8
When he next glanced at his watch, Caleb was pleasantly surprised. One hour to go. Then he looked down at the floor, at the seven scattered pages and the elaborate illustrations his subconscious had been drawing for the past sixty minutes.
Free-drawing, his mother called it. Kind of like the free-writing other psychics did while in a trance. With Caleb and others like him, especially those in the Morpheus Initiative, free-drawing was the key — the key to the past, the key to the present, the key to anything you set your mind to, giving it free rein like a dog off its leash in a great open park. Sometimes it returned empty-handed, other times it came back with something you really wanted, something valuable.
He stared at the drawings. Each one held a recognizable scene, something familiar. In some cases, he had drawn these very images before, years ago as a frightened kid hauled along with his baby sister on exotic romps around the world with his mom and a bunch of weirdoes claiming to see things.
Sheet one: a dizzying spire, so high it scraped the clouds, with a burning flame at its peak and a beam striking out below, seeking out the next target among the fleet of Roman galleys braving the greedy reefs. Two ships were ablaze, sinking as men leapt into the sea.
Sheet two: a smaller, much more modern lighthouse erected atop a hill beyond an apple orchard while below, a rusty iron ship with a lantern on its mast approached from the horizon.
Sheet three: a rugged mountain range and a series of caves, one with bars and withered arms reaching out from the darkness. In the sky hung a five-pointed star behind a crudely drawn fence. The entire picture was dark, drawn in deep lines and angry shading, as if he had wanted to be finished with it as soon as possible.
Sheet four: a girl in a wheelchair at work in a lab, peering into a microscope. Caleb frowned. What was that about? He had definitely drawn Phoebe, but as far as he knew she had never had an interest in biology or chemistry. What could it signify? He shook his head and considered the next one.
Sheet five: another ship, a naval clipper with striped sails — red and white, Caleb saw with sudden clarity — braving a dangerous sea while fleeing a small armada hot on its trail.
Sheet six: a finely detailed caduceus, a thick staff entwined with knotted snakes facing each other with huge glowing eyes.
And finally: a turbaned man standing atop a windswept dune, gazing at the ruins of a once-great tower, and a small flame burning at its peak while the stars blazed in the night sky. Caleb stared at this one, then back over the other six for a long time.
The minutes passed, his vision blurred, and it seemed another trance beckoned, just within a breath, a finger’s reach, a blink. He caught the whiff of jasmine, the thick pungent aroma of hashish, and the musty signs of old, wind-eroded stones.
Then the door whirred, the speaker crackled, and everything in his mind dissolved into a pale sheen of white as Waxman, lowering his head, stepped inside the chamber.
“Time served, young man. Ready for parole?”
Caleb blinked. “No, but how about dinner?”
9
An hour after Caleb checked into his new hotel he was struck down with a violent strain of food poisoning. He and the other members of the Morpheus Initiative had eaten at the same café outside of the mosque of Abul Abbas al-Mursi, but it seemed Alexandria had only intended Caleb as its target. He had been sitting next to the only one who actually seemed interesting, a Mediterranean beauty named Nina-something. She had tried to get him out of his shell, even bought a round of Ouzo shots, but Caleb passed on the drinks, already feeling queasy.
He’d avoided his mother’s gaze and tried to shut out Waxman’s ceaseless lecturing, going on just to hear his own voice talk about the glory of past missions or the strengths of the visions the group had achieved.
Maybe it was the food, or maybe Caleb really just didn’t want to put on a happy face for this gaggle of psychic misfits, so his body supplied the best possible excuse for his absence. Unfortunately, this bug left him unable to think, much less sit up to reach the cache of books he had brought along. The fever took hold quickly and didn’t let up for two brutal days and nights. People swam in and out of his vision, in and out of his consciousness, darting around the hotel room. But other times he was left extremely lucid, if unable to speak or move. He remembered his mother appearing frightened at first, then increasingly haggard. A pale face wavering in the watery blur of his room, a blur in which he could see every detaiclass="underline" the petals in the flowery curtains, the watermarks on the stained wallpaper, the cracks in the ceiling that mirrored the spider web lines in his mother’s skin, and the red jagged lines against the whites of her eyes.
Once, as Caleb tried taking a sip of water from the bedside cup in the middle of the night, he felt another presence. He saw a dark figure standing beside the rectangular outline of the door, head bowed, long arms at his side. Menacing, yet motionless. He was a blur, a melding of form and shadow, darkness and deep tones of gray and green. A low mumbling emanated from his throat, but in Caleb’s fevered state the words meshed into gibberish that echoed off the walls. Caleb trembled, and saliva dribbled down his chin as fresh chills ran over his body. Pajamas formerly stifling now felt like frost-covered rags. And the presence, whatever or whoever he was, appeared to be pointing at him and trying to speak. Then the door opened and blessed light stabbed inside, chasing away the image. Caleb was at the same time grateful and frustrated.
Helen entered and curiously paused on the threshold, as if she had caught the scent of something familiar, yet impossibly frightening.
Caleb fell back against the soaked pillow, the room spun, and he drowned in a frothing whirlpool of dreams…
… as he grips a wooden rail on the prow of a ship heaving upon turbulent waves. The surf pounds against great rocks, and only by furious rowing do the men manage to pull up to the embankment. And with a shout of thanks to Triton, they scramble overboard.
The rain spits upon them as they jump into the shallows and trudge to shore. His cloak is drenched, his armor unbearably heavy. Titus — his name is Titus — looks up as the others rush past, and there he sees it for the first time up close: a hulking shadow, black against the churning clouds, a brooding tower defying the angry storm. Far, far above, the seething flame of its beacon burns against the swirling winds, and the great mirror sends a crimson beam through the pelting rain, stabbing over the sea through the infinite folds of night.
Titus hurries forward with the others, his legion part of a small team of reinforcements for Caesar and his personal troops. In the pounding surf, the howling wind and the driving rain, even the sound of his own boots upon the granite stairs are muffled. He runs between two immense statues, an old king and queen greeting arrivals, then into a dark courtyard. Once more he turns his face up to the merciless rain and has the impression that the glowing tip of the Pharos is tickling the thunderclouds until they erupt in a laughing cacophony of light and sound.
Inside, the men shake off their cloaks, remove their helmets and dry their faces. Their leader, Marcus Entonius, orders Titus to follow him into a nearby doorway while the others set about their tasks. Hastening to obey, Titus has time only for a glance around the torch-lit interior to notice the winding ramp, the weathered statues clinging to the precipitous walls, the central shaft and the cauldron ready with oil.
He follows Marcus, trotting close to his torch as he is led through a winding labyrinth of passageways, one door leading to another exactly the same. It seems they double back, then forward again, before they finally descend a small ramp and turn into a tunnel-like chamber that drops sharply to a spiral staircase.