by Nick Thacker
Sparizione. The Spanish word it reminded her of was desaparición.
To disappear.
She turned to Ben once again, who was already looking at her. She held her cuffed hands up to her neck and slid her finger across it horizontally.
Ben understood the motion immediately. His face was stoic, but she could see the rage building behind his eyes.
He nodded slowly.
50
Reggie
Reggie was surrounded by monitors and whirring machines, gurneys lying on their sides and stacked against a wall, and bright hospital lights.
He’d been in a hospital before, so he wasn’t surprised by all that. What he was surprised by, however, was the fact that this particular hospital was inside an ancient temple.
Or whatever structure they’d been in. Reggie had found himself inside a wooden coffin in a basement, then escaped to a round chamber with stone walls, and was now strapped to a table in some other similarly styled chamber. Best guess, he figured, he was in the same ancient complex he and Sarah had been in, the same complex Vicente Garza was using as his hidden headquarters.
They had turned this room into a makeshift hospital, and he could see his vitals on one of the screens near his bed.
A woman entered, followed by a man. Both were wearing white lab coats, and both were holding clipboards.
“… because nearly all bacteria found in the human body is related to Candida somehow.”
The woman shook her head. “That’s patently untrue.”
“It’s an exaggeration, but it’s close. If it’s not Candida, I don’t know what it is.”
“We do know it’s Candida, but we’re not sure which strain. Candida albicans has been known to cause osteoporosis in certain situations, and those —”
“Those situations are obscure and exceedingly rare, and are most likely caused by something besides albicans reacting with it.”
“Dr. Prichard, that’s exactly my point. We’re not looking for Candida albicans, we’re looking for what the other yeast strain could be.”
The man, Dr. Prichard, sighed. “I know. I’m just thinking out loud. These — tests, if we can even call them that — are so inconclusive I can hardly pass them off as useful data. We need more time with the primate trials and more conclusive lab results before —”
“Garza isn’t going to give us that time,” the woman said. “You know that. He wants this phase complete tomorrow.”
Reggie grunted, and both doctors turned to him.
“Oh,” the woman said. “I — I didn’t realize you were awake. The soldiers said you’d be sedated.”
“Yeah, well, it takes a lot to sedate this guy. Where the hell am I?”
“This is the medical wing.”
“In Detroit?”
The doctors looked at him strangely.
“Ah, well, it was worth a shot. Say, you think I could get the all-clear? I’ve got a date later with this hot lady they’re keeping upstairs somewhere, and I —”
“Ms. Lindgren is safe, Mr. Red.”
“Where is she?”
“Exactly where she was before. Her wound is not healing, but our orders were to keep it that way. Trust that she is safe, for the moment.”
“Why am I here? What are you idiots going to do to me?”
“We’re testing a drug based on the Candida albicans yeast strain, and we’re hoping that it helps regenerate the growth in your skeletal structure. These initial dosages will —”
“Wait, wait. Hold on,” Reggie said. “You’re injecting me with yeast? To regenerate what skeletal structure are we talking about? Mine?”
The doctors looked down at him blankly; the woman working her hands over a syringe filled with a semi-opaque liquid.
“Yeah, I don’t think I signed the consent form to be one of your little experiments. Did Garza send you here? Where the hell is he?”
Reggie heard a voice over a hidden speaker. “I am right here, Gareth. In the next room over, watching your progress from a camera feed. I hope you find Drs. Prichard and Jenner accommodating. They are some of the best geneticists money can buy.”
“Well, whatever happy pills you’re about to pop into me, just know that it’s not going to change the fact that I’m going to kill you.”
“Sarah said the same thing an hour ago, Red. Fiery one, that woman. Her body had a hard time accepting the initial dosages, but like I said — Prichard and Jenner are the best there is.”
Reggie yanked hard against his bonds, smacking them into the table.
“Those straps are far stronger than you, Red, but I do enjoy watching you struggle. It reminds me how rash and naïve you are, getting yourself into these impossible situations. The ironic thing is — in about a year, after your full dosage, you might actually be strong enough to break free.”
Reggie’s heart raced. “So that’s it, Garza? You’re making a giant? Turning me into one of your insane freaks?”
“Those ‘insane freaks’ were volunteers, Red. Members of my team.”
“How did you do it?”
“That is what my geneticists are trying to figure out. What is it the ancients were able to mix with the Candida albicans yeast to cause such rapid bone growth? They left us a few pieces of the puzzle — the remnants of their medicine, their legends, and the Book of Bones.”
“Which you need to figure out the rest of the puzzle.”
Garza paused, but didn’t answer the question. “My scientists have been instructed to continue testing, to continue practicing and honing their methods until they are able to provide me with an army of giants.”
“You already have that, though. Those six grunts in Alaska.”
“They are a remarkable start, I admit. But you saw them yourself. They are vulnerable. Weak in undesirable areas. Their limbs have been stretched and broken and re-healed so many times their musculature cannot keep up. Those men will be dead within a year, though they don’t know it yet. Their bodies are incapable of managing such gigantic systems.”
“You’re murdering them slowly.”
“Men like you have such a stark view of the world, Red,” Garza said. “The reality is something more nuanced — these giants I’m making, these ‘beasts,’ as they will be called, aren’t the first of their kind. In fact, they’re not even the biggest of their kind. I am not killing anyone, Red, but merely restarting the beginning of an amazing, ancient race.”
“They lived here, didn’t they?”
“Astute observation, Red. Yes, they built this place. Exiled from their home thousands of years ago, they came here. Built their temples and homes to match their old ones, and hid in this valley, hoping to live out their days in solitude and peace.”
“Great story,” Reggie said. “But I call bullshit. These giants were able to hide, build their little oasis, and were unbothered for that long? How’d they survive?”
“They didn’t,” Garza said. “Their race was diluted as they bred with the local population, and word eventually got out that they were here. They tried to maintain their isolation, but —”
Garza stopped. Reggie smiled. Got him talking, now he’s said too much. “But what?”
There was a pause, then Garza’s voice came back over the intercom. “But nothing. I’ve said too much — Doctors, please resume your administration of the first dosage.”
The doctors turned back to Reggie’s bed and held out their hands. Each was holding a massive syringe, each one filled with the semi-opaque fluid.
“Where’s that thing going?” Reggie asked.
“Garza has instructed us to work on rebuilding the structure of your upper humerus. This first dosage will go directly into the bone, and due to the nature of the yeast molecules, we cannot risk anesthetizing them.”
“Ah, wonderful. Nothing like a shot to the bone.”
“Correct,” Dr. Jenner said, her voice ringing through the stone room with the emotion of a robot. “It is a significantly painful operation.”
> Dr. Prichard chuckled. “Although it’s nothing compared to the breaking.”
“The… breaking?”
“Well, of course. In order for the yeast to get into the bone’s bloodstream and marrow production facilities, a significant breakage in the bone’s lattice structure must be present.”
“A significant breakage?” Reggie shuddered.
“Yes, Mr. Red. A significant breakage.”
51
Ben
The car slowed when it left the main highway, and Ben saw a sign that labeled the area they were entering Punta Rossa. High hills, covered in thick forest, met his gaze as their driver sped up again. Their vehicle was quickly consumed by the trees, and they traveled onward, ascending one of the hills toward the ocean.
Julie seemed calm, but he knew she was considering their options. Should we attack once we’re out of the vehicle? Or make our move now, while it’s one against two?
He glanced over at Julie, and she nodded at him.
Guess that settles it.
The driver pulled the car toward the side of the road to pass a bicyclist in the middle of the lane, but Ben didn’t notice any other vehicles or people on the road. The sun was setting, and the heavy tree coverage bathed their surroundings in shadowy darkness.
Ben watched the soldier’s eyes in the rearview mirror. The kid had to be no older than twenty-five, and he thought back to when he was that age. I was lost, drifting around like a nomad, trying to figure out what life wanted with me. He wondered if the kid had had any such experiences. He wondered if the kid had signed up for this — for killing innocent civilians by driving them out to a remote area and executing them in cold blood.
He wondered, too, what it all meant: if the kid was involved, and knew what he was doing, then why? What purpose did it serve? Who did it serve? Ben knew by now that every person, regardless of race, religion, upbringing, or belief system thought they were in the right. They believed they were the heroes of their own story.
What was this kid’s story, and what belief system had he bought into?
The kid met his eyes in the mirror, and Ben smiled. He figured the guy didn’t speak English well enough to pick up on his vernacular. “You sure about this, buddy?”
The kid frowned, then glared at him.
“Okay, man. Your funeral.”
The kid continued to ignore him, and Ben noticed they were nearing the end of a long climb up a hill. An old, small castle sat perched atop a rock outcropping, overlooking the water. In the distance, a modern communications depot and satellite array stood like a sentinel on a similar rock stand. Two juxtaposed versions of the same thing.
The car pulled off the road and onto another one-lane gravel road. The tires crunched along, and Ben saw their destination. An old, decrepit wall, pockmarked with the beatings of time and weather. It stood alone, perpendicular to the edge of the cliff. Ben knew then what the plan was.
It was crude, but simple. Two Americans, their bodies found washed ashore with bullet holes in their skulls. Authorities would blame local gang activity and ship them back to their homeland, where they’d be buried and remembered for a full length of the national news cycle.
This is it, then. Time to move.
Ben didn’t hesitate. He reached up and over the driver’s head, then immediately pulled back — hard. The kid’s neck met the metal chain of Ben’s handcuffs and he choked, spitting as he tried to keep control of the vehicle.
Julie was already in motion, however. She yanked the wheel from the kid’s hands hard to the right, forcing him to apply the brakes as they rolled off the side of the road. When the car stopped, she quickly flung her door open and ran around to the driver’s side.
The car behind them that was carrying Godiva and his other young soldier was still a few hundred yards behind, just now cresting the hill. She heard it accelerate, and she knew they’d spotted her.
But it was too late. She had the kid’s door open and his seatbelt unbuckled in seconds, all while Ben held his hands tightly around the man’s neck. The soldier was gasping for breath, and blood — either from Ben’s wrists or the kid’s neck — dripped onto the soldier’s collar.
She waited for Ben to loosen his grip and move his hands up and then she yanked the man from the front seat. He fell to the ground, still gasping for air, and Julie kicked him hard in the belly, causing him to groan in agony and retch even harder. Then she knelt down and pulled out his sidearm.
She held it up and aimed toward the approaching vehicle. Ben and Reggie had helped train her, but she’d quickly gotten better than Ben and nearly as good as Reggie himself with small-arms weapons. It was an easy shot, but she wasn’t sure how many rounds were left in the pistol, and she didn’t want to take the chance of a firefight between herself and two armed men.
So she waited. The car was speeding now, heading straight for them. Ben fell out of the back of their car and landed on top of the driver, holding him down.
She aimed. Steadied her gaze. She could see the eyes of the second car’s driver, the soldier from the hotel. Godiva was screaming next to him, but she ignored him.
She pulled the trigger. Twice, then a third time. The cheap windshield glass of the sedan was not bulletproof, nor did it seem to change the direction of her second two bullets. They slammed into the face of the young driver, his head falling.
The car was twenty feet from them now, and the kid’s foot had fallen on the accelerator as he’d died.
She winced, preparing to try to jump out of the way, when the car veered sharply to her right. It stayed on the gravel road, kicking up dust and debris behind it, and as it passed her — barely missing her right arm — she saw Godiva’s panicked face in the passenger seat.
He was screaming, but she had the feeling it was no longer in rage. He was afraid, but his fear only lasted a second.
The car shot off the cliff, sailing next to the old stone wall, and was gone.
She took a breath, then jogged to the edge. She didn’t want to look, but she needed to know.
There, at the bottom of the cliffs, was the car. Totaled, completely unrecognizable. Just a mess of twisted, smoking metal lying in a heap on a huge boulder. Sea spray splashed against the wreckage, and she saw pieces of the car floating in the water, banging up against the rock.
The sedan had bounced down as it fell, and the now-faceless driver had been ejected out onto the rocks. She didn’t see Godiva’s body, but it seemed there was a growing pool of blackness near the wreckage, spilling out onto the surface of the boulder.
Ben was there.
“That… that was something,” he said. “Nice shot.”
She was shaking, and she felt his hand squeeze her shoulder. “I didn’t… know. I didn’t know what to do, Ben. I just… grabbed the kid’s pistol and…”
“You knew exactly what to do.”
“I did, but I didn’t think about it. Like — like I’ve done it before.”
Julie was breathing quickly now. She had never thought she was capable of killing someone like that. Near point-blank range, directly to the face. She saw the young man’s eyes in her mind, his face as it existed one moment and then imploded the next.
I’ve done that before.
She turned to Ben.
He was looking at her, watching her.
“Ben, I — I think…”
“It’s okay, Jules. We’ll talk about it later. Right now we need to figure out how to get to Peru.”
52
Ben
Fourteen Hours Later
“Archie, can you hear us?”
Ben tilted the iPad’s screen up on its stand and slid it across the tray table so he and Julie could see it. They had purchased the iPad in Rome, using Ben’s credit card, as well as plane tickets to Peru, a change of clothes for both of them, and a few essentials they deemed necessary for the next leg of their journey. The tickets had cost around thirty-five hundred dollars, but Ben’s credit card, funded by the CSO, had a limit t
hat only Mr. E knew — he had hesitated for only a moment before handing it over to the ticketing agent at Leonardo da Vinci International Airport, but he’d had no trouble and no fuss getting the boarding passes.
He’d had a few moments of concern once they’d safely boarded the plane and begun their takeoff. Are we too late to save Reggie and Sarah? he’d wondered. Who’s after us? And what do they want? Do they know we’re going to Peru?
And, most of all, the most important question of all: are they even in Peru?
They’d slept for about eight of the sixteen hours on the plane, and even though Ben’s thoughts had raced over the events of the past day — their near-death experience in the small prop plane, their boat chase in the port of Corsica, and their battle with the Vatican guards — he had been able to sleep. They’d hoped that by boarding a large, international commercial airliner, their pursuers would think twice about taking down the plane. Still, a feeling of dread had washed over Ben as he saw Archie’s face on the screen in front of him.
Did he betray us?
“I can hear you, Ben,” Archie said. The older man’s face was lined in wrinkles, his thick, black hair waving around his ears, disheveled, as if he’d just awoken from a night’s sleep. “Before we talk, please know: I believe my home computer has been hacked. I have been at the university library for the past day, trying to make sense of all of this.”
“We know,” Julie said, breathing an audible sigh of relief. “We got caught in the Vatican, just after we got inside the hotel. They detained us, then told Ben that you called in an assassination threat.”
“Oh, dear,” Archie said. “It is worse than I thought.”
“Is it?” Ben said. “We didn’t even get to the part where we were taken outside the city and driven up a hill to be executed.”
