James Axler - Infestation Cubed

He was ill at ease because he could sense her. He could feel that she was still alive, still breathing, still there, but she was cut off. There was no contact with her via Commtact, and she had disappeared from Cerberus before the final conflict within the redoubt’s walls.

Rosalia was a good woman, and Kane felt she was a trustworthy ally, right down to the instincts that made up his point man’s instinct, a combination of awareness and perceptive insight that made him seem almost psychic.

Kane almost wished that they’d made a conventional mat-trans jump, rather than employing the interphaser, which was instantaneous and didn’t jar his psyche loose to see beyond the normal flow of events. Perhaps a journey through the mat-trans unit would have freed him up enough to look across the world, to feel for Brigid Baptiste. He’d been able to find her, and other long-lived beings, in the visions brought upon by such jumps. Maybe this time he could have retained his focus and his interest long enough to latch on to his lost friend and ally and be that much closer to bringing her back into the fold.

There was always the dreaded possibility that Ullikummis had taken her prisoner, utilizing her intellect through the power of his mind control, the unrelenting force that had buckled even Kane’s indomitable will during his captivity. Even so, Kane would have been able to see that. He just knew that he could have caught a glimpse as his essence sped through the pinholes of reality, temporarily gaining a vantage point above a normal man’s.

No, he told himself. He had to do this the old-fashioned way. There was no way of telling if Ullikummis hadn’t had the ability to monitor the Totality Concept mat-trans units spread across the globe. Lakesh seemed wary of setting up shop, holing away in another redoubt, as well, preferring to go on the run with the utilization of the interphasers to hop away to a parallax point and literally shut the dimensional door behind them. While the Annunaki had proved to have the capability of making such journeys themselves with artifacts called thresholds, the means of tracing and locating such departures and entries was arcane and difficult.

Kane set his jaw firmly. He traveled on foot, or by boat, and made certain that he was seen and recognized in the sleek, black shadow suit that had become the badge of the Cerberus redoubt rebels. People might not have heard the whispers, but their descriptions of him and Grant would reach the ears of those who knew, and the hunt would be on.

The trouble with this plan was that the fury he’d bring down on himself might be that of the New Order, or it could be another set of foes such as the Millennial Consortium or one of the surviving Annunaki overlords who had been forced to do without the awesome resources of the living dragon ship Tiamat. One of those snake-faced assholes would prove just as deadly as Ullikummis and his followers, and the interference of these self-proclaimed gods across the breadth of human prehistory meant that anywhere in the world could be a hideout, a niche, a hidden tomb that held a treasure trove of extraterrestrial technology simply waiting to unleash itself upon an unsuspecting world.

“Hey! Ground control to Major Tom, come in,” came a harsh whisper, cutting through Kane’s musings as they glided through the still waters of the cypress swamp.

Kane blinked, looking back at Grant, an eyebrow raised quizzically in response to the odd way his friend had drawn his attention.

“It’s an old prenukecaust song I dug out for some meditation music,” Grant said. “Seemed appropriate since you looked like you were off in space, or even farther away.”

“Sorry. What did you want?” Kane asked.

“You just looked like you were in a daze,” Grant explained. “I know you’re worried about Brigid…”

“I’m keeping my eyes and ears peeled. I can brood and keep watch at the same time,” Kane answered with an annoyed grunt.

“I was just going to say we’ll find her. We’ve been split up before, and we’ll be back together before you know it,” Grant said. “And once we do, no pebble-faced chunk of dried shit is going to last long.”

Kane squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re the optimist and I’m the grumpy ass?”

“You said it, not me,” Grant replied. “Licky may have turned us upside down, but shit is still in balance.”

Kane scratched his cheek just below his eye. It felt stiff, and had the annoying sensation of a splinter stuck inside. He had tried to get it out with a needle, but it must have just been an illusion, a deep scar that had settled in and turned into a slender thread of gray. “Keep cheering me up, Grant.”

“Keep bitching,” Grant answered. “If we could get Rosalia or that damn dog to spout useless trivia, things would almost feel normal.”

Kane hadn’t broken his rhythmic rowing of the canoe they were in, despite deep thought or conversation with his friend. He glanced forward and looked at the sandy-furred half-breed dog, its dark eyes meeting his, curiosity reflecting in them.

“Maybe he is making small talk about trivia,” Kane said. “We just don’t understand dog. And don’t forget, Baptiste’s trivia was never useless.”

Grant nodded.

The dog continued to concentrate his gaze on Kane’s troubled features. He knew that he had been described as wolflike before, his musculature sharing the lean, sleek lines of the pack hunter, and his senses equally as keen as any canine. However, if there was any common ground between man and beast, Kane couldn’t make heads or tails from it, except that the dog showed sympathy.

As if on cue with that recognition, the dog lifted its paw and rested it on Kane’s knee, taking on an almost noble bearing before turning its attention off in the distance.

“What is it?” Kane asked.

The dog turned its whole body, its nose acting like an arrow directing Kane’s eyes toward a ribbon of water that moved off the main river they were on, rolling toward the shore of a hardwood hammock. He flattened his oar in the water, providing a braking force for the boat.

Grant made an annoyed groan as his friend worked against his progress, but that died off as he followed Kane’s gaze. “What?”

“Dog must have heard or smelled something,” Kane said.

Rosalia looked over her shoulder, disbelief coloring her gaze. “Like he knows something’s happening? It could be a squirrel.”

Kane squinted, silencing her with a raised finger.

“Magistrate Man, you don’t shut me up like—”

Kane turned and glared at her. “Quiet, damn it.”

Rosalia’s mouth closed, lips pressed together tight until her mouth was a thin, bloodless scar on her face.

Grant knew that Kane’s senses were nearly preternatural, and if he was trying to focus on something that Grant himself couldn’t hear or see, then he would follow the point man’s lead.

The silence folded in around them, weighing in as heavily as the humidity and the stench of mold around them. Kane knew something was wrong as the normal lively sounds of the swamp, the chirp of crickets and the warble of birds, had suddenly fallen away. The quiet lasted only a moment before a scream, faint and weak, but still a woman’s scream, reached his sharp ears. Even as he heard it, he noticed that Rosalia’s dog had perked up even more. It turned its big, dark eyes toward the former Magistrate, as if to say, “You heard that, right?”

“Trouble. Let’s go,” Kane announced, and he and Grant put their backs into it, turning the boat and pushing it down the waterway. The only sound they made was the slap and suck of their oars in the murky swamp water.

SUWANEE’S BLACK MANE of silky hair flew as the open hand cracked across her smooth, dark cheek. She struggled to maintain her balance on the uneven ground between the long leaf pines and tumbled down into the wiregrass. Her face throbbed from the force of the impact, and the Seminole woman had one thought—that she was lucky to have been slapped rather than punched. A closed fist would surely have shattered her facial bones and left her unconscious and helpless.