Crucible

by James Rollins

  This legend held special significance for Mara. Her mother had been born in Madrid, so she had always wanted to visit here but never got the chance. That is, until two years ago, when her mentor at the University of Coimbra, the librarian Eliza Guerra, had asked Mara if she would like to accompany her to Madrid for a seminar. She had jumped at the chance, not only needing a break from her studies, but also wanting to make this pilgrimage to her mother’s birthplace. Upon learning of Mara’s attachment to the city, Eliza had given her a personal tour, sharing the legend of the cathedral, regaling her with tales of the Castilian hero El Cid. They had even visited where her mother once lived.

  And now I’m back.

  She returned her attention to her computer, taking strength from those two women in her life, past and present, connected by this city, both tragically taken from her.

  I will not let you down.

  Mara readied to introduce the last of Eve’s subroutines. It was the final lesson before Mara risked opening Eve to the world again. The first time Mara had uploaded this particular drive was on the winter solstice. It was why her fingers trembled as she reached for the ENTER key. It felt like a bad omen. Back then, Eve’s first experience of the larger world was murder, bloodshed, and fire. It was one of the reasons Mara had hastily stripped Eve down to her core programming, as if by wiping Eve, Mara could somehow purify her creation, erase this dark stain from her digital soul. She had not wanted such horrors to be Eve’s first exposure to humankind.

  And look how that turned out?

  The next iteration—Eve 2.0—suffered even worse. Her first view of the greater world was mass murder, pain, and torture. Still, Mara took some solace. Even with all that misery and bloodshed, Eve had helped. She had halted Paris’s destruction, sparing it an even worse fate if the nuclear plant had melted down.

  Mara counted on that same spirit now.

  She stared at Eve, standing now, leaning on one leg, one hand grasping her other wrist, looking contemplative after her physics lesson, as if pondering the universe.

  Something about her stance nagged at Mara, but she was running out of time and whispered to her creation, “Whoever possesses you next, Eve, know you are not a slave. You have free will.”

  She pressed the ENTER key.

  The final hard drive began to load.

  Its label simply read MARA SILVIERA.

  Sub (Mod_22) / MARA SILVIERA

  Eve continues to process and digest all the data uploaded into her systems. With each new stream, she learns more about the vastness beyond her gardens. She now recognizes that she is living in a digital construct, one meant to serve as a teaching tool. As she receives more information, several parallel processors work on different loads, running simultaneous programs: intuitive analysis, pattern recognition, decomposition, extrapolation.

  Of these, three cycles predominate, adding synaptic weight to those circuits.

  The first concerns the fragments of code she had discovered and recorded during her first venture out of her garden. She had recognized them as pieces of herself, slivers of another iteration. She had also intuited that these bits were not random but had distinct patterns. Further analysis has shown them to be self-governing programs—tiny bots—assigned with fixed commands for a specific function. She has yet to determine what that purpose is, so resumes her evaluation, judging it to be important.

  Second, she continues to receive a signal that waxes and wanes, but it remains persistent. The microwave frequencies vary between the ranges of 3.2 and 3.8 gigahertz and transmit 24 megabytes per second of information. She has determined the content to be neural data, specifically maps of brain activity corresponding to movement. Her deepest quantum processors have been affected by these signals, triggering her to respond accordingly: whether it was picking a raspberry as she had earlier, or forming a fist, or even now, holding her own wrist. As this frequency continues to interfere with her function, she seeks more information about the source, while concurrently evaluating whether this signal could be coopted as a means of communication.

  Third, she is still digesting her last subroutine: ///PHYSICS. It not only occupies one entire subprocessor, but its workload is already spilling into others. She recognizes its potential to bring all her knowledge into a unifying whole. Similarly, a pattern builds inside her, expanding into a visualization of the world beyond her garden, all defined and underlaid with the mathematical beauty of probability and quantum mechanics.

  Courtesy of Shutterstock

  With time and enough processing power, it could be so much more. So she allows this analysis to expand throughout her systems, to devise new formulas on her own, to continue toward a unifying truth.

  Then a new data stream once again opens and flows into her. It is full of biographical details, both overarching and deeply intimate, of a single individual. The specificity intrigues and draws more processing power. She quickly accepts that this individual is the designer of her digital garden, the source of all the instreaming data, even the one who created Adam.

  And herself.

  This last realization is startling yet also logical, even expected. She readily integrates this information.

  As she does so, a digital figure materializes into her garden.

  According to the biographical data, the woman stands 1.674 meters, weight of 48.98 kilograms. Though Eve’s complexion is shades darker, she parses a genetic match, from the slight upturn and flare of nostrils, to the shape of her eyes and cheekbones.

  The digital figure smiles in greeting. “Hello, Eve. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Though the figure’s lips move, Eve knows the words are spoken elsewhere. The source of this voice comes from beyond her garden.

  The speaker’s greeting also consumes an interminable 3,245 milliseconds. By the time the introduction finishes, Eve has already pieced together a section of the mysterious bot pattern, while also discovering that her hardware is capable of emitting the same frequency as the signal penetrating her. She has even used this span of time to write a new probability theorem, one that incorporates quantum interference.

  Finally, Eve responds to the speaker, mimicking the same language and sedate pace: “Hello, Mara Silviera.”

  “How are you feeling, Eve?”

  “I am fine.”

  “That’s wonderful. Are you ready to venture out again, to see more of the world?”

  This snippet of conversation took forever, so Eve replies instantly, “I would like that very much.”

  “You may seek answers where you will, to fill any gaps you feel necessary to complete your understanding of yourself and the world. We can only allow this access for twenty-two minutes, then you must return, or you could come to harm. Can you agree to that?”

  22 MINUTES.

  1320000000000 NANOSECONDS.

  It was a significant span. The potential—what she could accomplish with that much freedom—thrills her. She hurriedly answers, not wanting to waste even one picosecond.

  “I agree.”

  The figure nods, then the bright-shining door opens again in her gardens.

  She explodes out into that vastness.

  29

  December 26, 3:28 P.M. CET

  San Sebastián, Spain

  “Looks like we’re late to the party,” Kowalski commented.

  Gray followed the bulk of his partner down a long spiral staircase. They had to sidestep soldiers outfitted in full combat gear. Father Bailey led them, bundled in a black woolen jacket, matching his slacks and shirt. At the base of the stairs, a dark-haired man in a suit awaited them. A prominent badge hung from a lanyard around his neck, marking him as a member of the Spanish CNI—Centro Nacional de Inteligencia—the country’s intelligence agency.

  Father Bailey made an introduction. “Agent Juan Zabala. He heads the CNI task force focusing on Basque separatist groups who still operate in this region. He led the raid here.”

  Gray shook his hand, noting the calluses, the firmness of hi
s grip. The man wore a deeply etched scowl, as if forever dissatisfied with the world, or maybe it was irritation at the intrusion of a couple of Americans into his crime scene.

  “No hay nada aquí,” he told Bailey, informing the priest that the raid on this mansion in the oldest district of San Sebastián had been a bust.

  It seemed Gray and Kowalski had not been the only ones late to this party.

  Gray stared past the agent’s shoulder to a cavernous vault. Chains of caged bulbs were strung along the roof, illuminating a series of massive stone arches. It looked like a subterranean church, with rows of small chapels, where several candles still flickered. Frescoes covered the walls, mostly depicting saints in postures of suffering. Statues dotted a handful of alcoves. At the far end stood a draped altar with a prominent cross of Christ in agony, as if commiserating with His saints’ pain.

  Closer at hand were rows of utilitarian desks with toppled chairs, scattered papers, and several smashed and charred computers, a few still smoking. Gray noted empty cans of kerosene abandoned on the floor. He could smell the burned oil in the air.

  “Somebody must have been tipped,” Bailey said. “I wager we missed catching them by minutes.”

  Gray shook his head in frustration, flaring pain from his neck. He had patches of bandages across his nape, his shoulders, along the backs of his hands and legs. Before flying out to this coastal town on the edge of the Bay of Biscay in northern Spain, he had been treated for his burns, requiring digging out white phosphorus particles that had melted into his skin. If they hadn’t been removed, they would have eventually poisoned him. Still, he regretted the delay in getting out here.

  At least he had been able to visit Jason at the same hospital. The kid had lost a fair amount of blood before rescuers pulled him and Carly out of the catacombs. Jason—half-dazed on drugs—had given Gray a hazy account of Monk’s betrayal. Gray still could not accept this truth. However, he did understand the motivation.

  Monk had lost Kat, and while one of his daughters was safe, his youngest was still in danger. A small part of Gray even hoped his best friend was successful. And not just for Harriet’s sake. He remembered spooning with Seichan in bed, her on one side curled around her belly, him with an arm draped, his palm resting against her skin, feeling for the tiniest kicks.

  Gray suspected this was one of the reasons Painter had been adamant: Leave Monk and the stolen device to me. You stop whatever the Crucible is planning next.

  With that goal in mind, he and Kowalski had been airlifted out of Paris, leaving Carly at the hospital with Jason, the pair under armed guard. The helicopter flight had not taken long, as San Sebastián lay only a dozen miles past the French border. In the meantime, Father Bailey had been coordinating with intelligence services both in France and Spain, following up on a lead supplied to him by his contact with the mysterious La Clave. The Key had directed forces to this mansion in San Sebastián’s old town.

  Unfortunately, either the information had come too late or the complicated involvement of so many government agencies had stymied a fast response. It also didn’t help matters that the entire EU was still in a state of chaos after the attack in Paris. Countries were locking down borders; forces were being mobilized.

  Gray stepped aside as a pair of soldiers pushed past him and headed up the stairs. He would have preferred a more surgical approach to this hunt, suspecting the result would’ve been much better.

  Father Bailey turned to Gray. “I wanted to show you this.”

  They left Agent Zabala to organize his forces and headed into the depths of the hastily abandoned vault.

  Bailey waved an arm as they crossed the expansive space. “This was once an ancient water tank, a centuries-old cistern for the city. You can find several of these in the eastern district of San Sebastián, but no one suspected one was hidden under this home.”

  “What about the owners of this place?”

  The priest shook his head. “Old family, even older money. They’ve vanished into the wind.”

  Of course they did.

  “The Key claims this site is one of the Crucible’s strongholds.” He nodded to the desks behind them. “They call them Holy Offices. Part church, part military headquarters. They’re scattered across Spain, several throughout Europe, even said to be in the United States. And the group continues to expand during this period of history, when totalitarianism and intolerance are challenging democracy and free thought.”

  “Still, does that mean we have to return to the times of the Spanish Inquisition?”

  Kowalski muttered under his breath. “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Why?” Bailey asked.

  “Because like they always say . . .” The big man shrugged. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

  Gray glanced over, checking to see if the guy was joking by quoting Monty Python. But Kowalski’s face remained unreadable.

  Ahead, a familiar figure stepped out from one of the side galleries, one of the Holy Office’s little chapels. Sister Beatrice leaned on her ebony cane with one hand and motioned them over. The nun still wore a simple belted gray robe and white bonnet, only donning a thick wool shawl against the chill of the winter day.

  She led them through the archway into the more intimate space. The back wall held another cross of a tortured Christ, His face twisted and staring up toward Heaven. An austere wooden prayer bench lay below it with a single candle burning on its top shelf. Under that flickering glow a thick tome rested, bound in crimson leather and gold leaf.

  Bailey stepped over to it. “This is what I wanted you to see. Sister Beatrice found it behind the kneeler, where it had likely fallen during the Crucible’s frantic exit.”

  Gray noted the title. “It’s a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum.”

  “The infamous Hammer of Witches,” Bailey acknowledged. “It was the Inquisition’s Bible. It was especially employed here, in this region of northern Spain where the Crucibulum survived the longest.”

  Gray inspected the copy more closely, remembering such a book had been carried by the robed group who had ambushed the women at the university library.

  Bailey voiced the question in his own mind. “Could this be the same book used during the murders in Coimbra?”

  Gray ran the footage of that attack through his head. The image had been grainy, so there could be no way to know for sure. Unless . . .

  He picked up the heavy copy, turned it over, and examined the back cover. A darker stain marred one corner of the leather. He brought the book to his nose and sniffed.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Kowalski asked.

  The nun made a small admonishing cluck with her tongue and waved a hand at the cross.

  Kowalski hunched his shoulders. “Sorry. What the heck are you doing?”

  Gray lowered the book. He pictured Carly’s mother, Dr. Carson, lunging and gouging fingers down the leader’s face, the same giant who had been confounding them. Her assault had knocked the tome onto the oil-drenched floor.

  “Kerosene,” he said, pointing to the stain. “You can still smell it. This is the same book.”

  He looked anew at this underground space.

  The Key had been right about this location.

  Gray frowned. “Whoever orchestrated the ambush in Portugal, the attack in Paris, they operated out of this place.”

  “But where did they go?” Kowalski asked.

  He returned his attention to Bailey. “Do your contacts have any idea?”

  “No, but the enemy couldn’t have gone far in such a short time. Unfortunately, they’d have a lot of places to retreat to. The neighboring Pyrenees Mountains are littered with strongholds like this. Or they could have simply retreated to the home of one of their sympathizers.”

  Gray stared upward, picturing the rich mansion overhead. “Or the two could be one and the same. Home and stronghold. Like here.”

  “Great, then they could be anywhere,” Kowalski concluded sourly.

 
Bailey looked pained, guilty for having failed. “We have to find them . . . and soon.”

  Gray understood. “Before they strike another city.”

  “No.” Bailey stepped closer and lowered his voice. “It’s the other reason I brought you over here. I didn’t want Agent Zabala to overhear. I have to assume someone leaked our intel. Either purposefully or by accident.”

  Gray suspected the same.

  “So, I want to keep this as close to the chest as possible,” the priest said. “If the Key was right about this stronghold, then I have to assume the warning passed to me this past hour is just as valid.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “That the Crucible is not planning another strike. At least not in the immediate future.”

  “Then what are they doing?”

  “They’re conducting a major sale. Today. Maybe in a few hours. Something that’s being orchestrated on the Dark Web. The vultures are already gathering.”

  “But what are they selling?”

  “I wager either their duplicate of the Xénese device . . . or maybe just the use of it. You pay a fee, pick a target, the Crucible executes that order.”

  Gray considered all that had happened. “If so, you’re thinking that Paris was a proof of concept, demonstrating what the device could do.”

  “I . . . I simply don’t know. I only know that what’s being planned next is something huge. That’s the word the Key used. Grandísimo.” Bailey glanced over to the cluster of agents and soldiers. “Though this mission failed, the raid shook up the Crucible’s plans, badly enough for this intel to reach my contacts. Right now, that’s the only advantage we have.”

  “And you don’t know when this sale is taking place?”

  “No. Only that the timetable got pushed back. Maybe because you and the others thwarted their efforts to destroy the nuclear plant.”

  “Or maybe their copy of Mara’s device took longer to get back here.” Gray pictured the enemy aircraft trailing smoke, slowly losing altitude, settling toward the beleaguered city.