by James Axler
Kane accelerated, Durga rushing to keep up as the weird universe swirled about them. The two men, divided by wrongs real and imagined, traveled along the spiral trails that they hoped would bring them back to reality.
Chapter 16
Grant grimaced as he looked over the layout of the redoubt. The kongamato were strong, but he couldn’t see them succeeding in a direct assault against the vaultlike doors, designed to turn the underground installation into an impregnable fortress. He and Edwards had examined the outside doors, and saw that the creatures had somehow managed to put dents in the half-inch-thick outer later of steel, but that must have been after hours of effort.
Quite simply, it would take something far more powerful to cut through those barriers. Unfortunately, there was the reality that the vat-bred creatures were not on their own. They had a controlling force, one that might be directed by someone within their own ranks. Grant almost wanted to blame Kane not just for abandoning him, but for leaving him with a plethora of potential traitors.
He didn’t mind teaming up with the Zambians or Nathan Longa. Those men had been under attack, and were not likely to turn on them. Grant’s observation of the haggard, battered state of the reinforcements also gave that group a proper “vetting” in his eyes, especially with the assistance of Sinclair and Edwards, who were also both good judges of character and had done triage on some of the injured.
The millennialists were a group that Grant could have easily seen stumble toward extinction by their own hand, if not for the fact that they were extra bodies that would help against the final numbers. According to their local commander, Makoba, Durga’s resurrection of the kongamato had taken place in a facility that was miles away, downstream, in the thickest jungles and beyond turbulent rapids. The Annunaki facility he’d opened was remote and well-hidden, but also had the ability to put out hundreds of the creatures in the space of a few days. Makoba hadn’t had an exact count of what had been produced, but Durga was not going to allow himself to be overwhelmed by any force.
“Two hundred a day,” Grant mused.
“And what if they’re making more today?” Edwards asked.
Grant nodded. “Fighting one or two was tough, and that was with guns. I can see how these things attacked armed troops and inflicted heavy losses.”
“We’ve got firepower, but the thing is, they’re not just savage in their attacks. They’re mobile. They’re quick on all fours, moving like a gorilla as they run, and they can leap or glide, allowing them more angles of attack,” Sinclair added. “If there were a means of limiting their mobility... Well, there is.”
“Fighting them inside,” Grant concluded. He folded his brawny arms, looking at the layout. “They’re not going to come down on us from above, anyway.”
“You think that the other facility has a tunnel leading here?” Sinclair asked.
“Makes sense,” Edwards said. “They were built by the same company, and this is all one extended facility, designed to provide electricity to the whole region.”
“There’s no sign of a conduit from this redoubt to another across the river, though,” Sinclair observed, her brow wrinkling with concern. “At least, nothing on paper.”
“It also took them over a century to open the mat-trans chamber,” Grant said. “These are post skydark plans, assembled by the Zambians. There are notes about locked doors in lower levels, doors that are sealed thanks to an outside power source.”
“Like the nuclear generators that run the redoubts,” Domi murmured. “Maybe I should look.”
“Don’t go alone,” Grant ordered. He glanced to the brawny Edwards. “Cover her.”
“And who knows, I might even spot something, as well,” Edwards grumbled.
He nodded. CAT Beta might not have been the “magical” threesome that Lakesh viewed Grant, Kane and Brigid as, but the three of them did their best to make certain that Cerberus’s other Away Team wasn’t a group of second-rate warriors.
Edwards was large and brawny, a paler version of Grant, but just because he was a “big lug” did not mean he was mentally deficient. As a magistrate, he’d received the same training as Kane and Grant, and as such, was swifter than his bulk appeared. Plus he was skilled in unarmed combat, was wicked with a blade, and a far-above-average shot, as well as having the skills to operate all manner of communication devices and transport and combat vehicles. While his senses weren’t anything beyond normal human, as Domi’s feral instincts or Kane’s point man instincts were, Edwards had spent enough time as a magistrate to have developed canny observational skills and a well-tuned bullshit filter.
Sinclair was a “freezie”—a survivor from centuries past who had been placed in suspended animation. She was an air force veteran, another member of the Cerberus group who had some facility with aircraft, although her specialty had been with security and espionage. Sinclair’s instincts and observational abilities were on par with Edwards’s, and she was in fine athletic condition. Technically and physically, she was bright and adaptable, and had brought late-twentieth-century law enforcement methods that, on more than one occasion, had proved the difference between needless bloodshed and the takedown of a person who was a danger both to himself and to the Cerberus explorers.
And then there was Domi. She had been with Kane, Grant and Brigid since the very beginning, changing from a feral child of the wilderness, hardened in the urban apocalypse of the Tartarus slums, into something more. She’d grown in education, in experience and in mental and emotional maturity. What had once been an illiterate, throat-slitting denizen of the slums had stood up in the face of gods and monsters, and had done so with compassion and the ability to connect with other humans, though never surrendering the savage talents that allowed her to fight so effectively that even Edwards, at three times her size, couldn’t defeat her.
All things told, though, Grant wished he had Kane himself back, instead of a mindless husk.
All this also informed Grant that he was seriously alone. Brigid was left pondering the mystery of Kane’s mental crippling, where he could have been attacked, whether he was alive and imprisoned in his own flesh, or if he were separated from his body.
If anyone could figure out the metaphysics of Kane’s condition, it would be Brigid Baptiste. After all, she and Kane had sought out Grant’s original self, trapped in a zone between dimensions. But that was with access to the time trawl, and with the assistance of some incredible mathematicians and quantum physicists, including Mohandas Lakesh Singh. The mat trans here didn’t have access to temporal wave distortion, and Lakesh and the others could be working on it back at Cerberus. But one of the mathematicians who’d helped Kane and Brigid survive between dimensions and home in on Grant’s multiversal location was dead, one of too many victims of Ullikummis’s assault on the redoubt.
“This is eating at you,” Sinclair noted.
Grant nodded. “It’s one thing to go toe to toe with an Annunaki overlord, or a fifteen-foot robot. It’s a whole other thing to sit by and be impotent when you’re not even sure what happened to your friend. I want to help Brigid....”
“Do you remember anything of your time through the wormhole?” Sinclair asked.
He shook his head. “I asked Brigid if it was something wrong with my brain. She said it was a problem with everyone’s brain.”
“What does that mean?” Sinclair asked.
“We’re stuck in a world ruled by three-dimensional physics and chemistry. The entity that I became when I was transmitted between worlds was something completely alien,” Grant replied. “Oh, sure, the shadows it cast were recognizable as myself. But there are things ‘visible’ in that realm that just don’t translate into human experience.”
Sinclair blinked. “So...”
“Basically, I can’t remember it because it’s not memorable by the human mind,” Grant said. “At leas
t as Brigid explained it.”
“Jeez,” Sinclair muttered. “Just like when Bones asked what death was like...”
“What?” Grant asked.
She shrugged. “I’d have to be lost just like you’d been to have a common point of view.”
He smirked. “And even then we couldn’t bring that common point of view back from the other side to communicate it properly here.”
Sinclair winced, trying to wrap her mind around that thought. “So we do what we can. And what will we do?”
“I’m going to give North a little bit of a poke,” Grant said. More than he’d have liked. He brushed the Commtact plate against his jaw, even though it was already off, making them relatively invisible to North if he were listening in on their communications. “I’ve already demonstrated distrust of the asshole, so when I confront him, he’ll be expecting some bullying, without implicating the rest of you.”
“But that means he could try to kill you,” Sinclair offered.
Grant smirked. “He’s welcome to try.”
* * *
GRANT ENTERED THE room that North had claimed for himself, finding the man sitting, eyes glazed, humming lowly, tunelessly, almost an unconscious trill.
“If you’re thinking of making an attack upon me, Grant, I’ll have you know the nanocomputers installed in my frontal lobes have already calculated every single one of your moves and informed me of them. I’ve summarized a response to over a million different battles between us, and in 78.04 percent of all instances, it ends with you bleeding and crying on the floor, drooling in your own spittle,” the archaeologist said.
Grant snorted, then exploded into a laugh. “That’s the reason I don’t try to kill you on first sight. You always say funny shit.”
North’s vision focused on Grant. “Really?”
“Well, enough of the time to keep me from just up and doing some serious damage to you,” Grant added. “You do know that I’ve held my own against you in the past, right?”
“Yes,” North responded. “Is that why you’re here? So we can unzip and measure ourselves against each other?”
“Nah,” Grant said. He had a couple cans of soda with him, and lobbed one gently to North. “I came to talk.”
The other man caught the can with a bit of fumbling, putting the lie to his boast of combat prowess. Or was he as clumsy as he seemed? Grant wondered. He could be playing, lulling his enemies into a false sense of security.
If there was one thing former magistrate Grant knew, cockiness was the quickest ticket to a world of pain and suffering. For as skilled as he was in combat, as physically powerful, Grant’s flesh was no more durable than a normal man’s, and his limits were still those of humanity. He’d seen what the nanites had done to Durga before Kane blew him up with a fuel-air explosion. The creature the Nagah prince had become was a giant, bulletproof and strong enough to ignore implosion grenades and bullets straight to the head, all while tearing through bricks and cave walls as if they were tissue paper. Whatever tricks North could hold might not be so vulgar in terms of might, not when the man’s mind was plugged into its own personal computer.
“So, did you do something to Kane and Durga?” Grant pressed.
“You mean when they went mentally bye-bye?” North returned.
He nodded.
North opened his soda, took a sip.
“Well?” Grant asked.
“If I knew, I’d be gloating,” the archaeologist answered.
Grant wrinkled his nose. “So you say.”
“What made you think I’ve got some involvement in this?” North asked.
“Because the last time Kane used the stick to heal someone, he went through just fine,” Grant responded. “But you were with us in that basement. And you claim that Nehushtan is producing some form of signal that prevents you from getting too close.”
“I’m not claiming,” North said. “It’s what is happening to me.”
Grant frowned.
“You don’t trust me. I get it. But why in particular are you coming to bother me?” North asked.
“Because Brigid’s busy determining other causes and solutions to the loss of Kane and the worm,” Grant said. “And CAT Beta is battening down the hatches against a possible incursion by the kongamato.”
“So, being the smartest of the remnants, you decided to engage in a battle of wits with the guy and his nanite-enhanced brain,” North concluded.
He nodded. “You know I wasn’t born yesterday. For the past few years I’ve been dealing left, right and center with all kinds of manipulators.”
“I don’t doubt it,” North admitted. “But this isn’t your strongest suit. You’re a blunt instrument.”
Grant remained quiet, punctuating North’s statement with the opening of his soda can. The crack-fizz of the opening beverage sounded especially harsh and loud in the quiet of the room. His lack of facial expression was all the condemnation that Grant required for North’s attempted insult.
“Not rising to the challenge?” the other man asked.
“I’m waiting for the challenge,” Grant answered.
North grimaced. “I’ve noticed that the lot of you from Cerberus have been very quiet on your radios.”
Grant raised an eyebrow. “Oh dear. I thought you’d never have figured that out.”
North smirked. “Playing dumb...more of a strength.”
“You see these muscles. You don’t think of what’s between the ears,” Grant told him.
“Who really got on to me?” North asked. “Brigid Baptiste? The girl with the movie hero fixation?”
Grant folded his arms. “You’re the smart one.”
North rolled his eyes. “Screw it. I’ll talk to something more on my mental level.” He studied his beverage can. “So, how are you doing today?”
Grant chuckled.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t kick you out of my quarters,” North finally asked, after a minute of silence and Grant’s brief bit of amusement.
“Because this isn’t your facility,” he answered. “The Zambians own it.”
“They don’t know what they have. What they still have,” North said.
“They figured out the mat trans’s general user interface enough to call around the globe,” Grant countered. “And that was after only about a half hour of looking at it without a manual.”
North rolled his eyes. “Big deal.”
“You’re pretty good at considering people beneath you. Me. The Zambians,” Grant mused. “Or is it just black people?”
“Give me a break. I look down on everyone,” North replied. “You less than most others.”
“Pin a medal on you,” Grant retorted.
“For what?” North asked. “Realizing that Africans aren’t backward and primitive? Just looking at how they haven’t fallen into the kind of barbarism that North America collapsed into is proof enough. Then again, the collapse of civilization was in the planning for millennia.”
“What is your goal here?” Grant asked. “What was so important that you needed to come to Africa?”
“It’s a vast continent, full of history, myths and gods,” North replied. “There are mysteries throughout this land.”
“And the first mystery that you pop in upon happens to put you in the same neighborhood as Durga and us,” Grant returned.
“Which I warned you of...”
“Yeah. You warned us he was present. That he was up to something,” Grant replied. “Even that he had something to do with the kongamato...and yet—”
“And yet what?” North interrupted.
“Durga’s control of the kongamato went south immediately, and now he and Kane are catatonic wrecks,” Grant snapped.
“I don’t have a personal problem with Durga,�
� North replied. “If anything, he has a problem with me because of what I did to him. First I wrecked his face, and then it was my bomb that turned him into a cripple.”
“So you wouldn’t take advantage of this situation?” Grant asked.
“If I had the room and opportunity to take advantage of this, you know full well I would,” North answered. “Durga’s damned scary and dangerous. You wouldn’t have stepped on him when he was helpless?”
“He’s helpless now,” Grant said. “What’s stopping you from cutting the head off that snake?”
“Aside from Thurpa and the millennialists? And you do-gooders?” North retorted.
“Ah.” Grant grunted.
“Yep,” North agreed. “Morally, you’re a damned idiot for not just killing him and putting out the consortium goon squad to be picked apart by kongamato.”
“Morals. Killing the unarmed and helpless,” Grant repeated.
“They’re not unarmed now,” North argued. “Not after getting into the Zambian’s armory. They can fight for their own survival.”
“Against creatures who took out a larger group of trained soldiers?” Grant asked.
“Your self-righteous attitude is starting to eat at my patience,” North muttered.
Grant smirked. “Then I’m doing my job well.”
“I thought you Cerberus people would be a lot more practical,” North growled.
“Practical, or acting like barbarians who just scalp people for a can of creamed corn? Because sometimes, practical is doing the right thing, no matter what.”
“You’re kidding me,” North exclaimed. “The right thing would be hunting down and exterminating every single millennialist that’s ever been born. They’re a heartless group of technocrats whose only goal is making themselves comfortable, no matter who they have to enslave.”
“Trust me, nothing would make life easier for us, but take a look at the group of ragtag losers we have here. They’re beaten. Whipped hard. Shell-shocked survivors. And their attitude is different now. They’ve changed,” Grant said.