and there was something altogether entrancing about her, the way she carried herself, the swell of her breasts and the casual sway of her round hips. This beautiful woman was called Rosalia, and when Kane had last seen her she had been a bodyguard in the employ of a group of immoral profiteers who were trading in pirated DNA. Kane’s team had burned down that operation, halting the threat of reborn baronies in the process, but evidently Rosalia herself had escaped. She looked more tired than Kane remembered, tired and drawn. But then, Kane suspected that he, too, looked pretty exhausted just now.
“This is your future, Kane,” Dylan began. “The world changed while you weren’t looking, and you’ve woken up to the new reality. Rejoice.”
Kane smiled in self-deprecation. “New reality, huh? Just how long was I asleep?” he taunted.
Dylan ignored his frivolity. “Your team, Cerberus, waged a war upon the Annunaki,” he stated, as if this fact was commonplace. “The Annunaki were your betters, of course, but you stood up to them, managed to disrupt their plans and, in your limited and infantile way, stymie their progress.”
“Well, I do what I do what I do,” Kane muttered.
“That is to be commended,” Dylan affirmed. “Though primitive, your efforts repelled the hated Overlord Enlil and the others of his coven. But you did not stop him entirely. Enlil still lives and his power base is growing once more, on the banks of the ancient Euphrates.”
This was news to Kane. The last time he had seen Enlil, the lizard-faced monster was trapped aboard an exploding spaceship called Tiamat.
“The future requires men like you,” Dylan continued, “men of good standing, to extinguish Enlil’s threat once and for all.”
Kane ran a hand through his hair as he considered the proposition. “This all sounds good…Dylan, isn’t it?”
The man nodded. “First Priest Dylan of the New Order,” he clarified.
Kane locked eyes with him in challenge. “And whose New Order is that?” he asked, his interest piqued.
“Lord Ullikummis,” Dylan said. “Our savior. He has seen the great works you have done. You, Kane, have faced Enlil when he was Baron Cobalt, Sam the Imperator, and as Enlil himself. And no matter what face he presented, you have always sought to stop him, to strike that face.”
“Well, what can I tell you?” Kane said. “I’m a face striker.”
“Lord Ullikummis studied the history, saw your works,” Dylan repeated.
Kane realized what the man was referring to. Less than two months before, Kane had been part of a team sent to protect an undersea archive called the Ontic Library. According to their information, this archive was the storehouse for the rules that governed reality, hosting a sentient data stream that contained and ordered all of history, down to the smallest minutiae. When Kane’s team had arrived, they’d found Ullikummis working his way through the data, where he’d appeared to be searching for evidence of his mother, Ninlil, whose rebirth had been the source of much conflict between Cerberus and the Annunaki overlords. In accessing those records, Ullikummis would have learned of the role of Cerberus, and the almost archenemy status that existed between Enlil and Kane. Ullikummis himself was an adept assassin, so little wonder that he would see the benefit in recruiting Kane’s skills if he planned to do battle with Enlil and his armies.
“He wishes you to join him,” Dylan concluded.
“You know, I’m really not a big joiner-upper,” Kane replied flippantly, “but you thank the big guy for the offer.”
“The world has changed,” Dylan repeated. “Sooner or later, you will submit. Take this path now, and it will be easy. You will become a lieutenant in his army. You will live like a king when the world is reshaped, with a barony of your own, and all you need do is pledge your fealty to Ullikummis.”
Kane looked away, girding himself, hiding his fist behind him as he bunched it in the shadows. “It sounds so easy, but I’ve got a better idea—that you surrender.”
Dylan almost spit, he was so surprised by the demand. “Surely you can’t be serious, Kane. Look around you. Look at what you’ve been reduced to, you and your people. You’ve lost. You’re lucky that he even kept you alive.”
Kane held the man’s gaze as he spoke. “You and your boss’s little army surrender now,” he snarled, “and I’ll go easy on you.”
Dylan sniggered. “You’re a fool, Kane. A blind fool. You cannot stop the future from happen—”
Kane struck suddenly, swinging his arm forward and punching the man in the face with his balled fist, forty-eight hours of frustration and rage finding primitive release in that one blow. He staggered a step backward in surprise and Kane was on him in that instant, swinging his other fist at Dylan’s face even as the first priest of the New Order tried to fend off the blows.
Rosalia, the woman who had entered with Dylan, moved then, taking two swift paces forward before high kicking Kane in the face with professional detachment. The blow knocked the ex-Magistrate back against the wall, and Kane felt his head spin with nausea as the rusty taste of blood filled his mouth.
Behind the woman, somewhere close to the open door, the dog yipped before assuming a low growling, clearly irritated.
When Kane looked up, he saw the dark hair of Rosalia as she pressed her face close to his. “Don’t be a fool, Magistrate man,” she hissed.
It was good advice, Kane knew. He was weak from lack of food, and his body was still recovering from some battle he could not fully recall. Or perhaps he could. The name Ullikummis had triggered something in his memory, and he was just beginning to remember what had happened in Cerberus’s main corridor.
Kane discarded the nagging memory for the moment, struggling to stay on his feet as he leaned against the rough wall.
Dylan stepped close to him, standing over him but not bothering to strike him. “You will learn the error of your ways in time,” he said, “and you will come to embrace the New Order. The Life Camp is calling you, Kane. You cannot begin to imagine how the world has altered, how different it is becoming.”
The priest turned and paced toward Rosalia, who waited at the doorway, her dark eyes fixed on Kane’s pitiful figure as he slumped against the wall, gingerly fingering his lip, which dripped with blood.
“The world is changing,” Dylan said yet again as he stepped through the door. “Your time—the age of Cerberus—is over.”
Then he was gone, and Rosalia followed him, the dog trotting along at her heels. Kane watched as the strange stone doorway slid back into place, the magma glow of the space beyond obscured by a rock wall. Once more, Kane was locked in a cell with no exit.
“First priest, huh?” he muttered as he wiped at the blood that trickled from his mouth. “Didn’t I know you when you were just the understudy, you self-important prick?”
Chapter 6
Grant hunkered down in the shadows of the tunnel as the silvery elevator doors in the rock wall slid apart just a few feet from him.
Striding from the elevator, much to his surprise, was the familiar form of Edwards, an ex-Magistrate like Grant
