Truth Engine

“Sorry, Mojambo,” Grant snarled, “gonna have to rain on your parade here.” Then he leaped from the floor, driving himself at Edwards like a wound spring.

Grant struck out with both fists, slamming one into the underside of the man’s jaw, even as the other pounded into his solar plexus. Edwards yelped with pain, toppling over into a fetal crouch. Behind him, the three hooded guards rushed forward, and Grant turned to face the newcomers.

“Grab him,” one of the guards ordered, “quickly!”

Instantly, Grant went on alert. He struck out blindly with his fist and caught the first of the men across the chest. He followed up with a low punch to his gut, striking with such force that the slender man doubled over, spitting gobs of blood as he tumbled to the floor.

Then the second one was upon him, and Edwards had recovered also, pushing his muscular form off the rough rock floor. Grant spun, booting the first in the face in a roundhouse kick that left him facing the ex-Magistrate again, whom he identified as the more dangerous foe.

As Grant turned, the third guard rushed at him, holding something in his bunched fist. Instinctively, Grant raised his left arm to block the blow, which had been intended for his skull. Flames of pain rushed through his forearm, and Grant screamed in agony, his voice high and strained.

Then Edwards socked him in the jaw, even as Grant tried to block him. It was like being hit in the face by a hammer, such was the power behind Edwards’s punch.

Grant staggered back, found himself stumbling against the rough tunnel wall, his ankles catching on one of those low ridges. Then the guard struck again, and Grant saw that he held a sliver of rock shaped like a blackjack, and was using it to strike out at his foe.

The tunnel before Grant seemed to whirl, the elevator doors to spin, and his vision blurred as he was set upon by the two men. He kicked out blindly, and felt his toe connect with one of his attackers. The dark form fell backward, toppling over and slamming into one of the walls with a thud. But the other one struck Grant again, kicking at his chest and face, forcing his head back against the hard floor of the cavern.

Grant was conscious of how the sounds around him changed, becoming distant as his skull struck the rock again. He reached out, trying to push his opponent away, but couldn’t seem to locate him through the miasma of his fuzzy vision. Then he felt another hammerlike punch, and his head snapped back once more.

And as Grant sank into unconsciousness under the rain of blows, he heard Edwards laugh.

“Welcome to hell, bitch,” his old colleague guffawed. “Enjoy your stay.”

The rock walls…the glowing magma within them…it all seemed to make some perverse kind of sense in that instant. Grant couldn’t recall how he had come to be here, but maybe Edwards was right. Maybe he was trapped in hell. Maybe they all were.

Chapter 7

Brigid waited a long time in the empty cavern, tied to the chair with nothing but the mirror for company. She tried to remember what had happened after she and her companions had arrived at Cerberus via the mat-trans and engaged with the hooded intruders, but every time her mind thought back on it, she found herself distracted by something in the mirror, certain she could see someone stalking toward her from behind. When she looked more closely, she saw it was nothing, just the dark shadows of the cavern playing tricks in the faintly swirling magma lighting.

And yet she could not relax. The mirror was like a ghost thing, an object sent to haunt her, to render her in a permanent state of anxiety. Perhaps that had been Ullikummis’s plan all along, to leave her with this simple torture, this way to seize her mind, her most powerful weapon.

So she watched the mirror, studied her reflection. Her cheeks were dirty, scuffed with grime. There was a crescent-shaped bruise dominating the righthand side of the face in the mirror. She remembered now how the magnetic desk tidy had been thrown at her, smashing her so hard she had felt the ache in her teeth.

But outside the ops room, it had been worse. There had been blood, washing down the walls and across the floor, a ghastly glistening sheet of crimson a half inch thick, enough to turn her stomach. She, Kane, Grant and Domi had stopped dead in their tracks, horrified by that sea of red swirling around their feet.

The lighting of the tunnel-like main corridor had been strobing on and off, illuminating the high rock ceiling in a firework staccato, flashing against the steel girders that held the roof in place above them.

Amid the pulsing lighting, Brigid had seen several figures lying motionless. She’d recognized Henny Johnson lying facedown in the pooling blood, her short dark bob matted against the side of her face. Automatically, Brigid had hurried over to the woman, her boots splashing in the wash of blood.

“Henny?” she’d asked, rolling the woman’s head. “Henny, are you—?”

She’d stopped. Henny’s eyes were open, but there was no acknowledgment on her blood-drenched face. Above her lifeless eyes, a wicked bruise showed across her pale forehead, and there was a clear indentation in her skull above her right eye. She was dead, struck by a stone.

Gently, Brigid had closed Henny’s eyelids, giving the armorer what little dignity she could in her final rest.

“Life spilled,” Domi had said, lifting one bare foot and looking at the blood oozing into the cracks and ridges between her toes. “Nasty shit.”

“What happened to the power?” Brigid asked, glancing to Domi as she stepped away from Henny’s fallen form. Domi had been the only one of them on site when the attack had begun; she was their only hope now of piecing things together.

“They attacked like locusts,” she explained. “Swarmed through the redoubt before we could respond. I watched on the monitors as they surged through the doors like a tidal wave. A tidal wave of people.”

“It makes no sense,” Brigid argued. “How could they just walk in?”

Domi raised her hands in a gesture of defeat, the Detonics Combat Master still clutched in her right fist. “They did—that’s all I know. It was so quick, Brigid. You wouldn’t believe.”

“They must have planned it, then,” Grant growled from where he was checking on one of the rooms that led off from the main artery. The room was empty, but the thin pool of blood was spreading across the floor even here.

Kane turned to Domi as the foursome continued hurrying along the wide corridor, he and Grant checking the side rooms with brutal efficiency in a standard Magistrate sweep pattern. “They must have got to the generator,” he surmised. “That’s why the lights are on the fritz. But I don’t get it—why didn’t anyone stop them?”

“We tried, Kane,” Domi told him hotly. “There are dead people all about—you notice that?”

Kane stopped, looking about him as if for the first time. The blood, the bodies, the ruin of familiar places. It seemed faintly unreal.

“Kane,” Grant called, standing in the doorway of one of the rooms. “You need to see…”

Kane had hurried over to join his partner, Brigid and Domi just a step behind him. Grant was standing at the door to a closet used for storing cleaning supplies. The light inside the cupboard was flashing on and off, making a tinkling note each time it winked on. Inside, Cerberus physician Reba DeFore was crouched on the floor, pulling her knees in close to her face. She was sobbing in silence, her shoulders shaking as she tried to stifle each cry.

“Reba?” Kane asked. “DeFore, it’s me. It’s Kane.”

The medic looked up, her brown eyes rimmed with red as she peered through the untidy mess of her blonde hair. DeFore had always taken special care with her hair, forming elaborate creations with the ash blonde tresses, different every day. Kane had never seen her like this.

“Reba?” Kane said again, his voice gentle. “Come on, it’s okay. What happened here? What happened to you?”

As he stepped forward, Kane felt the liquid under his heel, and realized that Reba DeFore was sitting in a pool of blood. She continued to shake as he approached her.

“He’s here,” DeFore said, her voice breathless with fear. “I saw him.”

Brigid was standing in the doorway, listening to their companion’s words. “He who?” she asked.

“The stone man,” DeFore explained.

Brigid could still remember the chilling sense of dread in DeFore’s tone, as if a part of her sanity had been stripped away.

BACK IN THE CAVE, there was movement in the mirror. Brigid shifted in her seat, feeling her tension rise as she warily watched the huge stone figure appear from the shadows. It was Ullikummis, the glowing strands of lava glittering across his charcoal flesh.

Brigid tried to turn, but couldn’t shift her head far enough, and was forced to watch the reflection of the great stone god striding toward her in the dim light. He stopped directly behind her, peering over her head at his own reflection in the mirror.

“You see the mirror?” Ullikummis asked.

Brigid studied the reflection of his craggy stone face looming out of the darkness above her own. He looked damaged, the stonework more ruined than she remembered, as if hit with buckshot, or a dead thing eaten by worms.

“Yes.” She nodded, the word little more than a breath.

She saw the stone colossus move his hands then, reaching behind her until she felt his hard, cool fingers pressing against the nape of her neck.

“What are you doing?” she blurted, unable to keep the fear out of her voice.

“Watch the mirror, Brigid,” Ullikummis replied, “for in it is contained your future.”