“How serious is the wound? Why didn’t you say anything as soon as you arrived?” the Master asked.
“It's just a hack. Trying to remove that bastard’s mouth away from my neck, I grabbed its jaws. I felt his teeth scraping my skin, but I did not pay attention to it. When we arrived here, I noticed the hack on my index finger. I didn’t think it was something serious, and I did not want to have you worry. Besides, in the reports we received, all victims bore serious injuries. Pieces of flesh had been stripped off. There were no reports about victims with minor lacerations and abrasions. However, since we got here, I have started feeling a strange fatigue. And you know I don’t get tired easily.” Egon winked.
The Master took Egon’s finger in his hands and looked closely. “This is not just a hack. It’s an infected wound. Do you see this yellowish-white liquid on the bleeding? This is pus. That’s not a good sign,” he observed. “In victims who bore light and shallow wounds, no changes started to occur until 12 hours after they are attacked. A body as robust and healthy as Egon’s most likely will have symptoms appear with a three to four-hour delay. We need to hurry.”
He held Egon’s hand firmly and looked him in the eyes. “My son, I promise you, everything will be fine.”
“Of course, it will! We're the guys with black roses, remember?” Egon replied with a gentle and playful voice.
Floriana admired how in a moment as difficult as that he managed to remain charming and frisky.
“Tell Vittor to come,” the old man addressed Valerie and Carson. “He is the one who has studied all the data we have collected. We have a discussion to conclude with this young lady here. We don’t have time to lose. The clock is ticking.”
When Valerie and Carson exited the room, the rest of them gathered around the big wooden desk. Floriana and Maite sat side by side on a leather couch, while Eric preferred to stand next to Egon’s armchair. The Master returned behind his desk and rested his hand on the leather folder.
“I’d prefer to keep Vittor out of this, so we need you to do it quickly.” He addressed Floriana.
“Before telling me anything, please let me express my regret about what happened to Egon,” she replied. Her physical and mental strength had been strongly tested within the last few hours, but she was devastated by the latest development.
“I feel responsible for what happened to you.” She turned to Egon. “I am the one who should be in your place. You tried to protect me and look what happened to you. I owe you my life, Egon.”
Her voice was broken, and her hands trembled. She had a lump in her throat, and her breathing was heavy. She could have been in Egon’s place. She could have been the one agonizing for her life.
“Now you have the chance to save my life. And if you do, we’ll be even,” Egon said with a warm smile.
“Can we go back in time and fix it?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, this isn’t how time traveling works,” the Master replies. “As much as I love Egon, the ugly truth is we don’t have to rush only for his salvation. We must also fix history. What happened tonight in the square shows that there is no more time to lose. It also shows that they know that we know.”
“Who are they?” Floriana asked but her question went unanswered.
“It is not the first time these things have made an appearance,” Egon said from the back of his comfortable armchair.
“There already had been attacks in Atlanta, London, and Russia,” the Master said. “That’s proof that they have already put their plans in action. Their decision to hit us right on our territory shows that they’re close in achieving their goal.”
“Who are they? And what is their goal?” Floriana now yelled.
“They are defectors,” Eric explained. “Time travelers who have managed to overcome the restrictions our rings put on us and traveled back in time to put their evil plan into action. The existence of the super-human soldiers like the ones that attacked us shows that they’re close to their plan to change history and conquer the world.”
The Master looked at her with a deep, exploratory look. “There never will be an alternative unless you agree to help us.”
Clutched in his hands were the handwritten notes he had removed from the leather folder. He separated the pages, placing the yellowed, old ones on one side of his desk and the cleaner, white ones on the other.
The old man put his finger on the brittle pages. “These are the notes of Foulkaneli and his associates.” He moved his hand slowly to the right until his palm rested on the stack with the white pages. “And these are the notes of Ross Rogers, your father.”
“My father?” Floriana uttered. Within seconds, the grief gave way to surprise in an emotional roller coaster from which she wanted to get free. “What could my father possibly have to do with this?”
“Your father wasn’t only a brilliant time traveler, he was also curious as a monkey,” the Master continued without lifting his eyes to look at her. “Unfortunately, his love for science prevailed over the greater good, which the Order serves. He ignored the mandate not to deal with Foulkaneli’s findings. He took them into his possession, taking advantage of his powerful position in the Order.”
“Powerful position in the Order?” she asked, bug-eyed.
“Girl, you need to stop interrupting,” Egon growled, looking at his injured hand.
“Your father's family's position within the Order was traditionally strong. Your father practically stole Foulkaneli’s notes and, together with his assistant, started experiments based on them. Foulkaneli’s team originally worked for the creation of a super soldier. However, your father’s intentions were nobler. He was fascinated by the idea of creating an invulnerable human being, and he believed he could achieve that by using the alchemist’s conclusions. With his partner’s help, he evolved a trophozoite, an amoeba-like organism, which they first tested on mice. After the microorganism was injected in their blood, the rodents would develop enormous powers, which they would then use to exterminate the other mice in the same cage. Afterward, they would fall into a deep slumber, almost a coma, which they would come out of a few hours later.
“Your father believed he had discovered a way to improve the immune system of rodents and prolong their lives. He thought their aggression was an indication of their robustness. Besides, it is a law of nature that the stronger obtrude on the weaker. He hoped he could implement the same to a human body. He believed he had found a way to prolong human life, but in order to prove it, he needed to test it on a human body. He needed a human guinea pig. But who would have agreed to risk his life for a drug based on the notes of a paranoid alchemist? Any requested help from the scientific community would have jeopardized the secrecy of the Order of the Black Rose as he would publishing his findings in scientific papers and justifying how he had arrived at his conclusions. Humanity would have learned about the secret Nazi experiments, Foulkaneli, and the Stumpfegger folder, and our role would have been revealed. So, he decided to appoint himself as the guinea pig. A decision that was as gallant as it was stupid.
“That is how, 16 years ago, in his laboratory here in Weengarts, Ross Rogers knocked on the door of eternity and was lost in the maelstrom. He locked himself in a well-sealed room, and he injected the amoeba into his blood. Similar to the mice, he gained power so enormous he could not control it. He destroyed the few items placed in the room, and he tried to breach the security door. Through the door’s window, his assistant watched him in horror, unable to react. As it had happened with the rodents, he was later drawn into deep lethargy. But when he woke up, he was no longer himself. He was not even human. The niches of his eyes dripped blood, and his pupils had transformed into white lumps. His skin was wrinkled and full of wounds gouging pus. He wandered aimlessly in the room and reacted only to shadows on the window of the door. He tried to attack each shadow, striking the door with supernatural power. His face had disappeared, as had every trace of human consciousness...”
He took a deep breath a
nd let a sigh release from his chest, looking at Floriana. She had a grimace of surprise and horror on her face.
“So, my father was a ... zombie?”
She could not believe she had just asked this. Embarrassed as she was, she looked around the room. Maite and Eric kept their serious expression while on Egon’s face a bitter smile was painted.
“Now you know what I’ll have been transformed into in less than 24 hours,” he said.
In this heavy atmosphere, the Master took the floor again.
“Although a product of pop culture, zombies may be a word close enough to describe the situation that your father experienced.”
They were startled by the sudden creak of the heavy door. Vittor rushed into the room with a stack of papers in his arms. Breathing quickly, he apologized for the invasion. His hair was uncombed, and his eyes betrayed that he had enjoyed a short sleep.
Turning to Egon, he asked, “How are you? I brought all my notes with me. Don’t be afraid. Everything will be fine. I promise.”
Egon got up painfully from his chair and approached the young newcomer and patted his shoulder. “If you promise, then I fear nothing.”
Vittor pressed the papers tightly in his arms and smiled coyly.
“I need you to follow me in the basement lab. I must run some tests. We need to see how far the bacteria have traveled in your blood. Based on the reports we have from the previous cases”—he showed the documents in his arms—“we’ll be able to understand what stage you are in.”
He turned to the older man. “Have you made any progress? Is there a way to create the antidote?”
“We’ll know shortly. You’d better do the tests needed, and when we’re ready, we’ll notify you. It’s going to be a long night.”
CHAPTER 7
*
“HE’S A GOOD kid, but he has to be more confident,” Eric observed once Vittor and Egon left the chamber and the door closed behind them.
“This isn’t something to discuss now,” the Master blasted, surprising Floriana who had approached the office with a heavy heart. Every minute a secret from her family’s past had been revealed and she didn’t even dare to think what the outcome of this adventure would be.
As if he guessed her thoughts, the Master softened the tone of his voice and said, “We are all entangled in a crazy story. In fact, it wasn’t even our choice. We accepted our families’ tradition in the belief that we work toward the common good. And believe me, we lost a lot along the way.”
“You say my father was a member of your Order and suffered a horrible death. My mother never said anything relevant. What I knew was that my father was a pediatrician and he died after a short illness. You said that the Order relies on family succession. This means that the family of my father belonged to the Order. I never met any of my father's relatives. My mother avoided talking about them; it was as if they never existed. She died when I was eight years old and I never had the chance to push her for some answers.”
“Your father's loss was a big hit on your mother. She blamed the Order. One day, she came to my office and started to accuse me of poisoning her husband’s mind with outrageous beliefs about the Order. She made it clear that she considered me responsible for what happened to her family and that she wanted to break any connection between us. That evening, you both left for London and I never saw you again. You were two years old.”
That was weird; her mother had never told her that they had lived in Weengarts. And Floriana had no memories of their life here.
“Nonetheless, your mother didn’t only take you with her, she also took all your father's notes,” the old man continued.
“And you let her do it? Just like that? You never tried to get them back?” she asked, puzzled.
“Your mother knew that any link with the Order could hardly be disrupted. She knew she had to negotiate hard to gain any kind of absolution, as she knew how she needed to sacrifice something very important to her if she insisted on keeping the formula in her possession. The negotiation was hard until we reached a satisfactory but painful solution. That’s how one day you and your mother left Weengarts with the formula in your luggage and a life outside the Order boundaries. In return, however, you left behind something very important: a piece of you.”
She tilted her head, confused.
“Is that what you want from me now?”
The Master shook his finger. “No, no... We need you to solve a riddle.”
“All this fuss for a crossword?”
Eric smiled playfully, while Maite remained unimpressed.
Their leader seemed to share the instant cheer either and continued speaking in a serious tone,
“Part of our agreement was to ensure your mother a laboratory in London so she would continue the experiments on her husband’s findings. She wanted to find an antidote in case the amoeba formula fell into the wrong hands.”
“Why didn’t she simply destroy the formula?” she asked.
“Because we had the insight that some of your father's notes had already fallen into the wrong hands. Shortly after the accident, his partner was found murdered in his apartment. The drawers of his desk had been violated and his computer was stolen. This was the straw that broke the camel's back, and your mother asked for her detachment from the Order.”
“Did she find the antidote?”
“She found it indeed. And she made sure to hide it away from everyone.”
The Master stood up from his desk and headed for the library. He sought out a thick volume in one of the middle shelves and grabbed its spine. He turned and looked at her. This time, he was smiling.
“The old trick with the storage hidden behind a bookcase. Cliché isn’t it?” he asked.
He removed the volume from the shelf and left it on a table next to him. He put his hand in the gap and grabbed a small loop of leather. He pulled the noose towards him until a thin wooden strip was detached from the back of the bookcase. When the wooden strip met the rack, he put his hand into the gap and pulled out a mail folder.
“Is that the antidote formula?” she asked.
“No, this is what will help us to find out how to create it,” he replied.
He put the envelope on the desk and returned to his place.
“Let me sit down again. Time has not been polite to my arthritis.”
The Master looked at Eric as if asking for his consent and then turned to Floriana.
“Six years after you moved to London, we learned that your mother was killed in a road accident in Latin America.”
“That's right,” Floriana confirmed. “She had joined a humanitarian mission in Colombia as a volunteer doctor. The car she was in fell off a cliff and caught fire. She was burnt alive.” She took a deep breath and continued. “I was eight years old and a guest of my mother's sister in London. My mother trusted Dora so much that she appointed her to be my guardian in her will. After the funeral, Dora and I went to live in Orkney Islands.”
“Dora was one of us, a member of the Order. I don’t expect you to remember, but I visited you in London once,” Eric said quietly.
“How? When?” She gawped before the Master interrupted her.
“We’ll talk about this later. Dora was the only person from the Order your mother trusted. Dora isn’t an active member of ours. None of us ever believed your mother’s death was an accident. That’s why we decided to guard your safety. However, at the same time, we had to respect your mother’s will, and never sought to communicate with you. We had to break her will and in this way because of this letter.” He gave her the envelope.
The paper did not seem old and the word Confidential was written on the front with handwriting reminiscent of her mother’s.
“May I open it?”
The Master nodded. “This is the reason you're here.”
The contents of the folder were three pages of handwritten characters. The characters filled each page from one end to the other without spaces and without making any sense.
>
“Is it some sort of code?” she asked.
Eric popped up his seat and approached her.
“I knew you would understand! My insight was correct!”
“You want me to break this code?”
The Master took from a drawer of his desk a few sheets of paper and a pencil, placed them neatly in front of her, and responded boldly.
“Exactly.”
THEY SURROUNDED HER the way trees surround a glade. They were trying to see the words that she’d put on the paper, although she hadn’t written any that were worthwhile. Even the old man stood beside her, supported on his staff. She was seated at the table where they had dined a few hours earlier, the coded documents in front of her and a pile of smeared papers on the side.
“I feel like I’m never going to break the code,” she said, jiggling the pencil in her hand absently.
“Try to get into your mother’s mind,” the Master advised.
He was right. The code was a creation of her mother, who hid the elements of the antidote within three pages of incoherent Latin characters. A few years after Ross Roger’s death, Althea Rogers had managed to make a vaccine for the terrible brain-eating microorganism that her husband had created. In an effort to protect it from those who had killed Dr. Rogers’s partner, she hid its formula in a coded message. Her instinct told her she had to inform the Order of the Black Rose of its existence; however, her decision to avoid any contact with them was definite. Thereupon she locked the envelope with the code in a safe deposit and gave the key to Dora, the only link she had with the Order, with a mandate to use it only if she died. When Althea was killed in a road accident in Latin America, Dora removed the envelope from the safe deposit and sent it to the House of the Black Roses.
“I know Dora showed you how to break codes,” said Eric. “She is an excellent code-breaker.”
“Encryption sharpens thinking. Now stop talking and let me think.” Floriana closed her eyes, covered her ears with her palms, and tried to concentrate.
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