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  Nina pinched her eyes shut. Gretchen prayed to all the gods she had ever rejected. Sam wondered how his latest acolyte killed her husband. Suddenly they were all jerked viciously from their seats on the bath’s edge and not a moment later they woke in a dark hall with a burning buzz running through their veins.

  “Good God, that wasn’t painful at all, was it?” Nina huffed as she caught her breath. The four of them sat up, trying to deal with the agony of minor electrocution.

  “Wow! No way, doll! Look at that!” Gretchen said in awe. Her eyes were trying to get used to the dark, but she could see what it was. The stupefying vision astonished all four of them.

  “Unbelievable! Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Nina asked, as her eyes took in the giant cavernous belly of the spaceship they were in. “It’s a fucking UFO! Look at all the records in discs and servers! Not books after all, and yet . . . ”

  “Are we in the Library of Forbidden Books?” Sam asked, pinching his eyes and holding his still tender bullet wound with his hand. All around he saw the intricate engineering of a spacecraft held together by alien technology and metals he had never seen before. “Am I right in guessing that the ancient library sank under Venice . . . .before Venice even existed?”

  “Yes, you are, Mr. Cleave.”

  He knew that voice and perked up to see better.

  “Agatha?” Nina asked.

  “Who’s Agatha?” Gretchen asked.

  “Long story,” Nina told her friend. “I thought you were dead!”

  “I was, in essence. But I am almost human now,” Agatha said bitterly.

  If she is here, her brother could be here too, Sam thought. Jesus, he’d kill me if he saw me.

  “Hello, Sam!” Purdue spoke behind him and Sam almost had a heart attack.

  Sam turned and attempted a smile, “Hey, Purdue.”

  Dave Purdue had a waterproof bag in his hand and his eyes immediately found Nina.

  “Nina, how are you?” he smiled.

  Nina’s eyes jumped between Sam and Purdue a few times as she tried to decide how to react, but ultimately she jumped up and gave Purdue a platonic hug. She was not going to deny that she was glad to see that he was alive after being delivered to the council by Sam when they returned from the Atlantis excursion. In actual fact, Sam too was relieved to see that Purdue had not been executed. He merely wanted him out of the running for Nina, but the guilt had been killing him while he thought he had the millionaire killed just for moving in on the girl he wanted.

  “This is all very sweet,” Richard said dryly.

  “Oh, come now, Pasty,” Sam nudged him, “you can get a hug too.”

  “I see you have already retrieved the correct codes for Dr. Meiner to engineer the last part of the strain.” Richard remarked, pointing at Purdue’s bag.

  “And you are?” Purdue asked.

  “Oh, apologies. Where are my manners? I am Dr. Richard Philips, a scientist and historian from the United States, visiting on a lecturing sabbatical,” the pale, thin man chuckled awkwardly. “I know who you are though, Mr. Purdue. I have read much about your interesting explorations and adventures.”

  “How do you know about Alfred Meiner then?” Purdue asked.

  “Oh, it’s a long old story. My grandfather met Meiner as a young man after the Second World War and the old scientist became his mentor, I suppose,” Richard grinned coyly, his eyes firmly on Purdue’s satchel in the darkness of the meager flashlights.

  “I hate to break up this party, but there are things to do here,” Sam announced, looking at Nina.

  “They are done,” Purdue attested coldly to Sam.

  “Really? . . . Renatus,” Sam asked with menace that sent a jolt though Nina.

  “What the fuck?” she frowned, and pulled away from Dave Purdue. Gretchen had no idea what was going on.

  “Not for long, I hear,” Richard mentioned casually.

  “Wait, wait!” Nina shouted. “What is going on?”

  “You did not know that Purdue is the new leader of the Black Sun?” Sam asked Nina, thoroughly enjoying her repulsion at the news, wedging her love even further from Purdue.

  “Is that true?” she shrieked at Purdue, her hands shivering on her chest.

  “Nina,” Purdue said, as gently as he could, “they were going to kill me, thanks to your boyfriend Sam Cleave’s assistance in having me apprehended.”

  One for Cleave. One for Purdue. Nina could not believe her ears. She joined Gretchen and buried her face in her friend’s neck. “Please, God, don’t tell me you are also in on some insidious shit, Gretch.”

  “Nope. I’m as confused as a bag of moths, doll.”

  “Nina, they made me Renatus to keep me from destroying the Longinus. It was a ploy to punish me, I swear!” Purdue tried to explain to a confounded Nina. “Jaap Roodt, one of the members of the council who tortured and brainwashed my poor sister and almost killed her—he made me Renatus!”

  “Brainwashed?” Agatha gasped. She grabbed Purdue’s satchel and tossed it to Richard Philips. “Well, maybe just a little.”

  Purdue’s jaw dropped. He knew she had been turned, but he never expected her to be in league with the tall, wan stranger who he had only seen in pictures with Alfred Meiner. She had a pistol in her hand that she pulled from her zipper pocket. Before he could utter his disgust at Agatha, the craft’s artificial intelligence awoke and the white brightness blinded them all. Richard grabbed Nina and pulled her through the wormhole before she could resist.

  “Nina!” Sam shouted in desperate panic. Purdue dove for the watery gate, but it closed before he could reach it. Gretchen was pulled with Nina, and Purdue’s carefully collected data was lost to Richard Philips and Alfred Meiner.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Agatha said, brandishing her pistol at Sam and Purdue.

  “I see there are no bounds to your treachery, David Purdue,” the voice echoed again, perfectly aware of what had happened before it was disengaged.

  Sam jumped and swirled defensively, “What’s that?”

  “The librarian,” Purdue said nonchalantly. Sam frowned at him, receiving only a shrug and a helpless nod from Purdue.

  “I believe you have removed more information from my data banks. This is going to be a catastrophe for your breed, but as always, humankind will find ways to make itself extinct,” the voice remarked.

  “You should not believe that just yet, my friend,” Purdue smiled. “I take it you are here to destroy the library, Sam?”

  “It’s the only way to stop you and your persistent band of SS sycophants, Renatus,” Sam gritted his teeth.

  “Well done, then, but I beat you to it,” Purdue grinned proudly. “Jaap Roodt is going to be the worst Renatus in history, when Alfred Meiner finds out that the data that pasty idiot took him is completely corrupted. In fact, they are going to slap together just enough genetic coding to bake a cake.”

  Sam could not help it.

  “Jaap Roodt is dead as a doornail, old boy.”

  He burst out laughing along with Purdue in the middle of the super-advanced spacecraft’s records room where their twisted fortune reverberated. When they ceased their laughing, they realized that their kinship was preordained and really quite resilient.

  “What do we do about the library? Seems a waste to obliterate so much knowledge,” Sam said.

  “Look what the Tree of Knowledge did, Sam. We now have the opportunity to rewrite that faux biblical fuckup, eh?” Purdue persuaded in his usual charming way.

  “Suicide for the good of humankind?” Sam lamented. “I miss Nina already.”

  “Me too, old buck,” Purdue agreed. “Let’s go visit her.”

  “That is impossible,” the librarian asserted.

  “No, it is improbable, Officer Greenly,” Purdue said.

  Agatha was astounded. “Who the hell is Officer Greenly, David?”

  “The Allied soldier doomed to stay behind and mind the records—the librarian,” Purdue revealed. “But if he could
find it in his wisdom to let me and Sam travel through that wormhole, we’d be happy to sacrifice a little something for his freedom.”

  “I’m listening,” it said plainly.

  “Well, my sister, Agatha, has always been a librarian. And now that she has such a thirst for knowledge in addition to being too dangerous to be trusted out in the world, she would make a perfect candidate as the new librarian, wouldn’t you say?” Purdue presented.

  “Genius,” Sam muttered, smiling.

  “You can’t do that!” Agatha screamed, aiming at her brother. Shots sounded, but not a single bullet appeared from her gun.

  “I was onto you before I had you released. All that my sister was died in Bloem’s dungeon. You were just a cheap replica, a shadow of who she used to be. Besides, you were planning to kill me so that your pals Meiner and Roodt and . . . ”

  “Pasty,” Sam helped him.

  “Yes, Pasty, the anorexic boy, could make Roodt the new Renatus after the completion of Final Solution 2, Agatha. Why don’t you serve a decent purpose? Become the librarian.”

  Under the rotten wood foundations of Venice a celestial rumble ensued, terrifying the perplexed people of the city. The authorities had no idea where it came from, but the news wrote it off as a minor earthquake. Italy would never know what magnitude of infinite knowledge she held—a blessing dressed as curse.

  41

  Nina and Gretchen awoke from the ice-cold water on their faces. Greeting them was the nightmarish face of the emaciated Dr. Alfred Meiner. Just to his left towered the calm face of the traitorous Dr. Philips. The women were unable to speak, even breathe properly, their mouths and throats clipped down on the silver steel slabs with titanium straps. They were naked, save for their underwear and their bodies shivered madly from the cold water and steel under them in the greenish lighting of the laboratory.

  “May I introduce Dr. Nina Gould and Professor Gretchen Mueller,” Richard introduced them. “Ladies, this is the brilliant Dr. Alfred Meiner.”

  On his desk, the data records and attic books lay scattered as the two men had finally accumulated the code markers and assembled the deadly strain XT8 according to the instructions of various texts and formulas.

  Nina wanted to see her friend, but she could only hear her whimpering. Other than that, she could only listen to the men discussing two things—testing XT8, the strain that would eradicate most of the planet’s population, and the fate of Renatus and the investigative journalist who had been trudging over the Black Sun’s plans for far too long.

  “They will never escape the hidden library. Now we can rest assured there is no-one to counter our efforts anymore. Jaap Roodt had disappeared. Probably went underground. I suppose it is time for a new Renatus,” Richard Philips said.

  “And who better than the descendant of the father of our beliefs? I am firmly behind you, Dr. Philips. Your father could not sway the scepter, but you will!” the creepy deformed sadist huffed through his weird mask. The women could do absolutely nothing against their restraints. A tear grew from the corner of Nina’s eye as she listened, learning that Sam and Purdue were forever caught in the sunken library, while she was about to die a gruesome Nazi death. How poetic was this!

  From her peripheral she could see Meiner approach Gretchen, syringe in hand.

  “We just need one trial. This one might have the right genes, but even if she doesn’t, we have more to work on after these two esteemed antagonists have been disposed of,” Dr. Meiner hissed through his mask.

  “Get to it, then. ARK will be ready to lock up in less than a day,” Richard said.

  Nina heard nothing after that. It was quiet for what felt like an eternity. Then, the sound she wished she would never hear. Next to her, out of her scope of vision, Gretchen groaned.

  “There, fifty milligrams administered,” Meiner reported and Philips took note on a yellow paper pad. “How long it will take remains to be seen, because this is the liquid, not the airborne agent.”

  Gretchen started to scream. Her eyes and gums dried out within a minute and her eyelids caved in over the collapse. “Peculiar,” Richard Philips noted. Her body started to convulse under muscle spasms so violent that her bones snapped. Nina sobbed, furious and terrified for her friend, helpless to end her suffering.

  “That is not what it is supposed to do, Philips. You imbecile! What did you bring me? A rapid-acting dehydration compound? Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” Meiner screamed like a squealing pig. He jabbed at Philips with the needle, but Philips pulled his mask off and flicked on the lights, leaving the monstrous Nazi doctor shrieking on the floor. Gretchen’s bones snapped, her jaw dislocated, and her wailing escalated. Nina was going to lose her mind. It was the most abhorrent thing she had ever had to play witness to. Her eyes welled with tears and no matter how she jerked her limbs, the restraints were too strong.

  Suddenly a deafening gunshot rang in the laboratory and Gretchen was instantly silent, free of her agony. Through distorted vision and tears, Nina saw Sam’s dark eyes peek over her. It couldn’t be, could it? He unlatched the mouthpiece and throat restraint that was holding her, but he sped to help Purdue before undoing all her bonds.

  “Hurry! Get them! Sam, come help me!” Nina heard Purdue shouting from the doorway. “After what they did to Nina’s friend, the bastards deserve so much worse.”

  Nina tried to turn her head to see what her two friends were up to. Unfortunately she laid eyes on Gretchen’s sunken, mutilated body, still expelling water, blood, and bodily fluids onto the floor. It was too much. She fell to the other side with her head and shoulders and vomited profusely. Her belly ached as much as her heart to see Gretchen like that, and all because she came to visit Nina. It made her sick to know that she was the cause of her friend’s brutal demise, but she could still not move.

  Through the awful sounds of the putrefying corpse, Nina could hear Purdue and Sam argue about how to position the evil men to get them into the still open wormhole. She turned her head, taking care not to look at Gretch. On the other side of the laboratory, she saw Sam and Purdue secure (to a laboratory desk that was bolted to the floor) a leg and an arm of the unconscious Philips and Meiner.

  Meiner woke just before Philips, but by the time they realized what was going on, it was too late. Purdue shoved the men into the entrance of the wormhole, and it began to teleport parts of their bodies inside the portal, leaving the rest behind.

  “Just like that. Now, let’s get Nina!” Sam urged Purdue.

  They undid her holds and pulled her up. Her legs were too weak to carry her, and she was shaking from the shock of what happened to Gretchen, so Sam swooped her up and carried her, ignoring his bullet-weakened leg.

  “You want to see what happened?” Purdue asked her. “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Sam chimed in, “It’s always encouraging to see evil men suffer, and no, I don’t care if that makes me evil.”

  “I just want to get away from here,” Nina croaked weakly against Sam’s chest.

  “You heard the lady,” Purdue said. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

  They exited the subterranean laboratory as briskly as they could, serenaded by the awful wailing of the two half-alive scientists caught in their own macabre contraptions. Behind them the high tide came in.

  “Looks like the island is about to be flooded,” Sam said, as he got on a boat docked there by one of ARK’s unfortunate occupants.

  “Pity I am terrible at reading blueprints, you know,” Purdue complained as he started the boat with his tablet’s laser manipulator.

  “Why? I thought you were a master mason,” Sam said. “Look, the galley has coffee!”

  “I’d love some, please, Sam,” Nina said softly.

  The three of them cruised over the Adriatic Sea in the posh yacht belonging to one of the members of the Black Sun; one of those wicked, wealthy, and hateful Nazis hiding in ARK and waiting for the outside world population to die. But there was no genocidal happy ending for Italy’s or
der members. In fact, the biblical flood had a second serving of evil to flush out.

  “What do you mean you are bad at reading blueprints?” Nina asked timidly, as her hands hugged her coffee cup.

  “When I oversaw the construction of ARK, I might have neglected to close the bottom sluices after lockdown,” Purdue said with a shrug.

  “Oh, my,” Nina replied. “That could be problematic.”

  “Right about now, in fact,” Sam said, looking at his watch. “I hope they can hold their breath for the duration of aqua alta.”

  “In Venice?” Nina asked.

  “No, in ARK,” Sam chuckled.

  “I’m so sorry about Gretchen,” Sam said. Purdue joined them on the deck as they entered the rising swells of the deep sea.

  “I’m sorry about Agatha,” she told Purdue. He sighed, a slight catch in his throat as his eyes looked over Sam and Nina’s heads and scanned the cool blue horizon, “Some knowledge is just too powerful for human fallacy. Lust for power will always make of wisdom a dangerous weapon.” He thought of his bland, sarcastic sister and the Nazi version of her he had left behind.

  “Some wonderful things are simply better buried forever.”

  The End

  TOMB OF ODIN

  “In this temple, entirely decked out in gold, the people worship the statues of three gods in such ways that the mightiest of them, Thor, occupies a throne in the middle of the chamber; Wotan and Frikko have places on either side. ( . . . ) Thor, they say, presides over the air, which governs the thunder and lightning, the winds and rains, fair weather [and] crops. The other, Wotan—that is, Fury [Wodan, id est furor]—carries on war and imparts to man strength against his enemies. The third is Frikko, who bestows peace and pleasure on mortals. His likeness, too, they fashion with an immense phallus.”

  ~ Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum

  (Deeds of the Bishop of Hamburg) circa 1081

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