by Tony Moyle
“Because I’m a recluse. The virus travels through the air and the only employees I have here are tested daily.”
“But you’ve not checked us, have you?”
“No, but fortunately I’m a brilliant internet hacker and it’s not hard for me to access the files of a simple solicitor’s firm like Lamy & Veron’s.”
Antoine paced around the back of the sofa pretending to take in the view through the window while collecting his thoughts. As he slowly circled the horseshoe he reached inside the pocket of his beige jacket. Antoine’s movement took him behind Mario and out of his eyesight.
“But what if we had the virus in a different form?”
“What?!”
Antoine jabbed a small syringe in the back of Mario’s neck and pushed down on the plunger. In shock the victim leapt in the air, holding the back of his neck with the palm of his hand. There was no blood, but if he was able to bend his head far enough around he would have seen a small pinprick.
“What have you done?” screamed Mario.
“I’ve injected you with a concentrated dose of N1G13. Probably strong enough to kill you in the next hour, unless you do as I say.”
“Where did you get that!” demanded Ally who’d scurried to the back of the room uncertain as to his state of his mind and next action.
“When we first met, Ally, I told you I was once a pharmacist. But I’m not any old pharmacist. My company still owns a laboratory, which the government recently requisitioned from me. In order to find a cure for N1G13, every lab has been given samples of the virus to work on. It wasn’t difficult to get one.”
“You’re a fool, Palomer,” laughed Mario, slumped in his chair. “Just like your ancestors. Now that I have the virus it will quickly spread to you. There’s no stopping it. You’ll die, too.”
“Oh, I beg to differ,” replied Antoine. “We’re not just here to pull down the Oblivion Doctrine.”
“We’re not?” said Ally.
“No. You see the prophecy in the book is a fake.”
“We know that already. I told you that weeks ago. He says this Lesage character wrote it,” she said, pointing at Mario.
“Lesage did write prophecies. Just not that one. It’s a hoax, a fraud, a con. Created to fool people, many by Nostradamus himself, into believing that Lesage wrote it. And it was designed for this very moment.”
Mario slumped to the floor, his brow thick with sweat and his body shaking violently as the extreme dose of flu overcame his immune system.
“If you want to live, Mario, you must give me the coffer.”
“Why?” he spluttered.
“Because inside it your ancestor unwittingly produced a cure.”
“How do you know this?” replied Ally.
“No time to explain,” replied Antoine, riffling through the contents of the coffer to Mario’s pathetic requests to stop. “Go find Gabriel and take this with you.”
He passed her a fragile book opened at a specific page. On it were the details of a recipe whose base ingredients were out-of-date oranges, water, a squeeze of lemon, and sugar.
“It looks like a recipe for marmalade.”
“Yes, but it’s a very special one with additional antibodies.”
“And what do you want me to do with it?”
“Tell Gabriel to find his servers and post it online. Then email it to my lab so they can start to mass-produce it.”
“What about me?” murmured Mario.
“You’ll have to hope they work fast.”
Out in the hallway, Ally found Cynthia unconscious on the hall tiles and Gabriel sitting quietly humming to herself.
“What happened here?!”
“Oh, I punched her,” replied Gabriel, calmly snapping out of her daydream and back to reality.
“Why?”
“She looked at me funny.”
“Describe funny?”
Gabriel made an almost imperceptible change to her own expression. “Like that.”
“Remind me never to piss you off. Come on, we need to find a way to get this online.”
It wasn’t long before Gabriel had located Mario’s computer and had hacked in to act on his behalf. The speed and accuracy of how she worked was breath-taking as always. Ally could barely see her hands moving. And whilst Gabriel’s fingers moved with incredible speed, the rest of her body was decidedly sloth-like in its lack of urgency.
Within an hour the message boards, blogs and website banners were all primed with details of the remedy and it wasn’t long before the internet community were jumping on-board to spread the message. Antoine’s laboratory signalled their receipt of the formula and set to work trying to find as many mouldy oranges they could lay their hands on.
- Chapter 34 -
The Longest Con
Death comes to us all, but the impact mostly affects the living. The deceased rarely complain. Living in the shadow of grief changes your outlook on life, until it's your own turn to walk that same path. One death is hard enough to deal with, but several at once was even worse. Annabelle had had enough this year to last a lifetime. By the end of fifteen sixty-five her father, Claude, had passed away peacefully. Her brothers, of course, shouldered much of the responsibilities for the administration of his affairs, but she bore the emotional impact.
Only months later Nostradamus had also shaken off his mortal coil, although she would not mourn his passing to the same extent. And at the age of only twenty-six she’d just buried her second husband, Georges. It wasn’t true to say that she truly loved him, but unlike Jacques, he was no monster. There was at least an affection and some mutual understanding that made their relationship benign at worst and at best occasionally enjoyable. The mysterious circumstances of his passing had shocked everyone. And passing was the right description. Neither Georges’s boat nor body were ever found from the excursion he’d taken along the coast to Spain, in extremely calm conditions.
At least her father couldn’t marry her off again. She was too old now anyway. Who wanted a middle-aged widower with two husbands under her belt and a body that was beyond its best-before date when it came to childbirth? Maybe she’d get a cat. Dabble in some witchcraft and live out the stereotype no doubt others were already creating for her.
She excused herself from the wake and retired to her chamber, dragging her long, black funeral dress across the cold, sharp steps.
Above all else she wished for the pain of loss to ease, and allow a semblance of normality to make a welcomed return. It wouldn’t be anytime soon, she thought. This year of grief had been layered on top of the greatest loss of all. The biggest void in her heart was for the one person she’d loved above all others, whose passing just over a year ago had stripped away her vitality and one last chance to lead a life of purpose.
As she approached her chamber on the top floor of the tower she noticed that the door was ajar and the light from the fire no longer shone through it. From the crack between door and wall she could see that the curtains had been pulled shut and the room had been plunged into almost perfect darkness, quite unlike the way it had been left. Someone had been here. No, someone was here. A shadowy figure sat in a chair by the window.
An involuntarily scream escaped her mouth and her body froze. “Guards!”
“They’ll come. Give them a few minutes,” said the man. “Those stairs are a killer.”
“What do you want?”
“I wanted to pay my respects.”
“The funeral is downstairs, maybe you took a wrong turn.”
“It’s easy to do.”
“That way,” she pointed.
“I wanted to pay my respects to you, not a corpse. I’m sorry to hear of your loss,” replied the man solemnly. “I didn’t hate him even half as much as the first one.”
As her eyes became more accustomed to the lack of light she did her best to identify the imposter. A wide-brimmed hat concealed most of his features and his body was sheathed in black.
“Who are you?�
��
“I’m a no one. The real question is who do you want to be?”
“That’s no concern of yours,” she said nervously.
“Oh, but it is. You see you’re being given one last chance to answer before the guards try to remove me.”
“I thought I knew once, but I lost the courage.”
“It wasn’t the only thing you lost.”
The man held his clenched fist out in front of him so it was bathed in the slightest slither of moonlight that was desperately trying to infiltrate the room. The plan worked perfectly. The moon glinted off a cluster of pearls that dangled from a fine silver chain.
“My locket. How did you get it?”
“I took it from the chest, of course. I almost took it the very first time we met. The pendant now holds something of great importance. What say we take it with us?”
*****
The trip was only meant to last a weekend, but in reality she’d been in France for more than a month. It was quite some field trip. A week on from the experiences at Mario’s the world was taking its first gentle steps towards normality. If that was at all possible. Once the messages about the Nostradamus cure had saturated the public consciousness and the scientists had quickly perfected the production, batches of it were being delivered to every corner of the globe. Orange prices went through the roof.
Rather than pull the Oblivion Doctrine down completely, Gabriel had reprogrammed it to show a recurring story detailing the work that Nostradamus had been least proud of that had also been concealed within the coffer. Not everyone accepted it. After all, some people avoid the truth at all costs. But enough people got bored of seeing the same story rotating over and over for the Oblivion Doctrine’s popularity to sink to obscurity in a matter of days. The Oblivion Doctrine’s work had once gone viral but there was always a cure for everything.
Gabriel’s skills were soon in high demand. Not from the prepper community, who were mostly still underground and unaware of recent developments, but as a freelance internet security expert. She bought an extremely expensive new car and still drove like an idiot.
Mario received the remedy before N1G13 took his life. Arrest followed soon after for the murder of Bernard Baptiste. In the months to come the prosecutors revealed the extent of Mario’s activities through the Oblivion Doctrine. It included various lobbying groups, e-commerce sites and even pharmaceuticals. Antoine was not the only person who had access to a laboratory. The connections would soon produce the evidence needed to secure a conviction.
Flu cases decreased as fast as they’d risen and the restrictions on public movement were lifted. Ally could finally book her flight home. Antoine offered to drop her at the airport. She accepted. It wasn’t because they’d settled their differences, she’d never forgive him for the lies he’d told her. But her curiosity and need for answers had still not been quenched. There were explanations he owed her.
“What time is your flight?” said Antoine as he accompanied her into the airport’s departure area.
“It’s meant to be eleven-thirty, but it’s a low-cost carrier so it could be anytime this week,” she replied bitterly.
There was an awkward silence as the two stood in front of the boarding gates trying to decide how their parting should be managed. Antoine went first.
“Ally, I know the last few weeks haven’t been a great experience for you, but I just wanted to say that I enjoyed spending the time with you. You really should let people in more.”
“What’s the point? Just as you proved, people always end up being a disappointment.”
“I really am sorry. What happened was entirely necessary even if it wasn’t comfortable.”
“Why? What possible benefit came from lying?”
“The lie was necessary for the prophecy to come to fruition without anyone manipulating it. There was too much at stake.”
“But the prophecy didn’t come true, did it? The end of the world wasn’t nigh after all.”
“No, and that’s mostly thanks to you.”
“Blah, what did I do? Gabriel had more involvement than I did.”
“It would have been impossible without both of you.”
“Before I leave, explain one thing to me?” asked Ally politely. “Why would Lesage go to all that trouble pretending that he wrote the prophecy?”
“Do you still believe that no prophecies are accurate?”
“Yes, of course. This episode proves it completely.”
“Well, I think Philibert Lesage did believe in them. Which is why he tricked Nostradamus into believing that his prophecies were superior. That way he wouldn’t notice if Philibert gave him a fake.”
“Then if it was a fake who wrote the one in the book?”
“I’m not sure we’ll ever know who,” said Antoine, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small, wrapped box. “I want you to have this.”
“What is it?”
“Open it. That’s the point of covering it in paper!”
The box had been beautifully wrapped with silver paper and a small gold bow. She untied it and slowly removed a box from the shiny paper. Inside the box the ram locket stared back at her.
“I can’t accept this.”
“You’ve earned it.”
“But it’s part of your heritage. You must pass it on to the next in line.”
“There isn’t anyone. It would die with me. Anyway, I think it belongs to a woman not a man. I used to sit for hours after my wife died just staring at it, as if her life was concealed somewhere in its surface. It was only after that when I realised its significance.”
“I can’t take it.”
“You must.”
Antoine adjusted his hat and turned without further comment, leaving Ally alone in the middle of Lyon Airport holding the locket on her palm. She placed it in her handbag. After the rigmarole of check-in, airport security and an hour watching hopefully for the flight number to finally reveal its gate number, finally she settled into her seat on the plane.
Her thoughts settled on home. She missed her little cottage, the peace, the quiet and even, to her surprise, the people she worked with. Maybe they weren’t so bad after all. They were trying to do their best, even if their brainpower couldn’t keep up with hers. It wasn’t a surprise that none of them had contacted her over the last month. No one had wondered about her welfare, but then again nor had she about theirs. Maybe if she made the first move it might draw people closer to her, rather than push them further away. She reached inside her handbag to find her phone and text one of them, but her fingers rested on the small, square box.
She lifted it out to take a second look. As she rotated the locket in her fingers she noticed a little clasp on the bottom edge. It was firmly lodged shut but with a little effort and the assistance of a hairpin she managed to force it open. There was a small cavity inside where a lady might conceal a small ring or perhaps in later periods a treasured photograph. Now, though, the locket contained something much more interesting. A beige scrap of paper folded over many times. This wasn’t new paper, she knew that. The fibres were rough and the surface uneven as a result of it being made by hand rather than by a machine.
She unfolded it carefully. Written in a clear, flowing handwriting were four lines, a signature and a date.
When the Baptist of Mâcon learns the secrets of Oblivion
And the Angel Gabriel prepares for the end,
Tirelessly plough old fields to discover man’s demise
The black, oak coffer and Michel’s oranges will cure all.
Philibert Lesage, 1563
THE END
Dr. Ally Oldfield will return…
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