by James Axler
The other servant fared little better as Kane dropped low and pitched a sweeping kick in his direction, yanking his surprised foe off his feet as he reached for King Jack from behind.
“What’s going on?” the king sputtered, struggling back to his feet. “The Gene-agers...?”
Kane pushed him back against the wall, reaching for his own polymer lenses and slipping them over the bridge of his nose. “Stay here,” he said. In an instant, the once-dark room took on an eerie green glow, and moving figures came to life amid the long shadows. He could see, too, the bathers where they waited in the water or had pulled themselves up to the side. They looked confused but not yet frightened. They had no idea that their ruler had just been attacked.
“What do we have?” Kane asked Grant.
“Company,” Grant said, eyeing the figures shambling through the darkness. “A lot of it. I count fifteen hostiles, heading this way and moving fast.”
“They’re converging,” Kane confirmed as he saw the scene fully for the first time through the night lenses. As he spoke, he flinched the tendons of his right wrist, sending his hidden Sin Eater out of its holster and into the palm of his hand.
“Gentlemen?” King Jack pleaded. He stood by the wall, rubbing at his throat where the rogue Gene-ager had tried to choke him. “I can’t see a darned thing!”
“We can. Your faithful servants just turned on you,” Kane outlined briefly.
“What?” King Jack spit. “But that’s impossible. The Gene-agers...”
“Not now, Your Highness,” Kane instructed in a hiss.
Choosing his first target, Grant powered his own blaster into his hand, though he held off shooting as he watched the Gene-agers amass on the same level of the pool, approaching determinedly from all directions.
“Keep back,” Grant commanded in an authoritative tone.
The figures kept coming. In a second, one materialized off to Jack’s left. The figure was running at full tilt, brandishing a hunk of metal pipe as a kind of club. Probably an engineer or handyman, Kane guessed, skewering him in his sights.
The dull-eyed man swung his makeshift weapon at King Jack, who had the sense to duck as he saw the movement in the flickering light of his staff. The pipe slammed against the wall with a clang, but the Gene-ager was drawing it back immediately to attack again.
Kane snapped at his trigger, sending a short burst of 9 mm bullets at the servant’s torso. The figure with the pipe staggered in place with the violent impacts before dancing into the wall a few inches from King Jack’s head, much to the monarch’s surprise.
“What’s going on?” Jack asked, bewildered. “I ain’t never seen the test tubers go nuts like this.”
“My guess is something’s controlling them,” Kane told the old man. “Based on the way they all turned on you together like this. They received some kind of command.”
“That’s impossible,” Jack insisted. “Only the God Rod has the wherewithal to—”
“You have another of those things anywhere?” Kane demanded, cutting the man off. “A spare? In the palace maybe?”
“No,” King Jack insisted. “One king—one rod. Why would I need another?”
“Then I don’t think the other one was made with you in mind, Your Highness,” Kane told him grimly.
Grant surveyed the open area of the pool, watching as more Gene-agers appeared from various doors and walkways, moving swiftly toward the Cerberus warriors.
“Kane...?” Grant said warningly.
“I see ’em,” Kane said before turning back to the golden-armored figure of the king. “Your Highness, do you have a bodyguard?” Kane asked. “Maybe someone who might have been following us at a discreet distance to make sure you were safe?”
Jack shook his head heavily. “No, nothing like that. There’s never been the need.”
“That’s a shame,” Kane told him. “Because we could use someone like that right now who knows the lay of the land.”
“We need to get out of here,” Grant added. “It’s too open. We can’t protect you.”
“Protect me?” King Jack sputtered.
“You’re going to have to trust us, Your Highness,” Kane said. “I think you’re in real danger here.”
As Kane spoke, another of the Gene-agers bolted for the king. Grant squeezed the trigger of the Sin Eater and sent a single round into the figure’s leg, the sound of the recoil loud in the open space. The Gene-ager doubled over and sank to the floor, hands pressed to his ruined thigh.
Grant turned to Kane as the figure fell in the darkness. “So what now?”
Gun raised, Kane used his free hand to gently shove the king in the direction of the entry doors. “Apologies for the rough treatment, Your Highness,” he said, “but we’re a little rushed.”
King Jack nodded. “Understood,” he said, picking up his pace as they made their way to the doors of the colossal bathing room, hordes of deranged Gene-agers chasing silently after them.
Chapter 21
Domi and Brigid found themselves in a corridor of colossal proportions that, like the fountain area, had been plunged into darkness. The palace felt still and frightening in the darkness, unidentifiable sounds echoing from the distance, the low susurration of scared voices buzzing like nightmare insects.
Further along the enormous corridor, Brigid could just barely make out bewildered figures moving about or sitting on decorative benches and seats that had been placed at intervals along the walls.
“It looks as though it’s affected the whole palace,” Brigid said, peering down the corridor.
“Not just the palace,” Domi stated as she padded over to a nearby window. “Look.”
The window dwarfed Brigid and Domi, standing fully four times their height and constructed of huge panels of glass, each one big enough to pass a full-grown ox through. Brigid joined her companion at the window, peering through one of those enormous glass panels.
This section of the palace was quite high up, and it granted a clear vista of one section of Authentiville. It was hard to make out at first, with the ever-swirling lights of the “sky,” but after a few seconds Brigid saw that no lights were showing in the golden spires of the city itself. “What’s happened?” she asked, barely breathing the words.
Domi turned away from the window, her head whipping around as she sensed something behind them. “Brigid...”
Brigid turned at the warning, watching as the dark silhouette of the albino girl marched off into the shadows. A moment later, Domi was lost to sight—or she would have been had Brigid not plucked a pair of night lenses from her jacket pocket and secured them on the bridge of her nose. The lenses were of the same type used by Kane and Grant.
Through the night-vision lenses, Brigid saw Domi hurrying away down the darkened corridor, sticking close to the walls. Up ahead, four hulking figures were stalking toward them both. They looked humanoid, but their proportions were larger, like those of a gorilla. Each figure had the hairless head and blank features of a Gene-ager, but these were larger than the ones Brigid had seen in the dining room, as if primitively stretched. One of the hulking figures was carrying a woman over its shoulder; patently unconscious, the woman did not struggle.
Behind the hulking Gene-agers, more figures became visible within the darkness, but these were better dressed, clearly members of King Jack’s royal court. They had their heads bowed and shuffled along, one after the other. Brigid recognized Betassa, the blond-haired woman who had been operating the Happening machine when the queen took her place among them. Betassa’s white minidress looked rumpled, and her hair hung limply about her face as she bowed her head in supplication.
What’s going on? Brigid wondered. Why aren’t they fighting back?
But the answer struck her, even as she said it. No one did anything because they h
ad rarely known violence in this city, and not for perhaps a thousand years. What guards existed here were for show, part of the pomp and ceremony that ancient kings were expected to have. If there was a response to violence of this sort, the court had forgotten it.
Behind the masking shades of her night lenses Brigid was rolling her eyes. “A society with the survival instinct drummed out of it,” she muttered. “Will wonders never cease?”
Brigid counted twenty courtiers in total and, straining to see, she noticed there was something glowing faintly around their necks.
“Join the line,” the Gene-agers instructed in one voice. “Follow the group.”
Domi, meanwhile, had slipped into the shadows between two chairs that had been backed against a wall, hunkering into herself as if to become a smaller target. Her keen eyes made out the figures, too, and she could smell the fear in the air.
It took Domi just a moment to guess what had happened. The palace had been somehow overrun by these Neanderthal brutes and they were placing everyone in custody for whatever cause they served. She watched as a figure farther down the corridor was added to the line of prisoners, a halolike band of energy placed around his neck by one of the bald-headed humanoids before being pushed to join the rear of the trudging line. The ring around his neck throbbed with light for a moment and Domi saw what seemed to be a spear of needle-thin energy spike into the back of the next prisoner in line, linking the two collars as effectively as a chain.
Brigid joined Domi, her movements silent in the darkness.
“I don’t know what we’ve stumbled upon,” Domi whispered, “but it doesn’t look good.”
“Agreed,” Brigid said.
“But why aren’t they fighting back?” Domi asked.
“The people here don’t know how to fight,” Brigid whispered. “It’s unknown to them.”
The Cerberus warriors watched the towering Gene-agers grab another courtier—this one a woman in emerald-green finery—and add her to the strange line of cowed prisoners.
Domi brushed her arm against Brigid to get her attention. “We have to do something,” she said in a low voice.
Brigid wasn’t so sure. “Domi, this isn’t our world. It’s not our fight. We don’t know what the sides are, or the stakes.”
Domi was busily removing her boots as Brigid spoke. “But we know wrong when we see it, Brigid,” she insisted.
The albino woman had never been comfortable in any clothing that restrained her, and seeing her remove her boots like this felt to Brigid as if it was an obscure victory of “her” Domi over the one who desired to remain here.
Brigid reached down to the holster at her hip and pulled her blaster free. The TP-9 slipped from its holster with a faint swish of leather and then it was in Brigid’s hand once more, a familiar weight in her grasp. Her left hand moved to check the safety without looking, while her eyes remained fixed on the strange line of prisoners and their guards who were marching down the corridor.
“You brought a blaster,” Domi whispered. “Good move.”
“Let’s hope I live to appreciate it,” Brigid said before standing up and striding to the center of the corridor, placing herself midway between the walls. She raised the blaster in a two-handed grip, pointing the muzzle at the line of prisoners and their captors. “Nobody move!”
* * *
IN THE DARKNESS of the bathing house, Kane, Grant and King Jack slipped from the magnificent pool room and out into the lobby. King Jack was bravely leading the way, the glow of his God Rod the only light by which he could see. Kane kept pace, while Grant brought up the rear, peering over his shoulder every few steps to warily eye the rogue Gene-agers tracking them.
“They’re right behind us,” Grant reminded the others.
As they entered the anteroom, where a sliver of rainbow sky winked through the parted doors at the far end, Kane reached forward and tugged at King Jack’s cloak, pulling the man to a stop.
“What is it, Kane?” the golden monarch asked.
For a moment, Kane said nothing. Through the electrochemical polymer lenses, the lobby was as Kane remembered it, with towering columns and the single, barlike desk along one wall. But through the night-vision lenses, Kane could see two dozen Gene-agers striding back and forth, guarding the far door, inside and out. Until he had evidence to the contrary, Kane had to assume the entire slave caste had turned against the monarch—and that the God Rod was now powerless against them.
Sensing the presence of their ruler, the two artificial women at the desk spoke in near unison. “Did you enjoy your dip, Your Highness?”
Alerted by the sound, the Gene-agers peered up the length of the anteroom and began to stride menacingly along it, walking in step.
“You know any other way out?” Kane asked Jack, his voice an urgent whisper.
“What? Why?” Jack sputtered.
“Trouble, and a lot of it,” Kane explained shortly. “Now—other exits? Yes or no?”
The old king thought for a moment, while behind them at the door into the bathing area, Grant pumped off a triple burst of fire.
“You want to hurry things up?” Grant hissed. “We have a lot of unpleasant company back here and they’re gaining fast.”
They were closing in the anteroom, too, Kane saw. He stroked the trigger of his Sin Eater, sending twin bullets at the nearest two figures as they strode closer and watched in grim satisfaction as the Gene-agers fell. But there were others to replace them—even as he watched, more of the dead-eyed servants came striding through the far doors of the anteroom from the streets beyond, blocking out that sliver of rainbow sky and the golden glow of the streets.
One of the genetically manipulated servants had reached King Jack by then, arms outstretched to grab him. The king stepped back, swinging the God Rod like a baseball bat. The blow struck his would-be attacker across the jaw, and the Gene-ager staggered back, rolling over the surface of the desk.
“The God Rod may not control them any longer,” Jack said breathlessly, “but it’s still good at keeping them in line.”
“We have a lot of them to keep in line, Your Highness,” Kane replied.
King Jack waved his glowing energy rod in the direction of the reception desk where his attacker had toppled. “This way,” he instructed.
Kane snapped off a shot, downing another of the threatening figures in the darkness. Then he and Grant were following the monarch as he strode behind the desk. The twin silver figures at the desk turned to face their king, asking again about his dip, but the king ignored them, playing the God Rod over a panel directly behind them.
Through the polymer lenses, Kane watched as the panel slid back, revealing an access into the heart of the building. More Gene-agers were closing in on all sides—Kane estimated at least thirty swarming on this spot and another dozen approaching from the pool area. He placed himself back to back with Grant.
“Let’s clear the field,” Kane instructed.
Together, the Cerberus warriors blasted a stream of bullets at King Jack’s approaching foes, turning together in a practiced clockwise rotation so as to send bullets in every direction. The brutal sound of 9 mm slugs ripping through vat-grown flesh and masonry thundered in the air, and the Cerberus men observed emotionlessly as swarming figures dropped all around them. It was not pleasant work but it was necessary—whoever had possessed the previously docile slave caste had murder in mind, and right now Kane and Grant were caught like rabbits in the headlights.
Close by, King Jack slipped into the access way and watched in horror as his makeshift protectors cleared the first wave of would-be assassins.
Kane raised his voice over the staccato sound of gunfire. “Let’s get moving,” he told Grant.
“On three,” Grant agreed, using their age-old system.
A moment later, the two men were
weaving through a flurry of attackers, their Sin Eaters still spitting bullets as figures leaped at them from all directions.
Jumping onto the reception desk, Grant kicked out and behind him, knocking back two Gene-ager servants as he dived for cover. Beside him, Kane bounded past the desk, slapping it with his palm as he swung the Sin Eater around to send another hail of bullets at their attackers.
With the shriek of bullets still echoing in the air, Kane and Grant disappeared through the access hatch and into the guts of the building. Jack passed his glowing God Rod over the access panel once more, and the metal plate slid back into place, hiding them from view. As the three of them disappeared, the high voices of the twin receptionists could be heard. “We hope to see you again soon, Your Highness.”
* * *
THE THUGGISH GENE-AGERS stood perplexed as they stared down the barrel of Brigid’s gun in the shadows. Light filtered through the windows from the rainbow swirl outside, but this whole section of the vast, highway-wide corridor was obscured by shadow. Behind them, the prisoners looked similarly bemused by Brigid’s command that they not move. Here was a hidden nation that had not seen a handgun, she realized, that had no frame of reference for the thing she was holding as a threat.
For a few seconds the confused Gene-agers looked from Brigid to one another, trying to work out what authority she had and how she thought the strange black item she held would help her. Then, as if they had independently settled on the same conclusion at the same time, the four brutish figures turned back to Brigid and shouted a single command.
“Join the line,” they commanded. “Follow the group.” Each colleague shouted the very same command a split second out of sync, creating a singing-in-the-round effect.
Being genetic constructs, it was plausible that they really had come to the same conclusion at approximately the same moment. That was the only way that Brigid could think to explain it.
Great, she chastised herself. You really thought this through!
Then the four brutish figures began to march down the corridor toward Brigid, their large strides eating up the forty feet of distance between them.