have spoken to Reba,” Lakesh explained soberly once Mariah had left and Brigid had sat beside his desk. “She has agreed to speak with you about what you went through. She’s been doing this with a number of our people. A lot of them are still quite understandably traumatized. We feel it might be of some help to you, as well. Do you understand?”
Reba DeFore was the facility’s physician. Brigid had known her a long time, too.
“You mean a psych evaluation?” Brigid challenged.
Lakesh nodded. “You have been through a terrible ordeal,” he said, “one we fear you are perhaps struggling to cope with. The sessions would be open-ended—and voluntary of course. I feel it would be for your own good.”
Brigid glared at him, her brilliant emerald eyes piercing his. “No,” she said.
Lakesh watched openmouthed as she rose to leave. Finally, he recovered his composure before she reached the doors. “Please, Brigid, there are so many questions that need to be addr—”
“No,” she shrieked, turning on him. “I’m sick of questions. Sick, sick, sick. Do you hear me?”
Lakesh balked at the outburst, apologizing and defusing the situation by backtracking as quickly as he had suggested it. He watched as Brigid left the room, still mad.
Lakesh regretted that, but he was worried about her. They all were. He had known Brigid for a long time, and in all that time he had never known her like this. Her biolink transponder, the device that was injected into all Cerberus personnel so they could be monitored and tracked, had been shut off by Ullikummis, and without it she had been lost to them for almost two months. She had come back broken, no longer herself. And there didn’t seem to be anything that Lakesh or anyone else could do about it.
* * *
BRIGID STORMED DOWN the main corridor that ran the length of the redoubt, the heels of her boots clumping against the hard stone floor. Wide enough to fit two ground vehicles side by side with ease, the corridor featured a high arched ceiling. It was always cold, like a cave at night, and always busy, running as it did the length of the redoubt mountain complex.
There was something about the feel of the corridor that was reassuring to Brigid right then, and she slowed her pace as she weaved over to the right-hand wall before pressing her hand against the rock. The wall was cold, the kind of cold that emanated just a little way beyond a thing’s surface, that one could feel before touching. It felt real to her.
When Ullikummis had attacked her, overwhelmed her, destroyed her, Brigid had hidden her true mind away in a secret place that he couldn’t reach. It was a higher plane of consciousness, accessible only via meditation. Its walls had been as white as lightning, and it had a sterile quality, with not so much as the hint of a breeze anywhere within it no matter how far she traveled.
Here, back in the redoubt with its rocky ceiling and cold walls, Brigid couldn’t help but notice the difference. It was real here. Everything was real. Wasn’t it?
* * *
BLACK JOHN JEFFERSON had reached the top of the stone steps that ran up the outside of the building, and spatters of his blood now daubed each stair. It was a rectangular construction, the sloping sides reminiscent of a pyramid, although they failed to meet at the apex. Instead, there was a small covered area, fourteen feet by twelve, its flat stone roof marked with carvings. Black John examined those carvings for a moment, trying to make sense of them. The elements had not been kind to them, and much of the definition had worn away over time. Still, he saw geometric shapes and something that looked like a bird carved into the stone, but he didn’t know what any of it meant.
Beneath the stone roof, there was another staircase, this one leading down into the building itself. The steps were dark and grimy, the detritus of dead leaves and dried insect shells lying amid swollen lines of moss.
Black John poked his head closer to the staircase and called out, “Hello? Anybody there?”
His own words echoed back to him after a moment, sounding hollow as they reverberated from the walls.
Jefferson clutched at his belly as another spark of searing pain ran through his guts where the bullets had struck, and when he brought his hand away it was slick with blood. The blood was thick, congealed with rough flecks in it from the edges of a forming scab.
Behind him, the jungle waited, bird caws and animal cries sounding distant and lonesome. Black John looked around him, searching the area. The tree cover was high, and the jungle was so overgrown that he could barely see ten feet beyond the edge of the stone structure. It would not surprise him to learn that this temple had stood here, unnoticed, for thousands of years, utterly lost to the eyes of man.
Warily, the blood dripping from his stomach wound with each step, Black John followed the stone steps into the darkness of the forgotten temple.
* * *
STILL CONCERNED ABOUT Brigid’s reaction, Lakesh threw himself back into his work, unable to put the incident out of his mind. The map of the Mexico border glowed on the flickering computer screen, with several destination points highlighted that the interphaser would be able to access. That posed a problem, too. While Lakesh was willing to help Rosalia, the interphaser would need to travel to the destination point, too, and it was simply too valuable a unit for Lakesh to rely on the feature that would return the device to the Cerberus redoubt. Lakesh took a pen from his rock-scarred desk and began to tap it against his teeth absently, wondering what his best course of action was. Brigid could only be helped if she would let them. And Rosalia needed to go home.
Lakesh was still pondering those problems when Donald Bry came over to speak with him. With an unruly mop of copper curls and an expression of permanent worry, Bry was second in command at the Cerberus ops center, and was also Lakesh’s closest confidant. Many hours of experience had taught him to pick up on the signs when Lakesh was worrying, and seeing the man absentmindedly tapping at his teeth with a pen was one sure giveaway.
“Something I can help you with, Lakesh?” he asked cheerily.
Lakesh looked up from his calculations and smiled. Bry had been overseeing much of the reconstruction work for the redoubt over the past four days, which meant that the two of them had spent little time in each other’s company. “Donald, how are things progressing?”
“Slowly. Ever so slowly. But we’re getting there.”
Lakesh nodded. “I’ll be glad when I can see my old map properly again.”
“Ullikummis did a real number on this place,” Bry said. “We’ve found things that look like carcasses up in the canteen area, round and as big as a dog but all withered up and dead now. The disturbing part is, they’re made of rock.”
“That sounds hideous,” Lakesh said solemnly. “I fear what other surprises we might yet find.”
Bry took a steadying breath, placing his hands on Lakesh’s desk. “We made it back here, and that monster won’t be coming again,” he said. “We survived everything he did, and we’ll make it through this, too. Whatever we find.”
“I know,” Lakesh agreed. “I’ll just be glad when things are finally back to normal. I’ve spent too much of the past few months living out of a suitcase, not knowing what new horror the next day will bring.”
“Life
