James Axler - Distortion Offensive

There was a wide pane of reinforced one-way glass along the wall, and Kane peered through it, looking at the occupants of the bland, simple room. There was a standard table, bolted to the floor as a security measure, along with a smattering of chairs, some of them stacked at the side of the room farthest from the table. A large cork notice board occupied one wall, with a similar, smaller board decorating the wall opposite the one-way glass.

Inside, Kane could see Lakesh and Donald Bry sitting on one side of the desk, addressing questions to their visitor. A little way across the room, much to Kane’s surprise, Cerberus physician Reba DeFore was jiggling a little girl on her knee as she proceeded to give her a health checkup. The girl had feathery white-blond hair tied back in a ponytail, and wide, expressive blue eyes. As Kane watched, DeFore, whose ash-blond hair had been tied up in an elaborate braid that left corkscrew-like strands dangling beside her ears, tickled the little girl’s tummy to make her laugh before peering into her mouth with the tiny light of her handheld otoscope.

Kane turned his attention back to the weird humanoid figure that sat at the far side of the desk with Lakesh and Donald, recognizing it instantly. “Looks like Balam’s come to pay us a visit,” he growled as his beautiful colleague joined him.

“And is that Little Quav?” Brigid asked, tapping at the glass to indicate the blond-haired child who sat on Reba’s lap. Brigid was clearly delighted to see the girl. “She’s grown so.”

Kane reached for the door, turning the handle. “Why don’t we go say hello?”

With that, the tall ex-Mag pushed open the door and made his way inside, like a jungle cat stalking warily into a cage.

“Balam, pal o’ mine,” Kane spit through clenched teeth, his eyes focused on the weird, alien form at the desk, “it’s been a long time.”

“Not too long I hope, Kane,” Balam chirped, his doleful eyes gazing at the new entrants as they filed into the room.

“It could never be too long,” Kane growled sarcastically.

Lakesh and Donald turned from the desk, and Lakesh gave Kane a warning look. “Now, Kane, let’s show some hospitality toward our honored visitors.”

“Hospitality,” Kane repeated, speaking the word as if it were something jagged that had just cut his tongue. “Right.”

Feeling the tension in the room, Brigid stepped forward and diffused it with her bright, sincere smile. “How have you been, Balam? How’s Little Quav?”

“I have been keeping myself to myself,” the gray-skinned alien replied simply in his softly spoken manner. “Quav seems to have settled into life in Agartha well. We have found some places where she may delight in play.”

Brigid laughed when she heard that, turning her attention from the strange, alienlike humanoid at the far end of the room to the playful child on Reba’s lap. “Listen to you, you old softie,” Brigid said. “I never pictured you for the doting parent type.” This was not entirely true, of course, for Brigid knew that Balam had at least two sons who had been raised in the underground city of Agartha. Still, it did genuinely amuse her to hear Balam speak with such a gentle tone of real emotion.

“Children change us,” Balam admitted, his sinewy, six-fingered hands weaving through the air in a nervous tic. “They have the ability to show our true faces, no matter how we try to hide them.”

Resting against the wall, Kane remained tense. His steely gaze had not left Balam since he had entered the room. “So, what?” he challenged. “This a social visit?”

Balam shook his huge, bulbous head ever so slightly, and his lips mouthed the word no so quietly that Kane wasn’t sure that the visitor had actually spoken at all. “It saddens me to have to come to you at this time, but I have been made aware of a situation that requires urgent attention.”

Brigid Baptiste pulled up a free chair to join Balam at the desk, while Kane took several steps closer until he loomed over them all, his shadow dark on the alien’s domelike pate.

“What sort of a situation?” Brigid probed gently.

Balam raised his head slightly, and Brigid could not be sure if his fathomless eyes were staring at her or through her. “Many millennia ago, the Annunaki established a store that would house all of their knowledge,” he explained. “This storehouse was called the Ontic Library, for it contained all of the caveats that defined the real from the imagined or the spiritually malleable.”

Brigid nodded, aware of the philosophical resonance of the term ontic.

“Over the past few days I have felt things in my head,” Balam continued, clearly referring to his telepathic nature, “that make me suspect that the library has been breached and may, in fact, be being broken apart.”

Kane shrugged, clearly unimpressed. “So it’s a library,” he said. “Big deal.”

Balam turned to face Kane, staring at him with those strangely expressive black eyes, but he took a long, calming breath before he actually spoke. “This is not a library as you understand the term,” he explained. “This is a storehouse for the very rules governing this reality. Should it be broken apart, destroyed, there is a significant risk that ‘the real’—that is, your world—will cease to hold integrity.”

“So, the world is under threat?” Kane asked, incredulous.

“More,” Balam stated, “the very rules that underpin the world are threatened. The Ontic Library is a store of knowledge so powerful that it holds the structure of ‘the real’ in place. Without it, your world, your universe may very well cease to hold together.”

Kane looked uncomfortable at the thought, and his brow furrowed with irritation. “Why would they do that? Why create something that could destroy everything around you?”

“Is your knowledge of human history so poor?” Balam challenged in his soft-spoken manner. “Or have you conveniently forgotten the bloodshed caused by humankind barely two centuries ago at the push of a single button?”

“But a library,” Kane said, still trying to comprehend the concept. “Why would they—?”

“The Annunaki are multidimensional beings, Kane,” Balam stated. “Do you concern yourself that food may spoil in your larder, or that a pot might overboil while inside your oven? Everything has a risk, even the retention of knowledge.”

Kane nodded, still feeling uncomfortable at the notion he had just been presented with.

Sitting at the desk, Brigid leaned forward to regain Balam’s attention. “So, where is this Ontic Library located?”

“Beneath the ocean you call the Pacific,” Balam stated emotionlessly, “off the coast of the barony of Snakefishville.”

“Hope,” Brigid breathed, a horrible realization knotting the pit of her stomach.

“Had to fucking be,” Kane growled, clearly irritated that he hadn’t realized it before now.

BACK IN THE FISHING VILLE of Hope, a separate Cerberus field team agents had been operating out of the shantytown area that surrounded the main ville. Like Kane’s group, this team was also a three-person operation, but they had journeyed to the overwhelmed ville using an interphaser unit and had traveled the remaining distance on foot, carrying much-needed medical supplies to the area. Right now, the three operatives were handing out antibiotics to a youthful family that was suffering a bout of skin rashes due to the poor sanitation of the area.

Domi looked at the eldest of the six children in the covered shack where her team had set up base. The child was a dark-haired boy of perhaps four years old, and Domi recognized the fear in the child’s eyes. He was afraid of her because she looked different, Domi knew, but she wasn’t here to make friends. Instead, she ignored him, turning her attention to the busy dirt street that ran between the slanting temporary dwellings while her colleagues, Edwards and Johnson, doled out the relevant medical supplies.