Ridley looked back at Rook, not comprehending the sudden shift in the conversation. “I…I really can’t say that I do.”
Rook scowled. “The eyeballs and the testicles. Unless you want me to put yours in a microwave, shut the fuck up.” Rook stood and walked past the three clones, throwing each dirty looks, before returning to his original post against the far wall.
Queen scanned the room after Rook’s outburst. Knight was looking at the floor, all memory of his mission to guard the door and keep an eye on the duplicates when Rook wasn’t, now forgotten. Bishop still leaned on a wall, and although his facial expression had changed just the slightest, in the form of a raised eyebrow, she knew he was reeling inside. Ridley wisely closed his mouth and looked at his left foot as its big toe formed a toenail.
The duplicates stood in place, although Queen noted that Seth was now closer to the door.
“Knight,” she called. The small Korean man’s shocked face stayed aimed at the floor. “Knight!” She shouted this time. The man’s head snapped up, irritation replacing his look of shock. “Stay sharp.” She motioned to the duplicates. “We’re not out of the shit yet. We’ll mourn King later.”
“Copy that,” Knight nodded, his eyes returning to a practiced focus, aiming directly at Seth. “I’m solid.”
Queen moved slowly away from Asya. “Goes for you too, Pawn. Your brother would want you to fight.”
Asya nodded, wiped her tears and stood up straight.
Queen moved to the center of the room where Ridley sat on the floor. She looked down at the man’s still forming toenail. “Can you walk?”
“Give me five more minutes,” he said, not looking up at her.
Queen turned to Asya. “Alexander is gone?” Then she clarified. “All of him?”
Asya stepped further into the room, still somewhat dazed. She nodded. “Like I said, dust. Vaporized. I have looked over what little is left of the wreckage. There is nothing left…nothing to bury.”
Queen hung her head.
She touched her tactical throat microphone. “Did you copy all that?”
After a few seconds pause, she heard Deep Blue’s voice in her ear. “I…I’m sorry, Queen. The embedded homing chip he had is gone from my screens too.”
“And…what do we do with these ass-clowns now that we don’t need them for Alexander?”
“They’re too dangerous to allow them to go free. Bring them back home. We’ll get them to a secure prison.”
“Are you sure that’s the way you want to play it?” Queen asked.
There was a moment of silence, followed by, “We’re better than that.”
“Just wanted to be sure,” Queen said, fighting to hide her disappointment, because right then, she really wanted to kill a bad guy…or four, though only one of them was truly alive.
Queen stood and walked back to Asya. She leaned in close, not wanting to share the information with the Ridleys. “Your parents?” she asked quietly.
“Safe,” Asya nodded.
“Good. We’ll get them, take these Ridleys back home, and figure out how to break the news to Sara and Fiona.”
“I will tell them,” Asya said, clenching her jaw. “I would not want them to remember you as the bearer of such bad news.”
Queen’s appreciation for Asya’s stoic Russian ways increased all the time. Here this woman was, having just lost the brother she had come to know and love, and the woman was thinking of others first. Queen patted her on the back.
Queen nodded and turned back to Richard Ridley. “On your feet.” She reached down, grabbed his arms and hefted him to his feet. The linen jacket slid to the floor, exposing his now fully reformed genitals and pubic hair, but he didn’t seem to care. His chest was hairy while his bald head gleamed under the bright heat lamps recessed into the ceiling. His skin, a sickly gray and yellow before, was now back in the full pink of health. His muscles had been rebuilding while the team had mourned the news of King’s demise, and now, with the exception of hair still growing on his legs, and the large toe, still looking shriveled, on his left foot, he was pretty much back to the way he had been when Queen had first seen him.
“You can stand even if you can’t walk,” Queen told him.
“Yes. It’s just the big toe yet. It affects balance, so I can’t—” Ridley began.
Queen threw a punch, landing the blow hard on Ridley’s cheek, shattering the man’s cheekbone, and sending him flying across the room. He smashed into the hanging cages, the impact ripping the chains from their moorings in the ceiling. Ridley, the cages, the chains and all sailed across the room in a tangle of whipping iron, careening against the floor and the wall.
Queen felt like she might have broken a finger bone on the punch, but it was simultaneously one of the best looking and most dynamic punches she had ever thrown, as well as being the most personally satisfying.
“Can I go next?” Asya asked.
Queen barked out a short laugh, her tension broken completely by the woman’s sharp dry wit.
Queen turned toward the three duplicates. They looked angry, but said nothing. Seth was still very close to the door, but Knight had his eyes fixed firmly on the duplicate. There was little chance the duplicate would make a break for it. If he did, it would be a very short run.
Richard Ridley sat up from the tangled cages and chains, rubbing his face with his hand and whispering something. Already, Queen could see the three places on the man’s face where the skin had split were healing. In seconds, all that remained to indicate an injury was a little bit of blood, which he pawed at angrily.
Queen stepped over to him, her MP-5 leveled at the man’s face. “Alexander is dead. We don’t need you any more. Please. Make a move. I dare you.”
Ridley said nothing. Just stared. Then his eyes darted to the left, looking over her shoulder, for just a fraction of a second. When they came back to her, he smiled. A huge grin. A winning grin.
Shit, she thought.
Queen turned to look back at the door. Knight had been distracted by her attack on Ridley. Seth had inched closer to the door. He stood in front of a control panel next to it. She had noticed it when she had first turned away from the horror of Ridley in the cages. A stainless steel panel, with an LCD display screen, temperature controls, an intercom, light switches and a large red button, which she assumed was a panic button. Seth stood in front of the panel now, his back to it. His eyes were directly on hers, and his face held the same malicious grin as Ridley’s.
Slowly, he leaned, until his back depressed the red button.
TWENTY-NINE
Tyrrhenian Sea, 799 BC
Jack Sigler became aware of two things when he woke. The ground was moving, and he didn’t feel dead. Long years of experience with precarious situations had taught him to take stock of his surroundings using his other senses when waking, before opening his eyes. He did so now.
He smelled the salty sea. The gentle rocking motion and wooden creaking noises told him he was on a boat. A new scent reached his nose. Something acrid and foul. He had trouble placing it for a moment, because it was masked by the smell of the sea, but then the familiar scent registered.
Blood.
Old blood.
Still, he kept his eyes closed. This time he listened. There was a complete lack of human sounds. No breathing, or shuffling feet, clunking oars or shouted orders. Even if the crew were sleeping, they’d be a noisy bunch. I’m alone, he thought. Left for dead. Perhaps adrift at sea or maybe tied to a dock.
He let his mind move from the environment around him to his personal wellbeing. He didn’t feel like a man who had been run through. In fact, his chest felt fine — strong and pain free for the first time since his ribs had been broken. He let his mind roam over his body, and he realized that every part of him felt okay. Better than okay. He felt as good as he did on the few times when he and Sara had taken a break, staying at some random bed and breakfast, waking to the rising warm sun instead of to an alarm clock. Strong.
Relaxed. Refreshed.
He tensed his muscles, preparing to leap into a fight if need be, and slowly opened his eyes. He lay on his back in the middle of the boat, his feet pointing toward the bow. The gunwales and the deck were spattered with dried blood, but there was no sign of the crew. The sail luffed gently above him, on a soft breeze.
King twisted around and glanced to the stern. Alexander was slumped at the tiller, his head leaned back against the stern, his mouth open, his chest rising and falling. The man was asleep at the wheel. He also had a full, dark, curly beard.
How long have I been out?
King reached a hand up to his own face and felt at least a month’s worth of thick facial hair. I really hate the past, he thought, recalling the series of events that had befallen him — including being stabbed in the back — since being yanked out of his time. He stood up slowly and took stock of the sea around him. They were near a coastline of some sort, jagged hills of green with jutting white rocks no more than a mile away. The waters were an amazing shade of translucent greenish blue. When he looked over the side, he saw they were grounded on a sandbar — the water was no more than a foot deep. The gentle roll of the boat was not the vessel swaying on the water, but rather rolling on the sand in the shallow liquid. There was no sign of the other men, besides the blood spattered on the wooden surfaces of the ship. King found his Sig on the deck and picked it up.
He walked over to the sleeping man and called his name.
Alexander came awake immediately, clear eyed, as if he had been only resting his eyes.
“Jack. It’s good to see you up again.” He stood up and stretched his arms.
“How long was I out? What happened?” King looked around the boat, his unasked question about the crew obvious.
“They set us up.” Alexander glanced around the boat at the blood. “I might have gone a little rough on some of them.” Alexander looked sheepish, like a man that had gone on a full-on temper tantrum and now felt guilty.
“You killed them all?” King asked.
“In my defense, they were trying to kill me. And…” He set his eyes on King. “…they had already killed you.”
King looked down at his robe and realized it was not the same robe he had been wearing. He touched the spot on his chest where he had been stabbed, expecting to feel the welt of a thick scar under the rough-spun cotton. Instead his chest felt smooth.
“It was the tea. I hope you’ll forgive me, Jack, but I felt it might be safer for us both, considering the dangers of the present age. Turns out I was correct.”
“The tea?” King looked up. “You dosed me with one of your healing herbs? I thought I was dead. I didn’t realize those things were so powerful.”
Alexander smiled. “You were dead.”
“What?”
“The herbs are extremely powerful — similar chemically to the formula I used to heal you in Rome — but these can actually restore life. They alter the DNA in much the same way as Ridley’s Hydra serum. Your body healed all the damage from the sword strike, but the first full resurrection always takes a long time.”
King looked at his arms as if he expected to see something different, but they looked the same to him. “I died…and came back?”
“Congratulations, King. You’re immortal.” Alexander said the words casually, like he’d just proclaimed King the winner of a spelling bee. “Come on, let’s make for shore. You’ve been unconscious for twenty-eight days.” Alexander leapt nimbly over the side of the boat, his rope sandals in his hand, his feet splashing into the shallow water.
King felt sick, though not physically. He’d been kidnapped to the past, manipulated, and now, without his consent had been…altered. Into what? “What are the side effects of—”
“Side effects?” Alexander shook his head. “This isn’t some crude formula developed by Ridley. You’re not going to grow scales or go on a murderous rampage. You drank my original formula, Jack. There are no side effects. Other than not aging, the ability to heal from most any injury short of a nuclear blast, which, let’s face it, is a long ways off, and the resilience to handle some of my other…brews. If you ever need a boost of strength, we can—”
“Keep it,” King said. He had experienced Alexander’s strength-enhancing brew once before. It was like a nitrous-charged adrenaline shot that made him stronger and faster, but at the expense of his body. He tore muscles and ligaments, broke bones and landed himself in a coma. From what he understood, the strength-enhancing concoction caused significant injury to Alexander as well — he just healed immediately.
King pursed his lips, a thousand questions coming to mind. In the end, he decided to handle it like Rook might. “Fuck it.” King glanced around. “Where’s my rifle?”
“Lost at sea. In the fight. Let’s go,” Alexander called, as he began walking through the knee-deep water toward the distant shore.
King hopped the gunwale and landed in the water. “Are we swimming?”
“The water stays shallow like this all the way to the beach. We have to move by foot. Hopefully when we get to land I can find us some donkeys.”
“Donkeys? Where are we?” King splashed through the water, catching up with Alexander.
“Donkeys are miserable beasts, but they get us from point to point in Italy. I think we’re near what will be Naples.”
“That sounds like it’s going to take a long time,” King said. He’d seen enough time travel movies to suspect they would return to their present just seconds, maybe hours or days, after they left, making the departure a temporary discomfort for the people he left behind, but he didn’t relish the idea of spending a few months in the past. Not that he would age. Alexander had taken care of that. “Will it wear off? The immortality?”
“If it did, you wouldn’t be immortal, would you? We can reverse the effects later on. But for now, for this mission, you need to be strong, immune to injury and most of all, able to withstand the years. It will take us some time to get where we’re going and do what we have to.”
King ground his feet into the sand and came to a stop. “Wait.”
Alexander paused and looked back. King could see that the man knew what question was coming next. He didn’t even need to ask it.
Alexander sighed. He looked honestly apologetic. “Twenty-five years, Jack. Acca doesn’t die for another twenty-five years.”
THIRTY
Security Cell, Manifold Omega Facility, 2013
Queen snarled as jets of gas sprayed down from the ceiling. She lunged across the room toward Seth while holding her breath, but she had already sucked in a lungful of the gas before realizing the true threat.
Her body flew through the air at the smiling bastard, but she could already feel an immense cough building in her lungs, and as her torso tightened, she could see Seth beginning to whisper. Alarm had registered on Knight’s Asian features, but his first response was to suck in a lungful of the gas, and he stood directly under a jet. As Queen reached her hands out to choke the shit out of the smiling duplicate, Knight’s body sank toward the floor. She heard a pistol fire from behind her, and then her chest shuddered and she coughed hard, whooping in a huge chest-full of the gas-laced air.
She smashed into Seth, the two of them toppling awkwardly to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Queen felt sleep taking over. It wouldn’t kill them, but she expected to wake in shackles. Or maybe not wake up at all.
She rolled on the floor. Her body felt heavy. She fought against her closing eyelids, but it was a losing battle.
Seth’s brow furrowed as he focused on whispering. Queen closed her eyes, promising herself she’d end Seth, the first chance she got. No more Ms. Nice Queen, she thought, and then she dreamed.
* * *
Thirty seconds after the gas stopped shooting from the nozzles in the ceiling, a ventilation fan in the wall behind Bishop’s slumped body activated. The vent sucked all the white gas from the room, while an air conditioning vent on the far wall pumped fresh air into the
cell. The rubber seals around the sole door in and out of the room, which had activated when Seth’s body hit the large activation button, released. An audible hiss filled the room as the pressure equalized.
Jared was the first to stir, waking up and performing a perfect push-up, before springing to his feet. He moved to Richard Ridley, and checked the man’s pulse, his fingers touching his creator’s neck as delicately as if he were caressing eggshell-thin porcelain.
Satisfied that the man was alive, he stood from his squat and walked toward Enos. Something was wrong. Enos’s chest was not moving. The duplicate wasn’t breathing. Jared squatted down and rolled his brother over. In the center of Enos’s head was a perfectly round hole, just large enough for the tip of Jared’s pinky finger. Still in Jared’s grasp, the body softened and drooped. The color faded and the features that defined Enos fell slack. Jared lay the heap down and stepped away. Enos was now nothing more than a human-shaped mass of clay dressed in an expensive suit.
Jared growled. They had each been so focused on using the mother tongue to avoid the effects of the gas — a compound of Fentanyl altered by Richard Ridley to create a more effective and less potentially lethal type of knockout gas — that their self-defense lapsed long enough for a Chess Team member to squeeze off a single, but highly accurate shot. Jared considered using the mother tongue, taught to him by Richard Ridley before his incarceration, to animate the clay once more, but it wouldn’t be Enos. The memories and experiences that made him unique were gone forever. Enos was dead.
Jared stood and turned to see Seth stirring and disentangling himself from Queen’s limbs.
“The Creator?” Seth inquired.
“He is well. Enos is dead. One of them got a shot off,” Jared said with disgust.
“Regrettable,” Seth said, walking over to Ridley. “Help me get him up.”
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