"Are you speechless for the first time in your life?" he asked, impatiently.
I forced myself back to the conversation, because my brain was getting lost in calculations and nothing was fitting together.
"Nagorno, those are not the results I was looking for."
"And what were, brother? What were they?"
I was quiet. How could I answer that question with Dana in his power?
"Tell me why you've called. What must I do to get you to release Adriana?"
"Reverse the effects of whatever you injected me with before my next heart attack. Only you can do it. You've got three weeks. Twenty-one days. If I die, Gunnarr will make sure she doesn't return. And believe me..., you don't want me to leave Adriana in the hands of your son."
"Speaking of Gunnarr, how could you hide the fact that he wasn't dead for four hundred years? How could you not tell me when I hit rock bottom?"
Nagorno was quiet, it seemed as though he was thinking of how to respond on the other end of the line.
"You know that he always preferred me, brother."
What a waste of time, going back to the old arguments.
"Do you really still think that Gunnarr is trustworthy? Every man is a slave to his choices," I warned. "But beware of the bear's claws."
"Don't worry, I've got reflexes. Or rather, had. Which brings us to the main topic of this conversation. Can you have the cure ready in time?"
What cure, Nagorno? What cure? I'm not even sure what I injected you with!
"I'm going to do everything humanly possible. But not for your sake, you know that, don't you? Not for your sake."
"Well you'd better get started. Let's get down to practical matters. The countdown has started for you and Adriana, so, do you need any organic samples?
"Yes, I'll need to know everything I can about the state of your heart. Send me the results of all the tests the doctors have done, and a blood sample. How can I contact you if I need anything else?"
"Don't push it, Urko. I'm not playing."
"Neither am I, I'm just trying to save the lives of my wife and my brother."
"I'll call you every few days."
"You'll have to give me something, Nagorno," I begged. "Let me speak to her, I need to hear from her that she's ok."
"None of that, brother, because you know that Adriana is with me and I'll keep her alive for as long as I need to in order to save my own life. I'm not negotiating. Find the damn cure and you'll get to see her again."
And with that he hung up.
So that was it: my experiment had failed, my calculations for Nagorno's heart to age like a normal person had been a tremendous failure.
I'd have to go back to researching against the clock. Where would I start?
I started up the car and went to my old apartment in the Paseo Pereda. On the fourth floor there were still some instruments that Flemming Peterson, my old Danish friend, had sent me. I went into my homemade laboratory and reluctantly walked around the soulless room, with the plastic covers hiding a research that I should never have begun, like ghost cloths, a research that had ruined so many people's lives.
What good had it done, discovering the secret to our longevity? Now I was the piece that had to be taken down and Dana was a pawn to be sacrificed. No, it hadn't been a good time to try and end the life of Nagorno. My history with Dana made me weak, a piece that could be put under pressure. I would never beat Nagorno under those conditions. So I didn't have any choice but to give into his wishes, put things on pause for seventy years, and upon Dana's death, then yes, I would finally kill him.
What kind of limbo had he lived in for the past year? How could I not have anticipated that Nagorno would return? How could I not have guessed that he would use my son as the executioner's arm, brought back from the depths of God knows what hell?
I went down to the third floor, opened my laptop and pulled up the encrypted files with all the information from the Kronon Corporation. I should be up to speed in a few hours.
But I knew that Nagorno had just asked me to do something impossible. I didn't know how to reverse the effects of a defective injection that I had jabbed into him inhibiting his telomerase. What he was after was like trying to send a manned spaceship to Mars in just a few weeks. Maybe if he had have given me decades... Maybe then... But the fact was that the technology still didn't exist to achieve it.
And Dana's life depended on a fucking technological miracle. Turning a wavering, prematurely aged heart back into a longevo heart.
I spent quite a long time absorbed in my own ideas, sitting on a window sill in my apartment on the Paseo Pereda. The view of the Cantabrian sea beyond the bay made me feel I was back at home. In the last year I had barely been back. The home that Dana and I were building kept us busy with mundane tasks, everyday decisions like which couch to put next to the chimney or what crockery set was more solid and would last for more years.
More years, I smiled. How ironic. Would there be more years with Dana?
I decided to spend the night there. I didn't have the strength to go back to our house. I knew the power that absences had to torment me, and I needed to think clearly if I wanted to save her.
After making a list of priorities in my head, I made a decision and took my cell phone out of my jeans pocket. I punched in the phone number, begging some forgotten god that my father had a signal.
Lür had spent the last year lost in some remote part of the Amazon jungle, helping some healers from the Ashaninka tribe to record their ancestral knowledge of plants and roots with healing properties. Some European pharmaceutical companies had spent years taking advantage of their knowledge to patent the active ingredients of grains like the sacha inchi or a vine known as "cat's claw". The healers thought that my father was an activist biologist with unlimited funds and a rare wisdom of the properties of their native flora.
But I knew him well. I knew that he was just running away, not forward, but rather back to the past.
Lür was too affected by the latest events, by the latest diaspora of the family, by Lyra's death, by my attacking Nagorno. Lür always hid out in virgin locations where nature was more powerful than man or civilization. Maybe because he was an expert on hostile environments, but an expert on man, an expert on his own family...? Not even his wisdom had helped his children to avoid disaster once again.
"Son, how are you?" he asked. In the background I could hear a bird, although I couldn't identify it.
"I wish I could tell you that everything's fine, but it's not. Gunnarr's back."
I could hear him mutter not again to himself, and he then said:
"Listen son, it's happened again. You've lost your memory and your memories are hazy. Your name is Urko and you were born in what we now call Prehistory..."
I rolled my eyes.
"Father..."
"No, listen, it's important," he interrupted. "Your son Gunnarr died four centuries ago. I want you to memorize the following information and wait until I go and..."
"Father, I haven't lost my memory. Gunnarr is back, he's alive."
"You're in 21st century Europe, your latest identity is..."
"My latest identity is that of an archeologist named Iago del Castillo, born in Santander in the 1976 C.E. I manage a private archeology museum and Gunnarr, the son I thought had died in the battle of Kinsale, has kidnapped Adriana in pursuance to Nagorno's order, who, a year ago, I injected in the heart with a telomerase inhibitor the side effects of which have caused him to have two heart attacks in the last few months. Who's got who up to date?" I said, in a rush.
My father didn't take long to make a decision.
"Give me twenty-four hours. Prepare all the paperwork to return my identity to that of Hector del Castillo. I'm going back to Santander."
12
Wait up for me
ADRIANA
I turned to see the face of my captor, even though I had guessed who it was hours ago. Gunnarr was behind me, watching my moves, in case I decided to run out
of that luxurious lounge crammed with antiques, soft silk armchairs, harps, marble busts and bookshelves filled with old books that reached the five meter high ceiling of that luxurious room.
"Here you are again, destroying my life," I roared, staring at Nagorno.
I wanted to stand up, but Gunnarr put his strong hand on my shoulder and I remained on my knees.
"I didn't want to," answered Nagorno with a frown.
"You didn't want to? Well, let me go then, you fucking psychopath!"
"That's in your hands, all you have to do is tell me what my brother injected me with."
No, that's not all. If I tell you then you won't need me alive and Gunnarr will kill me all the same, I thought.
"Nagorno, I have a father, a cousin, family, friends and colleagues who must be really worried about me right now."
Not to mention Iago, but best not to mention him and make him angry, right?
"You can't do this to me, I have a life," I continued. "You can't interrupt it, kidnap me, take the information that you want and... and then what, Nagorno?"
"Can't he?" bellowed Gunnarr behind me. "Can't he? Have you seen what my father did to Uncle Nagorno? What he's turned him into?"
He stood behind me with his hands on his hips. He was still wearing his biker uniform, the worn 50s leather jacket and the muddy boots. I had the protagonist of Sons of Anarchy there before me, furious and asking for answers.
"And what has he turned him into? What exactly has happened?"
Nagorno moved forward with difficulty, tapped Gunnarr on the arm with his walking stick getting him to move away from my side.
I could note his heavy breathing, he was no longer the silent snake I had once known, now he was just a decrepit old dandy.
He stared at me, that part of him hadn't changed: the strength, the fury of those dark eyes that had hurt me so much. I hated him with all my being, remembering that those eyes, that cold face, were possibly the last thing that my mother saw when she was alive.
Then a moan escaped from his throat, as if the effort of standing up was too much for him. Gunnarr rushed over to bring him a huge armchair, picking it up with his right hand, as if it was a feather and solicitously placing it behind him.
"Sit down, uncle. Too many emotions for today. You should go and rest."
"No, we've already come a long way, Gunnarr. First we should explain the situation to Adriana."
"She's furious right now, she won't see reason," he said.
I glared at him and he glared back, but despite my fear, despite the intimate conviction that he would be my executioner in the event that the fragile negotiations were to break down, I measured my strength against his, although the eyes that were piercing mine were exactly the same as Iago's, and my brain was finding it hard to accept such a dissonant situation.
Nagorno sat down heavily and coughed, as if that moment of intimate rage between us had bothered him. I remembered his egomania, his need to be the center of attention under all circumstances, that part of him hadn't changed. His essence remained intact.
"To start with, I didn't want to bother you," he confessed, with a serious look on his face. "I swore that I wouldn't go anywhere near you while you were still alive. I swore that I would get even with my brother once your life cycle had come to an end. A few decades is not long to wait, I'm a patient man, I can distract myself with other things for a few years."
"Great, here's a man who can't even remain faithful to his own promises," I pointed out to him.
Gunnarr let out a low whistle, something similar to admiration.
"You said she was feisty but that was a bit of an understatement," he said, chuckling.
"I told you, she's one of those one people who won't give up. It's going to be difficult to reach an agreement that satisfies both parties."
"Stop talking like this was one of your businesses, Nagorno. It's my life we're talking about here. At least tell me what part of the planet we are on, where you have brought me, how long I was unconscious for..."
"I'll do my part if you do yours, Adriana. And now, let me continue. I was telling you that to begin with I forced myself to stay away from both of you. But then came the first heart attack. They were able to save me, but I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to die..." he said, self-absorbed, looking at some faraway point in the library filled with hundred year old books.
"After that nothing was ever the same. Everything I did wore me out and left me exhausted. I was exhausted after taking pleasure with women, tired after horse riding, after playing golf... like an old man. Like a goddamn old man. My heart has aged significantly this year, I feel old and tired inside, despite the fact that I still look like an eternal thirty year old. But I'm not senile, my brain thinks just as quickly as before, I'm not forgetful, I don't have any signs of decline. It's just this heart, it finds it hard to pump my blood..." and with that he was quiet, lost in the spirals of some memory.
"So he came to me," interrupted Gunnarr. "He came to me, and to start with I didn't believe him. But soon after I saw him have his second heart attack, he's still getting over it, as you can see. It was my idea to use you, if you have to hate someone, hate me. I don't care."
I already do, I thought. I barely know you and I hate you.
I looked at both of them, I refused to be a playthings of circumstances, someone to be deprived of freedom, someone to move around at will, someone to intimidate to get information from.
I am more than that, I thought, I don't care how many more years you have lived than I have. I don't care what you've been through, how you make your enemies. I am more than that.
And right then I decided to stop looking at myself as someone inferior to them. So I pushed away Gunnarr's hand, which was still holding me by the shoulder, stood up with some difficulty and looked both of them in the eye as I recited what would likely mean my death sentence.
"Take me back to my cell. I'm not going to talk, not today, not ever. You've got the wrong person."
"So we'll move to Plan B," said Gunnarr. "If you don't give us any clues as to what my father injected Uncle Nagorno with, our doctors won't be able to save his life. I'll have to send my father some proof I am alive so that he will begin the research as soon as possible."
"No," interrupted Nagorno. "You're just looking for bloody revenge on your father, and I made it clear that it's not about that, god dammit."
"You're wrong. What I want is for you to live, I don't want you to die in my arms in a couple of weeks, but my father may doubt that we are serious, believe me, it's the only way to stop this messing around and get him to start working on it now."
"And what do you suggest?"
"Like I said: some proof she is alive. The same as we've always done, the old-fashioned way. An ear, something that won't compromise the life of this young lady.
My stomach gave me from inside. Painful.
"No, not an ear. If Adriana survives the ordeal and we give her back to my brother, he will never forgive me for returning her mutilated in that way."
"He won't even notice, she'll survive it, I'll cauterize the wound. And she's got long hair, she can cover it up all her life," said Gunnarr, pulling on my lobe. "Pass me that letter opener."
"I said no Gunnarr! Not an ear.”
Sweat started running down my back and soaking my shirt.
He's going to mutilate me, I managed to think, but terror paralyzed me and the rope kept my hands tied behind my back.
He's going to mutilate me.
"Throw me the fucking letter opener!" roared Gunnarr, throwing me to the ground and pushing Nagorno away from the desk. "What the hell has happened to you over these last years? You've all gone soft, you're like longevos made out of butter."
And then Nagorno, making an effort to stand up straight, put his hand on the giant's arm, like a snake winding itself around a bear, each aware of his powers.
"Leave it," he managed to whisper.
Because he didn't need
to say anything else. He was Nagorno, and Gunnarr bowed to his order.
"Take her back to her cell, I don't want to see her. Her presence here has drained me."
Gunnarr's gaze darkened and I barely had time to see the gesture that Nagorno made with his chin. He put the sack back on my head and dragged me down the stairs, back to my cell. Once there he threw me on the bed. Then, to my surprise, he untied my hands and I took off the sack that was preventing me from seeing.
Gunnarr was locking the door to the cell from the inside. He put the key in his camouflage pants and we were left alone in that locked room.
"Are you going to mutilate me now that we're alone?"
"You have to understand, stedmor. I had to know how far my uncle was willing to go."
"But what if he hadn't have stopped you?”
He looked at me with eloquence.
"You ask too many questions, my uncle warned me about your curiosity. Tell me, is that why you share your life with a longevo, Adriana Alameda, because of your eagerness to know everything? You and my father make a very odd couple. The reserved man and the curious archeologist.”
Wow, I thought, frustrated, he's got us figured out.
There was a glint of mischief in his eyes, like when a child manages to work out an adult's riddle.
He then went over to the wall that my bed was pushed up against and put his hand on the rock.
"Too damp," he whispered to himself.
"What are you doing?" I asked, not understanding.
He didn't answer.
He bent down next to the bed and started looking for something under the springs. He took out a small plastic box. I cautiously walked over and saw that it was one of those devices for absorbing humidity that people put in storage spaces.
"It's soaking, I'll bring you another one tomorrow," he muttered, after examining the sponge inside.
"You kidnap me, pretend that you want to cut my ear off and now you're worried about the humidity in my cell?"
"I'm concerned about your bones. I don't want you getting sick, and seeing as your pigheadedness is going to make this go on for quite some time, I would prefer for you to enjoy the best conditions that Uncle Nagorno will allow me to provide you with."
The Sons of Adam: The sequel of The Immortal Collection Page 6
