The Last Judgement

by The Last Judgement (retail) (epub)

  ‘You know I told you about those two priests coming back to life?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well it seems the Magi have been synthesizing a compound that regenerates dead tissue and that’s how they were able to achieve it,’ Harker revealed as they reached the open doorway. ‘So I would guess that the lab rats used in those experiments were kept here.’

  There was little time for Brulet to respond for, as they reached the doorway, they suddenly saw the very man they had been looking for.

  At the end of a long dark corridor, Wilcox sat in his wheelchair in front of a control panel covered in buttons and monitors. With a light-hearted wave he called out to them. ‘It seems I have nowhere left to run, doesn’t it?’

  Both Harker and Brulet paused to survey the corridor as best they could, and once satisfied it was built out of solid rock, they ventured along it. It was probably a foolish thing to do because Harker knew full well that Wilcox would never in a million years give up in the face of his most reviled foes. But he was done caring by now and they would just have to deal with anything as and when it happened. Tristan Brulet had been right when he had shouted out from the helicopter ‘It ends here’, because he was damn right, either way.

  ‘Well, we know how you managed to get down all those steps.’ Harker motioned to the red-faced wheelchair assistant who was standing in a corner, still catching his breath.

  The young man did not appear to have any kind of weapon, but nevertheless Brulet raised his arm-sword towards him and silently shook his head in warning.

  ‘Oh, don’t mind Albert here. He is but a lowly servant to my needs.’ Wilcox raised both arms upwards. ‘Welcome to my church.’

  ‘More like a slaughterhouse,’ Harker replied venomously, and Wilcox gave a shake of his head and tutted loudly.

  ‘You couldn’t be further from the truth, Alex. This is a modern form of Genesis, but a Garden of Eden for anyone with sufficient vision. Just see for yourself.’

  Wilcox pressed one of the many buttons on his control panel and, through a viewing window, a large excavated cave was illuminated by overhead lightning. For Harker the sight before him was just another damming indictment of Wilcox’s moral depravity and he couldn’t help but feel an urge to shoot the old man in the back there and then. Close to a hundred rectangular boxes were stacked high upon thick metal girders, like storage containers waiting to be shipped out from a supply dock. Their fronts had been cut away and replaced with sealed Perspex windows, so that the interior of each was always visible. But it was not the boxes themselves that were the cause for concern but the sorry-looking individuals housed inside them. Each ‘hutch’ contained an uncomfortable-looking metal bed with a single pillow, and water and food tubes ran into a single trough secured to the wall. Separate air pipe nozzles were connected at the front of each hutch and, from what Harker could judge, they were all independent of each other.

  ‘Each living space is hermetically sealed and self-contained,’ Wilcox informed them proudly, ‘which ensures accurate and viable testing for every experiment conducted.’

  The patients were a mixture of men and women of different ages, and they shielded their eyes from the sudden light with most not even bothering to stand up or even pay attention to the small group of men now studying them through the viewing window opposite. The only consolation, and there was precious little, was that Harker could see no children amongst them.

  ‘We used to go down the human-trafficking route, but we will soon breed our own. I feel it’s so much more humane that way. Otherwise it’s like taking zoo animals from the wild…it’s just not humane, is it?’

  ‘You sick piece of sh—’

  ‘Careful,’ Wilcox warned, holding his finger above a red button with a fire symbol on it, ‘or I will not hesitate to torch everyone inside there.’

  At that moment Harker could have sworn blindly, reasoned for humanity’s sake and finally resorted to pleading, but he knew it would not have made the slightest difference. ‘What do you want, Wilcox?’

  ‘Not a lot really,’ he replied in a cavalier manner. ‘I just want you and the cross-eyed wonder here to die horribly.’

  With his free hand he pressed another of the buttons, whereupon halogen bulbs flared up revealing two frosted rectangular cells, bigger than the others, and running the entire length and either side of the corridor they had just walked down. ‘This whole facility is an engineering marvel, you know. It’s fully equipped with the mechanism to move each of the containers down there into any cube we wish, which means the patients are completely isolated from the moment they arrive to when their usefulness comes to an end.’

  ‘Don’t like to get your hands dirty, John?’ Brulet suggested, wincing in disgust at the set-up.

  ‘Not at all,’ Wilcox replied, as he pressed another button so that the sides of the two corridor cells now became clear. ‘Would you want to handle these things?’

  Inside each container a hulking beast spun around and began to eye their audience with aggressive curiosity. As Wilcox chuckled to himself, Brulet looked mortified but Harker hardly flinched. He had seen these creatures before, deep in the basement of the Governorate in Vatican City.

  ‘Consider these beasts the prototypes for that cardinal wretch,’ Wilcox said smugly, ‘except this time you’re both going to enjoy a little one-on-one time with them. What do you say…you game for it?’

  At that moment the whole room began to shake as an explosion went off outside, undoubtedly part of the battle raging in the amphitheatre above.

  ‘Even if we die, the Magi are finished,’ Brulet stated categorically, still pointing his arm-sword in the direction of Wilcox’s wheelchair attendant, whom he addressed as Mr Reed. ‘The Templars must outnumber your men three to one, so it’s over whatever happens.’

  Wilcox looked unperturbed by this prospect. ‘On that we can both agree, but there is one other thing you don’t know.’

  ‘Like what?’ Harker said with a scowl.

  ‘Like, that just down there is a corridor leading to a small helicopter pad,’ Wilcox explained, pointing to the only other door in the room. ‘And after you make your ultimate sacrifice, I will use it to take off to pastures new.’ He pointed to a rectangular steel box at the feet of Mr Reed. ‘In that case is all the regeneration compound I will ever need, and a disc containing the fruits of our work on this project.’ Wilcox began to laugh like a man without any cares. ‘With a half a trillion pounds at my disposal, I’m sure I can live comfortably for the rest of my life and restart on the research to cure my withering body, wouldn’t you say? As for you two morons, you only have to offer yourself up to these fine specimens and then, with me gone, your men will be able to free those poor, desperate test subjects… What do you say? Sound like a fair deal?’

  Harker glanced over at Brulet and then towards the nearest ‘demon’, who was licking his forked tongue against the glass, leaving a slimy trail down its surface.

  Sensing some resistance, Wilcox continued pushing for an agreement. ‘Come on, Alex, you always wanted to be a hero and…well, now’s your chance. Just think, you two could go down in Templar history as the men who saved a hundred wretched souls from being burnt alive. I can think of worse epitaphs.’

  Both men stared at each other for a second and then, with a weary nod, Harker turned back to Wilcox, looking like a beaten man. ‘OK, John, you win,’ he said, as Brulet lowered the sword to his waist. ‘I’ll go first.’

  ‘Good,’ Wilcox said. ‘It’s the right thing to do, for honourable men like yourselves.’

  Harker nodded solemnly, then he turned to Brulet and reached over slowly to hug the man tightly.

  ‘Very touching, it really is,’ Wilcox commented sarcastically. ‘I might even shed a tear.’

  Brulet wrapped his arms around Harker and then began to lower his arm-sword further. But the moment it was level, and with lightning speed, he thrust forward and sliced into Wilcox’s forearm with the tip of its blade. At the same
time Harker grabbed the old man’s chair and flung him away from the work desk, as Brulet now retracted the bloody tip, turned it on Mr Reed and drove it right through his chest.

  The younger man began to shake as Brulet pinned him to the wall. With one final gurgling breath, he became motionless and, as the sword was withdrawn, he crumpled to the floor.

  Wilcox was screaming as he nursed his injured arm, and Brulet grabbed him by both shoulders and spun him around on his wheels so he was facing him. ‘I told you it ends now, and I am a man of my word.’

  Without any hindrance from Harker, Brulet wheeled the old man all the way down to the far end of the corridor before stopping at the sliding door leading into one side of the left-hand transparent cell. He then glanced over at Harker, who was already at the monitor and searching for the right button. The door controls were simple. It was like a turnstile: slide it open, person enters, slide it shut and you are inside the cube.

  Harker pressed the appropriate button and the door slid open. Even as he did so, the hulking beast, dripping what could only be described as slime, began to get noticeably excited. It was evidently not the first time this creature had been given someone to play with.

  Brulet shoved the wheelchair into the turnstile as Wilcox began to beg for his life. ‘Please don’t do this…it’s not your way… I beg you. We can make a deal.’

  But his pleas fell upon deaf ears. For as Harker stared at Wilcox, who was crying like a baby, he did not feel a thing. After all the pain and hurt this man had caused to so many men, women and children, it was difficult to feel one iota of empathy for an individual who would destroy every human being on the planet if he had the chance. I mean, would you really consider killing the Devil himself murder?

  ‘I once said to you, John, something that still holds true today,’ Harker declared as he pressed the door button, then made his way back up to Brulet while the turnstile began to rotate slowly. ‘I’ve met some evil bastards in my time but you…you’re special.’

  Harker and Brulet continued heading out of the corridor even as Wilcox’s screams turned into shrieks, and the sounds of a body being slammed against the cell’s walls reverberated past them. ‘We’ll make sure all’s clear outside, then we’ll come back and liberate everyone on this island. Give them back the life they deserve.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Harker said emphatically, and they continued towards the exit as meanwhile the screams of John Wilcox began to subside. ‘And half a trillion pounds should go a long way to buying them some comfort.’

  Chapter 42

  The sounds of laughter and restaurant music filled the air as Harker made his way up the narrow stone street in Mont-Saint-Michel. A light snowfall had blanketed the small island commune hours earlier, and with it the narrow walkways leading up to the Benedictine abbey towering above. The Mont was an already a magical-looking place, and this white dusting of powdered ice only added to its mystique, even if Harker felt uneasy due to his earlier and rather unpleasant encounters on this rock. Up ahead of him the glassed-paned wooden door of a small restaurant, Le Mouton Blanc, opened suddenly, and an attractive woman stepped out wearing a halter-neck, knee-length pewter evening dress, and waved.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Chloe Stanton asked in a hushed tone as she closed the door behind her and made her way down towards him as fast as her high heels would allow.

  It was freezing, and even in his blue Armani single-breasted suit and tie, Harker was feeling the chill, yet Chloe barely batted an eyelid.

  ‘You said you’d be right behind me, and that was almost half an hour ago.’

  Harker drew her towards him and wrapped the left side of his suit jacket around her as best he could. ‘Just went for a short walk,’ he replied. ‘This place is quite beautiful when you don’t have people chasing after you with assault rifles.’

  Chloe stroked his chest and offered her most supportive smile as she began to feel the effects of the frosty air. She quickly slipped her arm around his waist and tugged him gently in the direction of the restaurant. ‘You were so very brave,’ she said with a hint of sarcasm.

  ‘I was, actually.’

  ‘Yes, you were, and you’re my hero,’ Chloe replied sweetly, before she gave him a loving kiss on the lips. ‘Now can we go inside, please, before your bride-to-be dies of exposure?’

  Two months had passed since Wilcox’s demise at the hand of his own creation, and in all that time Harker had not heard once from either of the Brulet brothers. Even David Carter had dropped off the map after being whisked away by helicopter during the island battle, and apart from a letter Harker had received stating that he was alive and well with a promise that he would be in contact very soon, he had heard nothing since.

  By the time Harker and Tristan Brulet had returned topside from Wilcox’s twisted idea of a laboratory the fight was all but over and the last few remaining Magi guards, realizing that the battle was lost, had turned the guns on themselves in a group suicide. Another waste of human life, as Harker saw it, dressed up as a code of honour, albeit a twisted one.

  After the gunfire fell silent the Templar soldiers had immediately, on the orders of Tristan Brulet, been sent to release those hundred poor lab rats being held below ground. It had taken some time to break into the sealed human zoo but eventually the captives were set free and boarded onto a fleet of private jets that had begun landing at the runway strip, at Brulet’s command.

  This whole evacuation had taken some twelve hours in total, with jets constantly coming and going, and it was during this time that the body of Harker’s pilot, Frank, had been found. The poor man had been strung up in one of the runway hangars, tortured and then summarily shot. With little or no information to disclose except that Harker had been dropped off on the island, the only hope was that his torture had been quick. Brulet had promised to take care of what family the man had, but apart from that there was little that could be done, and Harker still carried with him a real sense of guilt about the whole thing. If it hadn’t been for him, then Frank would still be alive, but then without Frank a lot more people could have died.

  The remaining Templar soldiers had secured every corner of the island in search of information, and much had been found pertaining to the Magi and their activities. The island itself had been owned privately since the nineteen-thirties, and from the discovered records it emerged the laboratory had been initially built in the late forties and updated through the decades that followed. This island had unquestionably served as the main site of research and development when perfecting the cloning process that would go on to create the Christ child, as well as other things. The disks that were recovered contained thousands upon thousands of gigabytes of data covering over sixty years of experimentation, and only time would reveal what other atrocious experiments the Magi had pursued.

  There were some positives, though, with the finding of data relating to the regeneration compound: doses of the compound itself and finally details of bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands containing almost half a trillion pounds. The money had been unimportant as far as Harker had been concerned, but he had been more than pleased when he saw a news report concerning the anonymous deposit of over four hundred billion dollars spread across charities around the world. The figure was so large that the UK and US tax agencies began to demand an overhaul of the laws pertaining to tax-exempt charitable status, and the arguments now raged on all sides. As to the fate of the remaining money Harker had no idea about, but he had faith in the Templars to do the right thing, although paying off his own mortgage seemed to him a good place to start.

  Tristan Brulet had stayed on the island until the last released patient had been evacuated before leaving via helicopter to see to his brother and begin his recuperation. Over the hours, they had both set the record straight, and by the end there was no animosity on the part of the Templars, especially since the Illuminismo had now been taken back into their protective care. Wilcox’s kidnapping of Chloe and Harker’s forced se
rvitude to the madman had been accepted by Tristan Brulet as extenuating circumstances and, given that his brother had now been returned to him, he was more than gracious when it came to closing the book on the whole tawdry affair. He had also disclosed that between William Havers’s interrogation of Dean Lercher, which revealed Harker’s intended destination to be Wilcox’s island, and with Shroder’s discovery of Jacob Winters’s true identity, the Templars had been able to assemble the rescue party which had arrived on cue.

  The Grand Master had been far less willing, though, to disclose or even discuss anything pertaining to Wilcox’s claim of Harker’s father being involved with the Templars, but the fact that he insisted only his brother should talk on the subject gave some credence to the Magi’s assertion. The idea that his family was of Templar blood produced in Harker as much anger as it did confusion, and he had wrestled considerably with the notion over the past few months. Anger because his father had not brought him into the organisation as was the right of all Templar members and confusion for the very same reason. Why? Coupling that with the lack of communication from the Templars since leaving the island, and even Shroder’s unwillingness to return his messages, the ensuing months for Harker had been filled with a sense of tremendous loss and disappointment.

  Things had not been made much better after a somewhat fractious reunion with Doggie shortly after arriving back in the UK. The dean had been furious because of his ‘shoddy treatment’, as he put it, at the hands of John Shroder. But what had really pissed him off was his violent interrogation with the Templar, William Havers, which had left him bruised and with a small scar on his cheek. Doggie had rattled on about this unpleasant incident but, as the weeks passed, he began to show a degree of pride in his tiny scar. So much so that he had invented a story for his friends and peers involving an attempted mugging that he had valiantly fought off, leaving him with this battle wound as a memento.

  As for Chloe, after being cut down from her own personal cross amid the firefight, she had refused to be bundled onto the waiting helicopter with Carter, and insisted furiously – as only Chloe could – that she was not leaving until she saw Harker face-to-face. In fact by the time he reached her over an hour later, she was still in a heated discussion concerning his whereabouts.