Terminal White

Chapter 2

From warrior to traitor to legend—Brigid could barely process the path her life had taken. To find her effigy here, standing beside the rock that had brought these people’s god to Earth, was unsettling. She had worked for Ullikummis, acting as his “hand in the darkness” while he made a power grab to revive his mother, Ninlil, and gain control of the Annunaki pantheon. Brigid had kidnapped the hybrid child Quav, within whom the genetic template for Ninlil resided, betraying and almost killing her trusted friends in the process. She had even shot Kane, and only his shadow suit coupled with a rejuvenating pool called the Chalice of Rebirth had ensured his survival. It had been a dark time for Brigid, darker than she could bear. Her essence, her personality—even the thing that some religions might call her soul—had hidden away from the whole debacle, and had only been released when a trigger had been engaged—a trigger that had acted almost as a rebirth for Brigid Baptiste herself. So to find her dark aspect, the creature called Brigid Haight, worshipped here as some kind of—what?—demigoddess, was unnerving.

Brigid felt the tug of Kane’s hand on her arm, turned to see his stern face. “Come on, Baptiste,” he encouraged in a low voice, “people’ll notice if you’re not careful.”

“People will notice,” Brigid repeated, barely mouthing the words. What a turn of events that would be—for all these believers to suddenly learn that their demigoddess, the dark hand of the stone god himself, was walking among them.

Brigid turned away from the statue, away from its idealized representation of her own stunning appearance.

Ahead, the devotees were being encouraged to walk past the broken meteor—“the cradle of the stone god,” as the acolytes called it—and show reverence and appreciation for his mighty works and promised utopia. Everyone who passed reached out to touch the rock, some trembling and weeping as they did so. Kane found the displays of emotion disturbing—he had fought Ullikummis, knew him to be nothing but an inhuman monster subjugating mankind to use for his own whims. And yet, his message had somehow taken root in the public imagination, was growing even now, many months on from the death of the monster himself. The people craved something—release from the fear that the fall of the baronies had brought, fear that the world could devolve once more into the post-nukecaust chaos that had become known as the Deathlands era. Then, survival was everything, and the strong preyed on the weak, humans turned into little more than animals—predatory, vicious animals. The Program of Unification had changed all that, a design for living that had fostered new openness and trust between people, that had created the safe havens of the nine villes that had dominated and controlled North America. The barons had brought control, often crushing and dictatorial, but a control that people desired and needed to function and to advance after those dark years. When the barons had resigned, leaving their baronies to assume their true forms as Annunaki space gods, they had left a power vacuum that was proving hard to fill. People were scared—and this, this broken rock prison with all its connotations of evil and subjugation, appealed to that fear, quelled it in a way Kane could barely comprehend.

Kane and Brigid were next to be ushered past the rock, waiting a moment as the preceding pilgrim—a woman with tangled blond hair and a baby bump—wailed at its hollow chamber, the place where Ullikummis had waited five thousand years in cramped imprisonment. “Save us,” she cried. “Show us the glory of your utopia.”

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 pilgrims 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.