The Mortality Principle

by Alex Archer

  She heard someone whisper what sounded like “Bomb” and that changed the atmosphere of the tour. A couple of the children screamed. She saw a younger girl cling to the arm of one of her teachers, while the teachers themselves were pale faced and panic-stricken. Pieces of porcelain began to rattle against the glass shelves in a display cabinet. The world moved in slow motion. Flakes of paint and plaster drifted down from the ceiling like whispers of snow.

  The children’s faces filled with something akin to wonder, but far more shrank into themselves, terrified because they didn’t understand what was happening. The teachers tried to restore some semblance of calm, huddling their charges together and ushering them toward the door.

  Before they reached it a huge mirror slipped from its mounting and slid down the wall. It hit the ground and toppled forward, the glass shattering into a thousand pieces. The shards stung the legs of the children closest to it, the pain met with more shrieks of terror.

  In less than five seconds the air filled with dust shaken from every crevice in the place. Everyone in the room coughed and choked against the thick dust as they struggled to draw breath.

  “This way,” said the guard, the only person in the room aside from Annja who appeared to be calm in the apparent crisis.

  Roux had done well, better than she could possibly have hoped.

  This was her chance.

  But there was one very obvious problem.

  The old guard wasn’t flapping about like a headless chicken with the rest of them. He was acting on instinct, putting the safety of the visitors above the security of the building and its contents. In other circumstances she might have been impressed, but right now she was annoyed. He even put the safety of others ahead of his own safety. That was a rare quality. His primary concern was getting everyone out of there. She could only hope that his focus was on the kids, not her.

  “Everyone stay calm,” he said, his voice cutting above the aftermath of the explosion. “Everything’s okay. Follow me. We will go outside to the courtyard. Stay with your teachers.”

  The alarm was doing nothing to quell the sense of panic.

  The teachers did their best to echo his calm, issuing their own instructions, telling the kids to hold hands and walk in single file, following the guard outside.

  Annja hung back. She needed to go in the opposite direction. She guessed she had maybe two or three minutes before anyone realized she was missing. She needed to make the most of them.

  Starting now…

  Annja slipped out of the room.

  37

  Roux pulled a book of matches from his pocket and tore one free.

  He remembered having picked them up in a café overlooking the Seine a couple of months ago, but he could not remember the name of the woman who had shared his table. It had been a chance encounter, a couple of hours with a stranger who could have been anyone, but for an hour or two their lives interconnected. How many other little connections had he made during his six centuries? More than six lives’ worth, he was sure of that. His unnaturally long life seemed to have been dotted with encounters that meant nothing in isolation but as a whole represented a hollowness that the veneer of loneliness had taken shape around.

  Sometimes it felt that those times were nothing more than dots in a puzzle that might one day be connected to produce a picture that actually made sense. More often than not, it was more like the kind of Rorschach inkblot that kept some psychiatrists in gainful employment for years.

  Roux struck the match.

  The sudden flare was outside the beam of the flashlight he held between his teeth. He touched the match to the end of the gasoline-soaked rope, then started to run. He had no way of knowing how long it would take the voracious flame to snake along the three-strand rope or if the makeshift bomb would actually explode without a proper detonator. But at best he had seconds.

  So he ran.

  Roux might be immortal, or as near as it made no difference. The idea of eternity buried beneath several tons of rubble wasn’t particularly appealing.

  He raced through the narrow passageways, feeling the weight of the world above pressing down around him, as if the hounds of hell were on his tail. The flashlight’s beam roved over the walls of the tunnels, pointing everywhere but straight ahead and conjuring all manner of shadow demons in the process.

  He had barely covered half the distance back to the shaft when he felt the sudden punch of air from the explosion an instant before he heard it.

  The substance of the world around him thrummed to the vibration of the explosion. He couldn’t keep his focus or his balance. A heartbeat later the tunnel was full of rage. It began with a sudden deep thunderclap before becoming a deeper grumble that began to build and kept on building, chasing him. No matter how desperately he ran, he knew he had no prayer of outrunning it. But he kept on, charging through the tunnels, head down, as the shockwave overtook him in a rush of air that pushed and bullied him from behind. The shock of it caught Roux off balance and sent him stumbling to the ground.

  Rock started to rumble and tear with the agony of fracturing bone. Behind him, chunks of the tunnel’s ceiling came tumbling down.

  He had seconds, if that, before the weight of the earth above him ruptured and brought the whole tunnel crashing in on itself, and then there would be no getting out.

  Daggers of broken stone dug into his hands as he scrambled back to his feet, trying to run before he could walk.

  The smoke of the explosion roiled around him, swelling to fill every inch and cavity of the tunnel.

  The flashlight was useless. Even with it he couldn’t see the detritus strewed in his path as he stumbled through it, blinking back the tears stung from his eyes.

  He reached out for the wall with his free hand, pushing himself along it, breathing hard, head pounding with the intense swell of pressure the blast had brought on.

  He had to keep going.

  There was no alternative.

  At last a shaft of light appeared ahead of him. He stumbled, coughing and gagging, toward it.

  He could only hope that he had done enough.

  Now it was up to Annja.

  He reached for the first iron rung that would take him up to safety, looking up, and in that moment something struck him on the back of the head and his vision clouded, the world around him swimming out of focus. His legs buckled beneath him, the strength fleeing his body.

  And then he let go.

  38

  Annja placed her hand on the large brass knob and turned it slowly, pressing one ear to the wooden door in case she could hear anything on the other side. Not that she could have heard anything above the pandemonium that had now spread out into the courtyard, and the wailing alarm.

  The door handle offered little resistance. The lock was old and substantial. She felt, rather than heard, the deep click when the mechanism caught. The door opened slowly. If there had been builders working inside, she reasoned, they would have evacuated with the alarm.

  It was both a relief and disappointment to find that the room was empty. She realized she’d expected to find Garin in the observatory, but there was no sign of him. Neither was there any sign of any restoration work. The room hadn’t been touched in a long time. So, whatever the reason for its closure, it certainly wasn’t to allow workmen access.

  Annja stepped into the room.

  There was a telescope in place, the viewing aperture open and turned to the sky, but a worktable was covered with much more practical tools including screwdrivers and tweezers, wrenches and soldering irons. They were all distinctly modern, so they couldn’t be connected with Kepler or his efforts. So if it wasn’t a display, what was it all about?

  She scanned the area, searching for some kind of clue.

  From the distance Annja heard the distant wail of sirens approaching. They were another forceful reminder that she only had a short amount of time up here alone. She hurried around the workbench, running her fingers across the old pitted wo
od. Unlike the tools it could easily have been in place when Kepler and his contemporaries spent time in this room. It offered a real link to the past, but there was no way to draw out the memories of things it had to have seen.

  There was nothing to suggest that Garin had ever been there. She did see a heavy-looking coat thrown over the back of a chair. The dark material was damp to the touch. When she picked it up, it felt as though it was about to disintegrate between her fingers.

  It looked familiar.

  Or was her mind simply finding connections that she wanted to find?

  The more she looked at it, the more convinced she was that it was the same coat the killer had been wearing when she’d chased him across the rooftops.

  She knew she was right.

  And being right, that meant there really was a connection between this place and the killer.

  Through the window she saw a fire engine making its way in through the castle gates. Several men in flame-retardant clothing tumbled out of the cab, moving with practiced precision as they set about releasing the hose and preparing to fight a fire she couldn’t see. A moment later a police car joined them.

  One minute, two at most, then the firefighters would be inside the building.

  The observatory wouldn’t be the first or even the second place they checked—the explosion had come from down in the cellar tunnels—but given everything, being found wandering around inside wouldn’t go down too well, especially if they put two and two together and tied her into Roux’s sabotage. She had no idea what kind of charges causing criminal damage carried over here and she had no burning desire to find out.

  Things could become very messy.

  She draped the coat back onto the chair and made her way down the stairs.

  The air was a little clearer when she reached the ground-floor corridor, although everything was now coated in a fine film of dust.

  Roux had almost certainly done more damage than he’d anticipated—hopefully it was enough to keep the emergency services busy for a while so she could get out of there.

  That hope was short-lived.

  She heard someone start to open the main doors.

  Annja headed in the opposite direction, ducking around the corner before the newcomers could see her.

  She rushed down the passageway, looking for a fire exit or other way out of the building. She took another turn and then another before she spotted the sign for the fire exit. The siren was still blaring, so she didn’t worry about tripping any alarms as she hit the bar across the center of the door and slipped out. The door opened onto the rear of the castle, away from the hubbub of the courtyard. Now all she had to do was slip back into the crowd and it’d be like she’d never been away.

  Annja made her way around the side of the castle to join the others.

  As she came around the corner, she walked straight into a ferocious stare from the manager, who was just wrapping up his business with the fire chief. He was obviously running through the morning’s events in his head, trying to find a way to hold her personally responsible, which of course she was.

  The fire crew was already inside.

  “Did you get lost?” the manager asked.

  “Just wanted some fresh air,” she said. “What happened?”

  The man didn’t answer her. Instead, he went across to talk to the old guard, who was comforting a crying child.

  Annja had to find Roux. They needed a new strategy. As useful as it had been to find the coat, it didn’t help with the immediate problem of Garin’s disappearance. She scanned the faces in the crowd for Lars, who had to be somewhere. Some of the children were still nearly hysterical while others were absolutely fascinated by the fire truck and had completely forgotten what had happened inside the castle.

  No one paid Annja any attention as she slipped through the gates and out into the street. A small crowd of locals had gathered, drawn by the chaos of the evacuation.

  “Annja!” a voice called through the throng. “Over here.”

  She raised herself on her toes and craned her neck to see between the people who were standing in her way. Eventually she caught sight of Lars waving at her. She pushed through the press of people, none of whom seemed to want to give an inch for fear of losing their view.

  “You okay?” he asked when she finally reached him.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Any sign of Turek?”

  “Not yet. The police have thrown up a roadblock about a couple of kilometers back, stopping people getting in and out of town. The joys of the modern world. Whenever anything happens, the first assumption is always that it’s some kind of terrorist attack. Anyone hurt?”

  She shook her head. There was an ambulance parked in the street, but it couldn’t get any closer because of the crowd that had massed around the gates. A single police officer stood in the center of the gates, doing his best to usher them away. It was a fruitless battle.

  “Have you seen Roux?”

  “Nope, but then it has been a little crazy out here. I take it the explosion was our old friend’s doing?”

  There was no point denying it. “Come with me,” Annja said as Lars packed his camera back into its case.

  They had to skirt around the crowd, working a path that took them around the back of the ambulance before they could pick up the dirt path that ran along the side of the castle wall.

  Annja looked back over her shoulder more than once to be sure that no one was watching them.

  The grille was still open, but there was no sign of Roux.

  If he’d come out this way, surely he would have closed it behind him, wouldn’t he?

  She peered into the darkness, but there was nothing to see.

  No. She was wrong. There was smoke.

  “He’s still down there,” she said, sure that she’d just lost her second friend to the maze.

  39

  Annja saw the glow of the flashlight in the darkness.

  Her heart sank when she realized it wasn’t moving.

  “Roux,” she called.

  There was no response.

  She took a step toward the light and called his name again.

  Nothing.

  Another step, another cry of “Roux?” without response.

  Something was wrong.

  Annja hurried toward the flashlight.

  There were shapes on the ground. Shadows. The tunnel had collapsed.

  Roux was trapped beneath the rubble.

  He wasn’t moving.

  Annja knelt beside him, and reached out to feel for a pulse, dreading what she might not feel beneath his skin.

  His neck was still warm, his pulse weak and thready. He didn’t flinch or stir when she squeezed his hand.

  She needed to get him out of there and quickly.

  His heart was beating now, but would it stop eventually? She knew his body had prodigious recuperative powers, beyond hers even, but was there a limit to what it could withstand? Could the cave-in literally crush the life out of him? She’d always thought of him as immortal, but in the back of her mind she’d known that something surely could happen to end that.

  Annja started pulling lumps of stone and rubble away as fast as she could, heaving one after the other and hurling them aside, moving faster and faster until she was clawing at the rubble like a madwoman trying to tear him free.

  And all through it he remained absolutely silent, absolutely and eerily still.

  Her fingers bled as she tore at the debris.

  Some of the rubble was little more than egg-size, some like a football, but there were huge slabs of masonry that had come down, and one such piece pinned him across the legs. She couldn’t get the leverage with her bare hands to shift it. Try as she might, it just wouldn’t budge. She needed something to give her more leverage. Annja cast about the inside of the tunnel, but aside from a few spars of rotted wood there was nothing that would work. Without thinking, Annja reached instinctively into the otherwhere for the sword, knowing that she could work it be
neath the huge boulder and pry it up far enough for Roux to wriggle out from under—if he would just wake up.

  She heard him let out a groan.

  For one heart-stopping second she thought it was a death rattle.

  Then he stirred again, a deeper, more broken sound. The sound was no louder than a whisper, but oh-so-welcome.

  “Roux!” Annja said, pausing for no more than a heartbeat as she reassured herself that he was still breathing, that he was still alive. She worked harder, faster, putting every ounce of strength she had into the herculean task of getting him out from under the collapsed ceiling. She didn’t even want to contemplate the mess his bones could be in, or the damage to his internal organs. Right now it was enough that he was alive. The rest could wait.

  “Come on, old man,” she shouted at him, urging the life back into him. “I could use a little help here.”

  Roux groaned. The groan became a grunt became a cough.

  He tried to drag himself out from under the huge slab of masonry as the weight was gradually being lifted from him, but it was desperately slow-going.

  “Come on,” she urged, the tension thrumming through her arms, every muscle corded and burning from the strain. She gritted her teeth against the pain, determined to hold the stone clear of the old man for however long it took for Roux to crawl free.

  He clawed at the ground in front of him. The pain was evident on his face.

  “Come on, Roux.”

  He pulled himself forward an inch at a time. The longer it took to get him out of there, the greater the risk that the killer might return or disappear altogether, taking Garin with him.

  At last he was free to kick away the remaining rubble, though his legs weren’t working properly. His trousers were covered in blood, and she saw a spur of bone from his shin poking out through a tear in the fabric. She cursed, knowing she couldn’t leave him there and go hunting for the beast.

  “I’m going to lift you,” she said. “It’s going to hurt, but we’ve got to get you out of here.” Annja put the flashlight in his hands. “Show me the way.” She walked into the light, each faltering step leading back toward the shaft of light that led to the surface. He weighed nothing in her arms.