Truth Engine

by James Axler

  “Kane?” Dylan’s voice was close to the only door. The sound played over Kane like something warm and friendly, like treacle. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Saving the future,” Kane muttered under his breath as he shoved the voluminous right sleeve of his hooded robe back and strapped on the holster, tightening its straps. Then he snatched up one of the Sin Eaters and a plastic bag full of ammunition before running deeper into the storage complex.

  “He’s down here,” one of the guards was saying. It was a woman’s voice, and Kane turned just as a rock hurtled toward him, cutting the air with a familiar whine.

  Kane leaped out of the projectile’s way, slapping his empty palm against a nearby shelf as he used it for cover. The rock zipped past, continuing its path into the armory before crashing against a display of grenades. Kane winced as one of the shelves fell from its housing, spilling grenades all over the floor. Thankfully, nothing went off.

  Swiftly, Kane loaded the Sin Eater, ramming home a clip from the plastic bag and shoving the rest into the pouch at his belt, bag and all. The pistol was still locked in its clamped-shut position, and Kane placed it in the wrist holster, securing it with practiced familiarity. With a flinch of his wrist tendons, the pistol would launch into his hand and he could dispense justice to these infiltrators.

  Another flurry of stones hurtled toward where Kane hid, smashing a tray of combat knives on the nearest shelf. Their points cut through the air, missing Kane by just the smallest of margins, like some insane circus act.

  “Show yourself, Kane.” Dylan’s taunting voice echoed through the armory, the depth of his words feeling like a physical thing. “It’s time to stop all this nonsense and finally embrace the future.”

  “I’ll give you a future you won’t forget,” Kane murmured as he searched the armory for something with more firepower.

  While it appeared that Dylan himself was not armed, Kane needed to knock those stone throwers out of the picture or he was doomed. The obedience stone inside him would take control and the fight would simply drain out of him. Even now he could feel the weird effect that Dylan’s presence seemed to have, his words washing over Kane’s senses like waves on the shore.

  “Spread out,” Dylan ordered his followers. “Find him and bring him to me.”

  Kane heard running feet as the two soldiers came hurrying to find him, both rapidly checking each aisle as they sought their prey. In the next aisle over, Kane spotted a rack of Copperhead subguns. Remembering the damage the Copperhead had caused Ullikummis, Kane dashed across the opening, grabbing for one of the powerful blasters even as another hail of stones hurtled toward him. One of the stones clipped the hem of his robe, and Kane stumbled, correcting his balance automatically. A moment later he was rolling, dodging between another set of shelves before the hooded figures could catch up to him.

  Safe for the moment, his back pressed against a shelving unit filled with flares, Kane checked the ammo on the Copperhead with growing annoyance, knowing full well that Cerberus protocol was to keep weapons unloaded while they were held in storage. He searched his memory, overlaid his mental map of the storage facility with the way it looked now under its new rocky layer. The ammo should be four units over, held in a locked cupboard.

  Snatching up one of the flares, Kane primed it and tossed it where he guessed his foes were searching. There was a sudden flash of brilliance as the flare ignited, and Kane heard a grunt of surprise as the guards were momentarily blinded.

  “Come on, Kane,” Dylan called. “You’re behaving like a child, and Lord Ullikummis has promised we will all be reborn.”

  “Rebirth sucks,” Kane muttered to himself.

  Something in his mind warned him of danger then, that miraculous point man sense, and he turned just in time to see one of the hooded figures sneaking up on him from the near end of the shelving unit. Kane whipped out with the Copperhead, swinging it like a baton at the guard’s legs, sweeping his feet from under him. The man fell to the floor, a handful of small stones dropping from his grip.

  Kane was on him instantly, commanding the Sin Eater into his hand and blasting a fierce burst of 9 mm bullets into the guard’s face.

  A noise from behind him alerted Kane to his second assailant, and he ducked automatically as one of the vicious little stones was fired at him from the sentry’s slingshot. It was a woman, Kane saw, and then the realization came. It was Helen Foster, his old colleague, the one he had met with in the redoubt’s main artery prior to facing Ullikummis less than three days earlier. Her face was fixed in a grimace and Kane saw the scarring across its right side, where he had blasted her in their previous meeting. On the one hand, he was pleased she had survived, whatever her altered mental state might be, but on the other it disturbed him to learn that the devotees of Ullikummis seemed to be almost invincible, somehow able to recover from any wound.

  Tossing the Copperhead subgun through the gap between shelves, Kane scurried up the unit before him, using its shelves like the rungs of a ladder even as Helen snapped off another rock at his retreating form. The sharp shard of flint clipped the shelf by Kane’s right hand, igniting a shower of bright sparks just beside his face.

  For a moment Kane was dazzled, and black spots swam before his right eye as he hurried up and over the shelving unit, brushing aside its contents so that they rained down on his opponents. Then he was over the top, leaping across the open aisle to the next unit, easing himself down its side with a swift hand-over-hand movement.

  As dropped, Kane saw Dylan walking briskly toward him, his hood pushed back from his face as he searched the aisles for the renegade.

  “Come now, Kane,” Dylan said smoothly. “This is madness and you know it. Accept your new master’s willing embrace. Accept the future.”

  Kane commanded the Sin Eater into his grip, smiling as he felt its familiar weight there. He snapped off a burst of gunfire, sending twelve bullets in quick succession at Dylan as he loomed at the end of the aisle. The man didn’t even flinch, merely raised his right hand and swept it through the air, flicking the bullets aside.

  “What the hell are you?” Kane growled.

  “I am the future,” Dylan told him. “Ullikummis promised me utopia, made me a superman. I am stone, Kane, and soon you will be, too.”

  The words seemed almost melodic to Kane’s ears, touching something inside him. The stone, he realized. Dylan’s words—his very presence—were affecting the stone within him.

  Dylan took another step toward Kane, arms spread as if to give the ex-Mag an embrace. Kane’s feet pounded against the floor as he turned away, running for the end of the aisle.

  On the far side, Kane retrieved the Copperhead assault weapon, then sprinted down the next aisle toward where he was certain the ammunition would be stored. A rock wall stood before him, and Kane scanned it for several seconds, searching for the aperture where the sensor would open the hidden door. He swept his wrist past the scanner, heard the hidden lock snap open.

  Running feet slapped against the rock floor behind him, and Kane turned even as his hand fumbled with the stone-clad cupboard door. Both Foster and her hooded companion were running down the aisle toward him, their slingshots poised to unleash another hail of the vicious little stones. Kane pulled at the ammunition cupboard’s door even as two flat stones cut the air where he stood. One cuffed him across the left shoulder, while the other crashed against the cupboard door two inches from where his hand pulled at its rough surface.

  The unit was open now, an array of ammunition waiting within. The shelves inside had changed from how Kane remembered them, still rigid and uniform, but with a smattering of sand and pebbles sprinkled across their surfaces as if something washed up on a beach. Whatever Ullikummis had done, however his touch had metamorphosed the Cerberus redoubt, his effects had been strange and absolute, touching even the most hidden areas. Kane wondered for a moment how the ventilation system must look, whether the air flow itself had been disrupted, blocked as in a can
cerous lung.

  Kane’s hand whipped inside the ammunition cupboard, snatched up clips for his Copperhead as the hooded man ran at him, fist raised. Kane turned, blocking the savage punch and bringing his elbow low so that it jabbed into the man’s chest. His opponent tumbled a step backward and Kane brought up his other arm, swinging the length of the Copperhead once again like a nightstick and whipping him across the jowls.

  As the man staggered back, Kane slammed the clip into the Copperhead and, without a moment’s hesitation, pumped the trigger, drilling titanium shells point-blank into his chest at a rate of seven hundred rounds per minute. In less than three seconds, the hooded figure toppled backward, crashing into another shelving unit and bringing its contents—twin attaché cases—down onto his prone form.

  As the man fell, Kane saw Helen twirling the slingshot in her hand, whipping it around to generate the momentum required to launch its stony contents like bullets at his face. Kane turned away, leaping behind the nearest shelf even as she tossed the stones. Behind him, they cut a tattoo against the doors to the ammunition cupboard, but Kane was already running, heading back toward the single entrance to the huge armory.

  He ran onward, glancing over his shoulder to see Helen reappear, the hood of her robe low over her face. That made it easier, Kane thought as he squeezed the Copperhead’s trigger and sent two dozen bullets in her direction. Rather than avoiding them, she held her hands up over her face, and Kane watched in awe as the bullets struck her as if striking a wall. When she brought her hands back down, she was unscathed, standing as she had before the assault. Relentlessly, she began whipping the slingshot around once more, launching another of the sharp flat stones at Kane’s retreating form.

  “Dammit,” he muttered. “Looks like I’m gonna have to go shopping for something bigger.”

  As he spoke, he swerved into the next aisle, letting the disklike stone cut uselessly past him. He threw the Copperhead aside, searching the shelves for something with more kick. The Copperhead was fine for close-up work, but he couldn’t waste any more time point-blanking these abominations. He needed to finish them, cut Dylan out of the loop and destroy the signal that the first priest was broadcasting from his hidden stone.

  Kane’s hands brushed over a box of stick grenades as he ran down the aisle, knowing he would be foolish to detonate one in this space, especially with all the live ammunition that lined the walls. Up ahead he saw a bank of a half-dozen dragon launchers, antitank weapons that could be operated by a two-man team. Arms pumping, Kane ran toward the aisle, dropping low and sliding across the rock floor as he spotted Dylan just three aisles across from him, staring this way and that.

  Then Kane was at the bank of missile launchers, grabbing one by its carrying strap. Almost three feet long, the dragon launcher was a compact tube designed to fire guided missiles. The unit bulged at its back end, with a bulky sighting unit atop a metal cylinder approximately six and a half inches in diameter. The units were steadied on a drop-down, front-mounted tripod.

  As Helen Foster hurried around the corner of the aisle, Kane swung the bulky launcher, striking her in the stomach with the force of a battering ram. The woman grunted, sprawling to the floor in a flurry of robes.

  Kane turned, frantically searching for the storage unit that contained the dragon’s missiles. He spied it a second later, the warheads racked horizontally on wide rock struts that had once been metal.

  Kane snatched one of the missiles as Dylan appeared at the end of the aisle, a smile on his insufferable face.

  “What are you doing, Kane?” the first priest asked. “You know you want to submit. Give your will over to the future.”

  Kane scampered backward, hurrying down the aisle, putting a little distance between himself and the ex-farmer.

  “It’s all over, Dylan,” Kane shouted. “Your sick future’s about to go up in smoke.”

  Then he crouched down, loading the missile in the dragon launcher with a determined shunt. There were explosive materials all around, he knew—which meant things were about to get very dangerous. He just hoped that Rosalia was keeping up her side of their agreement.

  ON THE INCARCERATION LEVEL of Life Camp Zero, Rosalia and the half-dozen freed prisoners found themselves surrounded by hooded guards with the physical property of stone. As one, the guards pulled slingshots from their belts and loaded them with the stones they carried in ammunition pouches at their waists.

  Rosalia had expected Kane’s distraction to last longer, or had at least hoped he’d find a way to keep it going. But now her hand was revealed, and for what? To die at the whim of Ullikummis’s loyal subjects, stoned to death?

  The robed figures clashed with the people around Rosalia, and Grant used all his strength to force one of the group back into the others, knocking them over. Beside him, Domi was struggling with another hooded figure, driving rabbit punches into the man’s side as he swatted at her. Reba DeFore and Mariah Falk struggled with yet another guard, each grabbing an arm and trying to spin him, as if playing some schoolyard game. For a few seconds, the corridor went quiet as both groups assessed one another. It was a momentary respite at best, as the hooded figures were amassing at both ends of the rock-walled corridor. There was no escape.

  Rosalia looked left and right, searching for an exit even as she brushed her wrist against another sensor, unlocking another cell door. Inside, Cerberus director Lakesh struggled to his senses, holding his hands up against the stronger light that seeped in from the corridor.

  As the hooded guards tossed a clutch of stones at Rosalia and the prisoners, her dog leaped forward, bounding down the corridor with an angry bark. Rosalia watched in amazement as the canine—that stupid, useless mutt—ripped into their foes, a blur of teeth and sharp, stubby claws, like a thing possessed.

  Rosalia and the prisoners watched as the dog took on all comers, jaws clamping down on outstretched hands, yanking at fustian robes and pulling their wearers to the floor. Each touch, each bite, seemed to drop another of the figures, and they sank to the floor with screams, the battle utterly and eerily forgotten. There was something uncanny about the whole scene; the dog’s touch seemed almost fatal to the people affected. In the flickering lights of the magma pods, the dog seemed almost to expand, to double or triple in size with a ghostly image about it—a dog with three heads.

  Rosalia knew nothing of her dog’s history, had no inclination of the forces hidden within its matted and unassuming form. At that moment, all she knew was that any contact appeared to burn the devotees of Ullikummis in the way the cross was said to burn vampires of myth.

  It was the turn in the tide of battle that the prisoners needed. Suddenly rejuvenated, they struck out, beating back their hooded captors, and Rosalia fought among them.

  DOWN IN THE ARMORY, Kane was kneeling on the rocky floor, loading the dragon missile launcher he had acquired from one of the nearby racks. According to the manual, using the M-47 Dragon antitank rig should be a two-man operation, but Kane concentrated on his purpose, loading the tube with grim determination. At the far end of the aisle, farmer-turned-religious-zealot Dylan was trudging toward him, the folds of his coarse robe billowing out around him.

  “You thought you were going to inherit the future,” Kane muttered as he pushed the missile into place, “but all you’re getting is a handful of ashes.”

  Still kneeling, Kane hefted the tubelike hunk of metal over his right shoulder, letting its leg struts fold out automatically until they rested in place in front of him. He held his eye to the sight and engaged its guidance system, watching the figure of Dylan at the far end of the aisle. He was close. He was real close.

  As Kane prepared to fire the missile launcher, Helen Foster leaped from a gap beyond the shelving unit he crouched beside, swiping at his head with a flat, disklike rock. Kane ducked back at the noise, and the stone missed his skull by barely an inch, brushing against the folds of his hood. He snapped out with his fist, punching Foster high in the leg—the nearest place
he could reach from his crouch. The dragon launcher rolled from his shoulder and fell to the floor with a loud clatter.

  Helen stood there and took Kane’s blow, not making a noise. He saw her face then, saw the strangely vacant look in her eyes, and he resigned himself to what he’d had to do all along. Whipping up his right arm, he engaged the Sin Eater once more, driving a continuous stream of shots into Foster’s figure as she loomed over his crouching form. The bullets struck at her groin, chest and, finally, her face, knocking her off her feet. She crashed into the shelving unit and Kane shoved. The unit rocked and Foster fell, flailing in a pile of toppling debris from its shelves. She was trapped.

  Kane ignored Helen’s thrashing form, automatically sending the Sin Eater back to its hidden holster as he snatched up the dragon launcher once more. In a heartbeat, the M-47 dragon launcher was resting on his right shoulder, as Kane sighted down its length at the approaching form of Dylan.

  “Kiss the future goodbye, little man,” Kane snarled as he depressed the firing stud of the antitank weapon.

  There was a blaze of fire in the ill-lit room as the missile launched, powering across the short distance and slamming into Dylan’s body as he took another step. The force of the launch powered through the dragon unit, and Kane relaxed as it pushed against him, letting himself topple backward and roll away even as Dylan was knocked in the other direction.

  Kane pressed his face toward the shelving unit as the warhead exploded just thirty feet away from him. The calamitous explosion was followed immediately by a rush of smaller rumblings as the ammunition nearest to Dylan and the exploding shell went off. Kane covered his head with his arms, leaning into himself as ammo was set off all around him, popping and bursting in fiery blooms.

  As the smoke thinned, Kane turned his head, searching the length of the aisle for whatever remained of the first priest. The rocky shelves were awash with smoldering debris, and the floor and ceiling had blackened with the series of explosions. For a moment, all Kane could see of the far end of the aisle were the dark, churning vapors of smoke billowing from where the missile had hit. Then, to his astonishment, he saw something moving amid the wreckage.