The Demon Crown

  Not yet . . .

  He moved on, settling instead on epinephrine. He had to trust that if he could jump-start Seichan out of her pain-induced fugue, she could handle the torment on her own. At least long enough for them to escape from here.

  He loaded a syringe, crossed to Seichan, and poked the needle into the injection port of her IV. He clamped the line and pushed the plunger. He didn’t know how much to administer, so he titrated the drug in slowly.

  Such caution was excruciating.

  He breathed through clenched teeth.

  C’mon . . .

  On the floor next to him, Dr. Hamada groaned, echoing Ken’s own sentiment. He remembered the doctor’s warning about the pending threat to Seichan’s unborn child, how the larvae inside her were already beginning to transition from the second to third instars.

  He stared at Seichan’s exposed belly.

  Dear God, please be wrong.

  SECOND INSTAR

  The larva moved slower through the macerated muscle. Its gut was distended, packed full, unable to hold more. It had grown tenfold since its last molt—now a healthy half a centimeter in length—but its segmented exoskeleton could stretch no farther and had begun to darken. The strain in the underlying epidermis triggered glands behind its brain to excrete a hormone, ecdysone, to ready the larva to shed its skin once more.

  Compromised, it moved slower now, feeding less—both because it could no longer use the fuel to grow and because its mandibles had begun to harden, making it difficult to chew. A thick lubricating gel built up between its soft epidermis and tough outer cuticle. Glands in its head and thorax swelled with liquid silk, readying for when it would weave a bed upon which it would imbed tiny claws. At that point, it would grow quiescent for several hours, until it was ready to split out of its old skin and wriggle free.

  Still, the time was not quite right. Its body was still undergoing changes. Faint white patches—imaginal discs—had formed along its flanks, marking where wings would eventually grow. Silvery strings wound through its length, waiting to become future trachea.

  As it slugged dully through the tissues, it bumped into something hard. Mandibles tested and probed the obstruction in its path, defining the oblong shape.

  It identified the dense packet of silk in its way. Smelling through that woven mat, it sensed what was hidden there.

  As it squirmed around the obstruction, more details emerged, revealing the metamorphosis that was under way inside that silk nest. Another larva lay rooted inside there.

  This other was quiet and unmoving—but only on the surface. Inside that dead husk, life continued to change and incubate. A fresh layer of cuticle formed under there. A new set of mandibles grew, designed for drilling through bone.

  Once the larva was past this obstruction, its progress continued to slow, approaching the moment when it, too, would spin a nest and begin its own transformation.

  As it forged ahead, an evolutionary certainty grew.

  It would not be long now.

  34

  May 9, 12:39 P.M. JST

  Fujikawaguchiko, Japan

  Seichan woke with a stab of pain between her eyes, bright enough to blind her. Decades of brutal training with the Guild had taught her to control her autonomic reflexes. Despite the throbbing in her head and confusion, she remained still, forced her breathing to remain even, to give no sign she was awake.

  She slivered her eyelids open once the initial flare died away.

  Bright lights hung over her head. A hard, cold table chilled the bare skin of her back. The strong tang of antiseptic struck her nose. Her heart pounded fast—too fast—racing when it shouldn’t be.

  A frantic voice whispered a mantra to her left: “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon . . .”

  She recognized Professor Matsui’s accent, heard the urgency and panic in his voice.

  Still, she remained quiet, taking in her environment for another breath. Using her peripheral vision, she absorbed every detail in a glance.

  I’m in an operating room.

  Ken stepped fully into view. He held a syringe in one hand and fumbled with a glass bottle in his other. “Can’t risk giving her too much,” he mumbled to himself as he stabbed the needle into the bottle.

  She again noted the unnatural flutter to her racing heart.

  Drug-induced.

  Adrenaline . . .

  Realizing the man must be trying to wake her, she shifted her face toward him. As she did so, a shadow rose behind Ken. The figure’s features were masked, his form draped in a surgical gown.

  Still, she recognized him.

  Dr. Hamada . . .

  Hands reached for Ken’s throat.

  Seichan moved.

  With her agonized muscles already tensed, she sprang off the table, shedding surgical drapes from her half-naked form. Without ever taking her eyes off of Hamada, her hand lashed out and grabbed a scalpel from an open surgical pack. An IV pole toppled over, ripping the catheter from her arm. As she leaped, her other arm pushed Ken out of her way, then hooked around Hamada’s throat.

  She whipped behind the doctor and pressed the tip of the scalpel under the angle of his jaw, positioning it against the man’s pounding carotid.

  A drop of blood formed there.

  “Do we need him?” Seichan asked through cracked lips.

  It took Ken a moment to collect himself and realize the intent of her question. His gaze flicked between the scalpel and her captive’s face. Hamada tensed in her grip, clearly recognizing that his life balanced on Ken’s next words.

  “I don’t . . . maybe . . .” Ken searched back toward a set of swinging doors leading out of here. “There was a siren, an evacuation. I heard him mention something about a way out, through some bunker.”

  “You’re going to show us,” she hissed in the doctor’s ear. She kneed him in the back of the legs and dropped him to the floor, then passed the scalpel to Ken. “Guard him.”

  He took the blade with trembling fingers, but his grip firmed quickly.

  She dashed over to a discarded pile of gowns in a bin marked with a medical waste symbol. She quickly donned one, ignoring the dried spray of blood across the front. She tucked her hair under a surgical bonnet and tied a mask around her neck, letting it hang loose to her chin. She could always lower her face into it to further obscure her features. She hoped her half-Asian heritage would allow her to pass as part of the Japanese medical staff.

  Once ready, she had Ken do the same. The professor dashed to the next room and returned in less than a minute in surgical scrubs.

  She forced Hamada to his feet. “Show us the way out of here—and you might live.”

  The doctor nodded vigorously. “There’s an elevator at the end of the hall.”

  They set off in a tight group. She balled a fist in the back of Hamada’s gown and pressed her scalpel into his side. She trusted the doctor to recognize that a stab and twist into his right kidney would produce a mortal injury.

  As they headed off, blood dripped from her wrist, flowing from where her catheter had ripped away.

  She felt little pain—suspiciously so.

  She turned to Ken. “Did you shoot me up with something? Morphine, fentanyl?”

  She remembered Hamada’s concern about the risk of strong analgesics to the child inside her.

  “No,” Ken answered. “Just epinephrine. Why?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Pain’s just not as intense as before.”

  Ken and Hamada shared a look.

  “What?” she asked, noting the worry on the professor’s face.

  “Before molting into the third instars, the larvae will grow quiet for a short spell. That might be what you’re experiencing. But when those new instars hatch . . .”

  His voice died away, speaking volumes to the pain and threat to come.

  She understood. Right now, she was experiencing the calm before the storm.

  Any further discussion ceased as they reached the elevators at the end of the ha
ll. She used the key card hanging from Hamada’s neck to call the cage. Once the doors brushed open, they hurried inside.

  Seichan noted the elevator only went down one level—not up toward the surface. She had Ken block the doors from closing and dug the scalpel through the cloth of Hamada’s gown until the doctor winced.

  “Is this a trap?” she asked.

  “No, no,” he insisted with a pained expression. “In case of an enemy incursion, the basement labs are all locked down. Only top personnel have access to Sublevel Five. The research bunker below has its own evacuation route, to ensure the survival of critical assets to the company.”

  Seichan glanced to Ken to see if he had any additional insight.

  He looked worried as he nodded to Hamada. “I overheard him say the exit down below might not be open for long.”

  “That’s true,” the doctor warned.

  With no other recourse and time running short, she moved deeper into the elevator and nodded for Ken to do the same. As the doors closed, a loud explosion echoed down the hallway, as if trying to stop them.

  Too late now.

  12:48 P.M.

  Gray waved smoke from his face. He crouched halfway across the circular lab, shielded behind a stout workstation. Aiko and Palu flanked him. The team’s other two masked members, Hoga and Endo, were closer to the damage after slapping charges onto the locking mechanism of a set of large red metal doors.

  As Gray watched, the doors toppled into the room, falling through the smoke.

  “Get up!” Palu ordered, speaking to the man crouched at his side.

  His name was Yukio Oshiro, the head of the research lab. Several minutes ago, after they had discovered the lab was empty, the man had rushed into the room, yelling in Japanese that all the exits from the basement levels had been blocked. His tone was demanding, believing them to be members of the facility’s security unit.

  That misconception was quickly dismissed when weapons were leveled at his chest, and Aiko ordered him to his knees, with his hands on his head.

  She took two minutes to efficiently interrogate him. She quickly learned of his role here and forced him to open a wall safe where research files had been stored per evacuation orders. The safe’s lock required a retinal ID. The man’s right eye was already swelling from where Endo had slammed the scientist’s face into the reader when he tried to resist.

  After all the files had been gathered and secured in the team’s backpacks, they continued their hunt for Ken and Seichan. Oshiro knew nothing about Seichan, but from his deep scowl, he knew Professor Matsui. It seemed Ken had slipped away during the confusion, locking a door between him and any pursuers.

  Smart . . .

  Gray waved toward the blasted doors. With the way now open, they set off into the secured section of the facility. Oshiro had no clearance beyond those doors, so he likely could offer no guidance from here, but Palu dragged him along anyway. The scientist surely knew more about the ongoing research than could be found in the files alone.

  So for the moment, he was of value.

  As they continued down the hallway, they passed a series of empty surgical suites and medical labs. They called out furtively for Ken but got no reply.

  Gray grew concerned, knowing they had only a limited window to execute a rescue. The files and Oshiro were too important to risk. If there was any information in them that could help with the Odokuro scourge, it had to be brought to light.

  Aiko seemed to recognize this and cast a hard glance at Gray, her concern easy to read. They still had enough explosives to blast their way out of the sealed basement. But with every minute they delayed down here, they risked everything—all for a hunt that might be futile.

  What if Ken had been caught and was already dead?

  Hoga paused a few yards ahead and dropped to a knee. He lifted a pair of fingers in the air, the tips wet and dark.

  Blood.

  Despite the risk to their mission, Aiko pointed forward, willing to follow the trail for now. The hallway ended at a set of elevator doors. They were painted red, like the ones they had blasted through to get here.

  Endo waved to a small door off to the side. A thin window revealed a series of stairs leading down.

  Not up.

  If Ken had made it this far, there was only one direction to go from here.

  Unfortunately, the door was locked.

  As Hoga and Endo prepared another charge, Gray confronted Oshiro. “What’s down there?”

  The researcher shook his head. “I don’t—”

  “There had to be rumors,” Gray said, cutting him off. Even in top-secret government facilities, everyone whispered and wondered. “What have you heard?”

  Oshiro looked down.

  Palu shook him by the collar. “Tell him.”

  The man’s answer was meek with shame. “Human . . . human experimentation.”

  12:50 P.M.

  “Proceed with Phase Two,” Takashi ordered over the scrambled phone line.

  “Hai, Jōnin Ito.” The speaker was the commander of the company’s island base in the Norwegian Sea. “It will be done.”

  As Takashi knelt at his desk, he pictured a dozen planes lifting off from icy airstrips. In a matter of hours, the fleet would spread far and wide, seeding their colonizing loads of wasps across major cities throughout Europe.

  With the command given, he ended the call.

  It was his seventh and final.

  Already planes should be rising from the other islands owned or leased by Fenikkusu Laboratories around the globe. With the exception of Antarctica, no continent would be spared.

  Satisfied nothing could stop the wrath he had unleashed, he rose slowly from his desk. He needed his cane to support him. He reached to where it rested against his low desk. His thin fingers clasped hard to the fiery rose-gold phoenix crowning the cane’s head. The sharp feathers and beak of the symbol pinched the thin skin of his palm as he leaned on the cane’s length, taking deep breaths.

  Even this small effort taxed him.

  Once he caught his breath, he thumped across a series of tatami rugs that covered the teak floor. The mats were made of woven dried rushes, wrapped around a core made up of a traditional rice stalk, unlike the cheaper modern versions that used synthetics.

  He reached the wall of his office and slid aside a shoji screen to reveal his personal safe. It took him two tries to use his right palm to unlock it. He silently cursed the new security system his grandson had insisted on installing.

  Look where such caution got you, Masahiro.

  Feeling suddenly older, he opened the thick door and removed the lone contents of the safe. Sealed in a chunk of Lucite was a broken piece of amber, which in turn trapped the bones of a prehistoric reptile. The creature had been identified as a juvenile Aristosuchus, a small crocodile-headed dinosaur from the early Cretaceous Period. Its bones and skull were found to be rife with cysts from the wasps.

  Still, Takashi preferred the original, more elegant name for the relic.

  The Demon Crown.

  He leaned his cane against the wall, knowing he would need both hands to carry the treasure to his desk. Though heavy, it was only a fraction of the original artifact stolen from the tunnels under Washington, D.C. The rest had been consumed over the decades by the research into its deadly mysteries.

  He cherished what remained, knowing the blood spent and the life lost to bring it to Japan. Finally, a promise made long ago, one frozen in amber, had been fulfilled. The operation realized these last days served as both personal vengeance and a long-overdue national triumph.

  Once at his desk again, he glanced over to his abandoned cane.

  He stared at the phoenix, a symbol of the wasps’ eternal nature, of the Odokuro’s ability to rise from their own ashes, undying and eternal.

  As will be the new Japanese Imperium.

  It was his gift to Miu, for her sacrifice, for her love.

  Even from the heights of his office, he could hear th
e continuing battle on the ground floor as Japanese forces attempted to assault the Ice Castle. Explosions and gunfire echoed to him, but they sounded so distant, so petty and small.

  Instead, he stared out the window toward the summit of Mount Fuji. Lightning played across the mountaintop, illuminating vast piles of black clouds. The storm’s force made a mockery of the feeble fight below.

  Still, it would not be wise to linger any longer.

  He retrieved his phone and made one last call before he headed to his personal helicopter atop the pagoda. It waited to whisk him to a secure facility. He was done here. He needed nothing more from this place than what rested on his desk, representing a piece of Miu’s broken heart.

  He placed his palm atop the Demon Crown.

  It is done, my love.

  He heard the telltale click on the phone as the connection was made. The head of the facility’s security answered curtly. The man had been awaiting this call, ready to receive Takashi’s final command. He gave it, ordering the incendiary charges built throughout the structure of the pagoda to be ignited.

  It was time for the Ice Castle to burn.

  35

  May 9, 5:51 A.M. CEST

  Wieliczka, Poland

  Abandon all hope . . .

  Elena remembered Monk’s words from when they’d first entered the mine. She could not help but think of Dante’s warning as she followed the others up the ramp and into the cavernous space beyond.

  Tension and a vague sense of dread quashed any conversation. Clara’s brother Piotr remained at the entrance, in case the secret door decided to close on its own.

  As the rest of the group ventured inside, their lights pierced the darkness, the beams scattering away in all directions. The sound of splashing water drew Elena’s attention to the left. A giant wooden waterwheel hung high on the neighboring wall, turning in a stream of water flowing from the roof and draining down a hole in the floor.