A human form.
On a table next to the gurney was a picture frame. Grey bent to inspect it. He saw a beautiful woman in the faded photo, lustrous black hair caught in a braid. They were in New York with the Empire State Building in the background, and by the look of the cars and people it must have been the 1950s. Holding the woman’s hand was a smiling, slightly younger version of Al-Miri.
That must be his father
, Grey thought. The resemblance was remarkable.
“I don’t think I want to know what’s under that sheet,” Jax said.
Grey stared at the gurney. He needed to know as much as he could about Al-Miri, about what went on here. He stood in front of it longer than he should have, longer than they had time for.
Grey grasped the sheet, Jax perched over his shoulder. Jax sucked in air as Grey drew back the sheet and let it drape over the torso of the woman underneath.
Or what used to be a woman. The thing under the sheet had shriveled to an impossible state, a raisin left in the sun until desiccation had stripped away its very essence. Grey forced himself to look at the face. It was inhuman, a withered lump of vegetable. His eyes roamed upward, and then he gripped Jax’s arm. Her eyes were open and looking straight ahead. After a few seconds she blinked, a movement Grey knew was an involuntary physical response.
“Crazy bastard,” Jax muttered.
Grey replaced the sheet and left the room without a word. Jax followed him out of the room, past the double doors leading to the basin room, and down the other side of the carpeted hallway until it intersected with another passage, this one wider and cement-floored.
They chose to go right again. At the end of the hallway they found yet another metal door, this one much larger than the previous one. Grey saw another slot on the wall, and tried the card again. A loud click and the door swung open. Behind it lay a rock-hewn passageway.
Jax peered down the passageway. “It’s either an exit, or a dungeon.”
“Let’s try it,” Grey said. “Less likely to be people this way.”
“Lead on.”
They left the door cracked, and stepped into the tunnel. Grey noticed the incredible etchings on the rock in his peripheral vision, but he was too concerned with escape to pause. After a short distance the tunnel narrowed, and they came to what they thought was a dead end. Then Grey spotted the opening on the right side of the spiked limestone wall, and pointed it out to Jax.
They crept around the wall, and Grey put a hand on Jax’s chest. Voices floated down from the continuation of the passageway. He pulled Jax back to the other side. “That was Stefan’s voice. I heard Al-Miri as well.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“End of the line for me. I’m not in the rescue business. There’s got to be another way out.”
Grey didn’t answer. He expected nothing less.
Jax said, “You sure you want to do that? It can’t turn out good for you.”
“Stefan’s my friend. The others are probably there as well.”
Jax stared off to the side, then shook his head and backed away. “Try not to get yourself killed. I’ll send help when I get out.”
Grey turned his back. People chose the mercenary life for a reason: they didn’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. Without a word he slipped around the wall and started down the passageway. He could see the dim outlines of figures in the distance. He paused, wishing he had a weapon, wishing many things were different. He wouldn’t help anyone by getting himself killed, but turning around wasn’t an option.
He crouched in the darkness, trying furiously to think of a course of action. Then he heard a scream.
I
n the cavernous space beyond the ledge, Veronica saw a gently sloping and rounded depression, at least a few hundred feet across and just as deep. It reminded her of an empty lakebed, except instead of dried mud the surface was rocky and pitted. At the very bottom, in the center of the depression, there was a jacuzzi-sized pool of water surrounded by a large group of men, many rows deep, all in green robes.
Only it wasn’t water. A liquid with a green metallic sheen filled the tiny pool, gleaming at the bottom of the cavern. The alien fluid lay completely still, a million emeralds melted and poured into this hidden place.
The sloping rock bottom of the depression was also green, duller than the liquid, but itself possessed of a strange luminescence. The pool was miniscule in comparison to the scope of the depression, a speck of liquid in the bottom of a gigantic drain.
Veronica knew, by the look of pure amazement on Stefan’s face, that the fluid in the pool looked identical to what had been in the test tube. “My God,” she whispered.
Stefan had not stopped staring off the end of the ledge.
She pulled her eyes away from Stefan and the pool, and inspected the rest of the cavern. The ledge itself stretched fifty feet in either direction, and on each end rough stairs had been hewn into the rocky floor, leading to the pool. Four wide-bottomed tunnels fed into the circular depression at various intervals, and at various heights. They looked, she thought, like dry riverbeds that had once tunneled through the rock. She saw Viktor look from the pool to the four barren riverbeds with the same incredulous expression he had afforded the limestone gate.
The men around the pool carried torches that lit the cavern with a dull glow. Flickering lanterns illuminated the ledge. On the cavern walls she could see the faint crude outlines of more Neolithic art, each with the same theme: depictions of men kneeling before a body of water.
Two men climbed out of the shadows pooled near the staircase on the left side of the ledge. Veronica forgot about the pool and the implications of the cavern, and began to shake.
Al-Miri strode to the middle of the ledge, Nomti right behind him. Al-Miri waved a hand, and his men formed a line along the edge. Veronica felt rough hands grab her and stick a gun in the small of her back. Other guards grabbed Viktor, Stefan, and their driver. The guards and the captives all faced Al-Miri and Nomti. Veronica risked a glance over her shoulder. The lip of the ledge was dangerously close behind her.
Nomti turned his head towards Veronica and grinned. He was wearing an eye patch, and his left pinky was wrapped in a splint. Veronica’s skin burned under his gaze. She’d never hated anyone like she hated this man.
“Welcome,” Al-Miri said. “I did not expect your arrival so soon. You have interrupted our ritual.”
“Where’s Grey?” Veronica said.
“That is unfortunate. This is all unfortunate.”
“
Where is he
?” Veronica struggled with her captor, and he torqued one of her arms behind her back until she cried out. She refused to let her mind dwell on what she suspected had happened to Grey.
“This isn’t what you wanted to create,” Viktor said. “Do you wish your religion to be one of violence and chaos?”
“You don’t understand what is below. You have no comprehension. It is the crowning of a new age, the rebirth of an ancient one.”
“You haven’t changed in ten years,” Stefan said, his voice soft with awe. “No—you look healthier. The lakebed is igneous rock, isn’t it? That depression is a prehistoric meteor. Do the properties of the rock give the elixir its life?”
“The rock is the vessel. Nu has not yet revealed the secret of its composition.”
“You didn’t make it, did you? You
found
this.”
Al-Miri regarded him for a moment before his lips curled. “I’ve seen you before. The man who steals the secrets of other men.”
“What’s the price?” Stefan said. “Nature gives nothing for free. Too much will kill, won’t it? Too much cell division will occur. You have to take it slowly.”
“That is one price, yes.”
“The tests demonstrated damage to the reproductive organs,” Stefan whispered. “It’s perfect, beautiful. Sterility keeps the balance intact. That’s the other price, isn’t it?”
Veronica eyed Stefan. Why hadn’t he told them that?
Al-Miri approached Stefan. Her guards tightened their grip. “Where is my test tube?”
Stefan’s eyes returned to the pool below the ledge. “Jung’s table of green stone,” he said rhetorically, as if unaware of the direness of the situation. “The emerald tablet cut from the rock. Did the alchemists actually know of this place?” He scoffed. “That’s not possible. How did you find this?”
Al-Miri retreated, and Nomti stepped towards Stefan. “The test tube,” Al-Miri said again.
“What’re you talking about?” Veronica said. “You have it, unless your barbarians destroyed it in Bulgaria.”
Al-Miri turned to her, his face drawn with genuine regret. “All of your lives wasted because of this man.”
“What are you talking abo—” Veronica said, and then her voice caught and her mouth stayed open. She looked at Stefan. “Did you
lie
to us?”
“
It was used up in the experiments,” Stefan said.
“You lie!” Al-Miri said. “You would never have used it all.”
Stefan tried to move forward, but his guard held him in place. “You can’t keep this from the world. Your scientist knew this and sold it to me. Someone else will do the same.” His voice rose. “You can’t reproduce it, can you? That’s why your lab is here. Look at what you have left—nothing! A few pathetic cups! Let me help, you deranged fool. You’re going to waste it!”
“The only thing here that is wasted,” Al-Miri said, “is your lives.”
“There are other ways,” Viktor said. “Don’t let murder be your legacy, the foundation of what you’re building.”
Al-Miri ignored him. “I will ask one last time. Where is it?”
“Stefan!” Veronica said. “For God’s sake, if you know where the test tube is, tell him! He’s going to
kill
us.”
Stefan shook himself, as if escaping from a waking dream. He looked at Al-Miri as if just realizing the danger he was in. “There’s not enough,” he whispered. “Let me help you.”
“Perhaps death will loosen your tongue,” Al-Miri said, then rattled off something in Arabic. The guard holding Stefan pushed him forward at the same time Nomti stepped towards him, now holding a long knife. Viktor and Veronica cried out at the same time that Nomti thrust his knife deep into Stefan’s stomach.
G
rey lurched forward as soon as heard the scream. A few quick steps later he saw the source: Nomti stood in the middle of a wide ledge, his back to Grey, holding Stefan’s limp form in one hand, a bloody knife in another. Grey saw more figures lined up behind Nomti, and Al-Miri standing off to the side. He saw Viktor, and he saw Veronica screaming in shock beside him.
Then he saw red.
Stefan
.
Grey moaned and sprinted at Nomti. Nomti was only fifteen feet away, his back to Grey, and Grey knew he could reach him. He had no idea what he would do after that, but anything was better than standing in the shadows and watching Stefan die and another of his friends get stabbed or shot.
He heard shouting as soon as he emerged from the tunnel, and someone fired a shot. The shot missed. He reached Nomti at the same time Nomti dropped Stefan and turned to face him. Nomti barked a command, and in his periphery Grey saw the men lower their weapons. This time Nomti kept his knife.
Grey’s last thought before he collided with Nomti was one of pure pleasure.
You want to kill me yourself, you bastard? You just made your last mistake.
Nomti came at Grey with an overhead diagonal slash. Grey stepped deep into the slash before it landed, blocked the descending forearm with his left hand, and threw a straight right punch to Nomti’s shoulder. He aimed for the brachial plexus, a large nerve cluster hidden beneath an area of soft tissue on the front of the shoulder.
Grey hit it squarely. Nomti screamed and dropped the knife. Grey kneed him in the groin, threw an uppercut to the jaw, and then elbowed him in the side of the face. Nomti grunted but pressed through the blows.
Grey landed another elbow to Nomti’s face, but Nomti ignored it and grabbed Grey in a front bear hug. Grey head-butted him on the side of his face, then slid his hand under the base of Nomti’s nose and pushed straight up and back, into the nerve. Nomti released the bear hug, but Grey kept pressing backwards on the nerve, bending Nomti backwards and off his center of power, and then swept Nomti’s legs out.
Nomti crashed to his back, and Grey twisted to throw a kick to Nomti’s temple and end the fight, either knocking him out or crushing the weak facial bones below the temple. Then Grey slipped.
Grey heard Veronica shout his name as he crunched his body and turned his head before he hit the ground. He saw Veronica move towards him, he heard a gunshot, and then she splayed forward.
His world imploded.
He heard voices yelling, many at once, and he saw Nomti coming for him. Grey scrambled to get out of Nomti’s reach. His hands and feet slipped through a warm sticky substance, and he knew it was Stefan’s blood he had slipped on.
As he rolled out of Nomti’s grasp he caught another glimpse of Veronica, lying on her stomach in a pool of blood. His mind spun and his soul fluttered.
He heard a grunt from one of the guards and then a clang, and caught a flash of silver a few feet away. He saw Nomti reach a hand out and then stand, and Grey rolled again, towards the object he had glimpsed.
A knife, with a long hilt and a wavy blade. Viktor’s knife.
He picked it up and stood. Nomti had regained his knife as well. Grey heard shouting behind him, but Nomti screamed out an order, and the men held their places. Nomti stalked towards him, and Grey pushed away the images of Stefan and Veronica lying on the ground. He had one more thing to do, and he was done taking his time.
He ran at Nomti, and Nomti ran at him, and it did not last long, as a real knife fight never will. Grey parried Nomti’s thrust at his midsection, let his own knife slide off Nomti’s knife, and sliced Nomti’s wrist with a backward flick of his hand. Nomti dropped his knife, but Grey had already moved on. He dropped and slashed Nomti’s thigh, dropped even further and slashed his Achilles. He swiveled behind Nomti as he contorted in pain, moving up the rear of Nomti’s body, turning the knife over in his hand and stabbing him in the calf, the back of the thigh, the middle of the back, and the side of the neck. In the Special Forces it was called stacking: moving quickly with the knife from one part of the body to the other, fast stabs at arteries and vital areas, leaving nothing in doubt.