Distortion Offensive. James Axler

was turning gray at the temples, had made his way over by then, and he sucked at his teeth as he peered at the shell in Mallory’s hands. “Could be a crab, maybe?” he suggested.

      “Could be a lot of things, Vern,” Kane agreed.

      The old church warden looked up at Kane with an expression of concern. “Seen a few of these things wash up just lately. You think this has something to do with how these kids are acting, Kane?”

      “Let’s get these kids inside and see whether we can make any sense out of all of this,” Kane suggested noncommittally.

      “I KNOW.”

      The words came as a whisper from the thin gray lips of a creature called Balam. He was fifteen hundred years old and he had been born as the last of the Archons, a race that confirmed a pact between the Annunaki and the Tuatha de Danaan millennia before.

      He was a small figure, humanoid in appearance but with long, thin arms and a wide, bulbous head that narrowed to a pointed chin. Entirely hairless, Balam’s skin was a pink so washed out as to appear gray. Within his strangely expressive face, Balam had two wide, upslanting eyes, as black as bottomless pools, their edges tapering to points. His tiny mouth resided below two small, flat nostrils that served as his nose.

      He reached out before him, spreading the six fingers of each hand as if to stave off something that was attacking, and a gasp of breath came from his open mouth.

      There was a child playing in the underground garden that spread before him. She was human in appearance and perhaps three years old, wearing a one-piece suit in a dark indigo blue that seemed to match the simple garment that Balam himself wore. The child turned at Balam’s words, her pretty, snow-blond hair swishing behind her in simple ponytail, her large, blue eyes wide with curiosity.

      “Wha’ is it?” the child asked, peering up from the daisy chain she had been making on the little expanse of lawn before Balam’s dwelling.

      Balam looked at the child with those strange, fathomless eyes and wondered if she might recognize the fear on his face, the fear that had threatened for just a moment to overwhelm him.

      The child smiled at him, chuckling a little in that strange, deep way that human children will. “Uncle Bal-bal?” she asked. “Wha’ is it?”

      “The Ontic Library has been breached,” Balam said, his words heavy with meaning, fully aware that the child could never comprehend the gravity of them. “Pack some toys, Quav. We’re going to visit some old friends.”

      With that, Balam ushered the child—known as Little Quav after her late mother—back into their dwelling in the underground city of Agartha and prepared her for the interphase trip that would take them halfway around the world. It had been almost three years since Balam had last spoken with the Cerberus rebels, but the time had come to do so once again.

      Chapter 4

      The Cerberus warriors made their way back to the church hall, along with Vernor and the two teenagers, while Mallory returned to her surgery. The kid with the dyed hair—Tony—was getting edgy, and he started to ask some awkward questions. He’d been in trouble before, Kane realized, recognizing the signs, and he wondered if the youth might bolt before they could question him more fully about his altered state of mind.

      Noticing the teen’s discomfort, Grant took the lead. “Hey, Tony,” he said, “you want to see something cool?”

      Tony looked at the towering ex-Mag, visibly swallowing. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

      “I know you didn’t,” Grant said reassuringly as they approached the stone steps that led into the church building. “Come on, we’ll catch up with these guys in a minute.” With that, Grant led the way off to the side of the two-story building with Tony tentatively following.

      By contrast, the girl—Pam—seemed to have automatically slid into an air of unquestioning trust of the adults who were trying to help her. Kane reasoned that she had most likely grown up in a walled barony and was thereby indoctrinated to trust Magistrates and similar authority figures. Once again, Kane was struck by the difference between ville folk and outlanders.

      Walking ahead, Grant didn’t bother to look back to check on his charge, thereby demonstrating his trust in the teen boy. They walked around the side of the church building, along a wide service road that led to a side gate that opened on an open-air storage area. Grant pointed to the gate. “Take a look inside,” he encouraged. “It won’t bite.”

      Warily the plum-haired teenager worked the catch of the wooden gate, keeping one eye on Grant as the towering ex-Mag watched. “What’s in there?” he asked.

      “Take a look, son,” Grant said, a smile on his lips.

      Grant recognized the anticipation on Tony’s face, both excited and fearful, wondering if a trick was being played on him. When the boy didn’t open the gate, Grant reached over and pushed it gently until it swung open on a creaking hinge.

      “Whoa!” Tony uttered, unable to contain his excitement. “Is that real? What are they?”

      Two bronze-hued aircraft waited in the rough scrubland of the church hall garden. They were huge vehicles, with a wingspan of twenty yards, and a body length of almost fifteen feet. The beauty of their design was breathtaking, an effortless combination of every principle of aerodynamics wrapped up in a gleaming burned-gold finish. They had the shape and general configuration of seagoing manta rays, flattened wedges with graceful wings curving out from their bodies, and an elongated hump in the center of the craft providing the only evidence of a cockpit. Finished in a copper, metallic hue, the surfaces of each craft were decorated with curious geometric designs, elaborate cuneiform markings, swirling glyphs and cup-and-spiral symbols that covered the entire body of the aircraft. These were the Mantas, transatmospheric craft used by the Cerberus team for long-range missions. They were alien craft, discovered by Grant and Kane during one of their exploratory missions to the Manitius Moon base. While the adaptable vehicles were mostly used for long-haul and stealth missions, Kane, Grant and Brigid had employed them on this occasion as robust workhorses, able to convey the heavy crates of rations in collapsible storage units that had been attached to their undercarriages for transportation to Hope.

      Grant chuckled as he answered Tony’s question. “They’re real, all right,” he assured him. “Me and my buddies flew here in them.”

      Tony turned to Grant, his eyes wider than ever. “You flew them? Are you some kind of spaceman or something?”

      Grant placed a friendly hand on the teenager’s shoulder and guided him closer to the Mantas as the early-morning sun played off their metallic shells. “No, we’re just like you, kid,” he said.

      Tony ran a hand along the wing of the nearest vehicle, touching the swirling patterns that had been engraved within its surface. “They’re beautiful,” he said.

      He had come down from his high, Grant realized, just an excitable kid once more.

      “Do you think you could ever fly one?” Grant asked.

      Tony beamed. “I’d love to. How fast do they go?”

      “Real fast,” Grant assured him. “You could cover the whole of this ville in five seconds.”

      Tony was amazed. His was a world of poverty and survival; he had almost no inkling that such wondrous technology existed. While he looked at the engines at the back of the Manta craft, Grant brought up the subject of the mollusks and learned that the youth had found them on the beach while he was down there with his girlfriend. They were both hungry, it seemed, so they had decided to try eating them. They tasted lousy raw, so Tony had cooked them, starting a fire like his father had showed him. That kind of stood to reason, Grant thought, and he quietly admired the kid’s adventurousness.

      A few minutes later, Grant and the fourteen-year-old entered the church hall to join the others as they, too, discussed the mysterious mollusks.

      Inside,