Threshold

by Jeremy Robinson

  The men filed out of the room. Keasling followed after them, intent on ensuring that each and every man made King’s four-minute schedule.

  King sat down across from Aleman. He looked grim.

  “Last night, did you get a chance to refill Fiona’s insulin pump and move it to a new location?”

  Aleman paled. He hadn’t thought of that problem. “I did. The pump was on her hip. The needle just above it.”

  Fiona’s insulin pump lasted three days when full. After that Fiona would be susceptible to hyperglycemia, which resulted in painful symptoms including coma and death, sometimes very quickly depending on circumstances such as diet and exertion. But that wasn’t the most pressing concern at the moment. The girl he’d been entrusted to protect had been taken from him by a man he knew very little about.

  After first hearing Aleman’s description of the mystery man, King suspected his identity was none other than Alexander Diotrephes. He was sure of it. And Alexander was a doctor, among other things. In theory, he should be able to supply her with insulin. Hell, he could probably cure her. But what did they really know about the man? He’d helped them defeat the Hydra, but he had personal reasons for doing that. He’d saved Fiona once before, at the Siletz Reservation, but no one knew his real motives or intentions. Who’s to say he wasn’t behind the attacks himself? Until all of these questions were answered, King couldn’t trust that Fiona’s life wasn’t in danger. “Let’s operate under the assumption that she’s not going to be cared for. There’s no way to know for sure until I find her.”

  Aleman nodded. “You really think Hercules—Alexander—has Fiona?”

  King’s mind refocused on the task of finding Fiona. He couldn’t do anything about her diabetes until she was safe in his care again. “Sounds insane, I know. The question is: Where did he take her? And does he have anything to do with these living statues?”

  Aleman shook his head. There were so many unanswered questions he was having trouble keeping track of them all, which was frustrating because he could feel the answer to one of their questions on the tip of his tongue.

  Then it came to him. Living statues. “Oh my God,” he whispered, and then said loudly, “I know what they are.”

  King immediately sat up straight. “What?”

  “Golem.”

  EIGHTEEN

  “STAI BENE, TESORO?”

  Fiona opened her eyes to the concerned face of a middle-aged woman with dark curly hair. She couldn’t understand a word the woman said, but she recognized the language. “I can’t speak Italian.”

  “Sorry,” the woman said in English. “I should have learned to greet newcomers in English by now. Most of us here speak it well enough.”

  Fiona tried sitting up, but a spinning head kept her planted in what she now realized was a cot made up in white sheets. The woman saw Fiona’s trouble and helped her sit. “It’s the drugs. You’ll feel dizzy for just a few more minutes and drowsy for another day. Maybe more because you’re so small.”

  “Drugs?” Fiona gave her body a visual once over and saw no injuries, but her body and the woman’s face were as far as she could focus. She looked up and saw brown, but the room twisted madly causing instant nausea. She turned her eyes down and saw a brown stone floor. “This isn’t a hospital.” She looked at the woman. “And you’re not a nurse, are you?”

  The woman frowned and shook her head. “I am a linguist. And no, this is not a hospital.” The woman held out her hand. “Elma Rossi.”

  Fiona shook her hand. “Fiona Lane.” She looked into Elma’s eyes, wondering if she was someone she could trust. Deciding she had no choice, she asked, “Where am I?”

  “Where we are in the world … I cannot say. There are no windows. No clues. The only thing we know is that we are underground.”

  Underground? Fiona focused on the floor, fought down a fresh wave of nausea, and then looked again. The wall closest to her resolved as a continuation of the stone floor, brown and featureless. The room continued to spin, but she forced herself to look, to glean what she could.

  She saw people. Small groups of them gathered in huddles around the room. Some appeared to be self-segregated by race. Others lay on cots like hers, staring at the ceiling—also stone. The space was about the size of her junior high cafeteria, before the reservation was destroyed.

  A persistent pain in her hip drew her attention. She lifted up her shirt and saw the insulin pump attached to her waistband. She turned it up, looking at its digital display, which showed her glucose levels, battery life, and insulin supply. All was good.

  “What is that?” Elma asked.

  “Insulin pump. I’m diabetic.”

  “That can be hard, especially on one so young. But I wouldn’t worry about it,” Elma said. “Those of us with medical needs have been taken care of. I’m sure you will be as well.”

  “I’ll be fine for a few more days, anyway,” Fiona said. To prove it, she stood. When she did, a fresh wave of nausea struck. She stumbled and was caught by Elma.

  “Slow down, child, you’ll—”

  Fiona yanked her arm away. “Let me do this,” she said, her little voice almost a growl. “I can do this.” Driven by a deep desire to be strong like King, she did what she’d seen him do after taking a hard hit or running a long distance. Hands on knees, head between legs, and long, deep breaths. She finished with a deep grunt and stood. She felt stronger, but still dizzy. Though she didn’t let Elma see that. Rook told her that when they were on a mission they had to swallow pain and discomfort to get things done. He made it sound easy.

  It wasn’t.

  But Fiona had Elma convinced as she stood up straight and rolled her little neck. When she opened her eyes again, the woman had taken a step back with a hand to her mouth. “Child, you may be the toughest person here.”

  The statement helped Fiona stand still as her body threatened to buckle over and wretch. She swallowed, knowing that Rook had meant pain-swallowing as a metaphor, and forced a cocky King-style smile. “Just trying to take after my dad.”

  Elma’s eyes were wide. “And … who is your father?”

  “You can ask him when he—” Fiona lurched forward and vomited at the base of her cot. After three heaves and a coughing fit, she spit the remaining bile from her mouth and stood with tears in her eyes. Elma stepped forward and held her. Fiona melted into her hug. “Not as tough as you thought.”

  “Nonsense,” Elma said, brushing a hand over Fiona’s straight black hair. “Some of these people did not stop crying for days. Some still cry.”

  Fiona looked up at her. “How long have you been here?”

  “Three months.” She motioned to the groups around the room, some of whom were looking their way. “Others are new arrivals like you. The longest have been here for a year.”

  Fiona slumped in Elma’s embrace, horrified. “A year.”

  “We are well cared for,” Elma said, her voice suddenly hopeful. “Look there,” she said, pointing to a door at the far end of the room that Fiona had missed during her dizzy turnabout. “We’re fed three times a day. And the food isn’t bad.” She pointed to the other end of the room where several hanging sheets divided the space. “There is a toilet with working plumbing, and a shower with drainage there. The water is cold, but it is nice to be clean. Even the lighting was carefully chosen.”

  Fiona looked up at the string of lights hanging from the ceiling, spaced out every ten feet in a grid from one end to the other.

  “The bulbs mimic sunlight and reduce the effect of not getting outside. It’s no replacement, but it’s better than regular bulbs.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  Elma shrugged. “We do not know. But it is clear our captors mean us no harm.”

  “Yet…” Fiona added.

  Elma grimaced and then nodded. “Yes. Yet. We are supplied with games, water, reading material, and medical supplies should the need arise.”

  With her emotions reined in by the conversation
and her body returning to normal, Fiona stepped away and stood on her own. “Who brings the supplies? The food?”

  “We do not see who brings the food,” said a tall, skinny black man. “They come when it is dark. At night. When they shut off the lights. We cannot see them. But we hear them.”

  “Buru,” Elma scolded. “Don’t frighten the girl.”

  “She will be less frightened if she knows what to expect.” He turned to Fiona. “Who do you think deposited you here during the night? None of us saw you arrive. We woke, and there you were.”

  Elma muttered some exasperated Italian and said, “She has only just arrived!”

  When Elma threw her arms up, a black symbol could be seen on the back of her hand. It was small, about the size of a quarter, but Fiona recognized it instantly. She stepped away from Elma.

  Elma’s hands stopped in midair. She’d noticed Fiona’s fear and followed the girl’s eyes to the symbol on her hand—a circle with two vertical lines through it. “What is it, child?”

  Fiona just stared, her mind putting together pieces faster than she knew how to react.

  “It’s a brand of a sort,” Elma said, lowering her hand and holding it out.

  Buru showed her his hand. Though less visible on his dark skin, the symbol was there. “All of us have one.” He pointed to her right hand. “Even you.”

  Fiona looked at her hand, the dark symbol fresh and shining like a cancer. She tried rubbing it off, but it did not smudge or dull. Tattoos, she thought, and then realized their purpose. She had helped her grandmother tag goats on the reservation once. Hated every second. But the experience was etched into her mind, impossible to forget. The tags showed ownership. And she was the only one here who knew the name of their shepherd.

  Alexander Diotrephes.

  And the knowledge gave her strength.

  Rubbing the tattoo with her thumb, she turned to Buru. “They only enter in the dark?”

  He nodded, perplexed that the little girl would return to the topic. “There is a dim light from the hallway beyond the door, but that is all.”

  “Have you seen one?”

  Buru looked at Elma, who threw her hands up, and walked away while shaking her head and muttering in Italian.

  “Only shadows,” Buru said. “But others have seen them.”

  “Dark cloaks and gray skin?”

  Elma stopped and turned around slowly. Her eyes wide.

  Buru was likewise stunned. “You know of these things?”

  Fiona sifted through a year’s worth of Chess Team education she got on top of her regular school studies. “My father called them wraiths but that’s a misnomer because ‘wraith’ is a Scottish word for ghosts … and these are not Scottish. And they’re not ghosts.”

  “What are they?” Buru asked.

  She shrugged. “I dunno, but I can tell you two things for sure. First, we won’t be escaping without help. Second, help is on the way.”

  Buru looked incredulous, like he’d just remembered he was speaking to a young girl. “How do you know this?”

  She looked at Elma, trying her best to sound confident, to believe that King, her father, would scour the earth for her, and said, “I never did tell you who my father is.”

  NINETEEN

  Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina

  KING RESTED HIS elbows on the table and tried the word on for size. “Golem.” He didn’t like it. “As in the legendary Jewish variety?”

  “You know it?” Aleman asked.

  “Just the basics,” King said. “That they’re figures, most often created from clay and brought to life when a rabbi places a piece of paper in its mouth with the word ‘Emet,’ truth, written on it. Sometimes the word is inscribed on the golem’s body instead. To destroy the golem the ‘E’ is erased, leaving the word ‘Met,’ death.” King looked up at Aleman, who was typing away on his laptop as he listened. “You know how stupid this sounds?”

  “You’ve seen Hydra reborn and Neanderthal women wanting to mate with Rook. This kind of thing should no longer be strange. What else do we know?”

  King sat back and focused. They had covered the golem briefly during their year of study, along with a slew of other myths representing the world’s cultures and religions. Visualizing what he knew of the golem, images began to fill in the missing gaps.

  “The most popular golem story involved a rabbi in Prague. In the 1500s. He used a golem to defend his ghetto against anti-Semitic attacks. The golem grew violent. Killed slews of people. Non-Jews. And the persecution was stopped.”

  “Are they intelligent?” Aleman asked.

  “No,” King said. “They can’t act without instructions from the rabbi who gives them life. They can’t talk. I suppose they have a limited intelligence in that they can understand commands and carry them out, but maybe that’s just the creator’s thoughts and feelings being imprinted on the golem?”

  Aleman looked up slowly.

  “What?” King asked.

  “Just impressed is all. I don’t think you would have said that a year ago.”

  “That’s nice, but none of it tells me who to shoot. Any idea?”

  Aleman shrugged. “Beats me. But if inanimate objects really are being brought to life, maybe someone figured out how to tap into some kind of ancient creative power. God. Aliens. Intelligent capybara from another dimension. I’m leaving all the cards on the table.”

  King opened his hands. “Okay, fine. We’ll call them golems for now, but that doesn’t get us any closer to finding Fiona, which is why I’m still here. Tell me what happened again. How she was taken.”

  Aleman pursed his lips, looking down at the empty table. “The thing … the golem … was charging us. A man in black special ops gear, who I thought was you until he latched onto its head and drove what had to be a ton of stone into the pavement. As my vision faded I saw two things, black shapes attack the downed golem. I couldn’t see the man’s face, but he had a deep voice and said you would know who he was.”

  “And we do. But he could be anywhere in the world.” King shook his head in frustration. “He didn’t say anything else?”

  “Something … maybe … something about a promise.” Aleman looked up as the memory returned. “Breaking a promise. He said, ‘I hope he appreciates me breaking my promise.’”

  “Breaking his promise?”

  “Did he promise you anything?”

  King’s head moved slowly from side to side. “Nothing.”

  Aleman quickly scoured everything he could find about Hercules, searching for the keyword “promise.” He found nothing. “There’s no mention about a promise anywhere in literature or online. If he was dropping a hint, it’s not something publicly known.”

  “Then it would have to be personal,” King said. “But I never met the man.”

  “Queen and Rook did,” Aleman added.

  “Can you search their reports?” The team kept detailed reports of all missions including every action taken, why, and, to the best of their ability, what was said. The process was long and they often ended up with novelettes by the time they were done, but many missions overlapped and what was at the time a minor detail could become important in the future.

  Aleman’s response was to begin typing. Thirty seconds later, “Bingo! Queen’s report has him saying, ‘I long ago promised someone I loved that I would refrain from getting directly involved in the world’s problems.’ The context was his refusal to get physically involved in the Hydra mission.”

  “But he’s getting involved now.”

  “And breaking that promise … to who…” King pounded the table with his fist, but not in anger, in victory. “Acca Larentia.”

  Aleman wasn’t used to being the one asking questions. He was typically on the delivering end of strange or pertinent information. “Who?”

  “Acca Larentia. She was Hercules’s mistress, said to have been won in a game of dice and later, when he was done with her, married to an Etruscan man named Carutius,
whose property she inherited when he died. The property later became known as Rome.”

  King’s thoughts shifted, knowing that history, especially when it concerned Hercules, could not be trusted. Over the past several thousand years, his secret organization, the Herculean Society, had systematically altered history by either erasing Hercules’s influence and existence altogether, or heaping on legend to make it unbelievable. The truth that no one knew was that Hercules was more genius than a god-man, and had extended his life through genetic tinkering and boosted his physical prowess, when needed, by consuming adrenaline-boosting concoctions. Immortal, yes. A god, no.

  He stood and paced, his energy building as the pieces began coming together. “I’m willing to bet that Hercules was also Carutius, now Alexander Diotrephes. And I think we can safely assume he’s had many names in between. If he was married to Acca, then the promise he made might have been to her.”

  He turned to Aleman. “Are there any monuments to her?”

  After working the keyboard, Aleman said, “Not a one.”

  King frowned, thinking of the fear that Fiona must be feeling and loathing the absolute helplessness he felt. Never before in his life had he felt so powerless. So vulnerable.

  “Hold on,” Aleman said. “She was supposedly buried in the Velabrum, between the Palatine and Capitoline hills in Rome. It was once a swampy area, but it’s now covered by the ruins of Foro Romano—the Roman Forum.”

  “It fits,” King said. “His last hiding place had been beneath the Rock of Gibraltar, one of the two pillars of Hercules. If the Herculean Society is dedicated to protecting the historical Hercules, it would make sense to set up shop at his most prized locations, especially one housing the body of his one, and only, love in twenty-five hundred years.”

  He opened his cell phone and dialed. A moment later he said, “Bring my ride around. Yes. Rome.” He hung up and dialed again, waiting for the other end to pick up. When it did, he got an answering machine. “It’s Jack. I’m on my way to Rome and I need your help. ETA fives hours. Thanks, George.”