Part IV
Several hours after her meeting with the heads of the Executors and the Assembly of the 8th Sacrament, and having already decided on the plan of action, Narbareck found herself in another centre of power of the Holy Church as she continued to gather the pieces needed for the hunt. But this place was a world apart from the stately salons and halls of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.
It was a vast underground complex, located deep under the Castel Sant'Angelo, right in the heart of Rome. A maze of corridors, rooms, and shafts shaped like a reverse pyramid, sprawling over several acres and seven levels beneath the ground, it was the centre of the Church's military arm.
The complex - most of which had been built during the Cold War by the Italian government as shelters and a command centre in case of a nuclear exchange, and then almost immediately bought by the Holy See - comprised offices, training grounds, armouries, an espionage centre, research laboratories, messes, a chapel, underground garages, and various other facilities necessary for running an international force numbering hundreds, if not thousands of agents.
From here the Church coordinated its spy network, its Knights' Orders, and elite Executors, ensuring that all emergencies and threats to Christendom by supernatural and demonic forces were dealt with swiftly and effectively. It was a face of the Vatican that no one from the normal world had ever seen a secret army about whose existence several authors of conspiracy theory novels speculated, but no one save a small circle of privileged individuals within the Church actually knew of.
Just like the Mage's Association took great effort in concealing the existence of a thriving community of practitioners of magecraft scattered throughout the world, the Holy Church's existence was to be kept secret from the public at all costs.
After entering the complex through one of the plain, Church-owned buildings surrounding the Castel, Narbareck descended down to the seventh level of the complex, over 150 feet beneath the streets of Rome.
The corridor outside the elevator was bathing in the cold white and blue light of the fluorescent bulbs. One other person was also in the corridor, walking in the direction of the elevator. The seventh level was only for the select few who were working on research and development of new anti-vampiric weapons for the Church, so it was no wonder that the hallways were mostly empty.
Narbareck stepped forward into the hall, a large silver briefcase in hand. She had changed her clothes before coming here, and instead of her usual black and white habit, a black leather coat fluttered behind her as she made her way through the hallway and towards the elevator doors on the other end of the corridor. A pair of army boots creaked against the polyester floor, alerting the other man, who had previously been staring intently at a file in his hand, of her presence.
'Captain.'
He nodded to Narbareck and quickly moved out of her way. She didn't even acknowledge the man's presence, and just speeded by. The elevator doors on the far end of the corridor were sealed, and required a security code to open. Only two people in the world - numbers 1 and 2 of the Burial Agency - knew the code needed to enter the elevator, which led to the deepest, eight floor of the complex.
Narbareck quickly typed in the eight-digit code, anxious to get to the lowest level as soon as possible. She was brimming with excitement, but managed to conceal it rather well. On the outside, she was cold and collected. Only a fiery glint in her emerald eyes betrayed her true emotions.
The sealed doors slowly spread open to the loud hiss of pressurised air being forced through the pneumatic mechanism inside them. Narbareck stepped inside the small elevator cabin. After a short ride downwards, the elevator stopped; doors slid open, and Narbareck entered the corridor outside.
The light was weaker here compared to the previous level. The walls and the floor were bare concrete, but there was no moss. Pale fluorescent bulbs shed eerie light over the narrow hallway. There were no side corridors, nor doors leading to other rooms. Save for one. At the opposite end of the hall, half-hidden in shadows because the weak light barely reached that far corner of the hallway, was a single door.
It was a bulky, steel hatch door, not unlike those found on ships and submarines, secured by a rotating lever. To the right of the door, there was another panel for entering authorisation code. And beneath it, a small keyhole.
Narbareck approached the hatch door and entered the eight digit code again. Once she had done so, a green light next to the keyhole started blinking, to which she took a key from the inner pocket of her coat. A plain key at first glance, it bore the insignia of the 120th Cardinal – the commander of the Church's Executors.
A turn of the key was followed by loud metallic noise from the doors. Narbareck pulled the lever and opened the hatch.
Just a few yards behind it was another door, identical to the first one. And again Narbareck entered the code and took out a key from her coat. This key was marked by the mark of the secret Assembly of the Eight Sacrament – the Holy Church's division responsible for retrieval, research, and managing of sacred relics and Scriptures. The key was turned, the lever pulled, and the second hatch opened. Finally, Narbareck found herself in front of the third door.
The key for the third door was her own; she kept it with her at all times, except when the Number 2 of the Agency requested its use. Unlike the silvery keys of the 120th Cardinal and the head of the Assembly, the key of the Director of the Burial Agency had no marks or insignia - it was a simple, charcoal black key.
She repeated the opening procedure for the third time.
A sudden flood of bright white light made her squint. Nevertheless, she stepped forward into the room behind the third door. After a few seconds her eyes got accustomed to the strong light inside the room, allowing her to see the inside of the hall clearly.
It was probably the most strange and surreal room imaginable; circular, dozens of yards wide, bathing in the light of over a hundred light bulbs attached to the low ceiling.
The walls, the floor, and the ceiling were all white, discombobulating anyone who entered the room. But most peculiar of all, the room was a labyrinth; hundreds of mirrors, all about as tall and wide as a person, were arranged throughout the room in form of an intricate maze, with dozens of dead end corridors.
The maze was shaped like a spiral, its halls converging towards a single small open space in the centre of the room; this spot was Narbareck's final destination.
She managed to navigate her way through the maze splendidly, and reached its focal point in no time. A thick wall of mirrors encircled the central opening, leaving only a few tiny cracks between the neighbouring mirrors, which allowed one to see the area that they enclosed.
And the sight was a most grotesque one.
In the very middle of the opening there was a cylindrical water tank, and inside it what looked like the remains of a human body.
A brain and a spinal cord - almost fully developed - were floating in the liquid inside the tank, connected by bundles of nerves to a collection of organs: heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and some of the intestines. While the first traces of the skeleton ( like the vertebrae and the ribs )had already started to grow, there wasn't any skin, muscles, or eyes.
The organs were connected, via a myriad of tubes, pipes, and wires, intertwined and forming an intricate web inside the water tank, to numerous medical life-support machines and devices lined up next to the circle of mirrors.
Narbareck had only seen this bizarre place once before, back when she took over as the leader of the Burial Agency. She remembered the strange feeling of awe she felt back then, for that same feeling overtook her mind and body as she gazed at the grotesque collection of entrails in the middle of this hall of mirrors.
The remains of El Nahat, one of the Twenty Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors.
This vampire's unique ability to destroy his enemies no matter how strong, along with his main body - and still retain the ability to regenerate over time as long as his stomach remained - was deemed useful by the Church, which is why his stomach had been ripped out, and transformed into a Holy Scripture in the form of a book.
Alien Stomach World.
The Scripture did not possess the exact same amount of destructive firepower as its original owner; in fact, the power of the Scripture was directly proportional to how far El Nahat had managed to regenerate his main body by the point when the Scripture would be activated, which meant that in order to be of any use, the Stomach World could only be used once every few decades.
The medical devices that supported El Nahat's body weren't really necessary, but they did speed the regeneration process up a little.
Still, even with its downsides, it was the Church's final weapon against the Dead Apostles, a tool of unfathomable power, and Narbareck was genuinely ecstatic to have finally gotten a chance to use it.
She entered the central area through a narrow opening between the mirrors, and approached a small desk that stood in front of the water thank that held El Nahat's body.
On the desk lay a simple, black book.