They gathered all their belongings and strode over to where the steps led down from the top, trying not to be seen from the ground. It was highly likely that the vast majority of their stalkers were searching in neighboring towns. However, one was bound to still be waiting for some reward in the ruins.
Just as James drew nearer to the steps and had a clearer view of the complex, a head slowly popped up before him. As he finished climbing the last few steps, his body gradually materialized. An enormous back and a pair of strong, robust arms that made him impossible to defeat in one-on-one combat, muscular arms, a slim yet defined waist, long and athletic legs. At first, James couldn’t tell if he was some deranged tourist to have climbed the pyramid in that state, or one of his pursuers. However, his eyes instinctively went to his right hand. He was carrying a gun ready to fire. With a swift movement he raised the weapon and pointed it straight at his head. His index finger gently slid over the barrel of the gun and rested completely on the trigger. They fitted together perfectly, which was why it was his favorite weapon; it had never let him down. The assassin that so yearned to kill them had finally found them.
Chapter 56
When the assassin’s penetrating stare met with James, all the hair on his body stood on end as if the temperature had suddenly dropped forty degrees. His red eyes, full of rage, carried a glimpse of a horrendous ending. The assassin slowly moved his right arm behind his waist. It was a calculated movement, yet sufficiently slow for them both to follow it with their gaze.
Eventually he took out a military knife, the same one that he had been about to use to finish off James the day all this began. Its blade shone like a mirror when it came into contact with the light refracted in the raindrops. “Give me the fragments!” demanded the assassin in a steady and authoritative voice.
The seventeen or eighteen feet between them gave them a false sense of security which only served to intensify their agony.
Although it was highly likely that they hadn’t gotten rid of them during their escape, the assassin couldn’t be sure. They had tried to escape through the woodland around the complex, so they could have hidden them anywhere. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake; his boss would never forgive him.
“Hand them over!” he repeated, this time more insistent than before. He took a couple of steps forward.
James, who was desperately wishing for the distance between them to drastically reduce, retreated three feet for every step taken by the assassin. Mary did the same thing, without losing her cool.
“Who are you working for?” asked James. “How much is he paying you? We can come to some agreement. Let us go and we’ll pay you whatever you want.”
The assassin couldn’t contain his laughter. He sensed their fear; he could smell it. He found it hugely satisfying when his victims slowly realized they were going to die. “You’ll never be able to match his bid.”
James insisted. “Why? We have quite a lot of money.”
They assassin started to laugh again. The constant twitching of his jaw made him seem a cruel and bloodthirsty man. “He doesn’t just pay in money. He wiped my whole criminal record, and that really wasn’t an easy job. I was sentenced to life imprisonment.”
Mary glanced at James’ arm. It was practically purple and he had probably lost all feeling in it. He didn’t have much time left. She tried to get his attention with a slight whistle but his head was somewhere else.
“He wiped your criminal record?” James looked puzzled. “Your boss must be part of the government. No doubt he’s a very important person.”
The assassin grinded his teeth, his face showing that he had said too much. Meanwhile James and Mary kept taking steps back until they were on the edge of the summit. They couldn’t go any further.
“It doesn’t matter who my boss is, you two are dead. I’m just going to let you decide how you are going to go to the other side. Give me them!” he said again. “If you don’t, you’ll suffer.”
James’ body couldn’t take any more and he looked at him with rage. His right arm was hanging from his shoulder like rotten fruit on a branch. “We haven’t got it - we hid it.”
“You’re lying!” yelled the assassin who had already stepped over the five yard mark and was now less than four yards away. His mouth was again twisted in anger.
Things were becoming a little delicate, so James grabbed the only solution he had left. He took out half the object and showed it to him, shaking it about in the air.
The assassin stopped and even took a couple of steps back, cursing his ignorance. If he had known that they had the fragments, he would have fired a couple of shots at each one and he would have got the pieces without any more to it. But without being sure, he couldn’t take that risk. They could lose it forever.
James spoke to him in an intimidating tone of voice while he waved the Trifariam over the edge of the pyramid. “Get back! Get back or I’ll throw it over!”
The assassin started grinding his teeth again, he squeezed his fist in anger and lifted the weapon until it was pointing straight at his head.
“You don’t have the balls to shoot me,” said James, feeling shaken up inside. “If a bullet goes into my head and kills me, I’ll let it go and it will smash into the ground. I’d love to see your boss’ face when you tell him it was your fault that one of the pieces was broken.”
The assassin stepped back a few more feet; he was undecided. He waved his pistol, aiming all over James’ body until he eventually decided to point it at Mary’s head.
Before she could say anything, James squeezed the object tighter than ever and threatened to throw it over the edge if he didn’t drop his weapon. “If you so much as touch a hair on her, I’m throwing this over. I swear to god!”
The rain stopped just as the assassin was showing signs of flagging. He slid his gun back into the pouch tied around his waist while he kept the knife raised up in the air without knowing what to do.
Just then, a young man of around nineteen appeared on the summit. He had long hair which was completely soaked through and although he was wearing a blue raincoat, his pants were dark from the rain that they had absorbed. He didn’t know what was going on and walked over to one of the sides of the summit where the views were most spectacular, where he could see the ruins in all their glory.
“Watch out! Get out of here!” shouted James summoning the little strength he had left. But it was too late.
The assassin walked towards his back, immobilized his arms and pulled his head up to the sky to then slit his jugular. While blood flowed from his neck and splattered onto the ground, his body didn’t stop convulsing. Two precise stabs, one to the heart and another to the liver, quickly put an end to his life while Mary and James looked on in amazement.
“Noooo!” screamed Mary.
“You fucking bastards. Give me the fucking object! I’ll kill you, you piece of shit.”
“We’ll never give it to you! Why have you killed him? He was just a boy. You’re disgusting.”
“This is your last chance. Give me the object!”
“Never!” yelled James as he placed himself in front of Mary, protecting her from any possible shot.
“Okay, you asked for it.” He raised the weapon again, this time with much more certainty, and aimed it at James’ thigh. When he went to pull the trigger, however, a voice from the steps made him freeze.
“Alpha 2, calm down. I’m here.” Alpha 1 appeared at the summit carrying a briefcase in his right hand. His hands were covered in blood, although he seemed much calmer than his colleague. “What a mess you’ve made,” he said, motioning towards the young boy’s body as he gave it a kick. Then he looked them straight in the eye and spoke. “Okay, what do you want in return for the objects?”
Alpha 1 seemed more of a talker than his colleague, but this didn’t make James worry any less.
“Let us go, we haven’t done anything.”
Alpha 1 smiled and stared at his arm. “I see the snake bit you a
s well. It doesn’t look too good.”
James looked at his arm again and tried to hide it discreetly behind his body. He could barely feel it, let alone move it. “What? Who else did it bite? One of your colleagues?”
“No. We are the only ones in our team. The snake quickly devoured one of your stalkers’ thighs. He must be really pissed after all the venom it injected into him.”
“Stalkers?” he asked again.
“Apparently, there are other people interested in the object. It was hard to get rid of them, but I did it.” Alpha 1 showed them his bloody hands. It was like a show of power. “I’ve just ordered Alpha 2 to get rid of the bodies.”
“You’re monsters.”
Mary, who had until then been curled up behind James, looked at his left arm. He was holding the object with three fingers, relaxed, in a position of privilege from which he seemed to negotiate with the assassin. She slowly slipped behind his back, while the two became embroiled in a heated verbal dispute. Without James noticing, she wrapped her arms around the fragment he was holding and snatched it from his hands, much to his surprise and even more to that of Alpha 1.
She quickly ran over to one of the opposite sides of the summit and although James tried to follow her, he tripped clumsily and fell to the ground. His attempts to get up were in vain, his right arm didn’t respond and the left was completely exhausted. He observed the scene from the ground.
The woman took the second half from out of her bag, so that she was holding a piece in each hand. She fearlessly walked towards the assassin and when she was less than ten feet away she said the following word: MAJORITY.
Chapter 57
To James’ disbelief, Mary began to talk amiably to the assassin. Although they were speaking quite quietly, some words were clear to James. “So it was you”, “we had no idea”, “we’re sorry”. What the hell is going on? James constantly wondered.
Despite the wind having died down and the rain stopping, James’ clothes were completely drenched, numbing even the most remote of his muscles. He lay prostrate on the cold stone, in the middle of a huge puddle that had formed after the storm. His eyes quickly scanned Mary’s face, searching for some kind of look which would explain her behavior, but there was nothing. She had a piece of the object in each hand, rubbing them together in all imaginable ways until she found a point where they joined.
The assassin, who had already put his weapon away in a sheath at the back of his waist, walked towards the young man’s body that was lying just a few feet from the professor. His throat hadn’t yet started bleeding, unlike his stomach which occasionally spurted a thin red stream.
He lifted the young man up and slung him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. In no time at all he was standing looking down at the rear of the pyramid and after checking that there was nobody around, he threw the man down the slope while James looked on in astonishment.
The sound of the body slamming violently against the ground almost made him vomit. Meanwhile, Mary was studying the first two fragments with complete disregard for what was going on around her.
“Mary…” quietly whispered James, so as not to be heard by the assassin. “What’s going on?”
The woman ignored her friend’s pleas, even though James was completely positive that she had heard him.
It was then that he felt as if somebody was hitting his left leg with such violence that his thoughts disappeared for a few seconds. Already feeling weak, his neck was unable to hold up the weight of his head and kept falling to the rocky ground.
He began to feel a very sharp pain around his knee, and a quick glance at it confirmed his suspicions. Some of his ligaments appeared to be damaged and he was incapable of standing on his feet.
“Get up! Up, you prick!”
James moaned in pain when the assassin tightly grabbed his injured arm and pulled him up with it. “What’s going on, Mary?” he pleaded between moans when he managed to lean on his healthy leg.
Mary ignored him once again. She pulled off the backpack that was on her right shoulder and opened it. She carefully placed the two pieces inside, wrapping them in two handkerchiefs. Then she opened one of the ancillary pockets at the side and took out a cellphone which looked incredibly like a iphone. It bore no resemblance whatsoever to the old handset she had been using for all that time, it was much more sophisticated. She pressed the redial button and spoke after a few seconds. “Dad, it’s me. I have the first two fragments in my possession.”
The severe headache that James suffered after that blow hadn’t affected his ability to remain alert, following events as they unfolded. The prolonged silence that Mary was inflicting upon him, together with what she had just said, was quickly wearing down the young professor’s previously unbreakable shell. Although deep down he wished that the sweet, beautiful and innocent girl, who until an hour ago had been helping him to escape, was still at his side, deep down he was starting to think the opposite.
“What should I do with him?” she asked the person on the other end again.
After she heard the reply, James could see how the supposed archaeologist’s right eye shone like never before. Her pupil was more dilated than usual. She was getting worked up and very nervous.
Suddenly the assassin got James in a headlock with his right arm so that he was immobilized. Mary’s attitude had worried him so much that he had completely forgotten about him. In the blink of an eye, his arms got tighter. He imagined that the feeling was similar to a boa constrictor wrapping itself around the body of its victim, trying to kill him through suffocation and strangulation. It was such an effort for him to get air into his lungs and however hard he tried to get out of his arms, it was impossible. He was on the verge of losing consciousness; he even noticed how the flow of oxygen to his brain was ebbing away. It was the end.
“Wait! Let him go!”
The assassin looked at her angrily. She had interrupted him at the best part, when he was doing what he liked best - killing. With a look of disapproval he loosened his grip and let James fall to the ground. He didn’t agree with Mary but he had to obey her, that was what the boss had demanded.
Panting as if he had just returned from freediving in the middle of the Arctic Sea, he took in all the air he could and although it didn’t seem much at first, he kept calm and managed not to faint.
“He deserves an explanation before he dies.”
The assassin folded his arms and smiled at her - she would let him kill him after all. Mary had started to walk towards him, her face was serious and she looked nothing like that sweet girl of the last few days. When she was seven feet away, she stopped. She stared slowly and carefully at the professor’s wounds and, without showing any kind of remorse, she began to speak.
“You came really close to catching us. Luckily for us, you trusted the wrong person and cast your friend aside.”
“What?” James couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Maybe Richard didn’t want to kill us? he thought, horrified.
“You’re wondering what’s going on, aren’t you?”
James didn’t even answer. He barely had any strength left. However, rage made his jaw remain tense, his teeth clenched and occasionally grinding, while his eyes were full of hate and remained locked on those of Mary.
“We’ve been combing the planet for years looking for the Trifariam, but our attempts were always in vain.” Mary hesitated for a few seconds and continued with her explanation. “Legend has it that thousands of years ago, there was a very powerful civilization that had similar scientific, astronomical and mathematical knowledge to us, unfathomable for that time. They discovered that something terrible was going to happen on the planet, and after years of investigation, they made an artifact that would prevent the end of the world.”
James was eventually able to get to his feet. “What a pity that they didn’t take into account the intentions of people as evil as you,” he said angrily as all the muscles in his body tensed, waiting for a blow which never c
ame.
“The truth is… they did take it into account. Remember what Richard told us; the legend tells how a sudden raise in sea levels put paid to the city in the blink of an eye. Believers thought it was a divine punishment for creating a weapon which had so much power that it was comparable to that of a god, so they decided to hide it until the time came to use it. However, such a powerful weapon quickly became desired by many people, and after several attempts to steal it, they divided it into several fragments and hid them in the most mysterious places across the globe. A military order was charged with guarding the secret from generation to generation until the moment came to use it. Known to each other as the Grand Masters, they were the only ones who knew its exact location and how it worked.”
“I know the story. I don’t need you to explain it to me again.”
Mary smiled. “Five hundred years ago, the last Grand Master of the order was assassinated and his secret died with him forever. Although the situation was difficult, our society continued analyzing the hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts that we possessed in the hope that one of them shed some light onto the thick darkness that enshrouded us. Thousands of books were studied with due care, trying to in some way establish the route to follow, until our luck finally changed a few months ago. After checking monastery records throughout the years, we found an ancient copy of an original manuscript which contained another name.” Mary’s eyes shone again, excited by the difficult research they had undertaken and how she had been a linchpin in the process. “We tried to look to that monk for a clue. It was the only lifebelt to which we could cling to stay afloat. We wasted no time in discovering that several weeks before the Grand Master was murdered, the monastery bought some land near Florence where they built a house. Guess who started living there?”
Mary looked proud of herself. Meanwhile, James was listening to the story without changing his furious expression, although his mind started to scan the complex in search of an escape route.
Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) Page 33
