“Shut your fucking face before I put a bullet in it,” O’Brian said.
Natasha said, “The previous attack was just a warm-up. He messed with the hospital systems today—people were coding at hospitals all over the country.”
“Ms. Garcon, I’m quite proud. I know our dearly departed friend Mr. Blair here would have been proud, too. Yes, while everyone was scouring their little hospital systems for errors, a team of independent contractors in Indonesia were busy exploiting the security breach.”
Labyrinth smiled at them all.
“They took away my name. But I’ve come to learn that names mean nothing whatsoever.”
Thousands of newborns around the world were about to have their new identities erased in a flash. And Dark had no idea when.
Instantly Dark thought about his daughter, Sibby. He couldn’t help it. It was involuntary. A baby brought into the world in a monster’s dungeon, with no idea that her own mother was dying, or worse—that the monster’s blood ran through her veins, too. There was something especially horrible about the torment of innocents—the deck stacked against you from the moment of your birth.
Dark couldn’t let this happen.
He pulled the scalpel from Roeding’s neck, walked over to Labyrinth, crouched down next to him, smiled.
“I’ve been tortured before,” Labyrinth said.
“Not like this you haven’t,” Dark said, then grabbed the man’s face with one hand, turning it to one side. “I think I’ll start with the eardrums.”
“This won’t work. I think you know that, Steve Dark, and you’re simply trying to scare me into cooperating. Do you really think I’ll succumb to the threat of torture? I’ve been the torturer! I invented this game!”
“Dark—what the fuck are you doing?”
O’Brian said, “Let the man work.”
“Or maybe an eye.” Dark pressed the tip of the scalpel against the fleshy hollow under Labyrinth’s right eyeball.
“You can stop me at any time.”
“Ho-hum.”
Labyrinth moved his tongue around his mouth as if he were trying to pry a seed from between two molars.
“See you in a while,” he said.
All at once Dark realized what he was doing. The superoperative was engaging a fail-safe—no doubt buried in a tooth. A time-honored spy tradition. If you’ve been captured and you want to avoid spilling vital secrets under torture, you pop a false tooth and swallow the cyanide capsule inside.
Dark grabbed Labyrinth’s face under the nose and around his chin and struggled to pry open his jaws. Nothing. His mouth was clamped tight, his muscles like steel cable, his jaw inflexible. Dark made a fist and snapped a tight, hard punch into Labyrinth’s face, rocking the man’s head backward. Still nothing. And whatever he had swallowed had already slid down his throat, because a weak smile appeared on his bloodied face.
chapter 83
LABYRINTH
Well.
This is good-bye.
For now.
I wasn’t anticipating the need for shutdown at this moment, but Dark is forcing my hand. I recognize that wild, righteous look in his eyes—the willingness to hurt me for what he needs to know. He thinks he’s being a hero. I know better. I’ve looked at the Sqweegel autopsy photos. Brothers, under the skin, latex or not.
There is no doubt that I could withstand anything Dark intends to dish out, but I do not wish to go through the tired old pantomime. Ooh look, here’s your eyeball, look how perfectly oblong and squishy. Now shall we pop an eardrum, or cut out your tongue?
Boring.
So I take my medicine and prepare for sleep.
Just sleep.
Not death.
My medicine—which cost six million euros to develop—simulates a vegetative state, shutting down higher brain functions but maintaining breathing, heart rate, blood pressure. My body will go on autopilot. Nothing will be able to reach me. Not for six days, after which my brain will resume its normal functions. I will be back. No doubt I will be incarcerated in some kind of secret facility that America is so fond of. But escape will not be difficult. I have escaped from much worse.
And by then . . .
Everything will be different.
There will be a new world around me, and it will have a new leader.
A young, smart, ambitious, tenacious, and extremely malleable European Parliament member named Alain Pantin.
I’ve been conditioning him for years to step up onto the world stage at this moment, and he has not disappointed me once. He is the perfect man for the job.
Why raise an army when all you truly need is one charismatic man to engage the hearts and minds of those who will be all too eager to be led?
All Alain Pantin needs is the one gift that has yet to be delivered, and it is a gift that the entire world will be able to enjoy.
So.
This is good-bye.
But only for now.
chapter 84
DARK
“Fuck.”
Dark checked Labyrinth’s pulse. Slow but steady.
“Is he . . . ?” Natasha asked.
“No,” Dark said. “He put himself into a coma.”
Natasha was on her cell to the special agent in charge, telling them where they were, what they needed, and that she’d explain more when they met up. When she hung up, the sad remnants of Global Alliance looked around at one another.
Dark asked O’Brian, “Can you stop this cyber-blitz?”
“Get me to where the hospitals keep the servers, and yeah, I can pretty much stop anything. How much time do we have left? I need deadlines, man. It’s how I work.”
“I’ll call you when I figure that out.”
It was quickly decided that Natasha would stay with the seemingly comatose Labyrinth—through surgery, through everything. Dark, meanwhile, turned his attention to the time. This amphitheater was meant to be Labyrinth’s stage. Dark had the riddle, and the artifact—the baby photos. But what about the timepiece? There were no clocks in this room. No wristwatches, no sundials, no calendars . . . nothing.
Only when Dark looked up at the shattered skylight at the top of the dome did it occur to him that the room itself was the timepiece.
The surgeons had to rely on optimal daylight, streaming in from above. Most procedures were performed from eleven A.M. until about two P.M.
Dark raced up to the third level to where Natasha had found the trunk full of baby photos. About two feet to the right—as he expected—a beam of sunlight burned softly on the wooden floor.
When the sunlight crawled across the floor and hit the trunk . . . the deadline would be reached.
Dark did some quick mental calculations, called O’Brian, who was on his way to the hospital’s server room.
“You’ve got about a half hour, give or take ten minutes,” Dark said.
“Thank fuck. I think I can do a half hour. Was worried you were going to say something like thirty seconds.”
“Do it.”
Natasha touched Dark’s face. “I’m going with him. Be safe.”
“You’re the one babysitting the monster.”
“You still haven’t invited me to your home for the holidays.”
Dark blinked. “I didn’t know you . . .”
“I like to skip to the best part.”
She kissed him once before jogging away to follow the procession out of the operating theater.
Dark sat down on the wooden stairs as a pair of EMTs began to work on his arm and hands. He glanced over at Blair’s lifeless body. EMTs were trying to work on him, too, but he was long gone. The man had spent his life telling himself he was doing good, only to be punished for it at every turn. He’d let the monster out of the box and struggled to stuff him back inside.
For the first time since he’d met him, Dark realized he half-admired Damien Blair, after all.
New York Times
Breaking: Thousands of hospitals worldwide notified of possible birth
records hacking; latest Labyrinth threat.
AP World
Breaking: “Labyrinth” arrested; identity unknown, but one threat remains.
Reuters
Breaking: Birth records breach averted; latest Labyrinth plot “goes nowhere,” say officials.
chapter 85
DARK
Outside the hospital in the freezing cold, Dark looked around at the old colonial-era houses. Everything seemed unreal, like something from a dream. He didn’t know the last time he’d slept. All he could think about was hopping one last plane—over the past two weeks he’d grown to hate planes more than anything else in the world—so he could be at home in L.A. with his daughter. Tomorrow was Christmas. He hadn’t played Santa Claus, but it didn’t matter. He just wanted to hold her, smell the sweetness of her hair, try to push the riddles, the death, the bloody splatters . . . everything . . . away. For even a little while. A small break. A rest. A calming-down period while he pondered his next move, now that his would-be employer was dead.
“Mr. Dark?”
Dark turned to see Blair’s driver, holding an attaché case in his hands.
“This just arrived, addressed to Mr. Blair. I thought you should have it, considering . . .”
Dark took the case, which was heavier than it should be.
Somewhere else in the world, in a storage locker, a timer came to life with a faint beep. It had been sent a signal from an online cloud, which in turn had been activated by a remote command uploaded from Labyrinth’s watch, which had been monitoring his vital signs.
Labyrinth had slipped into a coma, which triggered the fail-safe.
Just in case he wasn’t awake to deliver his final package.
Kneeling on the cold sidewalk, Dark hesitated before the case intended for Blair. If Labyrinth wanted revenge, then of course he would deliver the final blow to the man who’d tried to kill him. Whatever was inside was most likely designed to shock or kill.
But not right away. Labyrinth was never that direct. Dark remembered Natasha’s fearlessness. If they had all waited to analyze the trunk, it would have been too late. So fuck it. Dark flipped the latches with his thumbs and opened the case. Inside was a letter with printed block letters on what appeared to be a piece of Damien Blair’s personal stationery. The font style and coloration of the paper suggested it was at least two decades old. Blair would have no doubt recognized it, had he been alive to open the package.
The riddle:I AM TERRIFYING AND FEAR INSPIRING, AND THE PHYSICAL WORLD CANNOT TOUCH ME. WHEN I’M FINISHED, YOU MAY NOT EVEN REMEMBER ME. WHAT AM I?
LABYRINTH
The final Labyrinth riddle. Delivered to Damien Blair personally, from his longtime nemesis. His own personal . . .
All at once, Dark knew the answer.
. . . nightmare.
They were beyond metaphors now and into the literal. This was meant to be Labyrinth’s final gift to the world, the final turn in the maze. The world would see that the center contained not cheese but a literal nightmare.
Dark lifted the page. Below the riddle was a heavy atomic-powered clock, the kind you’d buy at a high-end specialty shop for the man who has everything. These types of clocks guaranteed accuracy within a millisecond. The face showed a digital deadline, ticking down to less than twelve hours from now—midnight on Christmas.
The when.
A nightmare . . . in a little less than half a day.
So who?
Who would be the final victim?
Blair was already dead.
Perhaps the answer was in a small glass vial, secured by a leather loop sewn into the side of the attaché case. Dark carefully slid it out of the loop with his bandaged fingers, then held it up to examine it. There was dark red fluid, no more than an ounce, filling half of the vial.
Blood.
Dark had seen enough of it to know the real thing by sight. Was this the final victim’s blood, maybe?
The clock was ticking. He needed a lab—now.
Natasha had been standing outside Labyrinth’s heavily guarded hospital room when her tablet computer pinged.
The noise jolted her back to reality. Her new reality. For the past half hour she’d been running her life through her head and realized that she’d put every ounce of herself into the team with little left over. She’d been so angry with Dark at first because he seemed to ridicule the very thing she held dear. Now she understood his detachment. Because when the things you hold dear are taken away, it leaves you with a void that aches like crazy.
But the ping meant that a new video tagged with “Labyrinth” had been uploaded to the Net.
Natasha checked her screen, clicked through, and saw there was a new video. Apparently uploaded just a few seconds ago by . . .
. . . by the comatose man in the heavily guarded room behind her?
[To enter the Labyrinth, please go to level26.com and enter the code: confession]
chapter 86
Natasha watched the video as the monster delivered his message.
Eyebrows lowered, eyes focused directly at the camera. Like so many of history’s greatest monsters, he looks ordinary. Like the businessman who might sit next to you on a plane. The person you stop to ask for directions in a strange city. The kind-faced average guy in a bar who buys you a drink, and you think nothing of it, because we are trained from birth to trust those who appear ordinary, and fear those who are unusual or freakish.
“My name is Julian Blair, and I want to help you escape the maze.”
At that moment, all became clear to Natasha.
Blair.
B-L-A-I-R
Hidden in the surname itself:
L-A-B -y-R-I-n-t-h
A family joke.
The final riddle.
Natasha shuddered at the realization. All this time, Damien was chasing the monster, and the monster was his own brother. A coin toss had decided his fate. One brother on the side of law and order, the other lost to the darkness. Why hadn’t Damien told them any of this? Why was he so afraid to admit the truth? This could have helped them immeasurably in their hunt for Labyrinth. The knowledge would have changed everything.
Then she realized—it could still change everything.
Natasha plucked the phone from her hip and dialed.
Pennsylvania General did not have a forensics lab, of course. But they were perfectly equipped to analyze blood samples. A DNA match could take hours, if they were lucky. But Labyrinth was never that straightforward with his clues. There would be some other message in the blood.
First thing—Dark ordered a tox screen, telling the techs to take every precaution possible. Then Dark hunkered down in front of the microscope with his own sample. Maybe Labyrinth had mixed something else in the blood. Or maybe the real message was etched in the glass tube that held the blood, and the sample itself was meaningless. Something to distract them from the real menace.
See you in a while....
As he sat at the lab table, Dark felt the seconds ticking away in his head. He hated these ticking clock games. He was a brooder. He was his best when he could sit in a cold, quiet room with the lights down and let the pieces of the case float around in his brain until they settled into place.
A lab tech tapped him on the shoulder. “Mr. Dark? You need to see this.”
There was something wrong with the blood in the tube, it turned out. It was slightly irradiated. Which meant the “donor,” dead or alive, had been exposed to radioactive material. Was this a reference to horrible nuclear accidents in Japan? Did Labyrinth have some kind of ecological message to deliver?
No. That felt wrong.
Think, fucking think.
The key was finding the donor. The identity would complete the story. But DNA matches took hours, sometimes up to half a day. There wasn’t enough time left....
And then Dark’s phone buzzed—
Natasha.
“There’s a new video,” she said, “and Labyrinth just revealed his birth nam
e. It’s Julian Blair.”
“Brothers . . . ,” Dark said quietly, the pieces silently clicking into place. He couldn’t help but think of their brief, strange conversation in Edinburgh. Labyrinth had been dropping hints even then. Brothers under the skin. You and I, Steve Dark.
“No proof of that, but they’re about the same age. It makes sense, though. All of it. But I still don’t know why Damien didn’t tell us.”
I know exactly why, Dark thought. Because if you’ve got a monster for a brother, the last thing you want to do is let the world know about it. The moment they know the same blood runs through your veins, your life will never be the same.
Alain Pantin watched the Labyrinth video from a green room at BBC World News. They’d flown him in to discuss the latest developments in America, and he knew in his gut that it would only be a matter of time before someone linked him to Trey Halbthin.
Trey Halbthin, the madman killer known as Labyrinth.
Part of him despaired that this was it, the end of his political career, the sole focus of his every waking hour for the past three years.
Created by, and ultimately done in by, a monster.
“. . . the world’s worst nightmare come to life . . .”
Pantin knew that he should be filled with dread, but much to his surprise realized that he wasn’t. Not really.
For while Trey Halbthin may have been a monster—
“. . . you still have the power to rise up. You can still take control . . .”
—he was absolutely right about his message. And it was a message that Pantin still very much believed in, despite the way in which it was delivered.
A voice spoke from the doorway behind him.
Dark Revelations Page 23
