Dragon City

by James Axler

  He was surrounded now, with nowhere to turn. He could barely even see the light of the gloomy birthing chamber, such was the density of the mob all around him.

  Enlil drove a fist upward, striking a figure in the belly, lashing out and ripping something fleshy from another, its genitalia shredding across his sharp claws. But as he moved, another creature set upon him, and another and another. Relentless.

  “Get back,” Enlil demanded, spitting the words out at the crowd that surrounded him. “I have given life to you. Tiamat is your mother, but now I am father to the Annunaki race. Without me, none of you would be standing here. Don’t you realize that? Can’t you see?”

  In response, 213 sets of eyes gazed back at Enlil, staring with absolute hatred at the one who would be their master. And in that moment, Enlil finally saw what he had failed to notice before. They were not truly Annunaki. Somehow the Annunaki bodies were host to the Igigi, the slave caste of the Annunaki, turning now against their betters. Once, millennia ago, Enlil had killed them all, a consequence so trivial he could barely recall it.

  They were called the Igigi, and they were known as “those who watch and see.” According to Sumerian myth, there were one thousand of them and each one was a god. They never achieved names, however, for they toiled under the Annunaki, a slave caste made up of gods, whose function was to ensure that the day-to-day running of the Earth went smoothly. Bureaucrats cast as gods. The Igigi loved the Annunaki with all their hearts, and in return for that love they were ignored and dismissed, their value diminished by the very fact that they were not Annunaki. Finally, they had been seen as collateral damage when Enlil had unleashed the Great Flood upon the Earth to wipe out humankind.

  But some of the Igigi had grown wise to Enlil’s scheme for, as their epithet suggested, they would watch and see, their knowledge of the workings of the Annunaki royal family far more intricate than any had given them credit for. When they learned that Enlil planned to wipe them out, a rebellious group of Igigi had acted quickly, copying technology from Tiamat to grant them a second life, allowing their minds to be reborn into new and spectacular bodies. They were destined to rule the Earth in splendor, a race of new gods to replace the departing Annunaki.

  But there had been an unforeseen flaw in their plan. They had been forced to act surreptitiously, hiding their intentions from the Annunaki and had hidden their bootlegged tech deep beneath a mountain in the San Francisco range. A failure in the so-called shadow box that the Igigi had transferred their bio-prints into left them trapped without bodies for thousands of years, their essences slowly leaking out to affect the consciousnesses of the local Pueblo tribes. Whatever individuality they had once had had become lost in a miasma of muddled thought. Ultimately, an earthquake had reengaged the technology less than a year ago, and the damaged tech had created one body for the whole society of Igigi, locking them in a memory trap while they sought new bodies so they might finally become individuals thousands of years after they had first hidden beneath the earth.

  However, when the Igigi souls tried to download into reluctant humans, an added complication arose—the human vessels simply could not take the power of their blazing souls, and the bodies would be burned through within the space of a few hours. It took Cerberus teammates Kane and Brigid Baptiste to finally quell the monster, overpowering the Igigi souls locked inside the trap of memory by turning on themselves, in the mental equivalent of shadow boxing. What neither Kane nor his companions had realized was that an aspect of the Igigi souls had already fled the monstrous shell before they had first tangled with it, and that aspect had gained purchase not in a human but in the body of a dog. The canine had been owned by one of the crofters who lived in the bleak Californian desert and the creature had been driven half mad by the transfer, while its master had been burned alive from the inside by a similar trade of Igigi souls. While the master had died, the dog had survived, its genetic makeup just close enough to that of the Igigi that it could accept the spiritual transfusion. The dog was both one and many, for like a shattered piece of a hologram, every Igigi download attempt had contained all of the personalities that had gone into hiding.

  Rosalia had been with the Cerberus rebels when they had first encountered the monster that housed the Igigi souls, and she had returned to the little settlement seeking shelter. While there, she had found the mongrel with its eerily pale eyes and insatiable appetite, or arguably the dog had “found” her. Rosalia had taken the hound under her wing, feeding it and trusting it to act as a guard dog as she traveled alone across the ruined territory known as Cobaltville, little suspecting that the creature housed the rebellious Igigi souls within it. There had been occasions when the beast had seemed somehow more than real, moments when it had appeared to be more than one dog, more than one creature, but neither Rosalia nor her companions had begun to suspect why.

  Now, faced with 213 Annunaki shells waiting to be filled, the Igigi within the dog had seen their chance to be free. Their spirits soared through the air, charging out of the dog’s body in a joyous burst, hurling themselves via the control console into the dormant shells of the Annunaki gods. And with the Igigi gone, whatever remained of the dog had been used up, a dying husk left in its place.

  Thus, 213 pairs of Igigi eyes stared at Enlil, the cause of all their pain and suffering for the past four thousand years. And in unison 213 pairs of Igigi eyes narrowed in fury.

  * * *

  GRANT WAS STANDING TO the side of the altercation, watching in slack-jawed astonishment, the Sin Eater forgotten in his hand.

  “Magistrate?” Rosalia called to him. She stood propping up Domi, three channels of glistening water between them. “Are you coming or not?”

  “We can’t leave it like this,” Grant shouted to her, his mind racing. Something dropped from the ceiling then, flaming like a firework as it hurtled into one of the canals before fizzing and dying.

  “They won’t hurt us,” Rosalia said, indicating the swarming Igigi who were beating Enlil to death. “They’re—” she shrugged, struggling to explain “—grateful.”

  Grant looked at the dark-haired woman across the sparkling streams, recalling how she had met the Cerberus team as their enemy. Kane had brought her aboard, and he had vouched for her, said that she could be trusted. Kane would trust her now, Grant knew; Kane would trust the woman’s judgment. And while Grant might never really trust her, he knew to trust Kane and all his nutty instincts.

  Sin Eater in hand, he hurried across the disintegrating room, skirting past the crowding mob as they overwhelmed Enlil, pulling the overlord apart piece by bloody piece. Tiamat was doomed—whatever Grant’s bullets had hit in that control console had unleashed energy forces that would tear the whole chamber apart. The living ship rocked and quaked as another blast of energy rang across its innards.

  In truth, Grant might never really understand. At most, he and his companions would piece together as much as they could afterward, making their best guess at what had really occurred when the corrupted download began.

  For now, however, it was time to leave.

  Chapter 26

  When Kane emerged from the quantum jump he was met by a wall of rock, close to his face, dark and impenetrable. It was so close he could feel his own breath striking against it, making its presence felt even in the darkness. The rock was shaking and so was he, shaking as if a great engine stood beneath his feet, a great turbine all around him. His heart was pounding in his chest, thumping harder and harder against his rib cage.

  And then the vision began, the vision within the vision. A face materialized in front of his eyes, a female Annunaki, her sleek scales beautiful, her eyes piercing and direct.

  “My son,” she said, an animation floating in darkness, “though we have rarely shown affection for one another, what happens to you today leaves a stain upon my heart. You were born in horror, for your fat
her only knows how to take. Because of that, I have found myself unable to look upon you the way I might a child born in other circumstances. But still, my love for you has always been pure, Ullikummis. Your father is considered one of the greatest planning minds to ever be gifted to an Annunaki, and your own life has been just one part of those convoluted, never-ending schemes. You must understand that, even as you entered this awful prison, Enlil saw to it that you were playing yet another role in his schemes, and that your ultimate failure was simply another tactical move on his immense game board.”

  Kane felt himself nod as he listened to the female’s words, the rock prison shuddering all around him.

  “I couldn’t stave off your execution nor ensure that you would live, my son,” the Annunaki continued, her voice ringing in Kane’s head, “for I knew that appealing to your father’s mercy was a pointless gesture. And so, I spoke with Ningishzidda as you asked me to, and he came to visit as you waited in the cell beneath the palace.

  “Ningishzidda has done something so that you cannot betray him, lest your father learn of your audacious plan. He has altered the direction of the gravity beam by one degree, so slight that Enlil will never know. Thus you shall be launched into space, as expected, but you shall return to this planet—Ki, in the tongue of your forefathers—after you have completed one orbit of the heavens.

  “With love.”

  Abruptly the female’s face disappeared, and Kane felt a strange sense of loss as if orphaned. It was Ullikummis who felt these things, he knew, Ullikummis whose memories he was privy to. And the figure in the vision, the face that spoke loving words was his mother—Ninlil, the one reborn as Little Quav.

  “Kane?” The voice was nearby and it had no place in the memory.

  Disturbed, the vision faded away like a dissipating fog, and in its place Kane found himself sprawled on the smooth-tiled floor of a vast room. A pattern was painted on the floor, concentric circles that lit in oranges and ambers, the colors fading even as Kane acknowledged them. Beyond that, he saw shelves of equipment, most of it unrecognizable in either form or purpose. A bank of vast cylinders like jumbo jet engines waited by one of the shelves, and as Kane became more aware he saw more objects that had been left in the aisles between the shelves, each one sparking his curiosity. Balam stood over him, peering at Kane with his expressive, wide eyes.

  “Kane? Are you all right?”

  Kane looked at him, feeling the strain within his head. “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Agartha. In the museum sector,” Balam replied.

  “This is a museum?” Kane asked incredulously.

  Balam waved his hands through the air as if playing cat’s cradle with an invisible thread. “The term is imprecise,” he explained. “Some concepts translate better than others.”

  “Yeah,” Kane muttered, pushing himself up from the floor, “and I’m just a dumb ol’ human.”

  Either Balam did not hear the comment or he chose to ignore it. “How are your eyes?” he asked.

  “I can see,” Kane assured him. “Getting used to it, I guess. How about you? The trip do anything nasty to your injuries?”

  Balam touched his chest. “Nothing of note to report,” he said, intentionally vague.

  “We should have gone to Cerberus,” Kane said as he and Balam walked through the storage room of alien artifacts. “New Cerberus,” he added. “Reba DeFore could have looked you over, made sure that wound was patched up properly.”

  “I shall be fine,” Balam said a little too curtly.

  Kane left it at that, surprised to find Balam give such a display of macho pride. Maybe there was more to it than that; Kane didn’t know.

  Together, they made their way toward a curve-sided cube that arced up to the high ceiling of the room. The walls of the cube were transparent, creating a shimmering effect in the air. Kane broke the silence as they trudged toward it.

  “I had another vision,” he explained. “One of Ullikummis’s memories.”

  “There can be no such thing as one memory,” Balam corrected. “Memory is memory. Singling one out is like trying to understand a river by watching a single ripple on its surface.”

  “He hates his father,” Kane said. “But there’s something about his relationship with his mother, something unresolved there. Stupid as it sounds, I think he wants her love. Like it’s something he needs to fix.”

  Balam halted at the edge of the cube, forcing Kane to come up short. “Seeking a mother’s love is not that unusual,” he mused.

  “I think he wants to turn Little Quav into Ninlil so that he can make things better,” Kane said. “The attack on Cerberus—none of that mattered. We’re tiny to him, insignificant. He got us out of the way, yes, but what he wanted to create was something so that she would be worshiped when the time came. A new religion for a new world order. At least, that’s what I’d guess.”

  Balam touched his chin, long fingers running along his pointed jawbone in thought. “Then he needs Tiamat, and we shall stop him before that can happen,” he said.

  “But Tiamat got destroyed,” Kane said.

  Balam turned back and gave Kane that maddening half smile of his, as if indulging a child. Then he scooped his hands together and pushed into the wall of the cube, stepping through it as if through a waterfall. Warily, Kane followed.

  Within, the cube smelled of plant life, of things living and organic, like mulch. It was twenty feet across, but it contained just one object—a chair. Kane had seen the chair before, or at least one very much like it. It was a navigator’s chair used on the Annunaki spacecraft known as Tiamat.

  “Like calls to like, Kane,” Balam said. “You need to call to your anam-chara.”

  To Brigid, Kane realized.

  “Okay,” Kane said, his eyes fixed on the navigator’s chair. “Show me.”

  Chapter 27

  Domi couldn’t stay conscious, so Grant had been forced to carry her listless frame as they made their way out of the disintegrating body of Tiamat. Rosalia kept pace with him, the charred katana cinched in her belt like a trophy. Whatever was going on behind them, nobody had cared to check. They could hear the inhuman screams and shrieks as the Igigi tore their master apart, the cries of agony as Enlil fought with the slave caste he had abandoned all those millennia ago. Hearing the terrible screams was enough—it had to be.

  The artery-like passageways had been ankle-deep in water, but nothing further emerged from its swirling depths to attack them. Whatever had powered the watery figures lay with Enlil, it seemed, and once his mind was locked on other matters he lost all ability to generate the naiads that had caused such calamity to anyone who approached the dragon-shaped city.

  As they reached the ship’s exterior wall, searching for the point where Grant’s explosives had damaged her, Kudo appeared, calling to them from along the curving corridor. He looked hurt and, when he came closer Grant saw the man had a nasty streak across the left-hand side of his face—his eye was a grim shade of red and it looked as if the flesh around it had been melted, running to a puckered wound above the warrior’s mouth. He was also soaked through, and his black hair clung to his head in tussled curls.

  “What happened to you?” Grant asked, hefting the deadweight of Domi over the threshold and through the hole in Tiamat’s hull.

  “I mistimed the charge,” Kudo said wryly, offering nothing further by way of explanation. “Did you find Kishiro?”

  Grant looked solemn. “He didn’t make it,” he said.

  Rosalia clambered through the hole last of all, checking back to the water-logged corridor that they had exited to ensure they were not being followed. For a moment, automatically, she looked down for the familiar form of her faithful dog, breathing sharply when she realized it wouldn’t be there.

  Outside, the sun ha
d risen, painting the streets in the colors of bone.

  “We should destroy it,” Kudo said, staring angrily at the spaceship that nestled amid its own spreading wings, each of them a series of ordered bones that gave the illusion of streets and buildings.

  “We don’t have anything that can do that,” Grant told him, “but we can come back. Bomb the wicked place out of existence once and for all.”

  Rosalia stepped from the craft then, brushing the dark hair from her eyes where it had come loose from its ponytail. As always, she looked beautiful and withdrawn, her thoughts ever her own.

  Grant looked around and a question occurred to him then. “What happened to your dog?” he asked.

  Rosalia glared at Grant, but her fierce mask dropped and a smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “He saved your life,” she said.

  If a further explanation was coming, Grant would wait for it. Now was not the time to probe.

  Without water tanks, the ship Tiamat could no longer snatch people via its bizarre mat-trans. As the Cerberus warriors walked away through the streets of bone, the dragon form behind them was just a husk waiting to be brought back to life, as much of a threat now as an abandoned cannon left rusting in the rain. Let the aliens do what they wanted to one another. For now, humanity was safe.

  And so they began the long trek out of the empty city, making their way back to humanity.

  * * *

  IN THE TEMPORARY CERBERUS base on the Pacific shore, Mariah Falk sat watching Reba DeFore as she impatiently paced the study. Lakesh sat in a chair across from her, while Dr. Kazuko had taken up a position by the door. All of them looked concerned, their faces fixed in thought. The results of the CAT scan and the exploratory surgery were laid out across three desks in the small room, and a computer unit hummed to itself in one corner as its hard drive whirred, processing further analysis.