The cognomina codex, p.31
The Cognomina Codex, page 31
The doctor looked down at the cracked tiles that had witnessed his previous work here.
“This sacrifice is what our situation requires,” Auda said in a softening voice. “All I am asking from you is to bring me back.”
Galen shut his eyes tight and sighed through clenched teeth. “Come this way,” he said with a tone of defeat. “Let’s get you comfortable.”
Auda nodded as Galen grabbed a cot and dragged it in front of the row of medical equipment. “Let’s get this over with,” he said as though fearing that he or Galen would lose his resolve.
Rafic took a knee next to him and kept his attention as the doctor readied a syringe. “Look up for yes, down for no, and use left or right to build the code that spells the words.”
Auda grabbed his hand and forced a tense smile. “I remember.”
Galen turned and looked toward Evan, who watched from a distance. “Do you remember how much of this compound Ling used on Clovis?” he asked as he started filling the needle with liquid silver.
“That looks about right,” Evan said, keeping his eyes on the syringe and knowing what was coming.
Auda touched Galen’s trembling arm as he readied the shot. “If you feel like you are losing me or if I am not able to communicate or help you, you can always euthanize me. I promise I won’t hold a grudge.”
The doctor looked down at his patient as tears welled in his eyes. “Calamitas virtutis occasio est,”51 Galen said as he quickly inserted the needle into Auda’s leather-brown skin and depressed the plunger.
Auda took one normal breath and kept his eyes locked with Rafic’s until the first shudder hit him. His lean body bucked against the frame of the cot as violent convulsions crashed over him. Rafic released his twitching hand in horror and fell to the floor at the shock of the unnatural movements. Galen grabbed his stethoscope and clapped a small blood pressure cuff around Auda’s thrashing arm.
Evan kept his eyes on Auda’s face. He knew what to expect, and he saw the same look of shock and terror on Auda’s face that had been on Clovis’s. The tremors faded, and an eerie calm fell over him as he slowly stiffened and became rigid on the cot.
Galen listened to his heart and monitored his vitals for nearly a minute before turning to Evan. “Is that what happened to Clovis?”
“Yes,” Evan said gravely. “It was the exact same reaction. Dr. Ling monitored him for a bit to ensure he had survived it.”
Galen double-checked Auda’s vital signs. “He is stable now,” he said to Rafic and Evan before turning back to Auda. “You made it. You’re alive,” the doctor said with a tense smile. “Can you hear me?”
Rafic scrambled back to his feet and looked down into Auda’s wide-open eyes and saw him look in an upward direction. “That’s a yes,” Rafic said, placing a reassuring hand on Auda’s chest as it rose and fell in long, slow motions. “What else should we ask him?” Rafic asked Galen.
Galen took a step back and blinked as a lone tear fell to his tanned cheek. “Ask him if he is in any pain,” he whispered in a cracking voice as he held his trembling hand over his mouth before turning and walking quickly through the open doors to the dock where Evan heard him being sick.
Evan’s cane tapped on the wooden boards of the dock behind Galen as he pulled himself together. “I can’t believe I just did that,” he said, wiping at his brown eyes.
“You did what was needed,” Evan said, reassuring him.
“I hope you’re right, my friend,” Galen said, still not able to look back into the building. He paced on the dock as he collected his thoughts. “All right, I have induced him successfully. He can communicate. I have a plan for my first antidote,” he said to himself as he counted the steps to his plan on his fingers. “What I don’t have is data or samples on what Ling is doing to them with the other two drugs after the first shot.”
“Rome,” Evan stated.
“Yes, I think so. Ramsay is still gathering information and evidence inside the Vatican. I need you to return to Rome and then bring her new samples back to me.”
Evan thought about the mundane task of courier as he looked inside the building at the catatonic Auda on his cot. “That’s it? I just drive the car?”
“The first samples you brought me were enough to get me started on my hypotheses for how to counteract the shot, but I suspect that Ling is still injecting them with boosters of those other two drugs. That presents an unknown, a moving target for me,” Galen said as the plans solidified in his head. “I have to get new samples, or I am flying blind here.”
Evan dipped his head twice in acknowledgment as he lit a cigarette. “What is our plan after that?”
Galen looked around as if the surrounding ruins were all they had. “With the attack on Samas—and now Etyma is missing as well—there is too much risk for us out there in the world. I think after you return to Rome to check on Ramsay and get my samples, both of you should bring the remainder of the Cognomina back here to Lazzaretto. We can’t afford to lose any more of us. This place is secure,” the physician said, looking at the distant lights of Venice beyond the neglected buildings. “After all, the best place to hide is not a secret place, but a place that has been forgotten.”
49. Locked-In Syndrome is a rare but real medical condition in which the afflicted is paralyzed except for eye movements and the ability to blink. (See “The locked-in syndrome: a syndrome looking for a therapy” by José León-Carrión et al.)
50. Sir Francis Bacon developed an early cryptographic code in 1605 using only the letters A and B in unique combinations of five in what today would be called a five-bit binary cypher.
51. Latin—Disaster is the opportunity for bravery, Seneca
25
Evan’s thoughts kept flashing back to Auda convulsing on the cot as he drove south toward Rome. He replayed the courage Auda showed to sacrifice himself so that Galen’s work could accelerate. He replayed the doctor’s words in his mind about how his life-extension research was more to blame for triggering Brevicepts than his chance visit to Clovis. He could see it, but he could not stop replaying his time with her and thinking about how she had played him to create and foment this chaos in the Cognomina.
He didn’t listen to the news or music to pass the kilometers but kept company only with the drone of the economy car’s laboring engine as he thought about ways to undo this. Perhaps there was a way he could bring back those who had gone to her. Perhaps he could win over some on her side like Elsa into the Cognomina. He replayed his new memories of Elsa—there was goodness in her that overshadowed whatever her duties might be in La Mutuelle. He also found himself still feeling that spark between them he had felt in the SUV in Somalia.
Evan turned the car down the last dark alley after the abandoned pens of the old slaughterhouse next to the river and could hear the boisterous music coming from the Roma camp as he turned off the ignition. Fires burned in open metal barrels around the edge of the center camp and provided some heat against the February night.
He could see people dancing in the firelight in couples and groups of men with their arms locked together. They swayed and kicked in a centuries-old choreography that every Roma knew since they could walk. Their dance steps followed the wailing clarinet and frenetic violin that drove songs of slavery, of wandering, of escape, of living outside the world.
Ramsay sat with Lucca as Perez danced with half a dozen men crouched below him, snapping their fingers in time with accelerating music and their gray-haired Re Zingaro’s quickening steps. Evan put a hand on her shoulder to get her attention.
She turned her head to see him, and Lucca stood and opened his arms to embrace Evan. “Hello, my friend,” the man shouted as he took him into his arms. Lucca was drunk; they all were.
Ramsay held out a bottle to Evan, who shook his head and said, “I don’t really feel like celebrating.”
“Me neither,” she said before taking a drink from their bottle. “But they had a wedding today, and this is the reception.”
“I have a message from Galen,” Evan said. “He asks if you have more samples.”
“I have several more samples from Clovis and a few from Samas. I’ll get them in a bit, okay?” Ramsay kept her eyes on the smiling dancers and their colorful undulations of skirt and scarf as they stepped and stomped the ground together. “I want to enjoy this a while longer.”
“Sure,” Evan said as he sat beside her and watched the master musicians working feverishly at their burnished and well-worn instruments. “We were able to get more of the serum they used on Clovis and Samas.”
Ramsay looked at him out of the side of her eye. “That might come in handy for us. I haven’t heard from Dilmun in over a day, and I suspect they have him.”
“Contact with Etyma went silent too,” Evan added as he rested his cane across his lap.
Ramsay rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand and then took another drink from the bottle. “That explains why two more hospital beds arrived at their building in the Vatican. We need to find out what those injections do to them.”
“Galen injected Auda with it.”
“Galen did what?” Ramsay asked in surprise.
Evan nodded and turned back to watch the dancers. “Auda forced him to do it in order to accelerate Galen’s efforts toward an antidote.”
“I told you Auda would do anything to defeat her. Is he able to communicate?”
“He and Rafic have a code that uses eye movements,” Evan said. “He was able to say that the shot was very painful at first. He communicated that he could hear everything and see things in his field of vision, but that the feeling of being trapped in his body was”—Evan paused as he recalled Rafic’s translated words—“‘a waking nightmare.’”
“So it’s as bad as we thought for them.”
“Perhaps worse,” Evan countered. “We have the two other drugs they are using on them, and when Galen injected him with those, Auda’s messages became odd and incoherent as if he was struggling to stay with us or even to stay together. I had to leave right after that, so I don’t know how bad it has gotten for him.”
“Auda is the strongest person I have ever known. It was brave of him to force Galen to treat him. We will all need to find bravery like that if we are to come back from this,” Ramsay said as the song continued to build momentum. Perez stepped out of the circle of men to sit down, and Lucca hopped up to take his place as the song sped to a climax and then stopped.
Ramsay took another drink as the next song started. “Just look at them, Evan. They are oppressed and hated today, just as they were imprisoned and executed in the thousands when I fought for them a lifetime ago. Look at how beautiful they are. They don’t have a care in the world and have no more concern for the provisions of tomorrow than the sparrows they follow in their wanderings. They have no land save that beneath their feet, no flag save the clothes on their backs, no anthem except this song,” Ramsay said, taking another drink from the bottle. “They shun worry as they shun our labors and our expectations of them. I believe they are the freest people in the world, and that is why the world hates them. Their freedom from our expectations reflects how ridiculous most of the world is.
“If Brevicepts is collecting a powerful elite for some new utopian plan, these souls will likely be persecuted again,” Ramsay continued, motioning to them with the neck of the bottle before a laughing dancer swung around and snatched it out of her hand.
“And us with them,” Evan said as he watched them in their revels.
“I fought on their side once and freed the ones who had these children that laugh and dance before us. This is what I fight for, Evan,” she said, looking at him out of the corner of her bloodshot eyes. “It is people like this that make this place worth living in—and worth fighting for.”
“What can we do to fight now?”
Ramsay kept her gray eyes focused on the figures in front of her. “I haven’t figured it out yet,” she slurred, “but I have a feeling these rogues will have a part to play.”
“Galen thinks we should gather everyone and regroup on his island.”
“With Poppy on the run and Dilmun and Etyma likely gone, he might be right,” Ramsay said, casting an eye over at Perez, who was still catching his breath. “On your drive back, you should make some stops to put in your phone battery and text message the others to go to Venice and meet at the contact point.” She slowly stood up on unsteady feet as Evan rose beside her. “They have given me a car, so I can join you in a day or two after I finish some more preparation here. I’ll get you those samples for Galen now so that you can get on the road.”
evan made the trip with gonzalo to Lazzaretto Island to drop off the samples, and then Galen turned both of them around to wait for the returning members of the Cognomina. Gonzalo sat at the end of the Il Santo bar and only contacted Evan at the other end when he stepped up and greeted his arriving tattooed companions. They arrived in pairs and by themselves, staggering in like refugees from a world they once owned.
Evan knew the transport routine without the boatman having to explain. Gonzalo would exit the bar first and walk to his small boat. Evan would continue the conversations but discreetly ask each returning member to present their phones and show the emptied battery before inviting them outside for a shared cigarette on their way to the boat. They would get in without a question or a fare for their ferryman as Evan watched them load and depart before returning to the bar to repeat the cycle.
They sat at opposite ends of the bar and looked up at the clock that ticked toward closing time. Jens, Chance, Dilmun, Etyma, and Poppy were still missing. Evan nursed his beer as the bartender started wiping down the tables. He stood to stretch his legs and saw that Gonzalo had switched to coffee. Evan stepped outside for a cigarette when he heard the booming bass voice of Chance echoing down the canal. He could tell that the giant was talking with someone else, and his heart jumped with the anticipation that it was Poppy. He stepped to the edge of the walkway next to the canal, leaned out to get a glimpse of them, and saw Jens’s blond hair as they walked under a light. Evan walked toward them and lit a cigarette to calm the rising anxiety he felt about Poppy.
“Hello, little brother,” Chance bellowed for every sleeper in the neighborhood to hear.
The sound of his warm voice comforted like an embrace. “This way,” Evan responded in a voice just loud enough to carry down to them. “How did you finish at the tables?”
“You mean, do we come bearing gifts?” Jens joked.
“I only finished this afternoon when you called us back here,” Chance answered with a chuckle. “I gave back a little near the end, but it was a good run. Our financier here knows the total take and how much each of us gets as a split. This is your share,” he concluded, offering a black USB drive with a gold letter Z from his open hand.
“It’s in crypto,” Jens explained. “There are instructions on the drive along with the coins. Each person’s share, for the ones who are still with us, is 281,365 euros—and the key phrase is bonus content. We’re not going island shopping,” the blond man mused with a shrug, “but we’re not on the streets either.”
“If I can get to Macau, I can get us twice this,” Chance boasted.
“I haven’t heard from Poppy, Dilmun, or Etyma,” Evan confessed. “Ramsay thinks some of them might have been captured like Samas.”
“We saw that,” they said in grim unison.
“Auda is at our meeting point,” Evan said. “You will see him shortly.”
“Capital idea meeting at a bar, Evan,” Jens said with a grin. “Do they make a decent spritz?”
“Let me see your phones,” Evan interjected as he stood in the middle of the walkway. “Show me the batteries.”
Chance looked down at him with a smirk.
“I’m not kidding,” Evan demanded. “Did either of you hear anything from Poppy?”
Both men shook their heads as they pulled out their flip phones and showed the removed batteries. “I suppose that level of security is sound if we are all to be in the same palazzo,” Jens said.
They looked ahead to see the bartender locking the door closed behind him before walking away. “Nothing so luxurious as a palazzo this time,” Evan said, motioning to stoic Gonzalo at the helm of his open boat.
“Oh, charming,” Jens rasped as he eyed the humble craft. “And no drink either.”
Chance motioned for the smaller man to step on first before leaning down to Evan’s level. “Is it Lazzaretto?” he whispered with a smile.
Evan nodded, which sent the giant into loud laughter. “Ha! It’s perfect,” he bellowed. “I love that doctor.” The large man stepped onto the boat carefully and extended a black casino chip to Gonzalo. “An obol52 for your trouble, sir. I am ready for my passage to the other side.”
Gonzalo waited for the boat to stop rocking and then motioned for Evan to get in.
Evan stood on the walkway and shook his head. “We’re missing one. I want to stay and wait for her.”
The boatman nodded. “I will be back before dawn,” Gonzalo said without emotion before starting his motor and easing down the canal.
Evan paced the length of the narrow quay that ran in front of the bar. A freshly stomped-out cigarette butt punctuated every second circuit. He stopped and listened as he lit up again, waiting for the click of her shoes against the worn stones of the causeway.
Evan started thinking about her when the nervous energy of worry was no longer enough to keep him awake. He recalled their brief time together at his Ascension and the troubling time with her during his last life. Her beauty and mystery still attracted him, but there was something else about her that held him captive. She had been the first to see him, the first to recognize him for what he was. She had been the one to call him out of his wilderness of solitude and into a family of others like him.
