Distortion Offensive (3 page)

With no employer and no place to call home, Rosalia had found herself back in Hope, accompanied by the strange mongrel dog. What remained of the shanty dwellings had been reduced to a claustrophobic rabbit's warren, which suited Rosalia fine. She could hide here, another refugee among the population of strangers until she was ready to move on. There was the nunnery, of course, just over the border, where she had been trained.
Rosalia knew that she would always be welcome there if nowhere else.

Right now, however, she required rations and clean water, but she felt instinctively that revealing herself to Kane and his team would be foolhardy. Their business had not ended well. Better, then, that they thought her dead and dismissed her from their overly moralistic minds.

Rosalia hurried on, making her way from the church doors before ducking into a side street, the faithful mutt keeping pace with her. Rosalia had found the dog six weeks ago, while she had been wandering the Californian desert following the destruction of Carnack's base, and the two had become companions on the road. Not given to sentimentality, Rosalia had elected not to give the hound a name, merely calling it “Dog” or “Mutt” or “Belly-on-legs.” The dog didn't seem to care, happy to have human company, sharing its warmth with Rosalia wherever she slept. The dog itself was a strange, nervous animal, inquisitive but slightly wary around strangers, often hiding behind Rosalia as they walked the streets. That nervousness served her well, for it meant the hound would wake at the slightest noise or movement and would bark at any shadow it didn't recognize. On more than one occasion, the dog's sudden barking had woken Rosalia and saved her from being robbed or attacked while she slept in one of the empty, ramshackle buildings that remained dotted around the fishing ville.

Dog whined, and Rosalia peered down at it. Like herself, Dog could feel the gnawing in its belly as hunger threatened to consume it. It wouldn't do to go hungry simply because of the Cerberus Magistrates and their interruption of her daily routine. If she didn't eat, she
would become weak, and once that happened Rosalia would become a slave to circumstance, or she would never eat again and simply lie down in the street to die as she had seen others do.

There,
she said in her mind as she looked back up the street, her predatory instincts rising. Exiting the church, a young couple made their way down the stone steps, going slowly so that their child could keep pace with them. The child was a toddler, and the mother held its hand as it slowly navigated the hard steps to the street. Rosalia's eyes were on the male's bag, small but full of rations and two bottles of purified water. The young woman cheered as the child clambered down the final step, and it looked up at her and laughed. They were simple folks, Rosalia recognized, naive and lacking street smarts. Ville folk turned refugee with the destruction of Beausoleil or Snakefishville, most probably. Educated to be idiots.

And if the child starved because of her actions?

Better the child than me,
Rosalia reasoned.

Beneath the waxing moon, the couple turned into the side street where Rosalia waited by the wall, hidden in the shadows of the brickwork. She was about to step forward, planning merely to brush past them and take the bag before bolting in the manner of a common street thief, when she saw movement at the far end of the narrow street. Two tough-looking youths had followed the couple and their child, clearly harboring the same idea as Rosalia. She saw the glint of metal catch the moonlight as one of the young men unsheathed a switchblade, and the whisper of a smile crossed her perfect lips. It was a bored smile, the kind that came when one could finally sense a break in the tedium. This would be Rosalia's break from tedium.

One of the young punks began laughing, a sinister, braying sound that echoed off the walls of the enclosed street. It was meant to terrify, and the young couple walked faster, glancing over their shoulders as they rushed down the street. Then the two punks began to sprint, rushing along the street and surrounding the young couple in an instant, like a pack of wild dogs, howling and laughing as they did so, the animalistic noises echoing off the walls. Two more young thugs had appeared from the far end of the alleyway, and another stepped out of a doorway on the far side from Rosalia's own hiding place, where he had been waiting just out of sight, a bend in the alley hiding her from him.

“Got something we want, Mr. Man,” one of the punks announced, pointing to the modest bag of rations he had acquired from the church.

“Keep away,” the man spit, reaching for his woman's elbow and urging her onward.

The five-strong gang paced around the young couple, hemming them in and laughing among themselves. Another knife appeared in one punk's hand, and Rosalia noted how weedy he looked, the arm that held the knife little more than skin pulled over bone.

“We went to eat, but they didn't feed us enough,” the leering leader of the punks explained, his tone mocking. “We want more.”

Ironically, Rosalia could well believe that. These punks looked emaciated, wasting away like the fishing town around them.

The man stopped, standing protectively before his partner and child even as the group continued to circle them. “Get away,” he instructed. “We need to eat, too.”

“No, Mr. Man,” the lead punk said. “Not you.”

Rosalia stepped forward then, while the eyes of the teenage gang members were fixed on the man and his wife, intimidating them with the threat of casual violence. With two long-legged strides, she was next to the nearest punk, and without warning her hand jabbed out and drove into the soft, fleshy part beneath his rib cage. He yelped and fell to the ground, his eyes wide and his tongue lolling in his open mouth. Though he didn't know it yet, his kidney had ruptured under the impact, and internal bleeding would fill and devour him in the next two hours.

As one, the group of would-be robbers turned to see the hooded woman in their presence.

“Who th—!”

Rosalia didn't give the little punk enough time to even finish his sentence. Already her right leg was swinging high off the ground to kick the gang member in the face, and his nose exploded in a hideous burst of scarlet.

As the punk fell backward, Rosalia dropped and lashed out behind her as another of the gang slashed at her with his knife. The blade whizzed over her head, and Rosalia continued backward, driving the sharp corner of her crooked elbow into the young hoodlum's groin. The punk screamed out as white-hot pain speared through his genitals, and Rosalia heard something soft squelch beneath the impact of her savage blow. The knife-wielder toppled forward, his cry of pain echoing in the enclosed space of the narrow street, and Rosalia snatched the blade from his hand as she flipped him over her back and into the next gang member, who was running toward her.

The running gang member collided with his flailing
comrade, and both of them crashed to the street with finality.

Still low on the ground, Rosalia turned to see the final would-be robber grab the woman's hair and drag the knife he held across her exposed throat, just short of cutting her but still close enough to make her cry out. Behind her, Rosalia's dog barked once, but she dismissed him from her mind, her hands a practiced blur of movement. An instant later, the stolen knife left her hand and sailed through the air, connecting in less than a second with the final gang member's right eye, plunging deep into the eye socket. The punk screamed as he staggered backward, the hostage he had been holding forgotten.

“You fucking bitch, you blinded me,” the punk cried as he staggered back against the wall behind him. The knife was embedded in his eye, viscous liquid oozing down his cheek.

“No, I haven't,” Rosalia told him calmly as she stood up and approached her struggling foe. “Not yet.” With that, she pulled her own eight-inch blade from its hiding place in her voluminous sleeve, and thrust it into the worthless punk's remaining eye socket, ramming it so hard that she heard the bone crack.

As the frightened young couple ran down the street away from the scene of carnage, their child wailing in terror, Rosalia checked the pockets of her fallen foes. Riffling through their possessions, she snagged a half-dozen ration bars and two bottles of water. Not much, but enough for her and the mutt. The dog whined hopefully as it saw its mistress break the foil of a ration bar, snapping the end off. Rosalia handed the mongrel the broken end of the ration bar, telling it to make the food
last, even though she knew it wouldn't understand or heed her advice.

As the gang lay there, groaning and struggling to recover from the woman's deadly attack, Rosalia and the dog exited the street and disappeared into the night.

Life in Hope could be hard. Only the strongest would survive.

The Cerberus trio had spent the night in the spare rooms of the church warden, an aging man whose name was Vernor, but they awoke early and made their way out to the beach at Brigid's insistence.

“We spend half our lives cooped up inside a mountain,” Brigid had insisted, referring to the hidden Cerberus redoubt in Montana where the team was based, “and the other half fighting for our lives. Let's go take a look at the ocean and remind ourselves what it is we're fighting for.”

Grant agreed and, albeit with a reluctant grunt, Kane ultimately agreed, too. He'd much sooner spend another hour in bed, catching up on some much-needed rest, but he knew there was no reasoning with the red-haired archivist when she got like this.

When the three of them reached the beachfront, Brigid rushed off toward the rolling waves while Grant hung back to talk with Kane.

“Everything okay?” Grant asked, his voice a low rumble like distant thunder.

“What, with me?” Kane replied. “Sure. Why do you ask?”

“You just seem—” Grant shrugged “—I dunno, like you'd sooner be somewhere else.”

Kane looked at Grant, fixing his trusty partner in his steely stare. “No, this is… Well, it's nice,” Kane said,
sweeping his hands before him to take in the vista of the sandy beach and the churning turquoise waves of the Pacific as a quintet of seagulls swooped across its surface, squawking to one another. “Just makes a weird change from the usual.”

“Beating the crap out of Annunaki stone gods and their screwed-up minions, you mean?” Grant asked lightly, the humor clear from his tone.

Kane laughed. “Yeah, something like that.” With that, he and Grant joined Brigid at the ocean's edge, where she had removed her boots to wade in the spume-dappled water.

Though meant in jest, Kane knew that Grant's statement had an air of truth to it. Just ten days before, Kane and Grant had found themselves battling with a stone-like being called Ullikummis, who had returned from the stars after almost five thousand years in exile from his Annunaki brethren. The Annunaki had been a constant thorn in the side of the Cerberus warriors since their earliest days as a team. Once mistaken for space gods, the Annunaki were lizardlike, alien visitors who assumed different aspects in their ultimate quest to subjugate and subvert humankind, denying it from reaching its full potential. Primary among those so-called gods was the ruthless Enlil, whose subtle planning and mastery of deception made him a formidable foe.

Ullikummis was, in fact, Enlil's son, his lizardlike body genetically altered to serve a specific purpose—to be his father's personal assassin. But approximately five thousand years ago, something had gone wrong in Ullikummis's assassination attempt on a god called Teshub, and Enlil had disowned his scion, exiling him to space, imprisoned within an asteroid.

Less than a month ago, Ullikummis reappeared when
his rock prison crash-landed in the Canadian heartland, and the stone-clad Annunaki prince had soon indoctrinated a small group of loyal followers from the local populace. Three Cerberus operatives had been among those would-be followers, including Brigid Baptiste herself, who had found the stone lord's Svengali-like instruction almost impossible to resist. Accompanied by their colleague Domi, Kane and Grant had led an assault on Ullikummis's stone base, freeing Brigid and the others and destroying the eerie headquarters that Ullikummis had created from the rocks and named Tenth City. Ullikummis himself had been pushed into a superhot oven by Kane, where his rock body had been blasted with jets of fire until it was reduced to ash.

“Come on, guys,” Brigid called, her cheery voice intruding on Kane's somber thoughts.

Kane looked up and saw Brigid wading in the shallow waves of the ocean, her pant legs rolled up to just below her knees.

“It's lovely and cool,” Brigid told them.

Grant had located a large, flat rock, which he used as a seat while he removed his own boots and carefully folded his trench coat. “My feet have been in boots so long I think they're getting engaged,” Grant rumbled as he wiggled his dark-skinned toes.

Kane snorted at his partner's remark, wondering for a moment how long it had been since
he
had last been dressed for anything other than action. His gaze swept out across the rolling ocean, watching the early-morning sunlight play on its ever-changing surface as it rushed to meet with the shore. Even this early, Kane could see several small fishing boats making their way out into open ocean. Then he turned, taking in the beach and the little fishing ville that had been built along its edge,
the clutch of little two-and three-story buildings that sat as a solid reminder of man's tenacity to survive. Down there, a little way along the beach, a few struts of rotting wood marked where the fishing pier had once stood, jutting into the ocean. Kane had been on that pier when it had collapsed, battling with a beautiful, sword-wielding dancing girl called Rosalia. As Kane smiled, recalling the antagonistic nature of the dancing girl, his eyes focused on two figures crouching in the shadows of the broken pier. Definitely human, neither figure was moving.

While Grant and Brigid kicked at the water with their bare feet, Kane padded silently across the sand, taking to a light jog as he made his way toward the pier and the figures underneath. Kane noticed the remnants of a little camp fire as he approached the pier, a clutch of broken shells—two dozen in all—littered all around it. He could see now that the figures at the pier were quite young, still teenagers, a boy and a girl.

“You okay?” Kane called as he slowed his pace to a trot.

Neither teen acknowledged him; neither even looked up at the sound of his voice. They were sitting on the sand, very still, the girl's legs stretched before her while the boy had pulled his knees up and had his arms wrapped around them as though to stave off the cold.

“Hey?” Kane tried again. “You guys need some help?”

An alarm was going off in the back of Kane's mind, an old instinct from his days as a Magistrate, recognizing danger before he had consciously acknowledged it. There was something wrong with the teenagers, something eerie and out of place. They were just sitting there unmoving, like statues.

When he reached the wrecked underside of the pier, Kane crouched beneath the low-hanging crossbeams and made his way to the two figures waiting there. They were too still, and Kane unconsciously checked for the weight of the Sin Eater handgun that was strapped to his right arm, its wrist holster hidden beneath the sleeve of his denim jacket.

“You kids all right?” Kane prompted again, slowing and looking around the shadow-thick area of the pier as he warily approached the young couple.

The girl had dirty-blond hair that almost matched the wet sand of the beach, and she was dressed in a T-shirt and cutoffs that showed off her girlish figure. The boy had dyed his short hair the color of plum, and wore a ring through one nostril that glinted in the early-morning sunlight over the fluffy beginnings of an adolescent's beard. Like the girl, he was dressed in cutoffs, though his shirt was long-sleeved where hers stopped just past her bony shoulders.

For a moment Kane took them to be dead, but then he saw the slight rise and fall of the girl's chest. She was still breathing at least, and Kane scrambled over to her, grasping her by her shoulders and shaking her.

“Wake up,” Kane urged. “Come on, now.” In his days as a Cobaltville Magistrate, Kane had seen people in various states of semiconsciousness and delirium, and he knew the first thing he had to do was try to rouse the suspect. He slapped lightly at the boy's face to try to pull him out of whatever trance he had fallen into. “Hey, hey—snap out of it.”

Brigid and Grant had left the sea and traipsed over the beach to join Kane at the little shelter beneath the ruined pier.

“What's going on?” Grant asked as he ducked his huge frame to peer beneath the wooden crossbeams.

Kane glanced up at his colleagues, seeing that Grant wore his coat and boots once more, while Brigid Baptiste remained barefoot, carrying her own boots in one hand by their wide openings.

“I thought they were dead, but they're not,” Kane explained briefly. “But I can't seem to wake them up.”

Brigid made her way beneath the jagged crossbeams and knelt beside Kane, while Grant stood at the opening.

“I'll go back into town and see if I can get some medical help,” Grant announced. “Stay in touch,” he added, tapping the side of his face with his finger before turning to make his way up the beach. He meant by Commtact, and didn't need to spell that fact out to his colleagues.

“What's happened to them?” Brigid asked as she shook the girl gently, trying to rouse her while Kane focused his attention on the boy.

“No idea,” Kane admitted. “Flesh is cold so I'd guess they've been out here all night, but this is more than simply the effects of exposure.”

“I concur,” Brigid agreed as the blond-haired girl finally started to groan as if waking from a deep slumber.

“Wh—” the girl groaned. “What is…it?”

“It's okay,” Brigid told her in a sympathetic voice. “You're okay, you're safe.”

The teen boy was waking up, too, and Kane reassured him in a sharp, professional tone as he held his head steady and stared into his eyes. The pupils were normal and reactive, and there was no trace of blood in the whites.

“What happened to you guys?” Kane asked, turning his attention from one to the other.

The girl was staring at Brigid, her eyes wide. Slowly, she reached up and grabbed a lock of Brigid's vibrant hair. “It's so colorful,” she muttered. “Does it hurt?”

“My hair?” Brigid asked, perplexed. “No, it doesn't hurt. It's hair, just like yours.”

The girl shook her head, smiling with disbelief. “There are things in your hair,” she said, “hidden in the angles. They live in the shadows, making the tangles their home. The tangles of your hair turn back on themselves, creating non-space, like a tesseract. That's where the things live. That's where you hide your memories.”

Brigid looked at the young woman, a disconcerting sense of fear gripping her. At first she had thought that the girl had seen lice there, but that wasn't what she was describing at all. A tesseract was a dimensional anomaly, a place that appeared bigger on the inside than it did from without. An advanced mathematical concept, a tesseract was something that a girl of that age wouldn't normally be speaking of, Brigid reasoned. And yet, the way she had used the term, it was as though she could see it as she looked into Brigid's glossy mane of sunset-colored hair. To see the impossible.

“My name's Brigid,” the woman offered, trying to remain calm despite the strange turn in the conversation. “What's yours?”

The teenager looked at Brigid, her blue eyes fixed on the older woman's curls as she ran them through her fingers once more. “Pam,” she said. “I'm Pam. Your hair hides lots of secrets, Brigid. I wish mine could do that.”

Beside Pam, the other teen had started muttering,
too, and Kane helped him to his feet and led him out of the dark shelter of the pier with Brigid bringing the girl along shortly after. “Watch your head,” Kane instructed as he ducked into the sunlight. “Let's walk it off together, okay?”

Kane walked the youth in a little circuit across the beach, instructing him to take deep breaths and get himself together. As they walked, Kane's Commtact came to life and Grant advised that he had found the local doctor and would be along shortly.

A couple of minutes later, having quizzed the teenagers some more and assured themselves that the two were all right—physically, at least—Kane took Brigid to one side and asked what she made of them.

“They're whacked out on something,” Brigid concluded. “The girl's seeing visions wherever she looks. She told me the sea was being dragged to and fro by the moon.”

Kane grimaced. “That's kind of true, I guess. You know, with tides and so on.”

To Brigid, it sounded as if Kane was trying to convince himself. “Teenage girls don't say things like that, Kane,” she told him. “She was talking about a tesseract being hidden within the angles of my hair. A place where I kept my memories.”

“They've been smoking something, all right,” Kane growled, looking around the campfire for evidence of cigarette butts or drug-taking equipment. There was nothing there; all he could see were the shells of smoke-damaged shellfish, cracked and empty.

“Or perhaps eating it,” Brigid realized as she crouched by the empty mollusk shells to put her boots back on. “I think they had a little snack out here, Kane—look.”

Kane cocked an eyebrow as he picked up and
examined one of the empty shells between thumb and forefinger. “Breakfast?” he suggested.

“More likely a midnight snack,” Brigid told him, gathering up several shells and peering at them. They were different sizes, and each had been burned so that they were streaked with black, but they appeared to be of the same creature type.

“What are they?” Kane asked.

Brigid peered at them for a long moment, turning them on the palm of her hand, her brow furrowed.

“Baptiste?” Kane urged when she didn't respond.

“I don't know,” Brigid admitted, mystified. In another person, this admission may have seemed innocent, but Kane knew that Brigid Baptiste had a phenomenal knowledge base, augmented by a rare natural quirk known as an eidetic memory, which meant she could visually reproduce in her mind's eye anything that she had ever seen. And as an ex-archivist and natural scholar, Brigid Baptiste had seen quite a lot. In many ways, she seemed more like a walking encyclopedia than a person when challenged to produce theories.

When Brigid looked up, she saw Kane's puzzled expression.

“No ideas?” he asked.

“It's from the same genetic strain as mollusks and crustaceans,” Brigid assured him, “but I can't place the type. Not off the top of my head, anyway.”