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  So he waited in the silent cell until eventually the strange stone door oozed back on its hidden housings, flowing like a thing of liquid, and two figures appeared in the doorway, lit by the bubbling lava that flowed in the walls beyond.

  Dylan stepped forward, his face half-hidden beneath the shadows of the hood he wore. “This is your future, Kane,” he told him. “The world changed while you weren’t looking, and you’ve woken up to the new reality. Rejoice.”

  Sitting on the floor, his back against the wall farthest from the doorway, Kane looked up and smiled. “Didn’t we do this already?” he chided.

  Behind Dylan, Kane recognized the slender figure of Rosalia, her mongrel dog following languorously in her footsteps.

  Dylan nodded. “You will rejoice when you embrace the new reality, Kane,” the first priest of the New Order said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  “Why does it matter to you so much?” Kane asked, his voice rough from dehydration.

  “To me?” Dylan replied. “I serve only Overlord Ullikummis, and it matters to him. He has seen the things you are capable of, and he requires your service in the upcoming God War.”

  “God War,” Kane muttered, forming the words with his dry, cracked lips. “That’s what this is all heading to?”

  Dylan nodded. “The sides have been chosen already, Kane,” he said. “You need to submit so that things can progress. You will lead a great army into battle against the forces of the devil Enlil. And in return you will live like a baron.”

  Kane bowed his head, rubbing his hand over his face as if giving this some thought. A rough beard was forming on his chin, sharp stubble bristling against his touch. “What would this process entail?” he asked finally. “What do I have to do to pledge my allegiance to your master?”

  First Priest Dylan eased himself down on his haunches until he was crouching just a few feet away, roughly at eye level with the broken ex-Magistrate. To Kane, the man’s eyes seemed alight—with madness. “There are things in this brave new world that need to be embraced if you are to become a part of it,” he explained. “These things hurt at first, but you will learn to accept them, and they in turn will become a part of you.”

  The obedience stones, Kane thought. That was what the dark-haired man was referring to.

  “And what about my friends?” he asked.

  Behind Dylan, Kane saw Rosalia subtly shake her head, warning him not to pursue this course, but he ignored her. He had agreed to accept her wisdom on this matter, on how to get out of this diabolical prison, but he still had to play it as himself—otherwise this jumped-up sod buster would get suspicious.

  “My friends,” Kane repeated. “Grant, Baptiste, Domi, Lakesh—”

  Dylan held up a hand to halt the list he was reeling off, and that insane smile crossed his features once more, teeth twinkling orange in the faint overhead glow of the magma pod light. “You won’t need them,” he assured Kane levelly.

  “Won’t need…?” Kane repeated as if offended. Then he reached for Dylan, grabbing the front of the man’s robe and bringing his face closer. Kane’s movement was so swift that the priest didn’t have time to defend himself. “These are my friends, you jumped-up little toad,” Kane snarled. “If I’m going to embrace this fucking utopia of yours I’ll do it with my friends at my side.”

  In the back of the cell, Rosalia leaped forward, stamping down with her foot on Kane’s outstretched forearm. The blow was enough to force Kane to break his hold on the first priest, and Dylan toppled over as he was let free.

  Then Rosalia was astride Kane, a leg to either side of his slumped body, her hands stretched out to form flat edges like knives. “Careful, prisoner,” she snarled. “The future looks a whole lot bleaker when you’re dead.”

  Kane glared at her, seeing the flash of warning in her own eyes as the dog yipped behind her. He had to play this right, though, had to convince Dylan that he wasn’t an easy mark, that this decision was something he was making as Kane, not as part of an act.

  Dylan was standing once more, backing away from the scuffle and brushing down the rough material of the robe where he had fallen into the sand. “Rose,” he instructed, “let him go.”

  Rosalia issued a hiss between clenched teeth before backing away from Kane, her eyes never leaving his.

  Resting against the wall, Kane watched his two captors warily, before he spoke once again. “I want to see my friends,” he said, his voice grim with determination.

  Dylan nodded. “You will,” he promised. “In time.”

  “When?” Kane asked.

  “When Lord Ullikummis deems it,” Dylan replied. Then the self-proclaimed first priest of the New Order reached into his robes, fidgeting with a hidden pouch. A moment later his hand reappeared clutching a smooth pebble no larger than a silver dollar. “Once you embrace the future, you’ll see how foolish you’ve been. These trivialities will melt away and you’ll reach a new comprehension. This I promise you, Kane.”

  Kane watched as Dylan turned the stone over in his hand. Its polished surface glimmered as the orange glow of magma played across it, faintly reflected from the lights of the corridor and the lone pod above Kane’s head.

  “What does it do?” Kane asked.

  “It brings peace,” Dylan told him, his voice reassuring.

  Kane’s eyes were fixed on the stone, and he felt the fear rising inside him. Rosalia had explained how it worked, what had to happen now for Kane to be accepted into the new regime and so be given the opportunity of escape. He was to bond with the stone, which relied on organic technology the way of all things Annunaki—something grown and almost alive, yet not sentient until it was joined to something else, such as a human’s nervous system. Kane would submit to this bonding so that he might free his friends. This was the plan; this was how Rosalia had proposed he be dealt back into the game, as she had put it.

  “What do I have to do?” Kane asked, his voice low, fearful.

  “Hold out your arm,” Dylan instructed.

  He did so, and then Dylan told him to roll back the torn sleeve of his shadow suit to fully expose his flesh. Kane pushed his sleeve back so that it bunched just beneath his elbow, then held his arm horizontally as if waiting for an injection.

  Dylan’s robes fell around him like a blooming lotus in the flickering volcanic light of the room as he crouched down by Kane, holding the pebble between thumb and forefinger like a precious egg. Kane waited, his arm outstretched, as Dylan brought the stone seed closer to him, the light glinting off its polished surface in the gloom.

  “Will it hurt?” Kane asked then, and his question was genuine, no longer a part of his innocent act.

  Dylan nodded. “The future has to be born, Kane,” he said, “and birth is traumatic. But it will be brief, and the new world awaits you once it’s done. You need never look back, never regret. God will be with you.”

  Kane gritted his teeth as he watched Dylan bring the stone closer. Then he felt it brush against his skin, its surface cool, and for a moment the ex-Mag tensed.

  “Relax into it,” Dylan advised. “Don’t fight it.”

  Dylan pulled his hand back slowly, leaving the stone balanced on Kane’s outstretched arm. The stone was resting against his wrist now, in the groove at the heel of his hand. Kane watched as the stone sat there, doing nothing out of the ordinary. And then he felt it move, like an insect’s tiny feet tickling his wrist, and he almost laughed. The movement was so slight that, in the gloom, he could not really see it. All the same, he felt it, felt as it rolled and turned, inching around in a slow turn at the base of his palm.

  Suddenly, Kane felt a strange kind of pain, his skin splitting at his wrist with a burning sensation. It reminded him of the way chapped lips feel in cold weather, a hotness around the wound. He watched as the stone seemed to become slightly smaller. It was sinking, he realized, sinking into his flesh, burrowing there like an insect.

  Kane grunted, the noise coming from the back of his throat as he
felt the discomfort at his wrist. It looked as though the stone was sinking, pushing against his flesh and parting it, to disappear within his body. It was a form of osmosis, an absorption of one thing into another, something the human body, Kane felt sure, had never been prepared to do. Yet here it was, the stone burrowing into him, being absorbed by him.

  Despite the sensation of pressure on his flesh, despite the feel of ripping skin, Kane could see no blood in the poor lighting of the room, could not feel that familiar warm trickle that would alert him to the wound. Instead, it seemed that the pebble just disappeared into his flesh, its dark round shape becoming smaller as less and less of it was left exposed.

  Kane’s lips pulled back and he grunted again, holding back a scream as he felt the stone scrape against the bone beneath the flesh. It was a cold, empty scraping, like the dentist’s drill against a rotten tooth, a strange kind of discomfort for which Kane had no name or frame of reference.

  And then, as he watched, the pebble was gone, the whole of its polished surface disappearing beneath his skin, digging into his flesh and burrowing into his body. All that remained was a lump in his skin, like a forming boil, its whitehead not yet emerged. The skin itself was pristine; there was no suggestion that it had been cut, no hint of a wound. Just the bump in his wrist, a protrusion about as big as an eyeball on his otherwise smooth arm.

  Beneath his skin, Kane could feel the thing moving, securing itself, exploring the inside of his arm, his body. He reached for that bump, wanting to run his fingers over it, to feel it as it floated beneath his flesh, but Dylan grabbed his hand. Kane looked up at him, remembering for the first time in over a minute that he was not alone in the room, that this alien thing had been placed on his flesh by someone else, like a leech to suck his blood. Dylan shook his head, advising Kane with a single word of instruction: “No.”

  Kane relaxed his right hand, watched as the lump began to sink into his left wrist, slowly disappearing into his flesh. Ripples appeared around that bump, concentric circles running across his skin as the stone dived deeper and deeper into his body. Kane could feel it pressing there, nosing at the inside of his being, moving about as it sought refuge.

  Suddenly, the stone was pushing inside his arm, and Kane growled in pain.

  “Embrace it,” Rosalia advised from her standing position close to the open door to the cell.

  Could he really trust her? Kane wondered. He had put his faith in this woman, this mercenary who had tried to kill him on more than one occasion when they had previously met. She had come at him with knives and a sword, turned a gun on him and his teammates. Yet here he was, taking her advice when she told him to submit to the will of Ullikummis’s first priest, to allow himself to be joined with an obedience stone.

  “I must be crazy,” Kane muttered, the words forced painfully through his clenched teeth, sweat pouring from his brow, dampening his hair. Even as he said it, he sank back, crashing against the wall as the pressure of the stone inside him built, an infectious kind of pain that spread into his muscles there, reaching across his whole body in a pattern that emanated from his left wrist.

  “You’ll be fine,” Dylan assured him as he heard the muttered words. “It will all be over soon enough. Wonders await.”

  Then First Priest Dylan pushed himself up from the floor and stood looking down at Kane as the ex-Magistrate writhed on the floor like a beached fish, his legs kicking out as the pain gripped him.

  “Don’t fight it,” Dylan advised. “It will be much easier if you embrace it.”

  Kane felt a coldness then, sweeping across his brow, and he realized he had broken into a sweat at some point during the procedure, while his attention had been focused on his wrist. His whole body was taut, and a strange kind of pain ran through his muscles now, as if he were being stretched on a rack. The pressures seemed to come from everywhere, but centered on his arm.

  Vaguely Kane was aware that Dylan and Rosalia had left, with the dog in tow. The cell wall closed behind them, a facade of solid rock once more, the darkness becoming deeper, more absolute.

  Alone in the cave, Kane writhed against the floor, his body racked with pain. “Don’t fight it,” he told himself, remembering Dylan’s advice. Whatever it was, it was in him and it could fight harder, keep pushing into him until he submitted to its will.

  Kane sank back, his breathing coming fast and shallow as he tried to work through the pain. He tried to relax as best he could, embrace the pain and let it play itself out in his body, let the stone attach itself howsoever it must.

  He felt something changing in him as he let the stone reside there, felt a kind of inner peace come over him, the fight leaving him. Despite the pain, he felt tranquil somehow, as if he had trust in the world about him. Faith, that’s what it was. He was discovering faith.

  As he lay there on the rocky floor in the sealed cave, Kane remembered something that Rosalia had said. She had told him how the stones only work on the weak-minded, that she had found a way to break its grip by acting quickly enough. Even if that was true, even if its hold could be broken, what if he wasn’t strong enough? Did a man truly know if he was strongminded or weak? Or did he delude himself about being strong, delude himself that his will couldn’t be broken? Even if Rosalia came back, did all she had promised when they had agreed to the plan in the tiny cell, would it be in time? Could Kane shake the grip of this terrible thing that had plunged into his body and taken hold?

  Waves of blind faith coursed through his mind as he lay there, his body twitching as though jolted by electricity. And the thought of it all, the horror of what he had embraced, came to him in a single blinding flash of recognition.

  What if there was a sickness, and the sickness was called God? he asked himself.

  But the empty cavern offered no answers.

  Chapter 20

  Alone in the cavern, Brigid explored the limits of her strange cell. It was roughly circular, stretched almost thirty feet across, and was lit by a smattering of wide-spaced pods that glowed with the fiery blur of swirling magma. These pods were recessed into the rock walls and ceiling, and one was in the floor near what Brigid thought of as the back of the cave, for it lay some distance behind the chair in whose embrace she had spent the past two days. As she had suspected, there was no visible exit from the cavern; it seemed to be absolutely sealed. But when she ran her hands along the floor, she found a light breeze blowing through the room. The breeze captured particles of the sand that dusted the floor, picking them up and toying with them until they finally fell back to earth in a swirling dance.

  Ullikummis had brought a clay container filled with clear water, the liquid held in place by a stopper also made of clay. Brigid recognized it as an ancient design of water bottle, dating from before the days of strengthened glass, when pottery was the most practical manner for carrying precious fluids. Brigid had poured a little of the water onto her hand and sniffed at it. It looked clear in the dull light, smelled of nothing. She dipped her head and jabbed her tongue at the water that swilled in the cup of her hand, lapping at its coolness and letting it relieve her parched lips. Though it had no discernible taste, it felt wonderful swishing through her mouth, washing over her tongue. It had been so long since she had drunk that Brigid wanted to cry at the feel of it now.

  “The water is to help you shape the sand,” Ullikummis reminded Brigid, his voice cool and emotionless.

  She nodded, placing the stopper back on the clay bottle.

  At Brigid’s request, Ullikummis had left her. “I need to gather my thoughts to create the face,” she had explained. “I’ve never done anything like this before.” Ullikummis had assented, assuring her he would return in a few hours.

  Thus alone, Brigid had begun exploring the limits of the cavern, finding nothing that might direct her to freedom. She took careful swigs from the clay bottle, letting the cool water wash over her teeth and quench her dry throat, urging herself not to be greedy, knowing that that would only bloat her stomach and s
low her down now when she could least afford it, a step nearer freedom as she was.

  Finally, she turned back to the chair that had held her, ran her hands across it. It, too, appeared normal, carved from rock, rough and supremely durable, like something nature had created, ugly and thus beautiful. Aware of the irony, Brigid returned to the chair and sat down in it, resting her aching muscles.

  She was alone.

  Ullikummis had told her he would grant her her freedom if she showed him the child’s face. It seemed like something from a nightmare, a vague and indefinable horror that Brigid could not put her finger upon, unsettling yet innocent all at once. She had to assume it was a trick. Ullikummis was an Annunaki, one of that race of self-styled overlords who had come to Earth to relieve their boredom, toying with and extinguishing humans simply to pass the days. And yet this great beast thing, this Annunaki prince, expressed himself with nobility. He drew things to Brigid’s attention that she had not considered before. In short, he seemed strangely honest in his dealings with her.

  “This is crazy,” Brigid murmured under her breath. “I’m the bird trying to second-guess the cat as if it hasn’t already caught me.”

  There was nothing else to do. Climbing out of the chair, she dragged her foot sideways across the floor of the cave, shoveling a little of the sand together in a mound. Then she leaned down, scooping up more sand with her hands. It sifted through her fingers, its fine grains running away with all the properties of liquid.

  Kneeling on the rock floor, Brigid reached for the clay flask, wedged it firmly between her thighs and yanked the stopper from its neck. Carefully, she tipped the flask, dribbled a little of the precious water into the sand between her legs, rationing herself because she was aware she might not get more for a long time. The liquid sprinkled over the sand, darkening it from pale yellow to a color closer to brown. Dampening the sand made it firmer, and Brigid scooped up a handful, squeezing it so that it oozed between her fingers like paste.