The Eden Prophecy

CHAPTER 45

Sonia stood in an open doorway looking into an advanced genetics laboratory. It was spotless and clean and equipped with everything she and her father could have ever asked for. In fact they — or at least he — had asked for this equipment at one time. The sight of it made her sick.

“Move,” a man said, jabbing her in the back with a rifle.

She stumbled forward into the gleaming room. Another man sat on a chair inside, grinning at her. He had a rectangular tattoo that curved around his neck and covered some kind of scar. In a strange way it almost looked like a bar code. A snake tattoo slithered down one arm from under the cuff of his black T-shirt. His eyes were points of black ice in a gleaming white room.

“Leave us,” he said to the guard.

“Who are you?” she said.

“Don’t you recognize your master?”

So this was the leader, the one she’d spoken to but never met.

“You’re no ‘master,’ ” she said. “You’re just a murdering psychopath with a bunch of fools following you.”

She expected venom from him, a slap across the face or hand to her throat to choke half the life out of her for what she’d said, but he seemed unmoved.

“See things so deeply, do you?”

She didn’t respond.

“You’re the fool,” he said with disdain. “You and your pathetic allies. Hawker … Danielle … the ridiculous Arnold Moore.”

She didn’t recognize the last name, but a wave of trepidation swept through her as he spoke Hawker’s and Danielle’s names. She hadn’t expected him to know or care who had been helping her. How could he know? she wondered. Why did he care?

She tried not to react.

“You think this is about you?” he said. “How vain.”

She suddenly felt afraid even to speak. Was there something going on beyond what she understood?

The “Master” changed the subject.

“Your father bowed down before me,” he said. “You will do the same. And then the whole world will follow.”

It was the danger that had driven Ranga and her apart. In their own ways they’d attempted to mitigate that danger, Ranga going into hiding, Sonia trying to take Paradox public and raise enough money and publicity to the point where she’d be safe. But none of it had worked and this sick, twisted man in front of her was gloating over it.

Feeling a wave of strength flow from her anger, she looked around. For some reason a hammer lay on the bench beside her. She grabbed it and lunged forward, swinging it at him, but he caught her wrist as if he was waiting for it, twisted her arm around until it felt as if it might snap, and then swatted the hammer out of her grasp.

She expected him to let go now that she’d been disarmed but he continued to twist her hand, turning her wrist outward and down until it felt as if her elbow, her wrist, and her shoulder were going to come apart at the same time.

She let out a meek cry of pain but he didn’t stop. Instead he pushed harder, stepping forward, pressing her down until she was forced to her knees. With a shove he let her go. She fell backward and hit the floor.

In more fear than ever, Sonia scooted away from him until she hit the solid block of the workstation behind her.

The man with the tattoo stepped toward her, grabbed the hammer off the floor, and then yanked her up to her feet.

“Let me show you something more useful to do with this tool.”

Grabbing the back of her arm he walked her over to another table. Resting in the middle lay the section of the tablet Sonia had placed in her pack. She knew what it held. She prayed she was wrong, but she doubted it.

The man grabbed a carbon steel chisel, placed it against the center of the tablet, and swung the hammer rather lightly.

One blow, one chime of metal on metal, and the tablet split in half. At the center, three small objects half the size of golf balls rocked back and forth. The baked clay clung to them but in places the gold leaf showed through.

The seeds of the Tree of Life lay inside.

“You think they’re just going to stop?” she said, thinking of Hawker and his American government friend. “They want this as badly as you do.”

“Maybe worse,” the man said in a mocking tone.

“They’ll come for me,” she insisted. “And even if you kill me, they’ll come for you.”

“I believe you,” he said sadistically. “In fact I’m counting on it.”

Once again Sonia had been thrown off balance. The situation was terrifying. She was quite sure she was going to die before it ended, but each time her captor spoke or reacted differently than she expected, she grew even more afraid.

“You will bring me riches,” he explained, looking down at her. “And you will bring me power over everyone on this earth. But most important, you will bring them running to me.”

Sonia felt weak and fearful and somehow culpable.

She’d expected Hawker would die trying to save her on the sand hill in Iran and she didn’t want to think of it. She didn’t want anyone else to suffer for what she and her father had begun and chased all these years. But the way this man talked … Something else was going on here. And suddenly she felt as if she were just a pawn.

“Go to hell,” she said.

“There is no hell,” he said. “Except the ones we make for ourselves.”

“I don’t care what you do,” she said, trying to be strong. “I’m not giving you a damn thing. I’ll kill myself before I let you make me the world’s murderer.”

The laughter came again. Derisive, mocking.

“I won’t do anything to you,” he said. “In fact, I’ll let you live at the end. If you still want to.”

He grabbed a radio. “Bring them in,” he said calmly.

A second later the door opened and two more men came in, pushing other smaller figures in front of them, shoving them forward.

“Oh God,” Sonia said, her knees buckling. Only by holding on to the table was she able to stand.

In front of her, at the hands of the men who had apparently killed her father, were Savi and Nadia. Savi was pushed to the floor; Nadia was shoved forward. Her glasses were gone and she smacked into the workstation as if she didn’t see it.

Sonia ran to her. Tears were streaming down the little girl’s weathered face. Sonia felt her heart breaking.

“It’s okay,” she said, corralling Nadia in her arms. “It’s going to be okay.”

She looked over at Savi. Her face was bruised, her nose badly broken.

“Please …,” Sonia begged, beginning to cry. “Please no.”

Her tears flowed unabated. Her lips and her body quivered. Nadia was crying in her arms.

“They hurt Savi!” the little girl cried.

“I know, baby. I promise it’s going to be okay.”

She looked up at the man who’d called himself her master. He was now in every way. She would do anything to keep Savi and especially Nadia from harm. “Please don’t hurt them,” she pleaded. “I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever you ask.”

“I know you will,” he said. “But to prove you should not doubt me, I give you proof of my resolve.”

He snatched a gun from his belt and aimed it toward Savi.

“No!” Sonia shouted, covering Nadia’s face, burying the child’s face into her chest.

The gun sounded like a cannon when it fired. Sonia closed her eyes and heard the sickening thud of Savi’s body hitting the floor and then nothing.

She held Nadia tight, cradling the young girl’s head. “It’s okay,” she whispered over and over, not wanting the girl to look or to know or even guess. As it was, Nadia sobbed and held on to Sonia.

“Finish the serum,” her master said. “Give me what your father promised and I’ll let you all go when we’re done.”

In her heart Sonia knew it was a lie, but she couldn’t speak it, couldn’t force the truth out or stand or fight anymore. All her adult life she’d been fighting against the truth, and she couldn’t do it anymore.

“And don’t be too smart for your own good,” the Master said. “You can still save her, but whatever you give us, she gets first.”

She’d made a terrible mistake. She’d feared so badly for Hawker, been so certain he was going to die defending her on the sand hill in Iran, that she’d let herself fall off the ATV. She knew the men wouldn’t shoot her, she knew they would take her and scurry away for fear of losing their master’s prize, and she’d been certain when she did it that she would probably end up dead. But she and her father were responsible for all this misery, so who better to sacrifice?

In dying she might right the wrong. End the trail that was leading the world to perdition. She even had a plan, a thought in her mind of how she could trick these men into thinking they had what they wanted and give them nothing. But now that they had her sister and they had 951, she was powerless.

“And if I don’t give you anything?” she managed to ask.

“Then I’ll torture you both to death and I’ll release 951 instead.”

At that moment Sonia wanted to die. She found herself wishing she’d died either the day before in the desert or back in Dubai or years ago in Africa. As irrational as it was, she cursed Hawker in her mind for saving her. He’d preserved her life just long enough to send her to hell. A hell of her own making.