The Doomsday Key and The Last Oracle with Bonus Excerpts

by James Rollins

  The engineer nodded his head vigorously. “It would take an electrical genius weeks to repair it.”

  “Very good.” She lifted her pistol and shot the engineer through the forehead. The technician tried to run, but Savina swung her arm and dropped him at the foot of the stairs, pierced through the neck. He writhed, choking on his own blood.

  She could not risk these two being caught. What they dismantled, they might be forced to fix at gunpoint.

  She could not let that happen.

  To satisfy herself even further, Savina grabbed a fire ax from the back wall and crossed to the boards. Lifting it high, she smashed both computers and electronics boards. Afterward, she rested the ax on the floor and leaned on its handle. She stared at the row of LCD screens. They still displayed views from various cameras. She considered smashing the monitors, too, but with her back in full spasm, she didn’t know if she could lift the ax again.

  And in the end, what did it matter?

  She shoved the ax to the floor and stared at the centermost screen. Water poured in a toxic black stream.

  Let them see what she had wrought.

  She smiled, enjoying this one last act of cruelty, then turned and headed for the stairs.

  Let them watch the world die.

  No one could stop her.

  Chapter 21

  September 7, 1:03 P.M.

  Southern Ural Mountains

  Pyotr led the man by his shirtsleeve. They ran through chaos. Soldiers screamed, glass shattered, rifles blasted, flames writhed, and smoke choked. But it wasn’t chaos to Pyotr.

  He tugged Monk into a sheltering dark doorway as a soldier rounded a corner ahead, searched, then moved on. Pyotr hurried the man down a hall, up some stairs, out a window, and over a pile of rubble to the next building.

  “Pyotr, where are we going?”

  He didn’t answer, couldn’t answer.

  Reaching another hall, Pyotr stopped. In his head, he stretched outward along a thousand possibilities. Hearts glowed like small pyres, flickering with fear, anger, panic, cowardice, malice. He understood how each would move even before they did. It was his talent, only so much more now.

  For he had a secret.

  Over the past years, as he woke screaming from his nightmare, waking other children with visions of bodies on fire, there was a reason his other classmates performed so poorly on their tests afterward. The teachers believed it was just because Pyotr had scared them, but they were wrong. Pyotr’s talent was to read hearts. They called it empathy. But he had a secret, something he only talked to Marta about.

  Something he knew from his dreams.

  He could do more than read hearts—he could also steal them. It wasn’t fear that made the other children perform poorly; they had something drawn from them. For just a few minutes after waking, Pyotr could do anything. He could multiply big numbers, like Konstantin; he could tell a person was lying by listening to how they talked, like Elena; he could see to hidden places, like his sister; and so much more. It filled him until he burned.

  He pictured the stars falling into him, screaming, feeding the emptiness inside him. In his dreams, he had always woken before he consumed them fully. Not today. Pyotr walked through a dream from which he could never wake. He knew he had crossed a line, but he also knew he had no choice. He was always meant to burn.

  Pyotr stared out at the chaos with a fiery gaze that was not his alone. Through a hundred eyes, he teased a pattern out of the chaos. Though he could not see the future—or at least no more than a few seconds—his ears took in every noise, his eyes interpreted every flicker of flame or shift of shadow, his heart read deep into what drove a man to choose to step here or there, to take that corner or not, to shoot or run. And with a shadow of his sister’s ability, his senses extended a few yards beyond even that.

  And out of that chaos, a path took form.

  One he could follow.

  Pyotr crossed out into the hallway, guiding Monk behind him.

  He pointed to the left—and Monk shot the soldier who stepped into view a second later. The man was learning to trust Pyotr’s instinct. To move with him, to fire upon command, growing into an extension of Pyotr.

  Together, they crossed through the pattern.

  Moving through pure instinct.

  And that’s what Pyotr was now: instinct fired by a hundred talents.

  He understood fully. Instinct was merely the brain’s unconscious interpretation of millions of subtle changes in the environment, both at the moment and leading up to it. The brain took all that chaotic information, saw a pattern, and the body reacted to it. It seemed magical, but it was only biological.

  Pyotr did the same now—only a hundredfold more powerfully.

  He extended his senses, reading hearts, motivations, trajectories, distances, noises, voices, directions, cadences, smoke, heat…and on and on. The million details filled him and sifted through the hundred minds he shared. From out of that chaos, patterns opened, and he knew each step to take.

  “Where are we going?” Monk asked again.

  Where you need to be, Pyotr answered silently.

  Pyotr led him down the stairs again, then pulled the man to the floor as a shot fired overhead. From there, they crawled under a row of steel desks as soldiers searched, then down another set of stairs to a long basement hall with branches into a maze of rooms and other passageways.

  Pyotr hurried.

  While he saw a pattern, he could not truly see the future. He danced faster along the threads of pure instinct, sensing the pressure of ages upon him. They were running out of time.

  The man grew more distressed, perhaps sensing the same.

  “Where are you—?”

  A new voice intruded, coming from the end of the hall, pitched full of surprise. Pyotr read the pound in the newcomer’s heart. A name was called out with a ring of disbelief.

  “Monk!”

  Gray almost shot him. Rounding into the hall, Gray had found two figures running straight at him, one with a weapon pointed ahead. If not for the presence of the boy, Gray would have shot on instinct.

  Instead, he momentarily froze between recognition and shock.

  His friend did not. The pistol fired. Gray felt a kick to his shoulder, throwing him back. Pain lanced outward.

  Kowalski caught him as he fell and barked as loud as the crack of the pistol shot. “Monk, you ass! What are you doing?”

  Monk halted, tugged to a stop by the boy. His face collapsed into a wary mask of confusion. “Who…who are you people?”

  Kowalski still fumed. “Who are we? We’re your goddamn friends!”

  Gray gained his feet, his left shoulder blazing with fire. “Monk, don’t you recognize us?”

  Monk fingered a red and swollen line of sutures behind his ears. “No…actually I don’t.”

  Gray stumbled over to him, his mind dizzy with questions, with the impossibility of it all. Was it amnesia or had they done something to him? How could Monk be here? Gray didn’t care. He gave his friend a bear hug, earning a fiery complaint from his shoulder. Just a graze, but he would’ve taken a gut shot to have this man back in his life. He clutched even tighter.

  “I knew it…I knew it…,” Gray whispered fiercely. Tears welled and rolled. “God, you’re alive.”

  Kowalski grumbled, “He won’t be alive much longer if we don’t get moving.”

  The man was right. Gray let Monk go, but he kept one hand on his friend’s elbow, to make sure he didn’t disappear again.

  Monk looked across the lot of them. “Listen,” he said and pointed outward. “I could use your help. There’s something I have to stop.”

  “Operation Saturn,” Gray said.

  Monk did a double take in Gray’s direction, then nodded. “That’s right. This boy can—”

  Monk suddenly twirled around. “Where’s Pyotr?”

  Gray understood his confusion.

  The boy had vanished during the chaos.

  1:15 P.M.
>
  Kyshtym, Russia

  Elizabeth studied the image on the computer screen. It displayed the wall mosaic from the temple in India. Five figures sat on tripod chairs surrounding the central omphalos. From the hole in the stone, smoke swirled upward like a steaming volcano. A fiery boy rose above it, half buried in a column of the smoke.

  But it wasn’t just the smoke that lifted him.

  At her elbow, Elizabeth had papers covered with scribbled lines of Harappan, Sanskrit, and Greek. She had images of the inscriptions on the wall and omphalos. She was not entirely certain of her translation.

  The world will burn…

  She studied the mosaic closer. Five women slouched in their chairs, as if in a trance, but each held one arm raised toward the smoky boy. Her first thought was that it represented a conjuring of the boy or summoning of him. But now she knew better. They weren’t conjuring him, they were supporting him.

  She glanced to the line she had freshly translated in full.

  The world will burn…unless the many become one.

  It was a warning. The mosaic foretold what must come to pass or the world would be destroyed in some great fire. Elizabeth remembered Gray’s concern that whatever operation was at work in these mountains would kill millions and most likely involved a nuclear or radiological event.

  She pictured a mushroom cloud, burning and smoking with hellfire.

  It was not unlike the billowing smoke from the mosaic.

  …unless the many become one.

  She scrolled down to the bottom of the image, below the newly translated warning. She touched a finger to what lay there.

  A chakra wheel.

  Her fingertip traced a petal to the center. The chakra wheel represented the same warning. The numerous petals all led to one center.

  The many become one.

  She stared again at the five women, lifting a boy high.

  Certainty grew in her—not only about the accuracy of her translation, but also about its importance. Elizabeth’s body trembled with dread. She had to get word out to someone. She crossed to the satellite phone Gray had left her. He had instructed her to call Director Crowe if there were any problems.

  Still, she hesitated. What if she was wrong? What if she caused more of a mess? She considered keeping silent. But she remembered her father, and all his secrets. Of Masterson and his. She was done with secrets and half-truths, of words not spoken.

  No more.

  She would not be her father.

  Knowing her discovery was important, she raised the handset and tapped in the number Gray had left.

  3:18 A.M.

  Washington, D.C.

  Painter watched as the child was prepped for the operation. He stood with Kat Bryant in a neighboring observation room off Sigma’s small surgical suite. Sterile-wrapped equipment waited to be employed for the delicate operation: ultrasonic aspirators, laser scalpels, stereotactic localizers. Trays of steel tools and drills with various burrs lined tables. Inside the room, Lisa, Malcolm, and a neurosurgical team from George Washington University Hospital continued the final preparations.

  In the middle, Sasha lay under a thin surgical drape. All that was visible was the side of her head, shaved, coated in orange antiseptic, and trapped in a rigid frame attached to a scanning device. In the center of the surgical field, her steel implant reflected the lights.

  Kat, pale and worried, stood with one hand on the window.

  Over the course of the past hour, a series of EEG results and CT scans had shown progressive brain damage in the child. Whatever was happening to Sasha, it was slowly burning out her brain. It was decided, while the child was still strong, to remove the implant. It seemed to be the focus around which the storm of neurological hyperactivity centered.

  Lisa had used the term “lightning rod.”

  The only way to save her was to remove it. The neurosurgeon had studied all the scans and X-rays. He believed the device could be removed safely. It would be a delicate procedure, but not beyond his abilities.

  That had been the first good news all night.

  Painter’s phone jangled in his pocket. He considered not answering it, but he tugged it out and checked the I.D. From Kyshtym, Russia. He turned his back on the window, flipped open the phone, and answered it.

  “Painter Crowe here.”

  “Director,” a woman spoke, sounding greatly relieved. It was Elizabeth Polk. “Gray left this number.”

  He heard the anxiety in her rushed voice. “What’s wrong, Elizabeth?”

  “I’m not sure. Something I discovered, translated…anyway…”

  Painter listened as she stated her case, her fears, what she believed was the message buried in an ancient mosaic.

  “The oracles were all slumped in their chairs, unconscious, drugged, drained. Their sole reason for existing was to support the one who could save the world from destruction. I know this sounds crazy, but I think it’s connected to what’s going on today.”

  As she talked, Painter had swung back to the window overlooking the surgical suite. Her words resonated through him. Slumped, unconscious, drugged…

  Like Sasha’s collapse.

  He remembered Kat reporting the girl called out her brother’s name just before she collapsed.

  Their sole reason for existing was to support the one who could save the world from destruction.

  Painter saw the surgeon lift his scalpel, ready to begin the operation.

  No.

  He bolted for the door.

  Kat called to him. “What’s wrong?”

  Painter had no time. He burst through the sterile prep area and into the operating room. “Stop! No one move!”

  1:14 P.M.

  Southern Ural Mountains

  “General-Major, you should head downstairs to the bunker,” the soldier warned. He stood a head taller than her, thick with muscle. “We shall make a stand here.”

  Another soldier dragged Dr. Petrov’s screaming form into the room from the hallway. His leg had been blown off at the knee. Blood poured. Other soldiers ran in with the children carried over their shoulders. The group had been chased back to the apartment by the collapse of the Russian forces, retreating before the guerrilla assault.

  The large soldier pointed a beefy arm toward the stairwell. “Please, General-Major. We will hold off as long as we can.”

  “The children…” Savina said, knowing her plan was crumbling around her. She could not let anyone else steal what she had started. “Shoot them all.”

  The man’s eyes grew large, but he was a soldier.

  He nodded.

  Savina retreated down the stairs. She could not watch. Her legs stumbled under her as she reached the bottom of the stairs. The door to the room was four-inch steel. Barricaded inside, she would wait out the war above. Ahead, she noted the flicker of the screens beyond the doorway. In the center screen, water flooded poison into the earth. As she holed up here, she would take solace as she watched.

  Gunfire erupted overhead.

  The children…

  Cringing, she headed for the room.

  But a shape stepped into view in the open doorway, blocking her.

  A boy.

  Pyotr.

  Pyotr stood in the doorway and stared up at the woman. She was darkness and shadow in the gloom of the stairwell. He did not truly see her, but he knew her. He focused on the flame of her heart, aglow at the foot of the stairs.

  “Pyotr,” she called to him, with a shining note of hope in her voice.

  As she stepped toward him, he lifted his arms and reached out—not with flesh but with his fiery spirit. He cupped the flame of her heart between his open palms, holding it like a frightened bird. Then he gently squeezed, smothering her flame.

  The woman dropped to her knees with a cry, a fist clutched to her heart. “Pyotr, what are you—?”

  Hope turned to terror as she screamed.

  He was not done.

  There was another facet to Pyotr’s talent
of empathy. He could certainly sense others’ emotions, but with the force of a hundred behind him, he could do more.

  As a hundred eyes stared out of his, he drew from the other children: all the agony of the scalpel, the ache of loneliness, the coldness of neglect, the pain of secret abuse at night. He reached farther back, to a blue-eyed child in a dark church, watching a woman and a man approach. He stole all that fear out of the past and thrust it like a dagger into her heart.

  The woman shrieked, arched back, racked and locked in a pain without end.

  Yet, likewise, as the dark emotions ran through Pyotr, the same fire grazed him. Hot tears flowed for all the lost innocence, including his own.

  He barely registered the pistol as it lifted toward him.

  The woman sought to blindly kill what tortured her.

  While he did the same to her.

  The pistol blast shattered the silence.

  Pyotr fell back when the woman’s flame suddenly snuffed out between his palms. As he stumbled back, she fell to the floor, half her face gone. He stared up and saw Monk rushing down the stairs from above, his pistol smoking.

  The man leaped over the woman and scooped him in his arms.

  “Pyotr!”

  Monk lifted the stiff boy. He ran his hand over his small frame. He seemed uninjured, though his skin burned to the touch. He hugged Pyotr to his chest.

  The others ran down the stairs behind him.

  A brief firefight had eliminated the defenders above. It had looked like the Russians had been about to fire upon a group of unconscious children.

  If they’d been a half minute later…

  The Gypsies remained above to secure the area and watch over the children. They were safe here for the moment.

  “Is this the place?” Gray asked.

  With the boy in his arms, Monk crossed with the others into the bunker. The control board smoked from deep gashes into the smoldering circuitry. Keyboards lay cracked. Glass crunched underfoot. Everything was shattered, except for a row of wall monitors.

  Monk pointed to the center screen, recognizing the room. It was the heart of Operation Saturn. Only now, black water poured like a river out of a hole in the roof and swirled down a shaft in the floor.