Unknown 9 by Layton Green (e reader txt) 📗

mild sedative into the glass and walked slowly back into the living room, thinking about how he would feel if he were in Ettore’s shoes.

It’s his decision to make. His life’s work. Who am I to judge its fate?

“I’m afraid I’ll need to rest now,” Ettore said.

“Of course.”

As he approached the older man, Dr. Corwin’s step faltered, and he debated feigning an accident and dropping the glass on the floor.

Ettore reached out a hand. “As I said, I’d be happy to talk to you again, but you should know I’ve decided not to share my discovery with the world.”

Not to share my discovery.

In a daze, Dr. Corwin let Ettore take the glass, but remained standing a foot away from his armchair, close enough to stumble into the old man and spill the drugged water.

“I don’t want to raise your expectations,” Ettore continued, wrapping the glass in his birdlike hands. “When I was young, while I did not seek fame, I did seek to leave a mark of my genius. Not with little papers here and there, but with something earth-shattering. Something that would turn the world of physics on its head. But now that I have it . . . now I wish for the world to one day applaud my discretion.”

The heat pouring out of the wood-burning stove felt suffocating to Dr. Corwin, and strangely anthropomorphic, as if the invisible waves of energy were transmitting his innermost thoughts to Ettore, betraying his treacherous intention.

“Thank you,” Ettore whispered as he raised the glass to his lips.

Dr. Corwin took a step back. “You’re welcome.”

Coughing almost continuously, the elderly physicist drank the entire glass of water. Soon his eyelids fluttered, and Dr. Corwin made small talk as Ettore sank deeper into his armchair. When he was fully asleep, Dr. Corwin rested the man’s head gently against the side of the chair, tucked the afghan tight around him, and put more wood in the stove so he would not get a chill.

For a long moment, Dr. Corwin stood by Ettore’s armchair, consumed by guilt and wishing he could stay for months to talk to the man for whom he had searched for so long, wanting so very much to understand him and probe his remarkable brain. But every passing moment made Dr. Corwin more nervous that Hans had somehow found him. While Ettore might not want to share his knowledge, the Ascendants would never honor that choice.

Nor will I, apparently.

But I have to act while there is still time.

Whether the world is ready or not, I have to protect the knowledge.

It did not take Dr. Corwin long to find what he was looking for. Inside a locked antique trunk in the closet—he smashed the padlock with his bladed cane—he found heaps of research papers, a journal, and a metallic silver bauble the size of a cantaloupe. A tangle of wires tipped with electrodes were heaped around the silver sphere. Hands shaking with anticipation, he picked up the strange object to examine it, and saw that a large crack had almost split the object into two.

He gingerly set the device down, then flipped through the journal and the research papers long enough to know his search was complete. After replacing everything inside the chest, he carried it all to the trunk of the Land Rover, grunting from the strain.

“Forgive me, Ettore,” he whispered when he returned for his cane and stood in the threshold of the house, wondering if he were about to close a door that should never have been opened. “Forgive me.”

   22   

Andie’s feet echoed on the brick walkway of the abandoned subway tunnel. The humid air was rife with the stench of rat urine. She was alone, terribly so, as she ran beneath the streets of Manhattan, using a small flashlight she had bought at the Philadelphia airport to light the way. The weak penumbra of illumination cast shadows that seemed alive on the damp and gloomy walls.

But it felt good to run, despite the scurry of rodents in the darkness swallowing the tunnel, and the more nefarious sounds she imagined hearing, and the knowledge of who was searching for her aboveground and maybe waiting when she emerged. She relished pushing her legs to the limits of her endurance, stripping her mind of doubt and worry for a few small moments.

Running was her safe space.

Always had been.

She wished with all her heart that Zawadi had come to New York to meet her. After Andie relayed her intentions, Zawadi said she was foolish, and that she was busy helping in another way that was more important.

More important than having your own badass self here with me? What am I supposed to do if that scary Chinese guy shows up?

Of course, Zawadi had not elaborated, saying only that she needed to cut off their enemy’s oxygen, and leaving Andie to guess at her intentions. Zawadi did provide a plan to arrive at the Museum of Natural History undetected. She had suggested Andie fly into Philadelphia and take a train to Penn Station. From there, Zawadi gave her detailed instructions on how to find an access tunnel beneath the station that led to a deeper passage whose purpose at which Andie could only guess. After a while, the rough stone tunnel had connected to the old subway line on which Andie was now running.

She had no idea how far she had traveled. A few miles, if she had to guess.

On occasion, she had passed a group of homeless squatters, though nothing on the scale of the leper colony beneath Kolkata. Her heart had thumped in her chest when a man with a scraggly beard rose up to accost her, demanding a toll for passage. But Andie had screamed at him so fiercely he backed down, allowing her to sprint past.

Finally she arrived at the marker Zawadi had mentioned: a long-forgotten subway station with a low ceiling, graffiti-covered walls, and tracks piled with rubble. The evidence of