Journey Into the Flame: Book One of the Rising World Trilogy

by T. R. Williams

  “I’m Logan,” he answered. He felt awkward being recognized as anything else. “But you obviously know that. Please, don’t let me stop you. What are we looking at?”

  Sylvia smiled and started to explain. “This is a sample of Cynthia Brown’s DNA. Using the quantum computer at the Akasha Vault, we can map anyone’s genome in an hour. But my friend Chetan, who works at the Vault, gives me priority access from time to time if I need to get things done a bit quicker.”

  “Nice friend,” Logan said as he pulled up a chair. “That’s a pretty detailed image you’re analyzing.”

  “It’s a supercoiled alpha helix, as we scientists refer to it. If we unraveled it, it would be about one meter long.” Sylvia made a few motions with her hand to rotate and zoom in on parts of the projection.

  Logan noticed a tall dark-haired man wearing a gray suit enter the lab and walk over to Valerie. He gave a nod in his direction. “That’s Valerie’s boss, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s Director Burke,” Sylvia confirmed.

  Logan watched as they spoke. Burke made only a few remarks and then left the lab. Valerie didn’t seem happy with what he’d said. Logan turned back to Sylvia.

  “I really don’t see anything out of place here,” she was saying. “Let me try this.” She slid the image of the helix to her right and brought up another DNA segment. “This is an older sample of Ms. Brown’s DNA that we had on file. The computer can perform a detailed comparison of the two and tell us if there are any differences.”

  As the red laser lines started to scan each strand of DNA, Sylvia turned her attention to a different screen. Logan kept watching the first one as it shifted and rotated, studying the DNA images as if he were preparing to draw them. Suddenly, a dark gray ring appeared on one of them.

  “Hey, what’s that? This thing right here, this gray ring.” He pointed to the spot on the image.

  Sylvia paused the scanning process and zoomed in. Then she turned back to Logan. “Well, look at you, Mr. Agent,” she said with a smile. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen that before. Hey, Charlie,” she called across the room. “Come check this out.”

  “What do you have?” Charlie asked. Valerie came over with him.

  “It looks like there’s a DNA insert or some kind of attachment in the DNA sample we extracted from Ms. Brown postmortem.” Sylvia enlarged the image, isolating the location.

  “What’s a DNA insert?” Valerie asked.

  “It’s a result of a different sequence of DNA having been inserted into an existing strand. I’ve never seen one like this, though. It looks like a ring has been placed around a particular sequence.” Sylvia found the angle of the image she was looking for. Logan looked at it more closely. He’d said “ring” originally, but now “collar” came to mind. Like the ones he’d seen in his candle vision.

  “That looks like—” Logan began, but Valerie broke him off with an intense look of warning.

  “Looks like what?” Charlie asked.

  Logan picked up on Valerie’s cue. “Sorry, I thought it looked like something, but I was wrong.”

  “It looks like a dog collar around this particular part of the sequence,” Sylvia said. And there was the word again. “Collar.” She continued to play around with the image. “Let’s see if we can find out what this sequence does.”

  “You can do that?” Valerie asked.

  “Sort of. Close to ninety-eight percent of our DNA is classified as junk, which simply means we don’t know what it does. But all of our twenty-five thousand genes are made from their own distinct DNA segments. We should be able to figure out if this particular segment does anything useful.” Everyone watched as Sylvia manipulated the computer with her swift, nimble fingers. “Voilà! This DNA sequence is used to create the VMAT-2 gene.”

  “What’s a VMAT-2 gene?” Charlie asked.

  “VMAT-2 is used to deliver neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft of the brain. It is a protein that transports monoamines, particularly neurotransmitters such as dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and histamine.”

  “What does that mean?” Charlie asked. “Is that what killed them?”

  “I don’t know,” Sylvia said. “These neurotransmitters enable us to think. Without them, we can’t survive.” Sylvia turned back to her computer. “I’m going to need to run some more tests. We need to see if the other victims have the same anomaly in their DNA.”

  Valerie nodded. “Charlie, clear the road for her. Anything she needs, make sure she gets it. I have to go brief the higher-ups, and then I have to brief the media. Burke wants me to say something to keep everyone happy and occupied.” Valerie tightened up her ponytail. “Some days I really hate this job,” she said as she walked out of the lab.

  Logan took a seat at an empty desk near Sylvia. Hoping that Mr. Perrot was having more luck finding answers in New Chicago than they were having in D.C., he took his sketchpad and a pencil out of his backpack and started to draw the DNA strand from memory. He paid particular attention to the details of the collar.

  After ten minutes, he stood up, stretched, and walked over to the four bio-coffins. The last time he had viewed a dead body was at his parents’ funeral, the saddest day of his life. He walked slowly from corpse to corpse now and paused when he came to the young woman named Claire Williams. Did these people die because of the books, because of my decision to sell them? Logan asked himself. He looked at the young face of Claire Williams. She was innocent in all of this. They all were. A feeling of guilt overcame him as he looked at them. They had died for no reason . . . Unless Sebastian Quinn was correct. Unless there really was a greater purpose to the journey of the books . . .

  “None of this makes any sense,” he whispered.

  A red light above Claire’s bio-coffin started flashing. Logan looked around, but no one else in the lab seemed concerned. He turned back to the bio-coffin and noticed through the white mist that strange green lines were beginning to appear all over the body. The red light flashed faster, and indicators over the other three bio-coffins lit up. Logan jumped back as a loud alarm sounded. All of the lab personnel rushed over, with Charlie following them.

  “We’re losing stasis!” Sylvia shouted, manipulating the controls. “Quickly, someone get four ice boxes in here! We have to move these bodies right now!”

  Two technicians ran out of the room.

  “Those green lines on the body—some kind of chemical reaction is taking place in their bloodstreams,” Goshi said.

  “That’s impossible!” Sylvia replied, still trying to adjust the controls. “These chambers are supposed to prevent that from happening.”

  While Sylvia and Goshi hovered over the controls and the other technicians checked the wires on the bio-coffins, Logan couldn’t take his eyes off the corpses. Blood was starting to flow out of them. It was leaking out of the eyes and the ears. Then, as if the major veins and arteries had burst, blood started flowing through the skin.

  “It’s like their veins are disintegrating,” he whispered.

  Sylvia came over. “What’s happening to these bodies?”

  “Where are those ice boxes?” Goshi yelled.

  Four technicians slammed through the lab’s doors, wheeling in the ice boxes.

  As the bloodied corpses were transferred from the bio-coffins to the ice boxes, Logan realized that this was another part of his candle vision: the green vines and the bloody faces he had seen in the painting . . .

  He grabbed his backpack and ran out of the lab.

  24

  A warrior knows his time.

  —THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA

  NEW CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, 11:00 A.M. LOCAL TIME,

  3 DAYS UNTIL FREEDOM DAY

  Using the key that Logan had provided, Mr. Perrot entered Logan’s house and hung his hat on one of the coat hooks near the front door. He was accompanied by WCF agent Jogindra “Jogi” Bassi, whom Valerie had assigned to watch over her father.

  “I’ll just take a look around, sir,”
Jogi said politely in his acute Indian accent. “Let me know if you require my assistance.”

  Mr. Perrot thanked him and walked into the study, a room he was most familiar with. It looked much the same as it had when Camden and Cassandra had been alive. Camden’s desk stood where it always had, and the shelves behind it held the same books that Camden had read and reread, along with the origami figures he had enjoyed making. Hanging on a wall were two mosaics, which Cassandra had created. Mr. Perrot and Camden would sit in the study late into the night, drinking wine, smoking their pipes, and debating the many mysteries of the universe and the Chronicles. They would also reminisce about the past and the what-ifs of their lives. Cassandra would join them from time to time, but usually, she’d go to bed when the grandfather clock in the corner struck the witching hour. Those wonderful times were indelibly etched into Mr. Perrot’s soul, and he could easily get lost in those happy memories.

  The gentle smile on his face gave way to a more solemn expression. Now is not the time to indulge yourself, he reminded himself. You have a task to perform, a duty to your old friends . . .

  There was a small closet in the study, which Logan had told him contained the boxes of his father’s belongings that he had packed after his parents died. Logan recalled storing a large brown envelope stuffed with numerous folded sheets of paper he hadn’t had time to look at. Having now read some of his father’s journal entries, Logan suspected the papers might be the “flame notes” that his father had taken with him to Baté’s old study. But when Mr. Perrot opened the closet door, he groaned. There weren’t just a few boxes but at least ten, and none of them was labeled. Jogi returned to help Mr. Perrot remove all thirteen boxes and place them on the floor of the study. Then Jogi left him to his search.

  “Which one to start with?” Mr. Perrot mused aloud. With nothing to guide his selection, he was forced to rely on random choice. Maybe luck will shine on me today, he thought. Maybe Camden’s journal will be the first thing I find . . . Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

  The chiming of the grandfather clock marked the passing of time. The once neat and well-organized study was now cluttered with boxes, papers, and files that were of no use and had to be repacked. He had found old photographs and financial papers, trinkets and novelties, old government policy manuals, and other personal documents. He had even found a few childhood works of art signed “Logan Cutler.” It seemed Camden had saved everything, which did not make the search easier. Mr. Perrot paused for a moment and looked at a photograph of Logan’s mother who was wearing an elegant gown and holding the violin she loved to play.

  “Is everything all right, sir?” Jogi asked when he returned to the study. “Looks as though you have found a great many things.”

  “Yes, but not the thing I am looking for, I’m afraid,” Mr. Perrot said.

  “Let me know if I can be of any assistance,” Jogi offered. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”

  Mr. Perrot continued his rummaging, and after digging halfway into the contents of the eleventh box, he came across a large brown envelope. He dared not hope, but when he opened it, he found numerous folded sheets of paper with notes jotted in Camden’s handwriting. These were the “flame notes” that Logan had remembered seeing. Mr. Perrot quickly cleared off the long coffee table in front of him and removed the notes one at a time from the envelope, reading each one before setting it on the table. All started with the words “To my dearest friend Baté Sisán” and were signed “Your friend Camden Ford.” There were a total of ten notes, one fewer than the number Logan had seen in the candle voyage. Mr. Perrot pulled from his pocket the note about the King’s Gambit; it began and ended in the same manner as the other ten, which meant it had to be the eleventh. He returned his attention to the ones he had just discovered.

  To my dearest friend Baté Sisán,

  I am beginning to see things on the blank pages of my copy of the Chronicles. Do you know if there are things hidden there? The harder I look, the more difficult it is to see them.

  Your friend Camden Ford

  To my dearest friend Baté Sisán,

  Did you write The Chronicles of Satraya? If you didn’t, then who did?

  Your friend Camden Ford

  To my dearest friend Baté Sisán,

  Deya is very worried and scared of Fendral. She is leaving for India today, and she gave me a strange gift and instructions that I didn’t question.

  Your friend Camden Ford

  To my dearest friend Baté Sisán,

  Who are you? Maybe a better question is, what are you?

  Your friend Camden Ford

  To my dearest friend Baté Sisán,

  I can see all the images now but one. I only see a small part of it on the page. Is there more to it? Am I doing something wrong?

  Your friend Camden Ford

  To my dearest friend Baté Sisán,

  The Council is in turmoil. Perhaps if you would come and say a few words, the tension would ease. Even though I have never spoken of you, I am certain they will listen to your wisdom.

  Your friend Camden Ford

  To my dearest friend Baté Sisán,

  Can I use the Manas Mantr candle to go to other places? What will happen when the candle melts away? Will I still be able to travel to your mysterious study?

  Your friend Camden Ford

  To my dearest friend Baté Sisán,

  You were correct. I arrived tonight without the use of the Manas Mantr candle. It was as you described.

  Your friend Camden Ford

  To my dearest friend Baté Sisán,

  There is more uneasiness growing in the Council. Fendral is growing more militant each day. He thinks the people of the world need more direct leadership. He is asking that we, the Council, create a governing body to guide the world. I think he really means “to rule the world.”

  Your friend Camden Ford

  To my dearest friend Baté Sisán,

  The final pages of Deya’s and Madu’s copies of the third book of the Chronicles also have hidden symbols, but they are different from mine. To my astonishment, the last pages of their copies also display two additional segments of the final mark. The last segment must be in Fendral’s copy. But it is not wise for me to ask to see it. I believe I understand why this symbol was divided and hidden so deeply. It is not to be taken lightly or revealed freely. I dare not draw any of the hidden symbols anywhere. None of them should be treated carelessly, but the last one most of all. For I believe that the final symbol holds the promise of immortality.

  Your friend Camden Ford

  Mr. Perrot sat back on the sofa, filled with great trepidation. Now he thought he understood what Simon and Andrea were after. That promise, immortality. If they were to uncover and harness the power of the final symbol, humanity would confront a daunting new force of never-ending evil.

  Feeling a greater sense of urgency, he leaned forward and looked at the notes lying on the table. There were no dates on them or any indication of the order in which they’d been written. He flipped them over to see if anything was written on their back sides but found nothing. Then the obvious question occurred to him: Where were the answers to these queries? If Camden had indeed placed the notes in the old study and Baté had been able to read them, surely Baté would have provided answers. Logan mentioned that he had seen two piles of notes with eleven notes in each pile. That would suggest that Baté had answered Camden’s notes.

  Mr. Perrot sat pensively for a moment. He knew his friend Camden would have written down the responses. He recorded everything. Maybe he wrote the answers in his missing journal. Mr. Perrot looked at the two remaining boxes. Perhaps the journal and the responses are in one of those. The clock chimed again. Time was passing far too quickly.

  • • •

  Feeling tired and a bit discouraged, Mr. Perrot placed the lid back on the last of the boxes. Neither of them had contained Camden’s journal or Baté’s responses to Camden’s inquiries. After looking through the content
s of all thirteen boxes, the mystery had only grown deeper and more ominous. Mr. Perrot sat still on the couch and considered his next move. Perhaps there is another closet, other boxes that Logan did not mention, he thought.

  “You are playing games with us, Camden,” he said aloud. “I fear that the King’s Gambit was not your only riddle.”

  Mr. Perrot stood, walked behind the desk, and opened some of the drawers. Then he walked to the corner of the study and opened a small access door to the old grandfather clock that had been relentlessly ticking off the minutes of the day. He shut the door in frustration as it revealed only the intricate internal workings of the clock.

  He turned and looked at the bookshelves behind Camden’s desk. On the middle shelf, he saw Camden’s origami figures. He walked over and picked up the figure of a dog, which was his favorite. Origami was an art that Camden had perfected but never succeeded in teaching to Mr. Perrot. More fond memories flew through his mind. As he set the figure back on the shelf, a thought suddenly struck him. Camden, you clever, clever man!

  25

  Having great questions is not enough. You must be patient enough to wait for their answers.

  Great questions will make you a great philosopher, but having great answers will make you a wizard.

  —THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA

  WASHINGTON, D.C., 12:30 P.M. LOCAL TIME,

  3 DAYS UNTIL FREEDOM DAY

  Logan ran down the steps of the WCF building. While the fresh air provided some relief, he needed to find a peaceful place where he could pull his thoughts together. The undeniable similarity between what he had witnessed in the lab and what he’d seen in the candle vision deeply disturbed him. He noticed a colorful banner hanging from a streetlight, promoting a Renaissance art exhibit at the National Gallery. Perfect, he thought. That was just the kind of place he was looking for.

  As he turned to walk down the street, his PCD sounded. He saw from the number that it was a call from the museum in New Chicago.

  “Hello, Mr. Rampart,” Logan said. “Did you get my message?”

  “Yes, but you didn’t provide any time frame for your return,” Mr. Rampart replied.