Elixir of Life: A Novella (A Hank Boyd Adventure - Book 4) (The Hank Boyd Adventures)

by Matthew James

Gerard stepped forward again as she spoke of the slithering effect the setting sun had on the structure’s surface during the spring and autumn equinoxes, getting various “ooh's and ah's” out of the tourist-filled crowd. Now, he only had one other person between him and his prize.

  Breathing in deep, Gerard pulled what looked like a simple ballpoint pen from his pocket, something the guards at the front gate inspected but found to be of little, to no, threat. It was, in truth, a very potent, fast-acting delivery mechanism for the toxin loaded within it. If administered to a mere mortal, it would boil the blood within them.

  But not him, Gerard thought, clicking the end of the pen.

  The teenage boy standing inbetween him and the Architect, moved off as Victoria stepped away from the pyramid and headed towards the massive ball court to the northwest. The flock surrounding Gerard likewise trailed their shepherd, giving him the opening he needed. The only other person near them was a lone security guard but he wouldn’t be an issue.

  Gerard lifted his arm…but froze in place.

  His target didn’t follow the others.

  Instead, the older man turned and faced Gerard, his somewhat withered, sun-kissed face smiled like he knew a secret no one else did. And he did. He knew Gerard was there, right behind him the whole time. How else would he have known to turn around? Gerard never failed and his targets never discovered him before it was too late.

  Until now.

  “So,” the man said, staring intently into Gerard’s swirling silver eyes, his voice low and daunting, “they sent you this time.” He smiled again. “A shame really… I was hoping to avoid the—”

  Instead of letting the old man finish, Gerard launched at him with the pen. As he jabbed it towards the Architect’s neck, his wrist was caught in the man’s viselike grip. The pressure built up so much, that it made a man as hard and emotionally disconnected as Gerard whimper as the older man flexed his fingers inward.

  The sound of the assassin’s bones shattering clipped through the billowing breeze. The flesh and bone beneath the Architect’s hand collapsed like an empty plastic bottle in wet cardboard.

  “How?” Gerard asked through gritted teeth. The pain was intense but had already started to subside as it healed.

  The white-haired man grinned. “You and your superiors will never have the pleasure of finding out. I promised our king that no one would take possession of it.” He then looked Gerard in the eyes and focused. “And I never disappoint my king.”

  “What are you doing, Architect?” Gerard asked, feeling something stirring inside his head. A pulsating began behind his eyes, continuing deeper into his skull. “Get…out of my…head!” He tried to close his eyes, but couldn’t. His body had been frozen somehow.

  “Architect…” the old man said with a faraway look in his eyes. “I have not heard that name in some time.”

  The would-be assassin screamed in agony as his brain was melted from the inside and his skull caved in like an aluminum soda can being stepped on. Dozens upon dozens of spectators witnessed the initial attack and subsequent counterattack, watching as the younger man’s lifeless body was dropped to the ground. The old man just stood over the body and sneered, shaking with what looked like an adrenaline rush, his eyes wide. Some thought it was a reaction to a narcotic of some kind or just a fit of rage-filled mania.

  Stepping away, the Architect paid none of those around him any attention. Instead, he pushed through the gathering crowd, instantly disappearing from sight.

  “Where did he go?” someone asked, looking around.

  “Move out of the way!” a security guard shouted. “Let me through!”

  “Oh my God!” a woman screamed, shielding a child’s eyes from the horrifying scene. “He’s dead!”

  As news spread of the brutal death, the people surrounding the pyramid ran for the exit, panicking, screaming in fright. The only one not to flee was the security guard. Instead, he stood his ground and surveyed the landscape, watching for anyone not acting like those around him.

  One such person stood out. Only…he wasn’t the older gentleman that had just pushed through the crowd. In fact, he wasn’t old at all.

  Couldn’t be, Fernando thought, staring at the child. While the youth had the same silver-white hair as the killer, he was, indeed, only a child, easily ten years of age—maybe twelve. It’s then the child met his eyes and creased his eyebrows in what looked like…anger. But his eyes were what demanded the most attention.

  They seemed to flicker between a striking blue color and a beautiful gold.

  Maybe it’s just the sun playing tricks on—?

  “Fernando!” a voice shouted getting his attention off the young boy and back to the situation at hand. Self-defense or not, someone had been killed right in front of him and he had nothing to show for it.

  “Are you okay, Victoria?” he asked, turning as he spoke. He looked for the child but couldn’t find him. He was gone.

  Huh…

  “Of course I’m not bloody okay,” she replied, laying into him, “what the hell kind of stupid question is that? I just saw a man get his head caved in and—”

  A wet snapping sound, cut her off as they both leapt back and yelped in fear. The dead man’s head began to reform and inflate back into its original shape. Seconds later, he moaned and sat up, getting Fernando and Victoria moving in the opposite direction. They quickly fled with the park patrons, blending into the crowd while still watching the now undead man stand.

  Fernando slid to a stop and pulled out his phone, dialing a number no one else in the country had. It would ring once and then go to an answering machine. After that, he’d punch in his unique twelve-digit passcode and connect to the owner of the number.

  Then, as quickly as the dead man stood, he was off, running deeper into the park, disappearing into a wooded area to the north. Fernando was about to chase the very much alive corpse but the number’s owner answered, halting his pursuit. He didn’t even realize he still had the device glued to the side of his head.

  “What do you have, Nando?” the voice asked.

  “Hank,” he replied, “I need you here—now!”

  2

  Two Days Later

  Airborne over the Gulf of Mexico

  So, where do I start? Well, I guess I can start from where we last left off… I’m now the director of a black ops unit within the CIA called, ATLAS (Advanced Technological, Logistical, and Archaeological Sciences). Kane thought we needed an acronym like the other agencies. FBI, CIA, DHS…and so on. We specialize in uncovering the ancient world’s secrets and determining whether or not they’re a threat to the country’s national security, or the planet’s, for that matter. Well, we’re supposed to anyway. So far, we’ve yet to uncover squat since our formation three-plus months ago.

  Nicole and I are now engaged too but have no idea when we’ll actually tie the knot. Working up the courage to ask the woman to marry me was hard enough, the last thing I need to do is actually follow through with it. Let me explain…

  We’re currently buried in research—the whole team is—on The Immortal Mountain. At least, that's what Terra called it. You remember Terra—the Atlantean Judge turned friend… Anyway, Nicole and I are working around the clock and at each other’s throats constantly. We both know we're just frustrated from hitting the proverbial "brick wall." Our research has yielded little to none. Mostly the latter. All we know is that there might be a settlement of surviving Atlanteans somewhere in the mountains of Asia, possibly living in peace, or as Kane thinks, maybe plotting something naughty. Either way, it’s ATLAS’ job to find out which.

  So, with our team at a standstill, we decided to split apart for the time being. Kane has taken Olivia to check out a few leads on John Frost’s old operation, Broadsword Inc., and to see if he can dig up anything on the private security outfit’s last employer, Zero. Both have completely vanished so my friends are going into “super-secret spy mode.” It’s what Kane called it, anyway. Basically, the two
of them will be off-the-radar until they find what they’re looking for—completely incognito.

  Ben is back at the Smithsonian Castle, keeping up his front as my father’s replacement. While ATLAS doesn’t officially exist, we as people still do, working for the Smithsonian like we did prior to shit hitting the fan last year in Algeria.

  Then again in Mexico. And DC.

  Also in Kuwait, Iran, Florida, and then DC for a second time.

  “Hopefully, Director Rollins doesn’t come down on us the first time we destroy a major city,” I joke with Nicole, half serious. We’ve caused a ton of damage and, unfortunately, been right at the center of a few too many deaths.

  Including some loved ones.

  “This isn’t like the comics, Hank,” she says, laughing off my concern. “We aren’t Captain Rodgers and Tony Stark. They were front and center, slugging it out in front of the news cameras. We’re in the shadows, playing hide-and-seek from the public eye.”

  I look at her, confused. “Huh… Also, I pictured you as Black Widow… You know, dressed head-to-toe in leather and beating the snot out of big, bad men.”

  “I kind of preferred Agent Carter, myself,” she replies, showing off some of her inner, amazingly sexy, nerd.

  “You know they never actually get together, right?” I say. “Cap actually messes around with her great niece instead, if I recall.”

  All I get in return is Nicole’s signature eye roll.

  “Plus,” I add,” if we screw up, we’ll probably just get a matching pair of cement shoes.”

  Nicole doesn’t answer, which means she agrees.

  “Then again,” I continue, trying to convince myself otherwise, “Rollins seems like a standup guy and not the mafia type. He knew what he was getting into when he brought us aboard.”

  Nicole nods. “Some real science fiction stuff.”

  “Exactly. X-Files 2.0, Mulder and Scully.”

  “I thought you were Indy,” she says, grinning. It was the codename Kane assigned me when we were dealing with the Judges last summer. He and I are two peas-in-a-pod when it comes to pop culture references and we can proudly carry out entire conversations consisting of nothing but movie quotes. It’s a gift we have.

  “Eat me, Marian,” I jab back. It was her codename, one she hated from the get go.

  She punches me in the shoulder…hard. Really hard. She’s been doing that a lot lately.

  “Ow, damnit!” I say, laughing but also shrinking back in fear. “It wasn’t my idea.” She sits back and relaxes in her first-class seat. “Besides, if it were up to me,” I get up and step into the aisle, “I would’ve called you Xena instead.” Before she can hit me again, I scamper away and head for the bathroom. The handful of beers are starting to make their presence known and I know we’ll be landing in just over an hour.

  Where are we going? Unfortunately, we’re heading back to the Yucatan. Now, before you curse me out for speaking badly about the region, let me remind you that we almost died multiple times there. First, in Chichen Itza and again in Mexico at Teotihuacan. We needed to take a break from things with ATLAS anyways and it just so happens that I got a call from a trusted contact a few days ago, asking us to come down and check something out.

  “A murder?” I asked.

  “Yes, my friend,” he replied, “a strange one.”

  Normally, a random death isn’t exactly something two archaeologists would need to investigate, not unless it’s one of the ancient kind and the body a mummified cadaver. Nevertheless, this one has our attention. The caller, Fernando de los Santos, was working security during our last romp through Chichen Itza. He helped Nicole, Kane, and me in a big way that night and after ATLAS was birthed, I reached out to him. He accepted my invitation in becoming one of our many off-the-books contacts around the world, keeping tabs on all things surrounding the Yucatan.

  Nicole added a few people she could trust around the world, as did everyone else. Even, Todd asked to include a few of his fellow hacker-types into the fold, stating that their resources would be vast and unmatched. Considering we work for the CIA now, I thought it a good idea to have some people not associated with the company to help, just in case we hit a snag somewhere along the way.

  Like now, I think. Todd has his friends working hard at uncovering the location of the Immortal Mountain from outside the CIA databases. Maybe they can find something we couldn’t.

  Anyway, back to the present…

  Fernando and our snooty guide from before, a woman I nicknamed Veruca for obvious reasons, and someone one who’s name I still don’t know, were both on hand when the man was killed at the foot of Kukulkan’s pyramid—El Castillo. I think her name actually starts with a V as well. It’s said that the British woman wailed like a newborn during the incident, which made me smile a little, to be honest. But, unfortunately for me, both of them will be on hand during our investigation. In the end, I know Veruca needs to be there…but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. She rubbed us raw the last time we had to interact with her.

  I step into the plane’s bathroom and see that it’s, well, a bathroom. It’s cramped and noisy as hell. I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting. I’ve been in a bunch of these in my life, traveling the world with my late father. The sting of his death is still fresh but time has helped some.

  Mostly Nicole, though, I think as I close the door, locking the slide bolt. I turn, unzip my pants, and close my eyes, moaning as I empty my overfilled bladder. When I finish, I turn and wash my hands and glance up into the mirror.

  Seven or so months ago, I was just a glorified grave digger. But now, I’m in charge of a super-secret offshoot of the CIA and a former Atlantean superman. The power I held for a few months is now gone, however. Once I fully gave it up in Enki’s Citadel spacecraft, I became me again, even losing the gold swirling in my irises. At one point, I had to wear special contact lenses that hid the malformation for a while. But now, my natural hazel color is all that’s there, staring back at me.

  Sitting firmly on my head is my beloved Detroit Tigers ball cap and it's hiding my untamed overgrown hair. I didn’t intend to grow it out either, we’ve just been so busy that I haven’t had the chance to get it cut. That’s where my hat came back into play. I started not wearing it after Algeria, not feeling like myself anymore. It was a real identity crisis. But now, since I feel like me again, and the fact that I wouldn’t be caught dead styling my hair, I decided to use it as a sort of hair tie. Plus, I just missed the damn thing. It always reminds me to never take things for granted.

  How things have changed, I think, recalling my days as one of the top prospects in baseball. Ten-plus years after mangling my throwing shoulder in an accident and I’m now the boss of a “nerds with guns” kind of group.

  But Nicole made it all worth it. Before meeting her, I was just coasting through life, working for Dad, mentored by Ben. I resented everything in my life and made it pretty obvious to everyone. My angst towards my job would have worked too, except I became really, really good at it—my new career as it would become. I thought differently than everyone else and went about things in my own rebellious way, getting results when others in my field only found dead ends. Dad and I had a lot of good times back in the day. The stories are incredible, but still too painful to reminisce upon at the moment. Someday I’ll have to go through my files.

  Now, Nicole and I feel unstoppable working together. That is…until the most recent snag with our research in Nowhere. Nowhere is my nickname for our team’s operations base since it doesn’t officially exist. We don’t even belong to any particular city, hence why we call it, Nowhere, Virginia. We’re actually our own nation if you want to be ultra-technical about it.

  Which I don’t…

  “One day at a time, Hank…” I say to myself, watching my stubble-covered face bend and move with each word. If you had a picture of my dad in his early thirties, you’d have a perfect match to me. Now with my hair being a little longer…and greyer…we look iden
tical at this age. I’m not a mule, mind you, but the silver started to show itself in the last year. Nicole thinks it stress-induced.

  And I agree.

  The last six-plus months of my life has aged me in several ways. My looks are roughly the same, minus the aforementioned hair color, but my soul feels a hundred years older than it really is. I feel like my insides have been burned away by the very fire I wielded as a weapon against evil. I haven’t used the power in some time but I still feel drained all the time. Tests have shown me to be in perfect health, though, confusing me more.

  I feel empty…

  Kane jokingly says it’s because I still have a little Atlantis in me. He thinks there’s something still inside, buried deeper than any doctor or test can reveal. I have no idea what to believe anymore, but I think I’m starting to believe the big lug, which may be just as scary as his theory. The last time I thought I rid myself of the abilities, they eventually reared their flaming heads again.

  I look at my hands and clench them, trying to call upon the sizzling green aura. But like the countless times before this, nothing happens. Then, like before, I reach into my jeans pocket and procure something that also doesn’t publicly exist—Nicole’s orichalcum-made coin, the one we confiscated from Frost’s Blairsville home. It’s not exactly a lucky charm or anything like that, but almost a token of remembrance. It just feels right keeping it on my person at all times.

  I try to force the fires from within, using the coin as a propellant. It’s how I used them during our battle with the Judges. I wore orichalcum forged bracelets at the time, each of them allowing me to wield my powers to their fullest. All I had to do was tell them to burn and they listened, crackling to life.

  But even the coin doesn’t help.

  My shoulders slump and I reluctantly pocket it, looking back into the mirror in front of me. “Just one day at a time.”

  I turn and see a sign that makes me smile. No smoking…

  I give the signage a mock salute and open the bathroom door.