Omega: A Jack Sigler Thriller

EPILOGUE

A solitary set of feet pounded the dry soil, barely filling the air with the sound of a soldier on the march. But this man was not a simple soldier. Not any longer. Now he was something much, much more.

He marched without cease, without pause for food, water or rest, across the arid, lifeless Nazca plains. When the man finally stopped in the shade of a tall hill, he turned and cast a cool gaze back the way he had come.

His sweat-dampened, long dark hair clung to his forehead, but the man paid it no heed. Nor did he wipe away the beads of sweat rolling into his eyes. The woven sack he carried hung lifeless at his side, so still and bland that anyone watching the man might not even see it. And the contents might as well be air. There was no one left who would mourn the object’s passing.

He dropped the shovel he carried down onto the ground, and then he tossed the sack down. Upon striking the hot, dry earth, the sack rolled and came to a lazy stop. A cloud of dry dust rose and then clung to the fabric as though the desert were already trying to claim it.

King looked at his single piece of baggage, which contained the shattered head of Richard Ridley. They’d taken it with them from Carthage, just in case. But it never regenerated and showed normal signs of decay. Deep Blue had wanted to incinerate the remains, but King insisted on a burial.

This burial.

It was…cathartic.

As he stood there, shovel in hand, he thought back on the past month. His reunion with Sara had shaken him. All of his long forgotten memories — the way her eyes looked in the sun, the smell of her hair, her lopsided smile, and so many other details he’d taken for granted — came back in a rush. She’d been confused by his tears and weak legs, but a quick explanation coupled with his long hair and beard had helped her to quickly understand. She was shocked and amazed that he had waited so long for her…and he had waited. 2,812 years of celibacy. The only descendants of Jack Sigler roaming the world would be the ones he created with her.

Seeing Fiona was harder. He’d fallen to his knees in the parking lot of her school. Sensing his heartbreak, she’d run to him and hugged him tight. She didn’t ask about the beard or the hair, she’d simply said, “It finally happened.”

Apparently, she’d seen her rescuer in Siletz and had always known it was King…but a different King, the one with long hair and a beard. She handled the explanation better than everyone else and made him promise to regale her with stories from history. She also made him take her out of the boarding school. He agreed before she finished asking, vowing to spend as much time with her and Sara as humanly possible.

Once everyone had been gathered at the base in New Hampshire, he’d told his friends and family an abbreviated version of his story, and they had been dumbfounded by the magnitude of it. King explained how he had placed the grenade in the ‘Chest of Adoon’ instead of leaving it empty, and how Alexander had told him that he eventually arranged for the relocation of the Colossus of Rhodes to Tunisia, where he had once hoped to build a small fortress. The fortress never happened. He’d treated the statue with a special solution to prevent corrosion and left it along the shore, underwater, where only he would be able to retrieve it. Later, he hid the Chest of Adoon inside the chest of the Colossus. He thought it was clever. But only King had known the joke, and the Chest was never recovered, or opened, again. Until Ridley got it.

King remained in New Hampshire for a month, reuniting with his family and watching over his mending friends while the team’s scientists studied Ridley’s remains and ensured he was, without a doubt, not coming back. Not that anyone was going anywhere. The geopolitical backlash to the events in Carthage, which no one could find a reasonable explanation for, threatened to expose them. So they stayed silent. Waited for the world’s hackles to lower. And finally, Domenick Boucher, head of the CIA and one of the few people who knew Endgame existed, gave them the all-clear. Tensions had eased and a terrorist group was blamed for simultaneously releasing a hallucinogenic gas and detonating several bombs in Tunisia. The governments of several nations knew that was not the truth, but not one of them wanted to tell the world that the 300-foot tall Colossus of Rhodes had come to life and attacked the city. Bodies were disposed of. Videos were destroyed. Rumors were started and evidence was planted.

As soon as the all-clear had been given, King had taken Ridley’s remains and jetted to Nazca, Peru — where it all began — courtesy of Crescent II. The flight took just hours, and no one would be the wiser.

He stared down at the sack again, then looked at his watch. Crescent II was a stealth vehicle, but the Nazca plains sported more airborne tourists than anywhere else in the world. It was the only way to really see the giant geoglyphs carved into the desert by the ancient Nazcans and the occasional Greek demigod. He had an hour and a half before the first scheduled flight passed overhead.

He lifted the shovel and set to work, digging out the entrance to the cave his friend George Pierce had discovered under the massive stone, years ago. The memory was dim for King, but he knew it had happened for George only a few years back.

When the entrance to the cave, where King himself had once been trapped, was clear, he unceremoniously chucked the head into the cave, watching as it rolled along in its burlap.

He started filling in the entrance. Before the digging was done, he tossed the shovel itself into the tunnel and finished the work by hand. When he was done, he pulled a small hammer and a chisel from his belt and went to work on the side of the hot stone.

The symbol was simple, but he wanted it to be large. Large enough to be seen by anyone else that should come along in the next several hundred years. He carved it deep into the side of the stone, then he walked to the other side of the rock where Pierce had discovered the other carving, left centuries ago, by Alexander. The letters were in ancient Greek and the transcription read:

King went to work with the chisel again, destroying Alexander’s message, which had withstood the ravages of time thanks to the lack of weather on the plains. When the stone was completely smooth, he walked back to his side of the stone, and looked at the symbol he had carved, five feet tall.

He had never used the symbol before, but since Alexander — the first pillar in the Herculean Society’s insignia — was now gone from the Earth for good, it seemed fitting to start a new legacy. The Herculean Society and its wraith protectors served King now, and he wanted the new symbol to be familiar to them, but to reflect a change in the guard. It was simple and would be easily recognizable to speakers of all languages around the world and through the ages. Over the following years, leaders and governments would come to know the symbol, and what it meant.

Danger.

Stay away.

You don’t want any part of this.

They would learn to trust the symbol, and that ignoring its warning led to peril. The Herculean Society symbol had worked in the same way over the ages. It wasn’t known to all countries throughout history. Its meaning was lost and found as power shifted between nations and continents. Not every president understood it as a warning, including Tom Duncan, but they usually learned, often the hard way. Where the Herculean Society symbol was found, strange and deadly danger awaited. And whatever it was, someone else was handling it. Someone who knew better.

The symbol was the reason the Bermuda Triangle was still largely unexplored and unexplained. It was the reason the Russians still kept people away from Krasnoyarsk Krai, where the Tunguska comet had detonated. It was the reason no one would ever know what really happened to Roanoke.

King stepped back and looked at his new symbol. It was similar enough to the original that those who recognized the Herculean Society symbol might recognize the authority of the new.

It was crude, but it would do.

He turned and started walking away from the giant boulder that covered the cave. There was just one more thing to do.

He had lived an incredibly long life, impervious to harm. He almost couldn’t remember what it had been like to be afraid of death or to know that an injury could be permanent. In a way, he couldn’t remember what it felt like to be human.

King reached into the small pouch on his belt and removed an auto injector. It was similar to the serum the team had used on the Ridleys to rob them of their Hydra-induced regenerative abilities. But King’s version of the serum had started off as a potion Alexander had left for him in a Herculean Society base in Greenland. King had ordered some of his scientists working for the Society to analyze it and make small adjustments to it. If he injected it into himself, it would once again alter his DNA. It would remove the regenerative abilities Alexander had granted him by slipping herbs into his tea all those years ago. It would also remove his immortality.

He had lived a long, long time. He was ready to settle down with his family — his fiancée and his adopted daughter. He was ready to live a normal lifespan, and when the time came, he was ready to die.

He placed the injector against his skin, the metal warm from the hot sun beating down on him for the last several hours. He looked at the metal around the glass vial as it glinted in the sun. Over 2800 years. He wondered if he would still have the memories and experiences of those years, once his genetic code was rewritten, or whether, like his healing abilities, all that would fade as well.

He activated the high-pressure injector, and then it snapped loudly, driving the serum into his body. He expected to feel something, even though his techs had told him he would not.

All he felt was the slight sting on his arm from where the needle had punctured his skin. He removed the injector and looked at his arm. The needle hole oozed a tiny drop of blood. He wiped it away with his finger, and noted that the puncture wound had not closed up instantly as it would have in the past.

Easy come, easy go.

King looked up at the sky. It would be late afternoon in New Hampshire now. He pulled out a black satellite phone and called home. It took some rings and digital clicks, but the call went through.

“It’s done,” he said, when Deep Blue answered. “I am officially younger than you again.”

“Not really,” Deep Blue said.

“You know what I mean,” King replied.

Deep Blue chuckled. “Then you won’t mind if I start bossing you around again?”

King smiled. A mission was coming. “Where do you want me?”

“Home,” Deep Blue said. “Just come home.”

“Copy that,” King said. “I’ll be there for supper.”

As he hung up the phone, a high pitched whistle turned him around.

Rook stood at the top of the hill, lowering his hands. Beside him stood Queen, Bishop and Knight. And they weren’t alone. George Pierce, Sara, Fiona, Asya and his parents had all made the trip with him. A trip to say goodbye to the past and to welcome home their future.

Rook, however, had a few more words to say. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted down the hill, “That is the shittiest ‘K’ I have ever seen!”

King laughed and started up the hill as Fiona raced down to meet him.