Grant laughed at that. “Staying out of trouble? You get bumped on the head or something, buddy?”
“I said try,” Kane clarified as he removed the ammo clip from his captive’s AK-47 and secreted it in a pocket, along with the other ammunition he had found on the man. “No one’s expecting the impossible.”
* * *
“HE SAID THAT he saw the face of god before everything,” Kane recalled as the four Cerberus warriors trekked away from the tumbledown fort, away from the ongoing skirmish between the mysterious factions of blind men.
They were following the path laid out by the crack in the earth, tracking along it as it widened and narrowed, widened and narrowed, searching for the source. Right now, the gap was still five feet across, and it was deep enough that you could not see down to its floor.
“He told me it lit every step he took,” Kane continued, “showing him the path of salvation. Like I say, normal religious fanaticism.”
“But if he meant it literally,” Brigid reasoned, “then here is a man who is seeing an entirely different view of reality. The way he described it, as lighting his path, it might be like neon arrows showing him where to move and what to do. I’m speculating, of course, but we’ve both seen different views on reality, Kane. You know that.”
He did. Kane had been drawn into a war with the Annunaki, which had seen him tap into their holistic view of the universe. He had fought in the bordering dimensions of string theory, which his brain had interpreted in the wildest ways, trying to provide input he could comprehend. It had barely worked; only Kane’s innate practicality had kept him grounded during—and after—the experience.
Brigid, too, had touched on different ways to view this fragile thing we call reality. She had been mindwiped by the Annunaki prince Ullikummis, and had her thinking rewired into the Annunaki way of seeing the world for a short period of time. She had become a different person then, just to process the new perspective she had been given on the world, and had taken the name of Brigid Haight. That new comprehension had allowed her to shift time itself, stepping outside of its confines long enough to undo the birth of a goddess. It had been traumatic, and Brigid loathed thinking back to those days, had done all she could to mentally distance herself from that dark other her.
“Men fighting wars in a reality that only they can see,” Kane mused. “That’s...not an easy thing to process.”
“I agree,” Brigid said. “Reality is a lot more fragile than most of us realize.” As she spoke, her mind went back to another occasion, when CAT Alpha had stumbled upon an ancient device designed to bring about a new genesis. Kane had died during that mission, truly died, but Brigid had stepped inside the machine and reworked things, forcing reality to reknit. In doing so, she had brought Kane back from the dead, though she had never told him.
Mariah was walking beside Grant a few paces behind Brigid and Kane, struggling a little to keep up the pace that they were setting. They were soldiers while she was primarily a desk worker—gunfights and traipsing across battlefields were significantly outside Mariah’s comfort zone.
“There’s a lot of trekking around in what you guys do, huh?” she said, doing her best to ignore the feeling of damp sweat in her hair.
“Seems that way sometimes,” Grant agreed. Despite his recent exertion in curtailing the tripod cannon’s assault while wearing a long duster made of Kevlar, he seemed to be barely breaking a sweat. The shadow suit he wore beneath his clothes was regulating his body temperature, keeping him cool in spite of the fierce sunshine.
“So, what’s the formula you guys use in determining whether to use the interphaser or the Mantas to travel somewhere?” Mariah asked.
Grant looked at her and smiled. “No formula,” he said. “If there’s a parallax point or an old mat-trans unit, then we use that, unless we figure we might need to switch locations and stay on the move—in which case, we bring the Mantas out of the hangar.” The Mantas he referred to were superfast aircraft of alien design, ones which he, Kane and a few other members of Cerberus were adept in piloting.
Ahead of them, the bleak landscape stretched on and on, parched dirt dotted with stones like the debris from a mine, just a few leafless bushes here and there, rooted to the ground like the skeletal nests of birds. The terrain rose gradually, the crack in the ground widening and narrowing uncertainly but never closing to less than a four-foot gap.
The Cerberus team followed the line drawn by the crack in the earth, making their way up the gentle slope. The slope was made up of loose stones of all sizes and shapes, and as they went farther they found it became harder to keep one’s balance on the loose ground. Mariah especially needed help to keep moving forward, and Grant put an arm behind her back to prevent her from slipping. Brigid had put away the interphaser by this point, replacing it in its padded carry case, which could be strapped to her back. The unit still wasn’t operational; the bullet had evidently sheared through something important.
As they climbed higher, some of the loose rocks were dropping into the jagged rent that they were following. Once one started to fall, the rocks cascaded like a waterfall. For a frightening moment, Mariah slipped and fell toward the brink where those rocks had disappeared. Grant grabbed her in an instant, held her tightly by the arm as she dropped to one knee and continued to slide toward the rent in the earth.
“Hang on,” Grant told her with all the authority of the Magistrate he had once been.
“I’m—” Mariah began, breathlessly. “Can’t...” Her kneeling leg slipped out from under her as a landslide of stones began to disappear into the four-foot-wide opening of the chasm.
Grant tensed his muscles, spreading his legs wider to anchor himself in place. Kane and Brigid hurried back to join him, themselves slipping dangerously on the relentless stream of rocks that were now cascading into the pit.
Grant began to slip, his feet sliding along with the loose stones as Mariah’s weight threatened to drag them both into the chasm. Mariah herself was thrashing about, trying to keep from sliding into the darkness, her feet so close to the edge.
“Stop struggling,” Kane advised as he scrambled across the moving river of stones, struggling to get purchase. “Baptiste, hold on to me!”
“Hold on to you?” Brigid asked, confused.
“Yeah, I’m going to try to grab Mariah,” Kane said, reaching forward.
Brigid swiveled behind Kane, placing her arms around his midriff and locking her hands together.
Kane reached his hand out for Mariah, speaking through gritted teeth as he grabbed her flailing left arm. “Grant, you okay back there, bud?”
Grant was on his backside, still holding on to Mariah’s right arm as he struggled to stay in place. His grip had slipped down her sweat-slicked forearm, however, and it was now cinched painfully around her wrist. Mariah felt as though her hand was being wrenched off.
“Grant?” Kane pressed.
“Just grab her, Kane,” Grant told him. “Don’t worry about me.”
With Brigid providing counterbalance, Kane leaned in and reached his other arm around Mariah’s shoulders, still clinging to her left arm with his right hand. He pulled her to him in what seemed almost a consoling hug, drawing her face toward his left shoulder and chest. Mariah flailed, still fighting the stream of loose shale that threatened to throw her into the pit, and then she had an arm around Kane. Grant let go, anchoring himself in place as the stream of rocks beneath him rushed onward like an avalanche, accompanied by a susurration of noise as they disappeared into the chasm. In a moment he had stopped moving, though the rocks continued to drop.
“No one move,” Kane instructed. “Everyone just stay still, let the rocks settle.”
Brigid clutched Kane around