Truth Engine (24 page)

“What the hell are you?” Kane growled.

“I am the future,” Dylan told him. “Ullikummis prom
ised 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 cancerous 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.

 

O
N 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.

 

D
OWN 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.

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.