“You look pale. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Carver said. “Just wondering what it is we’re about to open. Please, go on.”
Brigid read the whole chant that had been written onto the knife, drawing from her incredible memory to interpret the ancient symbols as best she could.
Beware! I am the bringer of Death, the Destroyer of Souls, the alpha and the omega, the vanishing point. Mourn now the end of your life’s journey, for all shall fall before my power, their family line expunged from all histories, their bodies returned to Tiamat. I am the blade Godkiller. Gaze upon my bloodwork and lament.
“This is the symbol for Enlil,” she explained as Kane and Grant returned to the discussion at the display cabinet, “but it’s been altered.”
“Altered how?” Kane asked.
Brigid pointed to the knife’s hilt before looking up at Kane and Grant. There was clear concern in her emerald eyes. “It’s the name of the knife’s owner,” she explained. “I think it means Son of Enlil.”
Infinity Breach
Outlanders®
James Axler
Headlong themselves they threw
Down from the verge of Heaven, eternal wrath
Burnt after them to the bottomless pit.
—Paradise Lost
John Milton 1608–1674
The Road to Outlands—
From Secret Government Files to the Future
Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.
Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.
What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.
Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.
In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.
Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology…a question to a keeper of the archives…a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.
But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?
Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.
Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.
For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.
After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.
With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 1
October 31, 1930
Somewhere in the South Pacific
Hiding amid the foliage, a beautiful woman peered through a set of compact binoculars in the direction the U.S. naval base. Demy Octavo was a tall, shapely figure, sheathed in a formfitting outfit of soft brown leather that clung to her every enticing curve like poured mercury. Matching leather gloves on her hands accentuated her long, elegant fingers, and a pair of matching handguns were strapped to the swell of her hips. The compact pistols were modified versions of the Beretta Model 1915, and their silver handles were engraved with the columnlike symbol of the Fascist party along with the motto Viva La Morte, or Long Live Sacrifice. Octavo’s tight-fitting ensemble left only her head uncovered, but for the moment her striking features remained hidden behind the binoculars.
Octavo’s skin was tanned to a wonderful bronze shade from hours spent reclining on the beautiful golden beaches of the Mediterranean, and she had carefully painted her lips a luscious, rich color known as falu red. Her long, dark hair swung freely behind her, cascading over her delicate shoulders like a waterfall, loose strands catching now and then on the island breeze. Her hair was a shade of brown so dark as to be almost black, and her tresses held a slight kink that was pleasing to the eye.
Demy Octavo was on a mission, sent to the South Pacific by her government under the auspices of Benito Mussolini himself, tasked to acquire important American military secrets. And yet, hidden in the natural cover of the island’s green-and-yellow ferns, the gorgeous Signorina Octavo did not watch the naval base. Instead, she had turned her binoculars to the skies above,