by James Axler
He knew somehow that this was it—he had just taken the first step to freedom from this awful place.
But of course freedom wears many faces….
Chapter 26
Alone in the cavern once more, Brigid sat in the seat that had formed her prison for so long. She was free of it now, of course, yet she found she naturally gravitated to it, resting there as the only comfort in the vast cave.
Seven hours had passed, but Ullikummis had not returned since running the rock spike through the sand rendition of the girl. The spike remained, poking from the floor of the cavelike a stalagmite, just two feet across at its widest diameter. Brigid looked at it, ahead of where she sat on the stone chair. The sand remained strewed about the cavern, now just particles rising from the floor and dancing in the air on the light current that blew through the room. They had dried out, as the moisture that held them together had evaporated. Even if Ullikummis had not split the bust apart, the girl’s face would have crumbled in time, the sand figure breaking apart as it dried. Brigid wondered if this had been the real answer here, if the impermanence of sand would have taught her the same lesson no matter what had happened.
Ullikummis had spoken to her, told her how the world was not so much different as bigger. Her own time with Cerberus had shown her something similar, she supposed—that the things people misunderstood had many levels, and were hidden in plain sight. The Annunaki, then, were not gods.
This was nothing new. Brigid knew their history, knew how the Annunaki had traveled from the stars thousands of years before, had appeared as gods to the primitive peoples of Earth. But what Ullikummis had told her, about the mirror and the eclipse, suggested there was a deeper conspiracy here, a trick she hadn’t even begun to suspect.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there had been advertising and public relations. This was how products were popularized, Brigid understood, and those products might be carbonated drinks or they might be politicians. The advertising men created little fabrications, worlds that people wanted to buy into and be part of. Before Cerberus, Brigid Baptiste had been an archivist in Cobaltville, and part of her job had been to smooth over history, to make the past look “right,” to make it more palatable. She, too, had been a PR flack, designing false worlds with which to fool the public.
She looked around her, saw the cavern with its rough walls, its rock floor, the recessed pods of magma that provided just the slimmest of light. The cave was real; she was sure of that much. But everything else…
Ullikummis had made her sit in the dirt and craft a face, an imagined face of a fictitious girl. Brigid had done it because he had promised to set her free once she completed the task. With no other avenues of escape open to her, she had grasped at this possibility as her lifeline, her one way to freedom.
“The Annunaki,” Brigid muttered, “are a blending of reality and mythology, of fact and fiction. They are a story that we fight, but the reality is something different, something we’re never meant to see.”
The girl Abigail—she, too, was a fiction, a story and nothing more. And Brigid’s work with the historical division in Cobaltville had been a blending of fact and fantasy, too, creating new fabrications, new myths.
The titian-haired archivist and Cerberus warrior reached an inevitable conclusion then, the words forming on her trembling lips. “The Annunaki are us,” she whispered. It made no sense, and yet it seemed to finally open something in her mind that she had never noticed before. Yes, the Annunaki were alien, they were the different. But the way they acted, the things they hid, were stories, tricks of simple good and evil to hide their true nature.
Ullikummis had mocked her, told her that the way she and her fellow rebels had understood the Annunaki carried no more depth of insight than observing players in masks on a stage. “They have a permanence we cannot comprehend,” Brigid murmured aloud. “The games they play are moments which we perceive as lives.”
She rested back in the chair, wondering at what this revelation told her, how it could help her. The defeat of the Annunaki lay in their own trickery. If that could be turned against them, they would wither and die.
Brigid smiled, remembering an ancient theological argument that had been repeated over and over: Satan’s greatest trick was convincing the world he did not exist.
“If I were to become invisible,” Brigid whispered, “then I could defeat the Annunaki. That’s the key. By stepping outside their rules, I can stop them.”
A noise came from behind her, and she recognized the sound of rock scraping against rock. A glimmer of magma glinted by the wall, reflected in the mirror that was propped there. Ullikummis was with her, striding across the shadowy cave.
“You have questions,” he said.
Brigid shook her head. “No,” she said. “At first I thought I did, but I realize now that I do not.”
Ullikummis looked at her with approval. “If you have no questions, then you must only have answers,” he observed.
Brigid nodded, a thin smile forming on her lips. “I think so. Do you have questions, my lord?”
“Just one,” Ullikummis acknowledged. “I gave my word that I would set you free when you completed your task with the sand. When did I set you free?”
Brigid’s emerald eyes met his, proud in understanding. “When the sand crumbled,” she said. “But that was inevitable. Truthfully, you had set me free when you gave me the task, knowing I was ready.”
“And what does your freedom tell you?” Ullikummis asked.
Brigid’s eyes searched the sand about his trunklike feet, roving across the debris there. Finally, she glanced back to his face, realization dawning. “It tells me that freedom is a state of mind,” she said.
Pleased, Ullikummis reached forward and placed one hand to either side of her head. “My father created me to be his tool of hate,” he said. “Hate takes many forms, Brigid.”
She looked into his burning eyes and felt herself falling, her stomach flipping. This creature had such power. His every movement seemed to command her, his every gesture to instruct her. His eyes swirled with magma, mesmerizing her, dulling her brain. Like so many of the Annunaki, Ullikummis seemed able to command with just a thought, his merest presence enough to make humans cower and obey.
The Russians had realized this, had understood that the greatest threat that aliens posed to humanity was not physical domination but mental. They had used uncharted areas of the human mind, like new continents where weapons could be hidden.
“Did you believe in God, Brigid?” Ullikummis asked. The question startled her, sitting as she was, staring into a would-be god’s eyes.
She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
“The Annunaki were your gods,” Ullikummis explained. “For many years, they were worshiped for their superiority, their infinite brilliance when compared to man.”
“They created that situation,” Brigid said.
“No,” Ullikummis corrected. “Encouraged, no doubt, but the desire was there in man to worship something. Before the Annunaki it was clouds, insects, weather patterns. Man has a capacity to worship that sets him both above and below other races.”
“But they are false gods,” Brigid replied, her voice heated with irritation. Ullikummis’s hands were still at either side of her head, caging her, blocking her in.
“Would you recognize a true god if he came to you?” Ullikummis asked. He let the question hang, leaving her to ponder it a moment, watching her face with fascination.
Brigid turned the thought over in her head. “Did you,” she muttered. “You asked ‘Did you believe in God?’ Not ‘Do you?’ Why?”
“What do the gods believe in?” Ullikummis replied, a question for a question. “Did you ever wonder that?”
“The Annunaki, you mean?” Brigid clarified. “They believe in…hate, rivalry, subjugation of others.”
“In badness, then,” Ullikummis stated. “Is that what you are saying? You believe this race so
pure that they could only have evil qualities and nothing good?”
“No,” Brigid said, “there was one called Enki. Your father’s brother. He tried to help mankind. It’s said that he’s the reason we’re here, because he saved us from the Great Flood.”
“Enki cut off my feet. And what did Enki believe in?” Ullikummis asked.
“I don’t know,” Brigid admitted, feeling confused, almost punch-drunk by his questions.
“If you are to be elevated to the status of Annunaki, you had better find out,” Ullikummis told her.
Brigid stared at him, feeling the hypnotic pull of his swirling magma eyes. He was tricking her, feeding her mind with information that spun upon itself, questions that came only as questions, problems that existed solely to baffle and confuse.
He’s trying to get into my brain, Brigid realized.
“You are free now,” Ullikummis said, drawing his hands away from the chair and taking a step back. “You have intelligence and knowledge and a capacity for learning that is exceptional among those of your race. With your help, Enlil can be dethroned and the world can move forward.”
“So that you can take his place?” Brigid asked, the question laced with suspicion.
“Each step forward changes the next one you must take,” Ullikummis replied. “Upelluri taught me that.”
Brigid felt his presence in her mind then. He had spent so much time with her, concentrated his energies on her for so long, determined to change her way of thinking. And she saw it, an ink blot across her mind, her old thoughts becoming smaller, irrelevant to her. No, that could not happen. That must not happen.
Ullikummis had changed her through the softest of coercion, made her see things that weren’t there. She looked up, past him to the shining thing that waited at the edge of the cave. She was believing in things that did not exist as anything more than reflections on the surface of the mirror, Brigid realized.
It occurred to her then that she could not possibly hope to halt this thing’s progress in her mind, could not possibly hope to survive intact as it overwhelmed her. She could do nothing but embrace the mental might of Ullikummis, scion of the Annunaki, and in so doing become one with them, commune with their very way of thinking. And, in doing that, she threatened to lose Brigid Baptiste forever.
There had been a trick to it before, Brigid recalled. Gold on blue—green and red. The weaving threads of destiny.
“My father required a weapon,” Ullikummis said, “a physical expression of his hatred.”
The words seemed to echo in Brigid’s mind as she remembered the multicolored threads. She was losing the continuity of memory, fragmenting into something less than she had been before.
“I was that weapon,” Ullikummis continued. “I was the hatred that my father unleashed upon his enemies.”
Brigid concentrated, remembering the colors and the pattern they created.
“And now I need a weapon of hatred, too,” Ullikummis told her. “A weapon so devious, so powerful, that it can shape the future.”
Brigid concentrated on the colors, the familiar pattern that the threads wove, even as she sank into the mental embrace of the great god Ullikummis, knowing she could no longer fight him.
Chapter 27
Kane walked with Rosalia down one of the seemingly never-ending tunnels that made up Life Camp Zero, her nameless mongrel following at a discreet distance. The walls glimmered with the recessed pods of swirling magma, and Kane saw similar pods located at haphazard intervals in the ceilings and occasionally beneath his feet in the rough-hewn rocky floor. There were low walls here and there, hunks of rock jutting out like barricades. At first, Kane had taken these to be random, the result of whatever erosion had created the dense collection of tunnels, but after a while he realized there was a pattern to the juts and hurdles, and the pattern was repeated in each new tunnellike corridor.
“What is this place?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
Rosalia shrugged. “Ullikummis shaped it,” she explained. “He can manipulate rock, you understand.”
“Yeah,” Kane agreed. “I’ve seen him do that a few times. But this—life camp, prison, whatever you want to call it—this is a huge operation. It must have taken months to construct.”
“No,” Rosalia told him as her dog trotted along behind them, “it’s an adaptation. He builds on old things to create new ones.”
“The same way mythology does,” Kane mused. “Building new faith out of the ruins of the old. Typical Annunaki.”
Kane stopped in one of the rock-walled tunnels, peering behind for a few seconds to make sure they weren’t being observed. Reassured, he turned to Rosalia. “So, where are the other prisoners?” he asked.
“All around you,” Rosalia said, indicating the solid walls.
Kane glanced where she indicated, shook his head. “I don’t see them,” he admitted.
Rosalia shot him a fierce look. “You think you were the only one they kept in a cell with no door?” she challenged hotly. “You really think you’re so special?”
Brushing a hand through his hair beneath the hood, Kane had the good grace to look self-effacing. “First Priest Dylan gave me the impression that…” He stopped, shaking his head ruefully. “Not so smart, believing your own press, huh?”
“Not so smart believing a liar,” Rosalia told him dismissively. “You want to keep that in mind, Magistrate man, if we’re going to get out of here alive.”
Looking apologetic, Kane peered around the tunnel again. The walls were closely packed, claustrophobically so in parts where lumps jutted out in those strange barricades. If he stood on tiptoe and stretched, he could reach the arched ceiling, brushing it with his knuckles. Other than himself, his beautiful companion and her dog, the corridor was empty.
“Well?” he encouraged. “Can’t stage a jailbreak without knowing where the cells are, now, can I?”
Rosalia reached a slender hand behind Kane’s neck, pulling him close as if to kiss him. “Watch,” she breathed.
He looked down to see her other hand brush against the rock wall to his right, at about the height of his belt buckle. The wall appeared blank at first glance, but Kane could see a shadowed recess there no bigger than his thumb, surrounded by a little ridge that stood out about a quarter of an inch from the uneven rock surface. A keyhole, he guessed, or a sensor that did the same job as a keyhole, anyway.
Rosalia swept her hand across the recess in the rock, barely touching it with the pale, inner side of her forearm. There came a rumbling then, a deep vibration as if an earthquake was happening, and Kane felt the floor shake beneath his feet. She pulled him a pace back as the wall began to part, and suddenly the rectangular shape of a doorway formed, seamless to the rock wall itself, yet distinct.
The rock panel shuddered aside, merging with the wall to its right. Kane took a step forward, gazing at the door, which had disappeared from view. There was no visible mechanism to operate it, and it seemed to run on invisible tracks, sinking into the substance of the wall in some unfathomable manner.
Tentatively, Kane took another step forward, entering the tiny cave that lay behind the door, checking over his shoulder to make sure Rosalia wasn’t about to try anything. The cell was six-by-eight, the same size as his own had been, and a single magma pod glowed faintly in the ceiling, its swirling contents shifting subtly as Kane watched. Lying on the hard rock floor of the cell was a slender woman wearing the familiar white jumpsuit of the Cerberus staff. The suit was torn and scuffed, and even under the faint orange glow of the overhead light, Kane could see streaks of dried blood marring its once vibrant material. The magma light caught the woman’s hair, making it appear red, and for a moment Kane’s heart leaped as he thought she was Brigid Baptiste. Then he stopped himself, breath catching in his throat, as he recognized her. Not Baptiste, but…
“DeFore? Reba DeFore?”
The woman looked up through the curtain of her blond bangs, and Kane saw glistening streaks down her f
ace where tears flowed freely. “Lakesh?” she asked.
Kane pushed the hood of his robe back as he bent down to speak with her. “No, Reba, it’s me,” he said. “It’s Kane.”
“Kane?” DeFore sounded uncertain, frightened. Kane recognized her altered mental status from his days as a Magistrate in Cobaltville, where prisoners had sometimes gone stir-crazy, suffering mental breakdowns. “Is that really you?”
“It’s me,” he said, his voice tender and reassuring. “It’s okay, it’s me. It’s not a trick.”
“Where are we?” she asked, then peered over Kane’s shoulder and saw the other figure standing there, the slender woman in the rough robe. “Who’s that? Is that Brigid?”
“No,” Kane said, glancing over his shoulder and, with a quick nod, encouraging Rosalia to enter the room. “This is Rosie. She’s a friend.”
“Kane, what’s going on?” DeFore asked. “It feels like I’ve been lying here for so long.”
“I know it does,” he said, “but I’ll have you out soon enough. Just hang tight, be strong.”
DeFore reached out then, brushing the side of his face with her fingertips. “Kane,” she snickered. “As I live and breathe, it really is you.”
He nodded again. “It really is. Now, you’re going to have to stay strong for just a little while longer, Reba. I need to get things in place before I can get you and everyone else out of here. Okay?”
The Cerberus medic looked mystified, like some senile old woman being told she had already eaten, yet having no memory of the meal. “Are you leaving?” she asked. “Are you leaving me again?”
Kane rested his hand on her shoulder, held it firmly as she lay there on the cave floor before him. “Be strong, Reba,” he reiterated. “It won’t be long now.”
Then he stood, watching the broken figure of Reba DeFore as she slumped on the floor of the tiny cave, tears flowing down her cheeks.
