The Doomsday Key and The Last Oracle with Bonus Excerpts

by James Rollins

  Luca had joined them by now. He had heard the last part of the conversation. “I am coming, too.”

  Gray nodded. Painter had already made that arrangement, to buy Luca’s cooperation with the girl’s escape. Which was fine with Gray. He still had a slew of questions for the man, mostly concerning his relationship with Dr. Polk. The Gypsy leader also seemed dead determined about something. Gray saw it in the shadows behind his dark eyes.

  With the matter settled, Gray slid into the front passenger seat. Luca and Elizabeth piled into the back.

  “Hang tight!” Kowalski called to them as he hauled the car into reverse, pounded the gas, and sent them squealing out of the driveway and into the street.

  Overhead, the thump-thump of the helicopters receded into the night.

  Gray’s thoughts drifted to questions about the girl.

  Who is she? Where did she come from?

  Monk followed the three children. They were trailed by another who joined them at the lower hatch.

  But she was not a child.

  Monk felt those dark eyes on his back.

  As a group, they climbed a spiral staircase drilled through raw limestone. The rock walls dripped with water, making the steps slippery. The stairway was narrow, utilitarian, plainly a service stair. It had proved to be a long climb. Monk half carried Pyotr now.

  Earlier, while the siren blared, the kids had led Monk down a path that skirted the cavern and ended up at a small hatchway. The door opened into the stairway they were now climbing. Down below, Monk had been introduced to the last and strangest member of their party.

  Her name was Marta.

  “Here!” Konstantin called from ahead, bearing their only flashlight. He had reached the top of the stairs. Monk gathered the other two children and joined him. The older boy folded his lanky form and crouched beside a pile of packed gear. Ahead, a short tunnel ended at another hatch.

  Konstantin pushed a pack into Monk’s arms. Monk carried it toward the hatch and placed his palm on the door. It felt warm.

  He turned as the last member of their party climbed into the tunnel from the stairs. Weighing eighty pounds and stooped to the height of three feet, she knuckled on one arm. Her body was covered in soft dark fur, except for her exposed face, hands, and feet. The fur around her face had gone a silvery gray.

  Konstantin claimed the female chimpanzee was over sixty years old.

  The reunion between the children and the ape at the lower hatchway had been a warm one. Despite the siren’s blare and the wincing sensitivity of the children, the chimpanzee had taken each child under her arm and given them a reassuring squeeze, motherly, maternal.

  Monk had to admit that her presence had helped calm the kids.

  Even now, she shuffled among them, leaning, subvocalizing quietly.

  The youngest, Pyotr, was the one who got the most attention. The pair seemed to have a strange way of communicating. It wasn’t sign language, more like body language: gentle touches, posturing, long stares into each other’s eyes. The young boy, exhausted by the climb, seemed to gain strength from the elderly ape.

  Konstantin crossed to the hatch. He held out a small plastic badge toward Monk and showed him how to attach it to his coverall.

  “What is it?” Monk asked.

  Konstantin nodded toward the sealed doorway. “Monitoring badge…for radiation levels.”

  Monk stared over to the door. Radiation? What lay beyond that door? He remembered the heat he’d felt when he’d laid his palm on the hatch. In his head, he painted a blasted landscape, a terrain turned to ruin and slag.

  With everyone ready, Konstantin crossed to the hatch and yanked hard on the lever that secured it. The door cracked and opened.

  A blinding blaze of light flooded in, like staring into a fiery blast furnace. Monk shielded his eyes with his forearm. It took him another two breaths to realize he was merely facing a rising sun. He stumbled outside with the children.

  The landscape had not been blasted to slag, as he had feared.

  If anything, the opposite was true.

  The hatch opened out onto a ledge of a heavily wooded slope, thick with birches and alders. Many of the trees had gone fiery with the change of seasons. To one side, a creek tumbled over mossy green rocks. Low mountains stretched off into the distance, dotted by tiny alpine lakes that shone like droplets of silver.

  They had climbed out of hell into paradise.

  But hell wasn’t done with them yet.

  From the tunnel behind them, a strange yowling cry echoed out to them. Monk remembered hearing the same howl coming from the walled complex that neighbored the hospital.

  The Menagerie.

  A second and third cry answered the first.

  He didn’t need Konstantin’s urging to keep moving.

  Monk recognized what he was hearing—not from memory, but from that buried part of his brain where instinct of predator and prey were still written.

  Another howl echoed.

  Louder and closer.

  They were being hunted.

  Chapter 7

  September 6, 4:55 A.M.

  Washington, D.C.

  She remained a mystery in a very small package.

  Painter studied the girl through the window. She had finally fallen asleep. Kat Bryant kept vigil at her bedside, a copy of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham open in her lap. She had read to the girl until the sedatives had relaxed the child enough to sleep.

  The child hadn’t said a word since they’d arrived at midnight. Her eyes would track things, plainly registering what was going on around her. But there was little other response. She spent most of her time rocking back and forth, stiffening when touched. They had managed to get her to drink from a juice box and eat two chocolate-chip cookies. They’d also run some initial tests: blood chemistries, a full physical, even an MRI of her entire body. She still ran a low-grade fever, but it wasn’t as elevated as earlier.

  During the physical exam, they’d also found the microtransmitter embedded deep in the girl’s upper arm. The chip would require surgery to remove, so they decided to leave it in place. Besides, the signal was insulated here, blocked. There would be no tracking it.

  Kat stirred and stood up. The woman was dressed casually, her auburn hair accented against a white cotton broadcloth shirt that was worn loose over tan slacks. She had been called to central command from home to oversee field operations, but with Gray’s team still in the air, she found herself more useful here. Having a young daughter herself, Kat had brought in the copy of Dr. Seuss. Though the child remained unresponsive, she warmed up to Kat. Her rocking slowed.

  Painter was happy to see Kat Bryant back at work. After the loss of her husband, Monk, she’d been adrift for many weeks. Yet now she seemed to be recovering, moving forward again.

  Stepping out of the room, Kat closed the door softly and joined Painter in the neighboring observation room. High-backed chairs surrounded a conference table.

  “She’s asleep.” Kat sank into one of the chairs with a sigh.

  “Maybe you should, too. It will be a few more hours until Gray’s plane lands in India.”

  She nodded. “I’ll check with the sitter who’s watching Penelope, then crash for a couple of hours.”

  The door to the outer hall opened. They both turned to see Lisa Cummings and the center’s pathologist, Malcolm Jennings, enter the room. The two, dressed in matching white laboratory smocks and blue scrubs, were in an animated but whispered conversation. Lisa had her hands shoved in the pockets of her smock, pulling the coat tight to her shoulders, a sign of deep concentration. She had put her long blond hair up into a French braid. The pair had spent the last hour in the MRI suite, going over results.

  From their heated, excited chatter—full of medical jargon beyond Painter’s comprehension—they had come to some conclusions, though not necessarily a consensus.

  “Neuromodulation of that scale without glial cell support?” Lisa said with a shake of her head. “
The stimulation of the nucleus basalis, of course, makes sense.”

  “Does it?” Painter asked, drawing their attention.

  Lisa seemed to finally see Painter and Kat. Her shoulders relaxed, and her hands left her pockets. A whispery smile feathered her features as her gaze met his. One of her hands trailed across Painter’s shoulders as she passed and took one of the seats.

  Malcolm took the last remaining seat. “How’s the child doing?”

  “Asleep for the moment,” Kat said.

  “So what have we learned?” Painter asked.

  “That we’re moving through a landscape both new and old,” Malcolm answered cryptically. He slipped on a pair of glasses, tinged slightly blue for reading computer screens with less eyestrain. He settled them in place and opened a laptop he’d carried under one arm. “We’ve compiled the MRI scans of the child and my analysis of the skull. Both devices are the same, though the child’s is more sophisticated.”

  “What are they?” Kat asked.

  “For the most part, they’re TMS generators,” Malcolm answered.

  “Transcranial magnetic stimulators,” Lisa elaborated, though that didn’t help much.

  Painter shared a confused expression with Kat. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” he asked. “And use small words.”

  Malcolm tapped the side of his head with a pen. “Then we’ll start here. The human brain. Composed of thirty billion neurons. Each neuron communicates to its neighbors via multiple synapses. Creating roughly one million billion synaptic connections. These connections, in turn, create a very large number of neural circuits. And by large, I mean in the order of ten followed by a million zeros.”

  “A million zeros?” Painter said.

  Malcolm looked over the edge of his glasses at Painter. “To give you some scale. The total number of atoms in the entire universe is only ten followed by eighty zeros.”

  At Painter’s shocked reaction, Malcolm nodded. “So there’s a vast amount of computing power locked in our skulls that we’re only beginning to comprehend. We’ve just been scratching the surface.” He pointed toward the window. “Someone out there has been delving much deeper.”

  “What do you mean?” Kat asked, her expression showing worry for the girl.

  “With our current technology, we’ve been making tentative strides into this new frontier. Like sending probes into space, we’ve been slipping electrodes into brains. All input into the brain is via electrical impulses. We don’t see with our eyes. We see with our brains. It’s why cochlear implants work to return hearing to the deaf. The implant turns sounds into electrical impulses, which are passed to the brain via a microelectrode inserted into the auditory nerve. Over time, the cortex learns to reinterpret this new signal, and like learning a new language, the deaf begin to hear.”

  Malcolm waved to his laptop. “The human brain—being electrical, being malleable to new signals—has an innate ability to connect to machines. In some regards, that makes us perfect natural-born cyborgs.”

  Painter frowned. “Where are you going with all this?”

  Lisa placed a hand atop his. “We’re already there. The division between man and machine is already blurred. We now have microelectrodes so small that they can be inserted into individual neurons. At Brown University in 2006, they inserted a microchip into a paralyzed man’s brain, linked by a hundred of these microelectrodes. Within four days of practicing, the man—through his thoughts alone—could move a computer cursor on a screen, open e-mail, control a television, and move a robotic arm. That’s how far we’ve breeched the frontier.”

  Painter glanced to the window. “And someone’s gone farther than that?”

  Both Lisa and Malcolm nodded.

  “The device?” Painter asked.

  “A step above anything we’ve seen. It has nanofilament electrodes so tiny that it’s hard to say where the device ends and the child’s brain begins. But the basic function is well known. From studies done at Harvard University on rats, we know that TMS devices promote the growth of neurons—though, oddly, only in areas involved with learning and memory. We still don’t understand why. But what we do know is that magnetic stimulation can also turn on and off these neurons like a switch. Children are especially pliable in this manner.”

  “So if I understand this all correctly, someone has wired such a device to the child, stimulated nerve growth in a specific area, and now controls its functioning like a switch.”

  “Generally speaking, yes,” Malcolm said. “They’ve tapped deep into that vast neural network I described. Only with the magnetic-stimulation of new neurons, they’ve expanded that network even farther. And if I’m right, I’d say they’ve focused that expansion in a very narrow area.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “There’s a law in neurology. Hebb’s law. That basically states nerves that fire together, wire together. By stimulating one site in the brain, they are reinforcing it harder and harder.”

  “But to what end?” Painter asked.

  Malcolm shared a worried glance with Lisa. He wanted her to explain.

  She sighed. “I spoke to the psychologist, Zach Larson, who examined the girl when she was first brought in. From her nonresponsiveness, repetitive behavior, and sensitivity to stimulation, Zach is certain the girl is autistic. And from the behavior you described at the safe house, probably an autistic savant.”

  Painter had read Larson’s report, too. It had been put together quickly, but it had been thorough. He had run a small battery of psychological tests, including a genetic study for some of the typical markers for autism. The last was still pending.

  He’d also included fact sheets on the subject of autistic savants, those rare individuals who—though compromised by their disorder—have amazing islands of talent. A skill that is deep and narrow. Painter remembered the character played by Dustin Hoffman in the movie Rain Man. His ability was to do lightning calculations. But this was only one of the savant talents on Larson’s list. Others included calendar calculations, memorization skills, musical talent, mechanical and spatial skills, exquisite discrimination of smell, taste, or hearing, and also art.

  Painter pictured the drawing of the Taj Mahal. It had been sketched in minutes, handsomely drawn to scale, with perfectly balanced perspective. The girl was certainly talented.

  But was it more than that?

  The last on Larson’s list of savant talents was a rare and controversial report of some autistic savants who displayed extrasensory skills.

  Painter could not dismiss that the girl’s drawings had led the Gypsies unerringly to their safe house. He recalled the earlier discussion with Elizabeth, about her father’s work on intuition and instinct, about his connection with a deep-black government project involved in remote viewing.

  Lisa continued, “We think the device is meant to stimulate that area of the brain where the savant talent lies. It’s known that most savant talent arises from the right side of the brain, the same side where the device is attached on both the skull and the girl. Even using today’s technology, it would not take much effort to localize the region regulating this talent. And once found, the magnetic stimulation could both amplify that area and control it.”

  Painter stood with dawning horror. If Lisa and Malcolm were correct, someone was harnessing this child’s abilities. He crossed toward the window.

  Who did this to the girl?

  Kat had joined Painter and pointed through the window. “She’s awake.”

  And she was drawing again.

  The girl had found a notepad and black felt pen on the bedside table. She scratched across it, not quite as frantically as before, but she was still bent with concentration over the page.

  Kat headed to the door. Painter followed.

  The girl did not acknowledge them, but as they stepped through, both pad and pen dropped to her bedsheet. She went back to rocking.

  Kat stared down at the artwork, then fell back a step with a small gasp. Pai
nter understood her reaction. There was no mistaking what was drawn in ink and paper, a portrait.

  It was her husband, Monk.

  11:04 A.M.

  Southern Ural Mountains

  Russian Federation

  Monk helped Pyotr along a fallen log that forded a deep stream, churning over jumbled rocks. Moss grew heavy on the log, along with a few fat white mushrooms. The entire place smelled damp.

  Kiska was already on the other side, standing with Marta, holding the old chimpanzee’s paw. Monk wanted to be across the next rise and into the neighboring valley. Hopping off the log, he stared behind him. They were crossing a dense birch forest, whose white-barked trunks looked like dried bone. The green foliage was already flamed in patches.

  Monk picked one of the red leaves, rubbing it between his fingers. Still soft, not dried out. Early fall. But the changing leaves promised a cold night among the low mountains here. But at least there should be no snow. He dropped the crushed leaf.

  How did he know all this?

  He shook his head. Such answers would have to wait. Still, he found it disturbing how quickly he was growing accustomed to the disconnect between his lack of memory and his knowledge of the world. Then again, they were being hunted. They had to move quietly, sound carried far in the mountains. Through whispers and hand signals, they communicated.

  Monk searched the far side of the stream. They had been on the run for the past three hours. He had set a hard pace, trying to put as much distance between them and where they’d exited the subterranean world. He didn’t know how long it would take for the hunters to realize the escapees had abandoned the cavern and to pick up their trail out here.

  Monk waited at the stream’s edge.

  Where was Konstantin?

  As if beckoned by his thought, the taller boy came dancing down the far slope, as lithe and firm footed as a young buck. His face, though, was a mask of fear as he ambled, arms out, across the slippery log.

  “I did it!” he said. Wheezing heavily, he jumped and landed next to Monk. “I took your hospital nightshirt and dragged it to the stream in the other valley.”