The Forgotten were free.
Unlike in Tunisia though, this time they attacked all at once. King watched as a swarm of the creatures mauled Alexander. Then they turned on King, a chaotic mass of fast, nimble bodies moving with the ravenous excitement of hungry lions who have just spotted a baby zebra. He tried to fight them, but it was no use. They moved too fast, and more often than not, his punches struck only their cloaks.
In just ten seconds, King was overwhelmed, buried beneath a mass of hungry wraiths reaching for his skin — and the blood beneath it.
FORTY-TWO
The sun would not rise for another hour, but the dark heavens were already lightening. Pale blue leached up into the Arab sky on the horizon.
Richard Ridley smiled.
It was all coming together. That bastard Alexander was dead. King was dead, too — both unexpected gifts. His rebellious brother, Darius, had walked into a trap. Chess Team was cut off and unable to contact support. Although they had robbed him of his genetic immortality, it made little difference. With the mother tongue, he could repair damage to his body and give himself longevity by forcing his cells to age slower, perhaps not at all. And now…the Chest of Adoon. The power it contained was said to be without comparison. A civilization destroyer.
His company, Manifold Genetics, was in ruins, like the landscape around him, to which Trigger and Carpenter had led him. But that made little difference. He had many holdings and subsidiary companies. He had the wealth, even without the labs. Soon he would have a destructive power to correct all the wrongs done to him. Combined with his superior intellect, the mother tongue, and a lot of money, he would be an unstoppable force.
No more toying with these people, he thought. It was time for real power. World changing power.
He slowed his pace, allowing Seth and Jared to walk ahead of him. At first, Jared kept glancing back, afraid he would miss something. Seth continued on ahead, secure in his role. They walked through the dark ruins, Trigger lighting the way with a flashlight. Carpenter fell back to the rear to protect their small group.
They crossed La Goulette Road and headed into the trees on the opposite side, next to a house. Ridley still found it amusing that the wealthy Tunisians had built estates nestled in between the standing ruins. If they had been in a Western nation, the entire area would have been a World Heritage site, but here, the wealthy had managed to get every scrap of land that didn’t have an ancient rock on it.
They passed through a small copse of trees that ran along the backside of a house, and then they were in the necropolis. Beyond the tombstones lay another small forest, and then the ruins called the Antonine Baths. Beyond those, the Gulf of Tunis.
Richard Ridley looked around at the small stones of the darkened necropolis. He smiled again. The necropolis was as good a place as any. He raised the silenced pistol Trigger had provided him, and shot Jared neatly in the back of the skull. The sound the weapon made was like someone spitting in the dark. Jared’s body collapsed to the ground, draping over one of the low stones that acted as markers for ancient graves. Without time to prepare to use the mother tongue to heal himself, Jared was dead. His body went slack as it reverted to clay.
Seth turned at the act, shocked.
“Don’t worry, Seth. I know you are loyal to me. Jared dreamed of independence. From the moment I gave you life, you were all individuals, with personalities and emotions all growing further away from mine, based on your experiences. I didn’t like the direction Jared was going. Sooner or later, we would have butted heads. Or he would have gone to our enemies. That’s no good for business.”
Trigger and Carpenter looked unconcerned. They knew they were getting paid — and extremely well — to do their jobs. As long as they performed, they wouldn’t be getting bullets to the head. Besides, Ridley thought both men most likely imagined themselves capable of drawing their weapons on him faster than he could gun them down. Little did they know, in a few moments, he would no longer require their services.
“Let’s move,” Ridley said.
Trigger led the way into the trees on the opposite side of the necropolis, and the group unceremoniously left Jared’s gray corpse draped over the stone.
“Once we have the Chest,” Seth said to Ridley, “what do you intend to do next?”
Ridley shook his head. “That depends on the nature of the destructive force contained within the Chest. If the weapon is easily used, perhaps I’ll test it out on Tunis. But in my experience, ancient weapons with this kind of destructive power most often turn out to be biological. It might require study.”
“Destroying Tunis would be simple, even now with just the mother tongue, but perhaps not the statement you want to make to the world for your first assault. Maybe something bigger? The destruction of an entire nation, perhaps?” Seth spoke hesitantly. Ridley figured he was no doubt wary of getting a silenced bullet in the face. But it was a reasonable suggestion.
Ridley smiled at the idea. “Maybe China. I would like to have my own tea empire.”
They came upon the ruins of the Baths. The third largest Roman Bathing Ruins in the world, Antonine was something special. In its heyday, it would have been like an aquatic gymnasium, with pools of differing sizes and purposes. An amazing place to while away a Roman-era day. The complex faced the sea. An incredible view. It was also architecturally clever, lying at the base of two sloping hills, allowing water to flow down to it. Ridley considered having the baths reconstructed once the whole of North Africa was his. His only problem with North Africa was all the people. Nothing a little genocide can’t fix.
With the power he would soon possess, nothing would be impossible.
That’s what he told himself, but there were lingering doubts. Despite all of his research into the Chest supporting the idea that it contained a destructive power beyond imagining, he had to remember that it was placed there by ancient people who had yet to conceive of the atomic bomb. That said, he’d read texts comparing it to natural forces like typhoons and earthquakes, as well as mythological forces such as Zeus’s lightning bolts and the fires of Hades. Even by modern standards of destruction, those comparisons gave him hope that the weapon inside the chest would give him dominion over the human race. The mother tongue — the language of God — made him divine. The power inside the Chest would allow him to enforce his divinity world-wide.
The ruins, now little more than stumps of rock, walls, arched doorways and the occasional cave, had one other major benefit, unbeknownst to most. He had built his Omega facility under the baths at gigantic expense, and the process had required the continual hiring of architects and builders, who were quietly murdered later on. Bribing government officials had nearly bankrupted him at the time. But he had known of the mother tongue even then, and he had known it would only be a matter of time until he acquired it.
With the mother tongue, the prize under the Gulf of Tunis was invaluable. How ironic that two powerful weapons had been concealed here.
Building the aquarium wall had been maddeningly difficult with no less than twenty architects telling him it was an impossible feat, and five eventually designing the thing. They were all dead now. But in the end, he had it: one of the world’s most amazing offices with an unparalleled view of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
He had stood at that railing, lusting to control his secret find for long years, while his people scoured the globe for antiquities, secrets and power. The Hydra had blown up in his face, with the involvement of the Chess Team, first at his Peru facility, then again in the Atlantic and finally in New Hampshire. But those defeats were minor compared to the advancements in genetics he had made, and the serum he had designed to give himself regeneration. It occurred to him that he still had the formula. A smile slipped onto his face. He could make more, and ensure he could always regenerate from injury. Better yet, he would build a loyal army, unable to be killed. Visions of unkillable soldiers marching on Washington D.C., supported by living stone golems filled his imagination. The possibilities were endless.