Herculean (Cerberus Group Book 1) (15 page)

21

The pain gradually receded, fading to a dull glow and a persistent itch that was, in its own way, almost worse than the chemical burn. But while the physical effects seemed to steadily abate, Pierce’s shock at seeing Erik Somers, alive and evidently well, only compounded with the passage of time.

Somers—whom Pierce thought of primarily by his military callsign: Bishop—had been a member of Jack Sigler’s team. They had worked together closely during the years when Pierce had served as an instructor for the team. They had not been what Pierce would call ‘friends.’ The Iranian-born, American-raised giant had not allowed many people to get close to him. But the man was as unshakably trustworthy as he was physically unstoppable. Pierce had been stunned to learn of his death, eighteen months earlier, during a mission in the Congo region of Africa.

A mission where Sigler’s team had crossed paths with Felice Carter.

Evidently someone had finally gotten close to Bishop after all.

Pierce rolled over on his side and regarded Carter, who was suffering through her recovery. Now that she was no longer encumbered by the environment suit, he was able to really see her. Carter was tall and lean, with the physique of a distance runner. He did not doubt that she was attractive, though in her present state it was hard to say. Her straight black hair was pulled back in a utilitarian pony-tail, though several strands had escaped the elastic band and were now plastered to her angular face.

“I guess now I know why he didn’t come back,” Pierce murmured.

He hadn’t intended to say it aloud, but the effect on Carter was immediate. She flashed him an angry look that hit him like a physical blow. “You don’t know anything.”

“I know that there are people who love him, and are still in a lot pain because they think he died.”

“He
did
die,” she replied.

“Is he regenning again?” The question caught her by surprise and left her momentarily at loss for words. Pierce decided to fill the silence. “Yeah, I know all about it.”

Pierce thought about saying more, thought about telling her that he and Bishop had shared the strangest of bonds—they had both been used as lab rats by Richard Ridley. The mad geneticist had, at least in that phase of his life, been obsessed with giving humans the ability to regrow lost limbs or recover almost instantaneously from even the most grievous wounds. His early attempts had yielded the desired results, but the healing process was so agonizing that it transformed the recipient into a ravening, mindless—and virtually invincible—animal. Bishop had received a dose of that serum, but had, through nothing more than the strength of his will alone, resisted the effects long enough to find a way to keep the bestial rage in check. Pierce had received a slightly different version of the serum, one derived from the DNA of the mythological Hydra, which had come with its own set of side effects and, unfortunately for Bishop, a different antidote. Alexander Diotrephes and the Herculean Society, had supplied a drug to completely restore Pierce, but the compound had had no effect on Bishop. For several years thereafter, Somers had lived with the knowledge that a serious injury might turn him into an unstoppable rage beast, and given his position as the member of an elite special ops team, the likelihood of that happening was extremely high.

Much later, Ridley had utilized his knowledge of the Mother Tongue to ‘heal’ Bishop of the affliction, permanently stripping away his regenerative ability, or so everyone had believed.

Carter’s reaction was not quite what Pierce expected. Her initial ire seemed to melt away, replaced by something more like sadness. “I honestly don’t know. Something terrible happened to him. When he found me, later, he was…different.”

She took a breath, got to her feet, and then to Pierce’s utter surprise, offered a hand to help him up. “Maybe seeing you will be good for him. He might open up to you. Despite what you must think, I’m not keeping him here.”

Pierce accepted her hand. “I’m sorry. I jumped to a conclusion. It’s just…” He gave a helpless shrug. “We all thought…” He let the sentiment hang. There was too much happening, too many lives lost or in immediate danger. He turned his gaze to the woods. In the growing darkness, it was difficult to distinguish where the vine infestation began. “Is there something we can do to help him?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “We barely had time to make sense of what happened here. But if anyone can survive this, it’s him.”

“So what
did
happen? Where did this come from?”

“I’m not an expert in plant biology, but I do know that this growth is unlike anything seen before. That tells me it’s not naturally occurring. Someone
created
this and set it loose here.”

“A GMO,” Pierce said. A genetically modified organism. It was a catchall term that could be applied to any artificially created species, whether the process involved hybrid breeding or the direct manipulation of genetic material in the laboratory—gene splicing. The subject was the focus of intense controversy, with some people imagining a doomsday scenario with created ‘Frankenfood’ crops destroying or outcompeting naturally occurring species, though the vine infestation certainly seemed like that particular nightmare come true.

“I’ll have to analyze it, of course,” Carter went on. “But this didn’t just happen out of the blue. Someone is responsible for this.”

Pierce nodded slowly. “I’ll help in any way I can.”

When she did not answer, he decided to take a concrete step forward. He took out the damaged passport and his phone. Dourado might be able to backtrack the document’s owner and figure out if Van Der Hausen was involved, and who, if anyone, he was working with.

Before he could snap a photo of the passport page however, he saw that he had missed a call from Gallo. He debated calling her back but decided it could probably wait. Only one call and no voicemail message. How serious could it be?

He took the photo. The built-in flash briefly illuminated the woods, showing the creeping advance of the vines only twenty yards away. Instead of radiating outward uniformly in all directions, there was a pronounced bulge directly in front of Pierce, as if the plants were intentionally trying to reach him and Carter.

A moment later, he had Dourado on the line. After briefly explaining the situation, he sent her the picture of Van Der Hausen and instructed her to make it a top priority.

“Already on it,” she told him. He could hear her tapping on her keyboard in the background. “Is there anything else I can do? Should I alert the Liberian authorities?”

Pierce relayed the question to Carter, who shook her head. “Let me analyze it first. Figure out how best to kill it. The last thing we need is the army descending on this place with flamethrowers, burning the whole jungle down and inadvertently spreading it further.”

“Cintia, I’m going to put Dr. Carter on the line. Get whatever equipment she needs and have it overnighted to Monrovia.” He held out the phone to Carter. “Whatever you need,” he told her. “Sky’s the limit. You can even get an espresso machine, if you want.”

“This doesn’t mean I’m going to come work for you.”

“No strings attached. Except, of course, that I do expect you to save the world from that.” He pointed to the infested zone.

Carter regarded him with a mixture of admiration and wariness, but she took the phone and rattled off the names of a few pieces of equipment. Pierce got the impression that she was holding back, asking only for a bare minimum, perhaps still harboring some distrust about the gift. When she was done, she handed the phone back to him. “Thank you.”

He nodded and spoke to Dourado again. “I’ll be wrapping things up here as soon as I can. Do me a favor and let Augustina know. Tell her I’ll call as soon as I can.”

“Will do. And I will call back as soon as I have more information about Van Der Hausen.”

He hung up and activated the phone’s built-in flashlight. He aimed the light at the forest, a beacon to guide Bishop and any other survivors to safety. In the ambient glow, he could see red splotches on his hands. Chemical burns, though nowhere near as bad as the level of pain led him to expect. The enzyme was a slow-acting acid. The vines were the real threat, since they immobilized victims, allowing the plants to digest them over the course of hours, perhaps days.

A few minutes later, he heard shouts from the forest and saw a group of people running toward them, with the gigantic form of Bishop in the lead, literally plowing a path to safety with the blade of a shovel. A partially vine-wrapped figure was slung over one shoulder. Cooper.

Pierce allowed himself a relieved sigh. He didn’t know if his guide was still alive, but he was glad that the man had not been left behind to be devoured by the jungle.

“They all made it,” Carter whispered. “Thank God.”

“Thank Bishop,” Pierce murmured.

“Don’t call him that,” she warned. “He goes by Lazarus now. Or just Erik.”

“Lazarus.” Pierce nodded.
The resurrected man. Of course
. As if to keep him from commenting on this, Dourado chose that moment to keep her promise.

“Prompt as always,” he said into the phone. “What have you learned?”

“I have some information about Van Der Hausen.” Dourado’s tone was unusually subdued. “And there’s something else.”

“Van Der Hausen, first.”

Dourado related the salient facts about the passport and the man, a genetic engineer who had volunteered to work in Liberia during the early days of the Ebola outbreak. He had returned to Europe and started his own boutique gene-splicing company. “Some of his working capital came from Cerberus shell companies.”

“Cerberus is behind this?” Pierce said it more loudly than he had intended. His outburst did not go unnoticed by Carter. Pierce covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “I think we found our culprit. And you were right. It’s an engineered species.”

Dourado spoke again. “Until we know more about Cerberus, it’s impossible to say exactly what role they played, but yes, there does seem to be a connection.”

“Keep digging. Whether or not this has anything to do with Kenner, we need to stop Cerberus.”

“Dr. Gallo is not responding.” Dourado said. “Not by computer or telephone. They are not in the citadel. The door was last accessed more than eight hours ago.”

Pierce frowned. “I thought she might try something like that. I arranged for Aegis to keep an eye on them. If nothing else works, try to reach them through the Gibraltar office. I know she has her phone. She just tried to call me.”

“Dr. Pierce, listen to me. I checked with the airlines. Dr. Gallo and Fiona went to Greece—”

“Damn it,” Pierce muttered.

Dourado was not finished. “And Dr. Gallo’s vehicle was involved in an accident near the city of Argos.”

Now at last, Dourado’s apprehension made sense. A chill went through Pierce. “What do you mean, involved?”

“The police are investigating, but I can find no indication that she was at the crash site or taken to a hospital.”

Pierce heard himself speaking, asking nonsensical questions, parsing Dourado’s words in a futile attempt to ignore the painfully obvious fact that Gallo and Fiona had been taken.

Cerberus had them.

22

Unknown Location

Gallo awoke in a groggy panic. Even before the world came into focus, she knew that something was amiss. The feel of a firm mattress beneath her, blurred outlines dimly illuminated, the faint odor of a citrus cleaning solution, the complete absence of any sound but her own breathing. It was all…wrong.

I was driving. There was a…crash…explosion?

She could not grasp hold of the last bit, but she knew something bad had happened. The fact that she was in a strange place, a hospital room perhaps, indicated that she was far from where she had been.

She sat up, an action she immediately regretted as a wave of pain shot through her entire body. Her gut clenched, and she heaved so violently that she rolled off the bed and crashed onto the floor, the impact triggering a second round of full-bodied agony. Bitter bile stung her mouth and nostrils. She retched again, but there was nothing for her stomach to expel. It was not the pain her body was rebelling against, but something else.

God, I’m hungover
.

Except she knew that was not quite right. This was not the result of alcohol. It was more like the nausea that sometimes followed anesthesia.

Someone drugged me. After the crash
.

That made a strange sort of sense. If she had sustained serious injuries, perhaps the medical responders had given her a sedative or a strong painkiller. Yet something about that explanation did not quite ring true.

As the initial surge of pain receded into a dull ache, she took stock of her condition. The discomfort was mostly felt in her extremities and in the muscles of her back. She had taken a beating, but she felt certain her body was intact. No broken bones. No internal injuries.

She managed to draw a few quick breaths, fought through the urge to vomit again and blinked until her eyes were clear enough to see that she was not in a hospital room.

The bed she had fallen out of was a simple single mattress without headboard or footboard. The walls were a butterscotch yellow, with no pictures or other decorations—and no windows. There was a single door with no knob and a plain wooden chair beside the bed. She had probably come within an inch of cracking her head on it. Aside from that, the only other thing in the room was a large flat-screen television mounted high on the wall, opposite the bed.

“Hello?” Her voice was a hoarse croak. “Anybody here?”

For several seconds, the silence persisted. Then, a faint whine drew her attention to the television screen, which was now displaying the image of a room very much like the one she was in, with one notable difference. Stretched out on the bed was the motionless form of Fiona.

“Fi!” Gallo managed to shout this time, and strangely, the sleeping figure began to stir.

“Aunt Gus?”

Gallo heard the mumbled words as clearly as if Fiona were in the bed next to her, and although she loathed Fiona’s pet name for her, she promised never to disparage it again. “Easy darlin’,” she warned. “Waking up from this is like getting kicked by a mule.”

Despite the warning, Fiona sat up and then swung her legs around to meet the floor. She was visibly woozy but not to the same extent Gallo had been. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know yet.” She was tempted to say more, but as the pieces came together in her head, she recognized what this place truly was: a prison. “Just hush now. Take your time waking up.”

“Your apprehension is unnecessary,” came a voice, high-pitched and asthmatic, much louder than Fiona’s soft murmurings, but it was almost certainly due to electronic amplification. “Let us speak plainly. You are my hostages.”

The fact that their captor made no attempt to soften the blow did not bode well. In response, Fiona unleashed an almost incoherent torrent of accusations, demands and colorful insults. She abruptly went silent a few seconds later, but Gallo could still see the girl raging at the screen in her own room. The feed had been muted.

The elderly man spoke again. “Dr. Gallo, I have brought you both here for one reason. I want you to translate a historical document.”

“Can’t Liam Kenner do that for you?” It was a guess, but Gallo felt certain that the man now addressing her was part of the mysterious Cerberus organization, with which Kenner was aligned.

“Dr. Kenner is not up to the task. Understand that the terms of his employment are very similar to the terms I am offering you. If you cooperate, you buy freedom and safety for yourself and the girl.”

The man’s enunciation was clipped, his accent almost certainly Germanic, which made him seem all the more like a cliché villain from a bad spy movie. But there was nothing amusing about the consequences of refusal.

Gallo took a deep breath and considered her options. It was a very short list.

I have to protect Fiona
.

“I’ll do it,” she said, making no effort to hide just how pathetic she felt about the surrender. Perhaps if her captor thought she was truly broken, his vigilance would lapse and an opportunity for escape would present itself.

The disembodied voice did not acknowledge her statement, but a moment later the door swung open. A hulking figure strode into the room. Gallo immediately pegged him as Rohn, the brute who had accompanied Kenner to terrorize Fiona and Pierce in the Labyrinth. He said nothing, merely seized hold of her right biceps, and hauled her to her feet.

Gallo gasped as pain wracked her body once more. She fought through it and stood on her own. “Let go of me,” she said, defiant. “I said I’d help. You don’t need to manhandle me.”

Rohn grunted, his grip tightening even more as he dragged her toward the door. Gallo had to struggle to keep up, as they moved down a nondescript hallway. There were several doors on either side, all plain wood and unmarked. Gallo guessed that Fiona was behind one of them, and she wondered if the rest were occupied with other people being held against their will.

What is this place?

A blank metal door at the end of the corridor slid back as they approached, revealing a waiting elevator car. Rohn ushered Gallo inside, but took no other action. There were no control buttons to push and nothing to indicate which floor they were on or what direction they would be traveling. The interior door closed, and the car ascended so slowly and smoothly that Gallo had difficulty detecting any motion. The brief ride ended at a hallway indistinguishable from the one they had left. Rohn guided her out. His manner was less brusque, indifferent. Gallo kept pace with him lest he remember his role as her tormentor.

He delivered her to a windowless room, far larger than her prison cell, though no less spartan in décor. With row after row of lab tables sporting some microscopes, racks of test tubes and other apparatus, it reminded her of a high school science classroom
sans
students. But the room was not empty. As they entered, a seated figure hunched over a computer monitor turned to greet them. Although she had not seen him in several years, Gallo recognized him immediately.

“Augustina.” Kenner managed a wan smile and a half-hearted nod, as if embarrassed by the circumstances of the reunion. “They got you, too. I’m so very sorry.”

The lie caught Gallo off guard, and a flicker of disgust crossed her face before she could rein in her emotions. “Spare me the act, Liam. You don’t have the talent for it. Why am I here?”

Kenner seemed faintly disappointed by her refusal to embrace his pretense. She imagined he had constructed an elaborate ruse to win her over in spite of what he must have known Pierce had told her. After an awkward pause, he gestured to his computer screen. “I’m attempting to translate this document, but it’s slow-going.”

Gallo looked past him to study the displayed image, a page of text written in the archaic style of Ancient Greek. She spotted familiar words and names, most notably the subject of the text, the hero Herakles. The dialect was a bit challenging, but the differences from Ancient Greek were comparable to the difference between modern English and the language used by Shakespeare, with a few antiquated words and expressions easily understood in context. She was fairly certain that this was not the
Heracleia
of Peisander of Rhodes, the seventh century BC poet most often associated with the work, but rather an older version of the tale, one that had perhaps informed Peisander. There was, in fact, something very familiar about the style. If it was not the work of Homer, then it was a near perfect imitation.

With his Classical background, Kenner ought to have been able to read the document as easily as a Sunday newspaper.

Another lie?
She wondered whether to challenge him openly, but decided against it. Rohn lurked in a corner of the room, and there were probably other eyes watching as well.

“Mr. Tyndareus is not a patient man,” Kenner continued. “I imagine that’s why he decided to bring you in.”

“Tyndareus?”

Kenner made a sweeping gesture. “Our host.”

Gallo thought about the wheezy, disembodied voice that had greeted her. In Greek mythology, Tyndareus was a king of the Spartans. He was also the stepfather to Helen of Troy, as well as to the demigod Pollux. The name was too distinct to be a coincidence.

“And what exactly is it that Mr. Tyndareus wants? I mean aside from the translation of a three thousand year old poem.”

Kenner frowned. “I suppose there’s no point in being coy about it.” He crossed his arms as if preparing to give a lecture. “Mr. Tyndareus is a believer, and what he believes is that there is more than a shred of truth in the myths and legends of the ancient world. He approached me several years ago, not long after George discovered the
Argo
manifest, and he commissioned me to find the underlying truth about those myths. Specifically, the stories about Herakles.”

“That hardly constitutes a rationale for kidnapping,” Gallo retorted.

“If his motives were academic, that would be true. However, his reasons for wanting to know are purely self-serving. He is quite advanced in years. He wishes to find the means to delay or perhaps even avert his own death.”

“Well, who wouldn’t want that?” Gallo tried to fill her voice with disdain.

Kenner’s eyes narrowed. “We both know that’s not as preposterous as it sounds, Augustina. I’ve seen the proof with my own eyes. I know that you and George have as well.”

There was no point in challenging the assertion. “There’s one thing that I still don’t understand. Why did you take Queen Hipployte’s girdle?”

Kenner’s smile was all the proof she needed that his claim of being an unwilling conscript in Tyndareus’s plan was pure fiction. “Let me show you.”

He clicked the computer mouse to minimize the window with the page from the
Heracleia
, and brought up a photo of the belt. Gallo immediately saw that Fiona’s description had been spot on. The black leather had been elaborately tooled, with a rectangular border adorned with strange figures and a large central illustration that looked familiar. “Is it a map?”

“Not just any map.” Kenner traced his finger along the squiggly line at the right of the image, which bowed outward in the middle before looping back and angling away in a south-easterly direction. “Don’t you recognize that?”

Gallo consulted her mental map of the Mediterranean region. The bulge might have been intended as a primitive rendering of the Turkish peninsula, but the continuous landform depicted on the other half of the map looked nothing at all like the Greek Isles. She shrugged.

Kenner’s finger moved up and tapped what looked like the narrow mouth of a large fjord. “This is the Strait of Gibraltar, if that helps.”

The hint opened Gallo’s eyes. What she had taken to be a small inlet was actually the entire Mediterranean Sea. The bulge below was the northern half of Africa and the opposing landform was the coast of the Americas.

It was a map of the Atlantic rim, made almost 2,500 years before Columbus.

“Are you familiar with the Piri Reis map?” Kenner asked.

The name rang a bell, but Gallo shook her head.

“In 1513, a Turkish admiral named Piri Reis drew a map of the world, which included an astonishingly accurate depiction of an ice-free Antarctica—three hundred years before the continent was even discovered and long before satellites gave us a look beneath the ice—along with a detailed map of the entire coastline of the Americas. He claimed to have been informed by ancient charts dating back to at least 400 BC, which had survived the destruction of the Library at Alexandria and had been handed down through various institutions of the Muslim world.” He tapped the screen again. “This is a nearly perfect match to the Piri Reis map.”