James Axler - Genesis Sinister

The room featured two aisles of computer desks, and one wall was dominated by a Mercator relief map showing Earth covered in lighted pathways that traced the routes available to the matter-transfer system at any given time. The mat-trans units were designed for military use back in the latter half of the twentieth century. The Cerberus mat-trans unit was located in its own chamber in the far corner of the room. Tinted brown armaglass walls encompassed its powerful machinery. With just the flick of a switch, the mat-trans could hurl a person across the quantum ether to a similar unit many miles away. Though primarily concentrated in mainland America, the mat-trans units stretched across all continents and even as far as the moon.

The operations room was staffed around the clock, with people checking the live feeds and liaising with field agents in their self-appointed role of protecting humankind. Right now, however, the room was mostly populated by a cleanup crew that was using a combination of ultrasonic generators and good old-fashioned brute force to remove the strange infestation that had threatened to consume the redoubt.

The Cerberus redoubt was initially a military facility located high in the Bitterroot Mountains in Montana, where it had remained largely forgotten or ignored in the two centuries since the nukecaust. In the years since that nuclear devastation, a strange mythology had grown up around the mountains, their dark, foreboding forests and seemingly bottomless ravines. The wilderness area surrounding the redoubt was virtually unpopulated. The nearest settlement was to be found in the flatlands some miles away, consisting of a small band of Indians, Sioux and Cheyenne, led by a shaman named Sky Dog.

Hidden away as it was, the redoubt had required few active measures to discourage visitors, so when it had been attacked by Ullikummis and his forces the personnel had been both surprised and dumbfounded. With a force of just fifty troops, Ullikummis had taken control of the redoubt, altering its interior dimensions and changing the very shape of the rooms themselves as he transformed it into a brutal Life Camp.

Ullikummis himself was the shamed scion of the Annunaki bloodline, and had been medically altered to look like a monster carved from stone. Among other genetic enhancements, Ullikummis exhibited a psionic control over rock, and had employed this to radically alter the whole of the redoubt, covering everything in a fresh skin of stone. Ullikummis had other powers, too, including his so-called obedience stones, semisentient shards of rock that could influence and control a person’s thoughts. Ullikummis and his agents had secretly placed these obedience stones in several of the Cerberus personnel prior to the attack on the redoubt, and it had been these hidden allies within who had allowed the great stone Annunaki to take over the complex with such ease.

When the redoubt had come back under Cerberus’s control, the personnel had begun the slow process of cleaning away the stone and replacing the damaged stock beneath. It had been four days now, and Lakesh wondered if he could see any progress at all. The ops room was still covered in a spiderweb of rock, thick stone fingers clawing across every surface and every wall, obliterating the old familiar sights he had been used to for so long.

Outside was little different. Just beyond the rollback door where the garish three-headed hellhound had been painted many years earlier, lending the Cerberus facility its name, thick posts of rock lined the plateau, barring the entryway to the redoubt for anything wider than a human. Even now, workers were chipping away at those pillars of stone, breaking them down into gravel and dust.

“I’m sorry it’s such a mess in here,” Lakesh said as he offered a seat to the beautiful woman who had come to speak with him. “You haven’t caught us at our best.”

Rosalia shrugged indifferently. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’m not staying.” Rosalia was long of limb with thick, dark hair that reached past her shoulders to halfway down her back. In her early twenties, Rosalia wore loose clothes, a pale skirt that brushed her ankles and a white cotton blouse that she had left half unbuttoned. Where her olive skin could be seen it was tanned a beautiful golden. Rosalia had first met one of the Cerberus field teams as an adversary, but she had joined their ranks during their campaign against Ullikummis and had proved her worth many times over.

“You’ve been a real asset to us, Rosalia,” Lakesh told her. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to stay?”

Rosalia looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. “This? It’s not my scene,” she said. “You’ll be fine without me.”

And there it was, Lakesh thought. That remarkable arrogance that had typified Rosalia and her behavior within the Cerberus organization. The woman was competent—there was no question about it—but she was very aware of that fact. Whatever she had done, she made it clear that she had done it as a favor to Cerberus, not the other way around.

Kane, an incredibly gifted field agent and a lynchpin of the Cerberus team, had brought her on board. He had been trapped in the Life Camp at the time, and he had needed Rosalia’s help to escape and thus free the other Cerberus captives. But he had seen something in her and had asked her to help them for the duration. With Ullikummis now destroyed, Rosalia felt that her time with Cerberus had reached its natural end.

“Where will you go?” Lakesh asked, raising his voice to be heard over the sounds of chiseling going on just behind his shoulder.

“Somewhere,” Rosalia told him, as ever giving almost nothing away about herself.

“Cerberus owes you,” Lakesh said, “and I would like to see us pay our debts. If there’s anything I can do, or anything you need from the people of this facility, you need only ask.”

Rosalia stifled a laugh. “The first time I met your people—” she began.

“The slate is clean,” Lakesh cut in. “Whatever you did before you came here is forgotten. I promise.”

Rosalia nodded with gratitude. “You know, there is one thing,” she said. “I was planning to go see some people I... Some acquaintances. They’re down south. It’s quite a journey or I would have gone there sooner. You have your tech, the interphaser and the mat-trans. Think you can maybe give me a little push in the right direction?”

A broad smile appeared on Lakesh’s features. He was glad to be able to help the normally cagey young woman. “Where is it you need to go?” he asked.

“There’s a town close to the border, Mexico,” Rosalia said. “That side, not this.”

Lakesh was already tapping at the computer terminal that dominated his desk. The screen still had tendrils of stone across it like a cracked windshield, but he could see enough to get what he needed. “Whereabouts, exactly?”

“The place has gone by many names,” Rosalia said, “and it never once appeared on any map. I was told it was set up by a bandit who made himself its uncrowned king way back before the nukecaust. He meant it as a place where other outlaws could retreat and maybe retire. These days it’s a place of tranquillity and learning, high in the mountains, away from the villes.”

“Do you have coordinates?” Lakesh asked.

Rosalia nodded, tapping on the illuminated map on his computer screen. “Get me close enough, I’ll hoof it from there.”

“I’ll have to track down the nearest entry point,” Lakesh said, “which may take a while with the—”

“Everything?” Rosalia said brightly, gesturing around the ruined room.

Lakesh nodded. “Yes, with the ‘everything’ right now. Leave it with me—you’ll ship out before the day’s over.”