Truth Engine

by James Axler

  Smoke pluming from his body, the ex-farmer called Dylan pulled himself up off the floor. His robe had been burned away, just a few flaming tatters remaining across his back and shoulders as he stood. His flesh was a ruddy red from the heat of the explosion, and his dark beard had vanished, leaving patches across his chin, and several flames still licking at his lips.

  “It’s impossible,” Kane muttered. “No one could possibly survive—”

  Dylan fixed him with an angry glare, pacing down the aisle and picking up speed as he neared the ex-Magistrate who had attacked him. “You’ll never understand, will you?” Dylan spit. “I am stone. Ullikummis promised a utopian future, but we are its architects. We, his supermen.”

  Kane struggled to his feet, still reeling from the cacophony of explosions that had run through the shelves all around him. Dylan rushed at him, the flaming remnants of his robe disappearing in fizzing bursts of fire and smoke.

  Kane brought his arm up as the first priest drove a punch at his head, flames still licking down his arm. The blow struck with incredible force, knocking Kane off his feet even as he tried to deflect it.

  “You’ll embrace the future soon enough,” Dylan told him.

  Kane knew the man was right. The stone inside him was beginning to overpower his thought process, making even Dylan’s most lackluster proclamation seem like nectar from the gods. Kane needed to drop Dylan and do it now, take the threat he represented out of the picture once and for all as the armory burned all around them.

  He dropped to the floor, kicking out with a swift leg sweep designed to bring Dylan crashing down. His foot caught the farmer-turned-priest behind his knee, and Dylan wobbled slightly where he stood, but didn’t fall.

  “I am stone,” Dylan spit, glaring at Kane, “and stone is the future.” He lunged forward, hands outstretched.

  Commanding the Sin Eater back into his palm, Kane directed a stream of bullets right into the man’s face. The bullets struck Dylan, knocking him back, yet they failed to pierce his flesh. Somehow, Kane realized, Ullikummis had changed his key warriors, altering their genetic makeup with his pebblelike seeds. Dylan’s chant was not an idle boast; he had somehow acquired the physicality of stone.

  As Dylan stumbled backward, Kane’s Sin Eater clicked on empty, and his mind raced as he reached for the pouch at his belt and struggled to reload. Six feet before him, Dylan was pulling himself away from a burning shelf, a determined, almost manic gleam in his dark eyes. Kane’s fingers delved into the waterproof plastic bag that contained the spare cartridges for the Sin Eater, and then a devilish plan formed in his mind.

  Without hesitation, he tipped the contents of the bag to the floor, discarding the ammunition clips he had snagged from the armory. At the same moment, he commanded the Sin Eater back into its hidden recess beneath his sleeve. With an animalistic howl, Kane ran at Dylan even as the ex-farmer turned to face him once more.

  As Dylan brought his arms up in a gesture of defense, Kane leaped in the air, kicking off the uneven rock floor, the plastic bag clutched in his left hand. Dylan tracked Kane as he sprang, bringing his hands up to grab the onrushing figure. He snagged a handful of Kane’s robe, tearing it away as Kane barreled at him.

  Then Kane was on him, his hand going to Dylan’s face as his weight drove the priest backward. Dylan fell back, his feet kicking out as he keeled to the floor. Kane’s hands snapped the plastic bag out straight, placing the five-by-seven-inch pouch of clear plastic over his opponent’s mouth and nose.

  Dylan collided with the floor with a crunch, his skull smashing hard against the rocky surface. Kane was above him, fighting to hold the man down, pressing all his weight against Dylan’s singed body as he sprawled before him. Nearby, another ammo case exploded as flames touched it.

  Kane shoved, holding the plastic bag over his enemy’s mouth and nostrils, driving it against the man’s face as he struggled.

  Dylan fought, pushing against Kane’s chest. His angle was wrong; he couldn’t seem to get the leverage to throw Kane despite his struggles. Kane rode the man like a rodeo pro, clinging tight with his powerful thighs as he pressed the bag over the first priest’s face. The clear plastic began to mist over where Dylan breathed against its surface, two jets of white appearing beneath his nostrils, a fog of moisture around his mouth.

  “Bullets, missiles, explosives—all useless to a man who can assume the qualities of granite,” Kane said, fixing Dylan with a fearsome look.

  Dylan continued to struggle, his voice muffled by the bag as he tried to break free. Trapped beneath Kane’s powerful form, he writhed, frantically trying to free himself as his breath misted against the shield of plastic.

  “Guess I finally figured out the one thing that can stop you,” Kane growled as he stared into Dylan’s eyes—eyes now wide with fear.

  Dylan pounded against Kane’s sides, but the blows were coming weaker now, and Kane endured them with a grunt. The first priest reached for Kane’s wrists then, realizing too late that his only hope was to pull Kane’s hands away from his face, to free himself of the obstruction to his breathing. Kane pushed down harder, holding the bag in place over the man’s darkening face.

  “Whatever Ullikummis told you, whatever he promised,” Kane snarled, “even the future has to breathe, Dylan. Take that away and all his promises of the future and of being a superman mean nothing.”

  Dylan continued to struggle for almost three minutes, sprawled there before Kane on the hard rock floor of the armory. Finally, his face darkened to a deep red, darker even than the effect the explosion had caused, and the whites of his eyes turned pink. Then, as Kane held the plastic over his face, the man’s eyes widened, became distant, and spittle formed across the clear underside of the bag. Finally, with a spasm that seemed to run through the length of his singed, near naked body, Dylan flopped on the floor. Then he ceased struggling, ceased moving at all.

  Kane remained poised there for a long time, letting the minutes tick by as he held the bag in place over his foe’s face, fires stuttering all about them. He needed to be sure that Dylan was dead, that the first priest could no longer project whatever it was that affected the stones implanted in himself and the others.

  ONCE DYLAN HAD BEEN killed by Kane’s hand, the battle for the redoubt became easier. Shortly thereafter, the guards ceased fighting, many of them genuinely confused to find themselves amid the strange network of tunnels. Rosalia’s dog returned to her side as she went through the last of the cells, freeing the remaining Cerberus prisoners.

  There had been a few casualties from the first strike. Clem Bryant, Daryl Morganstern and Henny Johnson were listed among the dead.

  “There’s something you should know, Kane,” Lakesh said when the ex-Magistrate finally regrouped with his friends in the transformed operations room of the life camp. “There’s no sign of Brigid—she’s not here.”

  Kane looked steadily at Lakesh as he snacked on some freeze-dried rations that had been recovered from storage. “Don’t say it, Lakesh,” he warned, “because she’s not dead. I’d know if she was.”

  “I’ve prioritized getting the transponder monitoring equipment up and running again,” Lakesh explained hopefully, referring to the hidden biometric signal that every member of the Cerberus team carried. “Once we have access to that data, we’ll be able to locate all our personnel. Brigid among them.”

  “Do that,” Kane agreed brusquely.

  He was tired and hungry and he wasn’t happy about what he’d had to do to Dylan in the armory. The man was a farmer, misguided and fooled into joining a cult created by an Annunaki prince. Maybe he had deserved better.

  “You look pensive,” Lakesh observed.

  “Just can’t shake the feeling that something has gone horribly wrong,” Kane said.

  “The redoubt can be rebuilt in time,” Lakesh reassured him, “and if Brigid’s alive we’ll find her.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Kane said. “It’s something more fundamental. We were caugh
t napping while the world changed. Now we’re playing catch-up and we don’t even know the rules of the new game.”

  Lakesh sighed. “I’ve instructed everybody to gather outside in twenty minutes,” he said. “We’ll work out our battle plan then, and I think the fresh air will do all of us some good. Don’t you?”

  Kane nodded. “There’s more than one way to build the future, I guess.”

  Chapter 30

  Wearing the torn remains of the hooded robe, Kane looked about him at the figures waiting on the plateau beyond the entrance to the Cerberus redoubt. Vast pillars of stone stood across the front of the door like the bars of a prison, blocking the entryway to anything wider than a man. His colleagues—his friends—were dotted about the sandy plateau, sitting on flat rocks or wandering about in little circles, taking in the fresh evening air. They looked dazed, and it put Kane in mind of the people he had freed from Tenth City all those months ago. Brewster Philboyd, Donald Bry, Lakesh—all of them looked like people waking up from a deep sleep, like people coming out of a coma. In a sense, Kane realized now, they were. Whatever had gone on in the place now called Life Camp Zero, it had been a far more subtle kind of infiltration than it had first appeared.

  Lakesh called the team over and began addressing the operations people among the group in his stentorian voice. Lakesh looked like an old man, Kane realized with a start. Incarceration had been a terrible drain on him, more so than any of the others. Domi stood at the Cerberus director’s side, propping him up as he took a head count and began organizing smaller groups. Domi had dressed in the bloody remains of her shorts and top, and her alabaster flesh was marred with scrapes and scratches.

  Someone was missing, Kane knew, feeling it deep in his being, almost like a physical wound. His anam-chara—Brigid Baptiste—was gone. Wherever she had been held, it wasn’t here in the altered structure of the redoubt. They had searched the whole facility, and Brewster Philboyd and Reba DeFore had managed to jury-rig the transponder monitoring equipment via a recovered laptop. Like all the Cerberus personnel, Brigid had a subcutaneous transponder injected beneath her skin, instantly traceable via the Cerberus mainframe. When Brewster had run the diagnostics through the laptop he had come up blank. Brigid had simply disappeared from the system; her transponder was no longer broadcasting a signal.

  Almost two dozen of the robed guards could be seen among the familiar Cerberus personnel, and they seemed just as confused as Kane’s people. A kind of mass hypnosis had swept over the crowd, and the prison guards were as much victims as their prisoners.

  From behind Kane, the familiar forms of Mariah Falk and Grant edged through the tight columns of stone, bringing with them loaded trays of food. Like everything else in the redoubt, the canteen had been overwhelmed with a lacing of rock, and its kitchens were in a state of ruin, most of the equipment unusable. Still, army rations had survived, and even the freeze-dried junk and canned gunk was better than nothing until Cerberus was up and running again.

  Mariah was talking with Grant about theories she was already developing about the stones, her geologist training giving her a particular insight into their structure and characteristics.

  “If we can find some way to negate their effects,” Grant agreed, “then we’ll be on the road to recovery.”

  Mariah nodded sadly. “I know it won’t bring people back,” she said, “but I guess we need to go forward now.”

  “It’s the only place left to go,” Grant told her. “Brave heart, Mariah—we’ll get through this mess in time.”

  The two strolled straight past Kane, Grant not recognizing his friend in the hooded robe of the enemy, taking him for one of the recovering guards who were only now beginning to wake up from the mass hypnosis they had suffered.

  Kane kept silent. There was someone else he needed to speak with first, before he could reacquaint himself with old friends. Kane scanned the group, searching for Rosalia. It would be just like her to skip out once things were quiet, he thought, disappearing like mist on a warm day. But no—there she was, standing at the edge of the plateau, tossing a stick out into the forest beyond for her nameless dog to chase, her long, dark hair billowing behind her in the wind, a pariah on the fringes of the group of friends.

  Hood up, Kane made his way past the familiar Cerberus personnel, ignoring them. He received a few odd looks, dressed as he was as one of the enemy, but for the most part the Cerberus people were busy catching up, getting medical attention and forming a battle plan with Lakesh at their center.

  “Rosie,” Kane called as he approached the beautifully tanned woman at the edge of the clearing.

  She turned to him, her hair whipping around her face in the wind until she pushed it away with a casual sweep of her slender hand. “I suppose you’ll be wanting that stone of yours removed now, huh, Magistrate man?”

  Kane nodded. “Yeah, but I wanted to say something.”

  Rosalia looked at him, her predatory eyes assessing the threat he might pose to her even now. Behind her, the dog came scampering out of the tree cover, the stick in its mouth. Kane watched as the mutt dropped the stick on the ground at her feet, panting eagerly for her to join in the game. Her expression fixed, Rosalia reached down and threw the stick off into the trees again, and the dog yipped as it turned, scurrying off through the bushes after it.

  “You did good there,” Kane told her, feeling a little uncomfortable in the woman’s presence. “Helped free my people. Got me out of a jam. For what it’s worth, I think you’re a good person.”

  Rosalia shook her head. “You’re so naive, Magistrate man,” she muttered.

  “Hey, I’m trying to pay you a compliment,” he said, irritation creeping into his tone. “I owe you. You helped me and I wanted to say thanks. That’s all it is, and you can decide for yourself if it’s worth anything coming from a Magistrate man like me.”

  Rosalia peered over Kane’s shoulder, looking at the pillars that occluded the entrance to the redoubt. “You going to rebuild?” she asked.

  Kane shrugged. “I don’t know yet. I’m not sure if it’s going to be safe to stay here right now. We might have to move on till we can figure everything out.”

  “I looked around a little,” Rosalia admitted. “You had a pretty impressive setup here. I’m sorry it got messed up the way it did.”

  Kane nodded graciously. “Cerberus has spent years lurching from one threat to the next, confident we could react to whatever showed up on the horizon,” he said. “I don’t think we ever realized we were in the war. This will change that—we can’t just react anymore. We’ll have to take the fight to Ullikummis now, and to Enlil and the other overlords. We’re not Magistrates turning up to fix problems. We’re soldiers right there in the trenches as grenades are landing at our feet.”

  Rosalia reached forward, pushed the hood from Kane’s head and looked into his steely gray-blue eyes. “You did good, Magistrate m—” She stopped. “You did good, Kane. Better than I—”

  The dog barked, cutting into her words. Kane looked down and saw that the mongrel had returned with the stick, dropping it at their feet, tail drumming playfully. Kane leaned down and took the stick, pulling his arm back and launching it off into the trees once more. The dog scampered off, tail wagging.

  Kane turned back to Rosalia, looking at the beautiful woman as she pushed the hair away from her face yet again. “Than you what?” he prompted. “You were saying.”

  She smiled enigmatically. “You came through all right,” she told him. Then she reached for his left sleeve, pushed it back as Kane turned over his arm. “Shall we do this, then?”

  He nodded. “I’ll go find someone to take care of your dog,” he said.

  “He’ll be fine,” Rosalia assured him as she produced the little sewing kit from the folds of her robe. “You sit down. This will hurt, but you’ll be fine. I did it to myself a couple times, before I figured out how the stones worked.”

  “You still have one inside you,” Kane stated as he sat dow
n on the dirt.

  “I’ll keep it for now,” Rosalia told him, pulling a needle from her kit. “May be useful in this brave new world Ullikummis is creating.”

  Kane nodded. “It’s an alien artifact, you realize.”

  Rosalia looked at the ex-Mag for a moment, her dark eyes flashing with mischief. “I have it under control, Kane,” she promised. “You need to stop worrying so. You’re like an old woman.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered as she dug the needle between the veins of his wrist. “I get that a lot.”

  Rosalia probed with the sewing needle, wiggling its point beneath Kane’s skin until she located the little coin-size stone that had affixed itself to his insides. Kane winced as he felt the needle scrape against the thing buried inside him, felt Rosalia begin to pluck it out of his body the way one plucks at a splinter.

  “Come on, brave Magistrate man,” she goaded. “Big boys don’t cry.”

  Kane grunted, keeping his arm still as Rosalia worked. It took almost fifteen minutes of probing and scraping, but finally she pulled the hidden stone to the surface, worked it through a split she had made in the skin. It emerged covered in blood, with threads of flesh still attached to the surface. With the point of the needle, Rosalia flicked the stone away, and Kane watched as the bloody object rolled a few feet across the ground.

  Kane held his right hand against his wrist to staunch the flow of blood that trickled downward. Rosalia wiped the needle on the material of her robe and replaced it in the little pocket sewing kit she carried. Her dog had returned and it sniffed at the bloody stone, whined and turned away as if disinterested.

  “That’s one weird dog,” Kane murmured.

  “One of a kind,” Rosalia agreed. “You okay?”