by James Axler
Finally, sleep drew him down, down, sent him tumbling into unconsciousness, until he felt fingers pluck up his wrist. Kane’s eyes snapped open, and he found a tall man before him, dressed in the off-duty attire of a magistrate, complete with armored trench coat with the oversize sleeve to allow for the presence of the forearm holstered Sin Eater.
There was no fear, but Kane knew this man. It was Magistrate Thurmond, formerly of Cobaltville, the same megalithic city that Kane had served in when he was a pawn of the hybrid barons, a prior, near-human incarnation of the Annunaki. Back then, Baron Cobalt, the antecedent of Overlord Marduk, had sent Thurmond on an expedition to Europe to recover technology he had scarcely remembered. Kane had known Thurmond only briefly, encountering him years later when he, Brigid, Grant and Domi had gone in search of clues about a possible civil war between the scattered overlords.
In Greece, Kane had found Thurmond, as well as Dr. Helena Garthwaite and Magistrate Danton. The three of them had discovered robotic technology-gear skeletons that replaced the limbs of amputees and granted them the physical strength and power of a walking tank. Thurmond and Helena had set themselves up as leaders of the society called New Olympus, while Danton made use of another ancient Annunaki technology, clone vats, to create the threat necessary to turn New Olympus into an efficient government.
Even though Thurmond had been initially in on the con, having gone by the pilot code name Z005, he grew to love the people of New Olympus, making the other pilots of the gear skeletons his family. When Helena Garthwaite, rechristened Hera, went mad with power thanks to the interference of Marduk himself, Thurmond not only fought tooth and nail to drive back the forces of the Annunaki overlord, but died stopping Hera’s murderous rampage, sacrificing himself for the sake of his fellow New Olympians.
Seeing Thurmond tall and healthy, with his own legs intact, not lost to the necessary amputation required in becoming a gear skeleton pilot, Kane wasn’t confused or frightened; he was filled with awe.
“You died,” he said, offering a hand. Thurmond drew him to his feet, then passed his fellow ex-magistrate a boxy object. It was a folded Sin Eater machine pistol, in its holster.
“It’s time to get up,” Thurmond responded. “The hounds of hell are on the prowl, and you’ll need your weapon.”
Kane strapped on the Sin Eater. He accepted a pair of 20-round magazines for the weapon, pushing them into the pockets of his jeans. He repeated Thurmond’s warning. “Hounds of hell.”
“They are hunters in the darkness. The living exemplars of the foul creatures Danton, Helena and I tried to summon in our deception against New Olympus,” Thurmond said. His voice sounded pained as he recalled those events. “They are blood hungry, and they travel by night, seeking death and destruction everywhere they go. They are aware of you, Kane.”
“Why?” he asked. He flexed his forearm and the Sin Eater jumped into his grasp.
Thurmond pointed toward the tree that Kane had been sleeping against. Kane blinked for a moment, then saw a black staff, seven feet from the top of its twin carved serpents to the point at its other end. He felt a tingling in his arm, and his palm recalled the odd, almost living warmth of its jet-black wood when he’d gripped it, the weight of it that he’d used on multiple occasions to fight off the forces of darkness, to parry the hungry spear points of killers and to inflict wounds upon those things that not even the sharpest Spanish steel could dent. Those twin serpents seemed entwined in a familiar pattern that Kane had seen on med-packs, but they were metallic, and brought to mind a chilling similarity: the ASP conduits that the Nephilim wore on their forearms, the cobralike heads spitting energized fire with deadly heat and efficiency.
Despite that resemblance to an alien weapon, this staff was far more familiar. It was almost like a lost piece of his right arm, something he’d spent years leaning his weight upon as he crossed wildernesses. He was about to reach for it when Thurmond gripped him by the shoulder.
“Not now,” the ex-magistrate told him, his deep voice almost desperate. “Strong wings push through the night sky, and bloodstained claws press into the mud, driving their owners our way. They want to stop the staff, and they wish to take your head.”
Kane nodded, and in addition to the Sin Eater in his grasp, he drew the foot-long fighting knife from its sheath to supplement his fighting power. He glanced back to the tree, but the snake-entwined stick was gone, another phantom in the night.
He had no time to think about the staff’s disappearance, because a loud wail suddenly arose, the fury of a hundred agonized throats opening up at once. Kane tensed, but didn’t need to look around to realize that the little clearing where he’d set up was relatively well defended from the approaching threat. He’d hacked his way into the briar bushes and created the fire pit, with a circle of thorny branches left in place. Those would likely be broken by the very first attackers, but unless an entire army was bearing down on them, those thickets of thorny, stabbing branches would limit avenues of assault, making defense easier.
In a moment, the first figure burst into view, snagging on branches that stuck to his skin. Its features were odd, alien, terrifying, but Kane brought up the Sin Eater and dispatched it with a single shot, its face disappearing in a cloud of blood and gore, even as Thurmond lashed out with his combat knife, its wicked long blade slashing through a heavily muscled chest. A kicking foot skidded into the fire, eliciting a growl of pain from an odd, alien throat, and Kane whirled.
This had to be a dream. Thurmond had died. And these things were vague shapes, wrapped in cloaks, their faces odd and translucent, features indistinct behind gelatinous skin and muscle. Kane grimaced and lunged, plunging his knife into the belly of another attacker, but he felt the weight, the presence of the opponent he speared even as he hefted it back into a tangle of thorns.
He whirled at the arrival of other cloaked figures, firing the Sin Eater on single-shot, ripping off three rounds into three different targets. Two collapsed instantly, cored by the heavyweight 9 mm slugs fired by the high-tech machine pistol. The third staggered, wounded by an off-center shot, but Kane stepped in close, bringing the foot-long battle knife across its throat and slashing through skin and flesh. The thing’s head was torn loose, bouncing onto the ground, a skull floating in semiviscous ooze, a face whose teeth were malformed, each one a filed dagger designed to puncture meat. With mouths like that, their attackers must be dedicated carnivores, well armed to slash and tear, leaving brutal wounds in their wake.
Kane grimaced at the sight and pivoted. He brought the steel frame of the folding Sin Eater against another face, watching the skull crack beneath its semitransparent covering, dagger teeth snapping under the force of Kane’s brutal blow. He followed the pistol-whip with the lunging sweep of his knife, plunging it deep into the guts of his attacker, ripping the steel from its abdomen in such a violent fashion that loops of intestine poured out, semiclear organs slipping from their moorings and splashing on the dirt of the battleground.
Kane felt forceful fingers grab his shoulders, two sets of hands pulling him off his feet, and he kicked at empty air, trying to get traction and leverage against the two attackers.
Thurmond whirled and opened fire, a single 9 mm slug smashing the assailant to his left, and swift as a cobra, Kane drew his knees in tight to his chest and levered himself into the other one. His weight came down hard on this enemy, and fetid breath exploded past Kane’s ear. With a surge, he rolled off the downed foe. He could see two new sets of legs approaching as he rose to his knees.
With well-honed hip-firing reflexes, he triggered the Sin Eater, his slugs stopping the two enemies’ advance, one catching a round in the chest, the other folding over a bullet to the belly. Kane surged to his feet, then paused to look at the fallen, wormlike wrestler. He lashed out, his heel taking the creature by the jaw, and all of Kane’s weight, strength and fury splitting the mandible and popping i
t from its moorings. Ugly pinkish discharge gushed over the thing’s lips and across Kane’s naked foot, but the translucent attacker didn’t move.
The creature blasted in the belly stood up, holding its ruined guts, its pale, albino-pink eyes glaring hatefully at him. Dimly reminded of Domi, Kane pressed forward, wishing that the feral Outlander girl was fighting by his side. He stabbed his combat knife through the man-thing’s face, splitting and smashing the bone between its eye sockets. The blade stuck for an instant, but Kane gave the handle a sharp twist, then whirled, using the dead creature’s own momentum and weight to wrench it off the knife.
In the dim firelight, Kane could see his bare arms, knotted like oak, flexing with each gunshot, each slash of the knife. When the translucent horrors rose to attack, even with vicious, debilitating wounds, the former magistrate struck back. Bones broke, semiclear flesh tore, pink gelatinous ooze spilled from ravaging cuts. Steel and lead, fire and blade ruled this bloody, horrible fight, and in a manner reminiscent of a dream, the battle passed rapidly.
Whether they were dead or fleeing from the trampled clearing, Kane was soon abandoned by his attackers. He turned and looked for Thurmond, but already, as if this were the sequel to another half-remembered dream, he knew that no man would be standing there to take an offered hand of thanks.
Kane, the Cerberus rebel, the former magistrate, was alone among the bodies of dead, wormy men.
He then heard a familiar voice snap into his thoughts.
“What the hell are you doing here with that knife, Kane?” Donald Bry asked.
Kane blinked, his eyes focused on a strange African copse of trees and thorn bushes just before they closed. And when he opened them he stood in the mat-trans chamber of Cerberus redoubt. For a moment, he feared that he had been sleepwalking, acting out his strange nightmare with naked steel flashing in his fist. But he was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, barefoot, his only adornment a belt-sheathed combat knife in a cross draw on his hip.
He looked down at himself. In the dream, he’d become caked in bloodlike discharge and greasy with sweat and dirt, but here, he was clean and fresh, stirred awake from a nightmare.
“Would you believe that it was a bad dream?” Kane asked Bry.
The red-haired master of technology for Cerberus redoubt looked him over. Bry himself was small, slender, with a sardonic smirk and hints of freckles on his face. By weight, he was half of Kane, and a half a foot shorter than the former magistrate, who carried much of his muscle mass in his upper chest and shoulders. Where Bry was wiry, with an almost impish demeanor, Kane resembled a wolf recast as a man, right down to his grizzled brown mane and predatory, focused blue eyes.
Bry shrugged. “Considering some of the shit you’ve been through, I’m just glad you kept your sword in its sheath.”
Kane frowned. “I must have been sleepwalking.”
Bry studied Kane’s face for a sign of joking, perhaps a prank gone wrong, or ill thought out. But he could see the confusion in the man’s features. “Damn. You’re serious.”
“What the hell is wrong with me?” Kane muttered. Bry pointed to a nearby chair at one of the control consoles, and he took it, flopping down and resting both hands between his thighs. “I had a vivid dream. Like something out of one of the older mat-trans deliriums.”
With that, Kane explained what he thought had happened in the dream, especially his eventual deduction that he was wandering around in Africa.
“There haven’t been many of those since we’ve gotten the control algorithms straightened out,” Bry mused. “So it can’t be leftover trauma.”
“No,” Kane agreed. He allowed himself to go deep into thought. This time, knowing he was awake, he felt sure he would have more control of his brain. There were familiar images, things he knew from his dream of Africa, that meant there was some element of truth within the entire adventure. Also, he could feel pain, the touch of the clear breeze, the heat of the fire, the sharp thorns and the impact of blows against his flesh. This was more than just a dream; it had been a real occurrence, but maybe not one his current body, his current life had experienced.
He remembered only glimpses, hints of other lifetimes that had been opened to him through the psychic meddling of beings like Fand and Balam, or via the dimension-punching properties of the mat trans, which gave him brief views of other universes and histories far-flung, different from the reality he existed in. These were “casements,” alternate dimensions, with warps in history, and events that cast him in other roles, both as hero and villain, savior and marauder, colliding worlds that could be better or far worse than the one he’d been born into.
The mat trans had proved to be both a blessing and a curse. Without the wondrous transporter, he and the others wouldn’t have had the ability to traverse the globe, even get to other worlds within the solar system, seeking the materials necessary to fight the overlords and improve the lot of the human race. But the mat trans had also burdened Kane with visions of other lives, other deaths he’d experienced, other loves lost as he was cast about as a pawn of the universe.
He checked the chronometer on the wall. It was midmorning, and Kane wondered at the lateness of his slumber. But then he thought of the dream itself, its reality, its hold, the sharpness of thorns stabbing into his palms.
There was one person up now, available, who might be able to make sense out of things.
“I’m going to talk to Baptiste,” he told Bry. “Unless there’s something up here.”
Bry looked at the screen. “Nope, everything’s still quiet enough that I could entertain you and your sleepwalking ways.”
He snorted. “Thanks.”
As soon as Kane walked out of the control center, Bry caught a beep on his console. He turned back, and pulled up what had caused the alert on the system.
“New station on line,” he muttered. “Location, Victoria Falls.”
Bry wasn’t a geography buff, but he knew damn well that Victoria Falls was in Africa.
Exactly where Kane claimed his dream had occurred.
Bry leaned back. “What the hell?”
He glanced to the door.
Bry decided to take a closer look at the new linkup. He wasn’t going to run after Kane in the hall, not until he’d found out everything he could about the new location on the mat-trans circuit.
* * *
BRIGID BAPTISTE SAT on her bench at her desk. She wasn’t wearing her duty uniform, but was in black stirrup pants with no socks or shoes, plus a long-sleeved turtleneck sweater light enough that she wouldn’t be too warm in the controlled environment, but heavy enough for a brief step outside in the brisk fall day. She wore her reading glasses, and as Kane interrupted her, she was poring over a new hardback book that Domi had discovered in her far ranging wanderings in the woods. Brigid’s flame-gold hair was pulled back with a scrunchie, making her look even more like the librarian he’d originally pegged her as.
Right now, with her in her day-off wear, toes wriggling at the end of the bench, and one knee drawn up to her chest, the other folded at a right angle, her foot beneath her butt, Kane couldn’t see the person she’d hardened into over years of struggle against tyranny and threats both domestic and from other dimensions.
But beneath the snug-fitting pants and sweater, Kane knew, her body was toned with muscle. And just above her hairline there was a scar from when she’d been struck by a wrench, a trauma that had put her into a sickbed for several days, leaving her more vulnerable to the eyestrain that necessitated those reading glasses. She’d started out as an archivist, a brilliant young woman who collected and collated the facts of the world from before the terrible destruction of civilization, a nuclear war instigated by the subterfuge of the alien cabal of schemers now known as the overlords. The nuclear megacull had been intended to bring humanity down to more manageable, controllable numbers, but
there was one great weakness in the Annunaki’s thinking.
Humankind was too strong-willed, too free and too hungry for knowledge to remain under a dictatorial thumb for long. Even Kane himself, a member of Baron Cobalt’s own elite magistrates, indoctrinated and separated from mere humanity as much as possible, had found the cause of freedom irresistible. And he wasn’t the only one. Others had rebelled, and many had joined the ranks of those willing to fight for freedom against the overlords, despite measures designed to rob them of their individuality, removing all but their family name, and hiding them behind shells of polycarbonate, to be recast into identical, ominous storm troopers.
Now, Brigid had gone from scholar to defender of the world, saver of lives. She wasn’t a master of combat, like Kane and Grant, nor was she a feral package of wild strength and rage like Domi, but her intellect, courage and experience made her worth a whole platoon of local militia.
Though she seemed almost bored at the moment, curling and flexing her toes as she sat on the bench, only a fool would have mistaken her for being off in a wistful flight of fancy, ignoring the world about her. She was deep in thought, her eidetic memory peering through the collected wisdom of mankind, looking for similarities in Kane’s recollection of the waking dream. Her emerald-green eyes flashed with fire over each correlation she constructed in her mind, and slowly her lips began to curve into a smile as her conclusions were solidified.
Kane simply folded his arms, waiting for her to speak. She’d been like this for only a minute, but even when he’d told her about his “incident” she was already at work. If there was one thing that had impressed him about her, it was her ability to take data and extrapolate on it, all the while avoiding flights of fancy that would steer her toward a wrong conclusion. It didn’t hurt that she had that eidetic memory, a steel-trap brain that could instantly summon up every bit of data she’d ever learned, every image she’d seen, every sound, every smell. It was a frightening, almost mutant ability, but Kane was endlessly thankful for it when she could use her intellect to defang a threat just by thinking.