The Salvation of Gabriel Adam (The Revelation Saga)

by S. L. Duncan

  “This way, then, Highnesses,” Sergeant Alois said, gesturing to the door.

  Gabe followed Micah into the hallway. Alois issued an order to the Swiss Guard, and they fell into formation, leading them toward the residences. The Frenchman followed, several steps behind.

  “So, you’re going to tell me what’s going on, yeah?” she whispered. “Exhaustion? Please. You’re not that big of a wimp.”

  Gabe shook his head. “Later,” he whispered back.

  At the entrance to the Papal Residences, Sergeant Alois moved between them to unlock the ten-foot doors to the common area. The soldiers parted, taking position on each side of the doors. Sergeant Alois closed the doors, but instead of sealing them in, as Gabe had expected, he stayed in the room, locking the soldiers in the great hall.

  Gabe moved past Sergeant Alois, Micah a step behind. The ringing in his ears grew louder, like a teakettle on a flame. At the foot of the couch, he stumbled, only to be caught by Micah. Alois joined her, slinging Gabe’s arm over his shoulder and lowering him onto the cushion.

  “You have lied,” Sergeant Alois said, taking a step back.

  Micah was struggling to get Gabe sitting upright. “Gabe? Are you all right?”

  “He is not all right,” Sergeant Alois said, the accusation in his voice causing Gabe’s skin to prickle. “Look at him.”

  “I’m fine,” Gabe growled. Inside, his anger was rising. “I just need a rest.”

  Micah tried to get a pillow behind him, her hands pawing at his arm and shoulders.

  “Can I just get some space?” he said, jerking his body away. Instantly, he felt regret. “I’m sorry. I just . . .”

  Micah stood and took a step back, her fists clenched. “This is not you, Gabriel. Your temper with Afarôt. The soldier. This.”

  The way she looked at him—as if she didn’t know him at all—felt like a knife in the gut. The surprise of her disappointment was painted all over her face in shades of anger.

  “I don’t know what the hell has gotten into you, but I don’t like it,” she said.

  A part of Gabe wanted to argue that Micah was the one who had changed, but the smarter part of him managed to let reason prevail in the moment.

  “I do,” Alois said. “I know what the hell has gotten into you. Tell me, how have you slept since Axum?”

  “Not well. If at all.”

  “And how often do you wear the ring?”

  “They told me never to take it off. Unless Afarôt’s training requires me to. But it’s been a while.”

  “And when you do take it off, how do you feel?”

  Gabe didn’t answer, but his expression must have told Alois all he needed to know. Having the ring made him feel stronger and confident and yet, at the same time, in the back of his mind, he felt darkness. A dysphoria with his own being. He couldn’t explain it—everything inside just felt wrong. Yet when he removed the ring, there was an overwhelming feeling that he wasn’t enough. That he couldn’t do what had been asked of him without relying on the ring’s power. A fear would creep in that unless he could wield its power, those he cared about most would be in danger. The ring was all he had to fight the terror of the images of Septis that burdened his thoughts and dreams.

  “You need to be mindful about the ring, Gabriel,” Alois said.

  “What do you mean, mindful?” Micah said.

  Gabe touched the ring on his finger again, feeling the reassuring cold of the metal slide against his skin.

  “It is not for me to tell you,” Alois said.

  “You are our weapons expert, are you not?” Micah said and pointed to the ring. “Is that not a weapon?”

  “My place is to advise you for your protection. Keep your thoughts positive. Happiness, yes? I am forbidden to speak to you any more about this. I will report to the Holy See and make my recommendation on how to proceed.”

  “And in the meantime I just stay sick?” Gabe asked.

  “I am sorry.” Sergeant Alois bowed and exited through the large, white doors.

  “I’m beginning to hate it here,” Micah said. “Everyone is a politician.”

  “We won’t be here long, it seems.”

  “That ring is doing something to you.”

  “Trust me, I’m fully aware.” He forced a weak smile.

  “Alois knows, too.”

  “I know that, too. Have for a while. Ever since he first saw it on my finger.” Gabe smiled again. “So we’re going to find out what he knows.”

  Micah’s eyebrows rose. “And how do you suggest we do that?”

  “We use Alois’s access card and break into the Secret Archive. Obviously,” Gabe said and fake frowned, now mocking her.

  “Right. Obviously. And how do you expect we do that?”

  “With this.” He put his hand behind him on the couch and pulled out a small digitally encoded card. “Got it off of him when he broke my fall. It was just hanging there.”

  Micah grinned and shook her head, hands resting on her hips. “You’re full of surprises, Gabriel Adam.”

  “I do try, Micah Pari.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The alarm clock said three o’clock in the morning. Gabe tossed the plush covers off and silently got out of bed. The marble floor was cold on his bare feet. He slipped into the ridiculous uniform that resembled the Swiss Guard’s outfit and opened the door to the common area of their apartment.

  From across the dark of the room, he heard Micah’s door open. Gabe’s eyes refocused as she entered the room. Rome’s light filtered through the curtained windows and cast shadows across the walls and floor. A strip of bright white under the door to the hallway told him the lights were still on in the rest of the Papal Residences.

  “You didn’t forget it, did you?” Micah whispered.

  Gabe pulled Sergeant Alois’s security card from a pocket and then tucked it neatly back inside. “You’re sure about the time?”

  Micah’s eyes narrowed as if to say, Of course I’m sure. “Morning shift starts at three fifteen. We’ll have a couple of minutes to spare, more or less, when nobody is looking at the cameras.”

  “Let’s hope more,” Gabe said and moved to the apartment’s entrance. He turned the knob, and the large white door creaked as he opened it just enough to see into the hallway. The heels of the guards turned the corner. “They’re gone.”

  “Three minutes, tops,” Micah said. “That’s all the shift change takes and all the time we have to get off the floor. On the way to the security office, those two will pass their replacements already on their way to the post. After that, eyes will be back on the cameras and we’ll be busted.”

  “Let’s hope nobody’s having a particularly punctual morning.”

  “They’re Swiss Guard, Gabe,” Micah said. “Swiss. Like a watch?”

  Gabe shrugged and smiled. He opened the door and crossed the hall. Micah followed. They hugged the wall until they came to an intersecting hall. Gabe found the stairway they needed to descend, but a guard stood at the far wall, blocking their way.

  Micah wasn’t looking toward the stairway. Instead, she was turned around, listening to the silence behind them. “I think someone is there.”

  Gabe listened but heard nothing.

  “Wait,” she insisted. “Somebody’s coming. It’s like I can feel them there.” Her eyes narrowed as a distant pat, pat, pat echoed down the hall. “See?”

  The guard near the stairway looked at his watch and then turned to check something at his station. His communicator made a sound. Someone spoke over the speaker in Italian.

  “Now or never,” Gabe said, nodding for her to follow. They ran across the open space, keeping low enough to be mostly hidden by the bulky banister.

  The guard’s attention drifted from his communicator. He said something to the person on the other end, and the conversation stopped, his attention turned in their direction. Gabe watched between the banister’s white wooden rails that led to the stairway as the guard slowly made his way to
ward them.

  Micah couldn’t see the man. With her back against the wall, she was hidden at the top of the staircase. “He’s coming, isn’t he?” she whispered.

  Gabe nodded. The way down was exposed. If they went for it, they’d be caught for certain. Going back would also get them caught. Gabe knew they were trapped. He turned to Micah, but her eyes were closed, her eyelids rolling wildly, as if she were using all her effort to concentrate.

  “What are you doing?” Gabe whispered. “Are you having a seizure?”

  She frowned at him.

  Gabe looked around the corner to the approaching guard.

  The guard stopped, his face becoming slack. He seemed to forget what had held his attention, and a moment later, he was laughing into his communicator again.

  Gabe looked at Micah. “Did you do that? What the hell? That is so creepy.”

  Her eyes opened, and she was up, moving past him down the stairs like a ghost, her feet not making a sound. She slowed only enough to give him a look that said, Are you coming? He rolled off the banister, crouching on his way down the stairs. At the bottom, he followed her as she rushed toward the exit to the courtyard that led to the Vatican Library.

  “What was that?” he asked Micah between gasps. “What did you do to that guard?”

  “Nothing. I mean, I don’t know,” she said, smiling. “I just knew I could do that, so I did.”

  “Yeah, but what did you do?” Gabe said. “That was so freaky. You’re not even bothered.”

  She shrugged. “It was like I could feel him there. His aura or something. And I didn’t want him to be there, so I kind of, like, wished really hard that he wasn’t. But not, like, an actual wish.”

  Gabe remembered his father saying something about the Michaelion having power over the armies of the realm. Constantine had credited the archangel with his victory that united the empire. If that was true, perhaps Micah had the power of persuasion, too.

  She seemed as surprised as he was, but at the same time an excitement sparkled in her eyes, as if she had amazed herself. Finally, she waved him off. “Oh, get over it. That barely ranks on the list of weird things you’ve seen me do. Hello? The Nile?”

  Gabe remembered her hand dipping into the river and the bloody aftermath as the waters changed. “Good point.”

  “Let’s go, then,” she said. “We won’t have much time in the archive.”

  “Whatever,” Gabe said. “Don’t try that stuff on me, okay?”

  Micah smiled and shrugged again.

  “Micah. I’m serious. Not on me, okay?”

  Her wink didn’t make him feel any better. At the exit door to the courtyard, she motioned for the key.

  Gabe pulled it from his pocket and handed it to her. “What if he’s noticed it missing? Or had the code changed?”

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  Outside, the courtyard was long and thin, separating the two buildings like an alleyway. Lanterns lit the space in a soft, orange glow, casting everything in silhouette.

  Micah pulled her hair up into a ball on her head and tied it so it stayed. She walked toward the other building, her stride natural. “Just like I said,” Micah whispered, and Gabe joined her at her side, casually strolling toward a side entrance to the library.

  Two guards posted down the street took notice of them.

  Gabe’s heart began to beat harder.

  “Relax,” Micah whispered.

  “These stupid outfits don’t look like theirs.”

  “They’re close enough in this light.”

  At the library’s door, Micah scanned the card again. A green light appeared on the screen, and the guards down the street seemed to lose interest.

  “It worked,” Gabe said, lingering. Micah grabbed him and pulled him into the library.

  Gabe looked around, trying to catch his breath. He felt feverish from the excitement, both cold and warm at the same time. The room was huge, dark, and empty of guards.

  “You know where you’re going?” he asked.

  “We passed through the entrance when we were in the laboratory. Remember? We just came in through a different door.”

  Gabe shook his head. The marble-clad rooms were becoming indistinguishable from each other. Like galleries in one giant museum. Paintings, sculptures, pillars and arches and balconies. He would have been interested in learning more about everything, but it all seemed so overwhelming and confusing, and there was never time.

  “You’re bloody useless. Follow me, then,” Micah whispered.

  Gabe welcomed the taunt, preferred it to her sympathy. He followed her through the paintings, sculptures, pillars and arches and balconies. Without any of the lights on, the stacks of books and darkened art seemed to haunt the room. At the other end of the library, a security post blocked a door. Micah used the key card again, and the green light on the digital panel signaled them through.

  At the end of the hall stood an elevator, as big and shiny and metal as the one used to take them to the training grounds. Gabe had a sense that the other was close by, like the area was some kind of hub to the deeper, more secret levels, with separate elevators hidden in different hallways behind security checkpoints.

  Micah approached the security pad. She swiped the card down the scanner, and the elevator opened. Gabe followed her in.

  There was only one button: Down.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  One thousand years of history. Eighty-five kilometers of shelves. Gabe thought about these highlights of what the public knew about the Vatican Secret Archives. The “secret” part of its name didn’t seem very relevant anymore, since so much was found in brochures offered to visiting scholars who petitioned to enter.

  A tourist attraction for professor types, Gabe thought.

  But this, he realized, was merely what was on the surface. What the Vatican wanted to show the world. As the elevator descended, Gabe was reminded by the pressure building in his ears that where they were going was anything but surface. It was not in any brochure.

  A passing wave of nausea rolled through his body, and he wondered if the deep held any answers to the mysteries of the ring. Alois had hinted at what he managed in his private office. Alois was more scientist than librarian. His hidden sanctum, more museum than library, probably held more secrets in its tiny space than the rest of the entire Vatican did.

  The elevator slowed and came to a stop. Thankfully, there was no chime. Its doors opened, and the compartment flooded with fresh, cool air. It felt dry, smelled clean.

  Climate control. Gabe felt a rush of vertigo. The air seemed thinner and didn’t want to fill his lungs. He wondered if there was less oxygen in the atmosphere after hours, in order to protect all the treasures hidden in the archive. “You sure you know the way to his office?”

  “Unless the code of that badge is wrong in the computer and the map was bollocks, then yes. Just follow me, inspector,” Micah whispered. She looked at him, and scrunched her face up. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Does the air seem thin to you?”

  Micah shook her head.

  “Never mind.” Gabe waved her forward and followed her down the long, dark hallway that was lit only by small strips of dim, orange LEDs, until it met a central mezzanine that opened in the middle of a large room, which connected other branching hallways like spokes on a wheel and exposed a lower level. Each branching hallway housed a series of vault-like doors. He couldn’t help but think of a prison, though he imagined no prison was ever this sterile or covered in priceless art.

  “Look,” Micah whispered, pointing. “Books. Finally.”

  The circular room in the middle looked huge, with a marble floor on which stood, at last, actual stacks and shelves filled with bound volumes of texts. The dome ceiling had been painted, but in the dim light, it was difficult to appreciate the extent of the artwork.

  Micah led him down the stairs to the lower level. Gone were the bells and whistles of t
he floor above. No twinkling digital pads next to heavy, steel doors. No vents pumping in dry, cool air.

  Down the hall, she came to the door. There was no digital pad next to it.

  “Didn’t put much trust in the sergeant’s research, did they?” Gabe said.

  “Their mistake,” Micah turned the knob, but it would not budge.

  “How do we get in without a key?”

  Micah studied the lock and doorknob.

  Gabe was about to complain when she turned Alois’s plastic security card on its side and wiggled it between the door and the jamb. With a few forced thrusts, she managed to get the key card into place and pulled the door open.

  She smiled and shrugged.

  “It is like a closet,” Gabe said, remembering Alois’s description.

  Micah looked over his shoulder and waved toward the clutter on the ground. “Specifically your closet, if I recall the state of your dorm room at uni.”

  Inside the tiny room, the hectic mess reminded Gabe of Carlyle’s office back in Durham. There were documents and books scattered everywhere, and the chaos of everything made the space seem even smaller. On the other side of the room was another vault-like door, big enough to walk through but smaller than the one Carlyle had in the basement of Castle College.

  “Maybe they think Alois is onto something after all,” he said.

  Micah slipped the key card down the spine of the slot, and the bolts in the vault withdrew into the wall. Slowly, she pushed the door open.

  Gabe followed her through. At first, he thought he was experiencing déjà vu.

  “It’s just like Durham. Just like home,” Micah said, her voice breaking slightly.

  Her face looked blank, emotionless, but her eyes said everything. Walking into the room must have been like walking back in time. Files, scrolls, stone tablets, and the occasional sword filled the shelves.

  All that was missing was Carlyle.

  On second look, Gabe noticed many more weapons than Carlyle had collected. Gabe remembered searching Carlyle’s vault for something to carry Micah’s Gethsemane Sword in for travel to Ethiopia. There was plenty to choose from here.