Pierce craned his head around and spotted Tyndareus, crawling toward them, dragging his wasted body along with one outstretched hand. The other was clutched against his chest, as if trying to protect an injury.
“You have to let me go in there.”
Pierce raised an eyebrow. “As tempting as that sounds, that would probably involve touching you again.”
Tyndareus’s strange blue eyes bulged, but then appeared to soften. He held out the hand he had been hugging to his chest, and Pierce saw that it contained a bunched up piece of velvet. “Please. It’s not for me.”
“What’s that? Lucky charm?”
“My brother. Castor. I must take him to the Source, so that he can be reborn.”
“Castor. So that would make you Pollux? Twins.” Pierce shook his head. “One of you is too many.”
Lazarus returned a moment later. “It’s done. Cintia can send the detonation command as soon as we’re clear.”
“Good. We’re out of here.”
“You really mean to do this?” Tyndareus said. “To destroy it forever?”
Pierce did not correct the slight misconception. “That’s what we do. Mostly so evil bastards like you won’t be able to screw up the world any worse than it already is.”
Lazarus lifted Fiona in his arms, while Pierce helped Gallo and Carter to their feet. As they started up the steep ravine wall, Tyndareus finally understood that they meant to leave him.
“Take me with you,” he pleaded. “I can pay you. As much as you want. Just name it.”
Pierce looked back. “I guess you haven’t heard. We raided your headquarters and seized all your assets. Everything. Cerberus belongs to the Herculean Society now. As a friend of mine said, we completely powned you.”
Fiona let out a snort. “Good one.”
“Thanks. Did I say it right?” He turned back to Tyndareus. “One of the first things I’m going to do is box up everything in your little shop of horrors and donate it to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. They may be able to find some use for it, but I hope they burn it all.”
Tyndareus didn’t reply to that, and Pierce was too focused on negotiating the loose earth to care. By the time he reached the top he had almost completely forgotten about the old man.
“You can’t just leave me here!” Tyndareus shrieked.
“Actually, I can,” Pierce shouted back. He turned to the others. “Anyone have a problem with that?”
No one did.
Epilogue
Tabula Rasa
Pierce kept his final promise to Tyndareus. The contents of the gallery enshrining the worst horrors of the Holocaust were boxed up and shipped anonymously to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., although Pierce held back the items in Mengele’s trophy case. Those, he burned.
All that remained was an empty room. A blank slate, waiting for a new story to be written upon it. Five days after returning to Rome, Pierce called the group together to discuss what shape that story would take.
They had returned to the hidden facility below Castel Sant’Angelo for a little well-earned rest and recovery, while the rest of the world briefly went crazy worrying about a possible eruption of the Yellowstone caldera.
Despite assurances from numerous geologists and volcano experts, the cable news channels stirred up a frenzy of fear and speculation about the possibility that the geothermal event being reported in the Norris Basin might be the harbinger of an even greater disaster.
By week’s end, however, the furor had died down and park rangers reopened the roads to the Norris Basin area. For safety reasons, the backcountry areas remained closed to the public, just as they had before the unexpected geyser eruption, which had triggered a discharge of acidified water into a nameless minor valley a few miles from the nearest trail.
The eruption had scoured all traces of Tyndareus and his men from the ravine, and Dourado, with the powerful Cerberus computer network at her disposal, took care of the rest, arranging for the recovery of the vehicles that had borne them into the park, and obliterating any paper trail that might have prompted an investigation.
Another slate wiped clean, but then erasing history was what the Herculean Society did best. And that was something that had been nagging at Pierce since their return.
He looked at the expectant faces, trying to think of how to broach the subject. “I guess I should have had some chairs brought in,” he remarked, hoping it would serve as an icebreaker. The smiles and gentle laughter told him that it had.
“Actually, furniture is one of the things I wanted to talk to you all about.” That got quizzical stares, and he almost faltered. “I…ah, I’m thinking about…well, keeping this place.”
“Well, duh,” Fiona said. “You don’t walk away from real estate like this. Not in Rome.”
Pierce stared at her, wondering if she understood what he was trying to suggest. Probably. She’s a smart kid… No, make that a smart young woman.
“You know how I feel about caves,” Carter said. “But this place has more of a basement rec-room vibe. I can deal.”
The comment surprised Pierce on several levels. Carter had hardly spoken to him since their return, though in truth, he was probably as much to blame for that as she. The memory of what had happened to Rohn nagged at the back of his mind. Carter had saved them both, but whether she had tapped into her ability consciously or not was something that Pierce felt he needed to know. If she couldn’t control it, then the next person she turned into a mindless drone might be Lazarus. Or him. Or all of them.
It was a question he would eventually have to ask, but he did not yet know how, and he suspected that Carter probably didn’t know how to answer it.
Even more surprising to him was the implicit acceptance of an offer he had not yet made.
“George, let’s cut to the chase,” Gallo said. “You want this to be our new headquarters. I think I speak for everyone when I say that these accommodations are far more…accommodating than the citadel in Gibraltar.”
Pierce looked around to see if Gallo was in fact expressing the consensus of the group. Carter spoke up again. “I’ll admit, I was a little hesitant about letting someone else call the shots for me, but where else am I going to get unlimited access to state-of-the-art equipment and unlimited funding—”
“I don’t know about ‘unlimited,’” Pierce cut in quickly.
“And research opportunities that are…well, unique.” She glanced up at Lazarus. “But the truth is, you’re doing good work. Important work. I want to be a part of that.”
“You all feel that way? Cintia, would you be willing to leave Brazil and come work here?”
Dourado, her piercings all restored and sporting magenta hair with all the curl ironed out, replied without hesitation. “I can live anywhere. But with the hardware here, I can do magic.”
Pierce turned to Lazarus, who merely nodded.
“Uh… well, I’m glad to hear it,” Pierce said. “But actually that’s only part of it. I’ve been thinking a lot about… I guess you could call it our ‘mission statement.’ The Herculean Society has a very specific agenda — to preserve and protect the legacy of Hercules. Our founder, Alexander Diotrephes, had very good reasons for wanting to do that, reasons that are still valid today. But I think he was so consumed with trying to hide the truth about who he really was, that he forgot the most important thing about the legend.
“Hercules was a hero, and heroes help people.” He saw that Gallo was about to comment, and he quickly added, “I know, some of the stories don’t exactly make him out to be heroic, but even today, three thousand years later, what people remember most about him is the good stuff he did. He used his power to help people.”