Crucible

by James Rollins

  While the photos might have accomplished that, there remained one captive whose health couldn’t be discerned from a photo.

  And thus, the necessity of an ultrasound.

  Seichan hadn’t minded. After discovering the spots of blood in the toilet, she kept close watch on the bowl every time she urinated, which was at least once an hour. Each time, there was blood—more blood. But maybe it only appeared that way, amplified by her fear. Either way, she was greatly relieved the ultrasound showed her baby was apparently unharmed.

  Still, she also knew the other reason for the ultrasound.

  Valya did, too. “Clearly Direktor Crowe attempts to delay matters.”

  Seichan didn’t bother denying this. Ever since Harriet had been taken and returned, Seichan had been running a meter in her head. Roughly eight hours had passed. But how much time was left on the clock? She couldn’t know for sure, but she was certain she had to work more quickly if she intended to keep her silent promise to Kat, to keep the woman’s children safe.

  Valya turned her back on the ultrasound, while waving dismissively at the last image of the child frozen on the screen. “All this bezrassudstvo. The direktor hopes that I will make a mistake. That I slip up. That will not happen.”

  I don’t doubt it. This bitch—

  A cramp cut off this thought. The pain was sharp enough to make Seichan gasp. Her body clenched in half, as if to instinctively protect the child in her belly. The cuffs bit into her wrists and ankles. The pain lasted for two breaths, until it subsided enough for her to fall back to the cot.

  “Der’mo,” the guard swore, his face twisted in disgust. He pointed his cattle prod between Seichan’s legs.

  She was afraid to look. They had removed her maternity pants for the exam, but they had left on her panties. Blood now soaked through its thin cotton fabric.

  Valya only scowled with irritation. “Have someone bring a bucket so she can clean herself after you uncuff her.”

  The guard kept staring. “What about the baby?”

  “No matter.” She patted her pocket. “We have proof the child is alive. At least for this moment. That is all we need for now.”

  Seichan still breathed hard, her limbs trembling, more out of fear than pain. She stared at the curled baby on the screen.

  Valya checked her watch. “Let’s keep on schedule. Take the girl.”

  Seichan swung around, clanking her cuffs.

  Valya’s expression didn’t change as she noted Seichan’s distress. “Don’t excite yourself. It’s not good for your blood pressure.” She nodded to Seichan’s legs. “Or the child, da?”

  “What are you doing?”

  Valya wiped a cheek, revealing a smudge of old makeup from a disguise. “I just returned from visiting Kapitan Bryant.”

  Kat . . .

  “I’m afraid she is doing quite poorly. It is only a matter of time now.” Valya shrugged. “Still, when I was at the hospital, I was able to get close enough to capture Dr. Cummings’s phone calls and mirror that communication.”

  Seichan pictured Lisa Cummings, the director’s wife. At least, Kat wasn’t alone, but what was Valya’s gambit in going to the hospital?

  “Why did you need to tap her phone?”

  Another shrug. “Someone’s been proving exceptionally stubborn and will need further convincing of our seriousness.”

  Seichan struggled to understand, but it was to no avail.

  Valya nudged the man next to her and nodded to the girls. “Vzyat’ devushku,” she repeated.

  Harriet didn’t need to understand Russian to read the intent and subtext of their conversation. She scooted to the end of her cot, hugging the picture book to her chest.

  But the girl needn’t have worried.

  The man grabbed Penny instead, tossing her over his shoulder. She struggled and screamed. Her captor ignored her thrashing and hauled her out of the room.

  Seichan twisted toward Harriet, but the girl had buried her face in her pillow.

  Valya headed out.

  Seichan yanked on her restraints, now understanding why they had kept her cuffed to the bed after the procedure. “Let me loose.”

  “Soon,” Valya said. “And we’ll bring you a bucket.”

  The door clanged shut behind her.

  Seichan turned again toward Harriet. “It’s going to be all—”

  A loud gunshot made her jump.

  Harriet buried her face deeper into her pillow.

  Seichan stared at the closed door, knowing she had broken her promise.

  I’m sorry, Kat.

  6:47 P.M.

  Lisa sat bedside, holding the hand of her friend. Alone in the room, she didn’t bother wiping the tears from her eyes. She prayed Kat was at peace now; Lisa knew how much the woman had struggled at the end. She could only imagine the agony of dying without ever knowing the fate of her children.

  Guilt knotted inside her.

  We should’ve done more.

  Still, she could not fault the doctors. Julian and his team had tried everything. They had spent a full twenty minutes performing a final neurological exam: pinching Kat’s limbs and cheeks, testing her pupils with light, running multiple EEG leads. They even took her off the ventilator for a time to see if rising carbon dioxide levels might trigger even a single breath from her.

  The conclusion was irrefutable.

  Not only had Kat’s higher cerebral functions ceased, but she no longer showed any evidence of brainstem reflexes—those last vestiges of activity before a brain is declared dead.

  Kat was truly gone.

  Still, Lisa appreciated the warmth of the fingers in her hand, but this effect was artificial. Heated blankets and warmed IV fluids maintained a steady body temperature. Likewise, the ventilator pushed her chest up and down. Hormones had been shot into her, to replace what her brain could no longer trigger: vasopressin to maintain her kidneys, thyroid for body metabolism, others to support her immune system.

  The only thing that functioned on its own was Kat’s heart—proving to be as stubborn as the woman. Each remaining beat was powered by her heart’s intrinsic electrical system, a ghostly reminder of what once was. But it was no sign of life; hearts could even beat outside the body for a time. Without ventilation, Kat’s heart would stop within the hour.

  Doctors called this life support—but they were wrong. There was no life here to support, no hope for resuscitation. All the machines and ministration were for another purpose. The proper term for Kat’s care was organ support.

  Such treatment was sustained to allow additional time for out-of-town relatives to get to the hospital and say good-bye—while there was still even a semblance of life in the body.

  Still, this was a cruel ruse, a macabre act of puppetry.

  Their loved ones were already gone.

  While en route to France, Monk had been informed of Kat’s condition. He had enough medical background not to be fooled, to not hold out false hope. Still, Lisa had offered to keep Kat on the machines until he got back. This living death could be sustained for a week or so.

  Monk had refused.

  Let her go in peace, he told her. I already kissed her good-bye, knowing it would be my last.

  Instead, all of this care was for another reason.

  A doctor entered—Lisa couldn’t remember his name—flanked by two nurses and an orderly. “The OR is ready,” he said.

  Lisa nodded, unable to speak as she struggled to hold back a sob. She stood, gave Kat’s hand a final squeeze, and stepped away from the bed. The medical staff swooped in to take her place, unhooking and readying the patient for transportation to the operating room.

  Kat had signed an organ-donation order.

  It was no surprise—and fitting.

  Even in death, Kat would still be saving lives.

  Lisa stayed in the room until her body was rolled outside. Afterward, Lisa sank back into her chair. She knew Kat had left long before her body was taken away. Still, the space felt far m
ore hollow, emptier than before, as if the loss of all that verve and energy had left a vacuum in its wake.

  Too broken-hearted to move, she sat in silent vigil.

  Then a commotion drew her gaze back to the door.

  Julian entered swiftly, accompanied by a stranger, a woman. The neurologist’s gaze swept the room. “Where’s Kathryn?”

  Lisa stood, her heart pounding harder, reading the anxiety on the doctor’s face. “They moved her to the OR, to harvest her org—”

  Julian swung away. “We have to stop them.”

  21

  December 26, 1:08 A.M. CET

  Paris, France

  Gray ducked under a broken archway.

  They had been traversing the catacombs for fifteen minutes, and he was already lost. Simon led the way through a warren of tunnels and graffiti-scarred chambers, descending section by section through crumbling vents—wormholes their guide called chatières, or cat flaps. Simon even had to backtrack once, mumbling something about a cave-in.

  Thankfully, their guide was generous enough to chalk a few Xs and arrows along their path, markers to help lead them back to the exit. Until then, Gray stuck close to the man.

  Gray held the group’s lone ultraviolet torch, a penlight mounted on the rail under the barrel of his SIG Sauer. Invisible to the naked eye, the beam bounced off their surroundings, where the light was picked up by sensitive detectors in their night-vision goggles. It allowed the group to see, but Gray still used it sparingly, setting the torch to its weakest setting, fearing the beam might ignite anything fluorescent and give away their approach.

  Like now.

  As Gray straightened into the next chamber, the far wall exploded in his goggles, revealing a huge mural painted across the expanse of limestone. They had passed similar glimpses of such subterranean artistry, but nothing like this masterpiece hidden in the dark. It glowed and shimmered under the UV bombardment.

  The mural depicted a ghostly mummy riding a boat, transporting its own coffin. The vessel and its silent passenger crossed a dark lake toward a towering island, dotted with cypresses and sculpted with tomblike porticos.

  “That can’t be a good omen,” Kowalski grumbled.

  “It’s the work of a cataphile artist named Lone,” Simon whispered. “Took him a full year to paint. His rendering of Arnold Böcklin’s Die Toteninsel. The Isle of the Dead.”

  Gray read a sign posted at the mural’s bottom.

  Designed by the author

  It contained a palindrome, the letters of the sentence running the same forward and backward. Its message was eerily prophetic. Even the star between the lines sent a chill through him. The pentagram was identical to the symbol for Bruxas International. It was even angled identically, as if the symbol were marking their passage forward.

  Gray again had a weird sense of fate swirling around him.

  Noting his attention, Simon translated the palindrome aloud: “Around and around we spin in the night as we are consumed by fire.”

  Gray stared up, picturing the conflagration far above. Here, down in the catacombs, the air was cool and dank, the limestone damp and cold. The only evidence of the fires was the occasional wisp of smoke, found hanging in the stillness. As Gray had passed through them, he caught a whiff of ash, a touch of heat, as if the ghosts of the dead had retreated here, seeking refuge in the cold tombs.

  “Let’s keep going,” Monk urged.

  Gray waved Simon onward.

  They continued even deeper, proceeding single file.

  After another few minutes, a vague glow appeared ahead. Fearing they were nearing the enemy, Gray clicked off his UV torch. But it proved to be a false alarm. A three-foot-wide shaft in the roof drilled straight up. Fifty yards or more above his head, tiny orange supernovas flared, the light amplified by his night-vision gear. He shuttered the lenses on his goggles, telescoping the view to reveal the underside of a manhole cover. Holes in the steel carried the glow of the fires beyond.

  Simon pointed up the sheer, featureless walls of this limestone well. “Back in 1870, the Montparnasse Cemetery was overcrowded, overflowing with bodies. To make room, caretakers—at the order of the king—dumped old skeletons down into the ancient quarries where we’re standing.”

  As proof, he pointed to a scatter of bones as they headed off again—a mix of femurs, ribs, and broken skulls. They stepped carefully through the clutter.

  “You’ll not find the public museum’s macabre displays in this area. No one bothered with such things way over here.”

  Kowalski pointed to a side tunnel, trying his best to whisper. “Then who put that together?”

  At the passage’s end, a throne had been cobbled together of yellowing bone, with a seat made out of rib cages, the chairback strutted with femurs, and skulls used as armrests.

  “Hopefully it was constructed by human hands.” Simon shrugged. “But you hear stories of all sorts, of bones moving on their own . . .”

  Kowalski shuddered and scowled over at Gray. “This is the last time you play tour guide.”

  Gray waved everyone onward, but with a warning. “We should be getting close to the spot Mara pinpointed. No more talking.”

  While he was wary of the strange acoustics down here, he’d felt relatively safe up until now. So far, with his ears constantly piqued, he had heard no telltale signs—no echoes or voices—of anyone else down here.

  If I can’t hear them, they likely can’t hear us.

  But that could change at any moment.

  Still, a worry nagged him. What if the enemy had already cleared out? With Paris burning, the Crucible would not stick around for long.

  Knowing that, Gray set a harder pace. After another few minutes of silent trudging, Simon stopped abruptly. Gray came close to knocking into their guide.

  The tunnel ahead of him narrowed, but that wasn’t the problem. A calf-deep blanket of old bones covered the floor, stretching thirty yards.

  But even that wasn’t what had stopped Simon.

  Their guide pointed toward the far end, to where a smaller side tunnel opened to the left. A white light shone out into the main passage from there, bright enough to flare in the goggles.

  Gray took off his night-vision gear and stowed it. Monk and Kowalski followed his example, firming grips on their respective weapons. Monk carried another SIG. In Kowalski’s huge hands, his stubby bullpup rifle looked like a child’s toy.

  As planned, only Simon kept his night-vision goggles in place.

  Gray pointed back down the tunnel. Simon had completed his duty. The young man had no experience with weapons, and Gray wanted this civilian out of harm’s way.

  Simon didn’t have to be told twice. He retreated into the darkness, vanishing within steps.

  Once he was gone, Gray returned his attention to the bone-laden tunnel ahead. Occasional murmurs echoed back, faint and indistinct. Still, without question, it had to be the Crucible.

  Gray eyed the stretch of skulls, shattered rib cages, and broken femurs. He wondered if this macabre spread was happenstance or purposeful. Either way, it served as a crude early warning system for the enemy. One wrong step, one sharp snap of bone, and Gray’s team would lose any advantage of surprise.

  Holding his breath, Gray reached with a leg, nosed the tip of his boot to shift the bones until he touched the floor, then settled his heel.

  He sighed.

  One step down . . .

  He stared across the length of the tunnel, sensing time constricting. But he fought against that pressure and set out slowly, carefully, picking his way along.

  His only consolation: Paris burned above his head.

  What more damage could the enemy hope to do?

  1:24 A.M.

  Todor studied the topographic map on his e-tablet. It depicted the watershed of the Seine basin, showing the many tributaries and valleys that formed the river that passed through Paris on its way to the English Channel.

  Designed by Steven Prey (All rights reserved.
Used by permission of Steve Prey)

  He noted the French commune of Nogent-sur-Seine to the southeast. The small village’s nuclear plant lay close to the same river. Once the core melted down and exploded, winds would spread the radioactive cloud far and wide. Plus, the runoff from the plant would contaminate the neighboring waterway, transforming the river into a perfect vessel to carry that poisonous load straight into the heart of Paris.

  Mendoza straightened by the laptop. “It is done, Familiares Todor.”

  Todor set his tablet down and crossed closer.

  “The last firewall has been breached,” Mendoza reported. “She’s inside their systems, proceeding with the plan.”

  He checked his watch. “How long until she’s done?”

  “I’ll know in a moment. Unfortunately, the nuclear plant proved to be a greater challenge than Paris’s systems. So it was just as well we attacked the city first—not only as a distraction, but as a test run.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Paris was a simple exercise. The Inquisitor Generalis believed it was better to put Eve through her paces here first. He thought it best to challenge her with the city’s more antiquated and less-protected systems.”

  “Before sending her south.”

  Mendoza nodded. “And it worked. She’s learning rapidly.”

  Todor felt a stab of irritation. Mendoza had never met the Inquisitor General, yet the Crucible’s leader had shared this detail of the plan with an underling, someone who had not yet earned the title of familiares. Todor knew the Inquisitor had consulted with a nuclear engineer, someone familiar with the control systems at the Nogent power plant. A multipronged attack had been devised. Employing the versatility and speed of the AI, the many layers of the plant’s safety measures would be countermanded, disabled, or circumvented.

  The plan was to simultaneously trigger two failures: a loss of coolant and a spike in pressure. Without enough coolant, the reactor would overheat, causing a steam bubble to form in the core. With the pressure-control system sabotaged, the giant bubble would expand rapidly, leading to a hydrogen gas explosion, a blast strong enough to shatter the steel-reinforced containment building.