Truth Engine Read Free Page B

it jounced against the swell of her hip. She selected her first targets as, bizarrely, a stream of what appeared to be pebbles raced through the air toward her at high speed. As soon as her TP-9 had cleared its holster, Brigid snapped off her first burst of return fire, felling one of the mysterious strangers, who wore a hood to cover his features. The figure went down, tumbling backward as the bullets struck his body.
    Brigid was turning, finding her second target even as her semiautomatic shook in her hand with recoil. But as she spun she noticed something unnerving from the corner of her eye: the figure she had just shot was pullinghimself up off the ground, pushing the hood from his face. He was still alive….
    Back in the cave, Ullikummis’s footsteps grew loud once more, and Brigid focused her thoughts on the present. The looming stone creature came around to stand before her, and he held a rectangular object almost five feet in length. Brigid watched as the stone colossus set it before her, turning it to face her. It was a freestanding, full-length mirror with a swivel mechanism to adjust its tilt.
    â€œAre you able to see?” Ullikummis asked, changing the angle as he spoke.
    Brigid peered at her reflection in the mirror, saw the yellow crescent on her cheek despite the gloom. “Yes,” she said.
    Nodding sullenly, Ullikummis stood back, and he seemed to wait patiently while Brigid examined her face in the mirror. It wasn’t quite a black eye; the blow had been just a little too low for that. Instead, it had left a nasty bruise, along with some swelling, but there didn’t appear to be a cut or abrasion.
    Brigid looked up into the glowing orbs of Ullikummis’s eyes. “Why am I here?” she asked. “And where are we?”
    He looked back at her, his face an expressionless mask of rock, like a cliff ruined by erosion. “In time,” he replied, in that terrible voice of grinding stones. And that was all he said.
    Brigid watched as Ullikummis walked past her once more, watched his retreat reflected in the mirror. The glowing veins that webbed his body faded as he disappeared into the shadows of the cave behind her, the resounding strikes of his footsteps fading to nothingness.
    Brigid watched the reflection of the blackness for a long time.

Chapter 3
    Kane struggled to order his thoughts as he stood alone in the cold-walled cavern, trying to remember how he had arrived there. It was hard to think straight. His head ached, not with a throbbing but with a tautness that felt like a clenched fist, as if somehow his hair was too tightly woven into his scalp.
    His mouth was still horribly dry, and the ex-Magistrate was conscious that he was woefully dehydrated. His stomach hurt, too, hurt with emptiness.
    Kane pushed past the pain in his skull, forced himself to examine more closely the space he found himself in. Pacing it out, Kane estimated it to be a rectangular shape of approximately eight feet by six—small but accommodating so long as he lay on the floor the right way. The floor itself was hard, unforgiving rock, but there was an uneven carpet of sand, enough to cushion the contours of his body and so provide a little comfort while he slept.
    The sand reminded Kane yet again of the dryness in his mouth, but there was nothing to drink here; it was just a cave, empty but for its lone occupant—himself. Cold, too, since his shadow suit’s regulated environment had somehow failed.
    â€œIt’s a prison,” Kane muttered. “I’m in a cell.”
    But who had put him here and why? No, those questions weren’t important, not yet. Those were questions that Kane could address when he needed to. Right now,he needed to find the answer to a far more fundamental question— how had they put him here? Because if he could figure that out he might have a chance to escape.
    The room was sealed, and more than that, it was solid. The walls reached all the