Gerlach bent forward to study what was happening on the sixth screen.
A teenage boy lay tossing and turning in the clutches of an unbreakable nightmare. His bedroom was empty except for five items. The bed on which he lay, a dresser that was patched with duct tape, an old chair, a heavy metal crucifix that had been bolted to the ceiling above the bed, and a folding knife with a locking blade. The boy turned and writhed inside the nightmare, speaking in some language unknown to the two men who watched. They had forwarded tapes of everything the boy said to the language experts working for the Syndicate. The preliminary reports from those experts were deeply disturbing. They believed that when he was caught up in a certain kind of dream, the boy spoke in whole sentences, but the components of those sentences were made of words from several sources. Only a few words had been translated, and they were from a dialect of the ancient Aramaic language. Not merely a dead language, but specifically the dialect spoken in the region of Galilee, which differed in significant ways from the more commonly used dialect spoken in Jerusalem. The Syndicate linguists believed that the dialect used by the sleeping boy was the specific version of Aramaic that would have been used by Jesus and his disciples.
But there were only a few words spoken in that dialect. There were also words in the version of Greek known as Koine and in a very ancient version of Hebrew that contained elements of Phoenician.
Words from those languages made up 5 percent of what the boy said. Of what he screamed. The rest were either nonsense words or from a language unknown to the scholars who worked for the Syndicate. Some of those words were so strange that it clearly hurt the boy to speak them. More than once he woke gagging on blood from his torn larynx and tongue. As if such words were never meant for a human throat and mouth to speak.
Tonight, though, he kept repeating an Aramaic phrase the experts had decoded months ago. A phrase Danny and Gerlach knew by heart now, even if they did not understand its meaning or implication. The translation of that phrase was written on a strip of white surgical tape that had been pressed along the bottom of the sixth screen.
SHE WILL CHANGE THE WORLD. HEAVEN WILL FALL.
It might have been a phrase of no great importance, except for the fact that when he said those words, he was screaming with absolute terror.
The image on the seventh screen was of a pretty fifteen-year-old red-haired girl dressed in very modest pajamas lying sprawled on a bed that was soaked with her sweat. She thrashed and turned as she slept, and now the sheets and thin blanket were knotted around her. Above her bed, colored lights flashed and popped like tiny fireworks, but they came from nowhere and vanished without leaving any trace. No one in the Syndicate understood a thing about those lights.
“No…,” she said, moaning it out as a protracted wail. “Please … no…”
Danny said, “Do any of them know what’s happening?”
“Some of them do,” said Gerlach. “Most don’t. Why?”
“Well, because they look like they’re in pain. How do we know this won’t kill them?”
Gerlach and the other man exchanged a look.
Neither said another word, though.
CHAPTER 14
Scully Residence
April 3, 12:33 A.M.
Sleep was no escape.
None at all.
Deep in the night, Dana seemed to wake within a dream, knowing that she was dreaming, but afraid that this was every bit as real as the waking world. She knew that she didn’t have the lexicon to even put any of this into words that would make sense. The walls between fantasy and reality were broken, crumbling, irrelevant.
And that was terrifying.
Wasn’t that what happened when the mind fractured? Wasn’t that the definition of being insane?
The dream unfolded like a movie.
She woke in her room, but she wasn’t dressed in her pajamas. Instead she wore a dark suit that was almost masculine. Navy-blue pants and jacket, white blouse, the look softened only by a thin golden necklace from which her tiny cross hung and the lack of a tie. Her hair was stiffer, shorter, styled in a severe way she would never wear. Shoes with chunky heels.
The clothes were nothing she owned, but they fit her. She felt like she belonged in them. But when she stood up, there was something odd. A weight on her hip. Dana crossed to the mirror as she unbuttoned the jacket, and when she held the flap back, she saw the gun.
The.
Gun.
A small automatic snugged into a leather holster clipped to her belt.
“What…?” she murmured.