“What’s it going to matter?” he asked her, reaching down and patting the bandage back into place over the bloody wound. “If Kane’s done his job, we’ll all be dead in a day or so anyway, right?” Standing before Grant, Brigid held his gaze with her beautifully clear emerald eyes. “I don’t want to lose you, Grant,” she told him, putting her arms around him and pulling herself close. “We’ve been through too much over the years, leaving Cobaltville and facing the barons and the Annunaki.” Grant thought back as Brigid held him, old memories slipping into place, masking the flaws in his rudimentary programming. He wondered for just a moment why they had to kill Lakesh. Was the man evil? Was he part of the Annunaki conspiracy to enslave humankind? He had to be; that had to be why. Grant stroked a hand through Brigid’s long hair and she looked up at him and smiled, tears in her red-rimmed eyes. Then she stepped away. “Almost over now,” he assured her, and she nodded, turning away to hide the tears that began washing down her cheeks. Slowly, forcing himself to keep moving, Grant hefted the bodies of Shizuka and Trent onto a cart that he pulled from the corner of the ops room. “Someone’s going to notice they’re gone soon enough,” he told Brigid as she sat at her desk, quietly weeping. “I know,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes as she turned to him. “But like you said, it’s almost over now. Pretty soon it won’t matter what they know—they’ll all be dead.” Grant nodded silent agreement and began to push the cart and its grim burden toward the exit door. As he bumped the front of the cart against the door to open it, Brigid stood and pointed to the shining sword that rested on the floor where they had beaten Shizuka senseless. “Take the sword, too,” she said, “and dispose of it. No point tipping our hand if we don’t have to.” Grant took the katana and tossed it atop the bodies, then he wheeled them out of the room and into the high-ceilinged corridor. As soon as Grant had left the room, Brigid wrapped her arms around herself and sighed. “Oh, Grant,” she whispered. She was no expert, but Brigid Baptiste’s medical knowledge was sufficient to tell her, just with one look, that the sword wound in Grant’s torso had pierced right through, doing immeasurable and without swift medical attention—fatal damage. But she knew he was right. The mission was almost over now. Wounds wouldn’t matter after today. She walked across the room, gathering up the detritus of the battle and replacing it where it had come from, using a screen-wipe cloth to wipe away a few spots of blood from the desks and floor. Her white jumpsuit was stained with red, too, most of it rubbed off from Grant’s body when she had hugged him. She grabbed the suede jacket that hung over the back of her chair, draping it over her shoulders to disguise the bloody jumpsuit, before she got back to work on her report. It was more than a standard field report, however. The text contained a root kit—a hidden, very pervasive bug that even now was attacking the Cerberus data stream. Pretty soon, Mohandas Lakesh Singh’s pet project would be blind, its air polluted, its staff trapped. And then the endgame could begin.

  GRANT PUSHED the cart along the tunnel-like central corridor to the service elevator, and from there he descended with his grim cargo to the recycling plant in the basement of the Cerberus redoubt. When Cerberus was constructed, it had been foreseen that there may come a time where food and water were scarce, where the unit had to be utterly self-sufficient, and so a vast recycling facility had been built in one of the basement areas of the compound. Like any other self-contained military compound, Cerberus had been designed to recycle and reuse as much of its own waste as possible, and to safely dispose of the remainder. The elevator doors pulled back and Grant pushed the cart along the empty corridor, through the twin doors into the recycling plant room. As soon as Grant walked into the plant room, the stench assailed him. Food and chemical waste were piled upon a slow-moving conveyor belt that gradually trudged to a deep pit where metal teeth would sort it, crush it and dispose of it. The system was auto- mated, requiring only occasional supervision by a human operator. The machinery rumbled and groaned, hissing steam and grumbling out a mechanized symphony as the conveyor trudged twelve feet and the metal teeth began grinding the next mass of trash, mashing it into smaller, more manageable blocks and spewing these out before finally beginning the long process of sorting it and extracting needed nutrients and other components of interest. Despite the masses of rotting food, there were no insects in the room that Grant could see—this deep down in the concrete Cerberus compound, deep into the mountain itself, it had been almost entirely overlooked by everyone. There were no gaps or doors to the outside world, no way for a fly to find its way this far into the secure military base. Grant looked down at the worn, stained conveyor belt that led to the grinding teeth. It was a drop of ten feet from the level he stood at, and he saw the remains of today’s dinner and lunch and breakfast piled there, along with similar remains from the day before. With a grunt of effort, he wheeled the cart to the end of the walkway, as close as he could to the grinders, and rocked it on its wheels until it finally tipped over, dislodging the two bodies and the bloody blade of the sword over the side. “This man’s work is never done,” he muttered as he watched the bodies drop over the side of the walkway and plummet for a moment until they slapped against the mush of trash that was spread over the surface of the now-static conveyor belt. “Goodbye, Shizuka,” he snarled, shoving the cart over the side, too, before he turned away from the walkway’s edge and pushed through the exit doors. As Grant left the room, he heard the whir of machinery hum as the conveyor belt trundled another few feet forward, dropping the next lot of waste over its side and into the waiting jaws of the grinder, ripping the cart to pieces in a matter of seconds.

  IT WAS A LITTLE LATER, almost 1:00 a.m., when Grant found Kane standing alone on the plateau outside the entrance to the redoubt, puffing on a cigar as he examined the clear night sky overhead. “Hey,” Grant said, “what are you up to?” Kane turned to him, offering a smile to his longtime partner as he pulled the cigar from between his teeth. “Nothing much, just counting the stars.” He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a cigar for Grant, passing a little silver lighter along with it. Grant clipped the end and sheltered the flame from the wind as he lit the cigar, taking a few swift drags to get the cigar going. “What do you think it’ll be like up there,” he asked, “when we get to Heaven?” Kane shrugged, peering at the stars once more. “Like here, I guess, only with better cigars. Do you remember those ones we used to get back in Cobaltville, back when we did Pedestrian Pit Patrol? Man, I really miss those.” Grant nodded, even though Kane had turned away, thinking about their times together, feeling the memories fade into place. “I don’t think it will be long,” he said, his voice low. “What’s that?” Kane asked, turning once more to look at his friend. He seemed to notice the bandage across his friend’s ribs for the first time. “Hey, Grant, what happened to you?” he asked, concerned. “Me and Shizuka had a fight,” Grant explained. “She stabbed me, did some other damage, too.” He held up his left arm, showing Kane the ruined wrist joint. “I don’t think I’m going to last to the end. I’m sorry.”

  Kane looked at Grant, seeing the scabs, the wounds, the broken wrist. “You’ve been a good soldier, and before that a good Magistrate and always, always a good friend,” he said. “Heaven’s going to be everything they promised us. Baptiste and I will be with you before you know it.” Grant took another long drag on the cigar, feeling the heavy smoke fill his throat and lungs. “Did you get everything you wanted done, Kane?” he asked as the blue-gray smoke coiled around him. Kane nodded. “In forty-eight hours everyone here will be dead, friend.” Grant coughed then, hacked as he tried to draw another drag from the cigar. As he did so, he felt the pain pulling again at the spot just above his belly, where the point of Shizuka’s katana had pierced his body. He walked a few paces in a circle before sinking down and sitting on the packed soil beneath him. “You want me to do anything?” Kane asked, realizing that his old friend was in pain. “Get anyone?” “We’ll all be dead soon enough,” Grant replied, looking up at the stars. “Then we can finally enter the Dreaming for all eternity.” Silent, Kane stood watching as the cigar held by his oldest friend burned slowly down to a stump in his curled fingers, and the white material of the bandage turned a deeper and deeper shade of red. Once Grant’s cigar had burned itself out, Kane turned and walked back inside the redoubt, closing the door behind him. Accessing the emergency controls, he sealed them. Not even a nuclear attack would open them now.

  DECIMAL RIVER LOOKED UP from his screen in the outback cavern. “We’ve lost one,” he said, “but our door is now open.” Silently, Broken Ghost nodded acknowledgment, and Cloud Singer followed suit. Soon they would travel through the Dreaming World and enter Cerberus via the mat-trans gateway. And then they would finally execute Lakesh for his crimes against the Original Tribe.

  Chapter 14

  “I’m sorry,” Brigid was babbling as the black-garbed Magistrate pushed the muzzle of his Sin Eater painfully into her midriff. “I just tried to take care of her. She’s my niece. Please…”Magistrate Kane’s expression, his eyes hidden behind the dark lenses of his glasses, didn’t change, but there was a note of confusion in his furious voice. “What? What the hell are you talking about?” “I should have registered, I know,” Brigid continued, her words rushing out, “but I was so scared, so scared I would lose her, that the Mags would come and take her away. I’m good for her. I’m a good mother to her. Please don’t. Please don’t take her.” “Lady,” Kane growled, “I do not have one clue about what you are talking about.” His head seemed muzzy, his thoughts unclear, almost as though they were being blocked by an exterior power. Hadn’t he known whom she was talking about just moments before? “Abigail,” Brigid said. “You came for Abigail.”

  “Who the heck is Abigail?” Kane asked, easing the pressure of the Sin Eater from the archivist’s belly. “My niece,” Brigid told him, the tension clear in her muscles as she stood pushed against the wall with the intimidating Magistrate right before her. Kane turned then, peering at the doorway to the little apartment and seeing the girl pulling at the bandage on her arm, tearing the scabs away with her nails. “The girl,” he muttered, as if to himself. Then he turned to Brigid and spoke firmly, holding the Sin Eater where she could see it. “You stay right there, Baptiste. Don’t even blink unless I tell you otherwise. Understand?” Brigid nodded, defeat clear in her stance now. As Kane walked across the small lounge and into the little corridor that led to the doorway where the child stood, he heard Brigid sobbing, “Please don’t hurt her.” He ignored her. He wasn’t here to hurt a child, but he could see the blood on the girl’s arm, the pained satisfaction in her grimace as she tore at the itchy scab. Kane crouched on his haunches, bringing his hidden eyes to roughly the same level as the girl’s. “Abigail? I need you to come inside now,” he said, his voice sincere.

  The girl looked at him, her jaw set defiantly. “Are you going to shoot me?” Kane returned the Sin Eater back into its wrist housing and shook his head. “No, I’m not going to shoot you,” he assured the blond-haired girl. Abigail picked at the scab, her nails turning red with dried blood. “Are you going to shoot Auntie Brigid?” she asked. Kane held his hand out to the girl. “Come inside,” he told her. Abi looked up, seeing her aunt standing against the wall of the apartment. Brigid was trembling and there were tears rolling down her rosy cheeks, but when she caught Abi’s eye she nodded firmly. Abigail walked forward and took the Magistrate’s gloved hand. Kane stood up and closed the door behind the girl, leading her back into the apartment and placing her on the couch. She sat there, swinging her legs and watching him warily, her hand still fidgeting with the scab on her arm. “How did you do that?” Kane asked the girl, pointing to her scabbed arm. “Lauren pushed me off the stage at school,” Abigail told him. “It was deliberately on purpose. Are you going to shoot her, Magistrate?” Kane smiled just slightly at the girl’s hopeful request. “I’m not going to shoot anyone,” he assured her. “I’m just going to talk to your aunt for a while, okay?” Abi nodded very seriously, as only children did. “You have some gauze?” Kane asked Brigid. “Something we can use to stanch the blood?” Brigid looked at him, fear in her eyes. “Please don’t take her from me, Magistrate Kane,” she said, her thoughts racing, confused and muddled. “Please, I implore you.” Kane stood before the woman, looking her up and down and feeling increasingly as if he had made a big mistake. She was babbling, afraid of him, of what he would do, and her fear threatened to overwhelm her. He needed to break down that barrier if he was to figure out what was really going on, why he knew her and how she connected to the tattooed woman who had attacked him. Kane looked from Brigid to her niece, seeing their fear so palpable, and then he did a very unusual thing for a Mag. He raised his hand to his face and he removed his dark shades, folded the arms and placed them in the inside pocket of his jacket. He looked at Brigid with his steely blue-gray eyes. “I’m not here for your niece,” he assured her.

 

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