across his scalp along with two plaits that trailed down behind his right ear, falling over his shoulder where their ends were clamped with two metal beads. “Calm yourself, there’s no rush.”
“I just want to get out of here, Carver,” she said, stopping before him with her back to Kane and the doorway. “This place is…abnormal.”
Standing this close, Kane saw that, like many tall women, Simona was strangely shapeless, with small breasts and only a slight curvature at her hips in the otherwise flat line leading from shoulder to ankle. It made her seem that much taller, and somehow more graceful as she moved, like a person designed by aeronautic engineers to reduce drag.
“Heck, I didn’t think you’d scare so easy,” Carver said, his voice now rumbling with a cheerful tone. “Don’t tell me that wacky mirror freaked you out.”
“It’s not fear,” Simona snapped. “Just a healthy desire for efficiency. The sooner we wrap up this op and get back to the Millennial Consortium HQ, the sooner we get paid, fed and off this fucking iceberg.”
“You’re not really a winter person, are you?” Carver chided.
“I’ve wasted three months in that damned tent, searching for this hole in the ground,” Simona growled. “I just want it to be over. Don’t you?”
Reluctantly, Carver agreed.
Standing a little way back from the doorway, Grant looked at Kane and raised his eyebrows as they watched the scene unfold.
“Millennial Consortium,” Kane mouthed in response to his partner’s unasked question.
Kane, Grant and Brigid had crossed paths with the millennialists on a number of occasions. Twenty-third-century scavengers, they were pirates who profited by salvaging old technology and either selling it to the highest bidder or using it to their own ends. Often, the millennialists would attempt to do both at once. The Millennium Consortium was a vast organization, with branches in several locations and the technology and resources to back up impressive operations the world over. In theory, the millennialists had noble aims: the furthering of humankind and a recovery from the sick days that had followed the downfall of humanity at the end of the nuclear ravages of the twenty-first century. However, in practice, Kane knew, they were a selfish organization, whose only true goal was power, a goal they would readily achieve no matter what—or who—stood in their way.
Reluctantly, Kane stepped away from the doorway and, walking backward, made his way silently along the corridor, leaving Grant in place. At the far end of the corridor, Brigid looked up at Kane hopefully.
“We’ve located the knife,” Kane told her, his voice low, “but there’s one hell of a complication.”
Brigid raised one perfectly shaped, red-gold eyebrow.
“Millennialists got here first,” Kane explained.
“Damn,” Brigid spit. “How many?”
Kane shrugged noncommittally. “How important is this thing? Be honest now, Baptiste.”
“Why? Do you think you have a chance to snatch it?” Brigid asked.
“I think they’re crap odds and we’re better off making a tactical withdrawal,” Kane growled, “but I’m willing to listen to counterarguments if you have any.”
Brigid nodded toward the doorway at the far end of the corridor. “How many?” she asked again.
“Twelve,” Kane said, “all of them armed.”
Kane watched Brigid for a moment as the slightest crease appeared on her pale forehead while she thought. Then her eyes widened and she reached out to grab his arm, pulling him toward her.
“I think counterarguments will have to wait,” Brigid said as the familiar sounds of gunfire shattered the quiet of the laboratory.
Kane turned and looked over his shoulder. Grant was rushing toward him at full sprint, and the Sin Eater had materialized once again in the big man’s hand.
“We’ve been spotted,” Grant shouted as he ran from the corridor amid a hail of bullets.
Chapter 5
October 31, 1930
Isle Terandoa Naval Base, the South Pacific
“Godkiller.” Abraham Flag repeated the word slowly, as though feeling its sharp edges with his tongue. “An ominous name for a weapon.”
“Seems pretty weird to me, Professor,” Barnaby B. Barnaby said in his cultured New Haven accent.
“It is hardly unprecedented to name a weapon,” Flag reminded his archaeologist friend. “Think of Excalibur, or Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer. There is a great symbolism to the naming of an item. Ancient people often believed that names were sources of immense power.”
Little Ant was still poring over his notes. “But Godkiller, Chief,” he chimed in. “Well, it ain’t exactly subtle, is it?”
“Nor, I imagine, is being stabbed with a twelve-inch blade of carved stone,” Flag pointed out, but there was no hint of malice or superiority in his tone. He turned the knife over once more in his white-gloved hands. “Do you have a workable translation of the text, Little Ant?” he asked.
“I got most of it,” Little Ant assured him, “though it ain’t nothin’ pleasant. There’s a lot of lamentations, the destruction of an enemy’s family tree and some stuff about being returned to Tiamat.”
“Tiamat,” Flag repeated, placing the strange stone knife back on the desk. “She was the great mother of the Annunaki, the family of gods from Mesopotamian and Sumerian mythology. Some myth fragments suggest that she kept her squabbling children in line as they waged their endless battles across heaven and Earth.”
“Sounds like a tough old broad,” Little Ant remarked jovially as he replaced his modest notebook into his breast pocket.
Abraham Flag’s amethyst eyes took on an eerie, distant quality as he turned to look out of the small window of the office. Sunlight streamed through the pane, its golden rays playing along the length of the odd stone knife. Out there, beyond the wire fence that surrounded the naval base, a lush jungle stood poised, brimming with the colorful plant life of Isle Terandoa. “If the stories are accurate,” Flag said finally, his voice low, “the Annunaki were beings of immense power, the likes of which have never been seen before or since.”
Barnaby shook his head in disbelief, his tousled red hair flopping this way and that. “Gods, Professor?” he scoffed. “They’re just stories.”
Flag turned back to his companions, his eyes playing across the dark-colored blade. “The artifact before us would suggest otherwise, Barnaby,” Flag stated, an ominous edge creeping into his voice.
Both Little Ant and Barnaby B. Barnaby had worked alongside Abraham Flag for many years, racking up a score of adventures across the globe. Neither man had ever seen their de facto leader look as concerned as he did at that moment.
Little Ant shrugged. “You really think a stone knife is gonna do much hurt to anyone, Chief?” he asked.
Flag’s
