The Bloodline Cipher

by Stephen Cole

  Tye pushed herself faster, harder.

  But she couldn’t outrun Street’s fingers as he swung round blindly at the sound of Coldhardt’s voice, aimed low and opened fire. And he couldn’t see that his old-time partner was between him and his target.

  ‘Saitou!’ Bree screamed, hair askew, bleeding from a gash in her cheek, all composure lost.

  The bullets meant for Coldhardt struck Saitou point blank in the neck. Thick spurts of blood slapped against the ground and a few seconds later he followed them, quite dead, dark eyes staring from his face.

  Jonah quickened his step as Saitou took the bullets – Street still had the gun, and surely couldn’t miss again? But just then Bree broke free of Con’s struggling grip and hurled herself at Street, began wrestling the gun from him.

  ‘You killed Saitou!’ she hollered. ‘You stupid, stupid –’

  Tye reached Street first. Her wrists were cuffed behind her back but it didn’t slow her down. Lightning fast she kicked the gun away with one foot, and planted the sole of the other in his jaw. He fell backwards and lay still. A moment later Jonah caught up to Bree and hurled himself on to her back, pinning her to the ground. She bucked wildly beneath him, but Tye joined the fight. She brought her knee down hard on the back of Bree’s skull, knocking the girl’s forehead into the rock floor. The struggles abruptly halted.

  Jonah looked deep into Tye’s eyes. Who cares who’s watching, he thought, as he grabbed her tight as hell and they just kissed. He wondered if he tasted as rough as she did. Probably, he decided. But still it was the sweetest kiss of his life.

  ‘Gee, guys, that’s a big surprise to no one at all,’ drawled Motti, checking the fallen bodies around him. ‘But if you guys are planning on going further, I’d wait till Patch is around. You can sell him tickets.’

  Tye broke off as if stung and glared at him. ‘Patch is –’

  ‘Alive, we are told,’ Con told her happily, helping Coldhardt pull clear of Saitou’s lifeless fingers.

  ‘It’s true,’ Jonah whispered, smiling and nodding his head, searching out Tye’s gorgeous brown eyes as they filled with tears. ‘Maya says Patch is OK!’

  ‘He was when we left him,’ said Maya briskly. ‘But we must return, and quickly.’

  ‘But how can he be OK?’ Tye demanded. ‘Jonah, you said –’

  ‘Maya is an uncommonly skilled student of the Order,’ Coldhardt announced.

  Jonah looked at her sharply. ‘Order?’

  Maya shrugged off the crimson robe she wore to reveal a plain black swimsuit beneath, still wet from her swim through the sinkhole. Then she pulled down the top a little way to expose the tattoo that sat over her heart, the same tattoo Jonah had glimpsed before when he shouldn’t have been looking. But now he was staring, like everyone else, at a familiar symbol.

  ‘The Knot of Isis?’ Tye breathed.

  Maya nodded. ‘I am a scholar-priest of Nomen Oblitum.’

  Jonah stared at her, a chill prickling down the length of his back. He wanted to phrase a hundred questions in his mind but got nowhere with any of them.

  Tye shook her head dumbly. ‘First we find out Heidel is Coldhardt’s father, then we –’

  Jonah stared at her. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sure we all have questions,’ Coldhardt said heavily. ‘But there is no time.’

  Suddenly, it was as if something in the air changed, as if a noise in the background that Jonah hadn’t even registered had cut off. ‘Maya and I shut down the island’s power systems,’ he said. ‘Death of an island.’

  ‘The timing is apt,’ said Coldhardt. ‘Our business seems to be concluded here.’

  ‘Once we get these cuffs off me,’ said Tye, pointing to a key on Bree’s silver charm bracelet. Jonah snapped the thin silver chain and soon had the cuffs unlocked.

  ‘The Scribe went to fetch the perimeter guards,’ said Maya, restlessly. ‘They could be on their way now.’

  Tye looked round sadly at the devastation in the arena, rubbing her wrists. ‘Maybe they can organise some first aid for the survivors.’

  Con didn’t seem so impressed with that idea. ‘Come. It is time to go.’

  ‘What about Street?’ Motti nudged the man’s shoulder with his foot. ‘You just gonna leave him here?’

  ‘Why not,’ said Coldhardt. ‘Let him meditate on what it is to kill one you care for.’

  ‘But he could come after you in the future,’ Con argued. ‘Any of these bastards could. Given the chance, they’d kill you.’

  Coldhardt glanced at Maya, as gulls high above shouted their shrill complaints at the strengthening blue sky, and gave a heartfelt smile. ‘Where I’m going … no one will ever find me.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jonah followed Coldhardt, Tye, Motti and Con, walking quickly through the dark and twisting tunnels out of Saitou’s labyrinth, trying to stave off his thoughts and questions and stay alert.

  He was armed with a pepper-spray orchid in case of trouble. Jonah supposed it was a measure of what he’d lived through that to be holding such a bizarre weapon now seemed perfectly reasonable.

  Maya lagged behind him, hanging back from the others. Jonah put that down to her secret being out now. Maybe she felt awkward for not telling them sooner, or maybe she had simply stopped pretending to be normal. He had felt quite close to her when they’d been just a couple of hackers working an overclocked computer. Now so much made sense suddenly – no wonder she’d known so much about Nomen Oblitum, no wonder the Scribe’s oh-so-knowledgeable pronouncements in Chamonix had left her less than impressed …

  Jonah felt stupid and small-minded. He wasn’t used to that, and he didn’t like it. Maya had come through for them, but with what agenda Jonah wasn’t sure. Could they trust her?

  With Patch’s life in the balance, he reflected, can we afford not to?

  The atmosphere was muted as they emerged into daylight. They had won, but more through chance than skill. And the fact remained: Coldhardt might not have sold them out as such but he’d still let them run into the dragon’s den without warning them of the situation, purely to suit his own agenda.

  Where do we go from here? Jonah wondered.

  The answer, of course, was to get help to Patch as fast as possible.

  They met no one on the way out to the harbour.

  Coldhardt had apparently made the last leg of his journey here in a small speedboat, from which Maya had jumped ship and swum for shore. But that couldn’t accommodate them all. Tye started searching for an alternative among the many luxurious boats, and Jonah wondered how many of the owners had survived.

  ‘How did you find Patch?’ Motti asked Coldhardt.

  ‘I was monitoring your progress on Jonah’s transmitter, just as Saitou was.’ Coldhardt stared out over the calm and glittering sea, sounding matter of fact as ever. ‘Maya’s skills and upbringing have left her well-attuned to her own body. She was aware of the transmitter placed beneath her skin, and was able to remove it. Once she accepted my need to talk candidly, she left it carefully out of hearing range while we discussed the situation – and what to do about it.’

  ‘While the rest of us stayed in the dark,’ Jonah muttered, itching the lump on his neck.

  ‘My own aims and Coldhardt’s coincided.’ Maya hovered at the periphery of the group. ‘We were already on our way out here when the explosion went off on board the Aswang.’

  ‘And you stopped off to collect Patch?’ Jonah challenged. ‘Even though you thought he was dead?’

  Coldhardt met his gaze. ‘You think I would leave his body to rot on that ship?’ he asked quietly.

  Maya stepped in. ‘Con’s instruction to the Aswang’s captain as she mesmerised him – that he should do all in his power to aid and protect anyone not a part of his crew – saved Patch’s life. That and the titanium blanket he was still wearing around his midriff.’

  ‘That one-eyed pussy,’ said Motti, half smiling.

  ‘The captain administered first ai
d and kept him alive, until I arrived.’

  Tye had re-emerged from the cabin of an especially sleek boat and now started untying the mooring rope. ‘I heard Street say the Aswang’s cameras had picked up a masked “man” on board,’ she said. ‘You know, Bree had you down for a pirate, looting the bodies.’

  ‘I had to take the chance I would be spotted. Your friend Patch was in a critical condition. His body was shutting down and only drastic action could help him.’ Maya looked at Tye. ‘Now, if you are ready, we should go. Quickly.’

  ‘This is a Skater 46 Supreme,’ Tye told her stiffly, crossing to the captain’s seat. ‘It does one-fifty miles an hour on twin thirteen-hundred hp engines. We’ll be quick.’

  Con got in the seat beside her, while the others piled in the back. Jonah felt slightly uncomfortable, sat between Maya and Coldhardt. They were the ones with all the answers, but how far could he trust either? He felt a groaning wave of tiredness overwhelm him, and his burns stung in the sunlight.

  Coldhardt discussed directions with Tye. Then she gunned the powerful engines, and the speedboat soared away over the calm ocean.

  Jonah turned to Maya. ‘I’m still waiting to hear how I helped save Patch.’

  Maya’s grey eyes fixed on him. ‘Your breakthrough with the circles in the manuscript was timely.’

  ‘You mean the way they relate to the dark ink strokes beside them?’

  She nodded. ‘When you pointed out that not every redrawn circle was perfectly drawn, that some had very particular start points, I studied them closely.’ She started drawing in the air. ‘If you bisect the circle horizontally, then that’s your nought-degree line. And if you draw a line from the start point through to the centre of the circle, then you get an angle. It’s that easy. When two or more circles follow on you simply add the angles together. Then you take the first darker ink stroke that follows and rotate it by the same value.’

  ‘And what does it get you?’ Jonah demanded. ‘What do all those different line-strokes make when you put them together – new pictograms? A key to understanding the manuscript?’

  ‘They make sense of the appendix,’ Maya told him. ‘Only it’s not really the appendix – it’s more like the heart … the heart of the Bloodline Cipher.’

  Jonah wanted to shake her for the answers. ‘Well?’

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘It’s more easily demonstrated than explained. And I’m going to need my energy for what’s ahead.’

  Motti looked at Coldhardt. ‘Then I guess it’s your turn. Care to share about you and Daddy?’

  Jonah didn’t for one moment believe that Coldhardt would answer. He seemed to have fallen asleep, his head angled back so his pale face caught the sun.

  Con turned round in her seat to look at him. ‘Did Street and Saitou really not know that you and Heidel were … you know …’

  ‘Heidel was no more his name than Coldhardt is mine,’ the old man said with unexpected candour, loud enough for them all to hear over the engines’ diesel symphony. ‘His own father invented an identity for him from an early age … a tradition he continued. He considered our relationship a weakness, didn’t want anyone thinking they could get to the father through his son. And so I became Nathaniel Coldhardt. Just another member of the team.’

  ‘Until you popped Poppa,’ said Motti bluntly. ‘Was it like Street said?’

  Coldhardt said nothing.

  Maya opened her eyes for a moment. ‘Tell them,’ she said, and it sounded to Jonah more an order than a suggestion.

  ‘Heidel told us he needed to go away on business,’ Coldhardt began reluctantly. ‘To lie low for a while, he didn’t know for how long. He told us we would be needed to run things in his absence. I went to see him, to say goodbye to my father one last time …’ He paused. ‘And I learned – against his wishes – that he was very sick. That he was leaving to join a secret society named Nomen Oblitum, that the entrance fee was three-fifths of his total wealth, and that in fact he might never return.’

  Con had turned round in her seat, her eyes wide. ‘He hadn’t told you?’

  ‘Perhaps it slipped his mind – along with the fact that he was selling off his team.’

  Jonah stared. ‘He what?’

  ‘As soon as he was safely out of the way, he planned to send the signal to our purchasers to come and collect,’ said Coldhardt. ‘He’d set data bombs inside the computer systems to erase all records of the business, his contacts, our bank accounts … He was planning to take everything away from us. Our freedom … my birthright …’

  ‘God,’ Jonah muttered.

  Coldhardt half smiled. ‘Oh, he’d taken God away from me many years before that.’

  ‘He could sell his own son?’ Con shook her head. ‘You were right to shoot him.’

  ‘He shot me first,’ said Coldhardt matter-of-factly. ‘I returned fire, caught him in the chest. Then I crawled away and passed out. When I woke again, he’d gone. But the amount of blood, the scream he’d given … I knew he had to be close to death.’ Coldhardt looked at Jonah, eyes piercing, who felt a chill despite the baking sunshine. ‘Street and Saitou found me in the hub. The computers had blown. Everything was lost. I must have convinced them about Heidel’s death, but before I could say much more, Street started shooting.’

  ‘I’m seeing a pattern here,’ said Motti drily.

  Coldhardt didn’t react, seemingly miles away. ‘Street and Saitou thought I’d killed him simply to take everything for myself …’

  ‘So there was a gun fight,’ said Con. ‘And you won.’

  ‘No one won,’ said Coldhardt heavily. ‘Each of us went to ground to recover. Indeed, that was the only thing that saved us from being “collected” by those who had purchased us.’

  ‘Looks like Street and Saitou didn’t exactly find it easy to move on,’ Tye called back over her shoulder.

  Coldhardt said nothing, but he glanced at Maya, an impatient look that seemed to say, Satisfied?

  ‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,’ Maya muttered, just loud enough for Jonah to hear.

  But even if you knew the truth all along, can moving on ever be easy? Jonah reflected. When you’ve tasted a life so vivid and real … when you’ve run so deep into the darkness but raced back with glittering treasure time and again … Whether it’s taken from you or you choose to walk away – how can you ever adjust to a different life?

  He thought of Patch with a note of anxiety. It’s harder still to move on when you’re in a coffin.

  ‘How long till we reach this island?’ Jonah asked. There was an empty feeling inside him now, despite the weight of Coldhardt’s secret history. As a story it had filled only a few minutes of their journey, and yet its repercussions ran on. Dozens of lives had been lost in the long aftermath of those events. And if Patch died because Coldhardt had let them blunder into a trap instead of telling them the truth sooner …

  Jonah looked down at his white orchid, at the sinister mechanism peeping out from the beautiful façade. He reached past Maya and threw it overboard to be chewed up in their wake, the white scratch they were leaving in the veneer of perfect blue.

  Tye took them into a white sandy bay on some insignificant speck of land; there was no jetty, but a protruding spire of rock in the shallows allowed them to moor the boat and wade ashore. All except Coldhardt, who elected to remain on board, alone with his thoughts.

  A stiff breeze was blowing up, and the waves broke noisily on the shore. Jonah’s insides felt like a mosh pit and his bad leg stung evilly through his wet clothes, as Maya led them to a small cave in the cliff face on the shore. ‘Not exactly BUPA, is it?’

  ‘The cave is cool, there is no unpleasant animal life –’

  ‘You dumped a dying boy in a cave.’ Tye glared at Maya accusingly. ‘Why not divert to a conventional hospital?’

  ‘They would have undone my work,’ said Maya stiffly. ‘Conventional treatments can do nothing for your friend right now.�
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  ‘We’ve only got your word for that.’ Motti lowered his head to speak in her ear. ‘If anything happens to Patch …’

  The threat went unspoken as they entered the cool, wet half-light of the cave. A small figure lay on a stretcher, only his bloody, blackened face protruding from beneath a blanket.

  ‘Oh God,’ Tye whispered.

  Jonah clutched her hand tightly as she started to cry. He noticed that Motti had taken Con’s hand too.

  Within moments, Jonah caught the familiar taste of tears at the back of his throat. When Maya had told him Patch was alive, he’d allowed himself to believe things would be OK. But to see him like this – that cheery, lively, horny little bugger he’d come to know as a friend this last year, as family …

  ‘Patch?’ Tye approached the body on the stretcher warily, letting go of Jonah’s hand.

  ‘He actually looks better than he did,’ Jonah murmured, his voice cracking on the last words and so fooling no one, least of all himself.

  ‘Of all of us … Patch is the one who deserved this least,’ said Con softly.

  ‘Wait.’ Tye turned to Maya, suddenly frantic. ‘He’s not breathing.’

  Maya knelt beside Patch. ‘He is breathing. I have put him into a deep trance, slowed down his autonomic reflexes, to divert all his energies into coping with his injuries.’

  Motti wiped his running nose crossly. ‘You did all that by tapping him with your fingers?’

  ‘Just as Guan Yin gave her eyes to blind and wicked men to redeem them in the old stories, so the teachings of “her” manuscript open our eyes to our true potential. They explain how the meridians and pressure points of the body may be manipulated.’ Maya smiled serenely as she pricked at Patch’s ruined flesh with her fingertips. ‘But I was wrong before, Jonah – it’s not the ultimate medical handbook. Not until you factor in the appendix, anyway.’ Her eyes were aglow. ‘That spiel about junk DNA the Scribe came out with in Chamonix, that was sheer invention … Our cells are full of chemical magic, sure, conjuring life, creating energy. And what the mages of Guan Yin’s devotional cult really discovered was a means to master that energy within our bodies more fully than any doctor or shaman had before or since. Knowledge so powerful, so dangerous, it had to be kept the most strictly guarded secret.’