She glanced up, inspiration striking.
Alyssa forced her legs to pump even faster. The man at the far end of the aisle braced himself, a cold smile on his face, as if welcoming the challenge.
In mid-stride, Alyssa launched to the bottom shelf with her left foot, then to the next higher shelf across the narrow aisle with her right. The man’s smile wilted into an expression of bewilderment as she bounced between the shelves, climbing higher with every stride until she reached the top. The short man jumped after her, but his hand found only air.
Alyssa balanced on the top of the huge bookshelf. She spotted the tall doors to the outside.
The terrace!
She jumped to the neighboring bookshelf then the next, leaping across the aisles, chased by the curses of her pursuers as they doubled back in the aisle. She jumped from the last bookshelf onto a table and rolled to the floor. As she gained her feet, a hand clamped around her throat.
“That will be quite enough,” the voice of a third man rasped into her ear, the Eastern European accent turning his w into a v.
The thud behind her came without warning. The man slumped to the floor. She spun.
“Knowledge is power, yes?” Konrad said, grinning, holding a massive book. “Now, go!”
Konrad’s grin twisted. The flinty-eyed man appeared behind him, a bloody knife in his hand. Konrad sagged, his gaze locked on Alyssa.
The images popped into her head unbidden, flashing across her vision.
The attacker’s blade sinks into my beloved’s chest.
She slumps to her knees, the crimson stain growing larger.
Alyssa’s senses sharpened. The breathing of the second man behind her gave him away. She dropped into a crouch and twisted, keeping one leg extended, sweeping his feet from under him. He yelped and tumbled to the ground, his head cracking into the slate floor.
Flinty-eyes charged her with the knife, his face warped in a snarl. She stepped aside and spun behind him. She drove the side of her foot behind his knee then grabbed his hair and yanked him to the ground, trapping his legs beneath him. She crushed his knife hand under her right foot. Her heart pounded in her ears as adrenaline surged through her body.
The sound of alarms fills my head.
Hathor.
Imset…
She dropped and drove her left shin into his throat. He wheezed, eyes bulging.
You took my son from me!
He flailed, trying to break her crushing hold, but Alyssa didn’t relent her pressure. The man’s movements turned more desperate then slowed.
A voice broke through her red haze. “Stop!” Alyssa faced the source, panting.
The security guard rushed up the wide stairs.
She bounced up.
The man on the ground gasped, sucking in great gulps of air, his face aghast with fear.
“Stop!” the guard yelled again.
She took off across the hall. The guard tried to block the stairs, but she leaped on a table and onto the stone balustrade between the mezzanine level and the lobby. She sped along the railing and through the tall door onto the terrace. She jumped over the railing and crashed onto the roof of her SUV, rolling down the windshield and the hood.
Alyssa dove inside and started the car. She threw it in gear and peeled out of the parking spot. Breathless, she slung the car onto the river walk and accelerated hard, swerving before the rear tires gained traction. She kept driving, her brain on autopilot, eyes darting to the rearview mirror, until she was sure nobody had followed her.
She pulled into a deserted parking lot and stopped.
Alyssa sat with her hands locked tight around the wheel, staring dead ahead, her breathing growing heavier. Her vision blurred. She didn’t realize she’d been crying until she felt the sweatshirt pasted against her chest. The trembling came unsought, welling up from deep inside, as buried memories threatened to claw their way to the surface.
She covered her head with her hands, struggling to keep her composure. Slowly, the daze cleared, and the trembling stopped, allowing her to gather her thoughts. Alyssa inhaled deeply then pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the expressway.
Dr. Yuri Korzo pushed the thick glasses up the bridge of his nose and leaned closer to the display of the high-throughput DNA sequencer. A bead of sweat rolled down his right temple and clung to his jaw for a second before dropping to the workbench below.
He wiped it off, absentmindedly, his gloved finger leaving a wet trail on the black, smooth surface. He studied the output. For several seconds the synthesized sequence appeared stable, the nucleotides building on the molecular scaffolding he had designed from the original sample. He held his breath. Then the double helix collapsed on itself like a house of cards.
Damn it!
He bit back another curse and an even greater urge to put his fist through the thin monitor. Four months of working on duplicating the genes he had found in the girl’s blood, and he was not one step closer. The sequences were too long, too complex to synthesize. At this rate it would be years before he’d see any real progress.
Years I don’t have.
He glanced at the time. Today could change everything, but they were late with the update. Late was never a good sign.
After Professor Geoffrey Baxter’s death, the Society asked him to continue the American scientist’s work, and Yuri jumped at the opportunity. Though well aware of the consequence of his failure, the temptation was too great. And it wasn’t only the money that drove his decision. The image of the ancient bioweapon reacting to Alyssa Morgan’s genes was etched into his mind as if he had just seen it yesterday and not four months ago. It was molecular poetry. Beauty and power. Rather than ravaging the girl’s DNA, the lethal weapon displayed the most striking example of symbiosis he had ever seen. Since he first witnessed it, he knew he would not rest until he discovered everything about it.
The final motive for taking on this task was even more personal, and darker, one for which he needed to stay close to the Society, no matter the cost.
They will pay for what they took from me.
The grief threatened to surface when the phone rang. He forced the emotion down and answered the phone.
“The girl escaped,” the voice on the other end said.
This time he didn’t bite back a second curse.
“We had the exits blocked. She—”
He screamed and threw the phone across the laboratory. He sank onto the lab stool.
Not for the first time, he questioned the wisdom of his decision to accept the Society’s offer. He forced himself to calm down. He’d known it was going to be difficult. They had been forced to abandon the research lab with minutes notice to escape the raid. He barely had time to copy the sequences onto a thumb drive before Interpol swarmed the place. Thanks to his quick thinking, he had the blueprint of what he was after, but reconstructing and synthesizing entire genes was another story all together.
He planted his elbows on the bench and pressed his face into his palms. He had to succeed. His thirst for revenge drove him, motivated him more than their threats, more than the thrill of discovery, even more than the money.
He lost track of time. The sound of the door closing behind him snapped him out of his thoughts. He turned and stared into the most striking pair of eyes he had ever seen. Deep, golden irises gazed back at him, appraising him with a sense of bemused curiosity, like a master appraising a new pet. He should have felt insulted, but instead, he found her gaze hypnotic, both irresistible and impossible to hold.
The woman entered the lab. She moved with a leonine grace, the long white chiffon dress fluttering as it traced the fluid movements of her lithe form.
“Dr. Yuri Korzo,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.
He slowly found his voice. “How… how did you get in here?”
She approached and studied the display.
“This… this is confidential data,” he stammered. “You cannot—”
“Th
e HOXB allele is disrupting the beta exon, causing a loss of function. The genetic sequence also lacks the transcription factor binding sites you were expecting.”
He stared at her slack-jawed. “How… how can you know?”
She lifted a vial filled with a red liquid.
When he didn’t move, she said. “Run your analysis on this.”
Yuri felt himself unable to move.
The woman’s lips tensed for the briefest moment. “Do as I say.”
Yuri flinched at the admonition. He grasped the vial and moved to the sequencer. He pipetted a small amount of the red fluid into the machine then keyed in the start cycle.
After several moments, the data flickered on the display. Yuri’s brain took a moment to make sense of what his eyes saw. The genetic markers of this sequence matched the genetic markers of the girl almost perfectly.
“Where did you get this?” he breathed.
“I know the reward promised to you by the Society if you succeed in synthesizing the ancient genetic elements that you found in the girl’s blood,” the woman replied. “I also know the price of failure.” She held out her hand for the vial.
Yuri gripped the vial tightly. “What do you want from me?”
“You want to make them pay for what they have done.”
“What are you—?”
The woman pointed to the vial in his hand. “You will get as much of this as you need to complete your task—and to have your revenge.”
Yuri’s mind reeled. “The blood is only one part of the process. To unlock it completely, we also require the ancient bioweapon.”
“And you shall have it.”
“How?”
The woman remained silent, regarding him with perfect posture.
Yuri contemplated. Finally, he asked, “And what do you want in return?”
The woman’s lips curved into a thin smile.
2 Budapest, Hungary
Alyssa pulled her car into a parking spot at the MediaMarkt electronics store. She waited for several minutes, scanning the lot for anything unusual before hopping out. She had traded the SUV for another vehicle since the incident in Prague two weeks ago and continued to stay on the move and off the grid as much as possible. She had kept her phone turned off for fear of being tracked. Her only means of communication had been daily emails to her dad and Paul sent from electronics stores or Internet cafes.
A week ago she received the message she’d been desperately waiting and hoping for. It was from Konrad. He survived the stabbing and had been released from the hospital. Apparently, the three men had arrived just before she did and coerced him into collaborating with them. Despite what could have happened, Alyssa was too thankful and happy to hold a grudge against the old man—too many people had been hurt because of her.
Her dad and Paul wanted to know all about what happened, of course. And, of course, she didn’t tell them the whole story. There was no reason to worry them more than they already were.
She stepped through the sliding glass doors of the store, and her senses were assailed by a torrent of humanity and electronic noise and images. Hundreds of TV screens crowded endless aisles edge-to-edge, playing the latest movies and live high-definition streams. A medley of a dozen songs blared concurrently from speakers that lined the entire back wall of the store. To her left, shoppers pried and prodded any type of electronic appliances, large and small. Alyssa resisted her urge to turn on her heel. Instead, she turned right and headed for the section with the laptops.
As she passed the row of the TVs, one of the images caught her attention. She did a double take.
Is that the museum?
She stopped and stared at the broadcast. It was her dad’s museum! She stared at the video and tried reading the story captions, but it was like trying to make sense of a goulash of consonants and vowels, sprinkled with random dashes and dots.
“Excuse me.” She tapped a middle-school-aged girl on her shoulder. The young girl glanced up from underneath the visor of a pink baseball cap and took out one of her earbuds. “Do you speak English?” Alyssa asked.
“Ya know it,” the girl replied with a perfect California sitcom accent.
Alyssa pointed at the TV. “What are they saying?”
The girl took out the other earbud and listened for a few moments. “Something about a break-in at a new museum in Cairo—I think.”
Alyssa felt the blood drain from her face. Before the startled girl had a chance to react, Alyssa rushed to the nearest laptop and popped up a web browser. She clicked on the news link.
Her breath caught in her throat when she read the headline:
NEW CAIRO MUSEUM TARGETED IN ATTACK.
Her hand trembled as she scrolled through the story, scanning it.
“…Cairo’s newest National Museum of Archaeology was targeted in an attack on Friday morning… The Egyptian military has secured the building and is preventing onlookers from loitering in its vicinity… Clues remain scarce, but social media has been quick to put forth a multitude of suspects… employees of the museum, foreign governments, and a ‘psychotic billionaire cult’ who may have played a role in the outbreak of the Horus virus several months ago… The minister of antiquities has issued a statement that the museum shall remain closed for the foreseeable future pending further investigation… This unusually coordinated and violent attack that left several individuals seriously injured…”
Alyssa whimpered. She raced out of the store and into the parking lot. Her hands trembled as she fumbled for the keys, and she unlocked the car. She snatched her phone from the glovebox and powered it on.
Come on, come on! Her palm tapped against the door as the phone booted up. After what seemed like an eternity, the home screen appeared. The instant the cellular connection established, a flurry of text message and voicemail notifications appeared. She hit the speed-dial for her dad’s mobile.
He answered on the second ring.
“Dad!” she cried. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Ally,” he said. “I’m all good.”
She exhaled a breath she didn’t know she was holding, then she crumpled into the seat and began sobbing as everything that happened over the last few weeks caught up with her all at once. “I was so worried. When I read what happened…” Her voice choked with tears.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I tried letting you know right away. I left you messages. They weren’t going through.”
“I know, I know… I’m so glad you’re okay.” She paused. “The crystal?”
“They got it,” Kade replied. “I’m sorry.”
Alyssa’s chest tightened.
They got the crystal?
“Ally…” Kade wavered. “Something else happened. Something bad.”
Like that’s not bad enough?
“There was an attack at the genetics institute.”
“What?” she gasped. “When? Is Kamal all right? Did anybody get hurt?”
“Kamal is fine. It happened a couple weeks ago. Some people got hurt, but they’re fine now. The ministry has been trying to keep it quiet. They wanted to avoid a panic.”
He hesitated then added, “Samples of the virus were stolen.”
Alyssa’s hand clamped around the phone.
“A couple weeks ago? The virus? But Kamal promised to destroy—”
“He kept samples. In case of an outbreak. The government wanted to be prepared.”
“Did you know about it?” she asked, an edge to her voice, her concern temporarily forgotten.
“No, of course not,” Kade replied. “I would not have allowed it. The ministries raised the alert. They are worried about a potential bio-attack.”
Alyssa tried to make sense of the onslaught of information. “First the institute, now the museum. Is it the Society?”
“I don’t know,” Kade said.
“If there is another outbreak, they may need more of my blood.”
“Coming to Cairo is the last thing I want you to do—
for your safety. But I know I can’t talk you out of it.” He paused. “I will be glad to see you.”
Alyssa’s smile was distracted. “Me too.”
“How are you holding up?”
“Just peachy,” she replied, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
“Are you safe?”
Alyssa glanced out at the balding security guard lumbering along the parking lot. He gave her a friendly wave.
“I’ve got my own private security.” Alyssa returned the wave.
“Are you eating enough?”
“Daaad…” She suddenly realized how hungry she was. She spotted a box of Pop Tarts in the back seat and reached for it. Her shoulders slumped when she found it empty. She tossed it aside, sighing.
“Ally,” Kade said.
“What?”
“Be careful.”
“I’ve been staying low—and on the move.”
“Something is happening. I don’t know what, but you have to stay sharp.”
Alyssa exhaled. “I’ll see you soon.”
She ended the connection and put the phone in her pocket. She sat in the seat for a few minutes before she started the car and headed for the airport.
Dr. Yuri Korzo’s palm was a white-knuckled vise around the handle of the metal briefcase on the passenger seat. He pulled up the armored Cadillac Escalade to the dimly lit portico of the Cairo estate and stepped out, lifting the lethal cargo with him. The cool desert air did little to stifle the panic churning inside his gut, threatening to spew out all over the rosebushes decorating the sandstone driveway.
It will be over soon.
He dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief and scurried to the ornate entrance, clutching the briefcase to his chest. Two men flanking the double doors stepped into his path, the contours of their muscles and the automatic weapons bulging beneath their tailored suits.
“You’re late,” one of them said.
Yuri bit back the response that lingered on the tip of his tongue. Do not get distracted. “Then get out of my way,” he simply replied.
“Is this it?” The second man pointed at the briefcase.
Daughter of Ra Page 2