Rage.
Kenner had blown up the Labyrinth, probably expecting to seal them in, to die a slow death of starvation, rather than killing them outright. But the intent was the same. He had tried to kill them. Both of them. And Pierce couldn’t let that go unanswered.
Yet, revenge alone was not Pierce’s sole motivation. There was more to this than Kenner’s ambition. The man was working with someone else, someone with a lot of resources and few scruples. Kenner was also now in possession of at least two items that Alexander Diotrephes had seen fit to hide away in the Labyrinth’s forgotten depths. There was no telling where those artifacts would lead him. The Heracleia alone might contain enough information to help Kenner unlock the genetic treasure he sought—the secret of how to make viable chimeras—not to mention other revelations that might overturn everything the Herculean Society had accomplished over the millennia.
To say that the situation was dire seemed like an understatement. But like Fiona said, they were alive. Where there was life, there was hope. He allowed her a few more seconds to catch her breath then clapped her on the back. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”
12
Gibraltar
The skipper of the flat-bottomed launch drove the bow end of his craft up onto the sloping rocky beach and shouted for his lone passenger to jump ashore. Before the words finished leaving his lips, Augustina Gallo had already hopped out. She knew the drill. This was not her first visit to Gorham’s Cave.
She landed lightly on the wet rocks and scrambled up ahead of an incoming breaker. Above the tide line, she turned and threw a wave to her ferryman. Then she picked her way through the shifting mass of driftwood and rocks to the opening in the sheer cliff.
The cave was dark, lit only by ambient daylight, very little of which found its way in. It was still early, but once the sun passed its midday zenith, the east-facing cliff would fall under the shadow of the legendary Rock of Gibraltar, and even this vestige of illumination would be gone. Gallo removed her sunglasses, which helped a little, but she had to wait a few minutes for her eyes to adjust, before continuing inside.
A wooden boardwalk had been constructed through the middle of the vast hollow, branching out to areas where archaeologists had discovered artifacts and other signs of ancient habitation. Once, Gorham’s Cave had been high and dry, three miles from the shore of the Alboran Sea, where it had provided a refuge for a sizable population of Neanderthals for more than a hundred thousand years. Changing climates had spelled doom for the cave’s occupants, and then the sea level raised to the point where the waves were now practically lapping at the door. The inaccessibility of the entrance meant that the archaeological record from that period was virtually pristine. The cave complex, which was awaiting designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was off limits to the public. It was available only to authorized researchers, though at present, no one was working the site. Gallo had the place to herself.
She moved to the rear of the cave, where she left the marked path and climbed up to a concealed niche. Even from just a few feet away, the opening was impossible to see. Gallo paused to turn on her phone’s flashlight, then moved into the recess.
The light revealed a shape carved into the wall, not Neanderthal art, though it might easily have been mistaken for that, but rather a simple circle, crossed by parallel vertical lines. Just past it, a rickety-looking staircase led up to a closed wooden door, secured with a badly rusted padlock.
She reached out to what looked like a nub of rock on the adjacent wall and gave it a twist, revealing a modern handprint scanner. She placed her right palm flat against the glass plate. There was a faint flash of light as the scanner verified her identity, and then the entire door—padlock, frame and all—swung away to reveal another, almost completely unknown, section of the cave.
Gallo entered, careful to keep her right wrist turned up at all times, exposing the mark tattooed there. It was the same mark carved on the nearby wall, the distinctive sigil of the secret society into which she had been initiated, and which her boyfriend, George Pierce, was now the director: the Herculean Society.