by James Axler
“You look like hell,” Rosalia said cheerily when she saw Kane approach. Around them, the spontaneous party continued apace, with many Cerberus personnel being reunited for the first time in two months.
“Good to see you, too,” Kane said.
Rosalia reached up, brushing gently at the place where the stone shard of Ullikummis had been embedded in Kane’s face. It had gone, withered and died during the conflict in string space, and all that remained was an ugly bruise that ringed Kane’s left eye.
Kane winced as Rosalia’s hand touched him. “Hey, careful.”
“You big girl,” Rosalia shot back. “You never like it when I play rough.”
Kane stared at her in surprise, but after a moment he saw her expression warm and she smiled, her even teeth bright in the midafternoon sunlight.
“You did good out there, from what I hear,” Rosalia told him.
“Yeah, from what I hear, too,” Kane admitted. “Damned if I actually understand half the shit I went through to get us here. Don’t tell anyone else I said that, though.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Rosalia said. “Big, strong Magistrate like you doesn’t need brains to understand things, does he?”
Kane laughed, shaking his head at the woman’s gentle mocking. But after a moment’s pause, his expression became somber. “Lakesh told me about your dog,” Kane said. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, what does it matter?” Rosalia said with resignation. The hound had died during the initial altercation with Enlil, sacrificing itself to end the battle.
“Mangy mutt saved my hide on a couple of occasions,” Kane reminded her. “Did the same for you, and it wouldn’t hurt to admit it, you know?”
“Never get close to things, Magistrate,” Rosalia told him, “’cause they’ll only let you down or get killed in the end.”
Kane reached for Rosalia, placing his hand gently on her arm and staring into her chocolate-colored eyes. “You didn’t let us down, Rosie. You came through, one hundred percent.”
Rosalia inclined her head coquettishly. “Yeah, well, guess what? I’m leaving.”
“Why?” Kane asked. “You can stay, you know. You’re one of us now. A fully paid-up, secret-decoder-ring-wearing Cerberus member.”
But Rosalia was shaking her head. “My place is elsewhere. You got Brigid back. Your trinity is restored. You don’t need me anymore, Kane.”
“You’re wrong. It’s not about numbers, Rosalia,” Kane told her, but already Rosalia was placing her finger to his lips.
“Never get close to things, Magistrate,” Rosalia said. “Then when they let you down or get killed, you don’t get soppy and sentimental.”
Kane nodded. Rosalia had her own path to travel. She didn’t need him or Cerberus. And she was right—they had recovered Brigid Baptiste, and with Grant convalescing after his own battles with the Annunaki god-prince, it seemed that they were finally getting back to normal. Which reminded him, where was Baptiste, anyway? Shouldn’t she be here?
* * *
OUTSIDE THE REDOUBT, Brigid’s colleagues were continuing their celebration. It was not just an expression of their joy, Brigid knew, but a way to reappropriate the base that had suffered so at Ullikummis’s hands. The next day, the rebuilding would begin in earnest.
Brigid had ducked out of the celebrations early, migrating to her old quarters, which, like everything else in the redoubt, were sprinkled with a light dusting of rock debris, new growths and lumps along the walls and door frames.
She swept wreckage from her bed and sat down, feeling the great sadness inside her. It was a sadness she simply did not know how to address. She had been someone else for a while, her body working to the commands of the shadow self that Ullikummis had created, the character known as Haight.
Brigid had remained largely unaware of Haight’s actions, but she sensed the things that had been done in her name, death reaped across the globe, friends turned upon, shot. Haight was some rabid part of Brigid, what happened when disease took control of the body. In this case the sickness was a god, a false god fallen from the heavens to reshape the world for his mother.
Brigid had used a mind trick to hide her true self, focusing on a mandala she had seen months before in a Soviet bunker. The mandala, a meditation tool capable of sending a person’s mind to another plane of existence, had been weaved on a Persian rug that now resided somewhere in Lakesh’s private quarters. The rug design showed the sky, colored blue with golden rings running through it in concentric circles, highlighted here and there with reds and greens. Brigid’s eidetic memory had stored its design, and when Ullikummis had come at her in the cavern cell, breaking her down and rebuilding her thoughts in the manner of the Annunaki, Brigid had re-created the mandala in her mind’s eye, sending her personality to that other plane of existence once she knew she could not stop him.
Every time Haight had seen blues and gold and green, it had been like an alarm clock ringing in her mind, trying to reawaken the real woman hiding within: Brigid Baptiste.
Brigid lay back on her bed, trying to remember what it was to be normal, trying to feel at home in a body that had been turned against everything she stood for. There, amid the debris on her bedside unit, Brigid spied an ancient paperback book—The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. It was one she had read before, not that long ago. Reaching out, Brigid took the book and flipped it open to the first page. It was a comfort, reading words already familiar.
In spite of her eidetic memory, Brigid knew that sometimes a book only revealed its true meanings on a subsequent reading; sometimes the real story was only clear once you had put it all together for yourself.
Alone in her ruined room, Brigid lay back on the bed and began to read.
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781459235298
Copyright © 2012 by Worldwide Library
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