Pandora's Temple

by Jon Land

The possibilities were staggering, and Shinzo found himself wondering if all this was the true plan, if his fate was to use dark matter to destroy the material world so it could join with the spirit world now inhabited by his father. The mere thought, the very possibility, set Shinzo trembling as he again lifted the wrist-mounted microphone toward his lips.

  “Take the building. Kill anyone who gets in your way.”

  CHAPTER 61

  Houston

  Katie DeMarco had entered the triggering phone number but had yet to hit Call. She was conjuring up the memories, until they crystallized enough in clarity to make her head pound.

  The ghosts of her past reared themselves up again, refusing to be forgotten or ignored.

  Haven’t I done enough? Haven’t I suffered enough?

  Who was she challenging in her mind? Moments like this gave form to her pain, her anguish, how all the violence and destruction had begun. From that first day in Stuttgart, with the attack on the fossil fuel plant, they had been the only things that made her feel alive, vital. Katie recalled a visit she’d made to a psychiatrist a few years before Stuttgart, hoping to find the relief that had eluded her everywhere else. The psychiatrist was a woman, kind and compassionate enough, who had at least tried to understand.

  “I want you to close your eyes for me.”

  Katie, who was still going by her real name back then, did.

  “You’re on a beach. What’s the first thing you think of?”

  “I’m in the water, caught in a riptide. I’m fighting it, even though I know you’re supposed to go with it, parallel to shore. I’m getting weaker.”

  “What time of day is it?”

  “It’s night.”

  “Look around. Is there anyone to help you on the beach, hear your screams if you cry out?”

  “I’m alone. I’m looking for someone. I think there was someone else with me, someone the riptide’s already taken.”

  “But you don’t know who.”

  “No.”

  “Can you guess?”

  Katie remembered feeling as if she were in a trance, almost hypnotized. It was like a dream unfolding before her conscious mind.

  “I don’t want to,” she told the psychiatrist.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m afraid he might be dead.”

  “He?”

  Katie remained silent.

  “Tell me more about him,” the psychiatrist persisted.

  “I want him to be dead.”

  “I thought you were afraid for him, worried.”

  “This is someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “My father.”

  “Is he the one in the water with you?”

  “No, but he’s the one I wish was drowning.”

  In that moment, the trance broke and the memories returned, bringing the pain with them. Katie opened her eyes to find the psychiatrist staring right at her.

  “Tell me your happiest memory.”

  “There are so many . . .”

  “Tell me one that involves your mother.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she wasn’t in the water with you.”

  “Shopping in Paris when I was a little girl. Just the two of us. A beautiful day on the Champs-Elysées.”

  “Where was your father?”

  “Business. Like always.”

  “You’re leaving someone out.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because I think it was the other person caught in the riptide with you.”

  “My . . . brother.”

  “Was he the one in the water?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where was he the day you went shopping with your mother in Paris, on the Champs-Elysées?”

  “At prep school.”

  “You missed him.”

  “Yes, but glad he was away. I hated when he was home, when the family was together.”

  The psychiatrist leaned forward, aware they were coming to a crucial moment. “Can you tell me why?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know why?”

  Katie opened her eyes and nodded, her throat suddenly feeling clogged.

  “Close your eyes. Picture yourself in the water again.”

  Katie closed her eyes, feeling her lungs tighten in anticipation of the riptide.

  “Where is your brother?”

  “I . . . can’t see him.”

  “But he’s there.”

  “He went under. The tide’s got him.”

  “Someone’s holding him under, aren’t they?”

  Katie gnashed her teeth.

  “Someone’s drowning him.”

  “I want to help . . .”

  “But you can’t.”

  “I want to dive under the waves. I want to save him.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I’m not strong enough. I’m too scared. I’m too weak.”

  “Who’s holding him under the water?”

  “I’m too scared!”

  “Are they coming for you next?”

  “I’m too weak.”

  “Katie—”

  “No!”

  “Open your eyes, Katie, open your eyes.”

  She’d opened her eyes, left the psychiatrist’s office without another word, and never returned. How much she wanted to save her brother, how much she wanted to be strong enough . . .

  Katie hadn’t told the psychiatrist about the sounds she heard while he was drowning. Not cries for help, not desperate screams. Just murmurs, sobs, and muffled pleas. How could she hear them if he was trapped underwater?

  But she heard them again now, finally hitting Call and counting the rings. One . . . two . . . three . . .

  Katie tensed in anticipation of the fourth, the brief lag between the third ring and the one that would set off the explosives and ravage the Ocean Bore building proving interminable. Then it finally sounded and she tensed; even her breathing halted, flinching in anticipation of the Overnight Express truck exploding violently.

  Until the fifth ring sounded, then the sixth, seventh, and eighth that were followed by the clatter of footsteps behind her on the rooftop.

  CHAPTER 62

  Guangdong, China

  The Nagasaki Center’s security was no match for the forces of Aum Shinrikyo. Men fully prepared to die, who accepted if not embraced death, had been the hardest to kill from the time of the samurai. They wanted to see the end of the world, yes, but more importantly they wanted to help bring it about, and that was what tonight was all about.

  Shinzo Asahara’s second right hand began to tingle when he moved for the building, once his men had taken it. Strangely, the building bore little resemblance to the one he recalled from six years ago, looking as if it had been totally remodeled. Engulfed by his soldiers, Shinzo entered the elevator and descended toward the center’s laboratory level a dozen levels belowground. His heart was thudding, breathing starting to pick up. A layer of cool sweat brought a sheen to his face, and he suddenly found it difficult to swallow. This was where he had been remade; this was where the rest of his life’s course was determined for him. He thought he might pass out when the elevator doors finally opened and he emerged from the compartment onto the laboratory level.

  And froze.

  Because this, too, was unrecognizable, having been renovated and reconstructed since his fateful visit seven years before. Shinzo held a hand over his heart, as if to hold it inside his chest. The walk down the long, dully lit hallway passed with thoughts and memories clashing in his head, on the verge of surrendering to what felt like a panic attack when he finally reached the main laboratory and control room.

  Because of the inherent danger involved in its experiments into dark matter, the Nagasaki Center’s main lab had been forged out of heavy rock, shale, and a triple-thick layer of concrete for good measure covering the five immediate stories above. Once inside, Shinzo realized it bore no resemblance to what he recalled either, the lab having be
en utterly rebuilt from scratch.

  Something had happened, something had changed, and Shinzo saw a quartet of his Aum Shinrikyo commandos hovering over four scientists in lab coats. They were Yoshihiro Shibata, Kana Hosokawa, Hisanori Ito, and a younger man he didn’t recognize. Shibata had been the man in charge of the dark matter experiments on Shinzo’s last visit and, by the look of things, that much anyway hadn’t changed. But he had no recollection of the two-feet-thick glass walls that now ran the length of a much-expanded accelerator tunnel that stretched as far as the eye could see on the other side of the glass.

  Shibata saw him approaching and his eyes filled first with shock, then fear, and finally resignation. Asahara thought he may have even smiled ever so tightly.

  “I thought you’d be dead by now, Shinzo-san.”

  “As the Americans say, those reports have been greatly exaggerated.”

  “Let me see your hands.”

  Shinzo Asahara tugged off his mitten and showed both of them to him.

  Shibata’s smile widened almost smugly, his gaze focusing on what had once been Shinzo’s left hand. “I would imagine there’s no feeling, no sensation at all, even when you touch something.”

  “None.”

  “You have use of your fingers?”

  “Somewhat,” Shinzo said, clenching his second right hand as best he could, “although I can’t tell when I’m gripping something or not. It feels like someone else’s hand.”

  “Because it is, Shinzo-san, it is indeed. Not another man’s, but not yours either.”

  “Looks like you’ve enjoyed a very thorough upgrade in the time since. More funding from the Japanese and Chinese governments?”

  Shibata remained silent, spine tightening just enough to tell Asahara he’d struck a nerve.

  “From who then?”

  Shibata found the strength to meet Shinzo’s gaze. “You’re too late.”

  “For what?”

  “The experts you seek, the men who have worked virtually nonstop since our last visit, aren’t here. They were called away.”

  “To where?”

  “The airport to board a private plane. That’s all I know. I’ve had no contact with them since they were summoned weeks ago.”

  “Summoned?”

  “This a private facility now,” Shibata explained. “We are just glorified employees with walls full of diplomas and awards.”

  Asahara looked unconvinced.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Shibata insisted. “I have no reason to lie.”

  “You have every reason to lie when the man who should have killed you seven years ago is prepared to rectify that mistake.”

  “Then consider the price you paid for that visit.”

  Shinzo stepped back, spine straightening as he gazed about again before refocusing his attention on Shibata. His numb, tingly hand held before him. “What would exposure to dark matter do to an entire human body?”

  “I prefer not to think about that.”

  “Then perhaps we should experiment with you inside the particle accelerator.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “So calm in the face of death, Shibata?”

  “I’ve had plenty of practice. I’m dying, Shinzo-san. Inoperable brain cancer. Kill me now and all you accomplish is stealing six painful months from me.”

  Asahara looked to the younger men flanking Shibata, the one he didn’t know looking somehow vaguely familiar. “Then perhaps you’d like to join me in witnessing your younger associate here exposed to your accelerator.”

  Shibata’s face tightened in fear, and in that moment Asahara realized the source of the familiarity between the two men. He moved behind that younger man and clamped his good hand on his right shoulder.

  “Your son looks much like you, Shibata.”

  “Please, there’s nothing I can say that can help you!”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Asahara said, signaling his commandos to take the younger Shibata in tow.

  “What do you want?” his father pleaded.

  “Who called your scientists away? Who is this man you take your orders from now?”

  Shibata remained silent, looking down at the floor. Asahara nodded to his two commandos who instantly began dragging the man’s son toward the heavy steel doors that accessed the Nagasaki Center’s totally remodeled and expanded particle accelerator.

  “No, stop!” Shibata cried out.

  “Not until you tell me who you are beholden to now, Shibata.”

  “I-I-I am not to speak his name.”

  Asahara flashed his numb, second right hand before the man. “What do you think will happen when your son is exposed to the accelerator?”

  His commandos were almost to the heavy steel doors with the younger Shibata in their grasp.

  “Sebastian Roy!” his father screamed, and Shinzo Asahara looked back at him. “We all work for Sebastian Roy! The Nagasaki Center is his now!”

  “The energy tycoon?”

  Shibata nodded. “He took it over when the economy destroyed our other sources of funding!”

  “And he was the one who ordered your scientists away?”

  “Not my scientists anymore, Shinzo-san. His scientists.”

  “Tell me where they were sent!”

  “I don’t know, I swear it! I only fielded the call, relayed the instructions from Roy himself. The men were taken to a private airstrip. But I have no idea where their plane was headed. That’s all I know!”

  But Asahara wasn’t listening to him anymore. Someone else, the energy tycoon Sebastian Roy, must be after the dark matter as well. And, in point of fact, had located a potential source of it strong enough to call for an army of scientists to be dispatched somewhere.

  “You must believe me!” Shibata was pleading.

  “Oh, I do, Shibata, I do.”

  Shibata seemed to breathe easier. “Then my son, you will release him. . . .”

  Asahara glanced at his commandos holding the younger Shibata, flaccid and weak-kneed, between them before the steel door. “No, Shibata, I don’t think I will. I want to see what the accelerator will do to an entire body.”

  He nodded to his men, then turned back to Shibata, starting to tug his mitten off.

  “You see, I already know what it can do to a single limb.”

  CHAPTER 63

  Houston

  Katie lunged to her feet and twisted to flee, managing to scamper only a few strides before McCracken tackled her to the gravel-laden rooftop. She looked down at the cell phone that felt warm in her hand.

  “Looks a lot like this one,” McCracken told her, lifting the matching one she’d wired as a detonator from his pocket, still holding fast to her with his good arm. “And you’ve already done enough running for one lifetime, young lady.”

  She struggled futilely in his grasp. “You don’t know anything about my life!”

  “I know you’re a murderer and a terrorist. What I don’t know is why. Because some monsters are born and some are made.” McCracken released his hold on her. “You were made.”

  Katie back-crawled, putting more distance between them. “You’re letting me go?”

  “Depends how much you tell me about why you’re doing this. It’s not for you and has nothing to do with the environment. That much I know, which means there’s something lots more important I don’t.”

  “Take a guess, Superman.”

  “How about revenge? That usually works.”

  Katie didn’t bother denying it. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”

  McCracken shrugged. “It’s written in your eyes.”

  “So what now, you arrest me, something like that?”

  “Something,” was all McCracken said.

  Katie tried to look away from him, but failed. Enough of the light shed from the complex’s exterior lighting reached them to frame McCracken’s face with the same intensity Katie recalled from the car when he’d rescued her and then in New Orleans in the battle against the ro
bots before she’d escaped. He never seemed to lose that intensity, that focus, his switch perpetually in the on position. His thick hair looked too long for his age, yet the way the light touched his face made him seem younger.

  “How did you know I’d be here?”

  “Revenge, remember? That made your next target pretty obvious under the circumstances.”

  “And what circumstances might those be?”

  “One: you had every reason to believe Ocean Bore was behind the men who were after you and the kill team that wiped out your friends in Greenland.”

  McCracken watched Katie stiffen, a pallor falling over her expression. “You finally checked out Greenland.”

  “You were right—a massacre in all respects. We’re talking professional all the way, meaning men who’d done this kind of thing before. Lots of times. And you think Ocean Bore sent them, young lady.”

  “I know Ocean Bore sent them. And don’t call me that.”

  “Then tell me your real name.”

  “I’d rather you just stick with ‘Katie’; I like to be on a first-name basis with all the superheroes I get to know.”

  McCracken bristled slightly. “All the heroes I know are dead.”

  “That’s because they weren’t as super as you and that Indian friend of yours.” Katie looked around. “Speaking of whom, where is he?”

  “Out and about, making sure you came alone.”

  “All my friends are dead too, remember?”

  McCracken responded by rising and starting to walk off, gesturing for her to follow. “Come on.”

  “Where we going?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I’m still waiting for you to explain the connection to me.”

  “What connection?”

  “Between all the targets you’ve hit. What makes this personal for you.”

  Katie fought to remain calm. For a moment, just that moment, she felt as if she was back in the psychiatrist’s office being confronted with truths she didn’t want to see.

  “There’s no need to tell you something you’ve already figured out on your own,” she said finally.

  “Point taken,” McCracken conceded. “Roy Industries owns all the companies you’ve hit.”

  “Very good.”

  “Not really. That’s only part of the story. I haven’t figured out the why yet, where the personal part comes in.”