by James Axler
* * *
IN THE WEST COAST operations room, Lakesh studied the satellite view of the island of Bensalem and consulted several reference documents.
“This island did not exist a year ago,” he stated, shaking his head.
Brewster Philboyd looked at the map that Lakesh had brought up on his own computer screen. “This Ullikummis has pulled things out of thin air before now,” he said miserably.
“No, not thin air, Mr. Philboyd,” Lakesh corrected. “Rock. He has an affinity to rock, it seems, and is able to employ a form of telekinesis to call on such to do his bidding. That was, by our best guess, how he created his Tenth City. The rock itself was pulled up from beneath the soil—bedrock.”
“So, this island—he’s pulled it from the sea?” Philboyd theorized.
“It seems probable.”
Philboyd shrugged. “I guess even monsters need somewhere to live,” he said, nervously pushing the spectacles back up the bridge of his nose.
“No,” Lakesh said, “there’s more to it than that. Look at the design. Almost circular, with the highest towers based in its center. This is the same design that the nine villes followed.”
Brewster moved his face a little closer to the screen, watching the live feed from the satellite as the dark blurs of gulls passed through the overhead image. “That’s been cropping up a lot lately, huh?”
“It is the open secret we never noticed,” Lakesh said cryptically. Seeing Brewster’s quizzical look, Lakesh smiled apologetically and cleared his throat. “This design, the circular pattern of lower buildings rising to a peak in the center—this is the form that every city in the history of humankind has taken. After Brigid’s experience of attempted mind control in Tenth City, she theorized that there was something in the architectural design itself that focused a person’s thoughts in specific ways, perhaps making them more susceptible to instruction. As such, it is a way of controlling people, a sigil that traverses time. This is the same design of the cities that you and I inhabited in the twentieth century. We may presume that the subtle control of humanity by the Annunaki is long-lived, Mr. Philboyd.”
While it seemed fanciful, the use of sigils—or magical symbols—that Lakesh referred to was prevalent throughout human history. Most infamous among these was the Nazi swastika, a reversed symbol for peace that, in its mirrored form, was believed to have wrought conflict.
Lakesh and Brewster stared at the image on the latter’s terminal screen in silence while, across the room, Donald Bry became more animated in his conversation with Grant about the mysteriously appearing parallax point. At the same time, one of the Tigers of Heaven, the modern-day samurai warriors whose property the Cerberus base had temporarily commandeered, took two paces into the room before subtly attracting Lakesh’s attention.
“Dr. Singh,” the squat, broad-shouldered warrior urged, “your presence is required outside by Mistress Shizuka.”
Lakesh nodded. “Keep an eye on the situation here,” he told Brewster Philboyd, glancing across to Donald Bry as he did so. “If anything changes, I want to know.”
“Sir,” Brewster acknowledged with a curt nod.
* * *
THOUGH FULL OF OMINOUS shadows, the fortress of Ullikummis appeared to be empty, and after a while Kane stated that conclusion out loud. “If we haven’t bumped into anyone by now, my guess is we ain’t gonna.”
The fortress had several levels, connected by rough, uneven staircases or spiraling ramps. While its passageways were wide, the rooms felt haphazard and cramped, like things that had budded from the main walkways rather than been intentionally connected. That was disquieting to Kane, who felt there was something almost living about the structure itself despite its lack of movement. It felt grown, formed organically. In some way, walking through the fortress felt a little like walking through a body.
They found rooms that contained possessions, obviously human. One room had a bunch of letters on the hard stone cot that stretched against one wall, tied with a ribbon and inexpertly hidden in the folds of a fur blanket. Another room, this one featuring two stone bunks, had a simple game board carved of wood, a jointed hinge along its center so that the pieces could be cleverly stored within. None of the rooms had doors, and Kane recalled how the cells had worked in Life Camp Zero, the prison that Ullikummis had used to hold the Cerberus exiles. Those cells had seemed to be hollows in the rock like honeycombs, and their doors only appeared when necessary, a shifting of a rock wall that seemed almost to have the properties of a liquid and a solid in one item.
Balam stopped as they walked past another open doorway, turning and walking to the room as if in a trance. Kane continued on, peering in each open doorway in turn, glancing across the shadow-dappled interiors before moving to the next. Three rooms along, he saw something odd resting on the floor. Clearly broken, it looked like a bucket seat or a gigantic vase, the top torn free to leave a jagged line. As Kane stepped closer, something fluttered across his vision and he found his sight turning dark. Kane looked around, realizing for the first time that Balam was no longer with him. He hadn’t noticed his silent companion had stopped some doors away from him, and it only dawned on him now when his vision started to fade, the colors ebbing away to be replaced by grayness, the subtle edges of the stone walls and the shattered bowllike object diminished to a blur.
“Balam?” Kane called, turning.
The two were linked, and it was in this way that Kane could see, using their telepathic tie to overcome his own blindness. Proximity affected the bond, lessening its effectiveness as Kane well knew from a similar event while they had been searching the old Cerberus redoubt. So many new limitations to remember and to juggle, Kane cursed as he stepped out of the room. So many hazards to navigate at each turn.
“Balam? Where did you go?”
The weight of the Sin Eater still in his hand, Kane marched back down the corridor where he had just been. One advantage of their link was that he couldn’t lose Balam for long, he thought cheerlessly; he just had to walk around until his vision became clear again.
When Kane found Balam, the smaller humanoid was standing in the middle of a small room. The room contained a simple bed, a stone base with a little padding from several furs, a blanket made of the same. There was a narrow window on one wall that was little bigger than a letter slot, but the room was otherwise unremarkable. Balam was poised silently in the center of the room, his hands clasped together before him, his eyes closed.
“Balam? Everything okay?” Kane urged.
“She was here,” the gray-skinned creature said. He spoke quietly, and his eyes remained closed in meditation.
“Who?” Kane asked and stopped himself, realizing that the question was redundant. Balam meant Little Quav, of course.
“She’s not afraid,” Balam continued. “Merely...curious. She was told things here, taught things.”
“Some learning curve,” Kane muttered. “Imprisoning a three-year-old girl in a big stone fortress.”
Balam’s eyes flickered open, their dark orbs peering wistfully into Kane’s. “I do not believe she was imprisoned, Kane. This was a family reunion, mother and son.”
“Well, she ain’t here now,” Kane said, indicating the empty room.
“No,” Balam agreed. “So where is she? Where is Ullikummis?”
Kane racked his brain for a moment, trying to think in the manner of the Annunaki. They were multidimensional beings whose malice was just one aspect of their eternal boredom with their lives. So where would Ullikummis go next?
“Enlil,” Kane said slowly. “That’s the piece that’s missing from this family reunion.”
Balam’s bulbous head rocked back and forth on his spindly neck as he nodded his agreement. “The child is not ready,” he said after some consideration. “Her Ninlil aspect has yet to be teased out of her. She remains the
little girl that you and I know as Quav. It will be years before that changes.”
“There’s something you should see,” Kane said, gesturing to the corridor. “Maybe you can make sense of it.” He was talking about the bowllike thing he had found, but he chose not to add that he had been unable to analyze it because his vision had failed. It wouldn’t help to remind Balam of this; the First Folk diplomat was jumpy enough as it was.
Thus, Kane led the way from the room with Balam at his side. There were no doors in the gloomy palace, so everything here was open to view now.
Three doorways along, Kane stepped into the room, encouraging Balam to follow. There, in the center of the room, lay the broken bowllike structure. Kane could see it better now with his eyes recovered, and he studied it properly for the first time. Bigger than an armchair, the bowl seemed to be made of some kind of stone and rested on a very low plinth that raised it a quarter inch above the stone floor. The top edge was jagged as if the rest of it had been snapped away and, looking at it now, Kane was reminded of an egg. There were shards of the broken remains all around, quartz within it like plates of stained glass twinkling in the light from the arrow-slit windows that lined the room on three sides.
“Any ideas?” Kane prompted.
“A chrysalis,” Balam said. There was no hint of doubt in his voice.
“You seen this before?” Kane challenged.
Balam inclined his head in a nod. “They are one of the ways that the Annunaki employed to stave off their immense boredom,” he explained as he leaned down to pick through the wreckage strewed about the cuplike object. “You will have heard of how the gods of the Annunaki wore different faces and thus appeared to different cultures in different ways. Overlord Enlil was also Kumbari. Zu was Anzu...”
“Lilitu, Lilith,” Kane added, nodding.
“On occasion this would involve a period of cosmetic change,” Balam elaborated, “a minor amusement to the Annunaki. The chrysalis was one manner by which this was achieved.”
“So, Ullikummis has been—what—changing his face?” Kane questioned. “Ugly bastard like that’s going to take a lot of work.”
“No, not Ullikummis,” Balam said, studying one of the broken fragments of the rock shell. “This pod is too small for an adult form. It was used on a child.”
Kane fixed Balam with his stare. “I think we both know what that means, right?”
Balam nodded. “Quav.”
Chapter 4
“There’s got to be a thousand of them,” Grant muttered as he watched the massing army step from the crazed pattern of colors and light that swam in the air over the banks of the Euphrates.
“More than that, Magistrate,” Rosalia corrected, indicating the center of the rift.
Grant turned to where the dark-haired woman had indicated and saw the rift in space growing larger, its hourglass shape swelling in the center to disgorge more people with increased vigor. The rift crackled with lightning against a deep nothingness, swirling colors spinning and fraying in its depths, splitting apart to form even more colors as Grant watched. He estimated that the rift was a quarter mile across now, and as it increased in size it became harder to look it, burning against the rods and cones of his retina like some grisly optical illusion. It was an interphase window, Grant knew, but one so large as to reach a scale he had never seen before. The interphaser was designed for personal transport, carrying just a few people and limited matériel at a time. This, however, was on a scale he had never imagined, like some great monument tunneling through the very air over the sun-dappled surface of the Euphrates. Grant had never seen anything like it.
“Where the fuck are they all coming from?” he muttered, shaking his head.
“I attended a few of the rallies for Ullikummis,” Rosalia spoke, her voice low. “Held in the old bombed-out sports stadiums and parking lots, they would regularly attract a thousand, fifteen hundred people at a time. It was quite something seeing that many people chanting in unison.”
Grant turned to look at Rosalia, his brow furrowed, as the army massed behind him. “‘Quite something,’” he repeated. “Huh.”
“What?” Rosalia asked, challenge in her voice.
“It’s never ‘scary’ with you, is it?” Grant observed. “Always just something that happened.”
“The world’s as scary as we choose for it to be, Grant,” Rosalia told him cryptically. “You look at things the way you choose to. No one else makes you frightened but you yourself.”
The rift continued to expel more and more people of all ages and body types. Many of them wore the familiar robes of Ullikummis’s enforcers, some with the red badge shining over their left breast like those of the old Magistrates. There were dogs there, too, Grant saw—strange dogs with long bodies and heavy, loping movements, their shapes carved from living stone.
Ullikummis himself waited at the head of the army, backing slowly away from the rift to allow his followers space to spread out, Brigid and the little girl at his side.
“We’re going to need to get closer,” Grant decided. He was still hefting Domi’s unconscious form in his arms, and despite the burden he showed no signs of tiredness.
Rosalia indicated the albino woman. “Planning on taking her?”
“No,” Grant replied. Then he turned to Kudo, the man who’d lost half his face to the acid spillage inside the bowels of Tiamat. “Kudo, you good to get home if I leave you in charge of Domi?”
Kudo nodded, bringing forth a portable communications device from its secure place in a belt pouch. “I can tap Cerberus comms and ask them to guide me,” he said without arguing. Like all Tigers of Heaven, Kudo was a fearless warrior who would never shy away from a fight. However, he also recognized the need for authority, and bowed to Grant’s decisions as squad leader.
“Great,” Grant said as he passed his pale burden to Kudo. The modern-day samurai took the petite woman, hefting her over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “Tell Donald to trace Domi’s transponder. He can use that to guide you to the nearest safe haven from which you can make the jump home.”
Kudo nodded once. “As you command.” Then he walked away from the scene, speaking into the comm unit.
Within moments, Grant and Rosalia were alone at the edge of the citylike dragon ship, watching as the tear in the air continued spilling more of the mismatched troops to the ground.
Rosalia reached down to the handle of her sword, her hand brushing against it to ensure it was still there. “How do you propose we do this?” she asked.
Grant held his right arm out, palm open, and his Sin Eater slapped into his hand from its hiding place beneath his sleeve. “Let’s play it by ear.”
* * *
SELA STONE HEARD the call like a racing drumbeat in her skull, its urgency increasing until it became impossible to ignore. A black-skinned woman, slender and hungry-looking, she had a body that was all toned muscle, no flab. She had not always been called Sela Stone; three months earlier she had been Sela Sinclair, one of the security experts for Cerberus before their redoubt had been infiltrated and all personnel had been taken prisoner. It was a distant memory now, that first vision of Ullikummis as he strode through the familiar corridors of the redoubt with his army of followers, overcoming all attempts to stop them. He had touched her, a fleck of himself embedding in her head like a living thing. The stone put Sela in touch with Ullikummis, helped her to comprehend his will, to accept him as her god.
Since that day, Sela had heard the quiet drums beating over and over in her head. The noise had become reassuring, a heartbeat from another world, the heartbeat of her god and savior. The drumming increased whenever Ullikummis was near, and also when those most important to him—such as the warrior woman known as Haight—came close. And this day, as Sela sat before a small congregation in the old province of Samariumville, preaching the
word of Stone, she felt the drums beat louder and faster. As a believer in the future under Ullikummis, Sela had taken her first steps in spreading the word, gathering just a dozen of the outlander farmers in a dilapidated barn to tell them of the glorious utopia that was coming. A few days before, she had still been undercover, hiding in the shadows with her Cerberus teammate, Farrell, giving no indication that she had been turned. Now she was an Alpha, promoting the word of the new god.
“His love is stone, unbreakable, unconquerable,” Sela assured them. “His embrace is the embrace of the all. His future is the pinnacle of achievement, the glory of utopia.”
As she spoke, she could hear the drums inside her head getting faster and faster. She saw the farmers’ eyes widen as something changed behind her, and she turned, her own words turning to silence on her lips. Where the barn wall had been just a moment before now stood a swirling hole of blackness, dark colors twisting within its newly impossible depths, lightning strikes ravaging within. The hole seemed to pulse, subtly changing shape like a living creature breathing in and out. Sela recognized it from her time with Cerberus; it was a rift window created by an interphaser.
She stepped back automatically, giving room for the interphaser’s user to step out—but no one did. Behind her, the congregation of farmers and the hardy-looking women they had taken for their wives watched in awe. “Is this the utopia?” one of them asked. “Has it arrived?”
Sela peered deep into the impossible depths of the quantum window, watching those swirling colors coalesce and part over and over, no two patterns alike. There, deep in the swimming burst of light, fingers seemed to be moving, an upturned hand pulling back as if giving Sela the go-ahead signal. The hand was rough and crudely formed, as if it had been hewed from solid rock. When she saw this, Sela Stone knew just what to do. Without a second’s hesitation, she stepped into the pulsing swirl of darkness, letting the quantum window wash over her like the tide on a beach, bathing her in its power.
