Mahmett looked up, his dark brows arching in whatever pain it was that was driving itself through his body like a knife. Yasseft had been there when his brother had been born fifteen years ago, and he saw something in his brother’s eyes that he had not seen for a long time. He saw tears, the type that stream like pouring water with no effort from the one who cries. Water streamed from Mahmett’s tear ducts, thick lines running down the dusky skin of his face almost as if they were placed there by a paintbrush.
“What is it?” Mahmett mumbled, seeing the fear in his brother’s eyes.
“You’re crying,” was all Yasseft could think to say.
From deep inside, Mahmett felt the swirl of liquid charging through his guts, racing and churning with the power of nearby thunder, rocking his frame and shaking his very bones. “I f-f-feel…” he began, but a stream of saliva threatened to choke him, blurting from his mouth in a wave.
Yasseft’s grip slipped but slightly, and Mahmett tumbled to the chalky cobbles of the street. He hit hard but made no cry of pain. It was almost as if he was anesthetized, or more likely that whatever pain was driving through him required more attention than a simple blow to the knees.
Mahmett lay shuddering on the ground, his mouth widening, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“What is it?” Panenk asked frantically. “What is with him?”
“I don’t know,” Yasseft admitted. “It’s like a fever.”
They stood there, aware of how helpless they must appear in the face of this. They were the eldest of their little group, they had played together almost since birth and they had had it drummed into them that they were to keep little Mahmett safe. Suddenly a hundred near-misses were remembered: climbing by the power lines, when Mahmett had fallen from an olive tree, and when they had climbed over the neighbor’s wall for a ball, only to come face-to-face with his mean-tempered mastiff. And now Mahmett was collapsed on the ground in a strange city with not a soul in sight.
“Shit.” Yasseft spit. “We need to get him back. I don’t know what’s got into him but we can’t stay here.”
“I didn’t even want to come here in the first place,” Panenk reminded him, looking at the younger lad with worry. He wanted someone to blame now, and it wasn’t going to be him.
Yasseft crouched and placed his hands beneath Mahmett’s shoulders. The glistening, sunlit water at the side of the street sparked and shone like a polished mirror at the edges of Yasseft’s vision. “Just grab him,” he ordered. “Help me. We’ll carry him.”
Though dissatisfied with the arrangement, Panenk at least had the good grace to raise his complaints while lifting his cousin’s ankles. “It took three hours to get here,” he said. “It’ll take twice that to get back if we have to carry him, and it’ll be nightfall long before that.”
Yasseft didn’t answer. He stood there, his hands clenched beneath his brother’s armpits, wincing as a tremble ran through his own body.
“You okay?” Panenk asked.
Yasseft shook his head wearily. “Just…” He stopped. “Feel like I’m going to…”
He dropped Mahmett, the younger man’s arms slipping from his grip as he staggered backward. Yasseft’s hands reached for his guts. It felt as if he urgently needed the toilet, as if he had diarrhea. He stumbled for a moment, bashing against a wall in the shadow of the looming saurian head and neck.
“What is it?” Panenk asked again.
“Going to…” Yasseft began and then he belched, a watery spume blasting from his mouth.
Panenk let Mahmett’s legs drop to the ground, apologizing automatically as he rushed over to Yasseft’s side. “My grandfather told me about this,” he said fearfully. “Airborne weapons that get inside you, eat you up from within.”
Yasseft was not listening. He stood propped against the bone-white wall of a single-story building, vomiting an odorless mix of saliva and water.
Panenk looked around him, searching for some clue as to where this attack had started. “We’ll leave,” he shouted to the empty buildings. “We’ll go. Just leave us alone, please.”
His voice echoed back to him, its fear magnified.
In the road at his feet, Mahmett shuddered where he lay in a puddle of water he himself had created with tears and vomit, and Panenk watched incredulously as the lad vibrated faster and faster before finally shimmying out of existence.
“Please,” Panenk cried, stumbling away from the pool of water his cousin had been. There was no sign of Mahmett; he had simply ceased to be.
Behind him, Yasseft was clawing at his clothes, pulling his shirt away from his belt as his guts threatened to burst loose. Panenk looked at him, the fear making him shake like a leaf in the wind. As he watched, the older teen began shuddering in place, water streaming from his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils and ears. Water gushed from his hands, spurting from beneath his fingernails and darkening the white walls of the opposite building.
Panenk walked backward, his eyes fixed on what was happening to Yasseft. Yasseft seemed about to scream, but it came out more like a belch, a hacking blurt of noise as if a wind instrument played through water. Then, incredibly, Yasseft seemed to sink to his knees, but his legs had not bent. Instead, he dropped into the ground, his body sinking into the pool of water that had formed around him, sucking him down like quicksand. If he screamed, the scream was lost in the sound of rushing water that washed over his disappearing form. And then, just like Mahmett, Yasseft was gone, and all that was left was a puddle of cool water reflecting the overhead sun.
“Leave us alone,” Panenk cried as he backed away. His voice echoed through the empty white streets. Even as he backed away, he felt the first thrum of water in his stomach like a single drumbeat, and he saw the silvery figures approach.
Chapter 5
Staring into the barrel of the Colt Mark IV in Sela Sinclair’s hands, Farrell took a moment to process what she had just said. She had called him “the nonbeliever” and she looked damn serious about it.
From nearby, Farrell could hear the approaching footsteps of those robed figures, the troops for the stone god Ullikummis, the people who had sacked Cerberus and put him and Sinclair in this impossible position in the first place.
“What are you doing?” Farrell asked, mouthing the words more than saying them as he met Sinclair’s dark eyes.
She fixed him with her stare, and Farrell couldn’t detect so much as a hint of emotion or concern there. If this had been a movie, he knew, she’d smile now or wink or say something coded in such an obvious way that he would know without one iota of doubt that this was a ruse, that any second now she would turn the blaster on their human hunters and they’d get out of here breathless but alive. Come on, Sela, he thought, wishing for that little wink or smile, give me a sign.
Sinclair continued to stare into his eyes, the pistol never wavering as she aimed it at the spot between them.
In a few seconds the twin robed figures had joined them, their hoods still pulled down low over their features.
“Who is he?” the broad-shouldered one said, a man with a basso voice.
“Cerberus,” Sinclair replied, her eyes still watching Farrell like a hawk as he lay sprawled in the grass in front of her.
The hooded figures nodded in unison, and the slender one peered closer at the balding man who lay in the grass. “Is that Kane?” she asked, a Southern drawl to her voice.
“No,” Sinclair said simply. “Guy’s name is Farrell. He’s just a technician.”
“Overlord Ullikummis wants Kane,” the man explained.
Shit, Farrell thought. This should be