A curtain of blackness was falling over his eyes. He caught glimpses of a cold blue lake and a glacier.

I have failed.

He was more in shock than pain and felt only a profound and angry sadness.

Millions will die.

He coughed a mouthful of bloody froth and then he knew no more. He hung in his parachute harness, an easy target for one of the Aviatiks as it made another pass.

He never felt the bullet that crashed through his helmet and drilled into his skull.

With the sun glinting off his helmet, he floated lower until the mountains embraced him to their bosom.

NUMA 5 - Lost City

The Scottish Orkneys, the present

JODIE MICHAEL SON was steaming with anger. Earlier in the evening, she and the three remaining contestants of the Outcasts TV show had had to walk in their heavy boots on a thick rope stretched out along a three-foot-high berm made of piled rocks. The stunt had been billed as the “Viking Trial by Fire.” Rows of torches blazed away on either side of the rope, adding drama and risk, although the line of fire was actually six feet away. The cameras shot from a low side angle, making the walk seem much more dangerous than it was.

What wasn't phony was the way the producers had schemed to bring the contestants to near violence.

Outcasts was the latest offering in the “reality” shows that had popped up like mushrooms after the success of Survivor and Fear Factor. It was an accelerated combination of both formats, with the shouting matches of Jerry Springer thrown in.

The format was simple. Ten participants had to pass a gamut of

tests over the course of three weeks. Those who failed, or were voted off by the others, had to leave the island.

The winner would make a million dollars, with bonus points, which seemed to be based on how nasty the contestants could be to one another.

The show was considered even more cutthroat than its predecessors, and the producers played tricks to ratchet up the tension. Where other shows were highly competitive, Outcasts was openly combative.

The show's format had been based in part on the Outward Bound survival course, where a participant must live off the land. Unlike the other survival shows, which tended to be set on tropical isles with turquoise waters and swaying palm trees, Outcasts was filmed in the Scottish Orkneys. The contestants had landed in a tacky replica of a Viking ship, to an audience of seabirds.

The island was two miles long and a mile wide. It was mostly rock that had been tortured into knobs and fissures aeons ago by some cataclysm, with a few stands of scraggly trees here and there and a beach of coarse sand where most of the action was filmed. The weather was mild, except at night, and the skin-covered huts were tolerable.