Distortion Offensive (13 page)

By contrast, the heads-up display playing across Grant's retina was in flux, as a dozen different warning signals vied for the pilot's attention. Grant ignored the flashing signals, wondering if any of the ancient Annunaki pilots who had once used these crafts had
ever suffered epilepsy. “I fucking hope not,” he muttered into the faceplate of the heads-up display helmet.

In the seat behind Grant, unaware of the order Brigid had given, Clem Bryant voiced his concern. “Are we hit? Are we sunk?”

“Oh, we're sunk,” Grant said, “but it's all part of Brigid's plan.”

“I have to say that sounds a lot less reassuring than it should,” Clem voiced as the Manta began drifting in silence, its engines negated.

Just outside the smoothly curved shell, the two squidlike behemoths moved like planets orbiting the sun.

 

A
BOVE
G
RANT'S VEHICLE,
Kane's Manta continued along its course for thirty seconds or so, gradually arcing downward as its momentum was lost. “We're starting to sink,” he informed his companion as a warning light blinked on in his heads-up display.

“Exactly,” Brigid said, “and that's just what we want.”

Behind them, remarkably, the huge squidlike monster seemed to have stopped grasping at them, and Kane saw that the same thing had happened below them, where Grant had cut the power to his own engines. Now the Mantas were gradually sinking.

“The librarian creatures are leaving us alone,” Kane growled, equal parts astonishment and fury in his voice. “What the hell happened?”

“They're attracted to the heat of the engines or maybe just the unnatural movement of the crafts in their presence,” Brigid postulated. “With no power in our engines, they're seeing us as no more threat than a sinking stone.”

Kane shook his head in disbelief, the bronze helmet
swaying back and forth atop his neck. “Phew. When you pull it out of the fire, Baptiste…” he began.

As he spoke, Grant's jubilant voice came over the Commtact, broadcasting directly to the Cerberus warriors' subdermal implants. “We're all clear,” he said. “Those big bads seem to be leaving us alone. I don't know how you did it, but it seems to have worked, Brigid.”

As the currents of the ocean depths swirled slowly in their invisible dance, the two Mantas drifted gracefully toward the bottom of the crater, like two sycamore seeds caught on the autumn breeze.

 

T
HE CREATURES THAT
B
RIGID
had identified as librarians did not bother the Cerberus warriors again, satisfied perhaps that the seemingly dead Mantas were no threat to their habitat. As they slowly sank toward the bottom, Kane wiped his sweating palms on the legs of his pants, and he stretched the kinks out of his muscles. It had been a trying few minutes.

“What I don't get,” Kane said, “is how the Annunaki ever accessed this place. With those squids guarding the gateway, I mean.”

“Presumably they had some way to soothe the savage beasts,” Brigid suggested. “Maybe a sonic signal or something along those lines. Sound carries quite well in the ocean, albeit at a different rate to what we're used to. Whales communicate through song.”

“Huh.” Kane shrugged. “Kind of like a dog whistle, I guess.”

Brigid smiled at the comment. Though his eloquence sometimes left a little to be desired, Kane's ability to hit the nail on the head was very often second to none.

Languidly, the two Mantas sank lower, gradually
dropping to the bottom of the undersea crater, whose proportions dwarfed even the vast creatures that the Cerberus team had tangled with. As they got closer to the bottom, the water became muddied, and Kane observed a number of tiny objects being picked up by his Manta's built-in sensors.

“There's a lot of debris around here,” he stated as he took in the information on his helmet display.

Brigid peered through the slitlike windows in the back of the cockpit, but she was unable to see anything other than darkness now, even the bubbles of the Mantas' passing lost amid the intense gloom.

“Maybe it's the library itself,” she suggested.

Her statement resonated within the confines of the cockpit, reminding Kane of how alien the whole concept of the Ontic Library truly was. Balam had intimated it was something like a coral reef, a living environment that sustained more life-forms on its surface, each of them contributing to the archive of information in some unfathomable, collective manner. These things in the water may very well be the same mollusk-type creatures that Kane's team had initially found along the seafront at Hope, the ones that had been eaten by the teenagers beneath the wreckage of the pier.

 

D
RIFTING A LITTLE LOWER
than Kane's Manta, Grant and Clem tensely waited in the near-total darkness, the only faint light coming from the display board that interacted with Grant's heads-up display.

“Are we nearing the bottom?” Clem asked, feeling strangely dissociated with real life in that ghostly environment.

“About a half mile,” Grant said, translating the read
ings that whirred before his eyes. “But something's coming up,” he added. “Kane? Can you see this?”

For a moment, the Commtact link was silent, then Kane's voice came, speaking slowly. “Just reading it now. What appears to be a huge undersea structure in a roughly cruciform design.”

“Think this is it?” Grant asked, seeing the same outline on his own heads-up display.

“Stand by to reengage engines,” Kane advised. “But let's not be too hasty. I don't want to get into another squabble with the guard fish.”

“Roger that,” Grant replied, watching in wonder as the heads-up display began to draw in details of the structure far below.

The construction was shaped something like a giant cross, with one arm stretching out to almost twice the length of the others. At its longest point, the structure stretched to three-quarters of a mile, large enough to house a village or small town. A cloud of debris came from a section close to one of the joints, a rent seemed to have appeared there and spewed a thick, inky liquid amid the stultifying gloom. From this distance, drifting in darkness, it was impossible for Kane or Grant to guess what the structure itself was made from; they could only marvel at its vastness.

Whatever it was made from, one thing was certain—they had found the Ontic Library.

Kane widened the range beam of his scopes to their maximum, bringing input from far above them. The huge, squidlike guardians of the depths remained dormant over a mile above them, uncaring of what was going on down here in the lower depths of the crater.

“Let's motor,” Kane instructed over the Commtact, engaging his own engines once more as he did so.

Grant copied the request, and Kane watched on the heads-up display as his partner's Manta stopped sinking and began a more gentle arc forward, heading in a graceful curve toward the cruciform structure below them.

Still conscious of the leviathans above, Kane tapped a little power to the thrusters and followed his partner across the ocean bed toward the undersea palace.

“We're about one minute out,” Grant advised as he angled his craft over the ridged surface of the Ontic Library. “I've located an entry gate off to the port side.”

Kane checked his readouts and saw a signal flashing on his display, indicating the very entryway that Grant had just referred to. The Mantas were rediscovered Annunaki craft, and it seemed that certain information was preprogrammed into their amazing circuits for eventualities such as this.

Kane eased his hands across the control board, letting go of the control stick for a moment and allowing the Manta to glide toward the entrance under its own power. Thirty seconds later, he and Brigid were following Grant's craft into the belly of the undersea structure, taking another step into the unknown.

Outside the dirt-caked garage, Rosalia followed the group of marching humans as they continued down the street toward the beach. Besides the six in hoods, four others followed, their movements less regular and more shambolic, almost as if they were sleepwalking.

Trotting along at her side, Belly-on-legs let out an excited yip, peering back over his shoulder.

“Hush, stupid mutt,” Rosalia ordered, stepping into the shadows between the two nearest buildings, both of them ramshackle huts showing the heavy trauma of weathering.

Peering back to where the excited dog was looking, Rosalia saw another man pacing along the street, this one more upright with an almost military gait. Magistrate, she said to herself automatically. He had a shaved head, the start of a beard on his chin, and, as he came closer, Rosalia saw that his right ear was mangled where it had suffered some kind of wound. As she watched him pass, Rosalia saw the man lift his hand to his ear as if in pain.

“I can hear you, Domi,” the tall man said as though to thin air. “Stop blabbering in my fucking ear.”

Domi? Rosalia knew that name; it was another of the Cerberus people, the ones she had met with here just a few months before. Domi had been the curious-looking girl with the pure white skin. She had been a hellion,
Rosalia recalled, savage in her manners and brutal in her fighting techniques—an outlander, uncivilized despite her outward affectations.

Which didn't explain who the man with the bullet-bitten ear was, although it did heavily imply that he was part of the Cerberus team. They all communicated using some kind of internal electronic device, she knew, had seen it with her own eyes. Keeping her distance, Rosalia padded after the shaved-headed man, the pale-eyed mongrel at her side.

 

A
T A LOWER LEVEL OF
the favela, Domi had decided to follow the alleyway she had found by the jaunty chicken keeper. She engaged her Commtact communicator once again, trying to raise Edwards, but the response was the same as before—which was to say, there was no response.

“Come on, Edwards,” Domi growled as she trotted past a crate of rotten fruit that three young children were busily picking through. The children wore no clothes, and they glared at Domi with feral eyes as she passed them. Ignoring them, Domi continued up the winding passageway between tumbledown dwellings.

“Cerberus?” Domi said, engaging the hidden pickup in her skull. “This is Domi. I need a favor.”

A moment later, the cool voice of Brewster Philboyd, one of the mainstay operatives at the Cerberus redoubt, came back over the subdermal relay, pumping straight through Domi's mastoid bone. “I read you, Domi. What's going on?”

“I've lost Edwards,” Domi explained as she danced beneath a low rail stretched across the narrow alley, a handful of clothes upon it having been left to dry in
the sun. “Do you think you could use his transponder to give me a fix on his location?”

Over the Commtact link, Brewster Philboyd confirmed that he was doing so now. Transponders were implanted beneath the skin of each member of the Cerberus team, broadcasting a telemetric signal that provided the Cerberus nerve center with a constant stream of information about an individual's health, including heart rate, blood pressure and brain-wave activity. At a keystroke, these blips could be expanded to give full diagnostics for each member of a field team. With satellite triangulation, the transponders could also be used to track down an individual to within almost a hairbreadth of their actual physical location.

“So, how did you lose him anyway?” Philboyd asked as he brought forward Edwards's data feed.

“He went out for some fresh air and, um, gave us the slip,” Domi explained a little self-consciously.

“Gave you the…?” Brewster sounded faintly amused. “I didn't realize Edwards was a prisoner.”

“He's not,” Domi agreed. “Which is why his disappearing like this is all the more worrying.”

“Okay, okay,” Philboyd mused, speaking as if to himself. “Right, I've got Edwards tagged now. He's westbound, heading in roughly the direction of the ocean. By my reckoning, you're about three-quarters of a mile from his current location.”

“Which way?” Domi asked, picking up speed as she hurried down the seemingly endless, foul-smelling alleyway.

“You're heading north just now,” Philboyd told her. “You want to turn left as soon as you can and keep roughly to that course.”

“Okay,” Domi agreed as she saw a gap between two
of the broken-down huts. She rushed through the gap, ducking beneath a jutting strut of metal and weaving past a group of young mothers discussing something or other while they rocked their babies in their arms. The babies bawled incessantly, and the mothers ignored them, peering instead at the ghostly, chalk-white figure of Domi as she darted past them.

Brewster's rich voice came over the Commtact again as Domi headed on through the shanty ville. “I've just brought up the live satellite feed now, Domi,” he explained. “That place is nothing shy of a maze and you're heading for a dead end.”

“Dammit,” Domi cussed. “See if you can raise Edwards from your side, while I find myself another route.”

As she spoke, Domi reached the end of the current pathway, just as Philboyd had warned. A high wall loomed before her, its brickwork covered in damp lichen of a putrescent green shade with tiny mauve buds. To her left stood a ramshackle collection of aluminum cladding and wooden crates, somehow balanced together to create a rainproof structure—give or take a leak—within which dwelled a family of seven. Above the dwelling, a tin-can chimney contentedly chuffed billowing black smoke from the family's tiny cooking stove. To Domi's right, a similar building stood, its makeshift walls leaning at uncomfortable angles, apparently propping itself up in spite of the desires of gravity.

It was instinct, nothing more than that, but Domi felt certain that Edwards was in trouble. Assessing the two dwellings to either side of her, the albino woman reached up to the roof sill of the one to her left and sprang, her legs kicking out as she ran up the wall, pulling herself to the roof.

A holler of complaint came from the people below, but Domi ignored it. From up there, just one story above the ground, she could see across the immediate area. There were numerous run-down shacks, with smoking chimneys made from old piping or cans. The street plan, such as it was, was a labyrinthine mess of lefts and rights, abrupt stops in the roads where a new family of refugees from the destroyed villes had moved in and set up their home. But up here, on the rippled rooftop of corrugated iron, Domi could see a far easier way to travel through the run-down favela.

“Domi?” Brewster's voice came to her ear. “I've tried Edwards, but I'm having no success. A remote test shows his Commtact seems to be working. He just doesn't appear to be responding.”

Ignoring the complaints coming from the grubby street below, Domi strode across the rooftop, speeding up to a run as she reached its end. “What does the transponder show?” she asked Brewster over the Commtact link. “Is he conscious?” As she spoke, Domi leaped from the rooftop to that of the next building. From there she kept running, moving with long strides of her bonewhite legs, her pace quickening.

“He's moving,” Brewster mused, “but that's not a definite sign he's awake. Stand by, I'm bringing up a full bio scan now.”

Domi ran, her feet pounding lightly against the hollow roofs as she rushed over the heads of Hope's shanty ville populace. A moment later she had found a lower section of the moss-smeared wall, leaping over it in a single bound, her legs scissoring like a high jumper as she flung herself over the obstacle and headed west. On the other side, the petite albino woman found another rooftop, this one made of rain-damp wood. She
ran onward, listening to Brewster's voice as she made her way toward the coast.

 

E
DWARDS WAS STILL TREKKING
after the silent, hooded figures he had found himself drawn to while he was administering medicines to the locals. There was something about them, he knew, something eerily familiar; he just couldn't place it. The irritating pain in his head didn't help matters, either.

Just then, Brewster Philboyd's voice reverberated in his skull via the Commtact, requesting that he respond and state his position.

“Hey, Brewmeister,” Edwards said, keeping his voice low so as not to attract too much attention. “I'm…um—” he peered up at the position of the sun “—heading west, I think, following a group of suspects.”

Edwards waited for Philboyd to acknowledge, but nothing happened.

“Suspects,” Edwards repeated. “Perps. Whatever you non-Mags call them. People, weirdos. You getting this?”

Again there was no reply.

Irritably, Edwards continued along the shingle road between run-down tenements, wondering why his home base wouldn't respond. After all, they had called on him, not vice versa.

“Come on, Cerberus,” he muttered, “answer the damn call.”

Behind Edwards, stalking through the shadows, Rosalia followed the broad ex-Mag, her pale-eyed dog loping along at her heels. Rosalia wasn't being particularly subtle, she knew, and yet the wide-shouldered man seemed oblivious to his tail, as though his mind was too caught up on other things. She hurried along the street,
her booted feet splashing the puddles that littered the pockmarked road.

“Okay, Magistrate man,” she muttered, “let's see what you've got.”

 

D
OMI LEAPED THROUGH
the air, bouncing from rooftop to rooftop like some out-of-control jack-in-the-box as she rushed through the shanty dwellings that lay at the outskirts of the fishing ville.

“Brew?” she asked between breaths as she leaped the gap between two more buildings. “You have that heads-up on Edwards's status yet?”

“Sorry about that, Domi. He's conscious,” Philboyd responded after a moment. “His transponder is showing live brain activity and his heart is beating as normal. I just got a consult to double-check I was reading it right.”

Bounding down from a two-story shack, Domi hit the ground running, weaving through a crowd of customers at a makeshift market stall as they bartered for the local produce. By the smell of it, the produce was already on the turn, but Domi had no time to consider that any further. “So he's alive,” Domi said, “conscious and his Commtact appears to be operational. Any ideas what's going down?”

“I'm bringing in satellite surveillance now,” Brewster responded over the radio link. “There's a crowd gathering out there, close to the coast. Keep on track and I'll guide you.”

“How far?” Domi asked.

“You'll be there shortly,” Brewster judged. “Take the next right and head up toward the hills.”

Domi took the next right as instructed. Whatever
Edwards was involved in, he had better have a damn fine excuse for breaking contact.

 

T
HE HOODED FIGURES IN
the distance had stopped, amassing in a block of scrubland that overlooked the ocean. Edwards halted to watch them, and Rosalia also halted so that she could watch both him and the figures in the hoods.

Other people seemed to be appearing from all around now, drawn to the hooded group as they waited. Some of them carried the pebbles that the people had dropped like calling cards all over the ville. Within a few minutes, the watching crowd had to have become forty or fifty strong, waiting in near silence for whatever it was to proceed.

Edwards made his way along the rearmost edge of the crowd, sticking to the shadows of an uneven wall, one eye on the hooded figures while he took in the faces here. They seemed to have been drawn here, called by something unseen, just as he had been. He reached for his face, rubbing at his forehead where that dull ache resided.

Suddenly, one of the six figures began to speak, a powerful orator, his voice carrying clearly over the crowd that had amassed.

“Come one, come all,” he said. “Everyone is welcome here. This is where all salvation starts. Shall we begin?”

The crowd cried its assent, anticipation rising.

“We come among you today,” the hooded leader explained, “to bring you utopia. A paradise that you cannot begin to imagine. But before we start, I must ask a question.”

Edwards stopped walking as he reached the edge of
the wall that hid him, turning to face the speaker. The man reached his hands up and pulled back the low-hanging hood that had obscured his face. Around him, his five colleagues did likewise. Edwards narrowed his eyes, seeing something on each man's forehead, a circle no larger than a fingerprint.

“Who here already bears the mark?” the leader asked.

Several members of the crowd stepped forward, both men and women. They were the same people who had been following the group from down in the favela.

“Come now,” the leader called, “there are more of you, I'm sure. There's no need to be shy.”

Almost against his will, Edwards found himself stepping forward, edging away from a dead tree he had found himself standing beside, stepping away from the shattered wall. He could feel himself being drawn to the speaker, feel the man's hypnotic call inside his head. A part of him wanted to join the group, and—worse—that part of him seemed to be making the decision for the rest of him.

Edwards wasn't the only one. Others were emerging from the crowd, pushing their way to the front.

Suddenly a woman's voice spoke close by to Edwards's ear, just as he was about to make his way out from the wall and into the crowd.

“Sorry, Cerberus, but you're cramping my style.”

Edwards felt a heavy blow to his head then, and he collapsed to his knees, before sprawling forward, a trickle of blood pouring down the side of his face from where the woman had struck him with a fallen branch from the tree. As Edwards's consciousness flickered and dimmed, the last thing he saw was the lithe, olive-skinned woman striding
away, hiding herself among the crowd, her mongrel dog trotting along faithfully at her side.