by James Axler
Rosalia preceded him out of the cell, showed him how to close the door. “You need to brush here,” she said, “like a swipe card.” She held Kane’s left wrist in a tight grip and drew his hand across the sensor. The door grumbled a moment, then slid back into place, sealing Reba DeFore in her cell.
Kane nodded. “I see.”
Then he peered down the ill-lit corridor, seeing more of the recessed sensors hiding in plain sight, each one poised uniformly at waist height. There were over a dozen lining the walls that Kane could see, and he briefly tried to calculate how many prison cells might be here in this vast, eerie complex. There could be hundreds, he realized, more than enough to hold all the captured Cerberus personnel. And if that was the case, then it meant one thing—Brigid Baptiste must be here somewhere, trapped behind one of these hidden doors.
Rosalia’s hand reached up, stroking him gently across his cheek. “What are you thinking, Magistrate man?” she asked.
Kane looked at her. “How do we get out of here?”
“The main exit, but it’s blocked and guarded,” Rosalia told him.
“Any other way that you know of?”
“There’s another exit,” she informed him. “Cuts through a vehicle hangar, opens out lower down in the complex. I use it to walk the dog, let him get some exercise.”
“Why isn’t that entrance guarded?” Kane asked.
“The route there is,” Rosalia told him, “but think about it—who’s trying to escape?”
Kane nodded. “The cells lock themselves,” he reasoned, “making escape almost impossible.”
“No ‘almost’ about it, Magistrate man,” Rosalia corrected.
“There’s always a way,” Kane told her, and he raised his arm, examining his wrist. There was no scar, but there seemed to be a puckering of the skin, as though his flesh had buckled where the stone had embedded itself. “How long do I have?” he asked.
“We’ll fix it in time,” Rosalia assured him. “You trust me, right?”
Kane wasn’t so certain, but he reluctantly gave his assent as he followed Rosalia down the tunnel toward an intersection. She moved on, checking left and right as she led the way through the vast maze of caverns, the dog trotting along at her heels, tongue out. They passed several groups of hooded figures, the people Kane had come to think of as prison guards, and Rosalia acknowledged them with a nod or a quick word, keeping to her path through the tunnel-filled complex.
After a while they reached a wider tunnel, this one littered with low walls like hurdles.
“Main exit is that way.” Rosalia indicated the far end of the tunnel.
Kane looked, recognizing where he was. Dylan had brought him here. The operations center was off to his left. The ceiling was high and covered in spiky stalactites that reached down like witch’s fingers, sharp nails clawing at the air above him. It was uneven, something formed over centuries of erosion. Kane saw magma pods here and there, spaced irregularly along the vast length of the corridor, most on the ceiling but a few located along the walls or embedded in the solid stone floor. At the far end, a distance of perhaps three hundred yards in all, Kane could make out figures standing patiently, sentries guarding the life camp’s main exit.
Rosalia ran her wrist across a sensor eye in the wall, and a door melted aside. Beyond, Kane saw a flight of stairs carved from the rock, stretching down to lower levels of the prison. Rosalia motioned him forward, and Kane followed her and the dog as they walked into the strange stairwell, gesturing behind him with a sweep of his arm to close the entrance.
Inside, the rocky stairwell echoed, carrying the sounds of their footsteps back to them in staccato bursts. The dog’s panting seemed louder here, too, echoing in Kane’s ears from the hard surfaces that surrounded them. Like the rest of the prison, the stairwell was lit by lava pods hidden in recesses, and he marveled at the economy of design. Supposedly spaced at random, the glowing pods cast enough light to see by, and their orange tint gave the whole life camp the feeling of living inside a furnace, painting everything in a fiery glow.
Rosalia led the way down the steps, moving gracefully and silently. The dog scampered behind her, and Kane followed them both until the svelte woman stopped at another wall and brushed a sensor with her wrist. A door opened, revealing another poorly lit tunnel stretching away from the stairs. The walls here were rough, with jutting bumps sticking out at head height, forcing Kane to duck.
“Kind of monotonous design sense you have here,” he observed sarcastically.
Rosalia shot him a look so fierce he almost backed away. “Keep your mind on the job,” she told him, “and stop trying to dazzle me with small talk.”
Contritely, Kane agreed. “Reba seemed pretty messed up,” he said, returning to the subject at hand. “I don’t know how much use she’ll be in a firefight. Is she typical?”
“This place is designed to break the spirit, Kane,” Rosalia told him. “They’ve starved the prisoners, giving them only enough to keep them alive. Sometimes not even that.”
Kane felt the emptiness in his own stomach as she spoke, reminded of how little he had eaten in the past sixty hours. Ahead, Rosalia approached one of the hooded guards, constructing some cock-and-bull story about having to check on the vehicle bay for signs of welding equipment.
“You need a hand with that?” the sec man asked, his face hidden in shadow.
“That’s okay, I brought my own muscle,” Rosalia said, gesturing to Kane. Despite the shapelessness of the robe he wore, it was clear that he was well-muscled, his shoulders wide in the narrow rocky corridor.
Kane nodded to the sentry, looked across at his bored partner. The second man was working a coin over his knuckles, running it back and forth between his fingers in a show of dexterity. After a moment, Kane noted it wasn’t a coin. It was a smooth, flat rock, one of the smaller missiles that he had been on the receiving end of when he had battled these people just a couple of days before.
Rosalia brushed her hand against the door sensor, and the rock gate trundled backward, revealing a vast cave that waited beyond. The woman walked ahead and Kane followed, marveling at the size of the cavern they now found themselves in.
Kane estimated that it was sixty square feet, high-ceilinged, with the usual array of stalactites clawing down from above. Pods of orange light glowed along the walls and floor, both of which undulated with the roughness of the stone here.
As Rosalia resealed the door behind them, Kane spotted something glinting in the magma glow of the lights. He hurried over to get a closer look, recognizing it immediately. It was a Manta, the sleek wings of the aircraft finished in a burnished bronze, with cup-and-spiral designs marking its hull. Kane reached up, running his hand along one of the wings, touching it as if to make sure it was real. Even as he did so, he saw a second Manta docked on the other side of the vast room, its burned-gold shell shimmering in the volcanic light.
“Mantas,” Kane breathed. “They’ve got Mantas.”
Rosalia looked at him quizzically. “Is that good? You fly these?”
He nodded. “We get one of these up and running and I can get back to Cerberus, bring reinforcements and shut down this hellhole.”
“You’re forgetting something,” Rosalia told him. “In two hours or so that stone will kick in full force. Then you won’t care about any of this.”
Kane was about to argue, but stopped himself.
“Truth sucks, doesn’t it?” she said, raising a dark eyebrow in challenge. At her heels, the dog whined as if in sympathy.
Kane’s mind was racing, trying to work out a way to use this discovery to his advantage. With a Manta at his command, he could fly anywhere, recruit help and stage a massive jailbreak. “If I could get to New Edo, I could speak to Shizuka, come back here with her Tigers of Heaven,” he reasoned. “They’d overrun this place in no time.”
“Are they that much better than your people,” Rosalia challenged, “or are you so inferior?”
“Listen, sweetheart,” Kane snar
led, jabbing a finger in her face, “Cerberus was ambushed. Before we even knew what was happening, your new friends overran the place….”
“They caught you napping, you mean?” Rosalia said. “A big, strong military facility and they caught you on the one day you were all asleep.”
Kane made a fist in frustration, biting back a reply.
“This is bigger than you, Kane,” Rosalia told him reasonably. “You can’t defeat this in one move.”
“Then…what?” he asked.
She pressed her hand to his arm, squeezed the biceps beneath the fustian robe. “Let’s look outside,” she said gently.
Together, they made their way across the vast hangar, heading toward the little door that Rosalia had found to the side of the main exit. Kane saw other vehicles stored in the shadows as they strode across the echoing bay. The exit itself was locked, sealed with more of the living stone. Kane eyed it for a moment, saw it would be wide enough to bring both Mantas out side-by-side if he needed to. That was good to know. Once everything went ballistic, a rapid escape wouldn’t be impossible.
Rosalia brought her hidden stone into play once again, swiping it over a recessed port until Kane heard a lock click open. Then the beautiful woman reached ahead, placed both hands on the uneven rock and pulled until the seemingly solid rock wall began to move toward her. It was a swing door, Kane saw, nothing more complicated than that. He felt fresh air on his face as the door swung toward him, and narrowed his eyes as the bright sunlight struck his face.
The mongrel went running ahead, brushing the side of the door with its flank as it hurried outside and went charging off into the forest beyond. Rosalia followed, with Kane a few paces behind her.
Outside Life Camp Zero, Kane blinked, drinking in the fresh air with deep breaths. Rosalia glanced at him and smiled before turning her attention to the dog hurrying ahead of them. The animal stopped at the verge of trees, looked back once with imploring eyes, then ran off into the tree cover with a single bark.
“He knows where he’s going?” Kane asked, nodding toward the dog.
“He’ll be fine,” Rosalia said. “He never strays far.”
“What’s his name?” Kane asked, still squinting in the brightness of daylight. The sky was overcast, with silver clouds moving rapidly overhead as the wind picked up. Still, the brightness of the reflected sunlight was dazzling after being inside the dim prison for more than two days.
“He doesn’t have a name,” Rosalia said. “I never gave him one.”
“How long have you had him?” Kane asked.
“Six months maybe.” She was watching the dog as it pelted through the brush, sniffing at rabbit holes it found.
“You have a dog six months and you don’t give it a name?” Kane asked, taken aback.
Rosalia turned to him and smiled enigmatically. “You give things names and you get attached to them,” she said, “Magistrate man.”
“Touché,” Kane said, nodding in resigned agreement.
As they spoke, he looked around more closely. They were in a little clearing, high up on a mountain slope. The immediate area around the door was flat, with dusty soil marking a place where the trees had been cleared, presumably to let the Mantas take off. Five paces away, the steep slope of the mountain was covered with trees, a vast forest that filled the ravines and valleys all around. There was something nagging at Kane as he took in that vista through squinting eyes, something awfully familiar about the whole thing.
For a moment he stood still, peering at the mountains around them, the forest that blanked the area far and wide. Rosalia was standing two steps ahead of him as she watched her nameless dog sniff at one of the nearby trees, cock its leg and begin to urinate.
Kane turned then, glancing behind him at the open doorway, the rocky line that showed where a larger door for vehicles would open into the hangar. The smaller door was set within the larger one, Kane realized now, seeing how it all fit together. And he knew this place. This place was home.
In a swift movement, he reached forward, grasping Rosalia by the arm and pulling her off balance. He bent his face close to hers, spoke through gritted teeth.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kane snarled. “Why didn’t you tell me we’re still in Cerberus?”
Chapter 28
“Would you have believed me if I had told you?” Rosalia asked, her dark eyes meeting Kane’s as he loomed over her.
Beyond the plateau, the dog peered up at the sound, barked once in excitement.
Kane glared at the mongrel. “Stay,” he commanded.
The animal whimpered, turned to run, then seemed to think better of it. It waited, watching from the relative safety of the tree cover.
Kane turned back to Rosalia, anger flushing his cheeks inside the shadowy hood. “Explain it to me,” he growled. “Everything.”
“Let me go,” she responded. “I’m not your enemy, Kane. Now let me go.”
“I was just beginning to trust you,” he snarled, “and I find out this.”
Rosalia tried to shake off Kane’s grip, but he held her tighter, grasping her other arm with his free hand.
“Explain it to me,” he repeated, his tone brooking no argument now.
“We came here under the cover of night,” Rosalia related, “with Ullikummis at the head of the group. There must have been fifty, sixty people, Kane. He said he wanted to overwhelm this place, to strike hard and to hurt those within.”
“How did you get in?” Kane asked.
“He had people on the inside,” Rosalia told him. “Obedience stones embedded within them, dormant in their bodies, grafted to their central nervous systems.”
“Players on the inside,” Kane murmured, seeing the picture unfold before him.
“We waited in the woods,” Rosalia continued, “and he called to them. Ullikummis called to them, a mental signal like a song you can’t stop humming. I heard it, too, vibrating inside me. We all did. The stones are like a part of him, and they send signals to his people, not instructions so much as emotions. Once the stone is inside you you have to learn to block them, look past them.”
“Or what?” Kane demanded.
“Or they drive you insane, Kane,” Rosalia told him, “make you one of them. A firewalker.”
Kane nodded, taking the information in. “What happened then?” he asked.
“At the signal, we attacked this base,” Rosalia said. “Your Cerberus, whatever you call it. I didn’t know it was yours, Kane, I didn’t know you would be here.”
“I wasn’t here,” Kane told her. “My crew was out in Louisiana when you attacked. When we got back here the whole place was in disarray.
“What happened then?” he demanded, tightening his grip on the woman’s arms.
“Your sentries didn’t see it coming,” Rosalia said. “How could they? They were the very people Ullikummis had recruited, and they didn’t even know it. It didn’t take long to take over this rat hole, enclosed and under-manned as it was. You make it easy for people.”
“That’s a point of contention,” Kane snarled. “You shouldn’t have been able to just walk through the doors.”
“You put up a fight,” Rosalia said with an approving smile. “I saw you. You gave that monster a good run for his money. I wanted you to succeed, Kane—you have to believe that.”
Still holding her arms, Kane shook Rosalia angrily. “Then why didn’t you help me?”
“I was in the enemy’s base, surrounded by armed subjects loyal to that monster,” Rosalia said with a laugh. “You don’t know when to pick your battles, Magistrate man, but I do.”
Kane considered that, and his grip on Rosalia’s arms eased. Finally he let her go, stepped back a pace and looked out over the mountainous vista that surrounded the Cerberus redoubt. There were guards high above, stationed beside the thick pillars of stone that blocked the main door. “Is this you picking your battle now?” he asked.
Contritely, she nodded, her dark eyes fixed on his.
“Ullikummis placed his hand on the wall,” Rosalia said, “like this.” She pressed one hand to her breast, the fingers spread wide. “Then there was a rumbling, and the place began to change, like a bug shedding its cocoon. The rocks seemed to grow like mold, forming before my eyes, reshaping and entwining with one another like a lover’s embrace.
“He speaks to rocks, Kane,” Rosalia said. “He tells them to do things. It makes no sense, but I see him do it.”
Kane gazed off into the distance, watching as the silvery clouds sailed by overhead like boats on a stream. “It’s a form of telekinesis,” he told her. “Psionics. Baptiste figured he had something embedded deep inside him, some tool that could reach out and do these things.”
“You met him before?” Rosalia asked.
“Couple of times,” Kane told her. “First time was Tenth City up in the north. He built it literally from the ground up, pulling rocks out from the soil, turning them into buildings, nightmarish architecture that twisted and turned. Baptiste called it a sigil, a magical symbol of power. She said it could affect people’s way of thinking, make them more susceptible to his instruction.”
At the edge of the trees, the dog was sniffing the air, and it turned back to Kane and Rosalia and barked.
“What’s that—he sense something?” Kane asked.
She shook her head in irritation. “Stupid mutt, jumping at shadows. He’ll get us both killed.”
Kane ran his hand over his face, putting pressure there as if to awaken himself. He was trying to work out a map of the complex in his head, figure out how the place they called Life Camp Zero related to the Cerberus redoubt. “The cells are the living quarters,” he speculated, “but he’s boxed them in somehow, filled them with rock.”
“I don’t know your home well enough,” Rosalia admitted as he looked at her.
“We’d need to open the cells all at the same time,” Kane proposed. “Release everyone at once.”
“And then what?” she challenged. “You saw the woman, Kane—you saw the state she was in. Nobody’s going to fight with you. You barely have the strength to fight yourself.”
