She saw people. Small groups of them gathered in huddles around the room. Some appeared to be self-segregated by race. Others lay on cots like hers, staring at the ceiling—also stone. The space was about the size of her junior high cafeteria, before the reservation was destroyed.
A persistent pain in her hip drew her attention. She lifted up her shirt and saw the insulin pump attached to her waistband. She turned it up, looking at its digital display, which showed her glucose levels, battery life, and insulin supply. All was good.
“What is that?” Elma asked.
“Insulin pump. I’m diabetic.”
“That can be hard, especially on one so young. But I wouldn’t worry about it,” Elma said. “Those of us with medical needs have been taken care of. I’m sure you will be as well.”
“I’ll be fine for a few more days, anyway,” Fiona said. To prove it, she stood. When she did, a fresh wave of nausea struck. She stumbled and was caught by Elma.
“Slow down, child, you’ll—”
Fiona yanked her arm away. “Let me do this,” she said, her little voice almost a growl. “I can do this.” Driven by a deep desire to be strong like King, she did what she’d seen him do after taking a hard hit or running a long distance. Hands on knees, head between legs, and long, deep breaths. She finished with a deep grunt and stood. She felt stronger, but still dizzy. Though she didn’t let Elma see that. Rook told her that when they were on a mission they had to swallow pain and discomfort to get things done. He made it sound easy.
It wasn’t.
But Fiona had Elma convinced as she stood up straight and rolled her little neck. When she opened her eyes again, the woman had taken a step back with a hand to her mouth. “Child, you may be the toughest person here.”
The statement helped Fiona stand still as her body threatened to buckle over and wretch. She swallowed, knowing that Rook had meant pain-swallowing as a metaphor, and forced a cocky King-style smile. “Just trying to take after my dad.”
Elma’s eyes were wide. “And … who is your father?”
“You can ask him when he—” Fiona lurched forward and vomited at the base of her cot. After three heaves and a coughing fit, she spit the remaining bile from her mouth and stood with tears in her eyes. Elma stepped forward and held her. Fiona melted into her hug. “Not as tough as you thought.”
“Nonsense,” Elma said, brushing a hand over Fiona’s straight black hair. “Some of these people did not stop crying for days. Some still cry.”
Fiona looked up at her. “How long have you been here?”
“Three months.” She motioned to the groups around the room, some of whom were looking their way. “Others are new arrivals like you. The longest have been here for a year.”
Fiona slumped in Elma’s embrace, horrified. “A year.”
“We are well cared for,” Elma said, her voice suddenly hopeful. “Look there,” she said, pointing to a door at the far end of the room that Fiona had missed during her dizzy turnabout. “We’re fed three times a day. And the food isn’t bad.” She pointed to the other end of the room where several hanging sheets divided the space. “There is a toilet with working plumbing, and a shower with drainage there. The water is cold, but it is nice to be clean. Even the lighting was carefully chosen.”
Fiona looked up at the string of lights hanging from the ceiling, spaced out every ten feet in a grid from one end to the other.
“The bulbs mimic sunlight and reduce the effect of not getting outside. It’s no replacement, but it’s better than regular bulbs.”
“Then why are we here?”
Elma shrugged. “We do not know. But it is clear our captors mean us no harm.”
“Yet…” Fiona added.
Elma grimaced and then nodded. “Yes. Yet. We are supplied with games, water, reading material, and medical supplies should the need arise.”
With her emotions reined in by the conversation and her body returning to normal, Fiona stepped away and stood on her own. “Who brings the supplies? The food?”
“We do not see who brings the food,” said a tall, skinny black man. “They come when it is dark. At night. When they shut off the lights. We cannot see them. But we hear them.”
“Buru,” Elma scolded. “Don’t frighten the girl.”
“She will be less frightened if she knows what to expect.” He turned to Fiona. “Who do you think deposited you here during the night? None of us saw you arrive. We woke, and there you were.”
Elma muttered some exasperated Italian and said, “She has only just arrived!”
When Elma threw her arms up, a black symbol could be seen on the back of her hand. It was small, about the size of a quarter, but Fiona recognized it instantly. She stepped away from Elma.
Elma’s hands stopped in midair. She’d noticed Fiona’s fear and followed the girl’s eyes to the symbol on her hand—a circle with two vertical lines through it. “What is it, child?”
Fiona just stared, her mind putting together pieces faster than she knew how to react.
“It’s a brand of a sort,” Elma said, lowering her hand and holding it out.
Buru showed her his hand. Though less visible on his dark skin, the symbol was there. “All of us have one.” He pointed to her right hand. “Even you.”
Fiona looked at her hand, the dark symbol fresh and shining like a cancer. She tried rubbing it off, but it did not smudge or dull. Tattoos, she thought, and then realized their purpose. She had helped her grandmother tag goats on the reservation once. Hated every second. But the experience was etched into her mind, impossible to forget. The tags showed ownership. And she was the only one here who knew the name of their shepherd.
Alexander Diotrephes.
And the knowledge gave her strength.
Rubbing the tattoo with her thumb, she turned to Buru. “They only enter in the dark?”
He nodded, perplexed that the little girl would return to the topic. “There is a dim light from the hallway beyond the door, but that is all.”
“Have you seen one?”
Buru looked at Elma, who threw her hands up, and walked away while shaking her head and muttering in Italian.
“Only shadows,” Buru said. “But others have seen them.”
“Dark cloaks and gray skin?”
Elma stopped and turned around slowly. Her eyes wide.
Buru was likewise stunned. “You know of these things?”
Fiona sifted through a year’s worth of Chess Team education she got on top of her regular school studies. “My father called them wraiths but that’s a misnomer because ‘wraith’ is a Scottish word for ghosts … and these are not Scottish. And they’re not ghosts.”
“What are they?” Buru asked.
She shrugged. “I dunno, but I can tell you two things for sure. First, we won’t be escaping without help. Second, help is on the way.”
Buru looked incredulous, like he’d just remembered he was speaking to a young girl. “How do you know this?”
She looked at Elma, trying her best to sound confident, to believe that King, her father, would scour the earth for her, and said, “I never did tell you who my father is.”
NINETEEN
Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina
KING RESTED HIS elbows on the table and tried the word on for size. “Golem.” He didn’t like it. “As in the legendary Jewish variety?”
“You know it?” Aleman asked.
“Just the basics,” King said. “That they’re figures, most often created from clay and brought to life when a rabbi places a piece of paper in its mouth with the word ‘Emet,’ truth, written on it. Sometimes the word is inscribed on the golem’s body instead. To destroy the golem the ‘E’ is erased, leaving the word ‘Met,’ death.” King looked up at Aleman, who was typing away on his laptop as he listened. “You know how stupid this sounds?”
“You’ve seen Hydra reborn and Neanderthal women wanting to mate with Rook. This kind of thing should no longer be strange. What
else do we know?”
King sat back and focused. They had covered the golem briefly during their year of study, along with a slew of other myths representing the world’s cultures and religions. Visualizing what he knew of the golem, images began to fill in the missing gaps.
“The most popular golem story involved a rabbi in Prague. In the 1500s. He used a golem to defend his ghetto against anti-Semitic attacks. The golem grew violent. Killed slews of people. Non-Jews. And the persecution was stopped.”
“Are they intelligent?” Aleman asked.
“No,” King said. “They can’t act without instructions from the rabbi who gives them life. They can’t talk. I suppose they have a limited intelligence in that they can understand commands and carry them out, but maybe that’s just the creator’s thoughts and feelings being imprinted on the golem?”
Aleman looked up slowly.
“What?” King asked.
“Just impressed is all. I don’t think you would have said that a year ago.”
“That’s nice, but none of it tells me who to shoot. Any idea?”
Aleman shrugged. “Beats me. But if inanimate objects really are being brought to life, maybe someone figured out how to tap into some kind of ancient creative power. God. Aliens. Intelligent capybara from another dimension. I’m leaving all the cards on the table.”
King opened his hands. “Okay, fine. We’ll call them golems for now, but that doesn’t get us any closer to finding Fiona, which is why I’m still here. Tell me what happened again. How she was taken.”
Aleman pursed his lips, looking down at the empty table. “The thing … the golem … was charging us. A man in black special ops gear, who I thought was you until he latched onto its head and drove what had to be a ton of stone into the pavement. As my vision faded I saw two things, black shapes attack the downed golem. I couldn’t see the man’s face, but he had a deep voice and said you would know who he was.”
“And we do. But he could be anywhere in the world.” King shook his head in frustration. “He didn’t say anything else?”
“Something … maybe … something about a promise.” Aleman looked up as the memory returned. “Breaking a promise. He said, ‘I hope he appreciates me breaking my promise.’”
“Breaking his promise?”
“Did he promise you anything?”
King’s head moved slowly from side to side. “Nothing.”
Aleman quickly scoured everything he could find about Hercules, searching for the keyword “promise.” He found nothing. “There’s no mention about a promise anywhere in literature or online. If he was dropping a hint, it’s not something publicly known.”
“Then it would have to be personal,” King said. “But I never met the man.”
“Queen and Rook did,” Aleman added.
“Can you search their reports?” The team kept detailed reports of all missions including every action taken, why, and, to the best of their ability, what was said. The process was long and they often ended up with novelettes by the time they were done, but many missions overlapped and what was at the time a minor detail could become important in the future.
Aleman’s response was to begin typing. Thirty seconds later, “Bingo! Queen’s report has him saying, ‘I long ago promised someone I loved that I would refrain from getting directly involved in the world’s problems.’ The context was his refusal to get physically involved in the Hydra mission.”
“But he’s getting involved now.”
“And breaking that promise … to who…” King pounded the table with his fist, but not in anger, in victory. “Acca Larentia.”
Aleman wasn’t used to being the one asking questions. He was typically on the delivering end of strange or pertinent information. “Who?”
“Acca Larentia. She was Hercules’s mistress, said to have been won in a game of dice and later, when he was done with her, married to an Etruscan man named Carutius, whose property she inherited when he died. The property later became known as Rome.”
King’s thoughts shifted, knowing that history, especially when it concerned Hercules, could not be trusted. Over the past several thousand years, his secret organization, the Herculean Society, had systematically altered history by either erasing Hercules’s influence and existence altogether, or heaping on legend to make it unbelievable. The truth that no one knew was that Hercules was more genius than a god-man, and had extended his life through genetic tinkering and boosted his physical prowess, when needed, by consuming adrenaline-boosting concoctions. Immortal, yes. A god, no.
He stood and paced, his energy building as the pieces began coming together. “I’m willing to bet that Hercules was also Carutius, now Alexander Diotrephes. And I think we can safely assume he’s had many names in between. If he was married to Acca, then the promise he made might have been to her.”
He turned to Aleman. “Are there any monuments to her?”
After working the keyboard, Aleman said, “Not a one.”
King frowned, thinking of the fear that Fiona must be feeling and loathing the absolute helplessness he felt. Never before in his life had he felt so powerless. So vulnerable.
“Hold on,” Aleman said. “She was supposedly buried in the Velabrum, between the Palatine and Capitoline hills in Rome. It was once a swampy area, but it’s now covered by the ruins of Foro Romano—the Roman Forum.”
“It fits,” King said. “His last hiding place had been beneath the Rock of Gibraltar, one of the two pillars of Hercules. If the Herculean Society is dedicated to protecting the historical Hercules, it would make sense to set up shop at his most prized locations, especially one housing the body of his one, and only, love in twenty-five hundred years.”
He opened his cell phone and dialed. A moment later he said, “Bring my ride around. Yes. Rome.” He hung up and dialed again, waiting for the other end to pick up. When it did, he got an answering machine. “It’s Jack. I’m on my way to Rome and I need your help. ETA fives hours. Thanks, George.”
No one knew Rome or Hercules better than George Pierce, the man whose inquiries made him a target of the Herculean Society’s cloaked thieves and, later, the mysterious wraiths. He wasn’t sure if Pierce would want to help, but knew he would. King made a mental note to tell Pierce about his mother not being dead and headed for the door as the roar of a two-seat F/A-18 Hornet filled the hangar bay, signifying the arrival of his ride.
“King,” Aleman said, stopping him in the doorway. “About the golems. If that’s what they are, and they are mindless, keep in mind that you’re not just up against dumb hulking rocks. Someone smart is behind this. And they have an agenda that is beyond us. Beyond Fiona.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said, but only made it one more step before Aleman stopped him again.
“I’m not sure you will, King. Not this time. Because the last three attacks happened on three different continents at the exact same time. Whoever is behind this is not alone, and has amazing resources.”
King looked back. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying that Hercules may not have meant us to figure out where he was. And if you’re right, and find him beneath Rome, he might not be happy to see you.”
“I’m going to make damn sure he’s not happy. We might be named for chess pieces, but he’s done moving us on the game board.”
* * *
THE ROAR OF the F/A-18 hit him like a pressure wave as he left Decon and entered the hangar. He held an index finger up to the waiting pilot, who nodded in response as he brought the jet to a stop and killed the engines. King approached his parents, who had been sitting in metal folding chairs on the opposite side of the hangar. His mother looked worried as she sat with her hands over her ears. His father looked positively thrilled by the presence of the jet.
Peter held his hands out toward the jet and spoke to King. “You know, if this was a MiG I could fly you wherever you’re going myself.”
King stopped, looking at his father with a
quizzical expression. He really knew nothing about his parents. In many ways they were strangers to him, and small things, like the creases around his father’s eyes that had once given away his jests, now said nothing.
Peter waved at him. “I’m kidding, Jack.”
“Right,” King said, but he still wasn’t sure if the man was joking or not. His parents had been spies. His mother shot a man. That one, or both of them, could pilot a jet at this point wouldn’t be too shocking.
Lynn placed her hand on King’s back and rubbed hard, the way he had liked as a child when sitting through a boring event. “Honey,” she said, standing in front of him. She took his cheek and pulled his face down, while glancing at the jet. “Are you someone important?”
King couldn’t help but smile. For all the secrets his parents had, he had just as many. Whatever documents his mother had seen, most likely an I.D. or message from one of the team, wouldn’t have given away exactly what it was he did. They knew as little about him as he did about them.
But they were family.
King hugged his mother. “The things I do … no one will ever know about them. I’m no one, Mom.”
“You’re a father,” she said.
“Foster parent,” he corrected, leaving his mother’s embrace and standing up straight. “And not a very good one.”
“Bullshit,” Peter said. “Where you’re going, is it dangerous?”
“Yes,” King said, not wanting to lie to his parents and realizing his father wasn’t asking for important details.
“You could get killed?”
“Yes, Dad.”
King could see worry creeping into his mother’s eyes and didn’t want her to break down in tears.
“And you’re doing this for your daughter?”
King thought about the question. It was his job to put his life on the line for all Americans. He did it all the time. But this was different. This was personal. It was for Fiona. “Yes.”
“Son, there is no greater love than a father who is willing to lay down his life for his children.” He took King’s shoulders in his hands. “Do you understand?”
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