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  Kane bit his tongue in disgust. Then he and Brigid stepped up to the meteor, their expressions fixed and solemn. There were two ideograms carved high on the surface of the boulder. Together they read Son Of Enlil. Enlil was the cruellest of the Annunaki royal family, and his rebirth in modern times had caused Kane and his Cerberus teammates untold hours of grief. That he had a son who’d returned to challenge him for his throne had been like a never-ending nightmare that only got worse and worse.

  Kane placed his hand against the stone and bowed his head. He thought of how he had ultimately thrown Ullikummis into the sun, watched as his stone body hurtled toward the fiery ball in space, drawn by the sun’s gravity, burned up forever. “Warm our hearts, stone god,” Kane said aloud, and around him the acolytes and other pilgrims nodded and smiled in agreement at the seemingly innocuous sentiment. And burn in hell, Kane added in his mind.

  Brigid took Kane’s place a moment later, staring at the rock. She had seen it before, over a year ago, shortly after it had landed here. Back then, this area had been an arable farmer’s field, surrounded by more of the same. The fields had been mostly root vegetables, with a simple farmhouse located amid them, close to the lone road. The house was destroyed now, the fields turned over to wildflowers, and this site—this abomination—had sprung up in place of the fallen meteor in the field. It sickened her—this failing by man to need leadership, to almost desire subjugation. Maybe the barons had been right all along.

  Brigid stepped away, and her place was taken by two more pilgrims who pawed lovingly at the rock, this cradle of their stone god.

  After conversing with the rock, each pilgrim was led to an enclosed space behind it. Kane and Brigid entered this area, not knowing what to expect. Two robed acolytes spoke to them in soft tones as they led them through a drawn curtain colored black like the wet slate. Behind this sat several simple desks and chairs, each of which was sectioned off by another short curtain that hung down only as low as a man’s waist. They were a little like the voting booths found in many twenty-first-century democracies. Kane was ushered behind one of the curtains with the acolyte while Brigid was directed to the desk next to it.

  Once there, the robed acolyte—a young man with wide-set eyes and a shaven head—sat before Kane and addressed him in a calming, quiet tone. “Now you are expected to give life to god,” he said, reeling off the words as if they were entirely normal. “Have you been made aware of what this entails?”

  Kane shook his head. “I must’ve missed that sermon.”

  “No matter,” the robed man said gently. “It is a very simple matter.” He opened a small box located on the table—roughly the size of a travel sewing kit—and drew out an eight-inch-long needle along with something that reminded Kane of a shot glass. “We take a few drops of your blood—three or four is enough—which is your sacrifice to the stone god.”

  Kane eyed the needle warily. “Is that thing clean?” he asked.

  “We sterilize the sacrificial lances after each use,” the stone acolyte confirmed. “For the stone is clean and thus cleanliness is a sign of god.”

  Kane nodded. “Okay. What do you need me to do?”

  The acolyte drew the curtain across the little chamber for their privacy, then reached for Kane’s right wrist. Kane drew back his arm before the man could touch him; his Sin Eater was hidden there, disguised by the folds of the jacket.

  “It is right to feel fear on first sacrifice, but no harm will come to you,” the acolyte soothed gently.

  “Sorry,” Kane said, shaking his head. “Just have a thing about needles.” He held out his left arm—the one without the hidden blaster—pulling back the sleeve. “Go ahead.”

  The acolyte brought the cup and needle down close to Kane’s wrist and instructed him to chant a prayer to the stone god. Kane recited the words he had heard at the congregation a few days before, when he and Brigid had enlisted in this ragtag pilgrimage.

  “Ullikummis, lord of stone, grant me the presence of mind to recognize your works, and to embrace utopia when it descends upon us, healing all of mankind and washing away the sins of the past.”

  The acolyte pricked Kane’s thumb with the needle and squeezed four droplets of blood from it.

  “The bedrock of the world has slipped, but it can be corrected in time. Love shared, blessings shared, stone laid.”

  Kane hated the chant but he couldn’t draw attention to himself—not until he and Brigid had found out exactly what was going on here.

  * * *

  IN THE BOOTH beside Kane’s, Brigid was going through an identical ritual, giving three drops of blood as she recited the prayer to Ullikummis.

  Another visitor entered the third curtained booth, performing the same rite under the direction of another acolyte, and that same rite was repeated for every visitor, forty-seven people giving just a few drops of blood to show their devotion to their lord.

  This blood was then removed and each little sample was added to a large chalice carved of stone that had been left rough around its edges. By the time Kane and Brigid emerged from the booths, the chalice was almost full to the brim, topped up no doubt by blood from the acolytes themselves. Three robed acolytes stood behind the stone chalice while the others manning the sacrifice booths stepped out to add their contents to the mix.

  “Any idea where this is going?” Kane whispered to Brigid as they walked out of the booths and made their way toward the caldron pit where the other pilgrims were amassing.

  Brigid put a hand up to disguise her mouth as she replied. “Probably just mumbo-jumbo,” she whispered back.

  Kane didn’t like that “probably”—it rankled on him like a bad tooth.

  The last pilgrim’s blood was added to the chalice, and then the lead acolyte, a man Kane thought of as their leader, held the chalice aloft and began to speak in a loud, portentous tone. “Witness,” he said. “You have all given of your lives so that the stone god may rise again. Everyone who has visited this sacred place, the cradle where god was born—everyone has given of themselves and their blood, a thousand devotees who would shed their own blood to make the world a better place. You have all given of yourselves to fuel his self. You have all given your love that his love might walk here among us today.”

  Beside the leader, two of the robed acolytes began using shovels to sift through a pile of pebbles behind them. Kane had not noticed that before, hidden as it was behind the flaming pit, and for a moment he mistook it for coal or a similar fuel that might be used to stoke the fire. But then he realized—with a sinking feeling—what those stones were. While he was on Earth, Ullikummis had budded “stone seeds” from his own body—hundreds, perhaps thousands of the things had gone into circulation. The stones had different properties but they each connected the user to Ullikummis in some way. For many, the stones were simply used to generate obedience, lodging under their skin and driving away all thoughts but those that Ullikummis himself planted within a victim’s mind. For others, the ones whom Brigid had dubbed firewalkers, the stones granted limited periods of invulnerability, turning their own flesh into the stone hide of their master.

  The strange stones were a tie to Ullikummis, and Cerberus scientists had learned that they were powered—brought to life, if you will—by the iron content in a person’s blood. However, the stones had lost their influence once Ullikummis had been dispatched from the Earth, and the Cerberus personnel had speculated that they may work on a proximity basis as well as needing the ferrous content to fuel them.

  Suddenly, Kane saw where this oddball ceremony was leading—and his stomach twisted in knots as the realization dawned. Surely they could not revive Ullikummis through his depowered stones. That could not be done—could it?

  Kane and Brigid watched as two great heaps of stones were shoveled into the caldron pit, spitting out sparks as the flames touched them. As one, the crowd of pil
grims stepped back, watching in awe as the flames lit the sacred temple, turning the walls a richer shade of orange.

  Then the senior acolyte stepped forward, his arms straight, holding the chalice aloft in both hands. “Our love is rock,” he chanted, “and rock never breaks.” Then he tipped the scarlet contents of the chalice into the flaming pit, moving the stone cup in a circular motion, draining it of its blood. The flames were doused in places as the liquid struck, and a hissing sound echoed through the temple as steam billowed from the caldron pit.

  For a moment nothing happened; the flames kept burning, igniting higher as they recovered from the dousing that they had received. The acolytes stepped back from the caldron pit, watching it through the haze of smoke.

  And then Kane saw it—something moving amid the flames. It looked like a man, head rising, shoulders, chest and arms slowly emerging from the fire.

  The other people in the room saw it, too, and they stood transfixed as the imperfect figure seemed to pull itself from the flames.

  It’s some kind of illusion, Kane told himself. Gotta be.

  But it wasn’t. The manlike figure drew itself higher, lifting its torso out of the fire. It was rough, unfinished, its skin—if it was skin—lumpy and incomplete. There were gaps between parts of its flesh—open gaps through which the flames of the caldron could be seen. And something else became clear as it drew itself out of those flames: it was big; bigger than a man, broad-shouldered and towering to nine feet in height. That was the exact same height as Ullikummis when he had first walked the Earth, before his legs had been hobbled by Enki’s sword, leaving him a full foot shorter.

  A deathly hush filled the room as the figure emerged from the fire. Kane and Brigid watched with the others as the figure took its first unsteady step out of the fire. It was made of stones, malformed and lumpy. It looked like someone had spilled pebbles into the shape of a man, a lumbering pile of shale staggering slowly across the temple. Its face was just an impression, deep, lifeless sockets for eyes, a gaping maw for a mouth.

  “Our love is rock,” the acolyte leading the ceremony chanted, “and rock never breaks.” Around him, the other acolytes took up the chant, and so did the pilgrims.

  The stone man took another lumbering step away from the flame pit, its footfall like a landslide smashing against the slate. Then it raised its right arm and reached for the closest pilgrim—the well-dressed woman with the hat, blond hair cut in a bob.

  “Me?” the well-dressed woman gasped. “My lord, what am I to you?”

  The answer wasn’t an answer; it was an action—swift, sudden and deadly. The stone figure’s arm seemed to extend, breaking apart, the gaps between each pebble-like component becoming wider, and its fingers rammed through the woman’s face, smashing through her skull in the blink of an eye. The woman let out a bleat, then her flailing body was dangling from those weirdly extended fingers, dancing like a string puppet.

  A mutual gasp fluttered through the room as the pilgrims watched, and Kane and Brigid took a surreptitious step back, adopting ready poses.

  The woman’s body seemed to dangle for a moment before stiffening again as the spine arched, thrusting the woman’s breasts forward while her feet slipped backward on the temple floor on pointed toes. A whimper seemed to emanate from her throat, and Kane saw blood rushing along the shaft of stones that now crossed the temple chamber, leading from the woman to the stone monstrosity that had emerged from the caldron. The woman shivered, shook and dropped, unleashing one last gasp of pain as she crumpled to the deck.

  Across the room, the stone figure seemed to become fuller somehow, more substantial, sinews forming between its broken body of stones.

  “Take me next!” cried one of the pilgrims to Kane’s left, stepping forward.

  “No, take me!” a man demanded from Kane’s right. “I lost my wife to the west snows!”

  Beside him, a woman stepped forward, ripping open her cotton blouse. “No, me. My children were taken by the snows. Let my unquenched love for them power you, oh lord,” she implored.

  “This is getting out of hand,” Kane muttered as more of the pilgrims offered themselves to the stone monster.

  The stone figure thrust its arms forward again, and those limbs broke apart into tendril-like appendages as they sought their next victims. The Cerberus people had seen the individual stones do this before, under lab conditions, but never anything on this scale. One of those snaking, tendril-like arms reached toward Brigid Baptiste, cutting the air like a handful of tossed stones held in freeze-frame. Kane saw it coming, shoved her back protectively with a swift jab of his arm. Brigid fell to the floor and the arm hurried on, touching the pilgrim behind her, burrowing into the poor deluded fool’s face even as he screamed in pleasure.

  “Take me, oh lord,” the man cried, tears of joy and pain pouring from his eyes like an overworked storm drain. “Let me live in y— Argh!”

  The man and another pilgrim stumbled back, giving themselves willingly to the artificial man. Their legs buckled, knees folded, and they sunk to the floor as their blood and life was sucked from their joyful frames, feeding into the patchwork body of the stone creature who had emerged from the fire.

  Then the stone monster tilted its head back, blood rushing visibly between the mass of stones, and it cried out, an eerie, inhuman howl—the first cry after birth.

  “The lord lives,” the senior acolyte cried joyously. “He lives in all of us, in all of you.”

  “Not for much longer he doesn’t,” Kane muttered, powering his hidden Sin Eater pistol into the palm of his right hand from its hidden wrist holster. He had had enough of this.

  The Sin Eater’s holster was activated by a specific flinch movement of Kane’s wrist tendons, powering the weapon into his hand. The weapon itself was a compact hand blaster, roughly fourteen inches in length but able to fold in on itself for storage in the hidden holster. The Sin Eater was the official sidearm of the Magistrate Division, and his carrying it dated back to when Kane had still been a hard-contact Mag. The blaster was armed with 9 mm rounds. The trigger had no guard, as the necessity had never been foreseen that any kind of safety features for the weapon would ever be required. Thus, if the user’s index finger was crooked at the time the weapon reached his hand, the pistol would begin firing automatically.

  Beside Kane, Brigid was sprawled on the floor, her head spinning where it had struck the hard slate there, trying to shake the muzziness that occluded her thoughts. Wake up, she told herself. Wake up and act. If her body understood the words, then it didn’t seem inclined to play along.

  All around Kane, people were dropping as the life force was sucked out of them by the stone abomination. Pregnant woman; bald man; teen with acne and dyed hair; overweight farmhand with a beard that touched his belly—all of them fell as the stone monster touched them with its distended fingers, exchanging their lives and strength for its own. The stone thing was buoyed with every touch, rising taller, each step more determined, and all the while its gaping wound of a mouth shrieked its hideous ululation.

  “Time to put this stone wannabe out to pasture,” Kane grumbled as he stroked the trigger of the Sin Eater and sent a stream of bullets at the rough-hewn abomination.

  Designated Task #009: Food Harvesting

  Food is grown in massive hydroponics labs located in the west and north corners of Delta Level. Vast artificial fields have been sown with seeds which grow various crops—tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, carrots, etc.—in uniform lines. The crop is tested thoroughly throughout its lifespan to ensure it is growing in the correct manner: size, shape, color. Any imperfect crop is removed and recycled as feed for the animals in one of the other areas of Delta Level.

  Picking the crops is partially automated, but the amount of moisture coupled with the gentle touch required means that humans are considered superior and more efficient with much of the
menial work. As such, I have been assigned to work here two days a week as a rest from the construction of war machines on Epsilon Level. My first assignment is to tend to the pears which grow with resilience from a line of trees in room D41977. The crop is hard-skinned and tasteless, but it holds nutrients enough to sustain life. Most of it will be turned to pulp which is then added to the daily meal ration each citizen is allocated, wherein its lack of a distinctive taste will be rendered irrelevant.

  My crop picking is slow because I am still new to the task and have yet to get used to the automated ladders used by the pickers. These ladders stand at a thirty-degree angle with a wheeled base, and they follow the instructions of a computer brain. The brain analyzes the optimum speed for fruit picking based on a scan of each tree and its crop, then follows that calculation to provide a window within which the tree must be stripped of its bounty. The speed seems fast to me, and it becomes inevitable that many of the crop which I pick are bruised. The supervisors show no concern for the bruised fruit, and merely chastise me for my inadequacy in stripping every pear tree in my designated batch.

  “Your deficiency will be taken out of your food allowance next week,” a supervisor informs me without looking up from her tally sheets. I stare at the gray peaked cap she wears for a long moment, wondering if she might meet my eyes and perhaps explain how I am to increase productivity, but she never looks up.

  The conclusion of my shift is accompanied by a very real sense of disappointment, the knowledge that I have failed to live up to the expectations that the barons have in me as a citizen of Ioville. My back aches from stretching, my arms, too, from constantly reaching above me. I vow to try harder tomorrow.

  —From the journal of Citizen 619F.