Drake’s eyes narrowed to slits as he turned to the door.
“You will learn the meaning of that word, Professor, if you fail,” he said and left the room.
Alyssa woke with a vague and eerie sense of panic. Where am I? She opened her eyes, darting her gaze around the room as she lay perfectly still, too afraid to move. Gradually, her memories returned. Paul? She looked for him. Tasha?
The room was empty.
Alyssa clenched her teeth and gently slid her hand along her left side and probed the wound dressing on her back.
I guess I can cross off getting shot from my bucket list, too.
She pulled back the silk covers, shivering when the cool air hit her skin. She cringed when she realized she was dressed only in her bra and panties. Moving tentatively, she swung her feet over the side of the bed and sat on the edge, earning a grumpy complaint from her wound.
She took a deep breath and glanced out of the window at the setting sun, its fading rays casting a crimson glaze onto the white interior of the spacious bedroom. I must have been out for a while.
Alyssa slid her feet to the floor and used her right arm to push herself up. She scrunched her toes into the plush carpet and held her breath, dreading a wave of sharp pain. Surprised at the absence of it, she slowly exhaled. The carpet tickled the soles of her feet as she crossed the room to the dresser. She looked into the large mirror above it and cringed. She moved closer, scrutinizing her reflection. Her long hair was tangled and her face looked pale, with dark rings circling her brown eyes. She ran her tongue over her chapped lips and frowned. I look like shit.
She spotted a pair of white pants and a blouse wrapped in a clear plastic bag, hanging from the back of a chair. She approached the chair and took the clothes out of the bag, holding them up. My size, she thought, surprised. She bit her lip as she gingerly slipped into the pants and put on the blouse. Working on the last buttons, she moved to the door and opened it, taking a cautious step into a wide hallway. The slate floor under her foot was cold, and she quickly took another step onto the thick rug in the middle of the corridor.
Alyssa absorbed her surroundings. She stood at the end of a long wood-paneled hallway. To her left, a large window revealed a magnificent view of the desert and its ruby-colored sky, lit up by the sun’s waning rays. To her right, the long hallway continued for at least a hundred feet, lined with statues and suits of armor. Paintings decorated the walls between four pairs of large wooden doors. A British manor home in the middle of Egypt, she mused. As she moved along the corridor, the faint sound of voices rang from the hallway ahead of her.
The voices grew louder when she reached a large granite stairway that spiraled gently under a dome-covered foyer. She followed the sound of the voices to a room on the left side of the foyer where she spotted Renley, sitting in a brown leather armchair facing the stairway. He was talking to a man who sat in a second armchair facing him. Alyssa couldn’t see the man’s face, but her skin tingled as she stared at the back of his head. Something oddly familiar about his posture and his dark, slicked-back curls struck her.
Renley looked up at her. “Ah, Miss Morgan,” he said. “How delightful to see you on your feet. We just sent up for Mr. Matthews. Please, join us.”
“It seems like I owe you my gratitude and an apology, Lord Renley,” Alyssa said, moving gingerly down the stairs, holding on to the railing. “I was wrong not to trust you.”
“My dear Miss Morgan, not trusting me was the wisest thing you have done since we met.” Renley’s cold expression matched his voice when he spoke. “Please allow me to reacquaint you with my associate. I believe you two have met before?” Renley said as the other man turned around.
Alyssa’s knees weakened. Her hand clenched the railing, her brain struggling to process the image sent to her by her eyes. She felt the hall spinning as she stared into the familiar face of the man sitting across from Renley.
“Ed?” she muttered. “I don’t… I thought…” Her voice trailed off as the words stuck in her throat.
“I believe you’re mistaken,” Edward Wallace said with a menacing smile, his voice sending an icy chill rippling up her spine. “Dr. Wallace met an untimely demise. I prefer William Drake.”
23 Genetic Engineering Research Institute, Cairo
Kamal frowned as he redialed the number for the third time. Once again, the call went straight to Paul’s voicemail. Frustrated, he tossed the phone onto his desk. He propped up his elbows and held his head in his hands. Absentmindedly, his right hand moved to the back of his head, feeling the massive lump. His head felt like it was going to split in two. He grimaced. It’s like the worst hangover in my life, without actually having done anything worthwhile to earn it, he thought, irritated.
He rubbed his temples, trying to clear his mind. The answer had been staring him in the face for three days. How could he have been so stupid? If what Paul said was true, he and Alyssa didn’t realize the danger they were in. He had to get to them at all cost.
He reached across his desk and picked up the bottle of painkillers. He shook out four tablets into his palm and threw them in his mouth, washing them down with cold coffee. He grimaced at the bitter taste, then took another sip. He stood and started for the door when it swung open, revealing his assistant. Her expression made him stop in his tracks.
“What’s going on?” he asked, a tight knot building in his chest.
“It’s Dr. Farag from the hospital. He needs to speak with you right away,” her voice cracked. “Morgan’s virus broke containment.”
Kamal froze. “Contact the Ministry of Health and quarantine the hospital,” he said, his throat thick. “Nobody goes in or out. Tell Farag I’m on my way and will call him from the car.” He grabbed his phone from the desk and rushed past her. “And tell the biocontainment team to meet me outside the hospital with Level 4 suits.” Kamal’s face was white as he raced down the glass-enclosed corridor.
Paul was acutely aware of the sound of his heartbeat thrashing in his ears as he watched the armed man through the crack in the doorjamb. He advanced on the bathroom with a silent, predatory walk. Paul stood completely frozen, his mind racing. The man reached the half-open door, and his gun arm slowly came into view as he stalked into the bathroom.
Paul slammed his body against the heavy wood, crushing the intruder’s arm between the massive wooden door and the edge of the doorframe. The gunshot mixed with a loud scream as his arm shattered, and the pistol fell to the tile floor.
His brain on autopilot, Paul rushed out from behind the door and grabbed the man by his broken arm, pulling him into the bathroom with all his strength. The man screamed again, his face twisting with pain. Paul used his body as a pivot and swung the intruder at the shower by his arm—then he let go.
The man slammed violently against the glass enclosure and burst through it. He threw his arms over his head, desperately trying to protect himself from the rain of shards plummeting toward him as he fell onto the hard floor.
Paul lunged for the Glock and snatched it from the ground.
“Don’t move!” he yelled, his heart pounding, and pointed the weapon at the other man.
The intruder froze, his cold blue eyes beneath the short-cropped blond hair locked on the gun in Paul’s hand. His flat nose looked to have been broken more than once. His thin lips were contorted as he clutched his arm, the fresh cuts on his face growing into faint red lines.
“Get up. Slowly,” Paul said, stepping back, trying to keep his voice steady.
The man awkwardly regained his feet, holding his broken arm close to his body. He glowered at Paul, but remained silent.
“Go,” Paul pointed with the Glock, motioning him to move out of the bathroom.
“You cannot win,” the man said through clenched teeth, his voice ringing with a German accent.
“Then why are you the one bleeding?” Paul replied flatly.
Kamal Khanna stood in the middle of the deserted lobby of the Kasir El Aini hospital, hi
s stomach twisted into a tight knot. Without the usual clamor of the bustling crowd, the gentle sound of the three-story waterfall seemed eerily loud and out of place as it reverberated through the empty space.
He felt a bead of sweat from his forehead move down toward his eye. He brought his arm up to wipe it off and cringed when his gloved hand hit his visor. Snorting, he shook his head. The Level 4 biosafety suit sealed him off completely from the outside environment. He looked at the small heads-up display in the visor, informing him of the suit’s status. The suit’s independent air supply, a twelve-liter tank on his back, provided him with breathable air and positive pressure inside the suit, ensuring that any air exchange with the outside environment was going only one way, away from his lungs. Regardless of whether the filters on the Level 2 suits that Kade and his team wore at the dig were working, he wasn’t taking any chances.
He heard a chime as the elevator doors opened and Ahmed Farag stepped out. He approached Kamal, his ashen face a glum mask.
“Are you all right?” Kamal asked when Farag reached him. What a stupid question, he thought as soon as the words left his mouth.
Farag nodded silently. “Is the hospital contained?” he asked.
“It’s locked down, and we have guards stationed at every exit,” Kamal replied.
“I just talked with the ministry. The Minister of Health formally declared the hospital a quarantine area.”
“How the hell did it break containment?”
Farag shook his head. “We took all the precautions…”
“How many symptomatic people do we have?”
“So far, me and one ICU nurse. We’ve quarantined each of the floors and each of the departments. All visitors have been moved away from large areas. We’re trying to keep people in small groups. From what we’ve been able to learn so far, it appears that the incubation period for the mutated version is about twenty-four hours.”
“We won’t be able to handle this alone,” Kamal said. “We need the CDC and WHO for backup.”
“The Minister of Health doesn’t want this to get out until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Damn it, Ahmed, look around you! We’ve been trying to figure out what we’re dealing with for four days now. By the time we know what we’re up against, it’s going to be too late!”
Farag grimaced. “I told him the same thing. He insists on more information before calling on anybody from the outside for help.”
Kamal gave him a pained stare through the visor. “This goes deeper than any of us envisioned. The whole thing was a setup. I think Edward Wallace created this entire situation and faked his death. The two kids are in danger.” He swallowed. “I need to go after them, but that’ll take resources. I can’t do this on my own.”
Farag stared back at him in disbelief. “What are you talking about? This isn’t some game. You can’t just run off!” He looked at him, pleading. “I need you here to help us deal with this before it’s too late and this whole thing spirals out of—”
He started coughing violently. His breathing turned into a wheeze. He stared at Kamal between fits of cough.
“Ahmed!” Kamal rushed to him as the other man collapsed to the floor.
Alyssa heard a gunshot and a scream.
“Paul!” she yelled, leaping from the chair. She yelped in pain when Drake pulled her back down roughly.
“Why, Ed?” she asked, blinking. “Why are you doing this?”
Drake smiled as if Alyssa were an elder daughter who’d asked a clever question. “You will understand soon enough,” he replied, his calm words at odds with the fire in his eyes.
“My dad, and everybody else,” Alyssa tried to keep her voice steady, “they trusted you.”
“Kade,” his lips curled into a snarl as he spat the name. “He was nothing but a pawn.”
“He was your mentor!”
“He never respected me. He kept so much from me… about your grandfather, about the hall.” He scrutinized Alyssa for several long moments. “Do you know that your grandfather founded this Society?”
Alyssa stared at him. “You lie!” She turned to Renley. “Please tell me this isn’t true.”
“But it is, Miss Morgan,” Renley said. “It was only after your grandmother passed away and Francis Chaplain disavowed the Society that William’s father stepped in and salvaged it from the brink of extinction.”
Alyssa shook her head in disbelief.
“William’s father knew of my keen interest in the Hall of Records,” Renley continued, “so he reached out to me and suggested an alliance. Under his guidance and my considerable auspices, the Society was finally able to pursue Edgar Cayce’s original vision.” He sighed pensively. “We tried to convince your grandfather to join us again, of course.”
Drake scoffed, cutting in. “But the old fool had closed himself off completely,” he said. “Fortunately, your father came along at just the right time.”
“My father would never help you!”
“And yet he did,” Drake said. “He worked for the Society without suspecting a thing. It was my father’s idea to place me under Kade’s care as Ed Wallace, his student. After your mother… vanished… we knew that he was too unpredictable on his own, so the Society brought him here, where he could be controlled.”
Drake glanced at Renley then continued, “We arranged for the university to offer him a faculty position. When I proposed a collaboration to locate the hall—which Lord Renley generously funded—he rose to the bait like a speckled trout to a fly. Ultimately, our patience and your father’s persistence paid off… Yet even he could never conceive the true potential hidden inside it. Only the Society—”
“How could you betray him like that? He taught you everything!”
“There was so much more.” Drake reached into his pocket and took out the crystal, staring into it. He shook his head as if trying to ward off an old memory. “Once I learned the truth, I could not allow this to be locked up, probed by imbeciles, unaware of its true power.”
“You betrayed him. You betrayed all of them! And now they’re all dying.”
“Their sacrifice is nothing compared to the enlightenment we shall receive soon,” he said, a dangerous gleam in his eyes.
“You are a lunatic!” A sob escaped Alyssa’s lips. “All you’ve done is unleash a devastating weapon and put everyone on the planet at risk! You’ll never be able to harness Horus’s power!”
He looked at Renley. “You see? She has seen it. With her help we will—” Drake’s next words stuck in his throat. His expression shifted as he stared past Renley into the foyer. Alyssa followed his gaze to the top of the stairs. Tears of relief welled up behind her eyelids at the sight of Paul looking down at them from the landing of the winding staircase. He was shirtless, pointing a handgun at another man who stood next to him, clutching his arm, bleeding from numerous cuts.
Paul glared at Drake, sudden revelation in his face. His glance darted to Renley for an instant then back to Drake.
“So it’s true. You really deactivated the filters.”
“Ah, Mr. Matthews—so nice of you to join us,” William Drake said calmly. “Put down the weapon. You have no chance of escaping.”
“What else is new?” Paul said. He pointed the Glock at the man’s head.
“Alyssa,” he motioned to her, “get up and come up here.”
Drake stood and stalked behind Alyssa.
“No, I don’t think she will do that, Paul.” He grabbed Alyssa’s hair and pulled a compact Kel-Tec auto pistol out of his jacket.
Paul yanked the soaked man in front of him and pressed the gun against his head. “Let her go,” he said. “Nobody has to get hurt.”
Drake looked at the man with a detached glint. “Yet somebody always does.” He raised the Kel-Tec and shot the man in the head in one smooth motion.
Alyssa screamed as the man collapsed in front of Paul, his lifeless body tumbling down the curved staircase. Paul’s eyes betrayed his shock as
he stared at Drake in disbelief.
Drake jerked Alyssa’s head back and pressed the gun to her temple.
“Drop the weapon, now!”
Paul’s eyes were locked on Alyssa’s as he slowly bent and placed the pistol on the floor.
24 Kasir El Aini Hospital, Cairo
Kamal rushed along the floor of the intensive care unit as quickly as the suit and the forty-pound tank on his back allowed him. Struggling to catch his breath, he burst through the door and into the ICU suite.
Kamal slowed and approached the bed. He winced as he stared in disbelief at Ahmed Farag’s lifeless body.
He turned to the physician. “How… how could he deteriorate so fast?”
“The mutated version is even more lethal than we anticipated,” the physician replied softly.
Kamal stared at him silently, his face blank, then he turned and sped out of the room. He stormed into an office and dialed a number on the video phone. A few seconds later the Minister of Antiquities appeared on the screen.
“Ah, Dr. Khanna,” the other man said. “I have just spoken with the Minister of Health again. He assures me the ministry’s full support. How is Dr. Farag?”
Kamal stared at him blankly.
“Dr. Khanna?”
“Dr. Farag is dead.”
The minister gasped in surprise. “Dead?”
“We must bring back the CDC and the WHO,” Kamal exclaimed, “before it is too late and we lose the hospital!”
“We shouldn’t be hasty in our decisions, Dr. Khanna. We don’t want to alarm—”
“With all due respect, Minister, the quarantine simply delays the inevitable. If we don’t act now—”
“This is a very delicate situation, Dr. Khanna. We must give it more time.”
“This goes much deeper than we thought! The accident at the dig was a setup. Wallace faked his death!”
The minister’s face drew into a tight pinch. “That is highly doubtable. We must collect additional information. The Minister of Health and I think that—”
Heir of Ra (Blood of Ra Book One) Page 19
