Chapter 33: "I know a guy…"

"You okay?" Juliet murmured, passing a plastic cup of hospital coffee to Calvin.

"Hmm?" Calvin blinked and dragged his eyes away from the blank wall opposite. He took the cup from Juliet. Its heat brought him back to the world around him. "Trying to remember the first translation of the scroll."

"Why?" Juliet frowned. "We know it's wrong. Dorna don't."

"Maybe not, but it didn't exactly take us long to figure out the mistakes," shrugged Cal, taking a tentative sip of the lava hot dishwater that passed for vending machine coffee. "We can't assume they won't. They're not just bad guys, they're bad guys with brains, remember. And who knows how much experience and other knowledge that we don't have."

"Hmm," Juliet agreed. "Any word on Professor Zond?"

"Not back from the brain scan yet," Cal replied. "Maggie's with Nikko. Still says she's fine. Won't let us get anyone to check her over."

"Vincent?"

"Don't know. Said he'd be back soon." Cal leant over and dropped a kiss on Juliet's head. "Thought I lost you."

"You won't lose me," murmured Juliet, sliding closer to him until his arm automatically lifted and wrapped around her. "Your magic voice said so, remember."

Cal's eyes closed. His fingers wrapped a little more tightly around Juliet. His body froze next to her.

Juliet looked up at him, studying his face for clues. "What? What's wrong?"

The breath that had stalled in his lungs came out ragged. The other shoe had dropped. "The voice said we would end up together," he admitted, not daring to look round. "It didn't say for how long."

"What?" Juliet frowned, turning his face to hers. "What does that mean?"

"It means this isn't a fairy tale," sighed Calvin, wrapping his fingers through the smaller ones resting on his cheek and kissing her palm. "It means there's no such thing as happily ever after. There's just happily for a while, and who knows how long that while might be, or how short. Look at Professor Zond and his wife: they ended up together. Didn't last forever: nothing can. It means that while you were with Tony and not me, I knew you were safe, because I knew 'Us' was still in the future. Now we're together, that future is here, and I've no clue how long it may or may not last. All bets are off."

XXXX

De Molay wasn't happy. To be honest, that was an understatement. Vincent had expected nothing less, though. The news that the translation on its way to Dorna was flawed helped calm his employer's simmering anger, at least. His report of his findings at Blake's apartment were another matter. He had been too late once again. Too late to prevent the transfer of goods from Blake to his employers, and too late to prevent Blake receiving his final payment from them: a bullet through his skull. He had found one useful item, in his rapid search of the dead man's rooms. While Dorna had scrubbed his laptop and desktop, destroyed his phone, and removed any visible sign of their link to Blake, they had missed the thin, rolled piece of paper concealed inside the fountain pen in his shirt pocket. It had struck Vincent as an odd item to carry when robbing such an institute as Veritas. Sure enough, wrapped around the ink reservoir, he found the list. It named and described several items in detail, and, underlined at the top, were the words 'scroll of parchment with leather case plus any notes on its contents'. Second on the list was a 'Greek scroll of papyrus from Library of Alexandria' that could only be the manuscript Calvin and Juliet had retrieved in Damascus. That, at least, had not been found.

Vincent was not a fan of hospitals. They were necessary, true, and did much good in the world; but they were also too anonymous, too full of corridors and stairwells to get lost in, or ambushed in, and far too full of innocents who might find themselves in harm's way. His eyes flitted from one opening to the next, one face to another, until he spotted the familiar forms seated in the waiting area.

"Any news?" Vincent asked the pair, keeping his back to the wall opposite.

Juliet shook her head. "Still waiting," she replied. "Did you find Tony and the scroll?"

"Tony, yes. The scroll, no. Dorna got there first," reported Vincent. "Let's just say he won't be kidnapping anyone again. Ever! I did find this though."

He handed the roll of paper to Juliet. She and Calvin unrolled it and scanned its contents.

"This is everything we have that has anything to do with the Ring," Calvin exclaimed, "and a few others! And the Eratosthenes manuscript is second? We looked at that months ago: it's unique, but it has nothing to do with the ring!"

"Maybe they want to sell it: it would raise millions of dollars on the black market," suggested Juliet.

"Dorna don't need to steal to raise funds," murmured Vincent, "They have enough resources, believe me!"

"Maybe there's something we missed," mused Calvin. "Once we realised what it was, and that it was stable, we put it to one side to focus on the Jerusalem finds; then that led us to Alaska and so on."

"Dorna went after these two items together," Vincent pointed out. "They knew the location of the Templar scroll even when we did not, and they moved in there at the same time as others in their organisation went after Ibrahim. It is only by chance that both items found their way into your hands instead. Dorna came after our finds at Jerusalem too, but they waited for us to do the heavy lifting first. What is different about these two?"

Cal and Juliet exchanged a glance.

"We were going to tell the Professor when we finished the translation," began Juliet.

"We don't think Dorna are going after the Ring," continued Calvin, "at least not directly."

"We think…"

The rattle of wheels turned into the corridor and Juliet broke off, looking round then rising to her feet and dragging Cal with her.

"Professor Zond!"

Solomon Zond lay still and silent on the bed, alive, but unconscious. The hospital porter and a doctor steered the bed round the corner into the empty private room. Vincent, Calvin and Juliet followed them in, but were stopped at the door by a wave of the doctor's hand.

"Dad!" Nikko exclaimed, pushing himself off the wall of the small room. "Dad, can you hear me? He's still out. Why's he still out? What's wrong?"

Raising placating hands to the young man, as the orderly fixed the bed into place, the doctor led Nikko to the side. "Your father is in a medically induced coma. He has some swelling that is putting pressure on his brain. This should help relieve that pressure and allow the swelling to go down without causing too much damage."

"He has brain damage?" Nikko blurted, latching on to two familiar words from the jumble.

"Not much, and not permanently if this works," replied the doctor. "The brain is a highly complex organ, constantly producing new pathways. Your father received what we call a traumatic brain injury. Some damage is to be expected. That may take the form of mild post-traumatic amnesia that has no long term repercussions, or may have more serious consequences."

"Such as?" Maggie asked from the one seat in the room, having already been declared 'family' when the ambulance first arrived at the hospital.

"The worst area of damage was the left temporal lobe," explained the doctor. "One of the functions associated with this is recall of general knowledge. Specific facts like how many planets are in the solar system, what a giraffe is, that sort of thing. If there is damage to the area, the patient may have difficulty accessing those facts. In many cases, the brain can form new pathways to access the information, but in worst case scenarios the information has to be completely relearned."

"I see," nodded Maggie. "When will we know?"

"The truth is, we won't know for sure until Professor Zond wakes up," admitted the doctor. She turned back to Nikko. "Please, do not assume the worst. It is a possibility, and one which you do need to prepare yourself for, but it is also just that: a possibility, not a certainty. Your father's chances are good, but we do need to keep him like this for some time if they are going to be as good as we can make them."

"How long?" Nikko asked, swallowing.

"How long is a piece of string?" The doctor offered a comforting smile. "We will be monitoring his progress constantly. The next day or so should tell us more. Now I know you will want to spend some time with your father, but please be assured: we will contact you before reducing his medication, and it will take some time once we do that for him to wake up. You can take time to rest, eat and go about whatever else you have to do at home or work."

When the doctor left, the others crowded in, demanding information. It was Maggie that filled them in though. Nikko stood, as silent and still as his father, holding on to Solomon's hand. Update complete, silence descended on the room. Eyes shifted from Solomon to Nikko, to Maggie, to Vincent. Eventually, it was Calvin who spoke.

"Dorna are going after the Sacred City," he announced. "Not the Ring. Juliet spotted a pattern. We were going to tell, well, everyone, once we finished the translation."

"The Sacred City?" Maggie frowned. "Where Haley…"

"Where my Mom vanished," finished Nikko, his voice leaden. "You're telling me this city is what they've been after, all this time? Not the Ring we've been busting our asses to get before they do? This city, that has already cost me one parent, is why the other is now lying in a coma?"

"Why chase after the Ring when we are already doing all the hard work," mused Vincent. "Much easier to let us assemble the Ring, then steal it from us."

"But the more parts of the Ring we get, the stronger Nikko becomes," pointed out Cal.

"No, but they don't know that," corrected Juliet. "They don't, do they, Vincent?"

"No, my source says they do not," he confirmed. "What are you thinking?"

"What if we've got it backwards," she continued. "We translated conduit and thought it meant Nikko: what if it's the other way round. What if the Ring is the conduit: the thing that lets the bearer control or access their powers. What if the Sacred City is the source of that power. In Haley's story and in the Nabatean version, the lonely god wandered the world in search of companionship. He endured all manner of hardships and trials that would have killed an ordinary human being. When he found the companionship he was looking for, however, he set his immortality and his powers aside and became human. We've been thinking he put his power in the Ring. What if he put it somewhere else? What if he hid his power in the Sacred City? I think that's what Dorna is after. Get to the source first, get the power. Then, when you have the power, go after the thing that lets you control it!"

"But they don't know Nikko already has that power," added Calvin. "If he has it, then there's nothing for them to find. We win: they've already lost the race!"

"No," murmured Nikko from his father's side. All heads turned to him.

"Why not?" Vincent asked softly. "What are you thinking?"

Nikko was already studying his father's features as if they were a puzzle waiting to be put back together. He looked down and let his eyes fall closed. "I can't heal him," he admitted, as if confessing to a crime. "Believe me: I've tried. If I had the powers of a god, I'd be able to do more than just move things with my mind. I'd be able to heal him, like I was healed when I got shot. I can't."

Juliet shrugged. "Maybe, if the Ring were whole…"

"No," Nikko shook his head again. "It's not that. At least: not just that. Why would anyone, human or god, hide all that power in the one place, but the thing that lets you control it in so many different places? You'd do it the other way round, wouldn't you? I think he did both. I think he split the ring, but also split the power. I was dying in Siberia, but then I found that cave, a cave with legends about it saving lives, and mine was saved. I think, maybe, that was where he hid his immortality. The light that hit me when Mom disappeared, well, maybe that was another aspect of his power. We never got beyond the door. Why would there be a door with nothing behind it?"

"So we go back to the city where your Mom disappeared and we find out," suggested Calvin. "Then we try and find out where he hid the rest."

Nikko nodded. His eyes fell to his father's face once more.

"You can do nothing here, Nikko," murmured Vincent, a hand coming to rest on Nikko's shoulder. "But if we find the city first…"

Nikko shook his head. "The city collapsed," he said, not looking round. "It's buried under tons of rubble now."

"Luckily," smiled Vincent, "I know a guy…"