What he found were slit throats and an unguarded entrance. He had gone topside then, and found a similar scene at the amphitheater. Someone had killed his men, and his reinforcements were nowhere in sight. He’d contemplated going back to the cemetery, but he had suddenly understood what had happened. The clones had arranged it for Richard. They would get him out, using the men Darius had paid for. If he returned to the cemetery — his command center for this operation — there would be killers waiting for him.
Instead, he had waited in the shadows near the amphitheater for a time. Then he had gone back to the fountain entrance, waiting in the darkness patiently. Eventually the Korean—Knight, yes, that’s his callsign—and a Russian woman emerged. He had followed them as the smaller man ditched his armor and frantically radioed his people.
Darius really couldn’t believe things had come to this. First his brother had sidelined him for some minor failings, shuffling him off to act as head of security for a mostly pointless facility in the Ukraine. Ostensibly it was to keep him away from the more violent actions going on at some of the more important bases in Peru and the States. But in the end, that hadn’t mattered. The female member of Chess Team, Queen, had stumbled upon his base and infiltrated it before they even knew she was there. After a pitched battle, the bitch chewed his ear right off the side of his head.
She had gotten away, and he had barely escaped with his life. There was no chance of going back to his brother’s people then, and Richard himself had been missing and presumed dead. Instead, Darius had used his own resources to slowly comb through Manifold installations, hunting for any sign of Richard or the damned Chess Team. In the end, his people had located the Greek, and from that, Darius had found the clones. His people — well, he had thought they were his people — had watched the doubles long enough to learn that they thought Richard was being held in Tunisia at the Greek’s captured installation.
But Darius’s plan to kill off the clones, his brother and Chess Team, as well as to capture the bitch and torture her until the sun went out, was off the boards now. Now he just needed to make the best of the situation, kill as many of the traitorous bastards as possible and get out of Tunisia alive.
When the chance to ambush the little Korean presented itself, he couldn’t resist. And now, as the man coughed blood in the sand, Darius was suddenly feeling fine. Great, even.
He kicked the man on the ground again. He had knocked the Russian chick a good one, and he would turn his attention to her when he was done with this one.
He didn’t know why the ground was shaking. Didn’t care. He guessed maybe a shit-ton of explosives had gone off below in the base. It didn’t matter.
The squinty-eyed fucker was crawling away from him, looking up in horror. As if that would help him. He could crawl all he wanted. He wasn’t going to get away.
Suddenly something slammed into Darius from behind, and the ground shook violently again. He hit the dirt face down, taking a cloud of dust in the mouth. Now he was pissed. He rolled to the side and saw it had been the feisty little Rusky. Okay, bitch. We’re gonna dance. But instead of fighting, the woman was frantically trying to drag the Korean away.
He pulled a long Kennesaw Cutlery survival knife from its sheath on his leg. He couldn’t believe the little slut wasn’t even looking at him.
The ground rumbled again, and he had a hard time staying on his feet this time. When he regained his balance, he noticed the two of them weren’t looking at him.
They were looking up.
FIFTY-ONE
Antonine Baths, Carthage, 2013
Knight couldn’t tear his eyes away, as the giant foot came down.
The bald mercenary with the missing ear, who had kicked the crap out of him, only thought to look up at the last second. By that point, he wouldn’t have been able to even understand what was about to flatten him.
The immense foot smashed to the ground, squirting the mercenary out from under its heel like a stamped-on ketchup packet. The giant foot had fallen so close to Knight that for a few seconds, he wasn’t sure whether any of the gore had come from his own body. He wondered whether he would have even felt a limb or two being flattened that fast.
But then the huge foot took another step, and Knight could see the grotesque imprint of the flattened man on the underside of the thing’s massive foot, dripping wetness, as it swept overhead and pivoted, back the way it had come.
Knight coughed feebly, spitting up a wad of bloody phlegm. He was faring better than the man who’d attacked him, but he’d taken a beating.“Probably…gonna need a doctor.”
“I’ll get you to the others. Contact Queen,” Asya said.
Knight couldn’t stop coughing, so he fumbled at his ear with one hand and passed the earpiece to Asya, along with his throat mic, which he peeled away from his neck. The glue on the microphone had turned gooey in the heat.
“Pawn to Queen. Knight is in bad shape. Need assistance right now,” Asya donned the communications gear, pulling the transmitter pack from Knight’s belt. “Also, there is velikan on the loose.”
“A what?” came Queen’s reply.
“Velikan. Is Russian word for Great Big Fucking Giant.”
“We’ve seen. What’s wrong with Knight?”
Asya sighed. “Mercenary kicked crap out of him. He’s coughing blood.”
“Where are you?”
“That thing nearly stepped on us a second ago,” Asya said, as Knight finally settled down and stopped hacking.
“Okay. Stay put. I’m sending your parents to you.”
Asya turned to Knight. “She is sending my mother and father. We’ll get you to a hospital.”
“I’ll be able to limp around with an adrenaline shot,” Knight said.
“I haven’t got one. We will see what we can do. Queen says to stay here.”
Asya sat on the ground next to him and wiped some of the muck from his face with her hand.
“Flat man was a pig, but this end was undignified — even for him.”
“Quick, though,” Knight said with a laugh, and then winced at the pain in his ribs. He was pretty sure a few of them were broken. His face felt butchered too. His left arm was sore where a bullet had grazed him, and he felt like he had to pee, but if he did it would be extremely painful.
“Not gonna be much use fighting whatever the hell that thing was.”
Asya patted him on the head. “Don’t worry, Sniper-Man. We’ll just blow it up. Won’t need a steady shot for that.”
“I knew letting Ridley out was a bad idea,” Knight said, as he rubbed his forehead.
Asya said nothing.
He turned to look at her. “About Jack…I’m sorry, Asya.” She nodded, then turned away. “Now is not the time.”
They lapsed into silence, and Knight closed his eyes. He was in no shape to help her repel any more mercenaries if they showed up, and she was a pretty good shot with an MP-5. He could rest.
A minute later, Peter and Lynn Machtchenko came rushing down the path. She carried another MP-5, and he held a couple of small nylon pouches in his hands. Peter skidded to a stop and began frantically unzipping the pouches. Lynn remained standing and kept looking behind her.
“We have to hurry,” Lynn said.
Peter pulled out an adrenaline auto injector and stabbed it into Knight’s arm. Then he handed Knight two huge white pills. “Dry swallow. Sorry I don’t have water.”
Knight took the pills and ground them in his teeth, then swallowed the ground gritty remains. They were prescription-strength painkillers — he recognized the bitter taste.
The adrenaline started flowing through him.
Peter crawled behind him and slipped his arms into Knight’s armpits. He started to haul Knight up, and Asya came over to help from his front. In a few awkward seconds, Knight was on his feet. He actually felt better on his feet, since his ribs weren’t resting against anything and pushing painfully on his innards.
“Now what?” Knight asked.
>
“Now we run,” Lynn said. “That thing is coming back. And fast!”
Asya had one side of him and Peter the other, as they started to run. It was only now that Knight paid attention to the thunderous footfalls vibrating through the ground. Whatever belonged to the huge feet wasn’t walking now.
It was stomping.
FIFTY-TWO
Alexander’s Lab, Mountain of the Roman Rock, 780 BC
Alexander stopped them in the shadows of the next room. They waited from the edge of the darkened doorway, watching the lit lab, where they could see but not be seen.
“Shouldn’t we go?” King hissed.
“We need to make sure our assumptions about time are correct. I remember what I did back then. We have about twenty minutes after he finds the body before he goes on a full-on tantrum, destroying everything in sight. If it doesn’t go down that way, we might need to reconsider our next steps.”
They waited in silence.
After a few minutes, the younger version of Alexander — the Hercules of myth — stepped drunkenly out of the far doorway and staggered down the steps into the lab. He was whistling a tune of some sort, when he saw the body on the ground near the bars. The tune died slowly on his lips, as if his lungs had just run out of air to continue blowing.
He stood in place for a full thirty seconds. Then he walked slowly toward the body on the ground. He looked up at the Forgotten wraiths, clustered around the bars, watching him, and reaching through the bars for the body’s ankle, which was just a few inches too far away.
King noticed that as the shaken man walked to the cell and the body, he suddenly exhibited none of the drunken stagger he had just a moment ago. The sight of the body had sobered him in an instant.
Young Alexander knelt down next to the body, but did not touch it.
From the shadows, the older Alexander held his hand out to the others in the dark, as if to say: Wait. Here it comes. We’re either right or very, very wrong.
The younger man, still dressed in the clothes he had worn to the marketplace, reached out a hand slowly, and touched the body’s neck, feeling for a pulse. The hand stayed in place for an interminably long moment, then simply dropped to the man’s side. A low moaning escaped the man’s lips, but the sound went on and on, without a new breath. It grew in intensity until it was more like a siren then a moan.
He lowered his head, and the sound grew raspy like a growl.
In the shadows, the elder Alexander waved the other two down the hall as the younger Alexander threw his head back and howled in anguish. The sound was heartbreaking.
King turned and led the way down the long room where he had fought and died several times, and into the narrow tunnel beyond. As the last of the ambient light receded, Acca placed her hand on his shoulder. She couldn’t see. He slowed his pace in the dark as the younger Hercules’s screams echoed through the caverns.
Soon they came to the edge of the arena. King was about to tell Acca about the hellhound, but Alexander beat him to it. King saw that most of the bodies he had piled were gone now. The three of them circled around the perimeter of the massive cavern, but the huge dog didn’t notice. It was busy devouring and crunching the bones of a Forgotten.
When they reached the far tunnel that led to the forest, Alexander had them wait. He ran back into the center of the arena and quickly climbed onto Cerberus’s back. The animal was startled and began twisting its head, trying to snap at him. He quickly pulled the pin securing the chain around the hound’s central head. Then he leapt off of the beast and ran for the tunnel. The huge animal gave chase for just a second, but then thought better of it and turned back to its easy meal.
Alexander led them through the night forest and around the lake, until both Acca and King were so tired they could barely stand.
“We need to stop soon,” King said.
“It won’t be safe to stop anywhere near here. We need to get at least another town over. Tomorrow we can make for Antium, where I have another lab.”
“I am so very tired, my love. I do not think I can go another step tonight.” Acca sounded half asleep already.
Alexander reached into a small pouch on his belt and produced a tiny tin, in which King knew he kept the last of his herbs. By the light of the full moon, King watched the man pull out a small leaf and crush it between his fingers, before sprinkling the crumbs into his mouth, his head tilted back. He sighed heavily, and then swept Acca up into his meaty arms.
“I hope you can manage on your own, Jack. I don’t think I could carry you both.”
“I’ll make it,” King said, his body already easing the pain in his lungs. Then he started off through the forest again, taking the lead. Alexander’s speed slowed with the weight of his wife, but they still put a lot of distance between themselves and the lake, before the moon went down in the sky and only stars lit the way.
* * *
Acca had long since fallen asleep in Alexander’s arms as they walked. He had shifted her into one meaty arm, so he could allow the other to rest for a time. Then he would shift her to the other arm, and vigorously shake the first, as if it had gone to sleep on him. King knew the extra strength the herb had provided the man would be fading from his system soon. Even though Acca was slim, her sleeping dead-weight must have been exhausting to carry. King would have offered to carry her for a time, but he was barely able to keep going himself. If not for his body’s ability to heal, he would have collapsed long ago. They walked on under the stars in silence.
For a few minutes, King felt like it was old times for the two of them, but then he reminded himself that their mission was nearly complete, and soon he would be going home. He blinked and saw Sara’s face. It came clear to him for the first time in a long time. Perhaps knowing he would see her again allowed whatever mental defenses he had created to collapse. Whatever the cause, the brief mental glimpse brought a smile to his face.
“What’s next? We get to your place in Antium, and then what? How do we get you home? How do I get back? All you’ve ever told me was that you had access to the technology — but not until the time was right.”
“That’s the tricky part, Jack.”
“Saving Acca wasn’t tricky?”
“What comes next involves untested technology I created in this time, but never found a power source for. We have to examine the machine I made when I was younger, alter it and incorporate the things I learned from the Norway technology. We couldn’t get to the tech early, because I couldn’t be sure my younger self wouldn’t stop in for a visit. That’s not going to happen now. I spend a few days tearing up the area around the lake, and then months in a depression, rarely leaving that villa. It will be safe for us in Antium, now.”
“So the tech is dodgy, but why is this the tricky bit?” King asked, understanding the issue with avoiding Alexander’s younger self. The two had discussed such things for years, debating issues of paradox and destiny.
“Powering the machine,” Alexander replied. “I never used it to return home, because I couldn’t power it. Not until the twentieth century — but by then, I had come up with this plan to save her. The hard part is we have to power the device with this…” Alexander held up a small brown rock the size of a golf ball, which hung around his neck on a thick chain he had worn since they arrived in the past. He let it fall gently to his chest, then awkwardly tucked it back into his robe with the one hand, while his other arm cradled Acca.
“What…exactly…is that thing?” It looked familiar, but King couldn’t place it.
“Paris,” Alexander said.
The single word triggered King’s memory. He’d never forget Paris and that he’d nearly been sucked inside out by a sentient…
“Wait. We closed that portal. Completely. That can’t be what I think it is.”
“If what you think is a dwarf black hole, hidden inside the flimsiest of rock coverings? Then yes, that’s exactly what it is.”
FIFTY-THREE
Latium, 780 BC
“You’ve been wearing a black fucking hole around your neck for twenty years, and you didn’t think to tell me?”
Acca stirred in Alexander’s arms, so he shifted her to both arms. She laid her head against his chest and went back to sleep.
“Quiet, Jack. Let’s not wake her.” They continued walking across a pasture. “I’ve told you before how much I’ve been playing this whole thing by ear. I wasn’t sure any of this would work. But there’s simply no power source in this time that is strong enough. I took this thing in Paris for this very purpose. It’s an immense source of power. If anything can power up the portal I have here, this will be it.” Alexander moved over to a soft rise of grass and gently set Acca down on it. She stirred briefly, opened her eyes and looked around, then blinked and went back to sleep on the grass.
King plopped down on the ground himself, ready for sleep. Alexander sat cross-legged. “I’ll take first watch. Get some sleep, Jack. You’re going to need it.”
King yawned. “Why? What’s waiting for us in Antium?”
“Man eating birds with sharp bronze beaks and projectile metallic feathers,” Alexander said.
King sat up. “Seriously?”
“No. Just joking.”
“Dick,” King laid back down.
Alexander laughed. “Go to sleep.”
* * *
Hours later they began walking south again. King walked ahead, allowing Alexander and Acca time to discuss the extremely complicated story their lives had become. When they stopped in a small village for a lunch of bread, cheese and wine, Acca seemed convinced. She no longer questioned the impossibility of their having travelled back in time. Her only questions were geared toward what they needed to do next.
Omega: A Jack Sigler Thriller cta-5 Page 23