Distortion Offensive (16 page)

“We need a plan here, and quick,” she called.

“I know,” Kane growled. He looked around, playing the bright xenon beam across the corridor that they were in until it hit Brigid in the face, and she blinked so hard it was almost like waking up.

A moment later, the beam lit on the scuttling creatures as his mind raced. The more prominent of the hard-shelled creatures reared back as the light struck them, diving into nooks and ridges as he tried to examine them while their smaller brethren skittered away, keeping their distance. “Light,” he muttered. “They don't like the light.”

“Stands to reason,” Clem agreed as he sidestepped another creature plummeting from the ceiling, its claws outstretched. “Living down here in the darkness for so long.”

Grant brought the beam of his own xenon flashlight around, adding its intensity to Kane's. “Put them together and keep going forward?” he proposed.

Kane peered back over his shoulder, saw the skittering bodies there as the spiderlike creatures rushed across floor and walls toward them. “They're going to keep following us,” he concluded after a moment's thought, “and we can't light up the whole area.”

“You want to bring that light around here?” Brigid asked, a rising sense of panic in her voice.

“Heads up,” Kane called as he tossed Brigid the flashlight.

Grant blasted another shot from his Copperhead as yet another of the spindly creatures dropped from the ceiling, plummeting down toward where Kane stood. “I'll cover you,” he said, “but let's keep moving, huh?”

“No,” Kane ordered, reaching into a utility pouch at the side of his belt with his free hand. In a moment, he
had removed three ball-bearing-like spheres—flash-bangs, part of the standard arsenal carried by all Cerberus field teams. The flash-bangs were tiny devices that could be hidden in the palm of the hand and used on unsuspecting enemies. Each compact sphere contained a volatile chemical mixture along with a small amount of ignition fluid. When activated, the flash-bang would do exactly what its name implied—flash and bang. Different mixtures were available to create other effects, such as masking smoke clouds and tear gas, but the basic premise remained the same for each—a relatively harmless defensive weapon that could be used to surprise an enemy so that one could disorient and overpower them. Right now, however, Kane would have to admit he hadn't expected that enemy to be some weird alien spider-crab hybrid when he had stocked up his arsenal for the day. “Everybody look away,” he instructed in a firm voice, as the others continued toward the far end of the corridor.

As his colleagues ran, sweeping the rugged sides of the corridor with the fierce beams of their flashlights, Kane tossed three flash-bangs behind him, counting down in his head as they bounced off the hardpacked coral and rattled along the floor. Kane turned away before he reached the count of zero, waiting for the short flash-bang timers to take effect. Then, with cataclysmic fury, the trio of flash-bangs ignited, their cacophonous noise achingly loud in the confines of the narrow corridor, their bright lights illuminating the whole area like a savage lightning strike.

Eyes closed against the brightness that shone all around, Kane sprinted down the corridor, trusting his instincts and spatial awareness as he chased after his rapidly retreating colleagues. Behind him, he knew the
hideous arachnids had to be scuttling for cover, their world turned upside down by the dazzling blast of light. If they cried out—if they were capable of such—Kane could not hear them over the ringing in his ears from the explosion.

Bullets whizzed all about Kane, blasting overhead and spraying the walls as Grant and Brigid picked off more of the creatures that were scuttling after their prey. As he ran, Kane felt something small land on his shoulder, clawlike appendages jabbing at the protective weave of his shadow suit. Opening his eyes to a narrow squint, Kane punched at the thing, knocking it from his body as it spit a thick stream of the yellow-white venom at his face. The spray splashed over his shoulder before looping over and over in the air as the spider-thing was knocked away. The venom fizzed there against Kane's arm for a moment, and the ex-Mag was remarkably grateful at that moment for the protective power of the shadow suit that he wore.

His feet crashed against the rock-hard floor, and Kane felt things burst as he stepped on the bodies of more of the weird arachnids.

An instant later he was at the end of the corridor, dark shapes visible before him in his narrowed eyes, and a strong arm reached around him, pulling him to a halt; it was Grant.

“You're okay, man,” Grant assured him, his voice a deep rumble heard above the ringing in Kane's ears.

Kane opened his eyes wider, seeing the splurge of yellow-white that dripped from his shoulder. When he peered up, he saw that they stood in a vast chamber, the high ceiling a series of opaque panes that showed the inky darkness of the open ocean beyond. Augmented by the more diffused effects of the xenon beams in the
vast room, there was enough light that Kane could see the huge scale of the chamber they now found themselves in. It was at least ten times the size of the grotto that they had docked within, its farthest reaches lost in a blue-green gloom.

“Well, where are we?” Kane asked breathlessly, though he didn't expect an answer from his colleagues.

“I think we're here,” Brigid said, and she pointed to something in the center of the huge chamber.

A vast structure towered up into the rafters, dominating the center of the room. Kane saw it in sections as Brigid played the beam of the flashlight over its surface, so huge was the construct. It looked like an enormous upturned funnel, with eight great roots tangling outward from its lowest section, reaching across the coral floor like the arms of an octopus. As Brigid ran the beam across the center of the strange construction, Kane saw a majestic figure sitting there, and for a moment he thought that the still figure was simply a statue carved from stone. And then, as realisation dawned, Kane's heart thudded against his rib cage in alarm.

“Ullikummis,” he murmured.

In the scrubland overlooking the beach in the township of Hope, the speaker in the hooded robe began to explain the nature of the forthcoming utopia. As he spoke, Rosalia watched the members of the crowd out of the corners of her eyes, observing their reactions. The crowd seemed excited, hanging on the speaker's every word as he spoke of salvation and saviors and all the other reams of nonsense spoken by every preacher Rosalia had ever seen. It was uncanny, the way they listened with such intensity.

The crowd itself was made up of men and women, old and young. There were even a few children who, despite their youthful years, paid increasing attention to the speaker as he fed them his line of bull.

As she peered warily around, Rosalia began to spot a few faces she recognized. She noticed the group of street thugs from the altercation in the church hall the previous evening, when Kane and the others had employed their usual strong-arm Magistrate tactics to overpower them. Their leader, or at least the one who had led the attack that she had witnessed, wore glasses now, perched on the end of his nose at a slightly askew angle. He seemed entranced by the speech, as did his colleagues. That was strange—it wasn't normal that young predators like these gang members would fall for
this kind of spiel, unless they were here to steal from the congregation.

Rosalia made to brush her dark hair from her face, taking a more careful look at the street thugs. They seemed to be utterly entranced, their expressions blank and…
soulless,
that was the word that came to her. She had seen people without souls before, and it was not a thing she wished to revisit.

An elderly man stood with them, an outlander type with a dirty, drink-stained coat and a grizzly beard. Rosalia did not recognize him, but he seemed to be leading them now. Perhaps one of the thug's fathers?

Rosalia turned her attention back to the speaker for a moment, as he continued espousing his mumbo-jumbo about heaven on Earth, a savior from the stars and some great god called Ullikummis. The name was new, admittedly, but the rest was depressingly familiar to Rosalia, who had grown up in a nunnery.

At her feet, Belly-on-legs began to bark, looking at someone in the crowd. Rosalia hushed the dog, turning her attention to her right to try to see what it was that had disturbed the idiot mutt. There were three children there, three familiar children. They were the same ones who had been outside her garage home when she had been awoken, tossing stones in a dirt circle in some derivation of jacks. They were normal neighborhood kids, maybe five or six years of age; she knew them from around, sometimes gave them scraps of food if she managed to scrabble up any extra that she could tell was only going to rot.

Three normal five-or six-year-olds, and yet they sat erect on the ground, saying nothing, listening to the speechmaker with rapt attention. It was uncanny.

Then the person next to Rosalia jostled her, and she
almost struck her in automatic reaction. She stopped short, looking at the elderly woman there. The gray-haired woman was passing her something. For a moment, Rosalia took it to be a communion wafer, for it was small and circular and a light tan color. But as she took it, she saw it was not a wafer—it was a tiny rock, nothing more than a pebble.

The woman passed a handful of these to Rosalia, instructing her to take one and pass the others on.

“If you have one already,” the speaker was explaining in his proud orator's voice, “don't be greedy. Let others share in the future.”

Someone off to Rosalia's right shrieked, something just a little more than a gasp really, and the ears of Rosalia's mongrel dog suddenly pricked up. The dark-haired woman crouched, soothing the mutt as he became visibly agitated, wondering what was happening.

“Shh,” she told him. “It's nothing. It's okay. These people just want to be friends.”

As she spoke, Rosalia felt something digging into her right hand, and she opened her palm to see the stone she had held there was now burying itself, working through her skin like some burrowing insect. She gasped despite herself, reaching for the rock with her other hand and plucking at it with her nails, pulling it swiftly free. The hard stone rolled out of her fingers and across her hand as if it had a life of its own. Then it was moving down her hand toward her wrist, digging at the joint there.

“Damn,” Rosalia muttered under her breath, reaching for the weird stone again. “Get off me.”

With her broad, sharpened thumbnail, Rosalia flicked the burrowing rock off her skin, and watched as it skittered across the ground to land by the feet of the person in front of her.

“Now we are few,” the speaker continued at the front of the crowd, “but soon we shall be many. Spread the word of Ullikummis and he shall come—he shall save us all.”

The crowd around Rosalia began to chant, “Ullikummis, Ullikummis, Ullikummis.”

As the people around her joined the chorus, Rosalia looked at her arm, wondering if the weird, burrowing rock had damaged her, if it had already infected her blood or something. Were all these people already—what was the word—hosts? Were they all carriers for this strange rock thing?

“You!” the speaker shouted. “Woman, what is your name?”

Rosalia looked up from where she crouched at her dog's side, seeing the speaker and his team standing over her. The crowd had parted to give them space.

“Who, me?” Rosalia asked, automatically offering her most enticing and flirtatious smile.

“What is your name?” the man asked, ignoring her efforts to charm him with a look.

“Rose,” Rosalia told him. It was close enough, a name she would answer to without thinking. The nuns had taught her that in situations dealing with the unknown, it was best to keep a little in reserve, and to offer the truth only by slight degrees.

“Are you a believer, Rose?” the lead speaker asked, and his tone seemed fierce. “A believer in Ullikummis?”

At her side, the mutt started to whine, shuffling away from the robed men, clearly uncomfortable in their presence. Rosalia grabbed the dog by the scruff if its neck, holding the animal still.

“Are you a believer, Rose?” the lead speaker asked again, his tone demanding.

“I would like to be one,” Rosalia began. “I need convincing.” Once again, an element of truth in the lie was always the way to go in these situations, she knew.

“Heaven is coming,” the man said. “Utopia. And you, Rose, shall be a part of it. You shall be an apostle in the order of Ullikummis.”

Then, with a swift glance, the speaker instructed his colleagues. “Hold her down,” he said.

Rosalia's keen eyes flashed, assessing the situation in an instant. Six men—that was all. Rosalia could take six men. She could challenge them and beat them in combat, even trained fighters, even ones who were armed. She smiled, revelling in the challenge as the first two strode toward her, the crowd watching in fascination, still chanting the name of their imaginary savior.

From her position on the ground, Rosalia moved her leg in a swift sweep, judged to a height of just above her opponents' ankles, designed to knock them off their feet. But when the blow connected with the first, instead of knocking the man over, Rosalia's leg stopped as if it had hit something made of brick.

She cried out in her surprise, and leaped backward to escape the men's grasping hands. The crowd there pushed her back at the approaching group, as Belly-on-legs barked this way and that, not knowing which way to turn, which enemy to berate.

Less than three minutes later, the crowd had dissipated and the group had left, leaving no real indications that they had ever been there.

And Rosalia and her dog?

They were gone, too, and so was the sound of her awful, strained screaming.

 

W
HEN
D
OMI FOUND
E
DWARDS,
he was lying facedown in the scrubland of the empty block, the crashing sound of the waves drifting up from the nearby ocean.

“Edwards?” she asked, prodding him with her finger. “Edwards, you with us?”

Edwards moved slightly, grunting nonsensically as Domi prodded him again.

Crouching beside her fallen colleague, Domi peered around the empty block. They were hidden behind a low wall. Beyond that, the grass was barely there and showed a lackluster shade of yellow as if any life had been bleached away by the unrelenting sun. The ground was churned up, too, where people had been here just a short while before, perhaps less than a minute ago. Domi felt eyes watching her, but put it down to an over-active imagination.

“Come on, Edwards,” Domi urged, “nap time's over.”

Edwards pushed himself up, rolling over so that he could rest his head propped on one elbow. “What happened?” he asked.

Domi dipped a white finger in the congealing blood that marred her colleague's head. “Looks like you got whacked from behind,” she said, showing him the smear on her finger. “You remember anything?”

Edwards pushed a hand to his forehead, rubbing at a bump there. As he did so, the bump receded at his touch, disappearing as if it had never been. “There were people,” he explained, “and, like, a preacher type, calling them to mass, I guess. I…” Edwards stopped, recalling the command in his mind, encouraging him to follow, to join the figures in their hoods and robes. The call of utopia.

“What?” Domi asked, wondering at why Edwards had stopped.

“I don't think it's safe here,” Edwards announced. “I think something's going on that we're not quite seeing.”

“What do you mean by that?” Domi asked, peering more carefully around the now-empty lot.

Edwards pushed himself up, brushing off his clothes as he got back to a standing position. “We should leave,” he decided.

Domi looked at Edwards, examining the streaks of blood that washed the left side of his shaved skull. “I know you got clobbered,” she told him, “but it's just an empty lot now. Nothing's going to hurt you here.”

Edwards looked around vaguely, as if a dog scenting the air. “No, it's all around us,” he said. “The whole place is tainted by it. Not just here, not just this little patch of shit in the middle of nowhere, but the whole ville. Can't put my finger on what it is, but I can feel it.”

Domi had never seen Edwards so agitated, he was almost like a man possessed, the devil inside. “Okay,” she said calmly, “we can go. We'll wrap up what we're doing down in the campsite and interphase out of here before evening. That suit you?”

Edwards rubbed at his forehead again, feeling as if he was missing something so obvious it should be right there in front of his face. “As soon as possible,” he growled. “The sooner the better.”

Domi agreed, promising Edwards they would clean his wound as soon as they got back to Henny at the temporary medical center before moving on their way.

“So, were you having problems with your Commtact?” Domi asked, almost in afterthought as they made
their way back down the dirt steps that led them into the shanty town.

“What?” Edwards asked. “No, I could hear you and Brewster. I replied a dozen times but no one seemed to be able to hear me. I figured there was some satellite glitch.”

Domi peered at Edwards in confusion. “Maybe your pickup's busted.”

“Yeah,” Edwards agreed. “I'll get the big brains to look it over when we get back to home base.”

With that, the two Cerberus warriors made their way back through the refugee city at the outskirts of Hope. They would leave the ville and return to the Cerberus redoubt in less than three hours and whatever had been going on in the scrubland, with its talk of mysterious saviors from the skies, would be behind them.