Queen stood and walked over to a black metal weapons cabinet bolted to the wall of the crew room. It was empty except for a small black plastic case at the bottom. She returned to her chair and flipped open the case. Rook leaned over to see the contents.
The case held four small inch-long vials of nuclear green liquid and four spring-loaded auto-injector syringes.
“So we just stab one of these into Ridley?” Queen asked.
“Yes. It should work in seconds. If you can inject him covertly, he might not even know what’s happened. But be warned, Ridley will still have the mother tongue, and as long as he can speak, he’ll be able to heal from grievous injury.”
“Or turn us into paste,” Rook added.
“And that’s only if we take the clones at their word,” Deep Blue said, “which we shouldn’t do. They each might possess the mother tongue, but I doubt it.”
“What makes you doubt it?” Bishop asked, with his eyes closed. Queen had thought he was asleep and that she was going to need to fill him in later.
Deep Blue’s voice was absent from their earpieces for just a second, and then he came back. “If they could speak the mother tongue, they could literally move Heaven and Earth to get Ridley back. That the duplicates came to us and requested our help, means they really need it to free Ridley. If Seth and the others actually had the mother tongue, then they would each be unstoppable — and they would have freed Ridley from Alexander’s captivity long ago.”
“What do you suppose happens to the duplicates if Ridley were to die?” Queen asked. “Will they really just fall apart?”
“Theoretically, I suppose it could be true. In the original golem story, the rabbi that created it could later unmake it by destroying the word that gave it life. If the sacred word was written on a piece of paper, it could be removed from the golem’s mouth. If the text was inscribed on the golem’s body, it could simply be altered.”
“Emet to met,” Bishop said, recalling what they’d learned about golems while dealing with the threat.
“Exactly,” Deep Blue said. “Seeing as how Ridley spoke life into the duplicates, he could be the word himself.”
Rook shook his head. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Deep Blue fell silent. The three other members of the team turned toward Rook. He noticed their collective gaze after a moment. “What? It’s from the Bible. Am I the only one that’s been to church?”
Deep Blue cleared his throat. “We have to also consider the possibility that Ridley was able to grant them real life. Under their skin might be blood and organs and minds that will continue to live after Ridley dies. It’s not what we saw with his other duplicates, but we can’t rule it out. And neither can they. I suspect it’s part of why they want to find him.”
“Pinocchio wants to become a real boy,” Knight said.
“That creates two wildly different motives, doesn’t it?” Queen asked.
Rook shook his head. “I’m not following. If Ridley dies and they die too, that gives them the motivation to keep him alive, right? That’s just based on survival. But if his life isn’t tied to theirs, they still want him freed, because he’s their what? Some kind of messiah, right? A god?”
“If they can live independently of him, they might simply want the mother tongue for themselves. It is a learned language. And never forget — each duplicate has the same crazed hunger for power. They are each as dangerous as the original — if not more so, because they see an unlimited potential for power within their grasps.”
“I got a question,” Bishop sat up in his chair and opened his eyes. “We know where Ridley is being held, and we know who has him. We know the danger he presents. And we have three more of him in the cargo hold, who, you just said, are possibly even more dangerous than the original…” Bishop paused, and the others present in the room turned to listen. “Why shouldn’t we just shoot these three in the head and drop a bomb on the secret base they’re taking us to?”
The room was quiet. Deep Blue did not comment.
“That would have been so much cooler if you’d quoted Bishop from Aliens,” Rook said. “‘It’s the only way to be sure.’”
No one smiled. Bishop had presented them with brutal, but clear logic that would end all their problems at once. Even Rook’s comparison to the Aliens movie fit. Why should they engage a proven and deadly enemy up-close and personal when they could end the fight from a safe distance?
When Deep Blue spoke again, he stopped the violent line of thinking. “We can’t drop a bomb; first because it’s a mosque and we don’t want to start World War III, and second… King is already on site.”
FIFTEEN
King raised the LED flashlight to his face and screamed as loudly as he could. He waved the rifle and rushed at the approaching horde of wraiths. The reaction was instantaneous. The wraiths — all of them, including those scrabbling with claws along the ceiling — turned and fled to the far end of the massive parking garage-like space.
A moment later, as King looked on bewildered, he saw a dim light at the end of the space, as the hatch he and Asya had entered through was opened. The hundreds of Forgotten poured out into the night.
King turned to his sister in the dark, the flashlight now pointed at the floor. “Did I forget to brush my teeth?”
“Whatever the reason, they are frightened of you. We should count ourselves lucky — and find a doorway that is not bricked up.”
King turned back to the bricked up door and began to run along the wall to the right. Asya followed him. After about a hundred yards, they came to another door, identical to the first. King opened it, the AK-47 at the ready. This door revealed a long dark corridor that sloped down at an angle.
“Jackpot. Let’s go,” King slung the rifle over his shoulder and pulled out the Sig handgun. He raised the LED light, then sprinted down the darkened hallway.
“Shouldn’t we go slow? Look for booby-traps?” Asya asked, huffing behind him in the dark.
“If you had an army of those things would you need booby traps?”
“This is true.”
At the end of another few hundred yards, the corridor ended with an open stairwell. They descended what felt like three hundred more yards before the stairs ended at another corridor, this one moving in a right angle to the first. King guessed it would take them back toward the ruins of the Amphitheater, behind the giant mosque. Well, under the amphitheater, he thought.
Shortly they came to another stairwell leading up, and the corridor turned at another right angle, this time to their right.
King stopped to look at both possibilities.
“Up or right?” Asya asked. King noticed he was breathing harder than she was.
The stairs were metal and fairly new, with rust in only a few small spots. King took a few steps down the side corridor, then called to Asya. “This way. Look at the walls.”
Asya stepped closer until she could see what King had pointed at, in the light. The walls were concrete at the mouth of the tunnel, but after a few feet, the surface switched to ancient pitted stone.
“This is part of the ruins,” Asya said.
“That would be my guess. And if I’ve kept track of where we are accurately, this tunnel runs from beneath amphitheater to the Antonine Baths.”
“What about the staircase?” she asked.
“Maybe another entrance?” King shrugged. “Let’s see if this tunnel takes us to more ruins first. Ridley and Alexander are both fans of antiquity. My money is on the Baths.”