by James Axler
Without really noticing it, Domi realized that the noise from the screen had become louder, that regular clickety-clack sound like an approaching locomotive or the chatter of an insect’s scraping legs. What was it?
She tentatively touched her fingers to the glass, feeling the coldness against their tips before they were even pressed against it. The transparent pane was freezing, and it felt damp. As she held her hand there, water trickled across the ridges of her fingers, cool droplets filling in the hollows at the base of her fingernails. More water, she mentally cursed.
Behind her, the dripping became more insistent, and Domi turned irritably, searching for its source. Something glistened on the far wall, twinkling beneath the overhead strip lights. It was a tiny stream of trickling water, fracturing as it ran down the wall in thin, crooked streams like bent fingers.
Domi turned back to the glass pane, and almost jumped with shock. Standing there, his face seemingly a mere foot away from hers, was Overlord Enlil of the Annunaki, his lizard’s eyes staring at her.
Chapter 15
Enlil watched Domi through the glass that divided them, a cruel sneer on his reptilian lips, his crocodile’s eyes sinister, a single vertical slit down the center of each mustard-yellow iris.
“Let us out of here!” Domi shouted at the glass.
Utterly inhuman, Enlil was a truly beautiful creature, imposing but with such an economy and grace to his movements that he seemed almost like something from a dream, something impossible to behold. At his full height, Enlil stood seven feet tall, a crest of spines curving back from the crown of his skull with a metallic glint, like wires of burnished steel. He wore simple clothing—loose, darkly colored breeches that flared at the hips and ended just past his knees, and a bloodred cloak that was cinched at his shoulders with a golden clasp, glowing like sunset despite the lack of light in the room where he stood. Beneath the golden clasp, Enlil remained bare-chested, his lizardlike hide a coppery-rust, the color of bronze washed with blood. The tiny scales there looked like a pattern of metal that had been sewn into his flesh. He stared directly into Domi’s crimson eyes, meeting her gaze with his own. “Cerberus,” he stated, the word coming like a curse in his eerie, duotonal voice.
“Let us out of here, you sick, sick bastard,” Domi snarled, the knife flashing in her hand.
Domi had met Enlil before now, on several occasions, in fact. Oft considered the cruelest of Tiamat’s brood, Enlil had been a near-constant thorn in the side of the Cerberus exiles. Initially, Enlil had plagued Kane, Grant, Domi, Lakesh and Brigid Baptiste in his guise as Baron Cobalt, the hybrid ruler of Cobaltville. In subsequent years, Cobalt had assumed other forms, C. W. Thrush and Sam the Imperator among them. Indeed, under the latter form, Enlil had gifted Domi’s aging lover, Lakesh, with a new flush of youth, only to cruelly snatch it away with some genetic succubus that ebbed the life out of Lakesh and almost killed him. However, it was in his current and supposed final form that Enlil had proved his most dangerous. Like the other eight members of the Annunaki royal family, Enlil had emerged from a hybrid body when the starship Tiamat had reappeared in Earth’s orbit, triggering a genetic download that granted the Annunaki yet another incarnation. When they had first walked the Earth, the Annunaki had been revered as gods by the primitive humans who inhabited the planet; in fact, that godly reverence had also been granted to their slave caste, the Igigi, such was the splendor attached to all things Annunaki—a race whose very slaves were gods.
Enlil and his siblings had reemerged with the Tiamat download to take control of the Earth in the twenty-third century. However, they had soon reverted to type, their petty jealousies turning them against one another. So it was that in squabbles with his family, the royal bloodline of the Annunaki, Enlil and his brethren had laid waste to several of the nine baronies of America, causing massive upheaval to the continent and the world beyond.
It had been a while since Domi had last encountered Enlil, however, and there had been some hope that the would-be world tyrant was finally dead. However, Domi knew all too well the Annunaki’s penchant for sidestepping their seeming inevitable demise; seeing him now was a shock, but Domi tamped down her surprise as she faced Enlil.
The overlord stared at her, those eerie lizard-slit eyes seeming to both pierce her and stare through her, as if she was as insignificant to him as a gnat buzzing around his head. And then he spoke once more, the words chiming like the tolling of brass bells, a king’s voice in a world ill prepared for such brilliance. “You will be out of there soon enough, apekin,” Enlil said, “and more yet, you will be eternally grateful to me for your release. For that release shall be a thing of beauty, child, the release of the butterfly from its cocoon.”
“Never!” Domi screamed. Angrily, she lunged at the screen with her knife, driving its point at the glass. The point hit the screen and bounced back with such force that Domi staggered back, too, dropping the blade.
At the glass panel, Enlil began to laugh. It was a braying, mocking, ugly sound made all the more disturbing by its duotonal nature. Domi glared at him, breathing heavily as water dripped around her from the tiled ceiling of the cell.
“I’ll never show you gratitude,” she stormed, spitting a gob of saliva at the surface of the glass. “The tables will turn, you’ll see. They always do. You’re a dead lizard who just doesn’t know it yet.”
Enlil continued to laugh as he turned away from the screen—be it a camera relay or a pane of glass, Domi still could not be sure. She watched as he strode away, his bloodred cape flaring around him, its heavy hem brushing at his ankles. He was barefoot, she saw now, the flaring breeches coming down just a little way past his knees, the curling clawlike talons of his toenails scraping on the tile floor to produce that clickety-clack sound she had heard before.
“When the Annunaki first came to Earth,” Enlil said, his back still to the screen, “the apekin here, your ancestors, believed us to be a gift from the heavens. And in a way, we were, for we were the children of Anu and we had traveled from Nibiru to bring light and beauty and all things Annunaki to this poor, pitiful ball of mud.
“But you rejected that gift,” Enlil snarled, turning back to face the screen, something small and glowing in his clawed hand. “The apekin began to foster delusions of competence, that they—that you—could manage without your gods. We let that happen, allowing our gift to be forgotten.
“But this time…this time the gift will be absolute,” Enlil breathed, his voice barely a whisper now. “This time, there will be no denying its value, and there will be no turning back once it is bestowed upon you.”
“You’re insane,” Domi spit, glaring at Enlil through the screenlike medium that separated them.
As she spoke, Domi felt the chill rise in the air, and Kishiro gasped from off to her side. Domi spun and saw Kishiro being pulled to his feet like a rag doll, water pouring around his form in thin streams like a leaking hose. He was being dragged upward against his will, his teeth clenched as he struggled against whatever power it was that had hold of him.
“What is it?” Domi asked, padding toward him. As she got closer she felt the hair on her head part, blown backward by a powerful wind. She realized then what was happening—Kishiro was being sucked up in a powerful column of air, pulled up toward the ceiling. Domi looked up there as Kishiro fought against the incredible force, and she saw the dark tiles there had drawn silently back, and water was pouring from the edges of the gap.
Icy water streamed down Kishiro’s body, pouring like a second skin over him, amassing on the floor in a pool beneath his feet. The proud warrior seemed to stand on tiptoe for a moment, his whole body stretched arrow-straight as he was tugged higher and higher toward the ceiling. Domi grabbed him but was pushed back, the coolness of the water icy against her own flesh, the temperature striking through her like a knife. She staggered back, feeling the
bone-numbing coldness running through her, gritting her teeth against the sudden shock of pain. Then she looked up and saw Kishiro disappear through the dark mouth in the ceiling, his athletic form whipping up like a rocket.
“Kishiro!” Domi cried as she lunged for him again. But already she was too late and she knew it. The Tigers of Heaven warrior’s feet shot past her reaching hands, water pouring off them like a flowing river, and Domi instead grabbed for nothing but empty air. The water sluiced across her hands and forearms, so cold it felt boiling hot against her numb flesh. She jerked her hands back, crying out in agony.
Kishiro was gone. Above, the hole in the ceiling oozed closed, coming together like pursing lips before disappearing entirely, leaving just a bulbous ridge where it had been.
Domi spun on her heel, her crimson eyes twinkling like rubies as they searched the strange cell-like room. Hassood still lay there against the wall, muttering to himself in delirium. And over by the window screen, Enlil was watching the room with casual disinterest, the vertical splits of his irises fixed on the middle distance as if in thought.
An eerie shudder ran up Domi’s spine as, finally, she recognized that look in Enlil’s face. She had seen it time and again in the hallowed halls of the Cerberus redoubt, where the science-brains worked hard on their many and varied projects, learning new applications for the interphaser, testing new theories for the viral drugs that kept their people alive in the radioactive wastes between the villes. It was the look they gave to lab animals as they watched the results of their experiments, considered how next to toy with them to increase their learning.
Domi knew then, without doubt, that she and Hassood and Kishiro—and who knew how many others—were nothing more than laboratory animals to Enlil, there to be experimented on and discarded as necessary, there to die for his knowledge and his whim.
* * *
GRANT, KUDO AND ROSALIA hurried along the empty streets of the dragon-shaped city, their movements echoing down the chasmlike labyrinthine alleyways that made up the eerie settlement. Grant remained in touch with Brewster Philboyd and Donald Bry at the temporary Cerberus ops center, taking directions whenever they got turned around in the nightmarish streets. Brewster Philboyd could not achieve any kind of floor plan; indeed the phenomenal city seemed impervious to satellite scan, the details ever changing on screen. All he could do was guide Grant toward the blip of Domi’s transponder and advise him if he saw that his team was heading off course.
It was a laborious process, trying to find their way through those snakelike streets between the white towers glistening in the moonlight. Grant set a brisk pace, guided by the internal beacon in his ear, and the others kept up with him without complaint. But eventually, Rosalia suggested they stop. They had covered two and a half miles eastward, probably closer to twice that with the way the streets kept doubling back on themselves like coiled springs. And the nature of the streets, with their hard surfaces and lack of the signs of human habitation, were disconcerting, encouraging a rising sense of unease in all three members of the field team. There were buildings but no doors. Doorways that opened only onto recessed walls. It was like something from a nightmare, with all the logic of dreams.
“Let’s stop for five minutes,” Rosalia said as they reached another of the oppressive little courtyards that appeared frequently among the streets. “Catch our breaths and let the dog do his business.”
Beside her, Rosalia’s scruffy mutt whimpered hopefully as it stared at her with pale eyes before scurrying off to relieve itself by one of the pillars, encouraged there with a simple flick of Rosalia’s wrist.
Automatically, Kudo took up a guard position at one of the multitude of narrow entries to the courtyard. Leaning against what looked to be a series of rough stone steps, made from some pale stone like chalk, Kudo took the time to attend to his sword. The katana had taken a few knocks during the fight with the water creatures, and Kudo used a portable cleaning kit to oil and cleanse the blade.
“Hell of a place,” Grant grumbled, peering around at the towering buildings that clawed their way toward the silver crescent mirror of the moon. The red laser light had stopped firing into the sky, or at least they hadn’t seen it fire for almost an hour, and nocturnal birds, owls and sand-colored nighthawks swooped around up in the higher echelons of the abandoned city.
Rosalia nodded her agreement as she perched on the edge of what appeared to be a water trough, the kind used for horses, a horizontal stone bar running at a little above waist height. As she rested against it, her hand scratched across its white surface and caught in a ridge there. Idly, she ran her slender hand along the ridge, working at it with slim fingers.
“According to Brewster,” Grant related to his companions, “we’re still about two miles out. The location of Domi’s tracker hasn’t moved since Bry last checked it, so she’s definitely settled somewhere. Still can’t raise her, though. Something’s blocking the signal.”
“Technology, huh?” Rosalia said with an resigned shrug. “What would that be, that can block your communications devices like that?”
Grant shook his head. “There’s a lot of mineral deposits around here. Could be a localized pocket blocking the signal. Might be radiation off that laser cannon. Could be about a hundred other things. She might just be too far belowground for the signal to penetrate.”
Rosalia sat watching Grant without comment, but she was thinking about how these ex-Magistrates—both Grant and his partner Kane—had come to rely so heavily on technology to assist them, with their Commtacts and their mat-trans and their shadow suits. There was nothing wrong with technology in its place, Rosalia considered, but it could be conversely limiting if you became reliant on it. Both Mags had been ignorant of the ways the gangs communicated in the Outlands, utterly unaware of the network of secret signals and hidden signposts that gang members like herself used to pass on information and to mark out their territories. Such information had been crucial to her the first time she had met with Grant, when he had chased after her across the desert of the West Coast of America. Still, despite being outnumbered and in the lair of the enemy, Grant had conducted himself with aplomb, triumphing over greater odds to cage a primal beast whose only expression was violence. For that, at least, Rosalia admired the man.
As she thought these things, Rosalia’s fingers idly stroked the ridges in the stonework of the water trough, her nails running along the cracks without conscious thought. Suddenly, her dark eyes widened, and she looked down to where her hand was running across the creamy white stonework. She peered at it intensely, running her slender fingers more carefully across the bumps and ridges as the moonlight painted itself across it with delicate brushstrokes.
Then Rosalia turned back to Grant where the man stood a few feet away discussing strategy with Brewster Philboyd via the Commtact link.
“Bone,” Rosalia said as Grant caught her eye. “It’s bone. I’m sitting on bone.”
Grant’s brows furrowed as he heard her, and he swiftly cut the communication with Philboyd, assuring the man he’d contact him the second he needed his help.
“What’s that you said?” Grant asked, taking a step toward Rosalia as her dog trotted over from the shadows.
Rosalia flicked her dark ponytail back over her shoulder as she indicated the troughlike structure she had perched on. “I think it’s bone,” she said.
Grant peered at her warily, still unsure whether he could really trust this mercenary whom Kane had absorbed into their group. Then he sank down on his haunches and looked more closely at the trough, running his hand along its side. “How can you tell?” he asked.
“It’s cold out here,” Rosalia said. “No real cloud cover, desert night. If this was stone, it would be colder. And look—look how the ridges work.”
Grant ran his hand over the white surface, suppressing the shudder that suddenly ran up
his spine. The ridges ran parallel, curving slightly but all of them running lengthwise.
“This is something grown,” Rosalia said. “Something organic. We are standing in an ossuary, a bone palace.”
She stood then, looking about her at the buildings that towered all around them, at the way the windows and doors seemed to be boarded up with chalky brickwork or wood. Beside her, Grant stood, too, eyeing the buildings with growing concern. “You think…?” he began, and Rosalia nodded.
“We’ve assumed this whole place was built of stone,” she said, “because that’s how villes are built. Not one of us looked closely—looked properly—at these structures.
“There are gradations, of course, but the whole settlement is constructed of the same materials, all of it differing shades of cream. The moonlight lies to our eyes. This isn’t stone, it’s bone. We’re in something that’s grown. Grown and died.”
“A skeleton,” Grant said quietly, awe in his voice. “This empty ville covers over seven square miles. If it’s a skeleton, we’re talking about a heck of a beastie.”
“A dragon,” Rosalia stated bluntly.
Grant nodded unhappily, like a man who had discovered that the weight of the world was suddenly balanced on his shoulders. “A seven-mile-wide dragon? Someone would have seen it land, surely.”
Rosalia looked pensive. “What if it didn’t land? What if it…burrowed up from the surface or, I don’t know, what if someone placed it here using an interphaser or similar? Possible?”
“Anything’s possible,” Grant agreed cagily. “If working with Cerberus has taught me one thing, it’s that.”
Kudo had overheard the conversation from his post, and he looked to Grant with confusion written across his face. “What should we do, Grant? Turn back?”