little rumble went through the crowd, and voices were raised in dissent.
“I heard it was over.”
“Yeah, Lord Ullikummis abandoned us.”
“He died.”
The woman raised her hands for silence. “Please, people. Please.”
Gradually, with a palpable sense of reluctance, the crowd quietened.
“Ullikummis is dead,” the woman on the podium announced. “The rumors are true.”
Someone in the crowd cried out, and others raised their voices in shock once again, taking a minute to finally quieten once more.
“Ullikummis ascended,” the woman continued, “to watch over all of us, to better guarantee his utopia would come to pass. And he left us a gift.”
The woman pulled at her waist then, and Kane saw that what she wore was not a dress after all but a skirt and top of the same shimmering material. She raised the top, lifting it up and over her belly until it cinched just below her breasts. Her pink belly was swollen, a little bump showing in line with her hips. At first, Kane had taken the bump for fat, but now he realized his mistake.
“He planted his seed in me before he ascended,” the woman announced to the stunned crowd. “I am the Stone Widow, and Ullikummis’s child grows within me. Our lord has departed, but his flesh shall live on.”
Once again, the crowd began to talk, raising questions and surging forward to see and to touch the swollen belly of the pregnant woman who called herself the Stone Widow.
Careful not to draw attention to himself, Kane engaged the hidden receiver of his Commtact and subvocalized, “Edwards, what are you making of this?”
A moment later, Edwards responded, his voice crystal clear in Kane’s head. “I need to be closer to be sure, Kane.”
Commtacts were communications devices that were hidden beneath the skin of the Cerberus field personnel. Each subdermal device was a top-of-the-line communication unit whose designs had been discovered among the artifacts in Redoubt Yankee several years before by the Cerberus exiles. Commtacts featured sensor circuitry incorporating an analog-to-digital voice encoder that was subcutaneously embedded in a subject’s mastoid bone. Once the pintels made contact, transmissions were funneled directly to the wearer’s auditory canals through the skull casing, vibrating the ear canal to create sound. In theory, even if a user went completely deaf he or she would still be able to hear normally, in a fashion, courtesy of the Commtact device.
Kane bit back a curse as he saw Edwards’s tall form pushing farther toward the very front of the crowd. The man’s height made him conspicuous and, unlike himself and Grant, Edwards had never had much experience working in low-key ops like this one. Instead, he just barreled on, eyes on the prize.
“Cool off, Edwards,” Kane subvocalized. “You’re drawing too much attention.”
“Well, shit, Kane,” Edwards’s voice came back. “Whatever’s left inside me from that monster needs to get close to sense things. So, I’m getting close. You got a better idea, I’m all ears.” As he spoke, Edwards peered across the heads of the crowd, fixing Kane with a challenging stare.
Kane looked away, his eyes automatically playing over the rest of the crowd. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how it should play out. Edwards had been turned into a traitor against his will, and now that he was back on side he felt like he had something to prove. If they weren’t careful, that desire to prove himself was going to land them all in very hot water.
* * *
MEANWHILE, CLOSE TO the rear wall of the hangar, the fourth agent of the Cerberus team had slipped past the celebrants and was making her way along the length of the room behind the stage. Domi was an albino with chalk-white skin and bone-white hair that was cut into a short, pixie-style bob. Barely five feet in height with eyes a fearsome red, Domi had the figure of a teenage girl, with tiny, bird-thin limbs and small, high breasts. Right now, she was wearing a simple, airy ensemble, a light dress that left much of her pale skin uncovered. Given her choice, Domi would prefer to wear less and perhaps nothing at all. A child of the Outlands, Domi found the feel of clothing on her skin restrictive.
She had been tracking this group for several days, and had already witnessed two of their “performances,” for want of a better word. She balked at calling them sermons; there was nothing holy or reverent here that she could see. The group had come to recognize her, not in the least since her appearance was so distinctive, and she had told them her name was Mitra, a preferred alias she had used a few times while infiltrating similar pseudo religious groups. As “Mitra” she was trusted, a gentle-hearted innocent with a sickly parent who was looking for a new family in the form of this congregation. The story gave her enough credibility to pass herself off unnoticed as the false sermon continued.
While the crowd’s attention was on the preaching Stone Widow, Domi ducked under the stage and peered at what lay beneath. The stage had been constructed of several sheets of wood, placed end to end and held aloft by piled cinder blocks at regular intervals. Visibility was poor underneath, but Domi could see that the area was being used for storage. She wanted to know what was being stored.
The woman speaker’s coat was under there, neatly folded and placed by the open end of the stage. Other than that, the usual kind of things one would expect from travelers—several canteens filled with water along with some travel bags. Domi crouch-walked toward the bags—one of which was unbuckled at the top—and peered inside, spying a change of underwear along with some dried strips of cured meat in a separate bag with a clasp tie at its top. She sniffed the latter bag for a moment before moving on, head ducked beneath the stage. The height of the stage was about three feet, and Domi had to move slowly to find her way around.
Above her, the woman continued her proclamations about being the mother of the god’s child, and the crowd oohed and aahed as prompted. Through the medium of the low stage, the voices sounded hollow and eerie, as if coming from a great length of tunnel.
Up ahead, Domi spotted a wooden box that had been pushed a little more than arm’s length from the stage’s edge and against the side wall, just enough to keep it safe. The box was about fourteen inches in height and roughly square.
Checking the edges of the stage for movement and confirming there was none, Domi made her way slowly toward the crate on silent tread.
* * *
UP AT THE FRONT OF THE crowd, the Stone Widow was continuing to explain her role in the New Order. Words like messiah were being bandied about, child of god, saviour. The audience was lapping it up. The sense of relief was palpable; these people craved something to believe in now that their god was gone.
“When this child is born,” the woman continued, “he will be the first step in the evolution of our new world. A child born of god and woman. A force to lead us all.”
Edwards had reached the front of the group now, and he stared at the woman, eyeing her belly. Edwards had been seeded with one of the semisentient stones that came from Ullikummis to fulfill his will. While most of the stone growth had now been removed from his skull, parts of it tenaciously remained—not enough to do any damage to Edwards, but enough that he could sense other obedience stones and their ilk. He sure as hell could detect something here, but it was dull, like a niggling itch.
“Well?” Kane asked
