by Layton Green
Up ahead, the trees thinned as the cemetery opened up. Andie decided to make her stand as soon as she had room to maneuver. The next hundred feet seemed to pass in a heartbeat, and then they were crunching on pea gravel with low gravestones all around, clear of the dense foliage. After a silent deep breath to work up her nerve, Andie rushed forward, gripping the stun gun Zawadi had given her.
The man whirled and raised his hands, causing the hood of the cassock to fall back and expose his face. It was Omer. He saw what was happening, but not in time to stop it. Andie lunged forward like a fencer, pressing the button to ignite the device and catching him right in the middle of the chest.
When the stun gun connected, Omer seized up and stumbled backward. Yet instead of falling over, incapacitated, he twitched for a moment and then brought his muscles under control. Andie tried to follow up, but it was too late. Before she could shock him again, he reached into the cassock and withdrew a black handgun.
She was sure the end had arrived. Omer leveled the firearm at her chest, causing her to shrink back. At the same moment, Cal leaped out of the darkness, swinging the hydroboard by the handlebars with all his might. He caught Omer in the shoulder with the heavy engine beneath the board. The blow caused the handgun to go flying and dropped their assailant to the ground.
Andie ran up and stunned him in the back again. As Omer rolled to get away, shuddering through the current, Cal pulled her by the arm. “Run!”
She knew he was right. Omer either had protective gear under his clothing or superhuman powers of resistance, and neither of them had a chance against a trained assassin. Gripping her weapon, Andie took off down the path, Cal right beside her.
Behind them, Omer cursed and gave chase. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a long, serrated knife in his hand. He was twenty yards back and gaining ground, gritting through the pain.
Andie’s heart thumped against her chest, fear propelling her forward. When the path turned sharply, she plowed ahead through a quadrant of low graves, leaping over tombstones as branches whipped into her face. Cal was right with her, face pale with exhaustion, arms pumping, sprinting for his life.
In the distance, she noticed a break in the wall surrounding the cemetery, revealing an expanse of dark water. If an escape boat was moored offshore, then surely it was there. She looked back. Omer had closed half the gap. He was surging ahead with an unhinged but confident expression, sure they wouldn’t make it to the water.
As Andie drew closer to the breach in the wall, she spied a basin of water indented into the island where it spilled into the lagoon—a tiny marina for a boat to pull inside and dock. Yet there was no sign of a watercraft.
Omer’s footsteps pounded the gravel path. She could hear him breathing behind her and knew the chase was over.
“Help!” she cried, in case anyone was listening. “Help us!”
As the lagoon materialized, Andie despaired when no one was waiting to save them. She felt Omer’s hand on her shoulder, pulling her toward him, and she whipped around to jab the stun gun at his face.
He anticipated the maneuver, batting Andie’s arm away. The blow felt as if it had shattered her elbow. She dropped the stun gun, and he kneed her in the solar plexus, sending her crashing to the ground and paralyzed from the sudden loss of breath.
Cal roared and rushed Omer with his bare hands. Andie pushed to her knees and tried to scream at him to stop, but only a croak escaped her lips. It was a brave but foolish last charge. A small smile parted Omer’s lips as he pointed the knife at Cal and prepared to lunge.
A gunshot echoing through the night caused Andie to cringe. The sound of the blast was reduced by a silencer but still loud and shocking. Instead of seeing Cal gutted on Omer’s knife, Andie saw their pursuer slump to the ground like a puppet who had just lost its strings. It took her a moment to notice the hole in the center of his forehead, blood pouring from the wound, and she looked up in shock to see a blond man standing at the edge of the wall where it opened onto the lagoon. He was holding a gun and urgently waving them over.
Omer was staring straight ahead, eyes glossy and unblinking, and his body had sunk into the gravel as if deflated. Cal backed away from him. Andie’s eyes lingered on the body for a moment, revolted by the violence but feeling no remorse. Her breath returned in ragged gasps as she ran beside Cal, toward the man waiting by the wall. Whoever he was, he had just saved their lives, and they had little choice but to accept his help.
Their rescuer was standing on a stone walkway that extended along the base of the wall, wrapping around the edge of the lagoon. “Zawadi sent me,” he called out, further easing Andie’s fears. “Quickly, please.”
The man was tall and lean, maybe forty, with quick brown eyes and a strong Scandinavian jaw that matched his accent.
“Did she escape?” Andie asked.
“I don’t know. But if they catch her and don’t find you with her, the Ascendants will send more boats into the lagoon. We should be safe if we hurry.”
Once they had cleared the wall, they saw a cigarette boat moored just out of view. The man hopped onto the sleek prow of the boat, ran down it, and untied a rope slung around an iron post jutting out of the wall. Andie and Cal followed him on board and into the cushioned seat in the center of the boat.
The man fiddled with his cell phone as he took the helm. “I don’t know if he tapped our phones or discovered the poor groundskeeper’s true identity, but I’m shutting down communications. Do you have phones?”
“We were prisoners in a medieval dungeon,” Andie said. “So no.”
“If you hadn’t resisted, he would have taken me by surprise. We would all be dead.”
“How’d you know?” Cal said to Andie. He was slumped in the seat beside her, his eyes hollow with hunger and exhaustion.
“Just math,” she said with an ironic, melancholy twist of her lips. She was thinking of her mentor, the five-digit passcode to the folder housing his MUT research, and the contents of the wall safe behind the Ishango bone that had launched her on this insane journey.
“What?”
“Omer was missing a digit. A finger. I remembered it from before.”
His eyes widened in surprise and admiration. “I didn’t even notice.”
As the speedy vessel darted into the lagoon without its navigation lights, the engine purring at a low hum, Andie twisted her body to stare at the receding walls of the cemetery, grateful to be alive but overwhelmed with emotion.
Soon the lights of Venice were a speck in the distance, and as her mother grew farther and farther away, Andie turned toward the mainland, facing a future as terrifying and uncertain as the mounting mysteries of her past.
Naples, Italy
March 1938
As the mail boat drifted in at first light, its crew working hard to secure the vessel, Stefan took up a position at the front of the wooden dock. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat to warm them. Behind him, the blasted dome of Mount Vesuvius loomed high above the Gulf of Naples, a constant reminder of the fragility of civilization.
According to his sources, shortly after Ettore received the core of the device from the Society’s engineers, Ettore had taken an unauthorized trip to Sicily. Before he left, he had emptied his bank account and penned a strange goodbye letter to one of his associates.
Stefan had contacted the port authority in Palermo and confirmed that Ettore had reboarded the ship for the return journey. Still, sensing something amiss, Stefan had arrived at the dock well before dawn. As soon as the vessel anchored, before anyone had disembarked, Stefan rushed aboard and, in his most commanding voice, told the captain he was searching the ship. The captain took one glance at his Nazi credentials and stood down. Mussolini fawned over Hitler, and no one dared question a high-ranking member of the Third Reich. Everyone stood meekly about while Stefan interviewed the crew and passengers and, quivering with rage, inspected every single inch of the boat.
Ettore was nowhere to be seen.
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In fact, except for the crew member who had shown Ettore to his cabin, no one even remembered the quiet professor of theoretical physics. That was Ettore’s tragic flaw, Stefan knew. His inability to communicate with others throughout his life, despite his obvious yearning to do so. There is no need to reach for the stars if we are content with that which is right beside us.
Had Ettore fooled them all and absconded with his invention? Had someone from the crew of the mail boat, perhaps a plant from the Society, helped him escape? Or had Ettore simply jumped overboard and put an end to his sad life?
What exactly had happened in the middle of the open sea?
The only thing of interest to the German soldier was a piece of silver filament wire he found pinched between a pair of wooden crates stacked along the sidewall of the pilothouse. At first glance, the wire was so thin he mistook it for a piece of string. He again questioned the crew and passengers, but no one claimed to know who or what the wire belonged to.
It could be nothing, Stefan thought. A random piece of flotsam washed onto the deck in rough seas, blown in by the wind, or a meaningless item left by a passenger on a previous journey.
Or it could be everything.
What game was Ettore playing?
Furious, Stefan pounded a gloved fist against the railing. How many years had he wasted on this man? How much had he damaged the cause? If Ettore was still alive, Stefan vowed to find him and flay him alive for his betrayal, then toss his bones to the dogs. Yet despite his rage, Stefan had to admire the scientist’s ingenuity and courage, and for acting so out of character. I didn’t think you had it in you, Ettore.
As Stefan stepped onto the creaking wooden dock, clutching the strange piece of filament wire, bewildered by the find and sensing it held the key to a greater truth, he wondered just exactly what it was that Ettore Majorana had convinced them to build.
EPILOGUE
Dr. James Corwin’s world was black and silent.
Odorless, unending.
After his capture, the Ascendants had kept him sedated until he woke in a white padded cell. They interrogated him every day until he managed to lift a cell phone off a guard and send a desperate plea for help to the Star Phone. As punishment for his actions, his captors had placed him inside a sensory deprivation chamber.
Dr. Corwin had no idea how long he had been inside. Time had ceased to have weight, and he was losing his will to resist.
He knew that a typical isolation tank involved floating in water that contained enough dissolved salt to obtain a gravitational field of approximately 1.275, rendering the body weightless. But he wasn’t in water. He was being held in a chamber as dark as a cave, suspended a few feet off the floor, naked, upright, his arms outstretched. A metal helmet was affixed to his head; metal bracelets were on his wrists and ankles.
None of his bonds were attached to the walls.
At rare intervals, the force keeping him suspended in midair would shut off and he would crumple to the padded floor. By groping around with atrophied limbs on these occasions, he had discovered the contours of his cell, and that a tray of bland food and water awaited him. He would eat and drink and massage his muscles in silence as a computer-generated voice interrogated him from unseen speakers, seeking the hidden location of the Enneagon, claiming his suffering would never end unless he told them.
And he believed them.
Oh, how he believed them.
The source of his imprisonment was not magic. Nor was it science fiction. He surmised that powerful magnets, which attracted his metal bonds, were embedded in the soundproof walls. Pushing and pulling in equal measure, the force adjusted to his body weight to keep him suspended. Every time he finished eating, he had tried to resist the electromagnetic levitation, but the current would turn back on and he would slowly, inexorably rise into the air and return to his suspended position.
He knew that prisoners kept in prolonged isolation in normal jails—in full command of their external senses—suffer mental and physical health problems, often severe. Some commit suicide to escape the ordeal.
Dr. Corwin was trapped in a waking coma in absolute stasis, with no release or stimulation. A never-ending plunge into the ceaseless dark of the void.
So when a fluorescent light appeared for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, it flared like a sunspot, blinding him. When he regained his vision, he saw someone standing in the middle of the room, wearing a close-fitting golden mask and a white robe that brushed the floor.
A modulated voice spoke from behind the mask. “Do you know who I am?”
Dr. Corwin’s mouth felt stuffed with cotton. After a time, he managed to croak out a reply. “I know they call you the Archon.”
“Then you know why I am here.”
“Are you? I’m not really sure of anything right now.”
During his imprisonment, weird patterns of light from his own retinas had flooded his mind, phantasms that caused him to question his present reality.
“I understand your confusion. But I assure you I am not a hallucination.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“We’ve never held anyone in this state for so long,” the Archon continued. “Even I do not know how long your sanity will persist. No matter: I can bring you back if I choose—as long as you answer my questions.”
Dr. Corwin had heard enough about the Archon to know the identity of the person behind the disguise was a closely held secret. He had long suspected the leader of the Ascendants was someone he had once known, an adversary from his own past. “Hans? Is it you?”
“Perhaps this will help,” the Archon said, and raised a hand.
The light in the room was extinguished except for a golden glow emitting from the mask, which now seemed to hover in the darkness below Dr. Corwin. A strange liminality between worlds that restored some of his equilibrium, anchoring him better than the artificial lighting.
“An improvement?” the Archon said.
“I suppose, all things considered.”
“Excellent. As you have probably surmised, I have come to speak with you myself, since our interrogation has thus far proven ineffective.”
“I’m honored. Where are we exactly?”
“Where is the Enneagon?”
The Enneagon. The Enneagon. It took Dr. Corwin a moment to recall what it was and how he had hidden it—even from himself. Ah, yes. The Archon isn’t going to like that very much.
“The thing is,” Dr. Corwin said, “I can’t for the life of me seem to remember.”
The Archon took a step forward. The pupils behind the vacant eyeholes should have been visible in the darkness, but instead the circular openings in the mask seemed to stretch to infinity. “You found the Fold, didn’t you?”
“We found it long ago.”
“You know what I mean,” the Archon said. “You found it.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know far more than you think. I know about stepping, and the ones who roam. The walls of knowledge are crumbling. The old guard is dying, burdened by their failure to bridge the gap and reach the infinite. But I will find what you have made. Catalogue and absorb it. Improve upon it. I will save the world from itself and fulfill the destiny of our species.”
“You’re mad.”
“Mad? I am supremely rational. I’ll ask you again: Where is the Enneagon?”
“Who are you? Remove the mask.”
“Your fortitude is impressive. But I will strip the knowledge from your mouth and mind, or I will bring Andromeda here and break you in another way. As you know firsthand, the brain withers and dies without light. The same result occurs when observing the suffering of a loved one.”
“Don’t you dare touch her—do you hear me? She’s innocent! She has nothing to do with this!”
“None of us is innocent. Did you not involve her yourself? I’m afraid your plea to moral authority falls flat.”
“Damn you!” Dr. Corwin str
uggled to free himself, though he knew it was useless.
“It will be curious to see which route is more effective. I ask a third and final time: Where is it?”
Dr. Corwin’s laugh escaped his dry throat as a rasp. “You don’t understand—if I still knew, I would tell you to save her. I can’t give you what you want.”
Suddenly a mass of snakes the color of dry grass appeared and writhed around the golden mask. The snakes hissed, a susurration that echoed around the room and drove needles of pain into Dr. Corwin’s head. Unable to move, he could only shut his eyes until the terrible sound dissipated.
When he dared to open them again, the snakes were gone and there was no more light in the room. He was unsure if the hallucination had originated from the Archon or his own mind.
“What did you do?” he whispered, now barely able to speak from the effects of isolation and the residual pain in his skull. “Who are you?”
“You’re an old man who no longer fears for his life,” the disembodied voice of the Archon said. “This I understand. But there are fates worse than death—for you and for her. It is life itself you should fear. Given time, you will tell me what I wish to know. Of that I assure you.”
“Only the unwise are very sure of anything,” Dr. Corwin rasped.
In response, the flare of light returned, and then the snakes and the pain.
To Be Continued Fall 2020 in Volume II of the Genesis Trilogy!
Be sure to visit unknown9.com to stay up to date on both the Genesis Trilogy and all of the other stories set within the Unknown 9 universe.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have a lot of people to thank. To Alex Amancio: I have nothing but mad respect for the creative genius, business acumen, and sheer determination it took to bring your vision for Reflector Entertainment to life. Thank you for giving us a world to create in. Simon: it’s been a wild ride, and I appreciate your ten hands and twenty fingers that do a little bit of everything yet never seem to sweat. Anwdrea: thank you for picking up that Dominic Grey novel! Noémie, Andre, Ben, Marc-Olivier, Iléana, Matthieu, John, Jesse, Julie, Oliver, Pascale, Georgia, Ari, and the rest of the Reflector team: I appreciate each and every one of you, and I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to be working alongside so many smart and talented people. I also want to give a shout of thanks to the other artists from a wide range of media who provided excellent companionship and incredible creative energy to the U9. I can’t wait to see the final products.