Century #4: Dragon of Seas

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  Harvey carefully keeps the door propped open with his foot. Then he leans out and whistles.

  Three times.

  He lets a minute go by and whistles again.

  The pipes belch out hot steam. They hum, puff, hiss. Underground machinery lets out echoed thuds.

  Suddenly, he spots a shadow passing over the grate ten meters overhead.

  Harvey hides in the passageway, holding the door open a crack. The shadow slides under the grate, clips a snap hook to one of the metal cables running along the pipes and dangles in the void.

  Harvey opens the door a little wider.

  The shadow begins to slide down, the thick, heavy soles of his boots letting off sparks. When he’s less than a meter away from the cage, he unclips himself and crouches down beside Harvey.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  The boy nods.

  “Think you can handle going back up there?” The shadow looks at the passageway leading to the service stairs. He’s brought along the violin case.

  Again, Harvey nods. “We need to go up to the top floor of the building.”

  “It’s not the top floor,” Jacob Mahler corrects him, slipping into the passageway.

  IN THE NINTH-STORY APARTMENT ON THE CORNER OF LUJIAZUI Park, Elettra, Mistral, Ermete and Sheng have no idea what to do.

  Mistral sends her mother a message saying everything is fine, no need to worry. “In any case, we can’t stay here,” she murmurs.

  “Mahler told us to leave within two hours.”

  “And to push the red button.”

  They look apprehensively at the tangle of wires on the floor.

  “The red button and … boom!” Ermete mimes, holding up some wires attached to a black box that’s been leaned up against the wall.

  Elettra paces the room. “I’m going after them,” she says.

  “Where?”

  “The skyscraper.”

  “And do what, once you get there? Ask for permission to go inside? ‘Hello, my name is Elettra. Is Mr. Devil here? Check your list. I should have an appointment.’ ”

  “Harvey’s in there.”

  “He went there on purpose. They had a plan,” Mistral says.

  “Did they let any of you in on it?” Ermete asks. “Or did the two of them make an agreement without telling us anything?”

  They all shake their heads.

  Elettra pounds her fist on the table. “Why didn’t he warn us?”

  “Because we wouldn’t have let him get captured just so he could get our things back.”

  Ermete nods vigorously. “Nice idea, though. If Harvey and Jacob’s plan works, we’ll have the tops and everything else back,” he says. Then, while the kids are talking things over, he takes out the ancient map of the Chaldeans and rests it on the table. On the outside, it looks like a box covered with initials and signatures carved in the wood. Once it’s open, it reveals its surface, marked with whorls and grooves, like deep fingerprints. One of its four corners is missing. “I say we try using the map,” the engineer suggests, scratching his head, which is almost completely bald.

  “But Harvey isn’t here,” Elettra points out.

  “Let’s try it anyway,” Ermete insists.

  “But what map do we put on top of it?” Mistral asks.

  Sheng takes the Shanghai tourist map and spreads it out on the ancient wooden artifact. Then he reaches into the backpack, finds the last top they have left and puts it on the table. “Who’s going to cast it?”

  Indecision.

  “I’ll do it, then,” Sheng decides after a moment.

  He grabs the top, rests it on the center of the map and flicks it between his fingers. The oracle of the heart begins to whirl around, running along the ancient lines carved in the wood. It races through the area with the skyscrapers, crosses the river near the tourist ferries and heads toward the English Bund, the French Concession and veers off to the streets that border the Old City, the most ancient area of Shanghai.

  “Good top,” Sheng says when it comes to a halt on a small rectangle surrounded by a jumble of narrow streets. At that spot is one of the red circles Sheng and Ermete drew during their search for the city’s oldest buildings.

  “What is that place?” Ermete asks.

  “These green parts are the Yuyuan Garden,” Sheng says, picking up the top. “And this little square here inside the garden is Huxinting, the mid-lake pavilion. It’s the city’s oldest teahouse.”

  “How old?” the engineer asks.

  “A couple centuries, I think.” Sheng concentrates, trying to recall what he learned in school. “From what I remember, the gardens were built by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty somewhere around the seventeen hundreds. Then, a century later, the place was turned into a restaurant by a group of cotton traders, and it stayed that way.”

  Elettra snatches up the top and casts it. “The problem is that every time you use it, the top stops in a different place,” she says, remembering her attempts to find her aunt.

  The top starts whirling around again. It quickly leaves the Old City and slows down near the skyscrapers in Pudong. It stops right on top of the black glass skyscraper where Jacob Mahler and Harvey are.

  “Could it be,” the French girl murmurs, “that the heart top simply follows the heart of the person who casts it?”

  Two ghosts are climbing the service stairs in the Century Park skyscraper. They move without making a sound. The first one has gray hair and is carrying a violin case. The second, in jeans and a sweater, has the steady pace and breathing of a trained athlete.

  They don’t say a word during the whole climb. Sixty-three floors. Forty-two steps between one floor and the next. Two thousand, six hundred and forty-six steps in all. A climb that could paralyze anyone’s legs.

  But not Jacob Mahler’s.

  And not Harvey Miller’s.

  On the second-to-top floor, the stairs end. The killer stops beside a small, white door. Harvey is panting and his thigh muscles are burning.

  Jacob punches a code into the keypad. It’s a different code, much longer than the others.

  “I just hope that over the last few months,” he whispers, “he hasn’t changed it.”

  Once he’s punched in the last of the twenty-three digits, the door opens with a whoosh. Behind Jacob, Harvey heaves a sigh of relief.

  No one’s in the office. It’s dark. Rain begins to fall, ticking against the windowpanes.

  Jacob Mahler strides over to the desk. He seems calm, as if he’s certain there’s no form of surveillance in the room.

  And no imminent danger.

  With amazing swiftness, he slips all the objects on the desk into Harvey’s backpack and says, “Go on, get going.”

  Harvey is stunned. He figured they would leave together.

  “What about you?”

  “I need to wait for an old friend.” Mahler smiles.

  Harvey slips his backpack onto his shoulders. “Thanks, Jacob.”

  The killer doesn’t reply. He doesn’t smile. He appears to be at a loss for words. No one has ever said thank you to him before.

  “Take the gold elevator, if you want,” he says quietly. “It isn’t on the building’s surveillance system. Stop on the first floor, go down half a flight of stairs and climb up to the grate you saw me come down through. You’ll end up in a square courtyard. When the searchlights cross each other in the middle, count to fifteen. Then run across it. They won’t spot you. Go up the stairs and open the gate to Century Park. Two private guards were there, but I took care of them.”

  Harvey walks over to Heremit Devil’s private elevator. He presses the gold call button, waits a few seconds, and the door opens.

  Trickles of water streak the windows.

  “See you around,” he says, disappearing.

  Inside the office, Mahler holds up his hand.

  The window of the ninth-story apartment in Lujiazui Park is also streaked with tears.

  “Rain,” Sheng says. “Just what
we needed.”

  He rests his palm against the glass and follows the trickles of water, which branch off around his fingers. What the others are saying is muffled, distant to his ears. He’s so tired that he could fall asleep right there, standing, his hand pressed against the glass. If only he wasn’t afraid of dreaming about that freaking island again. And all that water.

  He shuts his eyes and opens them again when he hears Ermete shout, “We gotta go, Sheng!”

  The boy blinks, trying to snap out of it. He’s cold. And the instant he realizes it, it’s as though the entire room becomes a massive slab of ice. Outside, he sees the city lights distorted by the rain. Circles of streetlamps, glistening asphalt, clusters of dark leaves. The front steps look like the white keys on a piano.

  Someone’s there on the steps. Someone peering up.

  Sheng jerks his hand away from the glass as if it was scorching hot.

  On the rain-drenched steps is the boy in the number 89 jersey. Who’s staring at the window.

  A rustle, and Mistral is standing next to Sheng. “Sheng, we need to go. Hey, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s that boy again.”

  “What boy?”

  “He’s down on the steps, staring at me.”

  Mistral smiles sheepishly. Then she gives a frightened start. “Sheng!” she cries. “Your eyes are yellow again!”

  Heremit Devil’s gold elevator plunges to the first floor. The yellow numbers flash by one after the other in a furious countdown. Harvey gulps, scared despite himself. He’s huddled up in the corner opposite the door, watching the numbers plummet.

  The elevator descends as if it was screaming.

  Or maybe something inside his head is screaming. That strange call he heard in Heremit’s office. He squeezes back into the corner even harder, shivering from the sudden cold. And the farther down the elevator goes, the more he feels the temperature drop.

  And the farther down it goes, Harvey thinks, the louder I hear it.…

  First floor. The door opens.

  A call.

  Harvey staggers over the threshold.

  It isn’t exactly a call. It’s a voice.

  Harvey … Harvey … Please … come here … come here.…

  In the hallway, he sees the blinking light of the surveillance camera in the corner. Once again, he has forty seconds to reach the service stairs, go down half a flight, punch in the code and get out of there.

  But that call … So clear, so close, so insistent. Like the one Harvey hears whenever he passes by Ground Zero in New York. Like the voices from the subway that led him into the maze of roots: voices from the Earth.

  They’re calling him.

  Forty seconds, Harvey thinks, and I’ll be out of this building.

  He hesitates and stares at the elevator’s gold panel. Below, there’s another floor.

  The call is coming from belowground.

  It’s the Earth asking him to go down there.

  Harvey steps back into the elevator and pushes the last button.

  He huddles in the corner opposite the door.

  The elevator goes down a floor.

  And then another.

  It’s cold.

  Heremit Devil wakes up with a start.

  He touches his cheeks and finds they’re damp. He gropes for the light switch on the bedside table and flicks it. He looks around. The tiny bed he sleeps in is unwrinkled, as if he hasn’t been lying on it. The door to the stairs that lead up to his old office on the top floor is closed. As is the door to the hallway and the bathroom.

  Everything is in order. Everything is just as it should be.

  He was dreaming. Once again, he was just dreaming.

  The park. The playground. The trees.

  The excavation site. The top. And then …

  He was only dreaming.

  Even still, he can barely breathe. The small, square window is streaked with rain.

  It was raining that day, too, Heremit Devil thinks.

  That blasted day.

  He isn’t tired anymore. In a matter of a few hours it’ll be morning. Nik Knife will have taken care of Mademoiselle Cybel. And the kids will have arrived, too.

  Ah, yes. All four of the kids.

  Including the one from Shanghai.

  Then he’ll understand.

  Of course.

  Suddenly, everything will be clear.

  Heremit Devil gets up, puts on a dressing gown, steps into the bathroom to rinse his face with mineralized water, opens the little door leading into the long hallway covered with drawings and inscriptions in a childish hand, and reaches his office, the room where he’s spent most of his life. At least since that blasted day when he decided never again to step foot on the top floor.

  Standing in the doorway, the man realizes at once that someone has been in the room. He smells their scent even before he notices that nothing is left on his desk.

  The rain grows stronger.

  “Hello, Heremit,” an emotionless voice says. A violin bow glimmers in the darkness. “Did you get a good last night of sleep?”

  Inside the apartment on the corner of Lujiazui Park, a cell phone rings. Elettra’s cell phone.

  Sheng pulls himself away from the window and staggers toward the door. His eyes are yellow.

  He covers them with his hand. They don’t ache. And he’s seeing normally. So what’s the anomaly?

  Elettra’s cell phone continues to ring, but no one answers it.

  With every step, Sheng feels like he’s passing out. Or swimming in a sea of dark water.

  “I don’t feel very good,” he murmurs.

  “Sit down here,” someone says. Mistral, maybe. “You need to get some sleep.”

  Yes, it’s Mistral beside him. She’s beautiful.

  “You don’t see anyone on the steps, do you?” Sheng asks her.

  The girl shakes her head.

  “And you didn’t see the museum guard at the Louvre, either, right?”

  “Sheng …” Mistral rests her hand on his shoulder.

  He squeezes it. “I love you,” he says, smiling. And the instant he says it, something grips him inside. A pang of fear. The fear of being rejected. Of being wrong, out of place. Of being useless.

  Elettra’s cell phone is still ringing. Sheng lets go of Mistral’s hand. “But he’s there! He exists!” he shouts, exasperated. “I’m not crazy!”

  Driven by sudden rage, he bolts to his feet and runs over to the apartment door. He throws it open and leaves before the others can stop him.

  “Sheng!” someone calls out. Mistral, maybe.

  But he’s already running down the stairs.

  Elettra’s finally found her phone.

  She answers it. “Harvey? Where are you?”

  “I went downstairs, Elettra.”

  “Downstairs where? Are you okay?”

  “I’m downstairs, below the skyscraper. You wouldn’t understand … and I don’t have time to explain. The line’s breaking up.”

  “What are you still doing there? Get out!”

  “Let me talk! I followed the voices, okay? They made me come down here so I could warn you guys. It’s all here! But you need to leave, and fast!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Heremit Devil had them excavate below the building,” Harvey says. “There’s a big pit. There are pipes … lights. A stairway leading down. There are statues, an ancient wall and that … that wooden thing.”

  “What wooden thing?”

  “I don’t know yet. It looks like … a monster. That’s where the call was coming from. It told me to go see—”

  “Harvey? Who was calling you?”

  “The whole room, Elettra. Below the building’s foundations. I didn’t understand it. At first I thought it was just a voice, but then—”

  “Harvey!”

  “I really want to see you.”

  “So do I! I’m coming to get you!”

  “No! Leave! You have to … you have
to tell the others to leave town! There’s no point looking for anything in Shanghai! He’s already found it! Now I’m getting out of here and—”

  A bang. And Harvey’s voice goes silent.

  “Harvey, what’s happening?”

  Silence.

  Static.

  Elettra presses the phone to her ear, listening carefully. The line breaks up. Then Harvey’s voice again. He’s panting. “I need to move, Elettra. Someone came downstairs. I’m going to try—hide. I don’t know if I’ll be able to call you again.”

  “Har—”

  “Leave town, right away!—no point—”

  Static. Harvey panting.

  “Someone came out of the elevator.… Nine Fingers … Elettra!”

  Another bang, this time louder.

  Then nothing.

  In the apartment, the door is still open.

  They hear Sheng’s footsteps on the stairs.

  Mistral is in the doorway, calling to him.

  Elettra throws her phone on the ground. “No! Harvey! No!”

  “Hey!” Ermete exclaims. “Would you mind explaining what—”

  “This can’t be happening!” Elettra shouts, running to the door.

  Mistral grabs her arm and holds her back. “Wait! Where are you going?”

  She breaks free. “I’m going to save my boyfriend!”

  “Hey!” Ermete cuts in, this time more determined. “Hold it! Are you out of your mind?”

  But the Italian girl’s eyes are shooting flames. The signal lamp in the middle of the room suddenly switches on.

  “Elettra! Calm down, okay?” Ermete says, knowing where this is leading.

  Elettra’s gaze is fixed on Mistral.

  “I’m going with you,” the French girl says, although her friend hasn’t asked her anything.

  “Hey!” Ermete says for the third time, seeing that he’s been left all alone. “Oh, these kids with powers … They’re unbearable!”

  He picks up everything he can from the table and rushes out, slamming the door behind him.

  Then he opens it, presses the red button and shuts it again.

  THE HOTEL IS SMALL BUT COMFORTABLE. IRENE AND THE GYPSY woman look around, thinking different things. To Irene, it’s a temporary accommodation, fine for one night. For the gypsy woman, on the other hand, it’s the first time in years that she’ll be sleeping in a real bed. She steps into the bathroom, turns on the shower and stands there staring at the running water.