Infestation Cubed, page 22
Kane turned and spoke again. “Of course I’m making a joke out of you. You’re the king of snotballs! And you’re repeating the same empty boasts that I’ve heard before. And trust me, I’ve heard them now literally from the bottom of the Earth to the sands of Mars. All of you are the same. You claim godhood, and yet you want everyone else to do things for you. And you threaten to scourge me and my friends from the face of the world, and guess who’s still here and who’s either dead or licking their damned wounds?”
Orochi regarded Kane as he did his bit on the entrance to the mat-trans chamber. It was a long speech for Kane, but the Cerberus rebel was using it to keep Kakusa off balance. The would-be god must have been so self-assured that it expected any challenger to be immediately cowed. Kane was frightened—it was a natural reflex—but he used that fear to give himself the edge against formidable odds. The fight-or-flight reflex had been with humankind since its ancestors first developed eyes. Fear, when acknowledged and controlled, made people careful and prepare for what was coming next. It unleashed adrenaline and extra oxygen into the bloodstream, granting reserves of strength, endurance and quickness that let them fight harder or run faster, to perform on an edge that they’d honed to such razor keenness.
“Kane, you seem full of yourself,” Kakusa said. “Perhaps if we spoke in person…”
“Again you sound like a god, but you’re taking the easy, weak way out of this,” Kane challenged. “You want me paralyzed, shot full of octoslug venom, drugged out of my mind and simple to crush.”
“Be wary, Kane, lest I lose my patience with you,” Kakusa replied. “I am offering you a chance to become one with omnipotence. Such refusal may ensure that I kill you slowly, at the clubbing fists of a horde of minions whose combat skills are a sum total of experience beyond your brief years.”
“Go ahead,” Kane replied.
With that, the duct suddenly shook, a thunderbolt of expanding superheated gases spearing out of the mine. Squeals of agony unlike anything that Kane had heard whistled through the air and, in the back of his mind, he could feel the tickle, the tingle of Kakusa’s pain telepathically transmitted among the parasitic creatures caught in the immediate path of the thermobaric mine’s path.
“Ryu’s bones!” Orochi snarled. “The stink of them, it’s unbearable!”
The mine’s cutting fire bolt extruded down the duct, focused so that its force left Kane and his ally unharmed by back blast or shrapnel. It was a one-shot surprise, but at least it would give Kakusa pause before lunging into action through what could have been a blind spot.
“You think the destruction of a few cells hurts?” Kakusa asked.
“I heard your scream, dumb-ass,” Kane said. “How do you think I know you even woke up?”
“Mind your tongue, ape,” Kakusa snapped. “I was enslaving solar systems when your kind hadn’t advanced beyond single-celled organisms.”
“And yet you still ended up trapped inside a bunch of crawling boogers,” Kane taunted.
The entrance hatch of the mat-trans control room jolted, lurching open as the crew on the other side finished deactivating the locks. Even as the door opened, a small cluster of flash and concussion grens had their pins yanked out from the hatch’s movement. The combined flash and thunder of the multiple gren detonations created a bone-jarring roar that ran even through Kane’s bones, though he had shielded himself from the brunt of the force.
Orochi had taken cover inside the mat trans itself, counting on the armaglass to protect his unshielded senses, and gambling correctly. Kakusa was powerful, and able to see through the eyes and hear through the ears of countless minions, but if those pawns were left blind and deaf, the hidden god actually had nothing to work with.
Kane, with Orochi spinning out of the mat trans, plowed through the insensate minions. As he passed some of them, his fingers raked at tentacles and bulbous slug bodies, tearing through their rubbery skin and bursting them like jelly-filled balloons. Watatsumi hosts, already clutching pained eyes and ears, collapsed, suddenly cut off from the central hive mind. Orochi worked cleanup.
It may have been a useless gesture, now that it was shown that former hosts had been left comatose and incapacitated, but Kane wondered if it would be so easy to reconnect with those pawns once violently separated from them. There had been a dozen men, all armed and prepared for combat against the pair in the mat-trans chamber, but Kane’s stratagem and Orochi’s knowledge of their preparations had turned the tide.
Kakusa was down by twelve humanoid pawns, and who knew how many other cells, and the two men had barely started, their limbs and spirits still fresh.
Kane nodded to Orochi, and the pair of warriors bolted down a corridor, moving with as much speed as they could muster, senses sharp and wary for ambushing parasites and subjugated sentries at every corner.
Kakusa may have held the Tongue Of The Ocean, but Kane planned to snatch it back, just like the proverbial cat from Brigid Baptiste’s old saying.
THE GLIMMERING BLUE LINE, a tether path between Domi and her destination, shortened. It was like a living conduit that would disappear as she crossed it, then follow her with each bob and weave she made and, if she took a step back, it stretched with her. The feral girl knew the blue line was an illusion, but it was something incredible. She felt a warmth and security from this winding, blue-white thread that led her through the infernal underground maze.
Of course you’re going to feel comfortable. Priscilla’s going to put something in your head that makes you freak out?
The door to the nanotechnology laboratory was ajar when she reached it, and she kept her knife ready. She’d wiped it off in a pile of dirt and rubbish where she’d left the liver of the mutant she’d slain, so there would be little scent of blood on it. Domi still caught the tang of that coppery smell, which meant the monsters in the darkness could, too. All she could do was to hope that they were too busy snacking on the buffet she’d left for them. Their grunts and barks as they struggled over morsels of flesh, greed and tempers flaring in the midst of their cannibalistic feast, told her that they were still far behind, and she had safety and distance on her side.
Domi could only tell that the door was ajar by touch, and out of caution and not-yet-paranoid instinct, she felt the floor in front of the door. It wasn’t a sliding panel, but an actual hinged hatch. And she could trace an arc formed by the door, having opened and closed often, cut through the detritus and grime on the old, abandoned tiles.
Someone was using this lab. Someone or something.
Domi’s knuckles creaked as she gripped her knife even more firmly, swallowing a lump of fear. With a gentle caress, she tugged open the door just wide enough for her to slip her slender shoulders through, and she slithered inside. Immediately the blue line focused on another door. It looked similar to an air lock, something she’d encountered in Cerberus and several other far-flung locations in her brief, hectic life.
Of course the front door to the lab wasn’t going to deposit her right where she needed to be. The segment of corridor that acted as the air lock looked lived in, a large nest settled in one corner, the sleeping place of a carnivore judging by the stench of the rags and cardboard piled to make the primitive sleeping mat.
Domi sidestepped it, feeling an ominous dread over the empty nest, her other hand dropping to the .45 pistol she carried in her belt. This was a primal, violent beast. There was decayed meat that had dripped from slavering jaws, and the breadth of the mat showed that whatever she had missed encountering was large, bigger even than the rest of the mutant horde that infested Area 51’s dank tunnels. It had been only a few years since she’d been here, since the great battle that rendered Area 51 useless to the hybrid barons before their ascension to Annunaki godlings. And yet the place was in a state of complete disrepair.
Garbage, grime, stench, it had built up quickly. Maybe even too quickly.
Priscilla! Domi thought, trying to project with all of her will.
No response. Was her mind just not strong enough? She fought to empty her mind, to be in the moment as she reached the next door, this one a sliding hatch that she was able to move along easily. Now the floor seemed clean. The laboratory had the familiar, antiseptic feel of the well-preserved bowels of the Cerberus redoubt.
No, it wasn’t completely unlived in. On a hunch, she reached out, and her fingers found a pressure switch. At contact, fluorescent lights popped into harsh, blue-white illumination, and Domi had to pull on her sunglasses. Her sensitive ruby eyes were not meant for such a swift and sudden change in lighting. Through the shades, she could see that she was in a reception area. Priscilla’s telepathically implanted path etched its way along to a doorway.
Thanks to the shades, her eyes quickly adjusted to the layout of the room. There were a half-dozen major doorways leading off the far end of the reception area, and Priscilla’s tracking line, driven by Lakesh’s memory of this redoubt, pointed toward one of the laboratories.
The door she’d passed through wasn’t locked, and once more the main entrance was left fully ajar, with only a nest. She tried to measure how long it would take for this place to have gotten in such a condition. After all, she knew the living conditions that occurred in the Tartarus Pits, which had smells and rubbish of the same scale. The Tartarus Pits, however, at the base of Cobaltville, had been in existence for decades, and were populated by hundreds.
The numbers of the horde felt deceptive, as well. There had been fifty of the creatures in hot pursuit, and if there was a group that actually remained behind here…how would they all have enough to eat, unless there were food stores within Area 51? And if there was a supply of food, what was the purpose of going out and hunting other humanoids or killing each other off? And if they were slaughtering their weaker members, how come there were so many, indeed, far more than had appeared the last time she’d been imprisoned in the underground base?
The clean lab had a new stink about it. A shadow moved in the distance, and she felt an eerie prickling inside her mind, just like when Priscilla first made contact with Domi. It became a lot clearer, suddenly. Her contact with Priscilla was blocked. As if there was something else, like her, that was in operation. Something or someone.
“Not a bad supposition, Domi,” came a hoarse, crackling voice from a doorway. “Welcome to my lair.”
Domi was tempted to pull her .45 and gun him down, but that urge was forcibly suppressed by an outside force. She grimaced, realizing that these creatures had been too organized, as far as their hunt for her. They had been cunning, and more than a little too selfless in their attempts to tear at her flesh. Plus, according to Priscilla’s thoughts, the numbers of these hordelings hadn’t been this huge.
“You made the mutants,” Domi said, realizing that she was still capable of speech, but the violent, hateful urges within her were mired in a molasses of mental power.
He was much like Priscilla, with a shimmering skin that was partly between the Quad V hybrids and the coarser, reptilian Nephilim. His eyes shone with a similar intellect to hers, and his physique was still slender, but with corded muscle along his limbs.
“I am their father,” the mutated hybrid said. He sneered. “You are a quick learner.”
“Need to be,” Domi answered. “What’d you do to Priscilla?”
“You’ve your own suppositions, girl. I’m sure you know what’s going on,” the being said. “My name is Rioch. And you are Domi. And you came here seeking the cure for Lakesh.”
“Gonna gimme?” Domi asked. “Or do I kick your ass?”
Rioch snapped his fingers, grinning. “You are delightfully brash. I’m curious about you and he. I was hoping for a proper intellect to show up so I might gain from his knowledge. And lo, you bring him.”
“Lucky you,” Domi grumbled. “You want his brain. I want a cure for him.”
“Arrangements might be made,” Rioch told her. “One thing. Priscilla found an attraction, a kinship with you. Why?”
“We’re freaks of a feather,” Domi said, employing a term she’d learned from Brigid. “You got the doomie powers, read that outta my head.”
“I could. But I was wondering if you understood why you seemed to mesh so quickly,” Rioch prompted.
“Easy. She’s just like Quavell. My friend,” Domi answered. Her eyes narrowed behind the lenses of her shades. “What’s it to you?”
Rioch’s slender, lipless mouth turned up into a smile. “She and I are part of a particular strain that was an experiment, just as Quavell was. The human DNA in us was a little more…authoritative.”
“No sticks up your asses,” Domi countered. “Got emotions. Dreams.”
Rioch nodded again. “You understand the reason for this?”
“Barons wanted to stop being sickly. Didn’t know Tiamat was coming. Maybe you get stronger bodies,” Domi said. “Humans are tougher than the spindly little freaks.”
“Success,” Rioch replied, spreading his lean, muscular arms. “And we’ve tapped so much more than those evolutionary dead ends could.”
“Like controlling muties,” Domi responded. She kept talking, knowing that was all she had. Rioch had her combative instincts and reflexes tamped down with his telepathic abilities. Maybe if she gave Priscilla enough time, her powers might—
“Priscilla is not going to help you,” Rioch interrupted her thoughts. “She is destined to be my bride, but first I had to make sure that she was worthwhile as a mate.”
“So you made the mutie hybrids,” Domi said. “How many brides you make?”
“Enough to learn my lessons,” Rioch returned.
“Sicko,” Domi snarled. “Getting your jollies off cannibals.”
Rioch tilted his head, smirking. “It is entertaining to see them have at each other.”
“You got monsters. What you need Lakesh for?” Domi asked. If it was one thing that Domi learned over her years, it was that these sociopaths loved to talk about themselves and their aspirations.
Rioch nodded. “Ah, yes. He can respark the technology within this base. I’ve been able to have the breeding vats produce more, and thanks to Tiamat’s signal, anything that’s born is now closer and closer to becoming full Nephilim, rather than hybrids.”
“You don’t wanna share your snake-faces with Enlil,” Domi countered.
“Sooner or later, he’ll find a way to get even these creatures under his control. I do not wish to become spare parts for a god who abandoned me,” Rioch told her. “Right now, your lover and mine are trapped inside a Sandcat, held there at bay by my children.”
“Priscilla know she’s yours?” Domi asked.
“She soon will,” Rioch said. “Once I have made certain you are harmless to me, I’ll have her fully awaken, and then, with her powers at her peak, we’ll shut off and reverse the process rendering Lakesh a feeble, helpless old fool.”
“Make sure that I’m harmless to you,” Domi repeated. “You gonna cut my brain up? Or just kill me?”
“Well, I could certainly use you if you were to be a good soldier,” Rioch told her. “I wouldn’t have to do anything to your mind. I already have the carrot and stick to control you.”
“Lakesh’s health,” Domi returned. “You know how the sickness works.”
“And I can re-create it. Something I could do at a whim with him inside my realm here,” Rioch said.
“Was gonna say, shitty lair. But then, you had a good idea. Made it look lived-in by a bunch of man-eaters. No one’s coming here. Not with them around,” Domi challenged. She couldn’t hide her disgust with him. “No one except people looking for supplies and tech.”
“People who I could enslave.” Rioch grinned. “You are bright. You’ve learned much in your years alongside Kane, Grant and Lakesh.”
Priscilla, she thought. You feel me?
There was nothing, at least nowhere close to the kind of two-way mindspeak she’d had with the hybrid mutant before. Still, she had that warm tingle, the tickle in her heart and consciousness. She hadn’t been abandoned, meaning that there was still a link, a tether between the two of them. The only problem was that Rioch had expunged himself from her memory and seemed to have been able to erect a barrier in open communication. Anything was simply whispers in a howling gale.
Domi grimaced. “Sick. Perv. Freak.”
Rioch stepped closer to her, caressing her cheek with one slender hand. “You can be here for the return of your lover, or you can just die now.”
Domi bit her upper lip. His touch made her skin crawl, and the rage of revulsion bubbled up inside of her. Anger built, and she didn’t care if he felt it. She grit her teeth and felt her fists clench.
“Hurry, Domi. Lakesh is fading!” came the sudden impulse from Priscilla.
Hot rage and urgency rushed through Domi’s limbs and she backhanded the half-breed, knocking him to the floor.
“Kill her!” the telepathic sorcerer bellowed.
From the corridor behind, Domi could hear the crash of bodies charging to their master’s side.
Time was running out as she launched herself toward the laboratory.
GRANT DIDN’T TRUST GROGAN as far as he could heave a Sandcat, but right now he and the New Order expedition were out in the thick of the amassing forces under the guidance of an entity known as Kakusa. Even as the two men and the eight other members of the group were observing the movement of a combined force of men and massive reptiles, the enemy was getting closer to the fence that provided the AUTEC base with its perimeter.
Grogan showed his displeasure at the setup, gripping his gun. “We should get out of here.”
Grant shook his head. There were three pincers, like a three-fingered claw, and Grant’s group was between two of those assault lines. There were a hundred Hooded Ones, and a dozen alligators were still kicking. The reptiles were formidable foes; the ex-Magistrate had experienced that himself, as had Grogan. Still, Grant had a supply of grens, and the New Order soldiers had taken a few of them. High explosives would help even the odds between the Watatsumi and Kakusa’s fist.
Orochi regarded Kane as he did his bit on the entrance to the mat-trans chamber. It was a long speech for Kane, but the Cerberus rebel was using it to keep Kakusa off balance. The would-be god must have been so self-assured that it expected any challenger to be immediately cowed. Kane was frightened—it was a natural reflex—but he used that fear to give himself the edge against formidable odds. The fight-or-flight reflex had been with humankind since its ancestors first developed eyes. Fear, when acknowledged and controlled, made people careful and prepare for what was coming next. It unleashed adrenaline and extra oxygen into the bloodstream, granting reserves of strength, endurance and quickness that let them fight harder or run faster, to perform on an edge that they’d honed to such razor keenness.
“Kane, you seem full of yourself,” Kakusa said. “Perhaps if we spoke in person…”
“Again you sound like a god, but you’re taking the easy, weak way out of this,” Kane challenged. “You want me paralyzed, shot full of octoslug venom, drugged out of my mind and simple to crush.”
“Be wary, Kane, lest I lose my patience with you,” Kakusa replied. “I am offering you a chance to become one with omnipotence. Such refusal may ensure that I kill you slowly, at the clubbing fists of a horde of minions whose combat skills are a sum total of experience beyond your brief years.”
“Go ahead,” Kane replied.
With that, the duct suddenly shook, a thunderbolt of expanding superheated gases spearing out of the mine. Squeals of agony unlike anything that Kane had heard whistled through the air and, in the back of his mind, he could feel the tickle, the tingle of Kakusa’s pain telepathically transmitted among the parasitic creatures caught in the immediate path of the thermobaric mine’s path.
“Ryu’s bones!” Orochi snarled. “The stink of them, it’s unbearable!”
The mine’s cutting fire bolt extruded down the duct, focused so that its force left Kane and his ally unharmed by back blast or shrapnel. It was a one-shot surprise, but at least it would give Kakusa pause before lunging into action through what could have been a blind spot.
“You think the destruction of a few cells hurts?” Kakusa asked.
“I heard your scream, dumb-ass,” Kane said. “How do you think I know you even woke up?”
“Mind your tongue, ape,” Kakusa snapped. “I was enslaving solar systems when your kind hadn’t advanced beyond single-celled organisms.”
“And yet you still ended up trapped inside a bunch of crawling boogers,” Kane taunted.
The entrance hatch of the mat-trans control room jolted, lurching open as the crew on the other side finished deactivating the locks. Even as the door opened, a small cluster of flash and concussion grens had their pins yanked out from the hatch’s movement. The combined flash and thunder of the multiple gren detonations created a bone-jarring roar that ran even through Kane’s bones, though he had shielded himself from the brunt of the force.
Orochi had taken cover inside the mat trans itself, counting on the armaglass to protect his unshielded senses, and gambling correctly. Kakusa was powerful, and able to see through the eyes and hear through the ears of countless minions, but if those pawns were left blind and deaf, the hidden god actually had nothing to work with.
Kane, with Orochi spinning out of the mat trans, plowed through the insensate minions. As he passed some of them, his fingers raked at tentacles and bulbous slug bodies, tearing through their rubbery skin and bursting them like jelly-filled balloons. Watatsumi hosts, already clutching pained eyes and ears, collapsed, suddenly cut off from the central hive mind. Orochi worked cleanup.
It may have been a useless gesture, now that it was shown that former hosts had been left comatose and incapacitated, but Kane wondered if it would be so easy to reconnect with those pawns once violently separated from them. There had been a dozen men, all armed and prepared for combat against the pair in the mat-trans chamber, but Kane’s stratagem and Orochi’s knowledge of their preparations had turned the tide.
Kakusa was down by twelve humanoid pawns, and who knew how many other cells, and the two men had barely started, their limbs and spirits still fresh.
Kane nodded to Orochi, and the pair of warriors bolted down a corridor, moving with as much speed as they could muster, senses sharp and wary for ambushing parasites and subjugated sentries at every corner.
Kakusa may have held the Tongue Of The Ocean, but Kane planned to snatch it back, just like the proverbial cat from Brigid Baptiste’s old saying.
THE GLIMMERING BLUE LINE, a tether path between Domi and her destination, shortened. It was like a living conduit that would disappear as she crossed it, then follow her with each bob and weave she made and, if she took a step back, it stretched with her. The feral girl knew the blue line was an illusion, but it was something incredible. She felt a warmth and security from this winding, blue-white thread that led her through the infernal underground maze.
Of course you’re going to feel comfortable. Priscilla’s going to put something in your head that makes you freak out?
The door to the nanotechnology laboratory was ajar when she reached it, and she kept her knife ready. She’d wiped it off in a pile of dirt and rubbish where she’d left the liver of the mutant she’d slain, so there would be little scent of blood on it. Domi still caught the tang of that coppery smell, which meant the monsters in the darkness could, too. All she could do was to hope that they were too busy snacking on the buffet she’d left for them. Their grunts and barks as they struggled over morsels of flesh, greed and tempers flaring in the midst of their cannibalistic feast, told her that they were still far behind, and she had safety and distance on her side.
Domi could only tell that the door was ajar by touch, and out of caution and not-yet-paranoid instinct, she felt the floor in front of the door. It wasn’t a sliding panel, but an actual hinged hatch. And she could trace an arc formed by the door, having opened and closed often, cut through the detritus and grime on the old, abandoned tiles.
Someone was using this lab. Someone or something.
Domi’s knuckles creaked as she gripped her knife even more firmly, swallowing a lump of fear. With a gentle caress, she tugged open the door just wide enough for her to slip her slender shoulders through, and she slithered inside. Immediately the blue line focused on another door. It looked similar to an air lock, something she’d encountered in Cerberus and several other far-flung locations in her brief, hectic life.
Of course the front door to the lab wasn’t going to deposit her right where she needed to be. The segment of corridor that acted as the air lock looked lived in, a large nest settled in one corner, the sleeping place of a carnivore judging by the stench of the rags and cardboard piled to make the primitive sleeping mat.
Domi sidestepped it, feeling an ominous dread over the empty nest, her other hand dropping to the .45 pistol she carried in her belt. This was a primal, violent beast. There was decayed meat that had dripped from slavering jaws, and the breadth of the mat showed that whatever she had missed encountering was large, bigger even than the rest of the mutant horde that infested Area 51’s dank tunnels. It had been only a few years since she’d been here, since the great battle that rendered Area 51 useless to the hybrid barons before their ascension to Annunaki godlings. And yet the place was in a state of complete disrepair.
Garbage, grime, stench, it had built up quickly. Maybe even too quickly.
Priscilla! Domi thought, trying to project with all of her will.
No response. Was her mind just not strong enough? She fought to empty her mind, to be in the moment as she reached the next door, this one a sliding hatch that she was able to move along easily. Now the floor seemed clean. The laboratory had the familiar, antiseptic feel of the well-preserved bowels of the Cerberus redoubt.
No, it wasn’t completely unlived in. On a hunch, she reached out, and her fingers found a pressure switch. At contact, fluorescent lights popped into harsh, blue-white illumination, and Domi had to pull on her sunglasses. Her sensitive ruby eyes were not meant for such a swift and sudden change in lighting. Through the shades, she could see that she was in a reception area. Priscilla’s telepathically implanted path etched its way along to a doorway.
Thanks to the shades, her eyes quickly adjusted to the layout of the room. There were a half-dozen major doorways leading off the far end of the reception area, and Priscilla’s tracking line, driven by Lakesh’s memory of this redoubt, pointed toward one of the laboratories.
The door she’d passed through wasn’t locked, and once more the main entrance was left fully ajar, with only a nest. She tried to measure how long it would take for this place to have gotten in such a condition. After all, she knew the living conditions that occurred in the Tartarus Pits, which had smells and rubbish of the same scale. The Tartarus Pits, however, at the base of Cobaltville, had been in existence for decades, and were populated by hundreds.
The numbers of the horde felt deceptive, as well. There had been fifty of the creatures in hot pursuit, and if there was a group that actually remained behind here…how would they all have enough to eat, unless there were food stores within Area 51? And if there was a supply of food, what was the purpose of going out and hunting other humanoids or killing each other off? And if they were slaughtering their weaker members, how come there were so many, indeed, far more than had appeared the last time she’d been imprisoned in the underground base?
The clean lab had a new stink about it. A shadow moved in the distance, and she felt an eerie prickling inside her mind, just like when Priscilla first made contact with Domi. It became a lot clearer, suddenly. Her contact with Priscilla was blocked. As if there was something else, like her, that was in operation. Something or someone.
“Not a bad supposition, Domi,” came a hoarse, crackling voice from a doorway. “Welcome to my lair.”
Domi was tempted to pull her .45 and gun him down, but that urge was forcibly suppressed by an outside force. She grimaced, realizing that these creatures had been too organized, as far as their hunt for her. They had been cunning, and more than a little too selfless in their attempts to tear at her flesh. Plus, according to Priscilla’s thoughts, the numbers of these hordelings hadn’t been this huge.
“You made the mutants,” Domi said, realizing that she was still capable of speech, but the violent, hateful urges within her were mired in a molasses of mental power.
He was much like Priscilla, with a shimmering skin that was partly between the Quad V hybrids and the coarser, reptilian Nephilim. His eyes shone with a similar intellect to hers, and his physique was still slender, but with corded muscle along his limbs.
“I am their father,” the mutated hybrid said. He sneered. “You are a quick learner.”
“Need to be,” Domi answered. “What’d you do to Priscilla?”
“You’ve your own suppositions, girl. I’m sure you know what’s going on,” the being said. “My name is Rioch. And you are Domi. And you came here seeking the cure for Lakesh.”
“Gonna gimme?” Domi asked. “Or do I kick your ass?”
Rioch snapped his fingers, grinning. “You are delightfully brash. I’m curious about you and he. I was hoping for a proper intellect to show up so I might gain from his knowledge. And lo, you bring him.”
“Lucky you,” Domi grumbled. “You want his brain. I want a cure for him.”
“Arrangements might be made,” Rioch told her. “One thing. Priscilla found an attraction, a kinship with you. Why?”
“We’re freaks of a feather,” Domi said, employing a term she’d learned from Brigid. “You got the doomie powers, read that outta my head.”
“I could. But I was wondering if you understood why you seemed to mesh so quickly,” Rioch prompted.
“Easy. She’s just like Quavell. My friend,” Domi answered. Her eyes narrowed behind the lenses of her shades. “What’s it to you?”
Rioch’s slender, lipless mouth turned up into a smile. “She and I are part of a particular strain that was an experiment, just as Quavell was. The human DNA in us was a little more…authoritative.”
“No sticks up your asses,” Domi countered. “Got emotions. Dreams.”
Rioch nodded again. “You understand the reason for this?”
“Barons wanted to stop being sickly. Didn’t know Tiamat was coming. Maybe you get stronger bodies,” Domi said. “Humans are tougher than the spindly little freaks.”
“Success,” Rioch replied, spreading his lean, muscular arms. “And we’ve tapped so much more than those evolutionary dead ends could.”
“Like controlling muties,” Domi responded. She kept talking, knowing that was all she had. Rioch had her combative instincts and reflexes tamped down with his telepathic abilities. Maybe if she gave Priscilla enough time, her powers might—
“Priscilla is not going to help you,” Rioch interrupted her thoughts. “She is destined to be my bride, but first I had to make sure that she was worthwhile as a mate.”
“So you made the mutie hybrids,” Domi said. “How many brides you make?”
“Enough to learn my lessons,” Rioch returned.
“Sicko,” Domi snarled. “Getting your jollies off cannibals.”
Rioch tilted his head, smirking. “It is entertaining to see them have at each other.”
“You got monsters. What you need Lakesh for?” Domi asked. If it was one thing that Domi learned over her years, it was that these sociopaths loved to talk about themselves and their aspirations.
Rioch nodded. “Ah, yes. He can respark the technology within this base. I’ve been able to have the breeding vats produce more, and thanks to Tiamat’s signal, anything that’s born is now closer and closer to becoming full Nephilim, rather than hybrids.”
“You don’t wanna share your snake-faces with Enlil,” Domi countered.
“Sooner or later, he’ll find a way to get even these creatures under his control. I do not wish to become spare parts for a god who abandoned me,” Rioch told her. “Right now, your lover and mine are trapped inside a Sandcat, held there at bay by my children.”
“Priscilla know she’s yours?” Domi asked.
“She soon will,” Rioch said. “Once I have made certain you are harmless to me, I’ll have her fully awaken, and then, with her powers at her peak, we’ll shut off and reverse the process rendering Lakesh a feeble, helpless old fool.”
“Make sure that I’m harmless to you,” Domi repeated. “You gonna cut my brain up? Or just kill me?”
“Well, I could certainly use you if you were to be a good soldier,” Rioch told her. “I wouldn’t have to do anything to your mind. I already have the carrot and stick to control you.”
“Lakesh’s health,” Domi returned. “You know how the sickness works.”
“And I can re-create it. Something I could do at a whim with him inside my realm here,” Rioch said.
“Was gonna say, shitty lair. But then, you had a good idea. Made it look lived-in by a bunch of man-eaters. No one’s coming here. Not with them around,” Domi challenged. She couldn’t hide her disgust with him. “No one except people looking for supplies and tech.”
“People who I could enslave.” Rioch grinned. “You are bright. You’ve learned much in your years alongside Kane, Grant and Lakesh.”
Priscilla, she thought. You feel me?
There was nothing, at least nowhere close to the kind of two-way mindspeak she’d had with the hybrid mutant before. Still, she had that warm tingle, the tickle in her heart and consciousness. She hadn’t been abandoned, meaning that there was still a link, a tether between the two of them. The only problem was that Rioch had expunged himself from her memory and seemed to have been able to erect a barrier in open communication. Anything was simply whispers in a howling gale.
Domi grimaced. “Sick. Perv. Freak.”
Rioch stepped closer to her, caressing her cheek with one slender hand. “You can be here for the return of your lover, or you can just die now.”
Domi bit her upper lip. His touch made her skin crawl, and the rage of revulsion bubbled up inside of her. Anger built, and she didn’t care if he felt it. She grit her teeth and felt her fists clench.
“Hurry, Domi. Lakesh is fading!” came the sudden impulse from Priscilla.
Hot rage and urgency rushed through Domi’s limbs and she backhanded the half-breed, knocking him to the floor.
“Kill her!” the telepathic sorcerer bellowed.
From the corridor behind, Domi could hear the crash of bodies charging to their master’s side.
Time was running out as she launched herself toward the laboratory.
GRANT DIDN’T TRUST GROGAN as far as he could heave a Sandcat, but right now he and the New Order expedition were out in the thick of the amassing forces under the guidance of an entity known as Kakusa. Even as the two men and the eight other members of the group were observing the movement of a combined force of men and massive reptiles, the enemy was getting closer to the fence that provided the AUTEC base with its perimeter.
Grogan showed his displeasure at the setup, gripping his gun. “We should get out of here.”
Grant shook his head. There were three pincers, like a three-fingered claw, and Grant’s group was between two of those assault lines. There were a hundred Hooded Ones, and a dozen alligators were still kicking. The reptiles were formidable foes; the ex-Magistrate had experienced that himself, as had Grogan. Still, Grant had a supply of grens, and the New Order soldiers had taken a few of them. High explosives would help even the odds between the Watatsumi and Kakusa’s fist.
