The room fell silent for a moment. The litany of strange events they’d all survived conjured images of monsters, tortures and scars, some of which would never fade.
“As much as I hate to say it,” Knight spoke up from the corner of the room, “he has a point. Let’s not forget that hydra-dragon thing I fought in China too. At this point, I don’t think we can dismiss any possibility, no matter how unlikely it seems. Or how untrue we want it to be.”
“Alexander has been a fair-weather friend,” Bishop added from behind Queen. He had lowered his weapon, but his eyes remained trained on the three Ridley clones.
Seth looked up at the black speaker in the corner of the room. “Your people saw the tremendous power possibilities of the Bluelight project Graham Brown was working on. Alexander—Hercules—has that technology.”
Queen recalled the reports King had given of a man named Graham Brown who might have been masquerading as a worldwide computer network known as Brainstorm. The Bluelight project was a power system that operated on the principle of firing proton beams into a magnetic field, resulting in a plasma storm above the atmosphere, from which energy could be harvested. But the system was wildly unstable, and King had shut it down…permanently. Or so they had thought.
“Then there’s the matter of the miniature black hole,” Seth said, his face suddenly grim.
“The what?” Queen asked, startled. This was getting bad.
Deep Blue’s modulated voice answered. “He’s referring to the incident at the Louvre, two years ago. King stopped a black hole from eating Paris. Alexander was present. As far as we knew, all signs of the phenomenon were gone at the end of the incident.”
Seth grinned. “Review the security camera footage. A few of the cameras in the museum were powered by a battery backup. Even though the city was struck by a blackout and an earthquake, some of the cameras kept recording. Hercules removed a small token, when King wasn’t looking. Placed it in his pocket.”
“You don’t mean to suggest that an entire black hole was contained in something small enough to fit in a man’s pocket?” Deep Blue’s modulated voice did not intone the sarcasm, but Queen felt it would be present on his end of the conversation.
“The video shows him struggling to lift the object. A stone the size of a golf ball. How heavy do you suppose it must have been if the legendary Hercules nearly couldn’t budge it?”
Silence filled the room. Rook shuffled along the side wall, his weapon still pointed at the Ridleys. Queen could not see Bishop or Knight behind her, but she knew they would remain vigilant. The other Endgame soldiers kept their weapons trained on the seated figures.
Queen lowered her pistol and stepped closer to Seth. She squatted, placing her eyes level with Seth’s face.
“Could a miniature black hole be used to power that dimensional technology from Norway? To bring those things from the other side back here to Earth?”
“That dimension was theoretically only one dimension of a possibly infinite number. There could be far worse things out there. And yes, the energy contained in a black hole — no matter its size — could power anything. Theoretically, of course. No one has ever done it before…that we know of.”
Deep Blue’s voice buzzed into the room again, “What makes you think Richard Ridley can help?”
“With the mother tongue, the Creator is capable of anything. We three do not possess the mother tongue. But He does. He could simply unmake Hercules. He could stop the threat of the black hole and the dimensional technology all at once.”
“Or,” Deep Blue’s voice interrupted, “he might try to claim that technology for himself.”
Seth nodded grimly. “But, you are missing the point entirely.”
Queen raised a questioning eyebrow. She tried putting herself in Seth’s — or Richard Ridley’s — mental state, to guess what he meant, but she couldn’t see his side of things.
“Oh my God,” Deep Blue said through the speakers, after a minute.
“Yes. Exactly,” Seth smiled. “Do you really want a man that has the biological ability of regeneration, some kind of unnatural immortality, immense strength, unlimited power and the technology to tear holes between dimensions to suddenly acquire and possess the all-powerful language of God, as well?”
The moment spun out, with no one speaking.
Queen found herself looking at the black speaker up in the corner of the room, waiting for Deep Blue’s reply. When the words came, she knew there would have been resignation behind them, if she had heard the man in person. But she also knew it was the only possible response.
“Let’s make a deal.”
THIRTEEN
Omega Facility, Carthage, Tunisia
The space opened before King like an immense underground parking garage, with thick concrete support columns equally spaced and receding into the unlit portion of the echoing space. King’s LED light cast an arc of illumination fifty feet into the throng of shifting wraiths. It was enough.
Well, this sucks, he thought. He guessed the space likely stretched most of the length and breadth of the parking lot above and beyond. It seemed equally likely that it was filled with Wraiths.
But then he noticed something odd. The Forgotten were not attacking him and Asya. They were hissing and screeching, scampering along the ceiling of the space and on the wall behind him — even on the ladder, but they were keeping their distance.
King focused on the wraith closest to him. It was like the others — sickly gray skin, deformed facial features and a long tattered cloak. But it also held a look of curiosity. King watched as it appraised him, tilting its hairless head first one way, and then the other.
“Why do they not attack?” Asya whispered.
“Not sure,” King replied. As King spoke, the wraith closest to him stepped forward and hissed louder. Moving slowly, it brought its face just inches from King’s. Then it repeated the strange head movements, swaying as it turned its skull. A cobra dancing to an Indian snake charmer’s flute.
King moved his forehead closer, in the same manner, and now his face was an inch from the wraith’s. It hissed louder, but he sensed the hiss might be out of something else…appreciation or even submission maybe, but not a threat.
King took a chance.
“My name is Jack Sigler,” he shouted. “You might know me as King.” He moved the LED flashlight up as he spoke, as he had done in Malta, illuminating his face for the creatures to see his features. The Forgotten’s yellow reflective pupils dilated from the light, as its face elongated, and its eyes opened wider — as if in shock. Or maybe just really bad eyesight, King thought.
The creature stepped back from King and emitted a loud rising shriek that sounded like a referee tweeting on a whistle. All of the wraiths in the giant space were suddenly silent. The echoing chamber fell quiet except for the scratching noise of clawed hands and feet clinging to the walls and concrete support columns. Their tattered cloaks fluttered as they moved, but the creatures had stopped their incessant noise. To King’s relief, the creatures remained docile.
“Step closer to me, Asya,” he said quietly. He felt her brush up against his back. “Now walk with me, very slowly.”
King took a step forward into the crowd of wraiths.
Asya shuffled forward with him. He took another step, and the wraiths ahead of them parted to reveal the white concrete floor. King began to walk forward at a slow pace, with Asya right behind him. A wraith from the left came close, and he turned to look at it, shining the LED up, so his face would be lit in the harsh white glow.
“King!” he told it, and the creature receded into the crowd.
“Why are they letting us pass?” Asya asked, keeping one hand on his arm.
“The important thing is they are. The question is, for how long? Remember in Malta, they wouldn’t let us take the file. For some reason, I’m off limits as long as I play by Alexander’s rules.”
As King and Asya moved forward, the wraiths filled in the space b
ehind them, never allowing them more than a circle of twenty feet in diameter.
“No chance of retreat,” Asya said, looking behind them. “They are following.”
“That’s fine,” King said, gaining confidence. “I am King!” He shouted, and the crowd of Forgotten flinched back, widening the circle of clear floor around King and Asya.
They had covered perhaps three hundred feet from the ladder, with the wraiths curiously clustering around. Occasionally one would dart closer, and King would raise the flashlight and speak his callsign. Then the creatures would dart back to the group.
“I think we’re almost under the mosque,” King said. The gigantic room ended just ahead at a large, flat wall, with a single unmarked metal door, the only aberration. Several wraiths remained in front of the door.
As King approached the door, more of the wraiths clustered before it, blocking his path.
“I don’t think they will allow—” Asya began, but King pressed on, shoving some of the wraiths away from the door. Others slid away at the sight of his forcefulness.
The gray, steel door had a knob, but no lock. King reached for it and unslung the AK-47 from his back. Asya drew her weapon as well. The wraiths kept their distance around them, but the circle now gave them ten feet of floor and ten feet of vertical wall. The wraiths swayed and hissed softly, as if awaiting instructions.
King slowly raised the AK in his left hand to a 45 degree angle, still careful to point it at the floor, and not directly at any of the gyrating creatures. With his right hand, he reached for the door knob. Some of the hisses increased in volume. He got the idea that while the Forgotten were, for some reason, standing down, once he opened the door, all bets would be off.
“Be ready to run in after me,” King said. “Three…two…one. Now!”
King whipped open the door, took one step and stopped short. But Asya ran into his back, shoving him forward into the obstacle.
The other side of the door was bricked up from top to bottom with old orange bricks and whitish mortar.
King coughed as the air was knocked from his lungs and his face pressed against the stone. But the impact was harmless. He recovered quickly and turned back to face Asya and the wraiths, who were hooting and shrieking again, as they had when he had first switched on the light.
I knew this was too simple.
The circle of wraiths moved in, hissing and howling.
FOURTEEN
Over the Atlantic Ocean
Queen shuffled in her seat, trying to get comfortable. The flight would be a few hours, and she was already wound up. It didn’t help that this plane, a duplicate of the original Crescent, a stealth VTOL troop transport, was more spartan than its predecessor. Named for the craft’s curved flying-wing shape, the original Crescent had perished in battle the previous year, when King had piloted it into a tear in the fabric of reality, stopping an incursion from another dimension.
Although the half-billion dollar vehicle had been totaled, the move had arguably saved the world. Deep Blue had arranged for the team to keep Crescent’s twin, the Persephone, which had been assisting in the battle. Now renamed Crescent II, the current vehicle was Endgame’s for the foreseeable future.
Like its namesake, radar-reflective material covered the ship from one tip of its moon shape across 80 feet of breadth to its other tip. The giant, flat plane could carry 25,000 pounds of load and travel at above Mach 2. With VTOL capability, the plane could pick the team up anywhere and drop them off just as easily, but Queen didn’t like it. The original Crescent had been fairly plush inside. Crescent II was far more utilitarian, and Queen found herself missing that small bit of comfort in her life. She spent enough time in uncomfortable holes in the ground. She just hadn’t realized how much she had enjoyed the downtime in the original Crescent until she was faced with hours of nothing to do in Crescent II.
Her agitation over the uncomfortable seating came through in her voice when she spoke.
“You know the Three Ridleyteers are going to screw us the first chance they get. And if they don’t, the real Ridley will.” She tugged on the straps on her impact-resistant battle-armor suit, tightening a plate of gray metal and foam on her forearm.
“No kidding. I don’t particularly relish the thought of having to deal with four of that ass-clown,” Rook, clad in a similar battle suit, nodded toward the flat-screen LED monitor on the wall of the small troop area, showing the three clones strapped and chained to the wall of the rear cargo area of the plane. The Ridleys weren’t going anywhere, and the team needed some privacy to develop a plan as they rocketed across the Atlantic Ocean for Tunisia. “We can’t trust them, Blue.”
Deep Blue was with the team through their headsets, via an encrypted transmission across a military satellite. “I know, Rook. But they make some compelling arguments. Or at least Seth does, while his companions pretend to be deaf and mute.”
“Pretend?” Rook looked shocked, and turned to Queen, Knight and Bishop, as if to ask whether he was the only one that hadn’t seen through the deception. The others looked equally mystified.
“How?” Queen asked, and it was understood she was addressing Deep Blue.
“I’ve been carefully watching them the whole time. Enos reacts to loud noises, so he’s not really deaf. While they’ve been in the cargo area, I’ve seen Jared’s lips moving, although the audio sensors in the compartment haven’t picked up any sound. It’s likely he’s fooling too. Doesn’t matter. You’re right, Queen. They will turn on you at the first opportunity, but not until they have Ridley back. So stay sharp, and when the time is right, we’ll turn the tables on them.”
“What have you got planned?” Knight looked up from a fashion magazine he was reading.
“First things first. You need to remove Ridley’s regenerative abilities. Our scientists have had time to work on the original formula we used to cure George Pierce, back when Ridley infected him with the Hydra’s DNA. The formula now requires just a small dose to inhibit the regenerative strand. There’s a case on the bottom of the locker, Queen, if you’d retrieve it.”
Queen stood and walked over to a black metal weapons cabinet bolted to the wall of the crew room. It was empty except for a small black plastic case at the bottom. She returned to her chair and flipped open the case. Rook leaned over to see the contents.
The case held four small inch-long vials of nuclear green liquid and four spring-loaded auto-injector syringes.
“So we just stab one of these into Ridley?” Queen asked.
“Yes. It should work in seconds. If you can inject him covertly, he might not even know what’s happened. But be warned, Ridley will still have the mother tongue, and as long as he can speak, he’ll be able to heal from grievous injury.”
“Or turn us into paste,” Rook added.
“And that’s only if we take the clones at their word,” Deep Blue said, “which we shouldn’t do. They each might possess the mother tongue, but I doubt it.”
“What makes you doubt it?” Bishop asked, with his eyes closed. Queen had thought he was asleep and that she was going to need to fill him in later.
Deep Blue’s voice was absent from their earpieces for just a second, and then he came back. “If they could speak the mother tongue, they could literally move Heaven and Earth to get Ridley back. That the duplicates came to us and requested our help, means they really need it to free Ridley. If Seth and the others actually had the mother tongue, then they would each be unstoppable — and they would have freed Ridley from Alexander’s captivity long ago.”
“What do you suppose happens to the duplicates if Ridley were to die?” Queen asked. “Will they really just fall apart?”
“Theoretically, I suppose it could be true. In the original golem story, the rabbi that created it could later unmake it by destroying the word that gave it life. If the sacred word was written on a piece of paper, it could be removed from the golem’s mouth. If the text was inscribed on the golem’s body, it could simply be alte
red.”
“Emet to met,” Bishop said, recalling what they’d learned about golems while dealing with the threat.
“Exactly,” Deep Blue said. “Seeing as how Ridley spoke life into the duplicates, he could be the word himself.”
Rook shook his head. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Deep Blue fell silent. The three other members of the team turned toward Rook. He noticed their collective gaze after a moment. “What? It’s from the Bible. Am I the only one that’s been to church?”
Deep Blue cleared his throat. “We have to also consider the possibility that Ridley was able to grant them real life. Under their skin might be blood and organs and minds that will continue to live after Ridley dies. It’s not what we saw with his other duplicates, but we can’t rule it out. And neither can they. I suspect it’s part of why they want to find him.”
“Pinocchio wants to become a real boy,” Knight said.
“That creates two wildly different motives, doesn’t it?” Queen asked.
Rook shook his head. “I’m not following. If Ridley dies and they die too, that gives them the motivation to keep him alive, right? That’s just based on survival. But if his life isn’t tied to theirs, they still want him freed, because he’s their what? Some kind of messiah, right? A god?”
“If they can live independently of him, they might simply want the mother tongue for themselves. It is a learned language. And never forget — each duplicate has the same crazed hunger for power. They are each as dangerous as the original — if not more so, because they see an unlimited potential for power within their grasps.”
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