by James Axler
“They have locked me away and yet they feed me,” Lakesh mused to himself, “so they do not want me to die. They are keeping me alive for a reason. They have asked me nothing, so either they are wearing me down first or they have it in mind that they may need me in the future.
“So—why?
“My primary field of knowledge is of the mat-trans procedure, but the system itself is easy enough to operate. But the Cerberus operation…perhaps they need me for that?”
He coughed then, feeling the muscle ache of age as his lungs went into spasm. “If that is the case,” he mused aloud, “then an old fool like me must be very low on the list of available candidates, surely.” He laughed a little in spite of himself. He had been getting older these past few months—noticeably older, aging far faster than a normal man. It was Sam the Imperator’s blessing of youth finally backfiring, turning the young-old Lakesh back into the old-old Lakesh he had been before Sam’s magical touch had metamorphosed his cells. He had kept this fact from his peers, hidden the details of his curse from the others. Some had noted he was acting out of character, that he seemed more lethargic, more prone to rash decisions than he had been. Age could do strange things to a man.
But Lakesh still had his brain, his fearsome intellect. If he was to be locked in this impossible cell, then he needed to work out everything he possibly could about his situation. “If I am here, then I am not the only one,” he said to the empty air around him. “But where would you trap sixty trained personnel once you had overwhelmed the Cerberus redoubt? Where do you find self-sealing caves?” He tapped at the walls as he spoke.
“Ullikummis,” Lakesh breathed, the name coming out like a curse. The monster controlled rock, and so he could shape a place like this, form it from the stuff about him.
Lakesh allowed himself a little smile then. He was beginning to understand what was going on.
Like all scientists and men of reason, he knew that knowledge was the thing that would set them free. Knowledge was the most powerful weapon they had against their mighty foe.
Chapter 25
The stone door to Kane’s cell slid back once again, and Dylan stood there in the eerie orange glow of the corridor.
Kane brought his hand up to his face, shying away from the light for a moment.
“How are you feeling?” Dylan asked, a sense of pride in his voice, pride and something else that Kane could not yet pinpoint.
“Hungry,” Kane replied after a few seconds’ thought.
Dylan smiled, the yellowing teeth flashing within the shadows of his hood. “You now stand on the precipice of utopia, Kane,” he said, proffering his hand. “Welcome to the future.”
Kane took the ex-farmer’s hand, pulling himself up from the floor with the help of that strong grip. Dylan’s words seemed different than they had before; they seemed almost like pleasing scents that tickled the nostrils. Somehow the stone inside Kane was responding to Dylan’s voice, a receiver for some hidden, mystical broadcast.
“So what do we do now?” Kane asked. “What’s the agenda?”
“There’s a whole army here, waiting for a leader,” Dylan said as he led the way from the cell into the rock-walled tunnel beyond. “Troops all over, each one in need of a leader, a general.”
Kane looked behind him for a moment, taking in the claustrophobic proportions of the cell he had spent almost three days locked within. It stank of sweat and human waste. Kane felt a twinge of shame at the thought. Above, at the topmost arch of the low ceiling, a magma light glowed continuously, pulsing subtly brighter as he admired it.
Dylan stopped, turning back to Kane with an ingratiating smile. “Don’t tell me you’re going to miss it?” he joked.
“That? Nah,” Kane replied, shaking his head. “I’m part of the future now, right? And things like prison are best left in the past.”
“Not prison,” Dylan corrected. “Life camp. This is Life Camp Zero, prototype for the system that will be used to reeducate the world.”
“Reeducate the world?” Kane repeated, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
“Did you ever think that the baronies were weird?” Dylan asked, leaning closer as if voicing something conspiratorially. “They were a model, but they didn’t work. Too many exclusions, too many people left in the Outlands beyond ville limits. Hell, I never lived in a ville, just made a living outside their walls, far from the barons’ reach. The model didn’t work, Kane—nine baronies set up across the country, little enclaves of rules in a land of no-one-gives-a-shit.
“Lord Ullikummis saw this and he said that it must change. He said that the future must start, that man must be freed from the shackles of the barons.”
“The barons are dead,” Kane said. “They upped sticks and disappeared. The villes are falling apart—I saw the wreckage of Beausoleil blowing away in the wind.”
The pair walked down the tunnellike corridor, the faint glow of magma ebbing from inset pods in the walls and ceiling and floor. “The barons may be gone,” Dylan acknowledged, “but their model remains, holding people static, keeping them in their simple little roles.”
“But Lord Ullikummis,” Kane elaborated, “he’s changing the game plan. He’s setting people…free?”
It seemed a strange thing to say, for Kane knew that this ghastly Annunaki prince had as much interest in freeing humanity as a spider would a fly snagged in its web. Yet somehow, inside his head, he felt that this was the case, that Ullikummis—Lord Ullikummis—was benevolent. Kane recognized the mind trick, the double-think, even as the words tumbled from his lips. He almost believed it. If Rosalia hadn’t tweaked the living stone inside him maybe he would have believed it entirely, never thought to question it.
“It’s a war for freedom,” Dylan explained. “Isn’t that what you always fought for, Kane?”
Kane nodded in silent agreement. It felt strange walking beside this man, hearing the words he spoke. It was like hearing a voice double-tracked, a singer providing his own backing on an ancient recording. First Priest Dylan was speaking, and yet there was a second voice, subtler, hidden within his words. It made the bearded man seem charismatic, made his words hold more weight than they rightly should.
Kane followed as Dylan led him down another corridor, passing several hooded sentries before they reached a bank of elevators. Kane looked at them in fascination. The gleaming steel doors seemed so out of place amid the rough rock from which the complex appeared to be carved. For the first time in three days, Kane saw himself, his image reflected there in the dull sheen of the elevator doors. His hair was standing on end, tufts poking in all directions from his sleeping restlessly on the cavern floor. His hand moved to his jaw, feeling the dark stubble that had formed there. It was no longer stubble, in fact, but the beginnings of a definite beard. The man in the reflection wore scruffy clothes, the torn remains of a shadow suit, black strands pulled across his chest, arms and legs, rips showing the scarred flesh beneath. Kane glanced down at himself, saw the ruined suit he wore. It was smeared with blood and dirt, caked sand clinging along one side.
Dylan waved his hand at the wall in a gesture Kane couldn’t quite follow, and a moment later the middle set of elevator doors slid open. Kane followed Dylan through the doors, marveling at the presence of the elevator in the way a primitive might, he was so taken aback by it. Inside, the elevator seemed standard enough. In fact, it reminded Kane of the ones they had used in the Cerberus redoubt, only its walls were marred with stretching fingers of stone, reaching down from the ceiling like snow-melt.
Kane watched as Dylan selected a floor on the rock-obscured panel and the doors closed. With a pleasing whir of motors, the elevator ascended and a moment later the doors opened once more to reveal another cavern tunnel. There were low walls here and there, dotted seemingly at random along the length of the route Dylan chose. Some of the odd barricades jutted from the walls themselves, sticking out like pointing fingers, blocking their route in such a way that Kane and Dylan had to shuffle si
deways to pass them. They didn’t seem like natural formations, yet Kane could not imagine their purpose.
“Where is this place?” he muttered, curiosity finally getting the better of him.
Dylan smiled as he turned back to the ex-Mag. “It’s everywhere,” he said. “Ullikummis is everywhere.”
As Dylan said those words, Kane felt the tingling in his hand, his arm, the place where the stone had been embedded before Rosalia had blocked its progress. It was a giddy feeling, like falling in love. Kane felt sick.
Together, the two men walked down the tunnel, the low ceiling overhead giving Kane a sense of claustrophobia once more. He was becoming more conscious of such things since spending so long trapped in the doorless cell, he knew, yet he couldn’t shake that terrible feeling of being caged. A moment later, he found himself in a wider tunnel, the roof higher than the service tunnels they appeared to have been using up until now. The corridor stretched far off into the distance, and Kane saw several robed and hooded figures walking along its length, moving off into side tunnels much like the one he and Dylan had just exited. Almost twenty feet above them, the rocky roof was decorated with mean-looking stalactites, their spikes reaching down like arrows aimed at the people beneath.
Turning left, Dylan led the way briefly along the tunnel until they reached a wide archway carved into the rock. Through this, Dylan pointed to a large cavern located beyond its mouth. Kane looked inside, saw the vast, high-ceilinged cave there. People were busily working in this room, checking paperwork and maps they had laid out across two waist-high, curved ridges of rock that ran the full width of the cavern.
“The nerve center of Life Camp Zero,” Dylan explained. “We’re still setting things up, but we plan to coordinate everything from here. Utopia begins.”
Kane peered into the cave, his interest piqued. Over in the far corner he saw smoked glass amid the struts of rock, a burnt-orange color beneath the illumination of the bubbling lava lights. “You have a mat-trans,” Kane stated.
Dylan nodded. “We have a few modes of transport now,” he said. “Each has its part to play. Maybe you’ll use them all in your campaign against Enlil.”
Kane recalled then just why he had been recruited into Ullikummis’s army. He was to be a general or a sergeant, leading a force into battle against the hated enemy he knew only too well—the Annunaki overlord called Enlil. “When does this campaign begin?” Kane asked.
“Your troops are still being amassed,” Dylan told him. “Some are here, held in cells as you were, but there will be others soon enough. Recruiters are spreading out among the people, offering salvation.”
Salvation. On any other day, Kane would have scoffed at the misuse of the word. Yet right now, as he stood with Dylan, the first priest somehow made it all seem so plausible, inevitable even. The obedience stone was inside him, Kane knew, making him susceptible to the overtures of the strange priest. It was all hypnosis, fooling people into believing that this was what they had wanted all along.
Kane’s mind drifted back to the discussion he had had with Lakesh and Baptiste several months earlier, when they had tried to unlock the secret of the weird architecture of the Ullikummis-built Tenth City. The use of giant sigils, vast structures designed to take thought away, to make people comprehend things only in the way the overlords chose. That was the nature of Tenth City, but its design had occurred again and again throughout history, shaping every major city on Earth. If the hidden history of the world was one dictated by alien intervention, then the design of the cities formed an insidious part of that history, shaping the minds of the human race. The more civilized humanity became, the more humankind became trapped in the web of subjugation.
Kane peered around him once more, looking at the mat-trans in the corner, the low walls all around it. Perhaps the walls were part of the pattern, designed to affect a person’s mind in infinitely subtle ways. He didn’t know.
He turned back to Dylan, running a hand over his stubbled chin as he addressed the priest. “You know,” Kane said, “I feel like hell right now. Maybe I can get washed up and changed, and then we can start figuring out the battle plan.”
“Of course,” Dylan agreed, his voice once again emitting some strange musical pull that Kane could not quite put his finger on. “There’s a simple changing area on the floor below where you can clean yourself up. I’ll take you there and order delivery of fresh clothes.”
Kane nodded, feeling obliged.
Dylan dealt with some issue that had been raised by one of his people, and Kane felt sure that the man was the prison warden here, his authority absolute. He was Ullikummis in the absence of the stone Annunaki himself, and his word was law among these people. Kane needed to put him out of commission fast, stop whatever he was broadcasting from affecting the minds of those around him.
Once Dylan was done, he led Kane back to the bank of elevators and they descended to a lower floor. Then First Priest Dylan showed Kane to the washroom and left him there, promising that someone would be along shortly with clean clothes. He left Kane alone, trusting with absolute certainty that the obedience stone would stop him from trying anything rebellious.
There was a wall of mirrors behind three washbasins. Kane looked at himself in the nearest, saw the dark circles under his eyes, the shadow of beard across his chin. There was no denying that he looked rough, and for a Magistrate to appear this untidy somehow shamed Kane, his old life kicking in. There was a small hunk of soap in a dish, and a razor blade had been left beside it. The blade glinted beneath the soft orange lighting that swirled in the ceiling and walls.
Kane moved across the room, pushed open a door of one of the stalls. He was dehydrated and he hadn’t eaten for over forty-eight hours, but still he needed to use the toilet. His body ached with the need to clear itself, and his muscles twinged with the pain of exhaustion. He took his time, gathering his thoughts as he sat there, letting his body do what it must. The expulsion left him feeling drained, washed out. He needed to eat and to rehydrate himself.
Finally he exited the stall, made his way back to the washbasins, ran his hands under the water until it became steaming hot. Then he turned the faucet, letting in cold water and running it over his hands, feeling its coolness wash between his extended fingers, cleaning the dried blood and skin from beneath his fingernails. He cupped his hands under the flow, brought the cool water to his face, splashed it over his tired features. He repeated the motion, this time drinking water from his hands before splashing the remainder over his face in an effort to revive himself. Then he leaned down and drank directly from the faucet, his mouth feeling as if something had died inside it.
Finally, Kane reached forward again, fixing the stopper in the basin and pressing on the faucet until a jet of warm water filled the bowl. He stripped off the ruined top of his shadow suit and lathered his face. Then, as the water steamed in the basin, he began to shave, cutting away the growth of beard and making himself presentable once again. It was cathartic in its way, a re-creation of the old Kane that preceded his capture and incarceration. He looked at himself in the mirror as his familiar features reappeared, smiling as he began to feel the old determination—the old fire—return.
Kane splashed water on his face, not caring that it was cold now, relishing the feeling it brought him, that sensation of being alive. The buzzing in his head was abating, but he remained ravenous with hunger. He looked down at his left wrist, searching for evidence of the stone buried there. It was sending signals through his nervous system, he knew, making him respond differently to Dylan’s words. Kane was no scientist; he didn’t know how it worked. Attached to his nervous system, the stone might exude an enzyme, pump endorphins to his brain, maybe. He couldn’t tell.
There was a noise behind him and Kane turned, his keen eyes searching the darkness of the communal washroom. A person was walking past the screen that stood by the door, one that blocked a direct view of the room from the tunnel-like corridor beyond. Kane tensed, old instinc
ts returning, as whoever it was navigated around the stone screen and entered the main area of the washroom. Apparently tall and slender, the figure’s physique was disguised by the shapeless robe. The person carried a bundle of material, carefully folded, and Kane realized that here were the “fresh clothes” Dylan had promised.
“Just leave it there,” Kane said. “Thanks.”
The hooded figure stopped, placed the spare robe beside the basin closest to the door. “You dolt, it’s me,” she said, her voice an irritated hiss.
Kane watched the woman push back her hood, and recognized Rosalia’s familiar face looking up at him, her silken hair and dark eyes glowing in the magma lighting.
“Well, well,” Kane said, “fancy meeting you here, Rosie.”
“Put on the robe,” she instructed, “and hurry. They’ll send someone along in a minute to check on you. We want to be out of here by then.”
Kane reached for the robe, shaking it out and turning it upside down as he placed his bare arms in the sleeves. “What’s the rush?” he asked.
“I cuffed the guard who was bringing this to you,” Rosalia explained. “Didn’t want you straying too far without me.”
“I can believe that,” Kane muttered as he pushed his arms through the sleeves and brought the hood down over his head. The robe fell about him, rough against his skin and ending just a few inches above the soles of his boots. “I feel like a monk,” he griped.
Rosalia was back at the stone door, pushing at it and peeking outside. Kane saw the dark shape of her mutt standing guard, patiently waiting for its mistress to reappear.
“You want to know what happened to your friends?” Rosalia asked, turning back to him for a moment. Kane nodded.
“Good. Let’s go sightseeing,” Rosalia said breezily. Then she pulled the door wide and skipped outside, the mongrel dog at her heels and Kane bringing up the rear.