“Telomerase Research Results in Creation of First Immortal Rat.” That’s a new one. How the fuck they manage that? And how did Alcott figure into it?
Anne had read every morsel of legitimate research on telomeres and telomerase, was a peer reviewer on three major journals in the field. Never had she read one word about any lab producing an immortal mammal. Immortal cell lines, yes. Organ-specific, telomerase-enhanced reverse transcriptase—TERT, yes. No mammals. Full stop. Never. Not yet.
She sucked in a breath and opened the article. Bloody fucking hell.
Anne scanned down the article. She wasn’t impressed. Bad science . . . and the rat? Virtual, not real. There it was, Alcott’s name.
Best known for his groundbreaking HoloCall and HoliNar services . . . wading into the ancient quest for immortality . . . cracking the secret to immortality . . . true fountain of youth . . .
“Dr. Shawe??”
“Yeah. Yeah. Another sec. Sorry.” Maybe he’d hang up; maybe that would be better. She continued to read . . . more carefully.
Alcott claims he isn’t involved with the secretive antisenescence think tank Galahad Society, but sources close to the organization say he has a large financial stake, one that may soon be paying off. The group claims to be on the brink of a huge discovery with its immortal rats. Alcott denies any interest in funding basic research on curing rare genetic diseases, such as the one that claimed his wife last year. She stopped and reread that last bit twice more before returning to the call.
“You still there, Mr. Alcott?”
“Preston. Yup.”
“Sorry for the interruptions. I am sorry about your wife—”
“You know, then—”
“What I don’t know is what I might offer you. I’m no practitioner, if that’s what you’re hoping to find. Haven’t been for years. My research takes—”
“Like I said. Rather not discuss it on the phone, if you don’t mind.”
“Look, Mr. Alcott, I’m quite in the midst of something right now . . . Might I ring you back in say an hour? This number?”
“Yes. Of course. My cell.”
Holiday. This was . . . is . . . supposed to be . . . a holiday. Not a happy, carefree, lay-on-the-beach-have-an-affair-with-a-stranger holiday, but still . . . Chicago had men, right? And beaches. She did not want to contemplate work. Not yet. And who the hell can’t talk about a personal medical issue by phone?
Anne scrolled up to the source of the immortal rodent story. NewsFax Daily. The tabloid? “All the News—Unfiltered, Real Stories, Beyond the Facts.” A license to destroy careers and lives in the name of someone’s version of the truth. On the other hand, whatever the source, the fact Preston Alcott was at the heart of the story was unnerving at best.
She opened a second article and froze as her own words stared back at her.
Science fiction describes cyber-beings—brilliant machines with human tendencies. The simple fact is all beings—from the tiniest microbe to the T. nutricula jellyfish at the center of my work to the highly honed machine of a superstar athlete or Nobel laureate—are also machines, imperfect, but of the most elegant biology. Like the androids of Star Wars or any other of your favourite science fiction classics, human lifespan dictated by the failings of structure. The question is, can the fundamental structure of living beings be restored, rejuvenated, rebuilt at the cellular or even molecular level so that the superstructure—the body—never actually dies? Senescence becomes a choice?
Buried three paragraphs down from the quote, a mention of the Galahad Society and more speculation that Alcott was involved, at least financially.
A minor part of a lecture she’d given six years earlier on the ethical issues of applying her research in a practical setting. Indeed, it was beneficial to explore the use of telomerases to forestall cell death in diseases. Already it was becoming reality. But the temptation to take it to its ultimate degree . . . ? And she wasn’t talking about immortal rodents.
NORTHWEST COAST OF SCOTLAND, PRESENT DAY
CHAPTER 3
The seacoast, at last. Cape Wrath, Scotland. Gaelan Erceldoune had lost count of the days since he’d parted ways with Anne and lowered himself down Glomach Falls. The cobalt glass of the small vial glinted in the sunlight as he gave the poison a slight shake before gently replacing the bottle in his coat pocket, relieved it made the journey intact.
Now that he finally possessed the means, it was time to end his life. A poison. An antidote to five hundred years of living. Sola dosis facit venenum—the dose makes the poison, said Paracelsus. In this case, the poison was the dose.
A foolish move to give Anne that spare vial, but she’d cornered him. Trapped. Conflicted. The plea in her gaze had nearly undone him. Nearly. Part of him wanted to go back, fall into her gaze, her arms. But he couldn’t do it. To either of them.
Besides, she’d bloody well known the plan. He’d made it plain enough back in Chicago. She’d understood, at least she’d said so. But she had to muck it up and follow him to Scotland. So, he’d given her one of the two vials and lied. “Trust me,” he’d said, when she should do anything but that. How could she have known he’d made a second dose—just in case? Always have a backup plan.
He’d been moving for days now, ignoring the injuries tearing at him from within. The struggle against searing agony and gnawing lethargy beckoned at the crest of every new hill. But he pushed on. No choice.
But for a missed foothold on the descent at Glomach, he might have made it through the falls cleanly, as he’d done so many times as a lad. Each contusion and broken bone, cracked rib, and ugly gash provided an exquisitely painful reminder of just how vulnerable he was for an immortal fellow. Left untended, the injuries would mend in a matter of days. Gaelan had no plans to be alive even that long.
The tether holding him aloft just this side of conscious thought and forward movement had nearly disintegrated. Encroaching apathy and a mosaic landscape of blurred images now waged war against his bloody-minded determination to reach this, his final resting place. Leaning his back against a large, algae-covered boulder at the mouth of a sea cave, Gaelan slid to the ground, exhausted and broken.
Cape Wrath, a poetic location to end his life. Here he would put the vial to his lips and drink, savoring it like a one hundred-year-old whisky. Allow the tides to do the rest. After more than nearly five centuries, it would soon be over, his body forever lost to the sea.
The bracing surf pummeled Gaelan, cleansing him of grime and sweat, blood and regret; the tang of bitter salt lingered in his mouth. Anne Shawe had played in the shadows of his mind the entire way. Now she hovered just beyond the shore, haunting him, taunting him, a siren calling as she bobbed in and out of view, disappearing into the waves only to appear closer a moment later. He blinked and the image disintegrated, cascading into the white foam, a looming mirage conjured of guilt and fear. Remorse. She would despise him into eternity, but there was nothing to be done about that.
Soon enough, Anne would move past the brief moment that had flared between them in Chicago. And his promise, made in a moment of weakness, mouthed at the ledge of the abyss. “Trust me.”
To do what? Trust he would choose life, and they would live happily ever after? Until she’d grown old and he did not? Until she died, frail and elderly and he lived on, eternally a young man? For Gaelan “ever after” was forever. And ever. And never a happy ending.
Gaelan had loved three women in all his long years: Caitrin Kinston, Lady Eleanor Bell Braithwaite . . . and Anne Shawe. He’d been drawn to Anne in some indescribable way. Visceral. Incandescent. Transcendent. But she would move on; he would die. Full stop.
A cormorant landed on a nearby rock, eyeing a flock of puffins bobbing just off shore. Another day, a different time, Gaelan might simply sit in peace for hours, transfixed by the stark, unearthly seascape, its surreal rock formations, stone creatures forged by millennia of North Atlantic storms and the calm evolution of slow erosion.
Doub
t lingered in the periphery of his thoughts as centuries passed him by in a flash. Centuries of being witness to discoveries small and significant. The constant but slow motion of civilization’s thrust and parry—darkness into light into darkness. Enlightenment that too often wasn’t. Genius ignored, dismissed, discarded until it was too late to acknowledge the achievement.
Gaelan had touched greatness, played in the shadow of genius: Newton and Tesla, Wells and Conan Doyle, Louis Tiffany. Benjamin Bell. Giants. Sláinte to them, one and all. Yes, he regretted not being privy to the next chapter, but he was done, and ready for the end.
Anne hovered in the near distance, just beyond the whitecaps. He tried to ignore the mirage, but it refused to vanish in the faded northern light of early spring.
The vision dissolved just as he reached out toward it, as it mutated into an army of grotesques swallowing everything in its path. Setting the sea ablaze. Gaelan closed his eyes, but the image remained, burned into his retinas.
A blink, and it all disappeared, leaving in its wake only the whirlwind of sea and foam. No monsters. No Anne.
He breathed in the cold, sour salt air, hoping the spray would numb his injuries, aches, and pains. All it managed was to make him wet and cold. His sodden jeans clung heavy to his thighs and his suede jacket, blackened by freezing salt water, hung about his shoulders like an anvil.
He really needed a smoke, if only for a bit of warmth. But everything in his pockets was drowned and useless. Even his vintage Zippo.
A voice buzzed at his ear. Familiar and unwelcome as a mosquito.
“For fuck’s sake, Erceldoune, take the damn poison already.”
That voice; he knew it like his own. Simon Bell. “I thought you were dead, Simon.”
“I could say the same to you. Clearly, you’re still quite alive. Whereas I—”
If the entire thing wasn’t so completely pathetic, Gaelan would laugh at the absurdity of conversing with a . . . ghost . . . auditory hallucination? Just the same . . . “It worked, then?”
“It did! And what are you waiting for, hmm?”
Gaelan patted his jacket pocket. “The vial. It’s right here.”
“Yet, you’ve procrastinated, and nearly a week. And, by the way, you’re a bloody arse for disappearing on my dear niece, the delectable—and brilliant, if I might say—Dr. Anne Shawe.”
“Go the fuck away.”
“That what all this hesitation is all about, then? Not sure you want to shuffle off this mortal coil just yet?”
No, quite sure. I have suffered more slings and arrows than any mortal man may endure. I am done.
The sea was on the move, and the high tide would come in soon, infiltrating the cave, higher and higher. A slithering snake consuming everything in its path. And Gaelan was ready for it. He would drink the poison and wait for the blessed blanket of death. No more hallucinations, no macabre visions to invade his days and nights. No more fucking PTSD. No Handley. No Braithwaite. No Tremayne. No Simon Bell.
But, for the moment, Simon floated in and out of view, bothersome as ever.
“Why did you send Anne to me? Tell her my coordinates? You had no right!”
“Thought you deserved a chance after all you’d been through—”
“Bollocks. What are you doing here, anyway? Haunting me? Aren’t you busy reconciling with your dear departed Sophie? It’s all you’ve whined about for decades.”
“Having, I suppose, is not so pleasant a thing as wanting, in the end.”
“Quoth the philosopher Spock. Go away, Simon. Leave me be.”
Again, it was quiet, but for the flock of puffins, which had now relocated to the shore, scavenging the sand and gravel, tiny, feathered clowns with painted beaks, hunting dinner an earnest mission to complete quickly, before the tide roared back and hid the booty.
Gaelan took a final look around and, hands shaking, carefully tipped the vial to his lips. He closed his eyes and waited. The taste was not unpleasant—like cheap orange vodka—as it stung down his throat. He tried to identify each ingredient he’d mixed into the deadly elixir, its taste, the sensation on his tongue, in his throat, as it slithered into his bloodstream.
It would not be long now. He hauled himself into the sea cave and collapsed at the base of a massive boulder, awaiting a long-overdue death to claim him, as Simon Bell’s ghost lingered in the shadows.
Blinding flashes of light exploded in the dark periphery of Gaelan’s vision, a strobing rhythmic pulse in sync with a dull humming roar. Something was forcing him down, further and further. An anchor, sucking the air from his lungs like a vacuum, and in its wake, an overpowering crushing in his chest. He struggled to breathe against the screaming agony, a dagger piercing his lungs.
Then it was over, swiftly as it had begun, leaving Gaelan gasping for air and plastered to a jagged, rocky surface. No sound. No light. Complete and utter nothingness.
Suddenly, he was floating, drifting, aimless in the void on a bed of gauze and feathers. Would there not soon appear the famous white light to guide him directly toward heaven’s gate?
Or was his fate, instead, a place in the pits of hell? For now, he was falling. One level to the next until . . . what? The eighth circle of Dante’s inferno, reserved for those who’d dabbled with nature’s laws—where alchemists and sorcerers were condemned for all eternity?
Fire ignited the air, filling the chasm with dazzling, blinding light. From the depths of the blaze materialized the lone figure of his father, unbending, unrelenting, the flames licking at his boots, his clothing, lapping like waves, surrounding him. Yet, there Papa stood, still, and staring into Gaelan’s eyes, as he had that terrible morning nearly half a millennium ago, speaking words impossible to hear as they evaporated into the chaos of burning embers.
Gaelan could do nothing but watch in horror as, so very slowly, Papa’s clothing burned away, melting into his flesh, his bones, turning them to ash.
The fire sparked and spitted, engulfing the entire courtyard, reaching the high parapet, where, all-powerful, James VI, king of Scotland, smiled, pleased with the fiery execution. The inferno crept closer, scorching Gaelan’s face, as it had that morning in 1598.
Then he heard it, thunderous and deafening, a surging wall of water, coming at him from all sides. The cacophony of the tides thrust deep into the narrow cave, only to be sucked out again. Further out to sea this time, as high tide retreated. And he was still alive.
The poison vial, still clutched tight in his fist, was empty. Why was he not dead? How could he not be dead?
Gaelan’s heart pounded in his ears as the steady drip-drip of water echoed off the sea cave walls, dragging him back to full awareness as the remnants of the tide drizzled steadily from chalk white stalactites inches above his head. How had he gotten all the way up there?
Did some innate survival instinct force him ever upwards to escape the inundation? Up the boulder and just above the tide line? Or had the force of the tides pulled him out to sea only to deposit him here, atop this boulder as they heaved their way to and fro?
A furious storm battered the rocks outside, slamming a new swell through the cave’s mouth, which surged up the boulder just below Gaelan’s precarious perch. Lightning turned the night into day and beasts of the sea loomed on the cave walls in silhouette.
At least Simon had shut the fuck up.
Above the whip of wind and foam as the sea rushed in and out about him and the eerie whistle and screech of the gale sweeping through the cave, a sweet voice lilted in modal chant high and pure. He knew the ballad. The tragic tale of the Great Silkie, the man-seal creature who dwelled not far off from this bit of seacoast—at Sule Skerry.
The storm slowly receded along with the sea. Bioluminescent algae deposited by the retreating waves shimmered in bloodred puddles surrounding Gaelan’s boulder. He eased himself down from the slick rock and let go, landing in a shallow pool. Soaked through and shivering, he tried rubbing the cobwebs from his brain, the searing pain from his fo
rehead, where he must’ve bashed it during the storm.
Think, Erceldoune! Why had the poison not worked? How could he still be alive?
He had been precise in its preparations. Every detail. Exactly following the instructions in the ouroboros book.
“Pondere per singula—one dose. Celeri morte—a swift death. Certa mors—certain death.” Euthanasia in a bottle. He’d made no mistake—not with the poison. Yet, here he was. And lacking a Plan B.
In the distance, the notes of a familiar ringtone. Gaelan searched through the darkness for the familiar glow of his phone. How could it not be waterlogged and dead by now?
The ringing stopped.
If only he could concentrate, wrangle his brain into some semblance of clarity. Five centuries of looking over his shoulder had trained him; even when he’d been dead drunk or wasted into oblivion, his instincts were always reliable. Now there was only freezing wet fog and weariness. Coherent thought was, at best, an elusive notion, a meteor storm of disconnected thoughts.
The mobile went off again; the white of its bright screen pulsed among the algae. He pounced upon the phone, seizing it, determined.
Dragging himself through miry sand and slimy ropes of the luminous algae, Gaelan now stood at the base of a towering cliff just outside the cave entrance. He hurled the phone with as much strength as he could muster—barely enough to reach the fleeing sea as it swept ever westward. For a moment the phone bobbed on the crest of a wave, and then disappeared.
The effort sapped Gaelan of all strength and he staggered against rocks. The stars had begun to emerge, and he tried to focus on the western sky; always the heavens provided his most reliable guideposts as he navigated the worst of times. Perhaps they would now help him make sense of the mud and muck in his head.
But the expanse of sky was distorted into a confusing, pockmarked blur. Disorganized pinpoints of hazy light, one object indistinguishable from the next. He could not connect them into constellations. The northern sky danced a ballet of color, indistinct. An impressionistic painting of the aurora borealis. Not even the stars made sense this night.
Alchemy of Glass Page 3
