The eye of the lion

The black cloud of war was hovering over the world, but for us at that moment, there were more immediate problems to deal with.

Mark had driven us to within several hundred feet of Randall’s cabin, leaving the van hidden in a forest. He had brought some binoculars with him and approached the cabin to see if the place was safe. But his hunch was spot-on. A couple of men in the cabin and several more hidden outside, were patiently awaiting our return in order to eliminate us. Blond men in black suits.

We couldn’t go back there. We had to convince them we’d died in the NETGEN factory explosions.

Things were getting very ugly. We had nowhere to go, we were wounded and we couldn’t go to a hospital or clinic. We didn’t have much money either. We had to do something, and fast.

Jessica gave us a glimpse of hope. Her uncle Edward, a surgeon, lived near London. She hadn’t seen him in almost a decade, but he was our only hope at that moment. So we made our way there. Randall wasn’t giving us much reason to hope, and the truth was that I was starting to feel terrible. In fact, I fainted again.

It was at that time, in the midst of the darkness of unconsciousness, that images and sounds came to me.

As though in slow motion, I re-lived fragments of the events I’d gone through hours previously, but as though in a film that fast-forwarded and rewound alternately.

I saw myself again in that room in Waiss’ factory, looking with terror at the apparition of Edward Kelly. His voice boomed and distorted in my ears as he spoke in the tenor voice of a crazy prophet. I saw Kratz pointing his gun at us, that glacial look going right through us. And the sound of a volcano, getting louder and louder and shaking us to the bone, deafening us.

And then in the midst of the delirium, my photographic memory intruding on my subconscious, boldly throwing out notes taken on the fly, in the throes of death. Remnants of reality trapped by my retina without me realizing, now projected in the midst of my fever, presenting themselves for conscious review.

And then I saw it. Like in an artificial close-up. While Kratz was looking at us menacingly, I saw on his chest, at heart-level, the small golden cross.

The eyes of my memory now traveled towards Kelly as he was talking to Waiss with a voice that echoed in my ears. And there again as I drew close to examine it, pinned to the lapel of his jacket, was another small golden cross.

The image of Kelly’s face started to dissolve as a red glow gave him a devilish air. Before he disappeared completely, he managed to say a few words with total clarity.

“Tell me where the woman is, tell me her name, and you will die quickly.”

Waiss’ voice came from far away, responding as the darkness enveloped me again.

“Marina.”