The last thing Peter saw was the former Pope raising the saif. A flash of metal, and then the blazing light of pain enveloped him. A blood-curdling scream tore the silence of the catacombs apart like paper.
A scream that the cardinals, who were sitting high above the Necropolis in the Sistine Chapel, could not hear. They had prayed and were already filling in their ballot papers for the first round of voting for the day, when there was suddenly a loud hammering against the sealed door of the Chapel.
»Open up! … In the name of God, open the door! Open up!«
The Cardinals stared at the door, startled. Anxiety began to rise.
»Open the door, for heaven’s sake!«
Without paying any mind to Cardinal Alberti’s objection, the Camerlengo walked to the door.
»Who is there?«
»Padre Gattuso! You know me. Open the door!«
The Camerlengo hesitated. He looked over his shoulder and saw the fear in the eyes of the cardinals.
»Sacchi! Leave that damned door closed!« Cardinal Alberti bellowed in his thundering voice.
The Camerlengo turned away and opened the door.
Don Luigi stormed into the Chapel as if a thousand devils were after him.
»Out of here!« he screamed. »Everyone out of here! Immediately!«
Agonizing waves of pain were surging through Peter’s body. Maria had patched his stump up as well as she could; still, with every step he took Peter could feel the blood and his life draining out of him. Almost fainting from pain, he staggered after Maria down the steep steps, descending deeper and deeper into the earth. His right hand was clutching his severed and glowing left hand like a foreign object.
Vaunala cahisa conusata das daox cocasa ol Oanio
»Do you need a break?« Maria called out to him.
Peter did not answer; he just kept stumbling ahead, following Maria until they reached the end of the staircase. Sandy ground. A huge hall-like cavern. In the dim reddish light that was radiating from his left hand Peter saw horrific signs and symbols on the walls. Niches holding vessels. A huge stone in the middle of the hall that was engraved with a symbol. The symbol of the light.
Hoathahe Saitan!
In the mist of his fading consciousness, Peter realized that all the myths were true. Everything people had ever said or written about evil was true. They had arrived at one of the gates to Hell. It was time to lock it up again.
With the last strength he had, Peter placed his bleeding left hand on the sacrificial stone. For one seemingly endless moment, he stared in bewilderment at his hand, at the symbol, and at the signs on the walls. At this place where everything ended and love no longer applied.
Maria touched his arm. »Come.«
Hastily and in panic, the cardinals gathered their scarlet cassocks and bolted out of the Sistine Chapel with Cardinal Alberti leading the way. Don Luigi was the last one to rush out of this Chapel that a genius had crafted for the glory of God and life. He cast a final glance back at the man with the sword, who had entered the Chapel without any of the fleeing cardinals noticing him and who was now standing alone and tall under the ceiling fresco of Adam’s creation. A last glance. A farewell. Not a single word. Then Don Luigi closed the door behind him and rushed after the cardinals.
When those gathered in front of St. Peter’s Basilica saw the terror-stricken cardinals running into St. Peter’s Square, a wave of panic washed over them. A collective scream from thousands of throats rolled over the huge oval of the square. Without understanding what was actually happening, but with the certainty that this was the moment when the trepidation that they had felt all morning would find its cause, the people turned and ran, fleeing from this cursed place. Panic broke out, and during the first minute alone, dozens were trampled to death.
However, many thousands more died seconds later when a crack of thunder shook St. Peter’s Square as though it had been hit by the fist of Satan. The ground underneath St. Peter’s Basilica began to bulge upwards as if a giant demon wanted to split the earth and break out. With a flash of light and a dreadful explosion, the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica burst into pieces. At the same moment, the blast ripped apart the adjacent buildings, the Sistine Chapel and the Apostolic Palace, grinding them to pieces. An immense dust cloud rose from underneath the collapsing buildings, billowing into the sky, chasing over St. Peter’s Square, along Via della Conciliazione and into the adjoining side streets like an insatiable and hungry beast from Hell. Cars that were parked nearby were thrown into the air, and waves of debris from the buildings rained down on the people who were not fast enough to leave the square. Death was a downpour of building debris, dust and pressure.
After less than a minute it was all over.
»Chaos reigns in the Via della Conciliazione. Ambulances rush to the scene from all directions. Dead bodies and debris litter the streets, which look like a battlefield. Around thirty minutes ago, a huge explosion shook the entire Vatican. Eyewitnesses describe a blazing flash of light ripping through the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. The blast killed thousands of people and tossed debris and parked cars several hundred yards into the air. At this hour, nothing is known about the background details of this devastating attack, nor about the fate of the one hundred and seventeen cardinals who had gathered in the Sistine Chapel for the conclave. At this point, only one thing is clear: The Vatican, the center of the Catholic Church, no longer exists.«
Recording of a live broadcast
XCIII
June 28, 2011, Vatican City
White smoke. Not from a chimney but from an open fire, for the whole world to see.
The conclave ended in the open air, on a sweltering summer day, in the ruins of the Sistine Chapel. A sign to all believers across the globe that walls may be ephemeral but the Church was not. One month after the disaster, the surviving 109 Cardinals needed just one ballot to elect their new pope and they voted with an overwhelming majority for the man who had saved the Church from even greater disaster and destruction. Right there and then, the Cardinal Dean ordained him Bishop and then he asked him in the prescribed manner, »Luigi Gattuso, I hereby ask you: do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff?«
Don Luigi, Jesuit priest, exorcist and former special envoy to the Pope, knelt in front of the Cardinal Dean, visibly moved by the trust the College of Cardinals placed in him as well as by the weight of the office that he was about to accept. During the last weeks he had been catapulted into the ranks of a media star. The man who had saved the Church from the attack of an occult sect that, despite the highest security measures, had managed to smuggle a bomb into the Vatican. Urs Bühler, Commander of the Swiss Guards, who had risked his life to prevent the worst from happening, was hailed as a hero and shortly thereafter took his honorable discharge. He announced that his only plans for the future were to take care of his disabled sister. The world never learned what Urs Bühler had done shortly before his arrest in the hospital, that he had handed six vials with a glowing red substance over to a Japanese scientist, who had then used a simple procedure to neutralize the explosives.
The preliminary investigations indicated that the mastermind behind the attack was a German journalist by the name of Peter Adam, who seemed also to have perished in the explosion. His motives remained unclear. The experts were also puzzling over the type of explosive that had been used, which was as powerful as a small nuclear device. However, the Italian Department of Defense had not detected any radioactivity. Another mystery that remained to be solved was the involvement of the abdicated Pope John Paul III. Apparently he had returned to Rome shortly before the attack and had also perished in the debris of the Sistine Chapel. However, thus far they had not been able to recover his corpse or any body parts. They were equally unable to recover the crushed and mutilated corpse of a man by the name of Aleister Crowley. And the media did not even mention a young nun named Maria who had also been missing since the attack. She was just another one of the many thousands of victim
s of the explosion.
A lot of things remained mysteries and were covered with the dust of the destroyed St. Peter’s Basilica. The investigations dragged along with few results. However, there seemed to be mounting evidence that the members of the occult sect by the name of Temple of Equinox were in fact a small group of radicalized anti-clerics. The Italian Police were already coming up with their first line of suspects.
»I accept my election,« Don Luigi said in a firm voice. And as decency prescribed, he added the words once spoken by Pope Gregory the Great, recognizing his own unworthiness for the highest office in the Church: »I was pulled into the depths of the ocean and the surge is swallowing me. I am small and weak as I hear your voice, O Lord, with fear and trepidation.«
»Quo nomine vis vocari?« the Cardinal Dean asked him. »By what name do you wish to be called?«
Don Luigi looked over the rubble of the Sistine Chapel and beyond at the ruins of St. Peter’s Basilica that protruded from the debris like a decayed tooth.
»Many prophecies have come to pass,« he said softly instead of giving his answer. »Yet the Church did not perish. As a sign of our strength and the renewal of our Church I wish to be called: Peter II!«
– THE END –
* * *
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
June 29, 2011 13:14:05 GMT+01:00
Re: Report_001
The hunt is on.
Hoathahe Saitan!
P. II.
* * *
EPILOGUE
May 20, 2011, Island of Sylt, Germany
The fog crawled onto the land from the North Sea, lingered over the dunes like shadows of doom, and suffocated every sound and movement. As the tide went out, the water left behind hundreds of dead millipedes that covered the beach. The smell of beach grass and dog roses and the cry of a lonely seagull appeared to be the last signs of life. There was not a single breath of wind to disperse the damp plumes of fog that became entangled in the beach grass. In a few hours, the sun would burn off the fog and make room for vacationers and weekenders, so that they could stroll along the wooden walkways through the sand dunes. But now, so early in the morning, the sun was nothing but a cold and wet spot somewhere above the mudflats at the northernmost end of Germany.
From the First World War until the 1950s, the elbow of Sylt had been a military outpost. And up until the 1980s, NATO had used the tongue of land at the most northern part of the island during the months of October and November, as an air-to-ground firing range, the ammunition shells were still all over the dune sand. However, since then the military facilities had almost completely disappeared and the elbow of the island of Sylt had been declared a bird sanctuary. There were barely any houses, car traffic was restricted, and access to the shifting dunes was strictly prohibited. Officially, the 1500 foot long peninsula with the scenic dunes was the private property of a community of heirs. And hardly anyone knew who the real owner of the tongue of land was.
The early-morning silence and the thick fog were abruptly torn apart by the roar of rotor blades. Despite the poor visibility, the helicopter continued with its descent, swirling up sand and water before landing safely on a moss-covered concrete pad in the middle of the dunes. Just like everything else, the helicopter was immediately swallowed up by fog. Two armed men in black combat suits jumped out and secured the helicopter while the engine kept running.
»Go, go, go!« one of the men yelled, waving his hand. For a brief moment, a small tattoo on his wrist became visible. A three-armed spiral symbol. A triskelion.
Following the man’s command, four other men climbed out of the helicopter and assisted a woman in disembarking. Her head was bandaged and she had her arm in a sling. Together, they then lifted a stretcher from the helicopter. The man on the stretcher was seriously injured, one of his arms just a stump, and he was on IVs and a respirator. Without saying a word, the four men carried the amputee about thirty feet through the sand, where one of the black-clad soldiers shoveled a small area free of sand. Underneath was a well-camouflaged concrete slab, which was engraved with a three-armed spiral symbol. The men lifted the slab and a steep staircase became visible, which led deep down into an old bunker.
Because of the severity of his injuries, the doctors in Rome had put the patient into an artificial coma. Now the men carried him down into the bunker, as carefully as was possible due to the lack of time, and the injured woman followed them while the two armed men continued to secure the area. They only left their positions after three of the men had returned from the bunker and had closed and again camouflaged the concrete slab. Together, the five men climbed back into the heavy helicopter that immediately lifted and disappeared into the fog, leaving nothing behind but silence.
The whole operation had taken less than ten minutes.
Table of Contents
Apocalypsis 1.0 Signs by Giordano, Mario
Title Page
Copyright Page
Episode 0 ♦ SIGNS
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
Apocalypsis 1.01 Demons by Giordano, Mario
Title Page
Copyright Page
Episode 1 ♦ DEMONS
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
Apocalypsis 1.02 Ancient by Giordano, Mario
Title Page
Copyright Page
Episode 2 ♦ ANCIENT
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
Apocalypsis 1.03 Thoth by Giordano, Mario
Title Page
Copyright Page
Episode 3 ♦ THOTH
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI One year earlier ...
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX One year earlier ...
XXX
XXXI One year earlier ...
Apocalypsis 1.04 Baphomet by Giordano, Mario
Title Page
Copyright Page
Episode 4 ♦ BAPHOMET
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
Apocalypsis 1.05 Island of the Light by Giordano, Mario
Title Page
Copyright Page
Episode 5 ♦ ISLAND OF LIGHT
XL
XLI
XLII
XLIII
XLIV
XLV
Apocalypsis 1.06 Elixir by Giordano, Mario
Title Page
Copyright Page
Episode 6 ♦ One year earlier: ELIXIR
XLVI
XLVII
XLVIII
XLIX
L
LI
Apocalypsis 1.07 Vision by Giordano, Mario
Title Page
Copyright Page
Episode 7 ♦ VISION
LII
LIII
LIV
LV
LVI
Apocalypsis 1.08 Seth by Giordano, Mario
Title Page
Copyright Page
Episode 8 ♦ SETH
LVII
LVIII One year earlier ...
LIX
LX
LXI
LXII
Apocalypsis 1.09 Wearily Electors by Giordano, Mario
Title Page
Copyright Page
Episode 9 ♦ WEARILY ELECTORS
LXIII
LXIV
LXV One year earlier ...
Apocalypsis I Page 52
