Infinity Breach

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“Guess they want to make sure we stay away,” Grant proposed as the Cerberus trio reached the top of the strange stairwell. “You know we could pick them off from up here,” he added, glancing back down at the scrambling figures who were fanning out across the lab, checking every area with grim efficiency.

Simona was bellowing fierce instructions, ordering her men to check everywhere to ensure that there were no other intruders in the buried laboratory.

Shaking his head, Kane jogged along the balcony toward the doorway of the trophy room. “Let’s just keep moving before we run into their backup,” he advised.

Ahead of Kane, Brigid was passing through the open doorway into the room at the apex of the buried Laboratory of the Incredible, heading back to the point through which the three of them had entered. As she moved into the trophy area, Kane’s words from just a moment before proved horribly prophetic. An arm snapped out from off to the side of the open doorway, grabbing Brigid around the throat and wrenching her off her feet before she knew what was happening. She swung the TP-9 pistol around and her finger jammed against the trigger, unleashing a spray of 9 mm, 158-gram subsonic bullets that sputtered around the brightly lit trophy room.

Kane bolted through the doorway after their companion, and saw Brigid move so swiftly to one side that he thought she had fallen.

“What the—?” Kane began as he heard the TP-9 spitting fire and saw Brigid being yanked backward, her heels sliding along the floor.

Brigid had been grabbed by a large man dressed in a thick coat with a fur lining, Kane saw. The man was over six feet tall, built like a grizzly bear and wearing a scarf and goggles that obscured his face. A Calico M-960 subgun hung from a strap over his shoulder. The long-barreled automatic rifle featured two handgrips for better control of the field of fire, and it was the preferred weapon of the Millennial Consortium. Kane took it for a sure sign that this man was with the other people they had encountered in the glacial fortress. And that could mean something else, too, Kane realized, his heart sinking—there may be even more millennialists just waiting to pounce on them.

TRAPPED IN THE huge man’s grasp, Brigid was struggling to find her footing, her boot heels scraping across the white floor as she was dragged backward away from the doorway. She finally unhooked her finger from the TP-9’s trigger, and the weapon went silent. She tried to gain purchase on the hard floor, but found that she was being pulled back so quickly that she couldn’t even regain her balance for a second.

Kane raised his Sin Eater, stilling his mind as he took aim at the man pulling his companion across the floor.

The huge millennialist dragged Brigid between the glass display cabinets of the room, swinging her this way and that, using her as a human shield to prevent Kane taking his shot. “Try it,” he growled, “and you’ll execute your girlfriend, chum.”

Kane held still, the Sin Eater tracking the man’s movements as he continued yanking Brigid to and fro.

“Now, why don’t you put your gun down,” the millennialist suggested, reaching for his swinging Calico subgun with his free hand.

“Better yet,” Kane snapped back, “why don’t you put my friend down and we’ll settle this like men.”

Just entering the doorway to the huge trophy hall, Grant’s voice came to Kane, urgency in its tone. “Kane, they’re coming up the stairs. Boxing us in.”

Kane’s eyes flicked around the room, taking in the curiosities that stood silent vigil in their glass boxes. Trinkets and tablets that glistened beneath the miraculous lighting from overhead: bones and stones; here a chunk of masonry shaped like a wing, there a frayed rope wrapped around itself in a knot as thick as a person’s torso.

Behind him, Kane heard the familiar sound of a Sin Eater as Grant blasted shots at the approaching enemies.

“Kane,” Grant urged as the first of the millennialists reached the top of the double-helix staircase and dived against the far wall for cover. “Time’s run out.”

“Not yet it hasn’t,” Kane growled, and the Sin Eater bucked in his hand as he fired a single shot at the millennialist holding Brigid.

The bullet cut through the distance between Kane and his foe, slicing three long strands from Brigid’s red hair as it passed her and smashed into the face of the man holding her. Immediately, the guard staggered backward, his grip faltering around Brigid’s neck. Brigid didn’t need any further opening than that. She was already regaining and shifting her balance, struggling forward and flipping her assailant over her shoulders. The man crashed to the floor in a heap of furs and trailing scarf.

“I’m fine, Kane,” Brigid called across the trophy room. “Let’s go.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and began rushing across the trophy-filled room.

Kane and Grant were already moving, racing down the walkway between the huge glass cabinets. Brigid was sprinting toward the far wall, where the icelike shelves had formed the makeshift steps for their entry into Abraham Flag’s buried laboratory of wonder. Kane and Grant weaved between the cabinets that held the carved throne and the single bullet, making their way swiftly toward the far wall to join their red-haired companion.

Though knocked off his feet, the millennialist guard who had grabbed Brigid was not dead. He reached for his Calico M-960 as he lay on the floor beside a glass cabinet holding a single clay tablet. Kane’s bullet had indeed hit him; it had slammed into the goggles that he wore, impacting against the hard plastic of the right eyepiece, leaving a scar across its surface like a spiderweb. Beneath the goggles, the guard’s cheek ached, and he would have a black eye inside of an hour. But, other than disorienting him for five seconds, the bullet hadn’t created any lasting damage. Now he turned his subgun in the direction of the fleeing figures and pumped the trigger. A stream of flat-nosed 9 mm bullets spit from the muzzle of the Calico, spraying out over the trophy room. Automatically, Kane, Grant and Brigid dived for cover as the bullets raced toward them.

As his team ducked behind the tall glass cabinets of the room, the string of flat-nosed, wadcutter bullets smashed through the cabinet at Kane’s back, shattering the panes of glass and embedding themselves into the eerie, carved throne that waited silently within.

Guatemala, May 19, 1926

IT TOOK A FEW MOMENTS for his eyes to adjust when the sack-cloth bag was removed from Abraham Flag’s head. Warily, he looked around at his new surroundings. He was in a small, windowless room that appeared to be barely eight feet square. Lit by a single, flaming torch, the room held the distinct smells of dust and decrepitude.

When Flag tried to move, he found that his wrists were held in place. He looked down and saw the large wooden clips that had been placed over them like some tribal woman’s bracelet, clamping them to the arms of the solid wooden throne that he now sat upon. As hard as amethysts, his purple gaze played over the chair itself, examining the strange markings he saw there. The chair was covered in carvings, pictograms that Flag immediately recognized as the ancient written language of that dead race called the Aztecs.

Flag’s lightning-quick mind worked overtime, swiftly translating the words that he could see, ascertaining their meaning as swiftly as he was able. The meaning of those symbols was clear: it was a throne of execution.

Suddenly, Flag became aware of movements behind him, and then a sinister voice came from close to his shoulder. “I see you are awake, Professor Flag,” a man’s voice stated. The man spoke in heavily accented English, and Flag recognized almost immediately that the speaker was from the Latino region of Central America.

“You have me at a disadvantage, friend,” Flag replied. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

“‘A disadvantage’ would be a more than fair analysis, Professor,” the man said, stepping from the shadows. Flag saw that he was a short man, carrying a little extra weight and dressed entirely in white. A vicious-looking scar ran down the right-hand side of his face, ending several inches into the man’s hairline. The man’s hair was hidden by a magnificent headdress of feathers, each of them dyed a vivid, bloodred. “You may call me Mr. Hidalgo. I am the man who will kill you before this day is out.”

Abraham Flag had heard that same threat in numerous forms over the length of his career, and he felt no trepidation at facing death once again. Instead, he merely smiled at the irony of the man’s name, for hidalgo meant noble in Spanish, the strangely garbed man’s native tongue. This hidden threat had been close by ever since Flag had journeyed down to Guatemala to help with Michael Brand’s construction project and encountered that first hideous corpse. Only now had that threat finally been given a face. The terrible, twisted and scarred visage owned by Mr. Hidalgo, the revived priest of the blood-thirsty Aztecs.

“The chair that you now sit in,” Hidalgo explained, “has lain beneath this pyramid since its construction over three thousand years ago. It is a throne for the dead, and all who sit in it must surely die.”

As Hidalgo spoke, Flag could feel a cold shiver wrenching at his spine. There was something about this chair, some uncanny ability that could affect a man in ways almost beyond comprehension. The ideographs were more than simple representations of its purpose—they acted in some way to channel a person’s will, forcing them to die, their heart to cease beating.

“You feel it already, Professor Flag,” Hidalgo said, wide teeth showing in a sickening smile. “You feel the dreaded march of death’s approach.”

This strange throne was the primitive equivalent of an electric chair, Flag realized, but one that was powered solely through the will of the executioner himself. Flag’s only means of survival was to outthink Hidalgo before the dreams of death overcame him.

Flag narrowed his eyes and concentrated, his muscles tensing as his arms wrenched at the bonds that held them in place.

“You are a fool, Professor,” Hidalgo mocked as he saw Flag struggling at his restraints. “You cannot break those shackles—no man can. And, in a few moments, you shall be dead.”

Flag ignored the man’s ranting, concentrating on his inner strength, the nobility of purpose that had served him through the most dire of situations. He could feel Hidalgo’s thoughts in his mind now, sifting through them as a man’s hands will sift through sand. Suddenly, that terrible, invisible hand clawed within Flag’s skull, and the great man of science let loose a desperate gasp.

Hidalgo, that resurrected priest of a blood-soaked civilization of the ancient past, laughed as he tightened his mental grip on his victim, feeding all of his terrible hate through the strange and mystical chair through his thoughts alone. Trapped in that seat of doom, Abraham Flag fixed his fierce stare on the man in the abominable headdress, feeling the pressure bearing down upon his mind. His skull felt as though it might explode like some rotted fruit, but still Flag clung to life, recalling the miraculous things that he had discovered, thinking of all the sights he still had to see. And in that moment, something else flashed through his exceptional brain.

u x d + (c x s) - (t x b)

It was the incredible equation he had been developing at his hidden Laboratory of the Incredible in the Antarctic, the equation that proposed to hold the key to life itself. He concentrated all of his thoughts on the equation, on life itself.

Up x Down + (Charm x Strange) - (Top x Bottom)

As the equation raced through Flag’s thoughts, the ideographs on the chair began to glow and, incredibly, to alter their shape. The parable of death that had been written there just moments before changed, the millennia-old carvings shifting their lines subtly as their meaning altered forever at Flag’s command.

At first the priest, Hidalgo, failed to notice the extraordinary change that was occurring before his eyes. He stood in that tiny death chamber, grinning at Flag’s plight as he focused his thoughts to power that incredible, ancient machine. And then, like an old sheet finally wearing through, something in Hidalgo’s mind seemed to tear, ripping apart. The whites of his eyes took on an aspect of crimson as all of the capillaries burst, and blood trickled from his nose before he fell to the flagstone floor.

With a final strain of superhuman effort, Abraham Flag snapped the two shackles that held his wrists to the chair, their wood shattering into a thousand splinters as he leaped from that terrible throne of death….

KANE HELD HIS HAND over his face to protect his eyes as glass crashed down all around where he crouched on the trophy room’s floor. Swiftly, he ran his hand through his hair, and twinkling slivers of glass tinkered to the floor. “Son of a bitch,” he snarled, scrambling behind another cabinet and reeling off a burst of gunfire from his Sin Eater.

Kane’s bullets cleaved the air all around the Millennial Consortium guard, but the man rolled behind another cabinet, this one containing a carved stone wing from some long-forgotten statue.

“Kane,” Grant called from his own hiding place. When Kane looked, Grant was nodding toward the doorway. “More company.”

Kane glanced up and saw more millennialist guards rushing through the open doorway. Grant and Brigid peppered the doorway with a sustained burst, and one of the newcomers fell to the floor amid a spray of blood as his companions rushed to find cover.

“There’s no way we can get up top while they’re here,” Brigid said over the Commtact, her voice sounding frantic. “Any ideas?”

Kane’s eyes narrowed as he assessed the scene before him. They were trapped in a room full of pointless crap as a dozen armed men closed in on them. Reluctantly, he engaged his Commtact’s microphone. “I guess we play a game of Last Man Standing,” he growled.

Chapter 7

Sin Eater in hand, Kane backed up against a glass cabinet displaying nothing more than one lone bullet, its silver casing ringed with a single line of gold like a wedding band—a marriage of violence.

All around the brightly lit storage room, a dozen foot soldiers of the Millennial Consortium were finding their own cover as they hemmed in Kane and his companions. Both Grant and Brigid were somewhere off to Kane’s right, closer to the ladderlike shelves than he was, but neither they nor he could get out of the room without moving out into the open and risking execution.

As Kane tried to track all the enemies in his mind’s eye, his Commtact burst to life once more. It was Grant.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Grant said, “but we’re outnumbered here, partner.”

“I noticed,” Kane sourly acknowledged. “Looks like they had reinforcements tucked away.”

“These see-through cabinets are no cover at all,” Brigid added over the hidden Commtact unit.

“What are you suggesting?” Kane asked, his eyes fixed on the sentry who had grabbed Brigid. The man was busy reloading his Calico subgun. Kane saw now that the sentry had entered via a smaller chamber set to the rear of the trophy room. They had to have walked straight past the inset door when they had originally entered the complex.

“A bloodbath might not be our best avenue of attack,” Brigid mused.

“Ever the diplomat, Baptiste,” Kane growled in response, but under the circumstances he tended to agree.

Though Kane had absorbed Brigid’s words, his mind was focused on the guard by the cabinet containing the stone wing. The man had already shown himself to be dangerous, with a quick temper and an itchy trigger finger. What’s more, he was deadly fast—a lethal combination to face in any armed man. Worse yet, Kane thought as he peered at the spent shells at his feet, the lunatic was using wadcutters, nasty, flat-nosed rounds that did more and bloodier damage than a standard bullet. Any of Kane’s crew hit by one of those, even a glancing blow, would likely be incapacitated if not outright killed. The carved throne at Kane’s back had great rents across its upright section now, and thick wooden splinters carpeted the floor around the busted display case where the wadcutters had torn the arcane piece of furniture apart. With fortune on his side, a man could take a bullet and remain standing; wadcutters just ripped apart anything they made contact with, and could easily go straight through the shadow suits the Cerberus team wore.

Kane turned his mind back to the conversation of strategy. “I’m gonna go make friends,” he stated over the Commtact.

HIS SUBGUN RELOADED, the guard with the wadcutter bullets inched around the cabinet, the light glinting from his shattered goggle lens. Holding it solidly by its twin-handled grip, the man poked the Calico’s long muzzle in Kane’s direction, his cheek burning from the bullet his goggles had deflected.

RELUCTANTLY, KANE sent the Sin Eater back to its hiding place in his wrist sheath and stood to his full height, hands held in the air above him. “Salutations, millennial guys. Wonder if we can—” he began.

The itchy-triggered guard in the furs didn’t wait for the rest. His finger pressed down on the firing stud of the Calico, blasting a round of wadcutters across the brightly lit room. Kane dived for cover as the formidable stream of hot lead cut through the air toward him.

Across from Kane, Grant located the assailant, placed the firing millennialist in his sights and returned fire, bullets spitting from the nose of his Sin Eater. Lightning quick, the millennialist ducked back behind cabinet cover as a dozen high-density, 9 mm bullets raced at him. Grant’s leading bullet slammed through the front pane of the cabinet, shattering the glass and drilling into the worn stone wing that rested within. The bullet’s lethal siblings followed a split second after, peppering the mossy surface of that strange hunk of masonry.

Paris, France, September 3, 1928

ONLY THE KEENEST of eyes would have noticed, but then Abraham Flag did have the keenest of eyes. One of the grotesque gargoyles that was perched atop the medieval church was not quite as worn, as decayed and moss-covered, as its companions. It was a well-disguised replica, but Flag could tell instantly that it was newly crafted. So, where was the original that this imperfect impostor had replaced? And why had someone gone to so much trouble to cover up the switch? Flag’s formidable mind was immediately intrigued.

However, before Flag could even begin to process this information, a dark shadow loomed overhead and suddenly swooped down toward him. Flag dived for cover behind the nearest gravestone, and whatever had attacked flew back up into the gray sky, but not before Flag had glimpsed it.

Now Flag knew why there was a new stone gargoyle watching over the tower—because the old one was no longer made of stone. Gargoyles were meant to watch over, guard and protect their church from evil spirits and so this rogue had to be stopped, and fast. Professor Flag had been in many tricky, even dangerous, situations, but this was unlike any other he had encountered. It would take all his skill to put this right.

There was not much time to think, as the demonic creature dived at him again. This time Flag didn’t get out of the way, but instead stood his ground. His bravery seemed to confuse the gargoyle, and it pulled itself up short directly in front of Flag. They were now face to evil face. Flag’s mind was in motion, drawing quickly to the surface everything he knew about gargoyles and medieval beliefs.

Flag recalled a popular prayer from medieval times, for protection against evil. It was a prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel. Well, he certainly needed protection from evil now, and he had nothing to lose. Without ever taking his eyes off the hovering gargoyle, Flag began to recite:

“As smoke vanisheth, so let them vanish away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the Presence of God. Judge Thou, O’Lord, them that wrong me: overthrow them that fight against me.”

Instantly, in midflight, the live gargoyle turned back into stone and came crashing down to the ground. As Flag leaped out of the way of that falling chunk of lifeless masonry, his fierce eyes spotted a motionless figure watching from high up in the bell tower—a human figure. As their eyes met, Flag heard the flapping of leathery wings, felt the coldness of a shadow from overhead as another stone demon bore down upon him….

THE CACOPHONY of gunfire echoed all around the trophy-filled chamber as the millennialists traded shots with the Cerberus trio. Bullets zinged back and forth as the battle continued. The gargoyle’s wing that, moments ago, had sat safely behind glass for almost three hundred years toppled from its mounting and crashed to the floor as Grant’s bullets peppered it. The millennialist guard who had been using its cabinet for cover was already on his feet, hurrying across the room, to the next piece of available cover—a glass cabinet holding a signet ring with a crimson gemstone. The ruby twinkled as it caught the light of gunfire and explosions all around it.