Reality Echo

by James Axler

  Lugh was the grandson of Balor. And Bres boasted that he himself was the son of Balor. Bres’s resemblance to the Tuatha’s remarkable physiological superiority and his considerable strength could have made him one of many of Enlil’s children. Fand was a daughter of the same Dragon King.

  Thrush-Kane reeled. Why would Bres help, then sabotage, an effort to infiltrate Cerberus and lead an assault on the most powerful of the Annunaki? Because Bres wanted to return to his ancestor’s favor. The betrayal of the Fomorians was a calculated, cold plan set in motion to protect the king of the overlords, made up on the spot when Thrush-Kane had been overheard bragging to the captive Kane.

  “Kane! Wake the hell up!” Wynan shouted. “You’re zoning out!”

  “Bres and Enlil were linked. Bres is the grandson of Enlil,” Thrush-Kane said out loud.

  Morganstern tilted his head. “Kane, we need you to focus on the problems we have right now.”

  Thrush-Kane’s lips tightened into a bloodless line. He had to sell this next bit of information hard and fast. “You don’t get it, do you? Something else got into Cerberus along with us. That’s why I was really captured. I’m some form of Trojan horse.”

  Morganstern and Wynan looked at each other. Thrush-Kane could see the thought processes going between the pair.

  “We’d have noticed a biological entity,” Wynan declared.

  “But we’d also have noticed if there were microscopic constructs, akin to nanotechnology, that were brought in via the transporter,” Morganstern mused. He looked at Thrush-Kane, then reached out toward the false man’s face. “What if it was something that we wouldn’t expect?”

  Thrush-Kane pushed aside Morganstern’s hand. “What are you talking about?”

  “You were unconscious, correct?” Morganstern asked. “Given what we know about the kind of technology the Annunaki have, they have specific signals that can alter DNA radically in a manner that defies the conservation of energy.”

  “Right, mass doesn’t just spring out of nowhere,” Thrush-Kane said.

  “So what if we’re dealing with some form of mathematical theorem, but one that could be housed in the most innocent of devices, such as your Commtact insert. Not the plate, but the implant on your jawbone,” Morganstern replied. “Once we’d gone over you with a fine-tooth comb and found absolutely everything we expected to find, especially the Commtact implants—”

  “They stored a computer virus in my Commtact implant, and once I was hooked back up with the full plate system, I became a carrier who infected the Cerberus mainframe,” Thrush-Kane answered.

  Morganstern nodded. “Insidious. But highly likely.”

  “So how do we jump-start the mainframe again?” Thrush-Kane asked. “Especially if we can’t communicate.”

  Wynan had something pulled apart on the table next to the intercom. Thrush-Kane recognized it as some manner of keyboard-faced watch. “Daryl, get a fork, some diet soda and unscrew a nut from under the table. We’ll need some kind of battery power to get the door mechanism unlocked enough for Kane to pry the doors open.”

  “Will that be enough power?” Morganstern asked.

  “Only if you use a thirty-two-ounce cup,” Wynan replied snottily. “Move it, math boy!”

  Thrush-Kane had dodged a bullet so far. Cerberus was in a state where Grant couldn’t possibly be sent to find the real Kane, and with the help of the two lunar scientists, he’d constructed a plausible alibi for how the redoubt had been crippled.

  Maybe he’d get a chance at Enlil after all.

  If Thrush-Kane hadn’t been so relieved at the excuse that could clear him to continue his hunt for Enlil, perhaps he would have noticed Daryl Morganstern talking with cafeteria worker Clem Bryant, or the grim worry etched into the mathematician’s face as he spoke with one of the most capable minds in Cerberus.

  Chapter 16

  The Appalachians

  Kane had approached to within earshot of a Fomorian guard who had a radio unit on hand. The mutant was paying attention to the progress of the hunting party that had been sent after Kane, and right now, they were backtracking and searching thoroughly for whatever path Kane might have taken to elude them. Little did the hideous pursuers realize that Kane was a mile away from them, crouched in shadows and foliage, effectively invisible.

  “No sign of the human’s return to the compound,” the guard said. “Perimeter patrols are still on alert now that we’ve got the manpower.”

  “This monkey is a tricky bastard. He’s a legend among men for a reason,” came the crackling anger over the radio. “Balor’s keeping his Eye out, too, right?”

  “No, we just assumed that the Eye of Balor is too useful, and we should challenge ourselves,” the guard grumbled, sarcasm dripping like venom off his words. “Big as he is, and cool as his damn eye is, Balor’s just one man. Mutant. There’s just one Balor. And he can’t see everywhere at once!”

  “Bres’s balls!” the hunting party on the other end exclaimed. “We’re sorry we hurt your feelings. Tell you what—next time you’re getting your vagina cleaned, we’ll spring for a badger to be thrown up it.”

  Kane could see the anger screwing up on the guard’s face. “You’re all bastards.”

  The guard pivoted angrily, resisting the urge to grind the field radio into splinters in his massive fist. This creature was one of the single-armed monstrosities, and his sharp eyes searched for any movement. Only by avoiding the Fomorian’s peripheral vision was Kane able to move more than a few inches, even in the darkness and foliage camouflaging his presence.

  Kane made a short dash and knelt in loose soil that had been thrown up in the digging efforts to rescue other Fomorians trapped in caves under the avalanche. One of the benefits of his canvas parka on top of the body wraps he’d fashioned for himself was that the rough tarp was relatively moisture resistant, but it still picked up wet mud as he slid through it. The mud not only gave Kane another layer of lifesaving insulation, but it provided him with further visual camouflage, both to regular eyesight and any enhanced optics he’d encounter. That Balor—the largest of the Fomorians—hadn’t called out an alert meant that Kane’s visual signature was minimal.

  Oblivious to the ghostly passage of Kane, the Fomorian guard pivoted again and looked for more signs of intrusion. It wasn’t the fastest Kane had ever gone, but he left no footprints, made no sound and, most importantly, hadn’t made any sudden movements that would be visible as a shadow in the corner of some mutant’s eye. While he was armed and well rested now, he was still outnumbered, and each of Bres’s mutant horde was more than a physical match for him. Caution was the order of the day, and true stealth was required.

  The flurry of activity that would be required to knife an unsuspecting sentry would betray him immediately. The sight of his motion, the sound of the attack and the scent of fresh blood spilled would point the Fomorians toward the intruder within their ranks. Once it had gotten to that, there was no way that Kane could endure their attention.

  How he’d survive if he saw an opportunity to snatch Epona and flee was something he hadn’t quite worked out yet, but advance strategy wasn’t Kane’s forte. Adaptability and resourcefulness were more his game.

  “Father,” a young, almost feminine-sounding voice spoke up.

  Kane slithered closer to the sound and spotted Balor and Bres, seated around a fire. Over the glow of the flames, he could see a frightened face. Epona was seated with them, her arms clutched to her shoulders as she gathered her cloak around her as a shield more from fear than from cold.

  “Balor?” Bres asked. The voice issued again, incongruously from the huge, apelike being seated at the fire.

  “If Kane does not return for the woman, how will we be able to get after Thrush?” Balor inquired.

  “We will have visitors soon,” Bres answered. “You do not know the stories of the outlanders, do you?”

  “I have heard them, but why would those humans risk their lives just to help a group of obstin
ate hermits scattered across a mountain range?” Balor asked.

  “Because these humans are not as the rest. They are survivors, like the outcasts who refused to bow to the barons in their villes, but they are not self-centered. They are warriors, but they have deluded themselves that they possess a cause,” Bres explained.

  Balor shook his cyclopean head. “They must be afraid of Enlil taking roost. That’s how the witch explained it. It’s the only thing that really makes sense.”

  “You have to learn, my son, that there were once great herds of these humans who strode across the land. Many of them were either sheep or disgruntled loners who hid out from the world. But there were many who were not ruled by base design,” Bres said. The beautiful godling stood up, scanning into the night sky. “They dreamed of a better world.”

  “What could be better than our life?” Balor asked.

  “They would see us as low beasts, living hedonistically off the pain and suffering of our prey,” Bres said.

  Balor shrugged. “So? Even in their literature, their vanity and greed is apparent. What they call love is simply animalistic rutting dressed up with pretty language. There is an inherent dishonesty in their way of life, a denial that to live, you simply must kill. Crops were grown to be cut down. Animals raised to be slaughtered for meat. Lower classes forced to breed to provide labor and cannon fodder for their wars. We take no slaves. We fit in with the cycle of life, and don’t imprison our food in a no-win lifestyle that ultimately ends in death on a dinner plate, or as refuse to be ground up and fed to their kin.”

  Bres smiled at the beast’s statement. Kane’s stomach turned at the fact that the monsters before him had a philosophy that had its own powerful logic. It was why Kane often felt best when he was living among Sky Dog’s tribe. There was a freedom of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that allowed for an almost placid worldview.

  The trouble was, Kane couldn’t afford to live that way all the time. He was a man who was driven by duty to fight against oppression and cruelty. There were cultures around the world that had risen further than the perfect equilibrium of the Native Americans around the Cerberus redoubt. They sought civilization, not the false iterations that had sprung up between the time of skydark and the reunification programs of the hybrid barons. It was why Kane so readily had fallen into his duties as a Magistrate, before he realized the corruption in the system.

  Another pang of nausea hit Kane as he realized that Balor, despite his size and brutish appearance, was far more than a mindless slab of muscle with superhuman strength. The unholy glow of Balor’s single eye hinted at technological advances that at the very least would make it impossible to hide from the monstrosity. Couple that with agility, speed and intelligence necessary for the barbaric hunting the Fomorians had mastered, and Kane was facing a truly formidable opponent.

  Kane slithered silently, remaining low to the ground, his ears peeled.

  “We do have a life without lies and without pretense,” Bres answered. “We take what we need, and we do not take more than we have to.”

  The body-racking spite Kane felt for Bres tingled all through his skin. Though he resembled his kinsman, the Mad Maccan, Kane’s familiarity with the being was on a more instinctual level. The beautiful shimmer of the godling’s skin, the perfection of his limbs and features, were a blatant lie, hiding the rot and fury within a moldering soul. Bres’s first armies had lain siege to the Tuatha de Danaan at Enlil’s beck and call, and the bloodshed of that conflict went beyond mere soldiers slaying one another. Towns of innocents had been sacked, noncombatants tortured and cannibalized in wild orgies of violence and cruelty that made strong men vomit when they came upon the aftermath.

  Bres, for some purpose, had remained silent and out of the way for a while. Perhaps the reunification program had been an inspiration to grow the might of the Fomorians back to the days when the Annunaki and the Tuatha de Danaan still warred incessantly.

  Kane refocused his attention on his immediate situation. He had to ensure Epona’s safety and survival. The terrified witch was withdrawn and looked as if she’d need to be carried out of the Fomorian compound. Kane knew that logically, he should leave her behind and come back when he had more assistance from his allies back at Cerberus. However, the woman’s ashen, catatonic state was not something to which he could abandon her. Not with cruel predators like Bres and Balor responsible for her care. Rescue was not going to be easy, but turning his back on someone in need was something that Kane refused to do.

  As he closed with her, he felt the familiar rustle of a transmitting mind. He had to have been five feet behind her, slithering on the ground soundlessly when he was close enough to “hear” her thoughts. Since no animals were coming close to the compound to speak to him, and her concentration was so deep, he wondered if she was scouring the mountain slope in order to locate him.

  Kane closed his eyes and sent himself into a state of centered calm. It was a way that he had been able to put aside the conscious fears and subconscious instincts of horror and revulsion he’d felt toward the alien-like Balam. That semimeditative state was how he’d become more comfortable with Balam’s telepathic communication, and Kane wondered if that state of mind would make it easier for Epona to reach him.

  Epona, I’m right behind you, Kane thought.

  A jolt of surprise crawled back along the mental projection, and Kane braced himself against a reflexive wince. Moments later, the unbridled joy of a telempathic embrace engulfed him, waves of relief and joy flooding.

  Easy, Kane thought. What are you trying to do?

  He wondered exactly how Epona was reading what he communicated telepathically. However, she made herself perfectly clear in terms of emotional imagery and stimulation. She understood him, especially his questions, and now she was transmitting the sight of Grant arriving, bringing all the Tigers of Heaven, the citizen soldiers of Aten and the robots and footmen of New Olympus.

  Cavalry, Kane interpreted. But is it the one I envisioned?

  There was a tinge of disappointment, and Kane had his answer. Epona was in concentration, disguised as fearful torment, utilizing her granny witch powers in order to bring in enough of a distraction to allow her to escape. Kane’s return to retrieve her was merely icing on the cake, and Kane was given the distinct impression that she was ready to run as long and as fast as she possibly could.

  Give me a countdown—I’ll add to the distraction, Kane projected. Bres had drifted into reciting poetry for his brute-bodied son. Balor was in rapt attention, following his father as he paced and performed.

  A sentry in the compound gave a cry. “The hunting party has reported a contact!”

  Bres paused, looking toward the sentry. Neither of the two mutant leaders seemed disappointed at the interruption. “Watch her, son. This could merely be a feint.”

  Balor turned his baleful eye toward Epona. Even now, Kane could tell that there was some manner of weaponry within the fist-sized cybernetic orb in his face. Its sickly green glow bespoke lethal doses of radiation. Again, Kane remembered his prior life, how Lugh had utilized a mirrored shield to repel the deadly gaze of Bres’s father in order to get close enough to slay him. Kane didn’t have a shield, and he doubted the canvas and mud of his camouflage would do much more than add a tenth of a second to his resistance to whichever death ray spewed from the glowing green eye.

  But it was an eye, and it blinked, a massive lid flopping down over the iris and cornea like a bouncing window shade. Balor blinked, so he still retained the basic mental instinct put into humanity across its millennia of existence. Kane’s fingers clawed up a ball of mud, forming it and packing it. He’d need perfect timing in order to pull this off.

  Kane kept watch in his peripheral vision, alert for the sounds of the Fomorians as they gathered by Bres at the base of the mountain, keeping watch on the hunting party. They couldn’t see, but Kane heard the distant, tinny rattle of a radio.

  Epona sent Kane the image of a deer leading the h
unters on a game of cat and mouse, letting them get close just enough so that they still thought that there was something still worth hunting, but staying just beyond their range of vision. Kane smiled at Epona’s resourcefulness. He also envisioned thousands of eyes peering down upon them from the remaining trees on the mountainside. There was a horde, waiting on the witch’s summoning. Whatever the creatures were, they were invisible in the night, and yet had enough numbers to be considered a distraction. Thousands of eyes, the mental image repeated.

  Not a horde. A great flock.

  Epona straightened. “Kane…”

  Balor turned his eye toward her. “Where?”

  “Here!” Kane shouted.

  The green, glowing eye swiveled toward the Cerberus warrior, who rose and hurled his ball of mud with all of his strength. His throw was on target, smacking Balor in the face over his eye. Reflex forced the great brute to throw up both of his hands to claw away at whatever had smacked him and left a mushy smear all over his vision. Kane charged in that moment of distraction. On the mountainside, the explosive fluttering of thousands of bird wings went off at once, sounding for all the world like a thunderstorm of gunfire.

  At the base of the hill, Bres and his minions would be scrambling for cover as the clear, starlit sky suddenly turned black and the screeches of owls, nightingales and ravens split the air. Birds of all manner had taken wing, their throats belting forth the war cries of their species. The night shook with the combined cacophony of wing strokes and birdsong, and the great flock dropped out of the sky, zooming and dive-bombing the Fomorians in a wild aerial dance that kept the mutants off balance. Those with flesh-tearing beaks and meat-rending talons struck when they could, causing further distraction with their scratchings.

  In the meantime, Kane brought up both feet and pistoned them into Balor’s broad chest, knocking the huge Fomorian off balance and onto his back. Blinded by mud and caught by surprise, the giant was momentarily easy prey. Kane sought to further stun the bestial titan by jumping again, driving his heels into the flat slabs of muscle over Balor’s ribs. The Fomorian grunted as breath exploded from his lungs, but a massive paw rose from his splattered face to grab at Kane. The Cerberus warrior lashed out with a decisive kick that jarred the brute’s forearm bones. It felt like kicking a tree trunk, but the blow stopped the clawing grasp from catching anything but empty air. Kane wanted to avoid gunfire, knowing that even through the flock’s valiant distraction, the chatter of an automatic weapon would still be noticeable.