Terminal White. James Axler

in the snow, and their tracks are rigorously tested to ensure they have sufficient grip for the treacherous icy conditions that exist beyond the ville walls.

      Each Sandcat is armed with the standard array of twin USMG-73 heavy machine guns set in a blister turret above the blocky body of the vehicle itself. These guns are automated, with a linked positronic brain connecting engine to guns—this way, the engine may steer in a direction advantageous to combat as well as pursuit or retreat.

      The workshop itself is noisy with the sounds of construction, welding, sifting and hammering that make up the assembling of the vehicles. No chatter is permitted from the shop floor, so I know my fellow workers only by sight rather than by name. We share occasional nods when our eyes meet, but most citizens are diligent in their work and have no cause to look up except during the brief transition periods when their shift begins and ends. At these moments, I observe my fellow workers with quiet admiration, proud of what we have achieved in a given shift.

      Each shift is nine hours in total with three designated breaks. Breaks are staggered across the workforce so that the production line never ceases, and no two members of the production line are assigned a break at the same time. The three breaks are fifteen, twenty and fifteen minutes, the two shorter breaks arranged during the top and tail of the day. In these breaks, workers are provided with nutrition and water, and are allowed a comfort break of no more than four minutes. Self-decontamination is expected after any comfort break.

      The rest area is slight, a small “room” shielded from the main floor of the factory by low barricades, effectively penning the worker in from the shop floor. The noise of the factory is immense in these moments, when one is trying to relax and imbibe sufficient nutrients to continue the important task.

      Citizens travel to and from the factory via trolleybus or on foot, depending on the location of their residence and on the location of their designated activities before or after their shift. For two evenings of each week I am assigned to Designated Task #011—cleaning duties—after my shift, which take an additional 3.7 hours. This is for the good of the ville. Post-shift on other days, I have a rota of tasks to attend to, including Designated Tasks #008, #012 and #013.

      —From the journal of Citizen 619F.

       Chapter 2

      From warrior to traitor to legend—Brigid could barely process the path her life had taken. To find her effigy here, standing beside the rock that had brought these people’s god to Earth, was unsettling. She had worked for Ullikummis, acting as his “hand in the darkness” while he made a power grab to revive his mother, Ninlil, and gain control of the Annunaki pantheon. Brigid had kidnapped the hybrid child Quav, within whom the genetic template for Ninlil resided, betraying and almost killing her trusted friends in the process. She had even shot Kane, and only his shadow suit coupled with a rejuvenating pool called the Chalice of Rebirth had ensured his survival. It had been a dark time for Brigid, darker than she could bear. Her essence, her personality—even the thing that some religions might call her soul—had hidden away from the whole debacle, and had only been released when a trigger had been engaged—a trigger that had acted almost as a rebirth for Brigid Baptiste herself. So to find her dark aspect, the creature called Brigid Haight, worshipped here as some kind of—what?—demigoddess, was unnerving.

      Brigid felt the tug of Kane’s hand on her arm, turned to see his stern face. “Come on, Baptiste,” he encouraged in a low voice, “people’ll notice if you’re not careful.”

      “People will notice,” Brigid repeated, barely mouthing the words. What a turn of events that would be—for all these believers to suddenly learn that their demigoddess, the dark hand of the stone god himself, was walking among them.

      Brigid turned away from the statue, away from its idealized representation of her own stunning appearance.

      Ahead, the devotees were being encouraged to walk past the broken meteor—“the cradle of the stone god,” as the acolytes called it—and show reverence and appreciation for his mighty works and promised utopia. Everyone who passed reached out to touch the rock, some trembling and weeping as they did so. Kane found the displays of emotion disturbing—he had fought Ullikummis, knew him to be nothing but an inhuman monster subjugating mankind to use for his own whims. And yet, his message had somehow taken root in the public imagination, was growing even now, many months on from the death of the monster himself. The people craved something—release from the fear that the fall of the baronies had brought, fear that the world could devolve once more into the post-nukecaust chaos that had become known as the Deathlands era. Then, survival was everything, and the strong preyed on the weak, humans turned into little more than animals—predatory, vicious animals. The Program of Unification had changed all that, a design for living that had fostered new openness and trust between people, that had created the safe havens of the nine villes that had dominated and controlled North America. The barons had brought control, often crushing and dictatorial, but a control that people desired and needed to function and to advance after those dark years. When the barons had resigned, leaving their baronies to assume their true forms as Annunaki space gods, they had left a power vacuum that was proving hard to fill. People were scared—and this, this broken rock prison with all its connotations of evil and subjugation, appealed to that fear, quelled it in a way Kane could barely comprehend.

      Kane and Brigid were next to be ushered past the rock, waiting a moment as the preceding pilgrim—a woman with tangled blond hair and a baby bump—wailed at its hollow chamber, the place where Ullikummis had waited five thousand years in cramped imprisonment. “Save us,” she cried. “Show us the glory of your utopia.”

      Kane bit his tongue in disgust. Then he and Brigid stepped up to the meteor, their expressions fixed and solemn. There were two ideograms carved high on the surface of the boulder. Together they read Son Of Enlil. Enlil was the cruellest of the Annunaki royal family, and his rebirth in modern times had caused Kane and his Cerberus teammates untold hours of grief. That he had a son who’d returned to challenge him for his throne had been like a never-ending nightmare that only got worse and worse.

      Kane placed his hand against the stone and bowed his head. He thought of how he had ultimately thrown Ullikummis into the sun, watched as his stone body hurtled toward the fiery ball in space, drawn by the sun’s gravity, burned up forever. “Warm our hearts, stone god,” Kane said aloud, and around him the acolytes and other pilgrims nodded and smiled in agreement at the seemingly innocuous sentiment. And burn in hell, Kane added in his mind.

      Brigid took Kane’s place a moment later, staring at the rock. She had seen it before, over a year ago, shortly after it had landed here. Back then, this area had been an arable farmer’s field, surrounded by more of the same. The fields had been mostly root vegetables, with a simple farmhouse located amid them, close to the lone road. The house was destroyed now, the fields turned over to wildflowers, and this site—this abomination—had sprung up in place of the fallen meteor in the field. It sickened her—this failing by man to need leadership, to almost desire subjugation. Maybe the barons had been right all along.

      Brigid stepped away, and her place was taken by two more pilgrims who pawed lovingly at the rock, this cradle of their stone god.

      After conversing with the rock, each pilgrim was led to an enclosed space behind it. Kane and Brigid entered this area, not knowing what to expect. Two robed acolytes spoke to them in soft tones as they led them through a drawn curtain colored black like the wet slate. Behind this sat several simple desks and chairs, each of which was sectioned off by another short curtain that hung down only as low as a man’s waist. They were a little like the voting booths found in many twenty-first-century democracies. Kane was ushered behind one of the curtains with the acolyte while Brigid was directed to the desk next to it.

      Once there, the robed acolyte—a young man with wide-set eyes and a shaven head—sat before Kane and addressed him in a calming, quiet tone. “Now you are expected to give life to god,” he said, reeling off the words as if they were entirely normal. “Have you been made aware of what this entails?”

      Kane shook his head.