Unknown 9 by Layton Green (e reader txt) 📗

scientist, and his death had garnered national attention. The presence of the Ascendants was not an overt threat but a silent message to the members of the Society in attendance: This is our city, and we are watching.

The brazen attacks on Dr. Corwin and Lars Friedman, accompanied by the raid on Quasar Labs in the Research Triangle and the gunfight in Bologna, had not ignited the firestorm of retaliation from the Society that Zawadi would have expected. It was just as James had feared, and the funeral felt symbolic to her. The death of Dr. Corwin, who had worked his entire life to reform the LYS and combat the rise of the Ascendants, might mark the beginning of the end of the original faction.

If he was dead—and the answer to that question was the reason Zawadi had risked her life to come to New York.

Back arched, shoulders high, her stoic gaze fixated on the coffin at the front of the room, Zawadi walked steadily forward as the organ played, the crowd parting like subjects before a queen. She enjoyed the veiled surprise on the faces of the Ascendants, who had thought she was on the run somewhere in central Europe.

Let them feel the gut-wrenching churn of uncertainty for once.

The viewing room was packed. Some of the attendees surprised her. Dean Varen, and a few other close allies of Dr. Corwin, she had expected to see. But the number of Ascendants in the room, including two feared enforcers who avoided the public eye, was troubling.

Few eyes in the room were dry. Dr. Corwin had touched many lives. Still, Zawadi knew he was far from perfect. Throughout his extraordinary life, he had made hard choices that would turn the stomachs of most people, who would not understand the reasons for his decisions—and even some who would. Nor were all of his choices defensible, in her opinion. As brilliant as he was, her friend had let his passions drive him more than cold rationality.

Yet Zawadi loved him too. After a decorated stint in the South African Special Forces, she had become an ANC revolutionary and then a marooned freedom fighter swept up in global conflicts with dubious ideological connections. The death of a lover in a senseless conflict had sent her on a downward spiral, running from her past and unsure if she would escape. When her path had crossed with Dr. Corwin’s on a fateful night in Cape Town, a chance encounter on Table Mountain, her toes inching toward the ledge, he had talked to her quietly for hours, speaking of remarkable things that made her rethink her perspective.

Helped her better understand the arc of human existence that had led to the complex realities of the present world. Sympathized with the violence and trauma in which her beloved country and her life were steeped. Spoke of the wonders of theoretical physics and astronomy in plain terms, and of his hopes and dreams for humankind. Told her he was working behind the scenes to change the narrative. Gave her a mission to believe in.

He had saved her life that night, and starting the following morning, she had worked tirelessly to protect his.

Zawadi’s step faltered as she approached the body, her hands trembling at her sides, a show of emotion that was not faked.

Could he truly be gone? Discovering at last what lay on the other side of that fog-drenched mountain valley?

She could not bear the thought.

The viewing line inched steadily forward. After a weeping elderly woman wearing a lace veil moved on—perhaps an old lover—Zawadi stepped up to the raised coffin. She peered gingerly down at the body as a child peers into a closet at night, afraid of what she might find. Inhaling a deep breath through her nose, she took a good long look at the arranged corpse, so still and waxen. The sight of the familiar face caused her knees to buckle.

Yet she also discovered the absence of a faint sickle-shaped scar on the back of a hand, a scar she knew should be there but was not. Marveling at the otherwise flawless similarity of the face of the corpse, and the technological prowess of the Ascendants, Zawadi’s jaw clenched for a fraction of a moment. The ruse would have fooled anyone who had not witnessed Dr. Corwin’s injury firsthand and watched the wound heal, anyone not trained to notice the tiniest of details.

There’s no scar, and this isn’t him. He could still be alive!

In that moment out of time, hers and hers alone, Zawadi vowed to search for James Gerald Corwin to the ends of the Earth, and declared her own private war against the Ascendants.

With a little shudder, her face became an expressionless mask once more, eyes lowered and head bowed, feigning respect for the dead as she returned through the crowd.

   9   

Nestled in an unassuming pocket of the upscale Howrah neighborhood, the Kolkata Science Institute was a handsome four-story building made of rose-colored limestone. A spherical glass foyer extended out from the entrance, fronted by a circular drive that enclosed a green space and a fountain. Andie and Cal stood on a walkway of inlaid bricks just behind the fountain, shielding their eyes from the sun, the misty spray a welcome relief.

Emblazoned on a sign above the entrance was the emblem that had brought them halfway around the world: an embossed globe displaying the same collection of nested images from the Star Phone—an om symbol, a double helix, and a zero.

No one had accosted them so far. In fact, oddly, not a single person was in sight outside the institute. The memory of their imprisonment in the dungeon below Venice was still ripe in Andie’s mind, screaming at her to run as fast and as far away as she could.

Before they had left Sicily, a quick search had revealed the Kolkata Science Institute was not a public entity, as she had surmised from the name, but a private company