Nina raced back to the intercom and pressed the button to call Security.
“Yes, madam?”
“Is she still there? The woman who came to see me…” she asked hastily, hoping to see the visitor anyway and ascertain the purpose of her early morning rant at Nina’s home.
“I’m afraid not, Dr. Gould. She just left. She was pretty upset to be turned away, I must admit,” he explained.
“Did she leave her contact details?” Nina asked.
“No, madam. She refused to leave anything if she could not see you right away,” he replied in a subdued tone, well aware that Nina would not be happy about it. He was correct.
“Great! Did you even bother to take her plate number?” she asked in a raised voice that made the security guard deservedly nervous.
“N-no, I… I did not, Dr. Gould,” he stammered.
“The make and model of her vehicle?” Nina asked abruptly, knowing the answer by the sound of his previous tone of voice.
“It was a silver 4x4, a Ford, but that is all we could see,” he reported.
“What do you mean, ‘all you could see’?” Nina frowned, leaning against the wall as she tried to make sense of it.
“The vehicle did not come up to the gates, Dr. Gould. It parked well away from the premises and the woman walked up to us, so we could not see it too well from here,” he clarified with more confidence. Nina thought on it for a moment. She had no reason to yell at the guard now. His lack of information seemed to be well founded in this case. Nina cleared her throat and replied, “Oh. Alright then, we’ll just wait to see if she comes back. Thank you.”
Perplexed by the visitor earlier that morning, Nina stepped out from the steaming shower, flicking her wet hair back from the wrapping of the towel. Her shape in the mirror was obscured by the steam and it sent her reeling back to when she was in the throes of the deadly fever from the arsenic. Everything had been hazy like the shape in the mirror, moving and gesturing, yet she had been so disorientated by her condition that she had hardly been able to determine what had been human and what an apparition. Now she felt much the same. Still under the malicious spell of the poison she often found herself unable to tell the difference between people and shadows, yet her doctor insisted that it was not her physiological perception, but her psyche that was failing her.
She was due at the clinic at 10am for her check-up, one of several she had had to undergo in the past year or so to monitor her progress. On the previous occasion the laboratory detected the strange content of her blood which facilitated the regeneration of her cells unlike that of normal blood. But Nina played dumb. She could hardly tell them that she had received a blood transfusion with the blood of a violently twisted psychopath who had been genetically altered by Nazi doctors to enhance her natural self-healing. It sounded like something right out of a science fiction graphic novel, and she was certain they wouldn’t hesitate to throw her pretty little ass into a loony bin.
For now, she was grateful to be alive, and as long as this shit somehow got the poison out of her system, she was taking it easy, just coasting through each day.
Chapter 2 — Lost in Nohra
The cries of the men echoed through the landscape, shouting orders and threats as they combed the wilderness. Dusk was fast approaching as they raced through the foliage and clawing branches that reached out over the small footpaths and the soles of their combat boots landed lightly in blunt thumps and crunching twigs. They knew the terrain very well, which was not a good thing for their human quarry, an intruder that fled the scene after they shot and killed four others. They pursued him relentlessly.
Miserable and lonely the sky stretched from one horizon to another above him, clear heavens void of any movement or life. No birds or clouds populated the pastel pink and blue overhead that hovered over the perilous woods below. With every descending hillock or sandy path the atmosphere chilled around his burning cheeks and chest as he ran for his life. In his right hand he clutched the evidence of their treachery and in his left he was still grasping a large broken brick. Breathing laboriously, their target wove from left to right through the meagre parts of the woods, hoping to evade them before the landscape opened up in a flat plain of weeds and rocks. Once a river, the dry bed was the border between their perimeter and the exposure of the national road where they could not follow.
His heart raced and his legs burned; the unsteady footing of his wet boots threatening injury with every leap over the uneven grass. Around him the cooling breeze rose as he neared open field and it stirred his hair. Sweat trickled into his eyes and blurred his vision, but he could not afford to stop. Then he heard something terrifying behind him and he listened closely to the barking to determine how far behind him they were.
“Dogs? Oh Christ, what’s next?” he panted desperately.
It occurred to Sam that he would have to change his plans, whether he wanted to or not. With those dogs on his tracks he would have no chance of making it across the open field toward the road. They would catch up to him in no time, so he had to veer right from his path, re-entering the cover of the low trees and the brush that carpeted the forest floor. He ran past the ruins of several old buildings from bygone eras, weakened by his fatigue. Sam was driven on only by his will to survive, because his body had run completely out of steam.
Now that he entered the deserted old village, barely more than a collection of concrete foundations and steel skeletons, he noticed how hungry he was. It was a totally inconvenient complaint of his body and he found it a nuisance as he navigated the lost lanes of the overgrown settlement.
Far off the dogs yelped, but the shouts had ceased. This was a cause for concern, because to Sam Cleave mercenaries were kind of like spiders — as long as he knew where they were, he knew where to flee to. But now that they were quiet there was no indication of their location. Gradually the forest grew darker, its shelter no solace for the investigative journalist. Not only would he have to worry about his chasers after dark, but the nocturnal cravings of the woodland animals. He had been to Germany before, but he hardly knew what kind of wildlife to fear out here. Sam decided to rest a while. As long as he was quiet he would be at some advantage.
He needed the rest in case he had to use the cover of night to brave the alien landscape to find salvation. There was no way he would spend the night here, sleeping. Not only was it unwise to continue on in morning light, but there was nothing that could convince him to sleep in one of the creepy ruins where many people no doubt must have died in past decades. Sam had never been superstitious, yet the past few years had swayed his opinion on the unseen forces of this world just a little — little enough for him to vehemently oppose a night out in a deserted village where God knows what was lurking once the place was draped in night.
Sam took shelter in what looked like an old shed. He sat down on a huge chunk of cement that had fallen from the crumbling side wall. Wincing in pain, he put the camera down next to him and wiggled his boot loose from his wet sock under which several blisters burned. First the one, then the other, he removed his boots and peeled the drenched socks from his wrinkled feet. Open blisters and the bright pink skin underneath greeted his eyes. Sam groaned as he removed his long sleeved shirt to dry his feet carefully. Under the shirt his vest was still relatively clean, save for the dusty sweat patches. Listening intently for any noise, he wrapped his feet in the shirt and gently dabbed them, clenching his teeth from the jolt of hell from the meeting of fabric on open tissue.