by Layton Green
In her mind, the meeting was worth the risk. But she felt as if she were flying blind in the darkness, rushing into unknown peril with no copilot and no radar.
Tomorrow night I might have some answers.
One day at a time.
Starving and wired, she surfaced at Covent Garden to grab a bite to eat. All of the expensive shops were closed, leaving an assortment of flower vendors, pubs, sidewalk cafés, and street performers to entertain the tourists still clogging the main arcade. After grabbing fish-and-chips from a street vendor, she spied a side street that made her pause. Along the street was a line of stalls draped in black cloth and colorful silks. She drew closer and noticed a preponderance of body piercings, tattoos with occult symbology, and crystal jewelry.
Andie recognized the vibe from the old days, when she was still searching for an arcane answer to her visions. She had tried them all over the years: Wicca gatherings, faith healers, magic conventions, New Age festivals, ESP demonstrations.
The red-bearded man behind the first stall—a neodruid dressed in a black kilt and bronze wrist bands inscribed with runes—told her the market was a monthly gathering of the London Occult Society. On a whim, she took out one of the ink drawings she had found in Dr. Corwin’s desk and showed it to him. He had no idea what it was, but she started showing it around, asking if anyone had ever seen or heard of such a place.
The practitioners ran the gamut: theosophists, witches, clairvoyants, fortune-tellers, MK Ultra survivors turned remote viewers, tarot readers, the Society of the Inner Light. As with her past inquiries, no one had anything credible to offer. A hoodoo practitioner with dreadlocks hanging to her knees told Andie that for a small fee, she would throw the bones and see what they had to say. A LaVeyan Satanist leaned over a candle flame and professed that the drawing represented the prison of Andie’s own mind. She more or less agreed with that assessment.
Behind the next-to-last stall, a teenage girl with spiky green hair, dressed all in black and wearing purple lipstick, watched insouciantly as Andie approached. Her stall displayed a stack of books about the life of Aleister Crowley, pamphlets for the Ordo Templi Orientis, and sample instructions for the Gnostic Mass.
The girl lifted a cigarette out of an ornate silver case. The head of a ram was tattooed on her neck. “You selling something?”
“No,” Andie said. “Why?”
She lit up, releasing an odor of cloves. “I saw you asking around.”
The teenager had a Caribbean accent, and the lighter shadows in the background of the ink drawing matched the color of her skin. After debating walking away, Andie decided she might as well show her the drawing. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
The girl took the drawing and peered closer. “I think so.”
“You have?” Andie took a step forward, leaning over the stall. “Where? When?”
“Silent Hill.”
“What’s that?”
“A video game.”
Andie yanked the drawing back.
“No, really,” the girl said. “What is it?”
“It’s not a game is what it is,” Andie snapped.
“C’mon. I was just winding you up.”
“Not what I need right now.”
“Look, I might know someone who could help, if I knew what it was.”
Andie put a hand to her temple in frustration. “I have visions sometimes. They look like this place. That’s all.”
The girl took a long drag and blew smoke out of the side of her mouth. “I’m just watching the stall for Mum. All this”—she waved a hand—“is for tourists.”
“Of course it is.”
“Then why bother? No offense, yeah, but it sounds like you need a good psychologist.”
Andie shook her head and started to walk away.
“I work at a bookstore a few nights a week,” the girl called out. “It specializes in religion and mysticism. The real stuff.”
Andie turned back, her voice mocking. “The real stuff?”
“Hey, I’m just into the music and the games. But the old white guy who owns it, all kinds of people come to see him. Mum says he’s the expert in London.” She took out a card from behind the stall. “In case you want it. And, hey, cool ring. Where’d you get it?”
Andie took the card and glanced down at the circular jade band entwined with silver on her left ring finger, feeling a twinge of long-buried pain. “It was my mother’s.”
As she walked away, she took off the ring and pocketed it, realizing it might be picked up on camera. Without much interest, she slipped the card the girl had given her into the same pocket. Andie had never seen anything come of her inquiries over the years, and doubted anything would change.
Even at night, a swarm of people choked the streets around Victoria Station. Tourists and commuters and off-duty laborers packed the dizzying array of pizzerias, kebab stands, bars, and street-side patios. The area was one of Andie’s least favorite in London, but at least she felt anonymous.
A plethora of cheap hotels in grungy Victorian buildings ringed the transport hub. She chose one at random and paid cash for two nights. Her room was cramped and musty, but she collapsed on the sagging bed, thankful to escape the beggars on the corners, the obnoxious tourists, and the claustrophobic streets reeking of garbage and stale beer.
Her mind was too piqued to sleep. In the madness of the last few days, she had not had time to research any of the weirdness she had found in Dr. Corwin’s journal. With nothing else to do, she lay on her side and did a little searching on her burner phone.
She learned that Zawadi was a feminine name in Swahili that meant “gift.” It was also a hotel in Zanzibar. She supposed it could refer to a meeting place involving her mentor, though judging from the conversation with Professor Rickman, she felt like it referred to a specific person.
Besides a few pop culture references, she found nothing useful on the Ascendants.
A search for “the Unknown Nine” was also unproductive. However, The Nine Unknown was a novel by an English-born American writer named Talbot Mundy. The title referred to a mythical secret society founded in ancient India to preserve and develop books of hidden knowledge.
A symbolic reference perhaps?
Googling “Leap Year Society” turned up nothing except for some innocuous groups formed by people born on February 29. Frustrated, she kept searching, scrolling through pages and pages of useless data. She paused when she found a Yahoo! Answers question posed by someone called DocWoodburn.
Anyone out there know anything about the Leap Year Society?
DocWoodburn Ÿ 9 days ago
The recent date caught her eye. So far, there were no responses to the inquiry.
Interestingly, she found the same question posed with the same username on Reddit, 4chan, and a number of other chat forums. The 4chan posting—which was mocked mercilessly by a few responders—asked anyone with knowledge of the Leap Year Society to contact DocWoodburn at Seeker’s Corner on Twitch.
Andie was familiar with Twitch. Gamers gravitated to it, but it attracted all sorts of people looking for a voice online. Curious, she created a new user ID, Mercuri999, based on her favorite scientist. She logged on and discovered a weekly broadcast billing itself as a live show crowdsourcing the truth out of modern conspiracies. The host was someone with the handle of DocWoodburn. The show was mildly popular, closing in on ten thousand followers. She listened to the most recent episode—which had occurred during the last week—and heard the host describe how a black van had pulled up right outside his residence, just after he mentioned the Leap Year Society.
Andie sucked in a breath. Before the last few days, she might have written that off as a publicity stunt. She did not do conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, or alien sightings. The host sounded like a kook. But if he knew something about the Leap Year Society . . .
She noticed DocWoodburn was online right that very moment, or at least had left his Twitch account open. She chewed on a
thumbnail as she debated whether to contact him. Putting herself out there in any form was hazardous, but she was using a burner phone in an anonymous hotel room in London. In her mind, just like contacting Professor Rickman, acquiring information outweighed the risk of discovery.
She thought hard about what to say, then fired off a query.
Hey Doc r u there?
I am big fan and want discuss Atlantis New Hypothesis
Let’s see how smart DocWoodburn is.
She made the assumption that whoever had sent the black van to his house had a bot on the internet searching for mention of the Leap Year Society. She also had to assume that another bot, perhaps even a live user, was monitoring his Twitch account.
Ten minutes passed with no response. She figured he must be offline, or had failed to understand the reference. She left the account open, just in case, and resumed her other searches. Half an hour later, a response to her message appeared.
Aloha Mercuri! Do you mean a new theory about Atlantis?
No. I mean Atlantis New Hypothesis. A-N-H. Do you know it?
Inspired by the code Dr. Corwin had used on the Moleskine note, Andie had created a simple alphabetic cipher to disguise the name of the Leap Year Society, counting out the same number of letters between the initials. Thirteen letters separated L from Y, and counting backward, six from Y and S.
LYS = ANH. Atlantis New Hypothesis.
To connect the dots further, she had done all this in response to his post about the Leap Year Society.
Had he understood?
Sorry I am Latvia girl my English is not so great, she wrote.
It’s OK I understand completely
Thank you.
What’s the theory? I’d be very surprised to hear anything new about Atlantis.
Could Atlantis not we early taken alien life kreatures? She quickly corrected her purposeful typo: Very sorry be not we.
Andie bit her nails harder as she waited for his response. She had just sent him another encoded message, using the first letters of each word. Could Atlantis not we early taken alien life kreatures?
Can we talk?
She hoped the line was strange enough to catch his attention, and that he was clever enough to figure it out. For all she knew, her first veiled message had passed right by him, and he was simply humoring a foreign fan.
Half an hour later, she got a response.
You’re making me laugh, Mercuri. Do you mean could the people of Atlantis have been taken away in pre-history by alien life forms?
Yes!
Anything’s possible, but I’ve heard that one a thousand times. Sorry. Thanks for listening to the show
welcome
DocWoodburn logged off of Twitch. She left her account open and paced the room, wondering if he had understood.
Twenty minutes later, she had a friend request from a user named Rhodies4ever351! The subject of the message was “Who Are You?”
A little thrill passed through her.
Just to be sure, she rattled off a quick response after she accepted the friend request.
Is this a house call by the doctor?
At your service. Though I usually only call on the last day of February.
Exactly what I wanted.
Your English seems to have markedly improved. Especially your alphabet.
Paranoia affects my speech patterns.
You too?
100%
Who are you?
A friend. Maybe.
Why maybe?
I don’t know you.
I don’t know you either. But I want to talk about “Atlantis.”
Me too.
It’s not safe here.
Where is safe?
Let me think about it and contact you.
Here?
For now yes.
When?
Soon.
OK.
Stay tuned and be smart. I think they are very dangerous.
Andie typed with a vengeance. I know they are.
How do you know?
Read the news about the physicist killed in Italy.
After that last message went through, Andie shut it down. She had gone as far as she was prepared to go, at least for the night. After checking the window and drawing the lone curtain tight, she put on some ambient electronica and curled into bed.
The next morning, Andie took a tepid shower and stuffed her belongings into her backpack, in case she wasn’t coming back. Relieved to see the Star Phone still worked, she wondered if it was solar-powered. She had heard Dr. Corwin speak of a theoretical electromagnetic battery that utilized quick sips of power and could last months at a time. Maybe Quasar Labs had developed the idea.
After a takeaway coffee and croissant near the hotel, she took the Circle line two stops west to South Kensington. A five-minute walk down busy Cromwell Road brought her to the doorstep of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
She paused on the marble steps as tourists flowed like ants in and out of the monolithic arched entrance. The random chatter made her feel both invisible and all-knowing, as if everyone around her were actors in a play of which only she—and the shadowy people chasing her—were aware. A metareality she had stumbled onto and could not escape.
Pushing away thoughts of her impending meeting with Professor Rickman, she gripped the Star Phone in her pocket and stepped beneath the carved muses of Knowledge and Inspiration overlooking the twin doors of the museum.
11
As soon as Omer cleared customs in London, he taxied to a safe house in the West End, using a key to unlock the dead bolt on the outer door. The ivy-covered three-story brick townhome blended right in with the other residences in the posh Knightsbridge neighborhood.
The inner door, built into a customized foyer, was crafted from African blackwood with a reinforced steel core. The keypad restricted entry with a nine-digit code, as well as a biometric hand-geometry reader. Once inside, Omer climbed to the second floor as he gave a series of commands to an AI voice assistant programmed especially for the safe houses. Coded to Omer’s preferences, the AI turned on the lights, ran through the nightly menu options, and pumped a selection of modern violin concertos through hidden wireless speakers.
Though he had not slept more than a few hours over the last three days, and had remained alert during the flight, he did not succumb to exhaustion. Especially not after the escape of the target in Durham. Omer had given up everything for his ambition: family, home, even his true identity. But the Ascendants had recruited him to complete specific missions. They did not tolerate failure.
So instead of collapsing, he stripped down and stepped into a glass enclosure for a freezing-cold shower. Because he was conditioned to withstand extremes of temperature, the twenty-minute shower melted away the stiffness, and after toweling off he performed his breathing exercises on a Persian rug in the bedroom.
Omer was a faithful adherent of hormetism, the practice of subjecting oneself to low doses of substances or activities that in larger amounts were harmful—even fatal—to the human body. The biological phenomenon of hormesis was similar to homeopathy, yet not unknown to traditional science, which had learned that organic systems generally respond in a positive manner to negative stimuli, as long as they are given time to adapt. Alcohol, caffeine, and trace amounts of metals can all have beneficial effects but are toxic in the extreme. An athlete lifting weights, a yogi, a long-distance runner: every time muscles are broken down, the body rebuilds them stronger. The flu vaccine works on the same principle. Same with allergen immunotherapy.
The old adage was true: that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
While the Mossad had trained him well, the race to acquire the world’s top technologies was a ruthless game, played out across the globe by governments, multinational corporations, and a rogue’s list of shadowy organizations. To gain an upper hand, Omer had embraced hormesis. If the practice worked for some things, he hypothesized, why not for others? Why not for all
things?
Dioxin, a cousin to Agent Orange, had benefits at low doses. So did heat shock. Calorie restriction. Hyper-gravity and anti-gravity. Poisons. Suffocation. Viruses. Not only had Omer developed resistance or immunity to a laundry list of harmful agents, but he had developed an amount of control over physical processes that modern science would scarcely believe. He could regulate his body’s production of hormones, such as adrenaline and serotonin and, with enough time for meditation, could even influence his nervous and immune systems.
He slipped into a silk robe and checked his phone. No word yet. He entered the kitchen and downed one of the drug cocktail packets: combinations of vitamins, minerals, and performance enhancers with which all the safe houses were stocked. For dinner, he devoured a grass-fed rib eye, sautéed duck livers, and a side of broccolini, all washed down with a glass of Argentinian malbec.
If only Juma were in town! The very thought of her perfect breasts and lips like crushed velvet made him wonder if the principles of hormetism could somehow be applied to intense sexual behavior.
He was sure that it could . . .
After sinking into the king-size bed, secure within the safe house, Omer slept until dawn. He took another cold shower, dressed, stuck his zip gun into a concealed holster, and strapped a high-carbon full-tang fixed blade into his boot sheath.
The text he was dreading came during breakfast.
Call us.
After a swallow of coffee, he stared down at his smoked salmon, knowing his superiors were not pleased. Trying to imagine their response was tormenting him. The punishment for dereliction of duty in the organization was not death, but something just as final.
Abandonment.
Omer did as he was told. A digitized voice answered the call on the second ring. “Contact has been initiated.”
Omer sat up straight. “Where is she?” They gave him an address for a hotel near Victoria Station. “Should I take her now?”