At the speed they were traveling, the speck became a circle in just a few moments, and Grant could begin to make out some details. His first thought was that it was a star, but as he neared he saw that the thing was unbalanced. Yes, it resembled a star, but one that had been cut in half along its horizontal midpoint, the lower section discarded. The jagged top glowed like a miniature sun while its base was entirely missing in a straight-line cut.
“What have we here?” Grant muttered as he peered at the strange star through the magnification sensors of the Manta’s heads-up display. The lenses sought to get closer, dimming and filtering the brightness of the distant object to prevent the pilot from being dazzled. Strangely, the sensors could not seem to lock on to the object—each time they got close, the view would shimmer and the image would be lost, causing them to reset and begin the process again.
“Darn thing isn’t solid,” Grant realized, shutting down the sensor scan.
Details continued to pan across his field of vision in colored numerals, but the stuttered magnification ceased, and with it Grant’s sense of disorientation.
Grant waited impatiently, wishing he could contact Kane, wishing he could find out where it was he was being taken. Up ahead, the golden half star resolved itself into something more solid, and Grant could make out its details properly for the first time. It wasn’t a star; it was a city, gold as the sun’s rays, floating above the ground, its towering buildings thrust up into the blue sky.
“Well, that gives a while new meaning to the term
skyscrapers,
” Grant muttered incredulously.
Elsewhere
T
HE
BUILDING
LOOKED
like an anvil cast in copper, with a mighty waterfall running down one of its two-hundred-foot-high walls. The waterfall fed a deep stream that surrounded the building entirely and was filled with genetically modified piranha, fast and hungry, ensuring that no one could get in or out without the express permission of the king.
One man, however, came and went as he pleased: the guards merely waved Ronald through the security, for he was above reproach. He glided past the main desk in his sleek-sided motion chair, moving into an elevator that worked via the principles of compressed air, like the internal postal system in old buildings of the 1930s. A moment later he was sitting before the incarceration complex where the building’s lone guest was held. The interior walls here were clear, so that the guest’s every action could be observed.
The single inhabitant was called Wertham the Strange, and he sat cross-legged atop a table he had pulled up to one of the transparent walls, staring down at his visitor across its transparent barricade. Wertham’s face was sunken, hungry, and the whites of his eyes had taken on a yellow cast like egg yolks, dark pupils watching from their midst. His hair—brown with flecks of gray like steel wool—was cut in an unflattering basin style from which it had begun to grow free, the tangles curling up from his scalp as if they were rising flames. He wore the simple clothes of a prisoner, a cotton shirt and pants dyed the bright green of freshly mown grass.
“I tire of waiting,” Wertham said in a voice like nails down a blackboard. “Tell me you have news.”
Ronald turned to the guards and instructed them to leave with the slightest incline of his head. He was a neat man in middle age, wearing flexible indigo armor and a skullcap. He sat in the confines of the motion chair, his legs unmoving. The chair was metallic red with twin hornlike struts towering behind it similar to upturned elephant’s tusks. “Your pleas are heard in the royal court each week,” he assured Wertham, “and each week a new reason is found to hold you longer.”
“They think me strange,” Wertham said. “Wertham the Strange. Because my ideas are too wild for them.”
Ronald nodded. “You see things differently from the norm,” he said. “It can be hard for others to accept that. Fear guides their hearts at each clemency hearing.”
Wertham nodded. It was true. Even now, he could see the shapes that hid themselves from human eyes. No amount of jailing would cleanse that from his system.
“Plead my case, Doctor,” Wertham urged as the last guard shuffled out.
Ronald looked down at his legs where they were held in the motion chair, and when he looked back at Wertham his face had taken on a bitter aspect. “They won’t listen. They look at me as if I am worthless because of my injury.”
“They think the same of me because I dared to think further than merely technology, brother,” Wertham agreed.
“I’m not your brother, Wertham.”
“But we share the same goal—to see Authentiville’s stagnating regime overthrown. The same goal and the same hate.”
Ronald looked down at his legs again before shaking his head. “You can stop the pain? You can make me walk?”
“A king stands proudly above his subjects,” Wertham hissed. “Have faith, brother. Am I not the master of all things strange and all things wonderful?”
Dr. Ronald nodded solemnly. “You have so much to teach,” he said. “If only they would listen.”
“They will, brother,” Wertham assured him. “They will.”
Chapter 7
Serra do Norte, Brazil
Kane’s Manta rocketed straight up, crossing the faint blue line that marked the edge of the atmosphere and plunged onward toward the cold vacuum of space.
“Kane,” Brigid gasped through clenched teeth, “what...are...you...?”
“Al...most...there,” Kane replied, struggling to speak as the press of gravity pushed down hard against his chest. Even the g-compensator of the Manta was not capable of alleviating the change in pressure at this climb speed; it required time to catch up—time Kane didn’t have to spare.
The curvature of Earth was visible through the side viewports of the Manta. It was like looking down at a blue-white marble from very close, the great line of the horizon curving away into the distance.
Kane didn’t take much notice of the view. His mind was focused on the sensor display, where the Manta continued to track the movement of Grant’s transponder, blipping in and out of reception. The sensors didn’t tell him much; he only hoped it was enough to track Grant before he disappeared entirely, the same way Domi had.
Kane gritted his teeth as the Manta sped beyond gravity’s reach.
The Manta was burning through the last vestiges of the atmosphere now, hurtling up past its blue limit. Up ahead in the viewport, the blackness of space was becoming more pronounced as they reached the very edge of the atmosphere.
“What...do...you...plan to...do?” Brigid asked, every word a struggle as the gravity compensators in the Manta strove to keep up with the crushing pressure of the g-forces.
“Turn...around,” Kane bit out, “and catch...Grant...on the...flip side.”
Brigid was not certain what that meant, but it was too much effort to ask. She sat back in the acceleration couch behind Kane’s seat, clinging to its sides with a death grip.
Lakesh’s voice came over the Commtact at that moment, his concern clear. “Kane? Your transponder is showing some incredible physical strain, as is Brigid’s. Where are you? What’s going on?”
“Backing...my partner...up,” Kane replied, his eyes locked on the blurring numbers racking up on the altimeter where it was displayed on his heads-up software. They were beyond the limit of the atmosphere now, where the Manta would engage a secondary propulsion system.
Wind drag cut abruptly and Kane felt the Manta lurch forward as it was freed from the grip of gravity. Kane felt the ramjet cut out as the solid-fuel pulse detonation rockets kicked in, blasting the Manta out into the void. Below them, Earth turned very slowly, and Kane counted equally slowly in his head, trying not to rush. In his mind, he had counted to three, but it felt like forever knowing that Grant was in danger. A moment later, Kane flipped the Manta, cutting a tight arc around, bringing the beautiful craft almost a full 180 degrees until it began to hurtle back toward Earth. Behind him, the Manta left a streak of flame as the solid fuel blasted from its rear.
* * *
G
RANT
’
S
M
ANTA
CONTINUED
coasting toward the city in the sky, caught up in the magnetic net cast by the golden air vehicles. The city hung a mile and a half above Earth’s surface, moving at a swift pace over the lush greenery of the Brazilian rain forest. As Grant tried to focus on it, it seemed to flicker in and out of the air, its golden spires and minarets wavering into view like a mirage.
Grant studied the there-again-gone-again buildings that covered its surface. There were mighty towers that shot high into the sky, many as tall as forty stories or more. There was also an abrupt line beneath the city, a straight plain like a flat disc on which the whole thing rested. The floating spectacle was big as a ville; in fact, it reminded him a little of Cobaltville, where he had grown up. Grant estimated it was larger than Cobaltville, though it was hard to be sure from this distance and with the flicker.
Grant refocused his eyes, scanning the two craft ahead of him as they drew him closer to the city in the sky.
“Come on, Kane,” he muttered to himself. “Wherever you are—get back here quick.”
As Grant watched through the viewport, the air below seemed to shimmer with new energy, and he saw something burst from the floating city like the beam of a powerful searchlight. It could only be described as a wide track hanging in the sky, its lines straight and parallel. It glistened there like a river surface catching the moonlight.
Grant’s heads-up display analyzed the new data, detecting powerful ion energy. The thick line of energy wavered into place as if it were a waterfall catching the sunlight. The beam appeared to be stretching out from the mirage city, reaching out toward his Manta and its silent escorts.
Grant felt something lock on to his craft with an abrupt shunt, saw the twin golden pebbles similarly locked in place as they were caught within the twinkling beam. The Manta rattled as it was pulled on a new vector toward the city in the sky. But where was Kane?
* * *
“K
EEP
...
HOLDING
ON
TO
...something
,”
Kane advised Brigid as they slammed back into the atmosphere with a red scar of reentry heat.
His crazed maneuver had cut a tiny corner from the journey, using Earth’s rotation to boost Kane’s craft forward, as if it were a skipping stone bouncing on the planet’s atmosphere. Both engines were working to power the ship back to the ground, driving the Manta ahead at a breathtaking velocity, gravity adding even more urgency to the descent.
The sense of speed was incredible—at this distance, their eyes told them that they were hardly moving at all, and yet their bodies could feel the velocity in every organ, every bone.
“Kane, I can’t see anything down there,” Brigid admitted as she tried to spot Grant far below them.
“He’s there,” Kane insisted. “He’s got to be.”
Kane scanned the ground as it loomed into view. At first there was simply the rich darkness of the foliage like a splash of green paint. And then Kane identified the Juruena River, a snaking line cutting through the green, while his heads-up display gave him a location update so that he could get his bearings.
A moment later, Grant and his unwanted wingmen came into view on Kane’s scanner, still just pinprick dots in the distance, Grant’s ship automatically tagged by the Manta’s unique software.
There was something else there, too, Kane saw: a shimmering line, a quarter mile long and fifty feet in width, streaking across the sky above the dense forest.
“What th—?” Kane muttered as he pulled his Manta out of its dive, wrestling it toward the streak of light.
From this angle, the beam of light hung in the air like a sunbeam catching dust motes before disappearing in a broken, fading line.
“What is that?” Brigid asked from behind Kane’s ear. She still sounded breathless.
“I don’t know, Baptiste,” Kane admitted, “but Grant’s heading right for it.
Kane’s heads-up display informed him of the increased ionic activity, just as Grant’s sensors had done seconds earlier. Kane remembered what Lakesh had told him about the ion transfer, how its energy had been used to power rocket ships in the twentieth century.
“They’re boosting Grant’s Manta using an ion beam,” Kane realized. “Piggybacking him on its energy trail to shunt him to wherever it is they’re going.”
The Manta was closer now, whipping through the sky and leaving a double sonic boom in its wake. Below, Grant and his mysterious companions seemed to be stretching across the farthest end of the ion beam, pulling away into infinity.
“They’re disappearing,” Brigid gasped. “What can we do?”
“Keep your fingers crossed,” Kane told her. “Maybe your legs and your eyes crossed, too. I’m going in.”
With that, Kane ignored the straining engines of the Manta and entered the glistening beam of light as Grant’s Manta began to flicker and fade from its far end.
Kane watched as Grant’s Manta seemed to evaporate before his eyes. Without conscious thought, he pressed hard on the accelerator, willing the twin engine systems of his own Manta to catch its disappearing twin.
There was a flicker of light as Kane struck the space where the three aircraft had been just moments before. And then—nothing.
* * *
A
N
IMPOSSIBLE
INSTANT
PASSED
,
a swirl of colors racing before their eyes as Kane and Brigid hurtled tangentially across infinity.
The lush green canopy of Serra do Norte had disappeared. The blue sky had also been replaced, too, a slowly changing kaleidoscope of color taking its place, one shade flowing into the next, no one point remaining the same. Ahead of that, Kane and Brigid saw the golden city for the first time where it rested on its disclike base, hovering in multicolored limbo.
“It’s beautiful,” Brigid said as she craned her neck to peer through the viewport.
“It’s dangerous,” Kane spat in response. “Remember that—always.”
Unseen by Kane, Brigid nodded, checking the sidearm she had holstered at her hip. It was a TP-9 semiautomatic, a bulky hand pistol with a covered targeting scope across the top, finished in molded matte black. The grip was set just off center beneath the barrel so that, when removed from the holster, it created a lopsided square with the user’s hand and wrist forming the final side and corner.
In the pilot’s chair, Kane hailed Cerberus but received no answer. Wherever they were, their communications with the outside world had been blocked.
Before him, the two ovoid vehicles were descending toward the city, dragging Grant’s unpowered Manta behind them. Wouldn’t they be surprised to learn the Manta was undamaged! Kane spotted a landing strip ahead, a golden-butter color, jutting out from the side of the flying city.
“What have we stumbled on to this time?” he muttered incredulously. Kane had seen a lot of strange things in his time with the Cerberus organization. He had visited the city of Agartha hidden beneath the surface of Earth and fought running battles on the Annunaki mothership,
Tiamat,
as she coasted Earth’s atmosphere. But this golden city was something new, a settlement hidden...where?
“What is this place?” Kane wondered. “The gold at the end of the rainbow?”
“No, Kane,” Brigid said. “Look again. Don’t the colors remind you of anything?”
Kane eyed the rainbow display that painted the heavens before them. The constant flux was reminiscent of the blossom of force exuded by the interphaser, a portable teleportation device that Cerberus had made use of on countless occasions. That projection included not only a swirl of color but streaks of lightning that would crackle like witch fire when the quantum portal was opened for a teleportational jump. “The interphaser,” he replied. “But where’s the lightning?”
“Below us,” Brigid said, and Kane peered down at the ion stream that shimmered with white streaks.
“The stream—it’s lightning?” he said in stunned astonishment.
Brigid nodded. “Great gouts of it arranged in parallel, like a colossal circuit board.”
“Then we’re jumping parallax points?” Kane guessed uncertainly.
“I think we’re in some kind of cosmic rift between dimensions,” Brigid suggested, “with the positive charge of the ion stream boosting us toward our destination.”
“The ville,” Kane finished.
They continued on toward the butter-colored airstrip, carving a path through a space that didn’t seem to exist.
Within seconds, all four vehicles were brought down to the surface, executing smooth landings arrayed in a diamond shape on the landing strip. Neither Kane nor Grant had had to do anything to land their Mantas; instead, there appeared to be an automated system in place that guided the air vehicles down to the required point from the ion stream.
“Pretty smooth,” Kane muttered, watching the landing area through the sensor mask of the Manta.
The Manta’s engines were powering down automatically, even though Kane had sent no command for them to do so. It made him suspicious.
“Keep your eyes open, Baptiste,” he instructed. “I don’t like it when someone else starts calling the shots.”
They waited for the better part of a minute while the lead vehicles went through their postlanding sequence. Then their smooth exteriors buckled momentarily and a trapezoid door appeared in both, through which the interior of each craft could be seen. Their insides looked dark, with a smattering of glowing streaks in green and red.
Moments later, the pilots stepped out. They were clearly humanoid, and they were dressed in what appeared to be sleek, form-fitting armor that featured illuminated strips running across the torso and up and down the limbs.
One pilot’s armor was blue, while his companion’s was a rich purple that shimmered in the light like shot silk. Their flight helmets looked like upside-down buckets with stylized wings retreating back from just above the ears, running six inches behind them in a polished metal that might have been silver. The metal helmets covered the top half of each pilot’s face and included a molded pair of goggles with tinted black lenses, leaving the mouth, chin and the bottom of the nose exposed.
The analysis software in Kane’s heads-up display was feeding him conflicting reports on the composition of the armor, as if it was unable to scan it properly. Kane pushed back the visor, shaking his head. “Giving me a headache,” he muttered, wishing once again that he could break radio silence.
The pilots turned to the grounded Mantas and acknowledged them with a curt nod. It looked a lot like a warning. Then they turned in unison and marched toward a low building that crouched at the side of the airfield. Similarly armored figures waited there, poised behind large shieldlike plates with transparent windows.
The Cerberus warriors watched as the pilots disappeared into the building. The building had gold walls with vertical strips of light running up its surface, reaching from ground to roof in a line no wider than a man’s hand. Above, the sky swirled with a rainbow mix of color, reds and yellows colliding to form new shades of orange, blues meeting the reds in rich shades of violet.