‘So, here we are,’ — Da Recco’s voice echoed down the smooth stone walls of the tunnel — ‘below the Counsel chambers. Above us reside some of the most powerful men in Kaffa: including the Pope’s representative, Fra Gerolamo, who has the Papal Guard, Pontificia Cohors, protecting him and his treasure.’
De’Angelo’s attention was piqued at the mention of treasure.
‘You’ll need to find the navigation charts. They will be stored in the vault two floors above us. Joshua tells me you can reach them without bloodshed — which I have serious doubts about, but I try to keep an open mind while ensuring I have a backup plan.’
He drew out a metal ball, with a fuse sticking out of the top. ‘This is something I like to call “La Bollente”, because it has something of a temper. It will cause enough of an explosion to make them look the other way.’
‘Where exactly are you going to set that off?’ asked Darkling.
Da Recco shrugged. ‘Maybe by the South Gate. Give them something to keep them really busy.’
‘You’re going to blow a gate?’
‘They’ve been sitting comfortably on their fat backsides for too long. Someone needs to give them a bit of a kick. Yes?’
Michaelmas grinned at the idea and immediately volunteered to go with him.
As he and Da Recco ran back down the tunnel, the Italian turned and his voiced echoed along it. ‘I’ll see you at the map room!’
50
The Maps
They waited for the detonation. In hindsight, it would have probably been easier to have gone back in time and entered the building in a more peaceful period, and then jumped forward. Yet there was something exciting about living in the moment, like a linear — having to deal with the world in real-time.
The team members were nervous as they huddled in the dark tunnel. Josh could tell from their rapid breathing they were scared. He remembered the first time he’d stolen a car. His hands shook so much he couldn’t get the thing into first gear. It was a feeling that never left you — fear was a potent drug, and he loved the way it turned to elation when he overcame it.
Caitlin’s hand brushed against his and closed around his fingers. It was a small, child-like gesture that invoked protection and reassurance. Somewhere deep within him, something unlocked, a memory he’d sealed away — the time he’d woken in the Mesolithic cave, her arms wrapped around him, her body pressed against his.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered, so close that he felt her lips brush his ear.
He squeezed her hand in the way of a reply.
The explosion rocked the foundations of the buildings, raining dust down onto them — whatever Da Recco had concocted packed one hell of a punch.
Their ears were still ringing when they climbed the narrow staircase. Darkling took the lead, as usual, followed by the twins. By the time Josh and Caitlin made it up to the ground floor any guards that hadn’t abandoned their posts had been dealt with.
The next two floors were in chaos: confused servants and merchants were running around like frightened children, trying to understand what had happened.
Someone screamed, ‘They’re at the south gate!’ and a group of soldiers charged down the stairs, completely ignoring the dusty members of Aries226 as they headed for the door. The more level-headed members of the nobility were trying to persuade the remaining guards to bar the doors, but their orders fell on deaf ears.
Da Recco’s face appeared amongst the crowd, closely followed by the beaming smile of Michaelmas. The Italian motioned to come with him, and they went unnoticed through the empty corridors until they reached the Consul chambers.
They watched in awe as De’Angelo took less than a minute to unlock the metal studded doors.
Inside, the chamber was an obscene display of wealth: gilded candelabras hung from the painted ceiling and portraits of fat, rich merchants presided over the long mahogany table which stretched down the centre of the room, flanked by golden chairs.
The table was laid out for a lavish dinner. Roast suckling pig and guinea fowl steamed on silver platters amongst the fruit and wine. It was as if the meal had just been served when the bomb went off. Suddenly everyone realised they hadn’t eaten for over twenty-four hours.
‘Not now!’ Darkling ordered, as they moved eagerly towards the food. ‘Find the treasure room first.’
While the rest of the team was spreading out, Josh went onto the balcony to assess the damage Da Recco had done.
It was carnage, the street was now full of people climbing over each other to get away from the smoke rising from the southern gate. Through the haze Josh could make out the outline of shapes slowing groping their way over the debris — the infected were inside.
‘Hey, Jones, are you going to help or what?’ Darkling demanded.
The maps were easy to find, and there were so many latent memories tied to the objects in the room that it took mere minutes to locate the vault. A large painting was slid aside to reveal a hidden, metal-plated door. The lock proved no problem for De’Angelo, and there was a collective gasp at the sight that greeted them when the door opened to the treasure within.
‘This is definitely something the Antiquarians are going to want to get their hands on,’ Bentley said, as they began to open the chests. There were artefacts collected from all corners of the globe. Not just gold and jewels, but sacred objects from civilisations that none of them had ever seen.
Caitlin had found the charts in a wooden plans chest, and spread them out on the table. Josh studied them. It was weird to see the world according to the fourteenth century: the misshapen outlines of continents and the illustrations of sea beasts and dragons to hide the mapmaker’s lack of knowledge.
‘I can’t believe they can find anything with these!’ Josh pointed at a particularly crude rendering of Africa that just petered out towards the South.
The maps fell into two categories. Some cartographers had tried to draw the world: ‘Mappa Mundi,’ Caitlin called them, and they were so badly drawn that Josh wondered if they still believed the earth was flat. Others were less ambitious, creating detailed charts of Europe and the Mediterranean; these were covered in notes and nautical markings.
‘Ah. Come to papa, my beauties,’ murmured Da Recco, picking out four of the more detailed ones. He discarded one and rolled the others up carefully.
‘Are we seriously going to let him leave?’ Darkling asked, walking over with an ossuary of a ringed hand which rattled around inside the glass case. Da Recco had gone into the treasure room and was wrestling a map case from one of the twins.
‘It’s what was meant to happen.’ Fey opened her almanac and pointed at the relevant page. ‘You can’t argue with the Copernicans.’
‘Well, you could...’ Darkling began.
‘Why don’t we see where it would take us next?’ Caitlin suggested, intercepting Da Recco as he left the vault. She touched the case of maps and went rigid, the colour draining from her face. Da Recco looked thoroughly confused.
Josh knew instantly that something was wrong. ‘What is it?’
Caitlin didn’t reply, her eyes glazing as she was caught up in the weave of the timeline the maps were invoking.
She gasped.
The stench of decay was overpowering as a fibrous black tentacle materialised in the air above her. A grotesque, ulcerated limb that thrashed blindly around the room like a root in search of water.
‘Get down!’ shouted Darkling as the grim tendril swept over their heads.
Ducking under the long table, Josh saw the seeping, open sores puckering across its surface. ‘Let go!’ he screamed at Caitlin, wildly searching for something to knock the map out of her hands.
Da Recco stared blankly into space, oblivious to the Wyrrm’s spectral limb as it coiled around both of them. Coming out from under the table, Josh saw that the ceiling had transformed into a festering underbelly of tentacles, like a giant millipede. He ducked and rolled across the floor as another twisting feeler reached for
him, crashing into Darkling who was pulling a pair of swords off the wall.
‘We need to get her away from the map!’ Josh shouted over the raucous screeching of a thousand insects.
Darkling nodded and handed Josh one of the weapons. ‘Whatever you do, don’t let it touch you.’
Josh felt the weight of the blade, swinging it around as the tentacle came back for a second attack.
The metal slid through the ethereal fibres of the limb as if they were smoke, causing no damage at all.
‘Not like that!’ barked Darkling. ‘Reinforce it with a temporal strike.’
Josh thought back to his training. Vedris had shown them how to find a previous attack in the timeline of a weapon and use it to multiply the damage on a target. With practice, you could harness more than one event to increase the power even further.
He reached into the sword and found a duel: two men carving the air with deft the strokes of master swordsmen. It was enough, and he brought the force of their moves into his next swing, feeling the past intersect as the edge cut into the coils around Caitlin. The tremor travelled down his arm as the blade connected with solid matter, and a screech from somewhere above told him that it felt pain.
More tentacles dropped down from the ceiling, blindly searching for him. Caitlin was looking deathly pale, and Josh knew he had one chance to put it right. He dodged the flailing tendrils and brought the flat of the blade down hard on her hand. The blow brought her back to reality with a jolt, her face screwing up with agony as she released her grip on the map case, instinctively cradling her injured fingers.
The writhing mass of tentacles above them melted away like black ice.
‘Wyrrm,’ was all Caitlin managed to utter before she fainted.
51
1664
[London. Date: 11.664]
Darkling entered the church, first as always. The others trailed behind in dribs and drabs, no one too eager to find out what was inside.
After they had left Kaffa, ensuring that Da Recco and his uninfected crew were clear of the port, the team had followed the trail of the Wyrrm through the next two centuries, sometimes manifesting itself as a small outbreak of plague in an isolated village like Eyam, other times wiping out half a country.
By the time they reached 11.664, their elapsed time on the mission was nearing two weeks. Everyone was tired, and tempers were beginning to fray. Caitlin and Fey kept records of every instance, plotting their next jump as they tried to anticipate the trail of the creature.
‘I think we’re close to the head,’ whispered Caitlin, consulting her notes.
Josh was past the point of caring. He was sick of the smell of death, the lack of decent food and the constant moaning from other members of the team. They blamed him for losing the lensing helmet and for passing Da Recco forbidden information. Fey checked into his records and discovered Da Recco had gone back to Italy and tried to convince the Pope and his council that the plague originated from a bug they couldn’t see. They rejected his theory, upholding the belief that it was the work of the Devil — to which Da Recco pointed out that was also an unprovable theory and was summarily executed for heresy.
Josh had liked Da Recco, a man before his time, and it pained him to think that he may have inadvertently caused his death.
There was no one inside the church.
Like a well-drilled crew, Darkling, Michaelmas and the twins swept the transepts while Caitlin, Fey, Bentley and De’Angelo set up a base and discussed the options.
‘We should call this in,’ suggested Bentley, for what felt like the ninth time. ‘This is way too dangerous.’
‘And fail another test? No way!’ objected Fey. ‘The whole point of this trial is to prove we can deal with an unexpected situation.’
‘But a Wyrrm?’
De’Angelo, who had been mulling over the situation, suddenly snapped his fingers. ‘We could try to spike it.’
‘Do you know how to do that?’ Fey asked.
‘I’m okay on the theory, but I’ll need Bentley to build it.’ De’Angelo nodded at him.
‘What’s a spike?’ asked Josh.
‘A fixed point in time, when you create a closed time loop and bind the target with some kind of lure. The Xenos use it for trapping monads,’ De’Angelo explained.
‘But the Wyrrm is nearly a thousand-years-long,’ said Josh, stretching his arms out.
De’Angelo smiled. ‘We only need to nail the head.’
Josh turned to Bentley. ‘Can you build it?’
Bentley looked around the nave. ‘It’s basically a Hubble Invertor. I need a conductor like copper, and the oldest artefact you can find, plus something from one of the infected. A head would be best, but a limb will do.’
‘Really? You’re asking us to touch one of them?’ Fey complained so loudly it reverberated off every wall.
‘I’ll do it,’ offered Darkling, walking back up the aisle.
They all turned towards him.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Caitlin. ‘The Wyrrm will come after you the moment it senses you.’
‘It’s not that quick.’ He winked at her. ‘And besides, I’m faster than any of you.’
Josh had to give Darkling his due, he was always the one that went in first, and whether you called it bravery or stupidity, there was something endearing about his lack of fear.
‘Good luck.’ Josh held out his hand.
Darkling gripped it tight and smiled. ‘Like you wouldn’t have done the same.’ He leaned in closer. ‘Do me a favour and keep hold of this.’ He handed Josh his locker key. ‘If for some reason I don’t make it, you may be the only one who can stop him.’ Then walked off to consult with the twins.
‘Can’t we just kill it? Josh asked Caitlin while the others were busy finding the components for Bentley.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘They are a perdurant species — Wyrrms are not based in one single timestream, and as a rule we try not to kill things. It causes too much of a disturbance in the continuum. We do get to name it though.’
Josh was not impressed. ‘How come no one found this one before?’
‘They’re rare creatures, and most people don’t even want to admit they exist. If we can spike it here the Xenos will be able to study it. This is quite a significant find.’ She smiled a little. ‘Dalton’s going to hate it. The Order will be talking about this for years.’
‘About Darkling you mean,’ Josh muttered, watching him explaining his plans to the twins. The locker key was cold in Josh’s hand. He wasn’t sure what Darkling was asking him to do with it, so he slipped it into his pocket and duly forgot about it.
Darkling and his crew were gone for over an hour. In the meantime, the others busied themselves with the details of the trap. De’Angelo was enjoying the role of project manager, directing Bentley on the various component parts of a spiking.
Josh watched them work together; there was a seamless ease in the way they moved around each other, intuitively knowing what their partner would do next — they had finally bonded into a team. The challenges of this mission had forced them to come to terms with their differences, had made them overcome their prejudices. There was trust between them now, and Josh realised that was the primary goal of the mission.
Then Darkling walked through the door and collapsed.
‘Don’t touch him,’ Caitlin ordered. ‘Everybody stay back.’
Black tendrils of smoke coiled in and out of Darkling’s body. His eyes were glazed, and boils bubbled under the skin as the virus ravaged his body.
Everyone drew back as Darkling tried to stand, but he wasn’t in control — he moved like a marionette, suspended on invisible strings.
Caitlin looked to De’Angelo and Josh saw something pass between them.
De’Angelo and Bentley gathered their equipment and began to lay it out a few metres ahead of the lurching step of Darkling’s twisted feet.
‘Are you going to save him?’ asked one of the twins, coming through the do
or behind him.
‘No.’ De’Angelo’s face was solemn. ‘He’s beyond that.’
‘Where are the medics?’ the other twin shouted. ‘Aren’t they supposed to rescue us!’
‘No one’s coming,’ Josh growled. ‘We’re on our own.’
Darkling’s body was nearing the first of Bentley’s contraptions. A stream of saliva and pus dribbled down his chin as his head twisted at an unnatural angle and his mouth gaped open.
‘Doo ittt noowww!’ was all they could make out as De’Angelo activated the first device.
There were a series of static charges, as though Darkling had stood on a live wire. The air around him shimmered and suddenly the church was filled with the vast carapace head of an insect-like creature, its mandibles holding up Darkling’s body like a doll. He was lifted into the air, twisting back and forth like a man on the end of a hangman’s noose.
‘Finnnisshhh!’ Darkling managed to utter as a spectral claw opened his throat.
A tentacle caught De’Angelo around his ankle and dragged him away from the second trap. The others were all too stunned to move as he was pulled down the aisle of the church towards the vast head. Josh grabbed for him but missed. De’Angelo was screaming, desperately clawing at the passing pews as he tried to stop himself.
‘The spike!’ Bentley shouted, pointing at the detonator.
Josh jumped over the rail and up onto the altar. Tentacles flew out from every direction, the walls of the church blackening as dark, root-like veins spread through the plaster. Josh slammed his hand down on the makeshift switch, detonating the second trap and creating a sphere of energy that enshrouded Darkling and the creature’s head, freezing them in place.
De’Angelo was released as the stasis field shimmered and stabilised.
Thirty seconds later, the Dreadnoughts arrived and everything went from bad to worse.
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 53
