Before leaving the jungle, they had taken care not to accidentally transmit even a shred of plant fiber away from the infested zone, which meant stripping nearly naked and leaving everything behind. It was a small price to pay to ensure that the species would not gain a foothold somewhere else. Once back in the WHO facility in Monrovia, scrubbed clean and salved with a topical ointment, the scientists under Carter’s leadership had wasted no time analyzing the plant. They researched the possibility that it might be some naturally occurring mutation, while they waited for the arrival of the high-tech equipment Carter had requested. Pierce had little to do but sit and worry, while he waited for Dourado to run down the Cerberus group.
He had contemplated returning to the citadel, but he rejected that course of action. There was nothing he could do there, not without Carter’s help at least, and he had not entirely given up hope of recruiting her into the Herculean fold.
There was also the problem of what to do about Lazarus. The man whom he had once known as Bishop clearly wanted the rest of the world to believe that he was deceased, but Pierce could not imagine keeping such knowledge a secret from Jack Sigler, his best friend and Fiona’s father. But Lazarus had saved him from certain death. Pierce owed him a chance to explain, at the very least.
He found Lazarus on the roof, alone, stripped bare to the waist and seated in a lotus position, eyes closed and deep in meditation. The tableau was so surreal, so incongruous, that Pierce almost forgot why he had sought the other man out. Feeling like an intruder, he was about to turn away when something caught his eye, prompting him to take a second look.
Lazarus’s arms and bare chest were splotched with patches of stark white, much like Pierce’s own. The big man had applied the same healing ointment as the other survivors from the jungle nightmare.
Why?
Bishop…Lazarus…whatever he wanted to call himself…had gone missing at the bottom of Lake Kivu, at a crushing depth of more than 1,200 feet. The only possible explanation for his survival was that his body still retained the effects of Ridley’s regenerative serum. But if that was true, why had he treated the chemical burns on his skin?
He should have healed within seconds.
“Do you know why I chose the name Lazarus?”
The low voice startled Pierce. The sound was like a rumble of distant thunder, yet the big man had spoken almost without moving a muscle. Pierce looked up and saw that the man’s eyes were still closed.
“I…ah, assumed it was a Biblical reference. Lazarus died, but Jesus brought him back to life. Just like you. Back from the dead.”
Lazarus’s dark eyes opened slowly to meet Pierce’s gaze. “Four days.”
Pierce thought he understood the reference. In the Bible story, Lazarus had been dead and buried for four days before being raised.
“He didn’t take it away,” the big man went on, in the same dispassionate but haunting tone. “We all thought he did, but it’s a part of me, and it always will be. All he did…was slow it down.”
‘He’ could only mean Richard Ridley. In the early days of his insane experiments, the scientist had sought to isolate the DNA sequences that gave certain creatures like sea stars and salamanders the ability to fully reconstitute damaged tissue, even regrowing lost limbs. In nature, that process took time and a great deal of energy, no different than the recovery period for any injury. Ridley had found a way to ramp up the effect until it was almost instantaneous, but the pain, physical and mental, of both the injury and the accelerated healing, was magnified to a point beyond the capacity of an ordinary human’s tolerance. The man who now called himself Erik Lazarus had not exactly been ordinary, though. His capacity for dealing with pain had been nothing short of astonishing, but even he had a breaking point.
If what Lazarus was saying was true, then Ridley — using the Mother Tongue — had not stripped away the regenerative ability, but merely dialed it back to something more like the natural rate of healing. Which meant that if Lazarus sustained a serious injury or maiming, he would still recover, but it might take days or even weeks.
Pierce struggled to wrap his brain around the revelation. He could only imagine what it would feel like to drown, and then a few minutes or perhaps hours later, have the spark of life return for a frantic moment, only to be doused again.
“Four days,” Lazarus repeated. “That’s probably how long it took for me to reach the surface.”
Four days at the bottom of a lake, drowning, dying and then waking up to do it all over again…and again.
“Felice believes that decomposition must have started. It happens that way sometimes. The cells break down and release gases that make a drowned body buoyant enough to float to the surface.”
Pierce shuddered involuntarily. “That’s…” He could not find the words.
Lazarus shrugged. “One of the good things about being dead is that it switches off the black box. I have no memories of what happened. I woke up in a marsh on the edge of the lake. Probably got dragged there by a scavenger. After that, I remember everything.”
He fell silent, as if daring Pierce to ask for more. Pierce did not. He had an idea now of why the man had not returned to his old life. Part of him, the part that was Erik Somers, was still dead, left behind at the bottom of Lake Kivu.
“I won’t…” Pierce faltered, sucked in a breath and tried again. “I won’t tell Jack, if that’s what you want.”
Lazarus stared back for several seconds, and then unfolded himself and rose to his feet. “You said Fiona is missing. Is there any news?”
Pierce would not have thought the conversation could become any more awkward, but the change in subject snapped him back to the helplessness he had felt since Dourado’s call. “Nothing.”
“Fiona is family to me. I’ll do whatever I can to get her back.”
24
The translation went quickly, so quickly that Gallo was at a loss to determine how Kenner had convinced Tyndareus that he needed her to do it. A first year student could have done the work in a few days with nothing more than a dictionary and a copy of the Iliad for reference. Like the works officially attributed to Homer, the Heracleia was a non-linear narrative in dactylic hexameter, a classical poetry scheme that measured out the syllables of each line. The method served not only an aesthetic purpose but also a practical one, facilitating the memorization of long epic poems that were primarily handed down orally. Gallo did most of the work in her head, consulting external translation resources only to verify her interpretation of a few tricky passages.
Kenner sat beside her the whole time. Rohn kept his vigil from a distance, but neither man interrupted her. She was provided with a light meal and as much coffee as she could drink, and she was assured that Fiona would be taken care of, as well. After three hours of perusing scans of the old papyrus pages, she completed her first pass.
“This is more or less what you thought it was,” she told Kenner. “The life story of Herakles.” Part of it anyway, she thought, but did not say aloud. “There’s no mention of ‘Labors’—that was probably something added later. But it does recount his battles against the children of Typhon — the chthonic monsters. After killing several of them, he embarked on a ten-year-long voyage to find Echidna, the mother of the monsters, in Erebus. The darkness, which was another name for the Underworld. I suspect that very round figure might be a slight exaggeration. Poetic license. But it certainly took a very long time for him to reach his destination. The gates of the Underworld, where he captured the three-headed hellhound.” She paused a beat and then added, “Cerberus.”