Truth Engine (14 page)

“Wake up, Magistrate man.” It was a woman's voice, throaty, with the lilt of an accent.

Kane's eyes opened, the hard crust of sleep caught between the lashes of his left. He reached up, brushed the sleep away, trying to focus his mind.

“Are you awake?”

It was the woman's voice again. Kane recognized it now as belonging to Rosalia, the street thief cum bodyguard who had accompanied First Priest Dylan into his cell.

Kane sprang like a jungle cat, grappling her legs and dragging her to the floor. He heard her head thump against the wall behind her, and she spit out a curse as she collapsed before him.

To his right, something barked, and Kane felt a furry lump of muscle barrel into his side—Rosalia's dog, an ugly, pale-eyed mongrel. Kane kicked out, booting the animal away. It slammed against the wall, whined as it fell down.

Kane turned back to the woman as she struggled to get up, and his hand snapped out, thrusting her back to the floor of the cavern. He was on top of her in an instant, drawing his fist back, ready to pound her as she squirmed beneath him.

“Let me out of here!” Kane snarled.

With her hood and long hair splayed around her,
Rosalia looked back at Kane through the semidarkness. “Don't b—” she began.

But Kane didn't let her finish. His hand snapped out, striking her across the face. When he pulled it back there was blood on it, and the woman's lip was split, and bloody.

“Let me out of here!” Kane snarled again, his eyes fixed on the woman's.

“Just wai—”

He struck her again, his open hand slapping across her jaw. “Let me out of here!” he repeated. Beside him, the dog was barking, baring its teeth but not quite brave enough to approach the ex-Mag.

Rosalia's dark eyes fixed on Kane's, and he was impressed to see they betrayed no fear. She waited, saying nothing for an extended moment while he crouched atop her, his hand poised to strike her again.

He waited but she said nothing, just holding his gaze with her own. The cavern was still sealed closed, with no sign of the door through which the woman must have entered.

Finally, Rosalia spoke. “Listen to me,” she said. “Just listen for a moment and stop thinking with your fists. Can you do that?”

Kane looked at her, relaxing his hand but still holding it above her like a threat.

She turned then, hushing the dog with a few calming words, the way a mother would address an irritating child. The dog whined momentarily, then fell silent, its tail brushing the wall of the cave as it skulked away. Then the beautiful dark-haired woman turned back to Kane, the trace of a smile on her cut lips.

“You're a fool, Magistrate man,” she hissed. “We're both trapped here. Don't you realize that?”

“You were with him,” Kane growled. “Dylan. The first priest of the New Order.”

“Do you think I chose to be there?” Rosalia challenged.

“I dunno,” Kane snapped back. “The last time we met you were in the employ of street scum. I'm not seeing much difference, except this guy's dressing up what he's peddling as religion.”

“They tell you to submit, Kane,” Rosalia told him, and he realized she was using his name for the first time, “and you have to.”

“That's not true,” he retorted.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “They don't give you a choice. They ask and then they tell and then they force you.”

“They force
you?
” Kane asked.

“I don't know how much you've seen,” Rosalia told him as she lay sprawled on the rock floor, “so if this sounds like lunacy then you'll just have to trust me, okay?”

“You must be thinking of a different Magistrate man,” Kane said mockingly, turning her curse against her.

Rosalia ignored him. “They have things called obedience stones,” she said. “They plant them inside you. They block your thoughts, sap your willpower.”

Kane knew she was telling the truth. He had watched one of the stones the intruders had thrown as it tried to bury itself in his flesh. The Annunaki, for whom these people worked, were masters of organic technology. What she was saying sounded like madness, but it had the ring of truth.

“Go on,” Kane instructed.

“You think maybe you can get off me first?” Rosalia asked.

“Don't push your luck, princess,” he growled. “So, these obedience stones. You have one?”

“Yes,” Rosalia said. “It's in my arm. It's how I got in here.”

“Say that again?”

“The doors are operated by a pulse from the stones,” Rosalia explained. “Only the faithful can come and go as they please in the new world.”

Kane could worry about that later. “But this thing—this stone—it makes you obey the big cheese? Is that right?”

“It works better on the weak-minded,” Rosalia said, “and needs a broadcast unit to have the desired effect.”

“Broadcast unit,” Kane mused. “So, if you're in the gang, how come you're telling me this?”

“It works on the weak-minded,” Rosalia repeated, and Kane noticed there was a degree of arrogance to the set of her jaw now.

“And you're telling me,” Kane said slowly, “that you're not.”

“I figured out a way to vent it,” Rosalia said. “Catch it quick enough and it can't take proper hold.”

Something occurred to Kane then, and his hand tightened, ready to hit the woman beneath him again. “This a trick to get me to accept one of these things? To submit?”

“Oh, Magistrate man, you are so naive,” Rosalia mocked. “You've lived in a world of blacks and whites for so long that you've forgotten what it is to have color. Look at you. Look around you. You're one man, stuck in a cell with no door, suffering from dehydration and slowly being starved to death. And you think I'd come here and trick you into giving up when they know you're so close to doing so.”

“I'm not close,” Kane growled. But he could feel the light-headedness, feel the empty chasm of his gut.

“What, you think Dylan will say ‘We tried keeping him three days in a cell. Might as well give up and let him go'?” Rosalia challenged.

Kane thought about that, let the woman's argument sink in. Finally he nodded, and then he climbed from Rosalia's form, stepped away. As he did so, the dog snarled again, but Kane just glared at it, his tolerance exhausted.

Before him, Rosalia reached into her robe and produced a handkerchief, which she used to wipe the blood from her lip. The cut had dried now, and she spit on the handkerchief to moisten it and clean the blood that had dried against her skin. Standing, she brought her face close to Kane's beneath the flicking magma light, gesturing to the cut. “All gone?” she asked. “Why?”

“They see I'm hurt and they'll know something happened,” Rosalia explained. “Not good.”

There was a thin line of blood still on her chin, and Kane wet his finger to clean it. His saliva was thick and gunky, as if he'd dipped his finger in sauce. “Stay still,” he instructed.

Once he'd finished cleaning her face, Rosalia continued her explanation. “You're stuck here, Magistrate man,” she said. “It's just a matter of time now, and they know it.”

“Dylan?” Kane asked.

“Others, too.”

“We saw fifteen, maybe twenty when they attacked Cerberus,” Kane recalled.

“More than that,” Rosalia told him with irritating
vagueness. “They want you to submit because you're a leader.”

“What about Lakesh?” Kane asked.

Rosalia looked at him blankly. “The name means nothing to me,” she admitted.

Kane pondered how much he should tell this woman, this potential enemy. But she was right—he was stuck here and she was all he had for now. “Lakesh Singh,” he told her. “He runs the Cerberus operation.”

Rosalia shrugged. “There are others being kept here, in this facility. So—maybe?”

Others,
Kane heard, and his thoughts automatically went to his
anam-chara,
his soul friend. “What about Baptiste? And Grant,” he added.

“Kane,” Rosalia urged, “I don't have much time here. You're out of the game right now, you understand me?” He nodded.

“I'm offering to deal you back in if you'll trust me,” she continued. “You in?”

Kane held out his hand to her and she took it. “I'm in,” he assured her.

“Then this is what we're going to do,” Rosalia began.

Domi lay in the semidarkness of her cell, the light above her fluttering like the feathers of a crow taking wing. She held one bone-white arm over her head, using it to cover both her ears, with hand and upper arm respectively. She was naked through choice, having stripped off the slight garments she had worn when she had entered this now-sealed cavern. Beneath the fluttering magma glow of the light, her goose-white skin looked orange, like an evening ray of sunlight snapped off and thrust into the cavern. Hidden by her right ear, her wrist bore the jagged scarring of a hideous wound, its blush of red looking horribly out of place against her pure white flesh. Domi cried in silence, thick tears drooling down her face from her eerie red eyes. She ached.

Domi was especially sensitive to changes in the atmosphere around her, some curious byproduct of her up-bringing in the savage Outlands, and the albinism that defined her. Now she lay crying beneath the dim light of the magma pod. Its flickering was faint, and others less sensitive than her might not have even noticed the changing frequency. But she saw it,
felt
it deep within her brain. It was giving her tangle-brain, the same way that the towers of the villes gave her tangle-brain when she was cooped up within them for too long.

Domi glanced up from the stony floor, scanning the rocky ceiling seven feet above her, where the single
indentation of light glowed with all the intensity of a cooking ring, a little blister of orange in the blackness of the cave. It wasn't just a light, Domi realized, it was a broadcaster. It sent out a signal that could dull a man's thoughts, could make him placid. But the broadcast beacon did not work on its own. A broadcast unit needs a receiver.

Instinctive and emotional, Domi was considered by many of her peers to be a barbarian. And they were right to an extent, but it was folly to confuse a barbarian with a simpleton. Domi was smarter than many gave her credit for; her smarts just worked in different ways from the likes of Lakesh and Brigid and all the other scientists and doctors and big brains that inhabited the halls of the Cerberus redoubt.

Domi had figured out that the broadcast signal required a receiver to do its work. Sure, the lights could affect the brain in a dull sort of a way, but to really work to their fullest extent, they needed a pickup unit to feed the transmission to their victims.

They had tried to give Domi a receiver before they'd locked her in this cell. A tiny stone no larger than her thumb joint had been placed at the hollow of her wrist. She had been in the main corridor of the Cerberus redoubt at the time, close to the now-sealed rollback doors where the gaudy painting of Cerberus, the hound of hell, watched over everything with six fearsome eyes. She had gazed in horror as Kane had fallen to the might of the stone god, where Brigid and Grant had already been dispatched by this inhuman monstrosity. Domi had tried to help Kane, but her energy was spent, used up by crawling in the ventilation system of the redoubt, too much running, too long a fight against superior might. Half-giddy and light-headed, she had been dragged by the hooded
figures to join her colleagues at the end of the corridor, where Lakesh, Falk, Bry and the others waited, hands knitted behind their heads like good little prisoners. Grant's unconscious form had been dragged along, too, but Kane had been left where he lay, the bloody wounds on his grazed face glistening, the shadow suit torn where it had taken unimaginable punishment at the hands of Ullikummis and his men. Domi peered at Kane through narrowed eyes as she was dragged past his motionless body, and she silently hoped he was still alive.

Farther down the corridor that ran the length of the redoubt, Brigid Baptiste lay on her back, her hair spread about her head like a fiery halo. She twitched and moaned as she lay there, unconscious but restless, and Domi struggled to reach for her, shrugging away from the grip of the hooded figures who held her.

“Let me go,” she'd snarled. “I have to see if Brigid's okay.”

One of the hooded figures reached for Domi, grabbing her wrist and pulling her back like an errant child. She had hissed at the contact, baring her teeth at her attacker.

Then another of the hooded intruders grabbed Domi's other hand and, as she tried to kick out, two more grabbed her by the legs, carrying her between them like a splayed star. After a moment, Domi stopped struggling, realizing it was hopeless, that she was expending energy for no purpose other than to indulge her own temper. A short while later, she was tossed in among the other captured personnel, the robed guards watching her with contempt, the way one would watch a rabid animal.

Daryl Morganstern, the theoretical mathematician Domi and Brigid had been defending in the upstairs lab, had also been dragged down to join the others, and he
looked close to death, his face bruised and bloody, his eyes wandering and unfocused. Domi wanted to ask how he was, but the rumbling voice of the stone god burst into her thoughts like a hurricane smashing into an old barn.

“Obedience,” Ullikummis stated, his burning eyes flicking across the group, “is your key. Obedience will open up the new world for each of you. And through obedience you will learn progression, such as it ever was writ.”

Domi tried to make sense of the stone monster's words, studying where his face and chest had been burned by the acid, a blackened charring, black on black. He was talking about conformity, she realized, and that was something Domi had little tolerance for. Until she had reached her teens, she had avoided ville life for that very reason, only arriving in Cobaltville as a sex slave in the Tartarus Pits. Domi was no scholar of history, but she had picked up things from Brigid and Lakesh, and she recognized that history was often built on agreements and obedience. What Ullikummis was bringing them was an old, old story, a scenario that had been with man since the dawn of civilization. It was a scenario that seemed ingrained within the very genetic makeup of humankind.

Ullikummis strode along the group of wary prisoners, studying each in turn the way a sergeant major might study his troops.

“Submit,” he explained, “and the future will be yours. We shall build utopia together. Embrace the future. Submit.”

And then the great stone god had touched his upper thigh, brushing the rough, lumpy stonework there until he came away with a dozen flecks of stone, snapped from his body like scabs. A moment passed as Ullikummis
scanned the group sitting before him. Domi could feel the irritation emanating from this stone creature as he looked them over. The people of Cerberus had caused him trouble, more so than he had expected when his troops had infiltrated the mountain redoubt. Kane had dropped him, hurt him, almost defeated him in one-on-one combat. Perhaps this Annunaki prince held himself above the simple apekin that cowered before him, but Domi sensed he was angry, that he wanted to conclude this swiftly so he might move on, wash the burning acid from his body, pluck the bullets from his flesh.

Ullikummis paced for a moment, his footsteps echoing loudly in the tunnel, looking at each of the exhausted figures resting there on the cold floor of the redoubt— Lakesh, Philboyd, Sinclair, Falk. His stonelike flesh still bubbled and misted with the corrosive effects of the acid, although it had dulled to a whisper of smoldering trails now when he walked. Finally, the stone giant stopped, standing before Daryl Morganstern, the most recent addition to the prisoner group. Kane was being dragged to join them now, along with Brigid, but both remained unconscious. Morganstern, at least, was awake.

Ullikummis reached for Morganstern where he knelt, plucking him from the floor with an easy show of his phenomenal strength, lifting the mathematician into the air with one hand. In his other hand, Ullikummis rattled the clutch of stones he held, shaking them like dice. Then, still holding Morganstern's trembling body three feet off the floor, Ullikummis reached out with his other hand and brought one of those strange stone growths toward the man's forehead, rubbing it against the bloody skin of his head with a misplaced sense of gentleness.

Delirious from his earlier beating, Morganstern struggled to maintain eye contact, burbling something at the
monster who held him, the scabbing blood streaking down the side of his face in red and black.

“Submit,” Ullikummis instructed, his voice eerily calm. Then he pressed the fleck of stone he held to Morganstern's forehead with his thumb, forcing it into the skin in the space between the man's eyes.

Morganstern began to scream, and several of the Cerberus prisoners gasped or turned away. Mariah Falk muttered a prayer she remembered from high school, turning away from the vision before her as the man struggled in Ullikummis's grip, his legs kicking out and his voice hoarse with screaming. The bloody gash at the side of his head was oozing blood once more where the scab had broken.

“Please stop,” Lakesh pleaded from the group of captives. “Please don't do this terrible thing. The man is doing you no harm now. No one is.”

Ullikummis ignored him.

Domi just watched, saying nothing. She had grown up in the Outlands and had seen worse sights than this.

Ullikummis pushed the stone into Daryl Morganstern's head, exerting incredible pressure with just his thumb, forcing the small stone against the man's skin until it ruptured, embedding the stone there like a tack.

Then, with a casual brutality that surprised Domi, Ullikummis dropped Morganstern like a rag doll, letting the slender mathematician tumble to the floor. The man was still gasping, tears running down his cheeks, his fists clenched and his limbs twitching in agony. He cried out in pain as he landed on the floor of the tunnel.

Domi and the others watched in amazement as the stone at Morganstern's forehead began to sink beneath the skin, like a pebble dropped in milk, disappearing under the surface with just a circling ripple of skin marking its
passage. Where the skin rippled, the scab at the side of Morganstern's head tore open wider, and a rich line of red spilled down the side of his face. Daryl Morganstern cried out in agony, slapping his palms against the floor as the alien thing drilled into him. “Make it stop,” he cried. “Make it stop.”

Ullikummis looked down at the writhing figure and breathed a single word: “No.”

Rolling on the floor, his limbs twitching, Morganstern looked at the stone god with pleading eyes. “Please,” he cried, “make it stop.”

“Submit,” Ullikummis instructed, “and the pain will pass.”

“N-no,” Morganstern muttered, but it wasn't clear anymore if he was talking to Ullikummis or the agony that was gripping him inside his head. Then he shuddered, and a bloody rent opened on his forehead, oozing another thick ribbon of blood down his face. “No,” he screamed as his head literally tore apart.

Domi watched, keeping a tight rein on her emotions as Daryl Morganstern's head was ripped apart by the thing that Ullikummis had placed there. The theoretical mathematician lay twitching in a scarlet puddle of his own blood as his head disintegrated before Domi's eyes. His hair fell away, clumps of it dropping to the floor, matted with blood. Suddenly the brain was visible, brain stem glistening as the man's skull fractured, parting as though cut with a blade. And still he cried out, seemingly longer than he should have the conscious will to do so. But finally his struggles ended, and his body stopped twitching, its horrifying dance of death ceasing at last.

Ullikummis turned back to the remaining Cerberus exiles, who knelt before him and his people on the floor of the redoubt tunnel. “Submit,” he instructed.

Then Ullikummis held out the other stones he had plucked from his body, passing them to the hooded figures, who began to move among the crowd, choosing who would suffer the intrusion of the strange stones. To Domi's relief, her lover, Lakesh, was passed over, described as “too old” for what these people had in mind. It was understandable. It was evident that the procedure was physically traumatic, and Lakesh had been getting more and more infirm over the past few months. Although Domi did not know why, he was suffering from accelerated aging, his body leaping years in the space of weeks. The man had been plagued with bouts of exhaustion for the past several months now, and he seemed only to be getting worse. For once, Lakesh's ill health might prove his unlikely savior.

However, where Ullikummis had placed the stone in his victim's head, the hooded figures instead used people's arms as the insertion points for the stones, pressing them into the soft flesh of the inside wrist, holding them there until they burrowed beneath the skin and attached themselves to their unwilling hosts. Some people screamed as the stones drilled into their bodies, while others wept quietly. Several of the stronger members of the facility remained stoically silent, letting the stones infiltrate their bodies without complaint. Perhaps these last had already submitted mentally, resigning themselves to their fate, as Ullikummis had urged.

Domi watched warily as several of the robed figures turned toward her, and to her surprise she recognized one of them with a start—it was Edwards, the ex-Mag turned Cerberus rebel whom she had accompanied on field missions time and again. The broad-shouldered ex-Mag was doing Ullikummis's bidding, doing it willingly. As he stepped closer, Domi saw that Edwards had a scuff
mark on his forehead like some dark pimple, and she concluded that the man had one of these terrible stones buried there, hidden at the front of his brain. How long had he had that? Could Edwards have been carrying this evil seed ever since he first encountered Ullikummis—perhaps three months ago? Had Edwards been in the Annunaki's thrall all along?

Domi recalled how Edwards's Commtact unit had ceased working while they were out in the field recently. The radio unit was inserted in his mastoid bone, but its contacts had failed somehow, some kind of blockage to the sensors rendering it inoperative. Could that have had anything to do with this whole affair? Could the buried stone have somehow disrupted the comm device?