Chapter 57: Into the Catacombs

 

The 14th Arrondissement. A discrete manhole cover.

It wasn't the tourist entrance with the ticket booth. Louis stopped in a dark alley behind an old bakery. He produced a crowbar from his jacket. Clang. He lifted the heavy iron manhole cover. A smell of damp earth, rot, and centuries-old dust wafted up.

"After you," Louis gestured to the rusty ladder descending into the black abyss.

Sebastian looked down. Then at his cane. Then at his legs. The ladder was vertical. Twenty meters down. For a man with paraplegia who had only recently regained partial mobility, it was a suicide mission.

"I can lower a rope," Louis offered, a hint of mockery in his voice. "Or carry you."

"Touch me, and you lose a hand," Sebastian snapped.

He handed his cane to Harper. He sat on the edge of the manhole. He gripped the ladder rungs with his powerful hands. He didn't use his legs. He used his upper body strength to lower himself, rung by rung, like a gymnast performing a slow, controlled descent. His arms shook from the strain, but he didn't stop.

Harper followed, her heart in her throat, watching his knuckles turn white. When his boots finally hit the wet stone floor below, he collapsed against the wall, gasping for air, sweat dripping from his nose.

"Show off," Louis muttered, jumping down lightly. But there was respect in his eyes.

---

[The Empire of the Dead]

They walked. For an hour, they navigated a labyrinth of low tunnels. The walls were lined with bones. Femurs stacked like firewood. Skulls arranged in macabre patterns, staring at them with empty sockets. Water dripped from the ceiling. Plip. Plip.

Sebastian was limping heavily now. Every step was agony. The uneven ground twisted his ankles, sending shocks of pain up his damaged nerves. But he refused to stop. He refused to let the Frenchman see him weak.

"We are close," Louis checked the compass in the journal. "The deeper we go, the older the bones."

They reached a circular chamber. The ceiling was domed, supported by a pillar made entirely of skulls. On the far wall, there was a stone carving: A Weeping Angel.

"This is it," Louis shone his flashlight on the angel. "The Guardian."

Harper stepped forward. She looked at the angel. The angel wasn't holding a sword or a harp. She was holding her hands out, palms up, as if waiting to receive something. The space between her hands was cylindrical. Exactly the size of a rolling pin.

"Mom..." Harper whispered. "You really had a sense of humor."

She took the Rolling Pin from her backpack. She placed the steel cylinder into the angel's stone hands.

Click. It fit perfectly. The engravings on the rolling pin—the binary flowers—aligned with grooves on the statue's palms.

"Turn it," Sebastian rasped, leaning on his cane. "Like you're rolling dough."

Harper grabbed the handles. She turned it clockwise. Grind. Crunch. The sound of ancient gears grinding together echoed through the chamber. Dust fell from the ceiling.

The wall behind the angel groaned. Slowly, agonizingly, a section of the bone wall slid backward and then sideways.

A gust of cold, sterile air hit them. It didn't smell like rot. It smelled of ozone and antiseptic.

---

[The Sanctuary]

Beyond the bone wall was a metal airlock door. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, starkly out of place in the 18th-century tomb. On the door was a faded logo: [ HELIOS GENETICS - EST. 1995 ]

"It's real," Sebastian stared at the logo. "My father's money... it built this."

"And your mother's genius filled it," Louis looked at Harper.

The airlock was open (the power had died decades ago). They stepped inside. The laboratory was frozen in time. Papers were scattered on the floor. Coffee mugs with mold sat on desks. Computer monitors from the 90s gathered dust. But in the center of the room, illuminated by their flashlights, was a massive glass tank. It was broken. Shattered from the inside out.

And on the floor, surrounded by dried, black stains, was a skeleton. Not an old skeleton from the catacombs. A relatively fresh one. Wearing a lab coat. Clutching a clipboard.

Sebastian limped over to the skeleton. He shone his light on the ID badge clipped to the coat. [ Dr. Arthur Sterling ]

Sebastian froze. The air left his lungs. "No..." he whispered. "My father died of a heart attack in New York. I was at his funeral. I saw the body."

"Did you?" Louis asked quietly. "Or did you see a closed casket?"

Sebastian staggered back, hitting a desk. His father didn't die in New York. He died here. Alone. In the dark. And judging by the shattered glass tank... he didn't die of natural causes. Something escaped from that tank and killed him.

Harper picked up the clipboard from the skeleton's hand. The last entry was scribbled in shaky handwriting: Subject 001 has breached containment. Protocol failed. May God forgive us. - A.S.

"Subject 001?" Harper read aloud.

A noise came from the darkness at the back of the lab. Scrape. Scrape. Like claws on metal.

The three of them went dead silent. They weren't alone.

"Louis," Sebastian unholstered his gun, his hand steady despite the shock. "You said the lab was abandoned."

"It was," Louis unholstered his own weapon. "Thirty years ago."

Scrape. The sound got closer. From the shadows emerged a figure. It wasn't a monster. It was an old man. Ragged. Wild hair. Eyes that glowed with a strange, unnatural luminescence in the flashlight beam. He was holding a scalpel.

"Arthur?" the old man croaked, looking at Sebastian. "You came back?"

He tilted his head. "No... you are the son. The broken one." The man smiled, revealing teeth that were filed into points. "Did you bring the Rolling Pin? I am hungry."

(End of Chapter 57)