James Axler - Genesis Sinister

Chapter 2

Brigid Baptiste was sick of the questions. A member of the resistance group known as the Cerberus organization, Brigid had been deeply involved in a war between two would-be gods, Ullikummis and Enlil, who were in fact part of an ancient race of aliens called the Annunaki. With her Cerberus colleagues, Brigid had been battling the Annunaki for several years, striving to prevent their takeover of planet Earth and the absolute subjugation of the human spirit. But during the most recent skirmish with the insidious aliens, Brigid had been taken prisoner by Ullikummis, rogue upstart of the Annunaki. The stone god had turned her mind against her, brainwashed her into servitude. For a time she had taken the name of Brigid Haight and acted as Ullikummis’s hand in darkness, helping to manipulate events so that Ullikummis could breathe new life into the reincarnated form of his mother and seize control of Earth and her peoples.

Gifted with an eidetic memory that granted her perfect recall, Brigid had used a mind trick to hide her own personality in a meditative trance, leaving her body to function solely as a shell controlled by the wicked purpose of Ullikummis. But she had become lost in the trance, and when her mind had finally been reawakened, Brigid found that her body had wrought terrible atrocities, killing innocents and betraying her closest friends.

The war itself was over. Less than a week earlier, Ullikummis had led his million-strong army in a final push on Enlil’s stronghold on the banks of the Euphrates. Ultimately, the attack had failed, with enormous casualties on both sides. Cerberus had been in the thick of things, striving to the very limits of their abilities to halt the incredible God War that had erupted, twisting it from within. And for a while, almost to the very end of that final, cataclysmic battle, Brigid had stood with Ullikummis, opposed to the forces of man. She had a woman to thank for her final change of heart, a Cerberus fighter called Rosalia who had managed to break the meditative spell and free Brigid’s mind from its hiding place beyond time.

Ever since then, Brigid had been plagued by questions. Her colleagues had been concerned for her, which was not only natural but touching—something so very human that it encompassed everything that the Cerberus organization represented. But Brigid didn’t have any answers; she was still trying to put the pieces together herself. It was like waking from some horrible nightmare, only to be told that the nightmare had been real after all.

Now Brigid stood on the wide stone steps that led down to the River Ganges in India, the morning sun beating on her back. She was a tall and slender woman in her late twenties, with emerald eyes and flame-red hair that cascaded down her back in an elegant sweep of curls. Her skin was pale and she showed a wide expanse of forehead that suggested intelligence, along with full lips that suggested passion. In truth, Brigid could be defined by both of those aspects, and many more besides. She wore a white one-piece suit, the standard uniform of the Cerberus organization, and she had augmented this with a light jacket that was already making her feel too warm even before the sun had properly reached its full intensity.

Beside Brigid stood another woman dressed in similar clothes, enthusiastically gazing out at the rushing waters of the Ganges. This was Mariah Falk, a thin woman in her early forties, with short dark hair that showed flecks of white running through it. Though not conventionally pretty, Mariah had an engaging smile and a genial nature that put most people at ease. A geologist, Mariah had been with Cerberus a long time, ever since being awakened from a cryogenic suspension facility she had been placed in back in the twenty-first century. It had been her idea to travel to India, using the teleportation system that the Cerberus team relied on.

“Breathtaking, isn’t it?” Mariah said, staring across the wide expanse of river where locals were washing clothes, hefting buckets of water for private use, and where the local holy men had come to wash the soles of their feet.

Brigid watched, too, as a clutch of children ran past them on the stone steps and leaped into the water, giggling as they splashed one another. All human life was here, she realized, going about its business, oblivious to the great war that had been fought just a few days before, a war that had been for their very souls.

The water itself was brown with silt where movements churned up the riverbed, and it had that smell to it, Brigid recognized, the smell of muddy puddles after a hard rainfall.

“Clem brought me here once,” Mariah continued enthusiastically. “He said that the Hindus believe the Ganges is the source of all life and that bathing in it will wash away a person’s sins.” She turned to Brigid then, smiling her bright, hopeful smile.

Brigid just stared, watching the water the way one might watch an insect bat against the outside of a windowpane, with distracted disinterest.

“Brigid, I don’t know what happened to you,” Mariah said gently, “but I like to think that Clem would have said to bring you here, if he’d still been alive.”

Mariah had lost Clem Bryant in the God War, never having had the chance to tell him that she was in love with him.

Slowly Brigid dipped her head in the faintest of nods. “Clem was a good man,” she said quietly.

“He was,” Mariah agreed. “I really miss him. We all lost something in the war, Brigid. I lost...hope for a while.”

Brigid looked at the geologist, saw the worry lines on her face and around her eyes. She looked older than Brigid remembered. The war had placed a strain on everyone.

“Do you want a dip?” Mariah asked, inclining her head encouragingly toward the river. “Wash away your sins, once-in-a-lifetime offer.”

Brigid shook her head. “You go,” she said. “I’ll wait right here.”

There, on the sandy stone steps that lined the riverbank, Mariah stripped off the white jumpsuit, revealing a modest swimsuit underneath. “Whether the river really does wash away people’s sins or not, you can’t keep blaming yourself for what happened,” she told Brigid.

Brigid just looked at the rushing water, leaning down until she was sitting on one of the wide steps, her legs stretched out before her.

Mariah didn’t bother saying anything else. She had thought a trip to India might pull Brigid out of her blue funk. The Cerberus team was still engaged with the massive cleanup of their redoubt in the Bitterroot Mountains in Montana. The redoubt had been infiltrated and overwhelmed by Ullikummis and his army, but Brigid had seemed distant, emotionally disengaged, unable to be of any help. Yet the trip hadn’t seemed to do anything for her mood. She remained withdrawn, as if in mourning.

Brigid watched as Mariah waded into the river, waters lapping at her ankles and then her knees, then higher until she was in it past her hips. The geologist crouched, letting the cool waters lap against her skin, smiling as it tickled.

It would take more than water to wash away her sins, Brigid knew. In her guise as Brigid Haight, she had been a part of the campaign to betray and cage humankind. To cleanse her of her sins would take a miracle, something with the power of a nuke. She watched in silence as Mariah ducked under the water, letting it run through her hair as all around her the locals continued going about their business seemingly without a care in the world. It was as if nothing had happened at all.

* * *

CERBERUS WAS A MESS. The familiar operations room that sat at the hub of the redoubt complex looked as if a bomb had hit it. No, not a bomb, Lakesh corrected himself—an avalanche.

Lakesh was in his mid-fifties, with dusky skin, clear blue eyes and an aquiline nose over his refined mouth. His black hair was swept back in a tidy design, hints of gray showing at the temples. His full name was Mohandas Lakesh Singh and he had run the Cerberus operation since its inception. In fact, he had been at this redoubt, off and on, for the best part of 250 years, dating back to before the nuclear holocaust that had so dramatically changed the world at the end of the twentieth century. A physicist and cyberneticist of some renown in his day, Lakesh had worked on the original mat-trans system at this very redoubt. Cryogenic freezing and a program of organ replacement had kept Lakesh alive far longer than his natural years. In short, Lakesh had seen a lot in his life, and a lot of it had been in this very room in the heart of a mountain.