Reality Echo by James Axler Page A

himself pull the trigger that blew up the Russian embassy?”
    Kane shook his head and grimaced. “Thrush took advantage of the tensions those big brains created. I’m not absolving that freak. He’s the one who jumped me and set a bunch of Fomorian mutants on my ass. Right now, I’m just realizing how antisocial I feel with all these people crowding around.”
    Brigid took a deep breath and nodded. As compassionate as Kane was toward the plight of others, ever since the Manitius personnel had been evacuated and relocated to Cerberus redoubt, privacy and peace and quiet had been curtailed. Beset with a pounding headache, and not at the top of his physical condition, his impatience couldn’t be cast aside by strolling off into the surrounding hills and spending time in the relative tranquility ofSky Dog’s village. Brigid had often joked that she’d keep an eye out for little Indian papooses with blue eyes, but the truth of the matter was, Kane was much like Domi in that they were at home in the wilderness. The trappings of the redoubt were cold and sterile, no matter how brightly lit or colorfully painted. With the addition of more people, Brigid could see that Kane’s momentary musings were not an endorsement of Thrush’s destruction of humanity.
    Still, Kane winced internally. “I’m not doing much for my case by being so misanthropic.”
    Brigid shook her head. “I’ll bring you some coffee. We’ll start over.”
    Kane rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t overlook that kind of a rant if I were you.”
    Brigid rested her hand on his shoulder. “Why? It is a sentiment you’d voice if you were too hurt and too tired to get back into the fresh air. In fact, I’d be afraid if you didn’t let some of your rough edges show. As much as we get called heroes, we’re still just normal people who are allowed to be grumpy and hold some loathing for others.”
    Kane took a deep breath. “Maybe…but you don’t have to disguise the fact that you’re babysitting me because I haven’t been officially cleared.”
    Brigid nodded. “Find us a table, okay?”
    “Sure,” Kane relented.
    Brigid cursed herself for being too quick to disregard Kane’s rant, but that was an emotional reaction. Shewent over the pure logic of the situation and she stood on her decision. Everything she knew about the man pointed to someone who’d make a glib statement, a joking condemnation. Throw in the effects of physical trauma he’d experienced, including one tortuous bit of combat that occurred before her eyes, and she really had nothing to flag in Kane’s behavior or speech.
    She prepared their coffee mechanically while her intellect threw up a flow chart of possibilities in her mind’s eye. The benefits of having a photographic memory allowed her to visualize a thousand different things at once. In one part of the flow chart, she ran before and after imagery of Kane from multiple angles, looking for details that didn’t quite match. Nothing showed up, which frustrated her. On another part of the flow chart, she remembered the details of the Thrush Continuum’s transdimensional Orb ship. The great ark was staffed by copies of Thrush from across a multitude of universes, though they all bore only minor variations of appearance.
    Brigid brought up her memories of the young boy into whom Thrush had implanted his mind. The child had been birthed by Erica van Sloan, and had seemed entirely human, except for an intellect that dwarfed anything Brigid had ever seen, and access to technologies such as the Heart of the World and the nanomachines that rebuilt Lakesh so adeptly. She concentrated on young Sam’s face, processing its similarities to the more adult versions of Colonel Thrush. Thanks to hereidetic mental imagery, she was able to compare facial bone structure, eyes, jaw profile and ears. She ran those pictures through her mind’s eye and sighed in disgust. If she hadn’t recognized the boy Sam as a younger version of Thrush with