by Nick Thacker
“A hospital. Just a room.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what it was. Two weird scientist doctors were in there. They —”
“They gave you a dose of Candida albicans bonded with a liquid acetaminophen coating, to help with the administration.”
“Wha — what does that mean?”
“It means they gave you a shot of some weird crap that’s based on yeast.”
“Yeah, I heard them say that. They did that to you, too?”
She didn’t respond, but he felt her nodding. He was confused at first, then he tried to move his hand.
“They stuck us on that rock thing in the center of the room,” Sarah said. “On our backs.”
He was about to respond when he realized what she was implying. “Oh, my God. Sarah, your back. Are you okay? You got shot, and then —”
“I’m okay,” she said. “For now. It hurts, but it’s a dull throbbing. Those doctors patched me up a bit when Garza was done torturing me. It’s been getting better every hour.”
“Yet something tells me our situation is not getting any better.”
She sniffed. “Well, at least we’re together.”
Reggie chuckled, but found that he was strapped down so tightly even his lungs had a hard time moving. He hated to imagine what Sarah was feeling.
“Yeah, I guess there’s that. Die together, right?”
“I wasn’t planning on dying today,” Sarah said.
“Well, fine. I guess we can wait until tomorrow.”
Sarah let out a single breathy laugh, then fell silent. A minute later, Reggie heard her voice again. “Hey, Red?”
Reggie’s eyes immediately tinged with the sharp pang of tears. Sarah had begun calling him Red, as it seemed awkward for her to call him Gareth and there was no easy way to shorten Reggie. It was endearing when she said it, unlike anyone in the past who had called him by his last name. “Y — yeah?” He choked on the word.
“I just wanted to tell you that, uh, no matter what happens, I —”
One of the massive stone doors pressed open to Reggie’s left, and Sarah cut herself off. Reggie sucked in a quick breath of air.
“Good evening, you two,” a man’s voice said. Bright floodlights flicked on at the side of the room, and Reggie squinted as his eyes adjusted.
Garza.
“The Hawk himself,” Reggie said. “Coming back to his lair to watch over his victims. You’re like a Batman villain, you know that? No brains, one really cool trick you use over and over, and absolutely no exit strategy.”
“Is that so?”
“And if we’re lucky,” Reggie continued, “you’ll tell us all about your plans. Just in time for Sarah to save the day.”
“If you’re lucky.”
Reggie swallowed. He felt his confidence wavering.
“But,” Garza said. “I don’t think you are lucky, Red. I think you’re an idiot. A callous, rash, idiot, and I think you’ve got one trick, but it’s not even ‘really cool.’ It’s your ability to fight — to use your hands and feet in ways the human body was never designed to. You’re scrappy, able to see an opening where your challenger cannot.”
Reggie forced a laugh. “Ah, is that it, then? You strap down my arms and legs so I can’t fight you? So it’s a bit more of an even competition?”
Garza walked across the room and stepped up onto the elevated platform that held their round stone platform. He leaned in over Reggie’s face. “Close, Mr. Red. Very close.”
Reggie worked on some saliva, preparing to spit.
“But I have absolutely no interest in fighting you. This isn’t a comic book, Red. I have plans, and I have people waiting on me. I told your friends that — that my benefactors are waiting, and they are not going to take ‘no’ for an answer, nor will they allow me to mess with their timeline.
“Your friends know that — I told them that myself. Yet they are not here. They are nowhere near here, as far as I can tell. So do you know what that means?”
“They had to catch up on their favorite television show?”
“It means that we are almost out of time, and I am going to move on with my plans without the Book of Bones. A minor setback for me, but, I suspect, a major loss for you.”
“Nah,” Reggie said. “I never liked that damn book. Lot of people died because of it.”
“Indeed,” Garza said. “Red, have you analyzed your situation? The way I trained you?”
Reggie felt his heart drop. What the hell is he talking about? He had just woken up, spoken with Sarah, but he wasn’t able to see well in the dim light.
He didn’t want to give Garza the pleasure of victory, but Reggie couldn’t help looking around. He took in his surroundings — recognized the chamber he was in, saw Garza standing over him, the high, dark ceiling far above his head. He felt Sarah next to him, lying nearby but not speaking. He felt…
His arm.
He tried shaking it, moving his wrist, but it was tightly bound to the stone slab. Yet it was still… different. He felt warmth, a gently beating heart.
Sarah.
His wrist was bound to Sarah’s, and both of their arms were outstretched over their heads. They were laying on the slab of stone, head-to-head, facing upwards, but both of their right arms were outstretched, tied together and secured to the slab.
“What the hell?”
But that wasn’t all he noticed. He looked up, straight above his head. A shiny, glistening object stared down at him. Long and flat, the sheer edge of it sparkled in the bright floodlights. Almost like…
“Oh, shit,” he whispered. He felt Sarah catching her breath over and over, starting to cry silently as she realized their predicament.
“Red,” Garza said. “I have been working on a project here that will pay unfathomable dividends. You have seen the beginnings of that project, but — as I said before — it is far from finished. Those giants, the soldiers I have tested my research on, are still in a beta phase, if you will. Strong musculature, but their bone structures are extremely weak. They break down. Useful for a while, but over time…”
“Your doctors… they injected me with what’s inside them. That yeast stuff.”
“Correct. It’s related to Candida albicans, but it’s slightly different. Faster growing, it is able to survive inside the human body. We discovered it here, inside these walls. Dormant for centuries, we were able to activate it and use it for live applications. It is what we believe helped these people, the original inhabitants of this place, to grow to remarkable sizes. It causes rapid bone growth in mammals, though as I said, it is far from perfect.”
Rapid bone growth. Reggie shuddered. A significant breakage in the bone’s lattice structure must be present… “A significant breakage…”
“Yes, Mr. Red. In order for us to adhere the yeast cells directly to your skeletal structure, we must cause a breakage. The skin and muscles have no trouble growing back together, and the bones, bolstered by the yeast, will harden and expand from both sides.”
Reggie looked up. The menacing blade hanging above him looked back.
“We aren’t barbarians here, however,” Garza said. “‘Breakage’ just means the yeast needs direct access to the marrow production facilities of the bones. It can be a clean break, but it does need to break.”
“You tied us to a guillotine,” Reggie said, his breathing rapid. His voice was frantic, his eyes darting back and forth. “You’re going to cut our hands off. Both of us.”
Sarah’s sobs grew in volume.
“Yes,” Garza said. “That is the plan. I need the Book of Bones in order to understand exactly how this ancient yeast works, but as I said — I will not wait forever. If your friends do not arrive with the book in hand in exactly…” he paused to look at his watch. “Forty-seven minutes, this blade will fall. My doctors have assured me that you will survive the significant loss of blood, and they will most likely be able to reattach your hands. After that, we can begin with the second phase of tur
ning you both into one of my giants.
Garza turned to leave, but then turned around once again just before exiting. “But I had them prepare some adrenaline as well, which they will administer immediately after, to make sure you are awake for as long as possible.”
56
Victoria
“You know, that’s true,” Victoria said. “I do want to know who you think you’re at war with.”
“And the answer to that question lies in the actual question you are asking.”
She sighed, wishing that for once something in her career could be easy. She may have the unique ability to put pieces of history together in a way that made sense and created a compelling tapestry, but that didn’t mean it came easily to her. She often slaved in front of her computer for the perfect link, the missing piece that existed somewhere in the world.
But today — or tonight, whatever time it was — she was tired. She was tired of putting things together, and this little test this Masonic cult was putting her through to determine her worth was beyond cryptic. She needed more information. She needed more pieces. Her tapestry involved what most people knew of the Freemasons — they were a men’s fraternity founded in the 1700s in London, but many claimed their history extended long before that. They existed as a brotherhood that worked toward mutual benefits in their countries and communities by donating their money, effort, and time.
These men, obviously, were less like a Freemasonry lodge and more like a ring of spies, working toward a goal that was yet to be revealed.
They wanted her help, but they hadn’t yet told her how. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to help them? They told her they were at war, but they hadn’t yet told her whom they were fighting. Knowing a bit of biblical history wasn’t enough — the Bible was a tome of historic and anomalous information, filled with stories and legends and characters and —
She shook her head. Is that it?
She thought about the characters they’d been discussing. Hiram Abiff, or Hiram I of Tyre. The king who was friends with another king — Solomon, for whom he’d built the temple. Solomon, the son of Hiram’s other friend, King David, the famous biblical man who’d toppled Goliath.
Goliath.
She thought about what she knew of the ancient warrior. A “giant” from Philistine, fighting against the Israelites, who was defeated by young David’s stone. The Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts and the Septuagint described the man as ‘four cubits and a span,’ which would have placed him at six feet nine inches tall.
She then thought about the previous verses in Genesis. She spoke them aloud: “When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, 'My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.’”
“The war we have been fighting ever since, Ms. Reyes.”
She walked toward the dais, stepped up the round altar there, and leaned against it. “You’re fighting… the people of Goliath? Canaan?”
“In a sense, sure. But their ancestors, the Nephilim. The Anakim, their descendants, as well as the people of Gath, the Raphaim.”
“The biblical giants.”
“‘The sons of God and the daughters of men.’”
Victoria’s body went rigid. Sons of God, and the daughters of men.
She thought back to her conversation with Archibald Quinones, the professor from Brazil. He was concerned about his friends who had been kidnapped and taken somewhere, all in a ploy for their captors to find Plato’s lost book, Hermocrates, or the Book of Bones.
In the histories of Atlantis, Poseidon, a god, had borne children with a woman named Cleito, a human woman. Scriptures stated that angels always appeared to humans as men, and in Genesis, as well as in other apocryphal texts, some of these angels bore children with human women, creating the…
“Benei Elohim,” she whispered.
“Yes,” the man said. He was now standing in front of her, near the altar. “Benei Ha’Elohim — Sons of God.”
She wasn’t fluent in Greek or Hebrew, but she knew this term. “It means ‘child or grandchild,’ or…”
“Go on,” the man said.
“A member of a guild.”
“Correct.”
“And Elohim,” she said. “A common word, often used as a name for God. But it literally means ‘powerful ones.’ Benei Elohim means ‘Guild of Powerful Ones.’”
“Yes,” the man said, stepping even closer now. “The Guild Rite — the Guild of Powerful Ones…”
“The Nephilim. The ‘sons of God, daughters of men’ who were the bane of God’s existence in pre-flood times. The reason he wanted to wipe the earth clean of all humans.”
“But he didn’t, did he?”
“He didn’t. Genesis 6:4: ‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.’
“They were still around after the flood. Exiled to the lands beyond biblical accounts. David fought Goliath, a descendant of these same people. Solomon fought them as well, and his temple — the place believed to have been the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant — was built for this purpose.”
Victoria’s mind raced. Her tapestry was being extended, patched, reworked, and redesigned. It was as if years of research fell into place simultaneously. Her beliefs, goals, and dreams came to mind, and she felt as though she’d advanced forward a decade.
“You are here because you believe these people — the Nephilim — are still here.”
“We know they are still here,” the man said. “This group — the Guild Rite — has existed for millennia, hunted by our enemies, chastised by governments and populations as a radical cult. But we have never intended to hurt or harm any of them, but to bring truth — ultimate truth — to light.”
“A lofty goal,” Victoria said. “But your grunt told me you’re trying to build a New World Order.”
“No,” the man said. “But he isn’t technically wrong. What we are trying to do is reinstate the New World Order that was supposed to already exist. The order that God himself passed down to us in his own words, in his own book. ‘The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men’ are the people he placed in charge of his world. ‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days — and all afterward — when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.’”
“You think the Nephilim are supposed to run the world?” Victoria asked.
“No, they were never supposed to run the world. But they lost out to the true power that is running the world. We want to end that, just as the Nephilim did in their time. We exist to destroy the Catholic Church.”
57
Ben
Their plane had landed in Manaus, Brazil, where Ben and Julie had met up with Archibald Quinones. They hadn’t seen each other in over a year, but to Ben it had felt as if no time had passed. Quinones had just as much gray working its way through his otherwise jet-black hair, his face had only a few more distinct wrinkles, and his sense of humor was still intact.
They’d embraced, updated each other with a few quick tidbits about their lives, and then boarded a smaller plane headed to Peru. Archie had identified a few options for airstrips, one of which was within walking distance of the valley he felt was the most likely candidate for the home of the Chachapoyas, but, he’d explained, it was a ‘cash only’ situation.
The airstrip was owned by a farmer who had some ties to both the US government and the Peruvian drug cartels, but Archie had gotten the man’s approval that he worked for money, not loyalty. If they needed a ‘quick drop,’ as he’d described it, he was the only man in Peru who could guarantee their safety and his own silence.
Plus, Archie said, the man wa
s going to throw in some ‘goodies.’
And for the cash they were able to front, those ‘goodies’ ended up being all manner of weapons — grenades, Peruvian knockoff AK-47s, and pistols — as well as some communications equipment. Archie passed each of them a walkie-talkie with a solar charger, and he and Ben lifted a massive block of wires and hard plastic casing that looked like a generator into their vehicle. Archie said it was a ‘remote relay communications array,’ the sort of thing soldiers in the field used to communicate with their base. They would set it up essentially in reverse, to scan the area for any signals, at which point the radio would home in on the band and broadcast the feed to their handheld radios.
Placed in the middle of a search area, the apparatus would allow a team to broaden their radius by a factor of five while remaining within radio contact.
It would also allow them to remain in contact with the other jeep in their party. Archibald had called in a few favors and drummed up some support in Ben’s and Julie’s favor, and the second jeep was parked and waiting when they landed, four Peruvian Army soldiers ready for orders loaded within.
The weaponry was passed to their rented jeeps in three separate black duffel bags, and within fifteen minutes of landing in Peru, Ben and Julie found themselves driving through South American cartel-controlled land with no passports and a hatch full of illegally obtained weapons, another jeep full of guns-for-hire trailing behind.
Whatever it takes, he told himself. We have to find Reggie and Sarah.
And in the same thought, he added the name of Victoria Reyes, the professor who had recently been kidnapped as well. If she’s here, we’ll find her. If she’s not… we’ll still find her.
Ben was adamant that they would accomplish their goal, but that was where his confidence ended. He had no idea how they were going to pull this off. They were being chased by at least one upset faction, that faction — a segment within the Catholic Church — had already proven that they were willing to kill them.
