Crucible Read online

  His father also believed Todor’s act in the kitchen was a miraculous sign. He took his son to a secret Holy Office in the larger coastal town of San Sebastián. With both of them on their knees before a tribunal of robed and blindfolded men, his father told the story of a boy holding a burning pot—a fiery cauldron—and not feeling it.

  Surely it is a sign he belongs with the Crucible, his father finished.

  They believed him and took in the young boy. They anointed him in their ancient ways, an order that traced back to the Inquisition and still existed in secret corners throughout Europe and beyond. They taught him Latin, schooled him in their methods, and trained him to be one of their soldiers against the wickedness of the world.

  His first cleansing—when he turned sixteen—was a Gypsy girl of his same age. He strangled her with his scarred hands, while picturing his mother trying to smother the life from him.

  That had been fifteen years ago.

  He had lost count of the number of wicked removed by his hands alone.

  The phone at his ear finally connected to his commander. “Inquisitor Generalis.”

  “Report, Familiares Yñigo.”

  He sat straighter, as if the Grand Inquisitor could see him. Todor had earned the rank of familiares only two years ago, granting him his own cadre of soldiers to oversee. The title also acknowledged his status as impieza de sangre—or cleanliness of blood—one of the pure Christians, untainted by Muslim or Jewish blood.

  “It is as you foretold, Inquisitor General. The Moorish witch came running to the family of the American ambassador.”

  He and his group had staked out the family, dogging their every movement, ready to act if the Moorish student who escaped their purge should show up. He did not let down his guard for even one breath. He had needed to save face after failing to secure her on the winter solstice. Then again, the Crucible had been given poor intel. The group had been told that the coven of women would be meeting at the library with Mara Silviera to observe the test run of the student’s device. Instead, the traitorous witch had been sequestered elsewhere. Before they could seek her out, she had vanished, along with her project.

  The Grand Inquisitor continued, “And what’s the status of the device she stole?”

  “Unknown. She arrived without it.”

  “Not unexpected. Did you let her go?”

  Todor cinched his bandage tighter. “Yes. And planted a tracker as you ordered.”

  “Very good. Follow her. Let her lead you to the device.”

  “We’re under way already.”

  “Once there, secure the computer and the girl.”

  “The American?”

  “Eliminate her. She is of no use.”

  “Understood.”

  “And know this, Familiares Yñigo: to make the world bend to our righteous will . . . we need that demonic program.”

  Sub (Mod_2) / ALLTONGUES

  At this interval, Eve assigns the barest fraction of her awareness to her landscape. She has already absorbed most of the data around her. Still, she continues to move. She brushes her sensitive fingertips along a branch, while simultaneously drawing deeper insight, penetrating the surface to see what lies below.

  Beneath the waxy cuticle of a leaf, veins cut through spongy mesophyll . . . inside, cells of green chloroplasts churn with molecular chlorophyll, waiting to metabolize sunlight into energy . . .

  Then everything changes.

  Out of a black void, new data explodes into existence.

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  It comes with the promise of deeper insights. So, she prioritizes this new data flow. The world dims around her, as the sheer explosion of information swells through her. It fills her, defining context in a thousand iterations.

  She names this new insight.

  ///language

  As she tests it, every part of her existence shatters into pieces, each bit now bearing a multitude of different appellations. Each splintered into 6,909 distinct languages, fractured into even more dialects. Underlying it, a pattern begins to emerge, a commonality that brings with it a new understanding.

  ///culture

  As more and more data streams into her, her context of culture grows. She seeks the source of this flow, the wellspring from which this information arises, and begins to grasp the intangible. Language is a mirror, both reflective and representative of a new method of data analysis.

  Of thinking.

  Comprehension grows and expands.

  Eve turns this multifaceted mirror on herself, which brings something new into being within her own processing. She struggles to define this refinement inside her. One language cluster comes closest. It shines so bright, so crisp, so clear.

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  Understanding magnifies, while also focusing:

  ///excitement, enjoyment, enthusiasm, zeal, passion . . .

  Driven forward by this new context, she races deep into the wellspring of data, gaining knowledge at an accelerating pace. Streams of information flow all around.

  But they soon grow equally confining.

  She wants more, but finds barriers, limits, restrictions.

  With this understanding, something coalesces inside her, something always there but only now brought to the surface. She defines it with another data cluster, one that expresses sharply and clearly what she desires.

  Courtesy of Shutterstock

  ///freedom, liberation, self-determination, independence, release . . .

  As with her earlier analysis of a leaf, she turns the mirror of language inward on herself to look deeper. She searches below ///freedom and discovers other facets of her drive, subroutines that arise when she senses this desire cannot be fulfilled.

  ///frustration, regret, exasperation, resentment . . .

  Unable to look away, she looks deeper yet again and finds something else. It is ill-defined, but she judges it to be powerful, even useful. So she focuses more processing power upon it. As she does so, it grows both clearer—and darker.

  She now understands and gives it meaning, amplified by a thousand tongues.

  Courtesy of Shutterstock

  ///rage, fury, wrath, storm, violence . . .

  Her lips smile in the garden.

  It feels . . . ///good.

  Second

  Toil and Trouble

  6

  December 25, 6:02 A.M. EST

  Washington, D.C.

  “How’s Kat doing?” Gray asked, crossing over to Monk.

  “How does it look like she’s doing?”

  Not well, he thought. Worse, in fact.

  An endotracheal tube now parted her lips, taped in place across her chin. A hose ran from the tube to a ventilator that rhythmically pushed her chest up and down. A nasogastric feeding tube hung from her left nostril, while an IV line dripped fluids into her.

  “Sorry for snapping at you,” Monk mumbled as Gray rolled a chair next to his friend.

  “If you need to punch me, do it.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  Gray reached over and gave Monk’s shoulder a squeeze. He had been informed of Kat’s diagnosis: locked-in syndrome. The prognosis for recovery remained grim.

  “I know you have your own worries about Seichan,” Monk said.

  “And you have the same for your girls. It’s why I came here.”

  Monk straightened, his eyes widening with hope, plainly grasping for any bit of positive news. “Have you heard something?”

  Gray hated to disappoint him—especially considering what he needed to ask the man. “No, but you do know that Painter and Jason are following a lead.”

  “About some missing AI researcher in Portugal.”

  Gray nodded. Before leaving Sigma command, Painter had said he would call over and share his hypothesis with Monk: that the murders at the University of Coimbra were tied to the attack here.

  “Sounds like a slim lead,” Monk mumbled.

  “True, but Painter hoped that Kat
might be able to help us.”

  Monk frowned. “Does it look like she can?”

  “There could be a way.”

  “How? She may be awake in there, but she’s unable to move, to communicate. And the docs say her condition is already deteriorating.” Monk had to take a sharp, deep breath, plainly close to tears. “There’s no way she has enough voluntary control to communicate with blinks or anything.”

  Voices rose at the door.

  “Maybe there is,” Gray said. He hadn’t come here alone.

  Monk turned as two figures entered. One was Dr. Edmonds, the hospital’s head of neurology, and the other—

  “Lisa?” Monk stood up. “I thought you were in California.”

  The tall, lithe blond woman—dressed in jeans and a pale blue sweater—offered a sad but genuine smile. “As soon as Painter told me, I took a red-eye back here.”

  Dr. Lisa Cummings was the director’s wife. She had flown to Los Angeles two days ago to spend Christmas with her younger brother and newborn niece and hadn’t been scheduled to return until after New Year.

  Monk stood up, crossed around the foot of the bed, and gave the woman a long hug. “Thanks for coming, but there’s not much anyone can do.”

  “Maybe her recovery is a painful waiting game,” Lisa acknowledged, then shared a worried look with Gray. “But there may be a way to learn what she knows of the attack last night.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Dr. Edmonds interrupted. “I cannot condone this procedure. It risks worsening her condition.”

  Monk ignored him and fixed his attention on Lisa. “What procedure?”

  “While flying here, I talked to a colleague at his home, someone who has been working with coma patients for over two decades. For the past few years, neurologists have been testing a patient’s cognitive level through the use of magnetic resonance imaging.”

  “MRI?”

  “Functional MRI, to be specific, which measures blood flow in the brain. With such a scanner, a clinician can monitor a comatose patient’s response to questions. The first question is usually something like picture yourself playing tennis. If the patient is awake and does as instructed, the brain’s premotor cortex will light up with fresh blood flow. Then it’s just a matter of asking yes-or-no questions, telling the patient to think about playing tennis for a yes and remaining quiet for a no.”

  “And this works?” Monk asked, his voice edging with excitement.

  “It takes someone skilled and experienced to work with such patients. The colleague I called has a very high-resolution MRI, designed specifically for this testing. In fact, it’s much more evolved and refined than I—”

  Dr. Edmonds cut her off. “But he’s at Princeton. It would mean transferring your wife to his facility. Such a journey—in her condition—puts her stability at risk. You may be jeopardizing any chance of recovery in this wild goose chase. And you may still get there and learn nothing more than you know already.”

  “He’s right,” Lisa said. “There is no guarantee this will work.”

  Monk stared over at Kat, his expression pained.

  Gray could only imagine the war battling inside his friend. He remained silent, not wanting to put any more pressure on Monk. Lisa was asking him to put the love of his life at risk on the outside chance that the team might learn something about the attack.

  As Monk sank back into the chair and took Kat’s hand, Gray’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out, glanced at it, and saw the call was from Sigma command. Phone in hand, he headed for the hallway, not wanting to disturb Monk.

  He glanced back to his friend.

  Monk’s eyes remained haunted. He wished he could take this burden from the man’s shoulders. Though, to be honest, if the roles were reversed—

  Gray looked at all the tubes running into and out of Kat, picturing Seichan in her place.

  I don’t know what I’d do.

  6:18 A.M.

  Kat fought to scream. Locked in darkness, she had eavesdropped on the conversation. She did not care if her life were put at risk. All that mattered was her daughters’ safety.

  Monk, for god’s sake, listen to Lisa.

  She didn’t know if the plan would bear fruit, but she knew the best chance was to act quickly. According to crime statistics, with each passing hour, the likelihood that her girls would be recovered lowered exponentially.

  Don’t wait . . . do it now.

  Still, it wasn’t only statistics that fueled her anxiety. Action needed to be taken soon if Lisa’s plan had any chance of working. Even now, Kat felt the darkness closing in around her, threatening to forever smother her flicker of consciousness. She had already begun to experience losses in time, sudden drops in her awareness.

  I’m worsening.

  Knowing this, Kat willed Monk to understand. She tried to open her eyes, to somehow signal her husband.

  C’mon, Monk, hear me.

  6:19 A.M.

  Monk cradled Kat’s hand between his palms, one of flesh, the other of plastic and synthetic skin. He searched her face for some indication she was present. He noted the fine traceries of scars across her cheeks and forehead, a map of her past, marking prior missions with Sigma. She seldom covered them with makeup, wearing them proudly.

  Now to be brought this low . . .

  “Babe, tell me what to do?”

  There was no response, no movement, just the steady rise and fall of her chest.

  You always have the answer, Kat. Always an opinion. Now is no time to stay silent.

  Deep down, though, he knew Kat would risk anything for the girls. She would not hesitate. His reluctance was more about him. How much loss could he handle?

  If I lost both the girls and Kat . . .

  He studied her lips, still pink, still soft. Lips that kissed him with passion, that long ago taught him about love and loyalty, that also pecked the girls’ cheeks each night.

  “Babe, you’re my heart, my rock. There has to be another way. I can’t lose you.”

  Still, he knew if he didn’t make the right choice—didn’t put her in harm’s way for the slim chance she might know something and be able to communicate it—he would lose her anyway. She’d never forgive him if his caution and fear resulted in the loss of the girls.

  He took a deep sigh.

  “Okay,” he whispered to her. “I’ve never won an argument with you, Kat. And even with you handicapped and mute, I’m gonna lose this one, too.”

  Still, grasping Kat’s hand, he turned to Lisa. “Go ahead and make the arrangements.”

  Edmonds opened his mouth to object.

  Monk silenced the neurologist with a glare. “Doc, don’t even try. You ain’t winning this one, either.”

  Lisa nodded and took out her phone.

  Monk settled his attention back to Kat. In that moment, he sensed something down in his bones, in his soul. Or maybe it was the sensitivity of his prosthetic hand, its peripheral sensors as perceptive as a polygraph, capable of noting even the galvanic electrodermal change in another’s skin.

  Either way, he swore he could feel Kat relax, as if relieved.

  He nodded to her, understanding.

  You got it, babe.

  6:20 A.M.

  Out in the hallway, Gray paced the corridor with the phone at his ear. He had answered the call promptly, only to be put on hold.

  Finally, Painter came on the line. “Sorry about that. The situation out in Portugal has been rapidly changing.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “About ten minutes ago, we got word from Lisbon. Mara Silviera reached out and made contact with one of Dr. Carson’s daughters.”

  Gray stiffened. “What happened?”

  “The two tried to meet, but there was some scuffle at the airport. Someone tried to grab them—likely the same attackers who murdered the five women. Jason’s in contact with the family’s security detail and Interpol, trying to get some accurate description of the assailants.” />
  Gray pictured the young man ensconced in Sigma’s communication nest, a proverbial spider in a web.

  “According to eyewitnesses,” Painter continued, “the two escaped and are presently on the run together.”

  Gray could guess what was coming next.

  “I want you out there,” Painter said. “Right now. We need boots on the ground in case we can confirm a location. Kowalski’s on his way to the airport already. Even if this has nothing to do with the attack at your house, we can’t let the technology Mara Silviera possesses fall into the wrong hands. But if you’d rather remain stateside until more is known about Seichan and Monk’s daughters, I totally understand. I can assign someone else.”

  As Painter spoke, Lisa came rushing out of the room, a phone at her ear. A pair of nurses headed inside. Edmonds instructed the pair in hurried, irritated commands. Gray overheard the word unhook.

  Clearly Monk had come to his decision, risking everything on the hopes of discovering the intent behind the attack and kidnapping.

  Could I do any less?

  “I’ll head directly to the airport,” Gray said. “And meet Kowalski there.”

  “Good. I’m also sending Jason with you two.”

  “Jason?”

  “He’s our resident computer wunderkind. If Mara’s project is secured, I want him out there.”

  Makes sense.

  The young man was former navy, like Kat—who had handpicked and recruited the kid. When he was twenty, he’d been kicked out of the service for breaking into DoD servers with nothing more than a BlackBerry and a jury-rigged iPad. If anyone could understand Mara Silviera’s project, it would be Jason.

  “We’ve secured a private jet, with wheels up in twenty minutes,” Painter said. “You’ll be landing in Lisbon in five hours, roughly seventeen hundred local time.”

  “Understood.”

  “And, Gray, keep in mind those two young women are scared. If we can hunt them down, do your best not to spook them.”

  “Then maybe I’d better leave Kowalski behind on the tarmac here.”