Brail's thoughts. "That's impossible! One thousand pounds?"

"Everybody, cover your ears!" Brail quickly yelled at the soldiers.

The missile dropped though the small funnel at the center of the shield, colliding with the shield reactor. The building, including the reactor, exploded as the shield faded into particles. Pieces of the building flew across the complex as soldiers shielded their heads. When it calmed, they had their weapons pointed to the sky, ready for Vecto to fly over the gates and bombard them with gunfire.

"Where, where is he?" Tim asked, shaking his gun at the sky.