It had been five hours since anyone from CAT Alpha had made contact. In itself, this was not unusual—a field mission might see an agent out of touch for an extended period. However, what made it a source of worry for all concerned was the fact that the biolink transponders had ceased to register, which meant that not only did the Cerberus ops team not know where Kane and his crew were precisely, but also they could not confirm if they were even alive. “Time since initial loss of signal?” Lakesh asked, one eye on the clock as he paced the large operations center. “Five hours and oh-seven minutes since LOS,” an ops member called Farrell replied emotionlessly from his desk. Farrell had a shaven head, goatee beard and a gold hoop earring in one ear, and had served with Cerberus for a long time. He was skilled in surveillance and the operational procedures of the mat-trans among many other disciplines. Like most of the Cerberus staff, he was used to multitasking.
