THE
INTANGIBLES

Book One

The Intangibleworld Series

by Alex & Kris Astremsky

Intangibleworld.com

© 2019 Alex & Kris Astremsky. The Intangibles. All rights are reserved and protected by copyright law. No part of this book may be copied or reproduced in any form or by whatever means – electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording, posting on the Internet and corporate networks for private and public usage – without written permission, with the exception for brief quotation in critical articles and reviews. Coordinated usage of material is made with the author.

About The Book

Max, the main character of the first book, The Intangibles, is a young scientist who discovers a way to dematerialize a human body. That is, he finds a way to become invisible, go through walls and even teleport.

After being betrayed by his assistant, Max becomes the target of the hunt for his invention by his evil enemy.

And when it seems that nothing can save Max from the ruthless and fanatic enemy – the cult of professional assassins who have taken it upon themselves to “punish people for their unprofessed sins" – Osiris, “a man from the past” who has been in an intangible state for thousands of years, comes to his help.

About the Intangibleworld Series

After an extraterrestrial ship crashes on Earth, the alien crew gets reborn in the bodies of regular earthlings to confront the enemy who are intent on enslaving humanity. Faced with this malice, the crew members discover their unusual mental abilities and the “intangible” world where they have to learn to do things without their bodies. Meanwhile, their mad rival also becomes more and more unpredictable and dangerous with each passing day.

About The Authors

The pen name Alex & Kris Astremsky is being used by the married couple Alexandеr and Christy Astremsky.

Even before they were married, they shared a mutual passion for reading and writing. However, they had different tastes. Christy was fond of mysticism and thrillers. From a young age she had read all the Stephen King books, as well as many by Ray Bradbury and Herbert Wells. Alexander is a writer, screenwriter, and author of the book "Story-Flash: The Technology of Plot Development". He prefers adventures and irony; his favorite authors in the sci-fi genre are Harry Harrison and Robert Sheckley.

As a result of mixing their different tastes, an explosive, creative tandem was born, bubbling up with non-standard sci-fi plots and solutions.

According to the authors, when they came up with the idea of Intangibleworld, they wanted to write a series of novels they would enjoy reading themselves. To do that, they made a list of what they both loved in books and movies.

The result was a very long list. It included: suspense, an action-packed plot, vivid and complex characters, realistic and explicit scenes, irony, unpredictability, live dialogue, carefully crafted plot, authenticity, real character development, friendship and teamwork, a supernatural theme, gadgets and futuristic technologies, the hidden potentials of the human mind, discoveries and inventions, and extraterrestrial civilizations.

Based on this list, they developed their plot, and the first book was completed in 2016. But the authors weren’t in a hurry to release it as they decided to make it a 3 book series.

Upon the completion of the first book The Intangibles, it was tested on a group of beta-readers. Then the book was finalized. In 2017 the authors started working on the second book The Immortals, and in the process of writing this, the first book was revised again. The same thing happened during the writing of the third book The Unstoppable — the first two books were again revised and finalized. Thus, the first book has matured much like a good wine does. It is the foundation on which the plot of all the following books rests.

The Intangibleworld is a seven-book series that the authors plan to complete in 2022.

What People Are Saying About This Book:

I’ve known Christy and Alexander Astremsky for a while and worked a lot with them as screenwriters. I really appreciate Alexander’s plot development technology covered in his book Story-Flash. So, when I got the offer to read the first chapters of the Intangibleworld series before they were published, my interest was piqued. The subject of “intangibility” is actually something I have first-hand experience with as my company sold over a million copies of augmented reality books; plus, I really enjoy good sci-fi.

When I was reading it I realized this is a new wave of sci-fi genre for me. I asked myself, “What’s new here and why am I so fascinated?”

And here are the answers I’ve come up with:

There are 3 books written at the moment and all of them are action-packed. Each one pulls you into the next with more and more action. It actually should be called sci-fi action.

The writing is incredibly cinematic, meaning reading is just like watching a movie.

There is lots of intense suspense and action, with great dialog — effective and heartfelt. It doesn’t drag on and on. You can binge read these books.

The characters work as a team, especially in the second book. That’s the same character dynamic that makes you love movies like Mission Impossible and The Fast and the Furious.

This is a story for adults, so it has many explicit and realistic moments, just like in the Game of Thrones.

When I was reading Harry Potter I remember being impressed with the invisibility cloak. Here everything is based on a similar premise.

All 3 books maintain a uniformly high standard unlike other book series where the story gets boring after the first or second one.

I’m sure it will be made into a cool movie or a TV show.

I’m looking forward to the fourth book. If they keep up their good work, the authors will be able to please readers again and again.

Edward Akhramovich,

Executive Producer of the group of companies “Art Nation”

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1: The Man Who Is Not

CHAPTER 2: The Sex Chess

CHAPTER 3: Spider for the Stud

CHAPTER 4: Stiger

CHAPTER 5: The Abduction

CHAPTER 6: The Poison

CHAPTER 7: The Intangible Stranger

CHAPTER 8: The Range

CHAPTER 9: Osiris

CHAPTER 10: The Drills

CHAPTER 11: Breaking the Natural Laws

CHAPTER 12: The Succubus

CHAPTER 13: The Main Weapon

CHAPTER 14: Twelve Thousand Years Ago

CHAPTER 15: Under the Pyramids

CHAPTER 16: Sophie

CHAPTER 17: The Temptation

CHAPTER 18: At Stinger’s Place

CHAPTER 19: The Familiar Look

CHAPTER 20: Flower and Dagger

CHAPTER 21: The Chase

CHAPTER 22: Angels Have Two Faces

Prologue

Three colossal, shiny pyramids towered in the center of the biggest megalopolis on Earth. Beside them thousands of cars stood still, covered with water drops, sparkling after the recent rain.

Silence didn’t ask permission to fill every nook and cranny around. In fact, there was nobody to ask. It had taken just 24 hours for the entire planet to become a barren desert.

Yet only yesterday the energy had been pulsing through this metropolis. Yesterday it had been a hive full of flying cars swarming among the skyscrapers. Yesterday the capital city of the planet’s main sector had been living its everyday life.

And then everything had gone nuts.

As if the gods themselves had taken some hard drug and decided to crush the civilization of which they’d become too tired. As if by pushing some secret button they were trying to reboot the entire world.

Perhaps they were watching the cars fall to the ground, wreaking havoc and death. Perhaps they were even discussing the people who rushed down the streets, bumping into each other like bugs in a closed jar.

People were stumbling and falling, and the crowd that could no longer stop trampled and buried those who didn’t get up fast enough.

A woman was running down the street in panic. At some point, she managed to break away from the crowd and bumped into a man on one of the side streets. He stood there, trying to overcome convulsions that were making his entire body shake.

Then, all of a sudden, he vanished. Like he wasn’t there at all. And the only thing that remained of him were his clothes, which dropped onto the ground like an empty sack.

The woman grabbed her head and screamed in terror, so loud that the windows around her all but cracked. She rushed forward, but after a few steps, she vanished too. The wind, as if it had anticipated this, raised her thin silk robe into the air and slowly set it down a few feet away. Seconds later, this bright piece of fabric disappeared under the feet of the roaring crowd. However, running didn’t save them one bit. One after the other, people vanished, and soon the place became empty.

Over the next few minutes, there were more and more people vanishing. An incomprehensible and inevitable danger was devouring them just like the quicksand devours a wanderer who’s lost his way through the desert. People vanished, and their clothes on the sidewalk were the only sign that they had just been there.

One could still hear screams and car alarms here and there until they also faded away. Streets became empty. The city sank into dead silence.

The same thing happened in all other sectors of the planet. Having reached the acme of development, the entirety of civilization ceased to exist.

The following years and centuries did not show mercy to its remains. Skyscrapers turned to dust, shrubs and trees populated what once had been streets, squares, and parks. The former splendor of the place was covered with sand dunes, and once-exuberant vegetation withered and changed into brier.

And only the grandiose pyramids withstood the pressure of the eons. Their shine wore away, but they towered above the desert, securing the mysteries of the bygone civilization.

CHAPTER 1

The Man Who Is Not

While practicing, Max called himself the man who is not.

He was moving through concrete walls on the twentieth floor of an unfinished skyscraper. In his mind, he was counting down: 53, 52, 51...

In less than a minute, his body would become tangible again, and he could add an entry to his diary, “New record of intangibility achieved with the Switch: fifteen minutes.”

Having passed through another wall, he found himself in a spacious hall. Instead of one of the walls, which was supposed to be all glass, there was a gaping void. A panoramic window would have been very appropriate here.

Instead, there was just an enormous, red-bearded guy. He was standing on the very edge, and the breeze stroked his hair.

“Everyone has sinned,” he said, and scornfully spat into the abyss.

It was well past midnight and the dim lights around the construction site were fading into the thick fog that embraced New York City.

A flashlight lay on the floor nearby. He moved it with his boot covered in dirt, and abeam of bright light revealed a girl lying on the concrete floor. She was tied up.

Her unnaturally white face, smeared with mascara, seemed to gleam. In her mouth was a ball gag, the kind that might be used for bondage. Her long blonde hair was spilling across the floor. The sleeve of her pink jacket was torn. Her wrists were tightly tied up with a rope and looked white as she constantly tried to move them about. Her hips and torso were bound with a safety line, the kind that would normally be used in mountain climbing. The other end of the line was in the hands of the red-bearded guy.

He’d gotten the line through the hook on the ceiling and was attaching his end to the safety gear belt that he had on. When he finished, he ran the line through the belay device on his waist and gave it a few jerks. The line was moving freely and yet was securely held with the stopper. He chuckled.

The girl looked no more than seventeen. She sobbed occasionally, and her big round eyes were full of fear.

The big guy lifted her by the safety line as if she was a rag doll and moved her closer to the edge, so that her head was right above the abyss.

Max recoiled. For an instant, he even forgot that he was in the intangible state and nobody could see him.

42, 41, 40… This state was about to end.

The girl murmured something. A blast of wind made her hair look even wilder.

“Everyone has sinned and this is fine,” grunted the red beard, tightening up the line that connected him to the girl. “But sins pile up, and one needs to get rid of ’em. For example, by confessing. Or if one can’t get rid of ’em… one needs to be punished for ’em.”

The girl began to twitch, moving her head and mumbling. Her mascara, mixed with her tears, made it hard for her to see anything, causing her eyes to tear up even more. But the big guy didn’t seem to pay attention and continued his speech.

“You didn’t wanna confess willingly, so I’m gonna have to force it out of you. I’m telling you, I’ve been waiting long enough. But another sinful day of yours went by and I’ve lost my nerve…” He paused, scrutinizing the girl who was staring down into the abyss with horror. “Here’s what I say: You don’t wanna repent, it’s your choice. I do know your biggest sin. You just go on reeling ’em off one by one and when you tell the biggest one, I’ll take it as your confession and let you go. Deal?”

The girl shook her head and mumbled again.

The guy sighed with disappointment and rolled his eyes.

“Well, you gonna say again that you haven’t done anything wrong? Seems like you’re not quite getting it.”

He bent down, grabbed her safety line, and lifted her up again. Three times as big as her, he easily moved the girl even closer to the edge, causing the upper part of her body to hang above the abyss. She was now literally within an inch of her life.

The girl twitched even harder, trying to move away from the edge, but the heavy boot pressed her into the floor, making her totally immobile.

“So…”

The girl began to nod desperately. The red beard smirked and pulled her back in to her former spot. He touched her soft wet cheek. She stared at him, stunned and terrified. His paw slipped down and stopped by her neck. Suddenly, the big guy took out the gag, causing her to break into a fit of coughing.

“I will… I will tell all…” Her voice sounded like a bell trying to ring above its pitch.

The guy smiled and squatted next to her.

“My sin… My biggest sin was that I didn’t listen to you and… and… I didn’t come to your church.”

The man lifted his eyebrows and exploded with laughter.

“Come on! Is that a sin? You were simply stupid. That’s not your fault.”

“Please let me go! I didn’t do anything to you!”

“Give me your biggest sin,” he kept on going, “I just wanna help ya.”

The girl sobbed again.

“I… I slept with my science teacher before the exams.”

Her eyes glistened and lips curved down. She looked away and started to cry.

“Hmm. What do you know?”

He shrugged and reached for her face. “Look at you, you’re all…”

He tried to rub off the mascara smear under her eyes but made it even worse. Irritated, he started rubbing harder. The girl screamed and tried to dodge him but he was holding her tight. He grabbed her hair so she couldn’t move her head and started rubbing the delicate skin under her eyes. He started breathing harder, his face too close to hers. Now she looked totally terrified and desperate.

Max could not watch it any longer. He wanted to materialize now!

Suddenly, the guy shoved the girl away so fast that her head bumped against the floor.

He started to grit his teeth so loudly that Max almost could hear it.

“Well, you see? You must feel better now,” said the guy.

The girl was no longer crying. She seemed hypnotized and stunned, so all she could do was nod.

“Too bad though that you still haven’t given up your biggest sin.”

“I have.”

“No, you have not. That’s not what I expected to hear.” His voice grew softer. “Look, I am just doing what I am supposed to. Remember the symbol of my church?”

She nodded. “Yes, I do. The spider.”

“That’s my girl. The spider. The cosmic creator, the great spinner, the weaver of the universal fabric, the adviser to gods. But… you are not a goddess, are you? Perhaps that’s why you never made it to the church.”

Max had already started to suspect something, but now he was certain. Eddie, his assistant, has been going for a while to a church, which he referred to as the Church of The Spider. Eddie had talked about it a few times, and now Max recalled his stories. They sounded pretty much like the ideas of the red-bearded guy.

“You gonna kill me?” Her voice broke and she could hardly breathe.

“Why would I?” He raised his eyebrows. “However, I believe that you can see for yourself how utterly vulnerable and frail it is, this thing you call your life. Your sinful existence…”

He moved in toward her face again and grabbed her by the hair, causing her to look up. The girl winced in pain.

“Give me your sin, Chloe…” he groaned.

“I…I…”

“Give it to me!” He yelled. Tears sprang out of her eyes and she flinched.

“I slept… with two classmates…”

He let her go and recoiled. “Two! At the same time?”

She nodded. Her shoulders jumped up and down and tears poured out of her eyes.

“And what did you get out of it? You felt happier?”

She shook her head.

“Freer?”

“No,” she sobbed.

“Okay. And still, this is not it.”

He stood up and took the safety line again.

“No! No!” she shouted.

He ignored her plea and roughly pulled her to the edge, then checked the safety line, gave it a jerk, and kicked his victim.

With a scream, the girl fell over the edge and disappeared somewhere between the floors, but still hanging. The only thing that didn’t let her fall was the belay device and the stopper on the gear belt of the red-bearded guy.

He was holding the line tight. Even though he was much bigger and stronger than the girl, he had to brace his feet with much effort to prevent her from falling.

Max was desperately trying to find a solution. He would materialize any moment now. But what could he do to beat this maniac? He could well make things even worse. The guy may get distracted and lose control of the line. What could he do?

He thought for a moment and rushed to the stairs, going down into the room one floor below.

Between the floors, the girl was helplessly hanging by the safety line, which rubbed against the concrete slab and screeched.

“I’m gonna lift you up if you tell me about your biggest sin!” She heard his voice from the upper floor.

The safety line screeched again as he pulled the girl up a few inches.

“Give it to me!” demanded the red-bearded guy.

Chloe screamed in desperation.

“It’s no use yelling! No one can hear you! Give it to me!”

A horrible rasp, and Chloe suddenly dropped, reactively fluttering her hands and screaming. Darkness concealed her face, but Max clearly perceived the horror that she felt.

“I let my boyfriend take nude pictures of me!” Chloe shouted. “Pull me up! Do it!”

Another jerk and the girl dropped again, stopping three feet above the floor where Max now stood. She was swinging back and forth like a pendulum: back and she was over the floor, fourth and she was over the abyss. And the safety line was making its screech.

“I see you’re a real whore!” the big guy said slowly. Though unseen, his low and loud voice was clear. “Come on, I’ll give you two more shots. Let’s finish it.”

“I don’t know! I don’t know what you want to hear!” yelled Chloe and burst into tears again. “I swiped fifty dollars from you!”

“Oh dear! That’s just not it…” he said slowly again, and after a pause continued. “You should know something. I’ll tell you something else about our church. It might help you. The Spider is capable of moving through the air. This is what connects us to heaven and gods. This is why we deem the Spider as the link between worlds. And this is why he guides the soul in its afterlife journey either to heaven or the underworld. Here we perform his job… the Spider’s job…”

Chloe was swinging and sobbing. The panic that clenched her went away and now she just felt apathy. She couldn’t care less about her future.

“You must have realized that today I am your guide. And if you behave and repent, you shall live a little longer…”

Suddenly, Chloe sensed a motion and looked up. A young man wearing a pair of jeans and a vest stepped out of the darkness. He put his finger to his lips. A peculiar bracelet threw light on his face.

The red-bearded guy again made his presence known. “You never realized your biggest sin!

Max carefully grabbed the girl by the jacket, pulled her over and gestured her to keep talking.

“What do you want to hear?” she yelled.

“Your biggest sin,” he yelled back, “is you making me commit sins! It’s you not being ashamed of exposing your juicy body!”

“But you’re my guardian! I trusted you as I would my father, I didn’t even think of…”

A rustle came from above and the safety line moved. Max and Chloe froze. The guy must have gotten tired and sat down.

“You’re a whore, damn you!” he went on. “I’ve been thinking of you and screwing you in my thoughts a thousand times! This is my sin and I can’t live with it. And no confession will ever help me!”

Max took a jack-knife out of his pocket and began to cut the line. The small blade just slid back and forth, almost with no result. Yet Max kept going. Slowly, the blade did what it was supposed to do. The line started to yield.

“Hey! What’s this silence supposed to mean?” The red-bearded guy jerked the rope. Chloe screamed and grabbed onto Max.

“Help me, please,” she whispered.

Max looked up and peered into her eyes. He saw a plea and dread there, and resumed cutting the rope even harder. He was halfway there.

Another jerk, and the girl was pulled toward the edge; Max had to use all his strength to hold her.

“You bitch!” screamed the big guy and bent over. “You think I will let you escape, you whore?”

The next moment, his feet appeared. He swung a couple of times and jumped down.

He missed by just an inch. Perhaps, had there been a little lighter, he would have been able to estimate his effort better and land right beside Max. Risky as it was, he could have.

But he jumped the gun. His feet barely touched the floor and he slipped, pulling his bulky body down.

For Max it looked like slow motion: the guy jumped down, didn’t manage to land firmly on his feet, lost his balance, and slid down. Though his fingers did grasp the edge, his feet couldn’t find anything to stand on. He gasped and rushed toward the ground. The safety line dropped and started to quickly unreel. Chloe saw that and a shadow of grief and submission blinked in her eyes.

“No!” Max yelled and clasped her by the hand even harder.

But it was not hard enough, as the powerful force yanked the girl out of his grip and pulled her down after the red-bearded man.

Max took a step toward the edge. His heart felt like it was going to jump out of his chest. He saw Chloe falling into the abyss after the big guy, but could not do anything about it. Her fall seemed endless to him.

He felt numb as he watched the fog devour the girl.

One instant and it was all over. Max heard the distant thud of the inevitable. The thud of the sigh of death, which he had not managed to prevent.

Max glanced at his bracelet that he’d once named the Switch. It was glowing in the dark. He ran his fingers over it. Numbers showed up on the little screen, which looked like the face of a digital watch.

A moment later, Max was once again the Man Who Is Not.

CHAPTER 2

The Sex Chess

“Oh, come on! We’ve been working together for so long! Why don’t you let me try it? You don’t trust me? Why?”

Max was sitting on the sofa, elbows on his knees, rubbing his forehead with his fingers. He was staring at the person who spoke to him, but his attention was wandering to something disastrous that had happened recently, something that had disturbed him for the entire night and the whole never-ending day after.

Yet the guy was talking a mile a minute. He looked to be around 25 years old, wore glasses and a shirt with a stale odor. His words reached Max’s ears from afar and echoed inside his head. But all these sounds did not make much sense to him; he couldn’t make them out, though he looked right at the guy. The only thing that made sense to Max was the incident that he was unable to undo: the girl that he was unable to bring back, and the chance to save her he had been unable to take… It was swarming inside his head and causing throbbing pain.

“Hey, Max! Are you with me?”

The guy with glasses got closer and snapped his fingers several times in front of his face. Max shooed him away like a bothersome fly.

“Yeah, I am.”

“What’s up with you?” Eddie moved back and frowned, which made his eyebrows behind his horn-rimmed glasses move together, and continued in a higher voice. “How many times have I asked you, what are you afraid of? What can possibly happen? You have a whole bunch of settings in your Switch! It’s got a security code and no one but you can use it. Just set the timer and go! What can I do with it?”

“That’s not the point, Ed…” Max looked down, rubbed his temples, and saw the image of the red-bearded guy from the Church of the Spider. Eddie had told Max about that church. As far as he could tell from his enthusiastic stories, its adepts were rather spiritual and believed in ancient myths about “Spider the Creator weaving the cosmic threads.” However, last night’s experience with the zealot and his young victim did not quite match the uplifting theories of the Church of the Spider…

“Then what? What is the point? We are done, the bracelet works, all the functions were tested. By you!”

A drop of saliva came out of Eddie’s mouth, but he was speaking so vehemently that he didn’t even notice. He kept ranting and stabbing Max in the chest with his finger, as if it helped him make his point.

Max moved Eddie’s hand away.

Eddie moved back and started pacing their small office, furnished with only a sofa, a desk, and several drawers.

“It’s risky,” said Max. “Something might go wrong. Besides, you haven’t completed your training.”

“I did! A long time ago!”

“No, you didn’t,” Max insisted. “You handle the one-minute interval quite well, but five or ten minutes you don’t.”

“Oh really!” Eddie smiled ingratiatingly, took the smartphone from the desk and pointed at the screen. “Here, look. These are my training records. You kept them yourself.”

“I know. Right. But none have hundred percent results. We need exactly one hundred percent interval control.”

“Look here and here.” Eddie left marks on the touch screen with his finger; he was very agitated. “What else do you want?”

“I repeat, we need one hundred percent results. Besides…”

“Besides what?”

“You know very well how it can end if you skip something.”

Max’s face flushed with a distant memory flashing through his head and quickly fading into the labyrinths of his past.

Eddie shoved the smartphone back and chanted.

“This… has… all… been… taken… into… account. We have been working together for many years. All this time I’ve been helping you. Of course, all these are inventions of your father and yours, you being the scientist dynasty, right? And I’m just an ordinary programmer, right?” Eddie chuckled.

“Stop it.”

“No.” Eddie couldn’t stop. “If I hadn’t helped you, all these would not be worth a nickel! And I’ve been helping you as a friend, I’ve been working on the coding. You’d be broke if you had to pay me for all this work! But I didn’t charge you a single cent! We’re friends! And this is your appreciation?” Eddie’s voice broke.

“Look…” Max said more softly.

“No! You look!” Eddie didn’t let Max finish. His eyes glowed with anger and he sputtered as he spoke. “Just don’t think that I am going to take this much longer! All I’m asking you is to let me try the Switch! Just one try! Five, ten minutes tops! Yet you’re afraid, you don’t trust me for some reason, even though we’ve been working together for years and I’ve always shown my loyalty! Anyone else would have dropped it and left! I can’t have you disrespecting me like that anymore. Do you think that I won’t leave and develop my own Switch?”

Eddie stopped, but Max still noticed a mischievous and frantic look in his eyes.

“Calm down.” Max broke the intense silence. “Don’t think that I don’t trust you. That’s not the point. It’s just…I had a rough day yesterday.”

Eddie nodded and approached the window without a word.

“Okay. Let’s try,” Max acquiesced.

Eddie lit up.

“Ten minutes only.” Max showed all his ten fingers, like it could serve as an additional argument for Eddie. “Anyway, you do need to understand how the Switch works.”

“So, I need to try it.” Eddie smiled. “Thanks, mate! I really appreciate it.”

Eddie eagerly watched the bracelet as Max took it off.

“But please be careful. Ten minutes.” Max touched the bracelet lightly to set it. “Now, your clothes…”

Max aimed the bracelet at Eddie and it scanned him with an invisible beam. Eddie was so excited that he could barely stand still as he reached for the desired gadget. Max entered some additional settings.

“That’s it. Put it on.”

Eddie took the Switch with trembling hands and fastened it. It took him a few times to get it right.

“I’m a bit nervous,” said Eddie.

“Don’t be. Just keep the time under control. Actually, get back well before the time runs out. Okay?” Max briefed him as he opened one of the drawers and took a box out. From the box he got out a pair of glasses with bluish lenses.

“Let’s do it.”

Eddie nodded and disappeared.

Max put on the glasses, and a blue, specter-like figure appeared in front of him. Intangible Eddie was looking in amazement at what had just been his arms and legs. When he’d seen enough, he tentatively approached the wall, hesitated a little, and reached for it. The blue outline of his hand fused with the wall and then disappeared. In an instant, Eddie disappeared behind the wall completely.

* * *

Amazing. The body was intangible, yet all his senses were still bright! Eddie was overwhelmed with emotion. The incredible, one could even say metaphysical, powers of the gadget that he and Max had been working on for years were now there to be experienced in full. And nothing could compare with it. Every wall he walked through became sort of a part of him, and he felt god-like in that moment. For god’s sake, he was a god now! Defying all the natural laws, he, Eddie, walked through walls and could see what they were hiding. Eddie moved through the offices of the building, getting familiar with his new powers.

He saw a clerk in one of these offices who looked bored with his paperwork. Eddie stopped. A middle-aged man was lazily typing something on his computer. He knew that he was alone, so he suddenly leaned back and gave a thunderous burp.

Eddie moved on, entering the next office. It was empty and dark. There was nothing interesting there, so the intangible visitor kept going.

After a few more similar offices, Eddie found himself in a long hallway with identical doors that differed by the signs only.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of heels coming from the elevators. Eddie turned around and saw an outline of a woman against the light at the end of the hallway. The heels were coming faster, then slower, then faster again. Perhaps she was in a hurry.

She came very close to Eddie, almost bumping into him. He forgot that he was in the intangible state and jumped aside.

The tall black beauty flew by, tracing amazing zigzags with her hips and clicking her high heels loudly. Her long, curly hair playfully bounced up and down her shoulders in sync with her steps.

Eddie perked up and rushed after her.

The girl approached a heavy door with a plaque reading, “White Swan Modeling Agency” and ran her ID card through the locking device near the door knob. The door opened and automatically closed behind her with a click.

Eddie snuck through the door after her. He was still blown away by the absence of barriers for his intangible body.

He found himself not in the office, but rather in a hotel suite. The girl had turned left and disappeared into one of the rooms, apparently a bathroom.

“Finally!” someone said from the room.

Eddie walked toward the source of the voice and entered a bedroom with a huge bed. Carefully draped windows hid it from prying eyes. The decor and, most importantly, the furnishings made the purpose of the room pretty obvious.

On the huge bed lay a leggy blonde with a ponytail. She looked bored. Her white patent leather shoes were crumpling the fresh sheets. With her eyes, she was drilling a hole in the faux fireplace across the room and monotonously chewing gum. Her plump, bright red lips were moving slowly. Her long, neatly colored eyelashes now and then dropped and covered her unnaturally blue, almond-shaped eyes. A small white crown with blue rhinestones mesmerizingly dazzled in the dim light. Her lacy underwear was peeking through her white negligee. But for the mouth noisily chewing the gum and flapping eyelashes, one could have mistaken her for an enlarged Barbie doll.

Across the bed, next to the fireplace, stood a man in jeans and an elegant navy-blue jacket. He was around thirty-five. In his hands he had a tablet. He moved his eyes from the screen to the blonde and back. He frowned, turned around, fixed the camera on the wall above the fireplace, glanced at the screen once again, and nodded. Now he looked satisfied.

“It’s good now,” he said.

The blonde took a deep breath and stretched her legs, crumpling the snow-white sheets even more.

“Knock it off!” The man approached the blonde and rudely moved her legs off the bed. She made a sour face. He set the sheets straight and turned to a big black guy who was sitting in the chair by the bed, sipping a glass of whiskey on the rocks.

“Joe, that’s it. I need you to be in good shape.”

Joe nodded and put the glass down on the small clear table.

“I am in good shape, Billy.” He smiled smugly and got up.

His black leather pants were so tight that they almost tore apart. He straightened up and one could see his thick body and muscles beneath his mesh T-shirt that looked like armor.

“You’re a hell of a knight,” chuckled Billy. He looked at Joe, who was taller than him almost by a foot.

“So, where is she?” Billy looked at the screen and yelled, “Leeza!”

Answering his call, the black beauty sailed out of the dark hall. Eddie was flabbergasted by the change in her look. So was Billy.

Her magnificent, slim body was decorated with a scarlet thong and scarlet leather bra that was revealing everything that a bra was supposed to conceal. The only thing that somehow covered her charms was the thick curly hair, tar-black, streaming down her back, shoulders, and breasts like a waterfall. On top of her head she had a tiny crown, just like the one on the blonde’s head, but red. Her heels were as high as they could possibly be, completing the image of this steamy beauty.

Billy eventually snapped out of it and moved back a step, letting her in.

“Here’s our black queen,” he said with a lustful grin. “Darling, I was about to cut your pay in half for being late all the time, and you can thank your goddamn beauty that I haven’t done so.”

He laughed at his own joke, but no one else joined in. The blonde looked at the other girl indifferently with her jaw still moving about, and Joe was just staring at Leeza, barely listening to Billy.

“Okay, now.” Billy rubbed his hands and picked up his tablet. “In a minute we’ll be on the air. We’ve worked out the script. By the way, Emma, do you play chess?”

The blonde hesitated a little, then continued to chew her gum and shook her head, no.

“I thought so,” chuckled Billy. “Here’s all you need to know: normally, there are several pieces in the game, but we’ll have just three: the white queen, the black queen and… the knight.” Bill nodded toward Joe. “And one more thing. Our client loves to play chess. That’s all you need to know about this game. Ready. Action!” He stared at his tablet, moving his fingers on the screen.

A little red light appeared on the camera. Two pairs of smoky eyes looked at the stud in leather pants who approached the bed. The blonde licked her plump lips and slowly reached for his fly.

Suddenly a figure appeared in the dimly lit hallway. Billy turned around and his jaw dropped as he noticed a nerdy-looking guy standing in the doorway. It remained a mystery as to how he’d gotten there. The guy backed toward the exit and tried to disappear into the darkness. Joe also noticed the stranger, and was now looking at Billy with a question in his eyes. Billy motioned Joe to keep going and went after the uninvited guest.

The heavy door did not give in to the stranger, who was jerking the door knob in panic, trying to find the lock.

“Who are you?” Billy moved in on him and whispered.

“I… ummmm… I have to… have to go. I got here by mistake. Let me… go.”

“Who are you, dammit?” Billy fixed his eyes on Eddie. “And how did you get in here?”

The light from the bedroom exposed Eddie, who looked completely frightened, in total dismay. Billy’s eyes bugged out as he watched him. He didn’t pay attention to his incomprehensible mumbling but reached and started to go through Eddie’s clothes. He got a white ID card with Eddie’s picture from his greasy pants.

Billy studied the ID card and chuckled.

“So, you work here? Where exactly?”

“I… here… in an office… nearby.” Eddie waved his hand in an indefinite direction.

“How did you enter this suite, idiot?” Billy continued to interrogate Eddie in a low voice.

“I… wrong door…” Eddie mumbled and looked down.

“Horseshit!” Billy measured Eddie up. “Come here!” He grabbed Eddie by the elbow and pulled him toward the bedroom.

He stopped at the entrance to the room, where a “chess game” was being played for all its worth. Without getting in front of the camera, Billy got Leeza’s attention and beckoned to her. Her eyes got as round as they possibly could. She crawled from under Joe and approached Billy.

She disdainfully scanned Eddie and looked at Billy, who put his finger to his lips. Leeza threw up her hands in question.

Billy pointed at Eddie and then at the bed. Leeza pulled a long face. Billy insisted and whispered something in her ear. Right away she grabbed the flummoxed Eddie by the hand and dragged him toward the bed.

The couple that was playing their “game of chess,” all too vehemently, paused and stared at Leeza and her companion.

But she behaved like a true actress. Totally matter-of-factly, she looked at Eddie.

“And this is my knight,” she said and pushed him onto the bed.

Eddie fixed his glasses, fidgeted and crawled toward the pillows, trying to escape from the aggressive “black queen.”

Leeza was playing her part impeccably. Her smile that didn’t leave her face for an instant was disguising the lightning bolts, which were about to flash from her eyes. She suddenly took off Eddie’s shoes and threw them at Billy, who ducked, missing him by less than an inch.

Emma sat there with a blank look for a second, but then realized that another player had joined the game and also started to pull his clothes off.

Eddie tried his best to resist, but it was all in vain. Shortly, all his garments were lying on the floor and Leeza was squeamishly pulling off the last piece: his ancient briefs. The “knight” might have been away on a quest for a while and had no chance to change his underwear.

When the unpleasant part was finished, Leeza looked down to find him totally limp. The blonde was looking at him with disappointment too.

“Let me go!” Eddie whined, casting a haunted look at Billy.

All the others also looked at Billy, with an unspoken question in their eyes.

The director, however, showed no mercy, waved his hand and ordered the girls to continue. They looked at each other as if flipping a quarter to decide who would have to do it, and Emma heaved a helpless sigh and crawled up to Eddie.

The three actors covered the new player with their bodies, and Billy didn’t see what happened in the next instant. Emma screamed in terror and drew herself up. Her round eyes opened even wider so that her eyelashes touched her eyebrows. Joe and Leeza seemed petrified. They all looked at the spot where Eddie had been lying a moment ago.

Billy carefully moved from the entrance toward the fireplace, and what he saw made him stop in his tracks. Instead of a naked Eddie, the only thing under Emma were the white, wrinkled sheets. The “white queen” stared at him with a stupid look, as if she was unable to handle the short-circuit in her brain.

Billy stood still for another moment, but Joe confusedly looking straight into the camera brought him round. He started to wave his hands like mad, trying to get the “black knight” back to square one.

Joe immediately jumped onto Emma, saving her from overstraining her wits and thinking about the mysterious disappearance of the other knight.

* * *

Max was pacing the office, looking at his watch and nervously rubbing his hands. Now and then he looked at the wall into which Eddie had blended twenty minutes ago. He still had the glasses on, so he would see the intangible body once it appeared.

Suddenly, a blue outline came into sight by the door. Eddie walked into the office and approached Max. The outline nervously shivered and reached out, as if trying to tell him something.

Eddie materialized fully naked, looking around in fear and panting.

“What the hell?” said Max, slightly shocked. “Where are your clothes?”

“It… there… I… they…” Eddie sniffed and mumbled.

“Where have you been?”

“Wandering the offices.”

“Damn it, why didn’t you come back on time?”

“I could not. Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Warn you about what? Didn’t we agree that you’d be here in ten minutes?”

“You didn’t warn me that I’d disappear and then rematerialize! It happened all by itself!”

“Its fail-safe triggered. You materialized, didn’t enter the code, the Switch dematerialized you after ten minutes and then got you back to normal.”

“What code? Why haven’t you told me about this mode?” Eddie screamed.

“Because we agreed that you come back in ten minutes. You said you could perfectly handle a ten-minute interval, didn’t you? Look, dumbass, where did you go and where did you leave your clothes?”

Eddie looked away.

“What? Did anybody see how you disappeared?”

“No!” yelled Eddie. “I don’t report to you! You almost killed me! You should have told me about those settings! About the code! Yet you withheld it from me!”

Eddie narrowed his eyes, his hands moving erratically in front of Max’s face. When he finished, Max walked to one of the drawers and got some clothes out. They were totally wrinkled, making him look like a bum. He picked up the backpack and walked toward the door.

“Where are you going?” asked Max.

“What do you care? You never really cared about me,” snapped Eddie. Then he opened the door and dashed out of the office.

CHAPTER 3

Spider for the Stud

Eddie walked fast, watching his steps and not looking around. Everything that had just happened gave him a lump-in-the-throat feeling.

Soon he found himself at an old, small, three-story mansion off the main street. He walked up the stairs, pulled the door knob, and opened the heavy oak door. The plaque read, “The Church of the Spider: May the Penitent Be Forgiven.”

He entered and headed for the security booth. In this well-lit hall, characters of religious stories looked at him from the posters on the walls.

“Welcome, Eddie, brother!” The security guard smiled and got up from his chair. “It’s been a while since I saw you at our services.”

“Hello,” Eddie answered. “Well, busy all the time, didn’t have a chance to come. I need to see Adrian. Is he here?”

“Yes, and he’s available now. Come in.” The security guard pointed to the dimly lit hallway behind his desk.

“Thanks.”

Eddie walked by the booth, with CCTV’s watching him from above. He turned right and found himself in a long hallway. There were more religious posters on the walls. Scenarios of Hell were pictured on the right and of Heaven on the left. This hallway always gave Eddie a funny feeling, so he sped up involuntarily and made his way to the open door, behind which was a spacious hall with rows of chairs. He had listened to Adrian’s sermons in here.

There were doors to the left and right. Ten doors: five on each side. Eddie walked to the third door on the left and entered a small room with a partition in the middle. A comfortable armchair rested near the wall. The partition made of opaque glass had a mirror finish. Eddie knew that the person behind the wall could see him, whereas Eddie could only see his own reflection.

This room was as dim as the hallway. The lamp light shone on two posters on the walls. The posters were religious too.

Eddie sat in the armchair and pushed the call button on the wall. He was a little nervous, as usual. His hands got wet and he began to wipe them on his clothes. Even though the armchair was really comfortable, he was continuously fidgeting in it to get comfortable.

What will I tell him? Do I tell all? Maybe just part? Should I tell him about Max? Eddie was thinking and fidgeting in the armchair. He got more and more nervous. He looked at the posters. How does Adrian say it? ‘If you want to confess, tell all, don’t skip details, or your soul will still suffer and go to Hell after all.’ What if it’s true?

He heard a rustle from behind the partition wall.

“Hello, Eddie!”

“Hello, Brother Adrian!” said Eddie, his heart beating madly.

“How are you doing?” The voice was friendly and soothing.

Eddie was silent. So was Adrian.

Eventually, Eddie managed to squeeze out a few words.

“Well… I know it’s been a while; my heart is heavy.”

“Well, okay. Relieve your soul. You’re among friends here.”

Eddie paused again to stabilize his voice and started. “Brother Adrian, I trust you as I trust myself. I can’t hold it in anymore. I… I helped a friend and kept it secret from everyone for a long time, and he…” Eddie stopped to catch his breath and stared at his hands. He clenched his fists and then rubbed his hands, then clenched them again. “Have mercy on me, Master, if I…”

He got silent again. His hands trembled as he stared at them, as if it could somehow help him through his confession.

“Continue, Brother Eddie. Tell me your sin in detail, as you surely understand how important it is for your soul. Tell me everything and the Master will forgive you and send relief unto your soul…”

* * *

The sun generously cast its light on the street, highlighting the Church of the Spider among the other buildings. Its oak gates flung open and a woman went out. She was about forty. Even her professional make-up could not disguise her slightly swollen eyes. She cautiously looked around and sobbed, taking a tissue to her nose. She halted on the porch, took a deep breath, looked around again, and hurried toward the parking lot.

At the same time, Adrian entered a spacious office with a huge table in the middle. The interior was austere, the only decoration a set of frames with concise texts of the Church of the Spider. There were no windows.

A gloomy man sat at the top of the big oval table. He was about fifty, with a wrinkled, shaven, and dully grey face. Only his eyes carried any expression, a shade of exhaustion emanating from them.

Twelve men in long black cloaks sat around the table in Windsor chairs. They all had their heads down and their hands on the dark, heavy wooden table.

Adrian quietly walked to the table and sat in the empty chair.

The man at the top of the table was monotonously saying a prayer. “...and let the Master bring harmony to this world. We, as His chosen servants, will exercise the right to execute His will and rid His world of liars, hypocrites, fornicators, thieves, rapists, and murderers. And thus shall we assist the Spider, our Master, in His justice…”

Those at the table chanted.

“...and assume the right to restore justice where it was lost and execute vengeance where the evil remained unpunished.”

Everyone paused. Then the man at the top of the table looked up and said, “All except Adrian are dismissed.”

Cloaks rustled as the adepts stood up. Before leaving, each bowed before the one who had read the prayer.

He waited for the last adept to leave and addressed Adrian with a low, mellow, yet powerful voice. “What’s the delay?”

“Zet, I’m sorry, I was busy hearing confessions.”

“You must not be late for the meetings.”

“Sorry,” repeated Adrian.

“Okay. Tell me, how’s Margo?”

Adrian chuckled. “That’s why I was late today. You see, she was all too upset. She used up a week’s supply of tissues.”

“And what’s gotten our lady so upset? As far as I remember, her husband is a bank owner, they live in a posh mansion, she’s surrounded with help. Gardeners, chauffeurs, tutors for the kids.”

“True. In short, she fell in love and now she doesn’t know how to live with it.”

Zet arched his dark, thick eyebrows. His piercing eyes showed from under them.

“She told me she’s in love with her fitness coach, and the relationship is now far from being platonic.”

“Did she sleep with him?” Zet sneered.

“More than once. They’ve been together for three months. Every time in a different hotel. She is scared to death that her husband will find out. She thinks he suspects something.”

“Why doesn’t she just knock it off?”

“That’s the point, she tried but couldn’t. I’m telling you, she’s in love.”

Zet chuckled. “The work of the devil…”

“Right. And the musclehead is happy, he’s got a sugar mama. She bought him a new car and a watch, and rents them suites in posh hotels.”

“A gigolo.”

“Looks like it. I’ve checked him. She is not his first one and most probably won’t be the last. And right now, he’s having affairs with three other silly married women. One of them is well over fifty.

Zet whistled. “And what do you think?”

“Got a good plan. You’ll love it. Did you hear about the Brazilian wandering spider?

“It’s venomous, from South America.”

“Not quite.” Adrian produced his smartphone from his cloak with a cunning smile. “Look here.”

Zet stared curiously at the screen showing a picture of the spider on a human hand. The spider was about three inches big. With its long, brownish legs covered with short hair and pink, round jaws, it was terrifying.

Zet looked away from the screen and chuckled in satisfaction. “A real looker.”

“The best piece of my collection,” said Adrian, admiringly glancing at the spider. He put the smartphone back in his pocket. “This specific one is interesting, in that its bite is not deadly but its effect is especially excruciating.”

Zet narrowed his eyes.

“I know,” said Adrian in anticipation, “but sometimes death is not the worst punishment for a sinner. Especially for one like him.”

“And what is your plan?” Zet’s face grew warmer, and his dark and deep-set eyes sparkled.

Adrian went on with excitement. “Its bite is lethal only in three percent of cases, but it’s always bad for sex. Usual symptoms are dizziness, nausea, high BP, and erectile dysfunction for men.”

Zet sneered.

“Have you ever heard of priapism?” asked Adrian.

“I know about Priapus, a minor fertility god with a permanent hard-on.” Zet lay back and laughed. He invited Adrian to continue with a nod.

“You’re well in the know,” Adrian chuckled. “Anyway, this dysfunction is called priapism, which is named after that god, Priapus. A man with this condition suffers a permanent and quite painful erection, which is not connected with sexual arousal.”

“I think I’ve got it. You’re quite creative indeed!”

Adrian happily nodded. “Exactly. And the guy will stop thinking about pulling the wool over the eyes of innocent married women, ’cause he’ll be thinking of something else for a while. At least for a few months, he can forget about his carnal needs, and these women’s souls that have gotten lost will return to their cozy nests.”

“Brilliant!” Zet got his dry hands out of the cloak and sort of applauded. “Go for it.”

Adrian got up and bowed before leaving.

“Assume the right to restore justice where it was lost,” said Zet.

“And execute vengeance where the evil remained unpunished,” Adrian finished the line.

* * *

A tall, young stud inspected himself in the mirror above the sink. He saw barely noticeable bags under his eyes, frowned, and backed away from the reflection.

Narrow drawers stood along the walls of the small room, and in the center was a long bench.

“Had fun with your chicks again?” someone said from behind.

The young man turned around and saw a guy, about his age. He was putting on a T-shirt.

“Screw you,” the stud nattered, slipping out from the locker room.

He felt drained. Today, she’d exhausted him completely. First, she’d thrown a tantrum, then kept him up through the night with stupid texts. Freaking drama queen; he hadn’t gotten any sleep.

That’s it, he thought to himself, standing in the elevator going down to underground parking. It’s time I wrapped it up.

Thoughts were swarming in his head like a bunch of flies. He wanted to fend them off but they came back again and again, reminding him of the past twenty-four hours.

Margo had been really annoying. She’d jumped on him as though she’d felt that it was their last date. She’d yelled and acted up and cried. He’d thought that even the thick walls of the Hilton hotel building could not keep the entire city from hearing her screams. She had no sense of caution. None.

The elevator rang and stopped. The doors slid apart to let the young man exit.

The sound of steps echoed through the dimly lit parking lot. The stud walked past the cars and took his key out of his overcoat pocket. A black Porsche blinked a few times at its owner, who suddenly had a feeling of disgust. And this was really weird, because just a few days ago, he had been totally happy about this shiny new car. He recalled how Margo had given him the keys and looked at him with glowing and adoring eyes.

The car door quietly opened and he got in. The new interior still smelled like the factory. He rested his hands on the velvet leather of the wheel and sat back, waiting for the happiness and satisfaction to return. But nothing happened. Neither the neon-glowing dashboard, nor the quiet murmur of the engine, nor the new stylish hat that was supposed to match the color of his overcoat got his spirits up.

The car softly sailed out of the parking lot and dove into the turmoil of the big-city streets.

Stuck in his thoughts and worried by current events, he drove along, watching buildings and traffic lights sail by.

After several blocks, he parked his Porsche in the parking lot of a cozy neighborhood of townhouses.

The guy was not in a hurry to leave the car. He killed the engine and stroked the wheel several times, still deep in his thoughts. He’d dreamed about this car for years, and eventually his dream had come true. So why didn’t he feel happy? Why did he feel a gnawing unease instead?

He slapped the wheel lightly, as if to brush off his conflicting thoughts, grabbed his hat, put it on, and looked into the rearview mirror.

Yes, the hat fit him great. This cheered him up a little. Now he just needed to move it forward and pinch it a bit.

He made these easy actions with his right hand and, now happy, about to step out of his car. That very instant, something stung him on the top of his head, causing a sharp and sudden pain. He jerked the hat off and threw it away, reaching with his hand to the spot where the pain was burning like hell and felt like his skin was being ripped off. Something moved in his hair.

Panic overwhelmed him and he screamed. The scream was drowned out by the roar and rumble in his ears, as excruciating pain consumed his body.

He fumbled through his hair and eventually managed to pull something out. He stared at his clenched fist but could not make himself open it. He didn’t want to see what moved inside there and was trying to escape through his closed fingers.

Suddenly, sharp pain cut through his left hand as well. He howled and opened his fist to see a brown spider sinking its fangs into his delicate skin.

He screamed and convulsively shook his hand, trying to make the disgusting creature fall. It slid from his palm and flew into the corner.

Appalled, he managed to open the door with the bitten hand that was now numb with pain. He tried to get out, but could barely move his leg. His own scream sounded as if it was coming from afar, and he fell onto the pavement. The throbbing pain started to center around his groin and grew stronger every second. He tried to inhale for another scream, but he felt as if there was a noose around his throat, and all he could manage was a quiet, pitiful groan.

He writhed on the cold concrete and felt nothing but an intense burning pain in his groin. His body grew numb, with just his lips moving, as if he were a fish on the shore.

He noticed two elderly ladies approaching him with curious and anxious looks on their faces.

“Help! Help!” he heard somewhere deep inside his head, but he could make no sound; his vocal cords were paralyzed. Everything was moving slowly and resembled a nightmare.

One of the ladies looked somewhere to the left and her face distorted with horror. She pointed in that direction to show the other lady what had scared her.

The last thing that the sinner saw was the large spider striding about four inches from his eyes. The spider stopped right in front of his face, as if it wanted to make sure that the vengeance was executed, and then leaped away into a nearby bush.

Far away, he could hear the sound of a siren, fading as he passed out.

CHAPTER 4

Stinger

The door to the bathroom was slightly open. The glass wall of the shower cabin was covered with steam, but that didn’t hide the shape of the woman inside. Water streamed down her perfect body, a lightning bolt tattoo on her back, then ran over her full breasts and long legs before disappearing down the drain.

A tall, handsome, black-haired man around forty watched the girl. From time to time, he looked down at his hands as he filed his fingernails. Finished, he looked back up at the brunette and called to her.

“Linda!”

She turned off the shower and stepped out of the cabin, right in front of the man who was devouring her with his eyes. He gave her the towel, but the girl took her time. Water drops fell from her delicate shoulders onto the floor. The man smiled.

“Each time you take a shower, beauty,

A hundred angels gaze at you with pleasure!

They smile, and, keeping their voices muted,

Exchange their whispers and admire the treasure.”

He spoke each word very clearly as he leaned forward and sensually stroked her body with a file, slowly and carefully, down from the neck, between her perky breasts and then… lower.

“Your sparkling body makes their gazes tame.

Your splendor dazzles, stuns and leaves them almost blind,

They call you Goddess, both unearthly and divine,

And worship you without a bit of shame.”

The brunette’s eyes sparkled, the towel fell to the floor, she bent and touched his lips with hers…

At that instant, the phone rang.

“Damn it!” said Linda.

She picked up the towel, put it on, and walked away.

The cell phone was insistently ringing. The man gazed at the girl as if he was enchanted. When she disappeared in the other room, he sighed in disappointment, and went to the living room to answer the phone.

“What?” He made a sour face and plopped down on the sofa. “Billy, tell me!”

He listened to the voice on the other end jabber something, and his eyes began to light up.

“Let me see,” said the man, reaching for the coffee table. He took the tablet. “Okay, wait. Here it is. I got it! I’ll call you back.”

He hung up and threw the phone on the sofa. Now he was interested only in what he saw on the screen.

“Stinger, dear, who called?” a melodic voice asked from the next room.

He didn’t answer.

Linda stood in the doorway, tying up the belt of her light silk robe. Her wet black hair lay messily on her shoulders.

“Darling, come here,” said Stinger, motioning to her to sit down.

Linda did. “What is this?” she asked, looking at the tablet screen.

“Billy sent it and asked us to watch it to the end.”

Two chess queens, the white and the black, were having fun with the black knight on the huge bed.

“And who is this?” Linda raised her eyebrows and pointed at the screen when the new actor had appeared in shot. He clearly did not belong there. Some scared, nerdy-looking guy in a wrinkled shirt was at once put to work by one of the ladies.

Stinger paused the video. “Billy said that we almost lost our client because of that idiot. You see, big money was paid for the stream and suddenly that… Let’s watch it.” Stinger unpaused it.

It looked like another character was being added to the scene, but it was utterly absurd. He just didn’t belong there. At some point, the blonde covered him with her body, but all of a sudden, she jumped up and they saw that there was no one under her. At this point, the video ended.

“So, what the hell was that?” Linda squinted.

“Billy said that the dude came from nowhere and vanished in front of everyone. The client blamed Billy for plotting it and editing the video. Billy had to refund him. But that’s not the point. Did you see how he vanished?”

“Yes. I thought it was edited, too.”

“It was not.” Stinger said slowly, still looking at the screen, which showed the frozen frame of the white queen’s bewilderment.

“Then what was it?”

This question remained unanswered. Stinger sat in silence for a while. “You know what? Let’s check them out. Billy said that he found an ID card in that guy’s pocket. He works in the lab for some scientist named Max Landau.”

Stinger typed the name into his search bar and it produced a bunch of links. “Well, social networks. Facebook. Max Landau, scientist, official page. Reports, statements, discoveries, research. A picture with Athena Stone. Wow! They’ve been dating for over three years.” Stinger scrutinized the screen. “Do you remember? That’s the young tennis player, she won the cup with an eye patch on, like a world-class athlete can win even half-steam. After her picture with that patch was printed in the lad mags, Billy shot a whole film for the client.”

“Yeah, I remember that film with a couple of one-eyed blondies. Sure I do. Anything else?”

Stinger’s hand moved across the screen. “Here, in Wikipedia…”

Linda looked at the small letters on the screen.

“Max Landau, scientist, works in the field of elementary particle physics,” Stinger went on. “Scientific papers… Look, here’s something interesting. Max’s father, Arthur Landau, worked in the same field, lived in Moscow, Russia. After the fall of the USSR, he immigrated to New York City and continued his research. Here! ‘Sudden disappearance right in the airplane… Under mysterious circumstances.’ Interesting. ‘They considered this a hoax and are still arguing if it was the work of the KGB.’”

“And what do you think about all this?” asked Linda.

“I think that we gotta find this schmuck and ask him a few questions,” replied Stinger, putting the tablet aside and reaching for the phone.

“Hi, Billy. Downtown, in half an hour. Bring someone with you, we have a visit to make.”

* * *

Even the closed curtains in Eddie’s apartment could not stop a casual visitor from feeling disgust. It was an utter mess. Sofa upholstery all torn, a bunch of T-shirts and socks, the coffee table with dirty paper cups and a pile of old pizza boxes. The picture wouldn’t be complete without the wad of ancient napkins, spread on the floor around the table.

The kitchen corner was buried under dirty dishes. Every inch of the counter was covered with convenience food boxes, more napkin wads, more paper cups, and some other trash.

All this mess stank nastily. Several overflowing trash bags were piled one on top of the other by the entrance door, showing that the apartment owner hated to take out the trash, kept forgetting about it, or just didn’t care.

Despite the stinking mess, Eddie was sitting in the armchair with a laptop and headphones. He watched what was happening on the screen, and one could tell by his sweaty forehead and panting that the show was very absorbing.

Someone knocked on the door, killing the silence, but Eddie didn’t move. The knocking repeated. Eddie didn’t bat an eye. The knocking became a drum roll. Only then did Eddie hear it.  He realized that someone was assailing his apartment, and in a confusion, dropped the headphones on the floor, slammed the laptop shut, and rushed toward the door. But halfway there, he halted.

Someone kept pounding the door from the other side, however it sounded rather more like kicking.

Eddie straightened his filthy T-shirt and sweatpants as if he could ever look presentable, and opened the door.

Stinger, Linda, Billy, and Joe were standing there. Eddie froze.

“You…you?” Eddie whispered.

“Good afternoon,” said Stinger. “Why don’t you invite your guests to come in?”

“I must not speak to you. You…”

“No need for protocol,” Stinger continued, as he moved Eddie over and came in.

“Freaking stench!” shouted Linda, following Stinger. “Someone die here or what?”

In her hip-huggers, high heels, and body shirt, she totally did not belong in Eddie’s bachelor den. She pulled a sour face and started to twist her long, dark hair into a topknot.

“You don’t have insects here, do you?” asked Linda, looking around with disgust on her face.

“No.”

“It looks like you do, actually,” chuckled Stinger.

“I must not speak to you! You were excommunicated… I saw your picture!” Eddie looked at him with the look of a hunted animal, but Stinger ignored his words.

“So… you’re smart and understand why we came, right?” he said, looking at Joe and Bill.

Linda briefly inspected the apartment and walked to the beaten-up sofa. With two fingers, she carefully picked up a T-shirt, noticed the laptop, and immediately put the T-shirt back.

“We’re very interested in your mysterious disappearance,” said Stinger.

“It’s not me! It’s not me! It’s Max!” Eddie broke down and Stinger looked at him with surprise.

“Go on,” he said, with a keen interest in his eyes.

“It was Max who gave it to me! He’s been working on it for a while!”

Sexy voices from the side of the armchair made all four turn around.

“Oops…” Linda stood there with the open laptop and a cunning smile. “My goodness, honey! Come and look.”

Eddie dropped his eyes in dismay.

Stinger scornfully chuckled. “I see you loves your porn?”

Eddie shook his head, but it wasn’t convincing. He still looked down.

“It’s fine, relax,” said Stinger. “We won’t make you stand in the corner for this. C’mon, we’re going to our place.”

Eddie nodded with a servile look, changed, and headed for the door. His guests followed. Linda slammed the laptop shut, threw it on the armchair, and walked out of the room last.

CHAPTER 5

The Abduction

It was getting dark. The business center was well lit, illuminated by the street lights and neon signs and the glow of nearby skyscrapers. The black SUV drifted slowly through the traffic jams toward Max’s office.

The shotgun passenger observed the road ahead meditatively, in total silence.

Adrian couldn’t understand what had happened to Zet in such a short time while he had been punishing that sinner. Everything had gone really well and according to plan, and the boss must have been happy with the result. Despite his harsh disposition, he always commended his assistants for a good job. But not today.

Before Adrian had been able to enter Zet’s office, the boss was beelining out of there, telling Adrian to immediately go to “that Eddie.” Perhaps, while Adrian had been taking care of things, Zet had watched the recording of Eddie’s confession. When they had made it to the car and gotten in, Zet added, “We need to find him right away.” Adrian had had to call Eddie from the car, but he still didn’t know why.

Nobody had answered. There was nobody at his home address either. Now they were heading to his office.

True, talking with Eddie had been really weird. Some scientist, some mysterious appearances and disappearances, some invention from some sci-fi story and some conspiracy against mankind. But you never knew how many crazy dudes would visit their church every day with whatever miraculous stories. They already had magicians and psychics, as well as the usual frauds. Eddie’s story was just one among hundreds of similar tales, which he’d had to listen to over the years that they’d known each other. And Adrian hadn’t done anything unusual when he passed the USB stick with the recording of Eddie’s confession to his boss. So why was Zet so agitated?

They stopped at the red light and Adrian looked suspiciously to the right. He had never seen his boss so detached and worried at the same time. The wrinkles between his brows deepened as he fingered his rosary beads. Something was definitely wrong with Zet.

They were almost at the office where Eddie worked. As Adrian looked around to find a free parking spot, Zet’s face suddenly changed and he ordered abruptly:

“Drive! Now!”

Adrian stepped on the gas and the car shot along.

“What happened?” he asked while accelerating.

“I saw somebody.”

Adrian looked back and noticed among the parked cars a silver-colored SUV that was usually used by Zet’s brother, also known by the nickname Stinger.

“Park the car so that we can see the SUV.”

Adrian turned around and parked nearby so that they could watch the other car from their location while keeping an eye on the building exit, where Stinger supposedly would appear soon.

Zet kept running his beads through his fingers. Adrian looked askance at him without a word, then killed the engine and sat there waiting.

Ten minutes later, the main door burst open and two men with a strongbox walked out followed by Eddie with Stinger pushing him in the back. Linda followed, closing up the rear. They approached the SUV. The trunk opened and they tossed the strongbox in.

Stinger carelessly pushed Eddie to the rear door. Feeble attempts to resist produced no result. He grabbed Eddie by the elbow and stuffed him into the car. Then he opened the front door for Linda. After she got in, he took the driver’s seat. His assistants sat beside their scared prisoner, flanking him.

Stinger started the engine and the SUV left the parking lot.

“He beat me,” said Zet through his teeth. “Follow them!”

Adrian started the car and, keeping his distance, tailed the silver SUV.

“Son of a bitch!” snapped Zet. “How did he know? Wire him. Keep me posted. I want to know all his movements and who he meets! That brat has always been a burr in my saddle!”

* * *

The unpleasant guest, Max’s assistant Eddie, had now been at Stinger’s place for over an hour. Unpleasant because once he had entered, he’d managed to knock over one of the wooden floor vases in the spacious living room. When he’d bent down to pick it up, Stinger had kicked him and pushed him into one of the armchairs. Eddie left the vase alone and sat down with his head shrunk into his shoulders.

Linda reproachfully watched this pitiful show. She placed the vase back in its place, put on long gloves made of fine leather, and walked to the small glass terrarium cage, one of many along the back wall of the room. She removed the lid and lovingly whispering something, reached into it.

At first Eddie didn’t understand what was in the cage. But when he had a better look, his feet got cold. Something moved inside there and then Linda held up a huge, hairy, greyish spider lazily moving its legs.

Eddie opened his mouth; his eyes became round and a chill went down his spine. He had never seen such spiders in real life.

Linda took the monster to her bosom as if it were a kitten and, stroking it tenderly, sat down across from Eddie. He fidgeted as he watched the wicked creature slowly moving its hairy legs, while holding onto her shirt.

“It’s a Chilean rose tarantula,” commented Stinger, reading the silent question in Eddie’s eyes. “They are common pets. My wife has cared for this one since its birth.”

Stinger walked to Linda, sat beside her and looked into her deep, dark eyes.

“It suits her,” he went on, stroking the pink back of the spider. “And it loves her.”

“Spiders aren’t dogs, they can’t love,” said Eddie through his teeth.

The hairy monster absorbed his attention. It would slowly, lazily move its legs around each time Linda stroked it, going still when her hand stopped.

“What? I didn't hear you. You said something?” Stinger quickly turned.

“Nothing. I mean… spiders are insects, they can’t love.”

Stinger stood up and stared at Eddie. “So you mean to say that you’re very familiar with spiders?”

“No, I’m not, but….”

“Spiders aren’t insects, you dumbass.” Stinger said dismissively, poking Eddie on his sweaty forehead with his finger. “But I have no desire now to discuss that or explain something that they were supposed to teach you in biology class. I want to know something else.”

Eddie looked away and fidgeted. “If you mean that, you should ask Max, I don’t know anything! I’m just his assistant!”

“Well, then tell me where you store all your stuff, your records, formulas, whatever you have…”

“I-I don’t know. Max has everything.”

“You mean you know nothing at all?”

Eddie shook his head.

“And did you say anything about this when you were in the church?”

“No.”

“Okay. And how many bracelets do you have in total? One? Two? A dozen?”

“No,” said Eddie, “we only have the one.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. We were working on this together.”

“Together? Just the two of you?”

“Well…”

Stinger took out his smartphone, pulled a picture up on the screen, and shoved it under Eddie’s nose, making him squint and back off. His pink face quickly grew pale.

“Who is she?” Stinger asked in a suave voice, while his eyes drilled Eddie to the bones.

Eddie recognized the picture that he’d seen on Max’s desk in his office. There were three people in it: Eddie, Max, and a light-haired girl with sparkling blue eyes.

“Who is she?” Stinger repeated his question.

Eddie flushed again. “It’s… we… she…”

“Stop this mumbling.” Stinger poked Eddie again, in the chest.

Eddie jumped and grew even paler. “It’s his ex-assistant. They… we… worked together. But she went missing two years ago.”

Stinger chuckled as he looked at the picture of the nerd and the happy couple, who appeared more than mere co-workers.

“And you said you knew nothing. Now, tell me about her.”

* * *

There was another terrarium cage next to the one from which Linda had taken her gigantic pet. As Eddie finished his inconsistent and muddled story, Stinger walked over to it.

The white, furry balls stirred when Stinger opened the lid and reached inside. He caught one mouse by the tail and walked to the armchairs where Linda and Eddie sat. He stood between them. The mouse twisted and writhed repeatedly.

Linda fiendishly smiled as she grabbed the spider by its meaty, pink belly and put it on her lap. The spider lazily moved its legs in response.

“Once upon a time… lived a grey mouse,” started Stinger looking at the twisting animal. “She was living her life decently and worked a lot.” He looked up at Eddie. “She paid her taxes and was loyal to her master, but one day she got into a weird situation.”

The mouse was swinging in Stinger’s left hand, while he made a round motion with the fingers of his right hand and a file appeared in it. He took it to the middle of the mouse’s tail.

“Common sense told the mouse how to handle her situation, but she could not make up her mind. Instead, she listened to her friend called Conscience, but Conscience didn’t know life well, either…”

Eddie fidgeted again when he saw the sharp blade in the hand of the madman who had just stormed into his life. He moved his lips, silently saying the Salvation Prayer, which he’d heard many times in the Church of the Spider.

“Don’t rub a hole with your butt!” said Linda. “It’s expensive upholstery!”

She was still sitting across from him with her legs up in the armchair and the spider on her lap. It spread its long legs with whitish hair, as if hugging Linda’s legs. Eddie’s attention was drawn there as if by a magnet.

Linda slowly put her pet onto the floor. The spider headed toward Stinger, who was still standing between the armchairs. Eddie tensed up and shrank when he saw it moving.

“The mouse was contemplating for a while, but eventually didn’t make the right choice and… lost everything in a jiffy!” said Stinger, and dispassionately cut the tail.

The mouse fell to the floor. The spider halted for a moment. The mouse turned over onto its feet, and that very instant the listless and apathetic bird spider transformed into a lightning-fast predator. In one leap, too brisk for an eye to see, it clutched its victim in a death grip.

Stinger’s eyes sparkled with admiration, while Eddie went numb. He clutched the arm pads, his face twisted, his arms covered in goosebumps.

The mouse tried to break free a couple times but it was doomed. The predator constricted its victim and started to devour it, its front legs sunk deep into the mouse’s white hair.

“Though it was one inch away from success and a big, very big, chunk of cheese.” Stinger finished his story and looked into Eddie’s utterly white face. “Interesting fable, isn’t it?”

Eddie said nothing.

“Okay,” Stinger nodded, taking the tablet from the coffee table and directing its camera at Eddie.

“And now you’re going to give a short interview. Look here”—Stinger pointed at the camera—“and tell us about your friend. You want your story to end with a happy ending, don’t you?”

Eddie could not look away from the hairy monster, which had already swallowed the head of the mouse and kept moving its jaws and front legs.

“Hey, assistant,” said Stinger. “Did you hear me?”

Eddie shook his head.

“That means what? You don’t want to give an interview?”

“I can’t… I can’t….”

“Oh, you can’t?”

Stinger ambled up to Eddie, paused a bit, and lifted his head by the chin.

Eddie winced and babbled something. Beads of sweat appeared on his temples.

Stinger frowned. “I would happily push your kisser in! You know how thugs normally get people to talk, right?”

Eddie shook his head again.

“You haven’t seen any mafia movies? Well, let me tell you then. They clock the guy and the guy tells them everything they need. Feel me?” Stinger clenched Eddie’s chin again. Eddie squealed and winced. “And they do it much more painfully than I did now. You could say that I barely touched you, my nervous assistant. I wish I could punch your mug in, but we actually need it for the video. We need you nice and alive.”

He let go of Eddie’s chin, which remained whitish.

“Open your eyes,” said Stinger. “I wanna show you something.”

Eddie’s wet eyelashes slowly opened to reveal his haunted look. There was more suffering and pain than there had been in the eyes of the mouse just before death.

Stinger nodded. Linda took a small box from the table, stood up, and gave it to her husband.

“Thank you, darling.”

He took the box and got a transparent object out of his pocket. Eddie thought he’d seen it before.

“You know what this is?” asked Stinger, moving it in front of Eddie’s face. “This is a dentist’s tool. They call it a spreader. It’s for spreading the mouth.”

Eddie took fright, fidgeting, looking at the transparent plastic thing, and vigorously shook his head.

“No… no… you can’t! This is illegal!” he squalled but could not recognize his own voice. First it was somewhat unreal, but now it seemed to him that he would faint, as the whole thing was transforming into a non-stop, utter nightmare and becoming more and more real. And now this… But they couldn’t! It’s the 21st century, and they were in New York City, not somewhere in Somalia.

“Oh, don’t you worry!” Stinger laughed. “I’m not a dentist, and I’m not going to dig in your dirty mouth hole. All I know is how to install this thing…”

He grabbed Eddie’s chin again and quickly shoved the spreader into his half-open mouth. Before Eddie realized what had happened, the spreader was preventing his jaw from closing.

Stinger stepped back. “Did they tell you that you should take care about your teeth?”

Eddie stared at his tormentor and tried to reach for his face, but Stinger was faster. He grabbed and wrung Eddie’s hands so that Eddie shrieked, and then tied them with duct tape to his chest.

Now Eddie was totally paralyzed and could only shake his head and grunt. He was drooling, and his tongue was hanging helplessly between his teeth.

“Yuck!” Linda squirmed.

“He had it coming.” Stinger shrugged.

“He can screw it all up.” Linda got up and walked up to Eddie. “Moves his head too much.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Stinger placed duct tape on Eddie’s neck.

“Lean back,” he demanded.

As the tape touched his neck, Eddie ceased to move about and grunt and slowly leaned back in the armchair. He now resembled a rabbit sitting quietly before a boa constrictor.

“Careful, don’t strangle him,” sneered Linda.

“I know.”

Stinger wrapped the tape around Eddie’s neck three times, attaching it to the back of the armchair, stepped back, and nodded contently.

“Now he won’t fidget.”

Linda smiled with sympathy at Eddie, who was giving her puppy-dog eyes while grunting and trying to move his tongue.

“You should have told us what we asked.” She sat back down into her armchair.

Stinger picked up the box which he’d put away and tenderly stroked it. “I used to deal with these cute bastards a while ago.”

He opened the box and carefully took out another middle-sized spider, smaller than the other one, but nevertheless Eddie froze when he saw it. And when Stinger moved it closer to him, his face went whiter than bedsheets. The greyish creature was moving its legs.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” Stinger smirked as he took the spider closer to Eddie. “This one is quite big, but normally these are smaller. Did you know that there are about forty thousand named species of spiders worldwide?”

He talked to Eddie but didn’t even look at him. He was holding the spider with two fingers, adoring the hairy creature with a red patch on its back; it helplessly tried to escape. Eddie could hardly breathe, mesmerized by the hairy legs flying back and forth before his eyes. He had every chance to examine this wonderful specimen, the red-backed jumping spider, about two inches wide.

“About forty thousand species, can you imagine?” Stinger went on fanatically.

Linda smiled serenely as she watched her husband.

“It’s as if some mad genius created them, trying to evolve some perfect specimen. They are all beautiful, each and every one of them… By the way, what is your favorite species?”

Stinger finally looked at Eddie. Eddie was panting, his face and forehead sweaty. His armpits were drenched and he stunk.

“You don’t like them? Are you scared?” asked Stinger. “Only fools fear them. Spiders are perfect creatures. They are creators of worlds! Do you know anything about that? Of course, you don’t. In ancient times, they used to believe that spiders had woven the reality in which we all live. To fear creators is to fear yourself. And this is utterly stupid.” Stinger spoke firmly and waved his unoccupied hand. “But I tell you what…” He moved in on Eddie, getting so close that his breath blew across the hair on his prisoner’s head. He went on in a low voice. “They did not weave this reality. They have woven the illusion of the reality in which we all live.”

A long, pregnant pause grew thicker in space and time, nearly freezing it. Instants evolved into seconds, seconds into minutes. The minutes flowed by slowly and evenly, as if they were honey.

All Eddie could see was Stinger’s face, hovering above him like the executioner above the chopping block; the only thing that the worn-out prisoner wanted was a quick death. But his executioner seemed to want something else.

Suddenly, a kind smile replaced Stinger’s seriousness. “I will introduce you to this process…  the process of creation. Just a bit.” Stinger moved his thumb and index finger close together.

His other hand, the one holding the spider, moved toward Eddie’s face. Closer and closer. Eddie tried to move back but the tape was holding his neck well, strangling him, and every motion caused him pain. Stinger’s hand stopped right above Eddie’s open mouth.

“By the way, I should have warned you,” said Stinger. “This spider isn’t venomous. It won’t bite you. However, be careful with it.”

The next moment, Eddie felt something scratch the roof of his mouth. He didn’t want to think about what was happening to him; he wanted to disappear, evaporate, pass out. He didn’t want to feel it. He couldn’t have imagined this in his worst nightmares. At some point, he even thought it had ended, as he couldn’t feel any further scratching. And at that very moment Stinger fetched a scarf or maybe a towel and covered Eddie’s mouth with it.

Stinger’s eyes sparkled with a diabolical fire as something scratched Eddie’s mouth again, and then his tongue. The spider crawled along his tongue and the appalling sensation moved along with it toward his throat. It triggered Eddie’s gag reflex and he moved his tongue. This scared the spider and it frantically tried to grab hold of the inside of his mouth.

Eddie yelled as loudly as he could. The vibration of his own voice alleviated the disgust. But only for a moment. The spider moved along the inside of his cheek, and this was unbearable. It clung to his tongue, scratched it, moved about, causing hellish sensations, which were tortuously maddening.

Eddie’s eyes popped out and he yelled again. His voice was breaking as his inhuman guttural cry filled the room.

Through the miasma of his pain and confusion, he saw Stinger reach over and slowly, disconcertingly slowly, removed the gag, not yet letting the spider out of Eddie’s mouth. The creature halted but then resumed its movements.

Eddie got another wave of horrible oral sensations, this time less. With a buzzing feeling in his head, he was about to faint and felt the spider clinging to his teeth and lips, trying to get out. Finally, he saw Stinger take the disgusting thing off his face.

But the buzzing noise inside his head was getting louder and he felt himself blacking out. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the knife appear in Linda’s hand, and the pressure on his neck was relieved. In a second, his hands were free, and then he finally fainted.

* * *

He came around because someone was slapping him on his face. His heart was pounding; he twitched a couple times and waved his hands. Linda stepped away.

“Poor boy,” she said. “I told you he’s too feeble for this.”

“Any guy with balls would take it!” answered Stinger, examining Eddie.

“You said that spiders aren’t mere living beings. They are of the Creator’s nature.”

With the last sentence, Linda imitated her husband’s tone very well. He looked at her and laughed.

“Did I?”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Forget it. These are just the delusions of my zealous brother.” He turned to Eddie and continued. “You could swallow it. The Chinese eat spiders. It takes balls to swallow it. I would.”

Stinger thoughtfully stared at Eddie, who looked awful, with his messed-up hair clinging to his forehead and temples, his red puffy eyes and grayish-green face. He looked at his tormentor vacantly, nodding and babbling.

“Yes… I agree… I will tell you all. Please don’t… don’t…”

“That’s my boy,” said Stinger, taking the tablet. “Now you’re talking business, now you’ve grown balls. I was about to become disappointed in you.” He pointed the camera at Eddie and started recording. “Tell me about the scientist.”

“Ugh…” Eddie tried to say something but coughed.

Stinger didn’t make a sound. Eddie suppressed his cough and started to talk in a weak voice.

“We’d been working for several years already. Max invented a gadget for… well… dematerialization. He called it the Switch. It… which is the bracelet… is capable of making any object intangible. A living or a dead one. He… Max… wants to use it himself. He never let me use it.” Eddie’s voice broke.  “He needed me, I did various jobs for him, like coding. And he… he…”

For the next 30 minutes, Eddie spoke to the camera like a robot. Then, exhausted, he sighed heavily.

“Okay, that’s it,” said Stinger.

He put the tablet aside and raised his hand. Eddie was surprised to see Max’s bracelet on it.

“So, you say it’s the Switch. A weird name.” Stinger stroked the bracelet. “Well, let’s get down to business. As you can see, we know how to crack safes and take what’s inside.” He gave Linda a sly look, and she responded with the same gaze. “However, we aren’t that good with unusual and complicated devices yet. First, tell me what this stupid name is all about: the Switch. It switches something? Or is your Max so short on imagination?”

“It… it switches, yes. I’ll explain. You see, it switches tangibility, or materialness, so to speak…” Eddie stopped.

“Enough babbling!” yelped Stinger. “Talk!”

“You see… Each body or thing has its vibration, as Max said…”

“Wait. Are you telling me that if I disappear, I will vibrate?”

“No… I mean yes… it’s kind of like…”

“Listen, babbler, can you talk like normal people do? Or should I help?” asked Linda, motioning toward the terrarium cages.

Eddie went pale. “No! No! Sure I can…” He reached forward as if trying to stop her. “Nobody will be able to see you, but it’s not because you vib… vibrate. It’s because the physical body is made of particles. It’s a kind of energy structure, so to speak. And any object, including a body, vibrates on its own level, therefore any object can become intangible if you switch it to a different level of vibration. And then you can get back to the original state with each molecule intact.

“Interesting,” said Stinger. “So this Switch kind of moves the body to another dimension?”

Eddie nodded in affirmation.

“Turn it on.”

Eddie walked up to him and looked at the bracelet. “I’ve never used it on my own, without Max,” he stuttered.

“Listen, assistant.” Stinger was getting annoyed. “You worked with him for a while. Don’t tell me you don’t know how to turn on the thing you created together. I will not believe you!” He again raised his hand with the bracelet.

Eddie hesitated a little and touched the screen of the gadget. It produced a high-pitched tone, like a bird, and the screen went dark.

He stepped back, shrinking his head into his shoulders, muttering something.

“What are you babbling again?” asked Stinger.

“Something is wrong with it,” replied Eddie. “I don’t know what exactly.”

“What? Tell me! Come on! Nobody will spank you!”

“Well, perhaps it’s a safety lock-out.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Eddie shrank his head even further in total dismay. “Max said something… about fingerprints. Maybe he set it up to lock out on security breach.”

Stinger clenched his fists in anger and made a move toward Eddie. Eddie stepped back.

“And how can you unlock it?”

“Only Max can,” answered Eddie sheepishly. “The system recognizes his fingerprints only.”

Stinger looked at him with rage. He wanted to kick this lousy, worthless assistant as hard as he could, and he would, but for the….

Linda appeared at the door. She’d gotten bored with the ‘interview’ and had quietly left the room. Now she stood in the doorway, watching the scene with her arms crossed.

“Honey, why are you bothering with him? Let’s go and visit this Max right now. We have something to show him.” She smiled.

Stinger looked at her, forgetting all about Eddie for the moment. “You’re gorgeous,” he said, caressing her cheek.

And gorgeous Linda was, with light makeup, a ponytail of black hair, and a coquettish sparkle in her eyes. The perfectly fitting short leather dress accentuated her figure. And thigh high boots completed the picture.

“I’m taking my car. And this too.” She looked at Eddie pointedly. “I think he could use some freshening up.”

“As you wish, darling,” Stinger looked at her lovingly and took her by the waist. “You are a goddess.”

Linda kissed him fervently. Stinger kissed her back, pulling her even closer.

“Okay, time to go,” she said, softly pushing Stinger away.

He reluctantly complied. “Okay, darling.” He gave Eddie a baleful glance and commanded, “Get up! We need to visit your scientist friend. You’ll show us the way.”

Eddie shook his head. “No! I can’t…” He tried to object again but met Stinger’s eyes and shut up. “Okay, I will,” he murmured timidly.

When they got outside, the moon was already high in the sky. Stinger got into the SUV parked near the entrance, his two assistants followed him.

The garage door opened slowly, bright light suddenly bursting from the darkness.

Linda sat in the driver’s seat, with Eddie beside her. The scarlet Lamborghini Diablo, its doors lowering, floated down the driveway, with Stinger’s SUV following behind.

CHAPTER 6

The Poison

The Lamborghini moved along the highway breaking the speed limit, dangerously outracing the other cars. The speed pressed the car into the road, almost fusing them together.

Linda was relaxed in her driver’s seat. It was odd, considering how aggressively she drove the car. She embraced the wheel with the long fingers of her left hand.  With her right arm resting on the beige velvet arm pad, she changed gears. Her short leather dress exposed slender legs and stocking boots, and the high collar concealed and accentuated her neck.

Eddie sat shotgun, desperately holding onto the door handle. He felt like he got loaded into a torpedo. The oncoming cars flew by with meteoric speed. And every time Linda passed another car, he shrank and squirmed. Every now and then he sniveled, wiping his nose with his sleeve.

Linda kept going as if nothing was happening. She passed other cars without slowing down, paying no attention to her disturbed passenger.

Suddenly Eddie sneezed, the contents of his nose transferring onto the squeaky-clean windshield.

Linda shot a glance at it and her serene face contorted with rage. Eddie tried to wipe the windshield with his hand, but sure enough, only made it worse. In total dismay, he involuntarily wiped his hand against the velvet of the seat. He looked at Linda and froze.

Linda watched the whole thing with disgust.

“Can you… please… drive a bit slower?” asked Eddie.

“I can,” sneered Linda, and instead of stepping on the brakes she floored it.

Eddie was pressed into his seat and he squirmed again, trying to look away from the road. The car was flying along the highway, drifting left and right.

“I’m gonna throw up,” Eddie squeezed out.

Linda changed lanes, this time to the right, and slowed down. She reached for the buttons on her door and pressed one.

The door on Eddie’s side smoothly went up, and the cool night air rushed into the car. Linda made another motion and his safety belt unfastened. Now Eddie sat there with his fingers plunged into the seat. All they could hear now was the noise outside.

A sudden turn to the right threw Eddie onto Linda who instantly grabbed him by the sweatshirt and shoved him outside. As she continued steering, she reached toward him, preventing him from trying to get back in. Eddie screamed when he realized that the upper half of his body was outside the car and he would easily fall to the road if Linda got distracted or loosened her grip. But she

wasn’t about to do that and kept good hold of Eddie’s sweatshirt with one hand, driving the car with the other.

“Don’t worry, I’m an experienced street racer,” she soothed him as she made another insane turn to outstrip a huge truck. The Lamborghini was closing in on a truck whose wheels were as high as the car itself. In a moment, they were going to be level with it, with Eddie still halfway out the door.

The truck driver stuck his head out and looked at the scarlet sports car that was clinging to the rear wheels of his truck. He tried to steer to the right, but Linda stayed on course, not falling behind a single inch.

Eventually, the Diablo caught up and leveled with the huge truck, with Eddie hanging just a couple feet from its rear wheels.

Another crafty turn to the right, and Eddie ended up between the mammoth-sized, spinning cylinders.

The truck driver stuck his head out again. He was pale with shock. The truck maintained its speed and didn’t try to maneuver.

Linda paused (Eddie felt it was an eternity) and then suddenly turned left, yanking Eddie away from the wheels. Having changed lanes, she pulled Eddie back inside.

The door smoothly closed. It got quiet.

Eddie sat there, disheveled and petrified, while Linda calmly looked forward and kept going.

In ten minutes, they arrived at their destination.

* * *

Max’s house was uptown, on the edge of New York City. It was nighttime and the street lights shone softly on the quiet neighborhood. Eddie pointed at one of the houses where they could park. Stinger, who’d followed Linda the whole way, stopped nearby, killed his engine and got out.

“Wait in the car,” he ordered his minions, and walked toward Linda. She leaned against her Lamborghini and watched Eddie with disgust. Eddie folded himself in half, throwing up on the sidewalk.

“What did you think?” Stinger snickered. “I doubt even James Bond would have taken it easily! Much less the… assistant.”

“Okay, let’s go,” Linda said to Eddie between her teeth. “Hey, assistant! That’s it there! You have a lot to do!”

She turned around and walked toward the entrance. Eddie staggered behind.

* * *

A bead of sweat rolled down Max’s forehead and dropped onto the young beauty’s heaving breast.

She lay on her back, clenching the sheets. “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!”

Suddenly someone rang the doorbell. The girl flinched, opened her eyes, and stared at Max, who froze with surprise.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” replied Max.

Another ring of the doorbell.

“Who’s that, for God’s sake? It’s midnight!” she yelled, punching the bed.

“Athena, darling, calm down. I’ll sort it out.”

Max caressed her shoulder and reluctantly stood up.

“No way!” Athena picked her silk robe from the floor. “What are they thinking coming at this time? Max, don’t open the door!”

“I have to, dear. I should check.” He exited the room, zipping up his jeans.

Athena stayed alone in the bedroom, annoyed, while Max went downstairs and looked at the screen of the house intercom.

Eddie and some stranger were standing there. Behind them stood a brunette wearing a short black dress and stocking boots. Eddie’s eyes were wandering and he was shuffling his feet.

This strange crew caused Max conflicting feelings. Who are these people and why are they here? And, more importantly, why is Eddie with them?

He reached for the door knob but was hesitant to open it.

“Who are you?” he asked, loudly enough to be heard outside.

“Good evening,” replied the man calmly. “Do you mind if we come in?”

“What do you need?” Max asked through the still-closed door.

The man paused.

“It’s not about what we need, it’s rather about what you need.” He raised his hand so even the low resolution of the intercom screen showed what Max considered to be his masterpiece as an engineer: the man was wearing the Switch.

Max flung the door open. “Come in.” Max stepped aside, letting the strangers inside.

“Get yourself seated.” He pointed at the sofa as they entered the sitting room.

“Thank you,” said Stinger. “You must be surprised by our late visit. That’s fine. You’ll soon stop being surprised.” He paused. “So, I believe this man needs no introduction.” He motioned his head at Eddie, who was sinking into one of the armchairs. “And this… is Linda,” he said more softly. “Now let’s get to business.” Stinger’s voice became firm. “Your name is Max and we know that you are a very respected scientist and you work on important projects in physics. This is all great, but we’re interested in only one subject of your work—to be more precise, an invention which you’ve been working on for a few years, and on which you’ve been assisted by your… assistant.” Stinger again motioned his head at Eddie.

Max was beginning to understand what was happening, and his anxiety snowballed. He could only guess what Eddie could have told this man. Any information at all could be fatal for the project.

There was a series of quiet steps on the stairs. Athena entered the room and halted in surprise as the visitors turned and looked at her.

“Here’s another important detail of your life,” Stinger said to Max. He looked at Athena and addressed her. “In real life, you’re much more beautiful than on the tennis court, Athena Stone. Did I say your name right? You’re a famous tennis player. I’m really pleased to meet you in person.”

Stinger gave her a genteel nod of greeting, then walked up to her, took her hand, and touched it with his lips. Athena tried to release her hand, but Stinger held it tight.

“Sit down, please. Join our conversation. You’ll be one of its major and quite charming participants…” He took Athena by the shoulders and insistently guided her to the other armchair.

Athena sat down hesitantly and looked at Max, who kept his silence.

“Now I see what inspired your scientific advances. I mean, who did,” Stinger said to Max. He stood beside Athena, gazing at her.

Silence ensued.

Linda chuckled and looked at Stinger. She liked to watch him in such moments. It even got her aroused. She glanced at Max, who seemed agitated, shifting in his seat as if to walk up to Athena.

“Can we get down to business?” Max sounded annoyed.

But Stinger ignored his words and kept eating Athena up with his eyes. “Say, Linda, isn’t she to be admired?” He moved his lips to Athena’s ear and whispered so that all could hear him. “You know who I am? Seduction is my name, my heart is set on fire.”

Athena tried to move away from him but with no success, as Stinger hung over her with his left hand on the armchair and his right curled into a fist.

“Please stop,” she said.

Max snapped and rushed to her. But Linda jumped forward like a wild cat and blocked his way.

“I don’t recommend that, or you may steam him up.” She pointed at Stinger.

Max paid no attention to her warning and tried to move her out of his way, but Linda instantly chopped him in the throat, and he fell down on his knees in a fit of coughing.

Athena jumped up but was immediately pressed back down. With no waste of time, Stinger moved his fist to her face. He opened it suddenly and a sharp file appeared in his hand.

Athena started and froze as Stinger touched her neck with it.

“Stop, freeze, don’t move, stand still,

Observe, perceive and feel…”

He moved closer to Athena’s face, so close that she could feel him breathing. At the same time, he slowly moved the file down her neck.

“I walk to you, my sweet,

I touch you with my glance,

My stinger’s like a lance,

The venom is my treat.”

With these words, he stopped the file. It was against her chest. Stinger pressed it a bit, leaving a small red dot on her fine skin. Athena didn’t dare move or speak a word.

Max snapped again, but Linda again blocked him.

“Don’t. He may harm her… and I you.” She held up a small knife.

“Stop!” Max yelled desperately.

 “We are just starting, sir,” said Stinger with a fiendish grin, which sent a chill down Max’s spine.

“What do you want?” He tried to collect himself.

Stinger took his file off Athena’s chest and walked up to Linda and Max with a relaxed smile.

“Excellent! I love people who mean business.” He sank into the sofa. “I’ll try to be brief so that I don’t waste your time—it’s already late at night and we must have distracted you from something intimate.” He sneered and sent Athena an obscene wink. “Though we have already disturbed your plans for this night anyway. But you can make it up later. Linda, darling, would you give me… you know what. We must get to the main part of our negotiations.”

Max walked up to Athena, sat on his haunches, and without a word, took her hand. She was pale from fear but still kept her dignity.

Linda fetched the tablet and gave it to Stinger.

“So, first we’ll watch a movie.”

Stinger gave the tablet to Max, who took it askance and, holding it so Athena could also see it, started the video.

Eddie had screwed him! How much he now regretted giving that moron the Switch... he knew he shouldn’t have done it. The bastard had gotten into more trouble than Max could’ve dreamed of.

Max shot a glance full of flame at Eddie, who quietly shrank into the armchair and looked down.

Sure enough, he had found himself in an interesting place, forgotten about the timer, and not only had he materialized in front of these thugs and whores, he had also dematerialized in front of them.

The video ended and Max shot another angry look at Eddie. “You’re such an asshole,” was all he could say.

Eddie snapped. “Blame yourself!” he squealed. “You didn’t warn me!”

“You’re just an idiot.” Max could hardly stop himself from killing that loser.

“Okay, guys, no need to argue. Calm down.” Stinger raised his arms like an umpire. “You will get your time to squabble, but not now. Our work isn’t finished yet.”

Another video started and Eddie’s voice emitted from the speaker. “Okay, I’ll tell you what happened there with Leeza.”

Max was petrified. He paused the video with a chilled finger and returned the tablet. He tried not to look at Athena, who was curious about what was going on in the video.

Stinger chuckled, took the tablet, and gave it back to Linda. “So, Eddie has let us in on your secrets, Max. He told us about your invention and even tried to help me turn on your… Switch. That’s what you call it, right?”

Max remained silent. Now his palms chilled too.

Stinger looked at him closely and, having received no answer, continued. “We have this on video too. And we can show you, if you want. But I think you believe us, don’t you?”

Max didn’t say a word.

“Hmm…  And actually, we wouldn’t have bothered you tonight, had your obliging assistant not screwed up along the way. Can you imagine? He got your device locked up with his negligence and said that it’s kind of complicatedly protected against unauthorized access. And supposedly, no one but you is capable of unlocking the device. Is that true?” Stinger put on a theatrically upset face. “And now I would like to kindly beg you, Max, to unlock it. That’s all. Ah, by the way, I almost forgot. You also need to show us how to use this device and impart all the guidelines to us in case we forget. Now, that is all.”

The room filled with tension.

“Did I make myself clear?” asked Stinger.

“That’s not possible,” said Max. “The device is in its testing phase and it is a long way from being complete.”

Stinger approached Max and extended his hand with the Switch on the wrist. In the other hand flashed the file.

“I don’t really want to repeat myself. I have a feeling that you are quite a sensible person.”

Max shuddered. He hesitantly put his finger to the screen of the Switch. Under normal circumstances, this would turn it on, but not now. Exactly as it should. Eddie had activated the lock when he touched the screen.

“It is locked for twenty-four hours—the security system was activated.” Max glanced at Eddie with disapproval. “This system recognizes the owner by fingerprints. Now I can turn it on in no less than twenty-four hours.”

“Hey, listen to me, you brainiac!” Stinger said through his teeth. “You unlock it now or my people will come here, and they can hurt you a lot. And her, for that matter.” Stinger glanced at Athena. “I don’t think she’d like it.”

Max was breathing deeply, trying to cool his mind. He collected himself at last and now he was able to figure out what to do next.

“Listen, I really cannot do anything now. In fact, if I keep trying, it might simply turn off for good. So, I suggest that we wait for twenty-four hours and then I unlock it and show you how to use it.”

Stinger scrutinized Max’s face, trying to see if he was bluffing, and suddenly burst into laughter. “Do you really think I’m an idiot?”

“No, I’m giving you the only possible solution to the problem. There are no other options.”

Stinger went silent. His eyes were burning with hellfire. Slowly, he moved in on Max. “Is that so?”

He made a lightning-fast motion with his hand. Max screamed in pain, gripped his thigh, and bent over.

“Shit!”

Athena jumped out of the armchair and rushed to him. “Max!”

“My leg…” groaned Max.

“Nope, not your leg. Your entire body, rather,” Stinger displayed his file. There was a very thin needle at its point.

Linda remained where she was; Eddie was swaying back and forth in the armchair and staring into one point in space.

“My gorgeous, multi-purpose tool,” Stinger kept talking. “Of my own invention. Yes, that’s right, I’m an inventor, too!” With these words, he shot a glance full of pride at Max and laughed. “And my invention is now doing its job.” He pressed something on the file and the blade disappeared, together with the needle, into a fine handle. “Now, inventor, at this moment your body is flooding with a strong poison with a long-lasting action. Its name is complicated and I’m not going to mention it. I am just going to say that this action is neuroparalytic and it will start working in about twenty-four hours. You will slowly lose control of your body. It will become more and more unresponsive and eventually paralyzed.”

Athena screamed and Max grew chilled as he looked at Stinger.

“But all is not that bad, my friends,” Stinger said with false cheer. “You don’t think I’m a merciless murderer, do you? No, of course not. I’m not just your executioner, I’m your savior, too.” He raised his tool, which now looked like a simple knife handle. “Here, inside, there’s a vial of the antidote.” He removed the upper part of the handle and took out a small vial of colorless liquid. “So, if we meet again in twenty-four hours and you give me what I want, I will inject this life-saving liquid. And if we don’t… your heart will stop in a couple of days. Heart attack. Now a lot of young men die of heart attacks. Bad ecology, bad lifestyle, you know… So, now I’m your god, and thus attend my commandment: do not try me!”

He carefully put the vial back and closed the lid, and the thing disappeared into his pocket like a prop in the sleeve of a stage magician.

His precise and indifferent motions made Max feel uneasy.

“I got it. I’ll do what you want.” He squeezed the words through his teeth.

“So, it’s a deal then.” Stinger grinned in satisfaction. “Now, we gotta go. We’ve bothered you enough, haven’t we?” His last question was addressed to Linda.

She nodded, picked the tablet up from the table, and made for the exit.

“Same time tomorrow, I’ll wait for your visit, loves. Your assistant will stay with us for now. And, one more thing.” Stinger turned back, “I want you to know that for me it’s really easy to visit your girlfriend… Athena… and inject the same stuff.”

“It won’t be necessary,” whispered Max.

“It is, if something goes wrong,” said Stinger, and left the room.

Eddie slowly stood up and unsteadily, as if he were ill, wobbled toward the door. Max stared at his back balefully.

Once the visitors had left, Max turned to Athena and grasped her shoulders. “I’m going after them.”

“No, Max, don’t! It’s dangerous, please!”

“Don’t worry, darling, I won’t be long. I need to find out where they’re heading. They won’t even know I’m there.” Max was panting. “It’s time to go.”

He left, and in a minute came back with a bracelet on his wrist.

Athena was still standing in the middle of the room in total dismay. Max gave her a hug.

In a New York second, she was alone in the house.

CHAPTER 7

The Intangible Stranger

After an hour, Max still hadn’t come back. Athena wrapped herself in a comforter and sat back in the armchair. Time dragged on and on.

Suddenly, a rustling sound came from behind her. Athena turned around and saw Max. He was standing in the center of the room and doing something with the Switch.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“It’s okay, darling.”

She walked up to him and put her hands on his shoulders.

“Let’s go down to the lab, I have to show you something,” said Max.

“Show me what?”

“Let’s go!” He took her hand and led her to the closet right behind the kitchen.

Along the walls of the confined room were shelves with boxes, jars, and various utensils. Max moved the boxes on one of the shelves and pressed something on the wall behind them. The closet floor began to slide apart, opening the way down to the basement.

“Does Eddie know about this?” asked Athena with alarm in her voice.

“Fortunately, he does not,” said Max as he went downstairs.

Athena followed.

The lab was brilliantly equipped and spotlessly clean. Fluorescent tubes brightly lit the room. In the center stood a table full of equipment, and along the walls sat shelves with glass doors.

Max walked up to the table, took a bracelet that was lying on it, and turned to Athena. He touched his wrist and disappeared. In two seconds, he reappeared a few inches before her. She started in surprise.

“Damn! I can’t get used to your tricks.”

“Now you.” Max offered her the gadget.

“No, Max.” Athena drew back. “You know that I can’t.”

“I do. Look, I need your help now. Those people got what they should not have gotten. I have a plan, but I can’t do it alone.”

“Max!”

“Darling,” he interrupted her, “I will set the timer for five seconds only. You won’t even notice it. You’ve seen me do this so many times. Please, don’t be afraid. Trust me. Okay?”

Athena hesitated a few seconds and then nodded, yes.

With a smile, Max took her hand and put the bracelet on her wrist.

“What if I don’t reappear?”

“Trust me, you’re too valuable for me to risk that. In the last two weeks, I got the materialization fully under control. To the last detail. Just touch here”—Max pointed at the gadget—“Only five seconds, just touch it and try…”

Athena waited a little, collected herself, and touched the screen as Max had instructed her. That very instant, she disappeared. Her silk robe fell to the floor around her slippers, followed with a clunk by her hair clasp.

“Damn it!” shouted Max.

Athena re-appeared in five seconds, totally naked, with messy hair and with the bracelet on her wrist. She didn’t even try to cover her assets. She only furrowed her eyebrows in anger.

“Is this your ‘under control?’ ‘To the last detail?’”

“You’re gorgeous in this bracelet!” Max chortled. “Now I see that everything else was redundant.” He burst into laughter.

She couldn’t restrain herself and laughed too as she picked her silk robe back up and put it on.

“So how was it? Nothing to fear?”

“Really bizarre! It felt like I jumped and took off flying. Amazing!”

“What did I tell you?”

Athena smiled as she tied up her belt. “Look, can it be done without your pranks? I mean the clothes.”

 “Darling, I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you. I swear. Look here”—he showed her the sensor on the side of the gadget. “You need to push it to activate. The Switch emits a wave that affects any object. In short, you irradiate it with the wave, your clothes in this case, before dematerialization, and voilà, your clothes will also dematerialize. Got it? I just forgot to tell you. Sorry.”

“I see.” Athena inspected the sensor panel of the bracelet with curiosity.

“That’s not all,” Max continued. “There’s something else that we’ll need. Wait.”

He approached one of the drawers and took out a pair of glasses, seemingly normal, though with bluish lenses. “My last project. This will add to your certainty.”

With these words, he disappeared. Athena fiddled with the glasses and put them on. Now she saw the lab in shades of blue. But more importantly, she saw Max’s shape. He stood right there in front of her, looking like an iridescent hologram. She took off the glasses and all went back to normal. But no Max. She put them back on, and bluish, iridescent Max appeared again.

“Holy shit!” shouted Athena.

Suddenly, behind his back swooshed a shadow and then, right from the wall, walked a tall man in a long cloak. Through the glasses, the man was bluish too, just like Max.

Athena’s face contorted with fear, and she screamed.

She yanked the glasses off and drew back. Max materialized right away and rushed to her.

“What’s wrong? Did I scare you?”

“Max! There is… behind you…”

He looked back.

“Someone was there, Max! Put them on!” She handed him the glasses. “There’s a man! He was watching us. Max, I’m scared!”

Max immediately put on the glasses but didn’t see anyone.

“Who was it? My father?” Max grabbed Athena by the shoulders.

“A man was there! He walked right from the wall,” Athena whispered, aghast. “He looked at me! I didn’t have a chance to see him closely… He was…”

“But you’ve seen my father in pictures! Was that him?”

Max clenched Athena’s shoulders and started to shake her, but then he snapped out of it and let her go. He fetched a phone from his pocket, swiped a few pictures, and stabbed the screen with his finger.

“Was it him? It could only be him!”

Athena looked with confusion at the picture of a smiling man. “I don’t know… Your father was not tall and this one was… No, that’s not him.” She returned the phone and whispered, “Please don’t go. Don’t disappear again! Please!”

* * *

When they fell asleep, it was very late. Max kept waking up; he could not relax and he was anxious, even in his sleep. Eventually, at six o’clock, he woke up completely. He was a little dizzy and could hardly get up.

Athena woke as well from the rustling sound: Max was sitting on the bed and rubbing his temples.

“Good morning, honey. How are you?” she asked him languidly.

“I feel kind of dizzy… couldn’t sleep.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“I’ll make us breakfast.”

Athena got up, put on her silk robe, and walked out. Max remained sitting for a little while. The dizziness was gone, but his body was still lax.

A cold shower livened him up a bit, and he came down to the kitchen. Athena had already made coffee.

Max reached out to hug her. Her warmth gave him some strength. He kissed her on the cheek and sat at the table. The first gulp of morning coffee awakened him even more.

“Darling, I have to go to their place again,” he said, holding the cup.

“Why?”

“I need to find out as much about them as possible. I’ll listen to their conversation and find out where he keeps his file… I need to steal the vial.”

“You wanna steal it? But how?”

“I will enter their house while intangible and stalk him, until he leaves it somewhere. And then I’ll take it.”

Max looked resolute, but Athena was still anxious. This morning, the previous night’s events had seemed somewhat unreal, and she didn’t really want to believe that there was something wrong with Max.

“Okay, then I’m going with you.”

He sipped his coffee and shook his head. “Not now. I’ll go alone. I don’t want to take the risk…”

Suddenly, his hand that was holding the cup trembled. He tried to tense the muscles but couldn’t. The cup slipped from his slackened fingers and smashed on the table. Coffee spilled on the tablecloth, creating a growing blot.

“I think it’s starting,” he said slowly.

“I’m going with you,” insisted Athena. “You shouldn’t be alone now.”

Max didn’t say anything. He was rubbing his numb hand. “Perhaps you’re right.”

* * *

Half an hour later, they were in the car. Athena was driving and Max was sitting in the back seat and tweaking the gadget. Athena glanced at him now and then through the mirror to make sure he was all right.

They arrived quickly.

“Pull over,” said Max.

Athena killed the engine. They had to walk a couple of blocks to Stinger’s house. Max didn’t want them to be noticed.

“Sit here; don’t go out.”

She nodded. He smiled cheerfully, kissed her on the cheek and activated the Switch. An instant later, Athena was alone in the car. Max disappeared and she still felt his kiss.

She put on the glasses and looked outside. Max was walking away quickly, or rather his bluish outline was. Athena moved the glasses up and there was nobody on the sidewalk; the street was empty. She put them back on and saw Max again. It was very bizarre to watch him this way.

He was far away when the bluish silhouette of a man appeared in front of her. It was the same visitor that she’d seen yesterday, the one who had scared her in the lab.

Athena shrank into the car seat and yanked the glasses off. They hit the steering wheel and almost cracked when she shoved them onto the seat. Petrified, she tried to open the door, but failed. Her heart started pumping madly.

Eventually, the door opened. Athena got out and leaned against the hood. She took a deep breath and looked around. There was nobody near the car.

CHAPTER 8

The Range

Max closed in on the house. He’d moved while in the intangible state many times and had gotten accustomed to going through doors and walls. Yet still, he sometimes hesitated a little before barriers. This time he moved assertively forward, but his anxiety grew with every second and it was much harder to cope with it. For a brief moment, he halted in front of the large entrance door, and then took another step.

His intangible body moved through the door. He found himself in a spacious hall.

A large painting that occupied half of the wall in one of the rooms to the side of the foyer caught Max’s eye. A strong gale at sunset, sanguineous waves, and a sinking ship with screaming people on it. The painting oozed horror and despair. Max looked around. The painting fit the overall style well. There were a lot of antique knick-knacks: statuettes, vases, chandeliers. The objects combined the charm of antiquity and modern high class.

Max walked up to a clay statue of a girl. It was about one three feet tall. It stood on the floor by a mini-fountain that looked like a volcano spraying water instead of lava. He wanted to reach out and touch the statue, but remembered that it wasn’t possible; for now, he was able to look only.

His thoughts were interrupted by voices from the opposite side of the house. Max passed through several walls and entered a small, odd room that looked like a shooting range. There were several bullseye targets on the back wall.

The range was its own world. A dozen body-shaped shooting targets in different stances were situated in the middle of the room. Between the dummy men there were stuffed predators, which looked very real.

Max looked at the people whose voices had brought him to this odd room. Linda, Stinger and Eddie stood beside the long table, on which there were…

Max recognized these things. Shurikens, or ninja throwing stars. Thin and sharp and deadly. There were dozens of them here.

Many years ago, he’d tried to take a six-month course in ninja art and had survived only one month of it. Their craftsmanship mainly depended on sudden appearing and disappearing, and at this, ninja were among the best of the best.

Well, now Max definitely bested them all. But then, that had been the exact appeal of the course: to find out how they did their disappearing and what techniques they used. Two weeks later he’d seen that the modern “teachers” actually knew nothing about how it was really done. Apparently, the ancient techniques had been lost forever.

Max couldn’t believe that all ninjas did was skillfully hide behind some tree in some hoodie that allegedly cloaked them from the enemy. No, they had definitely mastered some very advanced knowledge and skills.

A five-point star sank with a thump into the temple of one of the dummies in a sheriff’s uniform, drawing Max’s attention. Such a shot would have instantly killed anyone, had they been in the dummy’s place.

Linda rubbed her hands. Stinger fetched his file and started to polish his nails.

Eddie stood sadly beside Linda.

“Bring me that sharp doo-dah,” she ordered Eddie, and nodded at the dummy.

“Let me go please…” Eddie pleaded. He grabbed the wooden bar next to him and didn’t move.

“No way!” Stringer interjected. “Now you’re our assistant, and we have a lot of work ahead of us.” He glanced at Eddie and winked at Linda. “Am I right, darling?”

Linda smiled and nodded back.

“Bring her what she asks, don’t be afraid… And don’t make her ask twice,” said Stinger, pushing Eddie toward the dummies.

Linda reached for another shuriken.

Eddie walked around the bar and, nervously looking back, made for the sheriff bristling with the shurikens.

Some sport they have!, thought Max, moving to the other end of the room, which offered a better view. He walked past Eddie who wheezed, trying to release the shuriken from the dummy, anxiously looking back at his tormentors.

When Max walked past the stuffed panther, he stopped. The gracefulness of the animal was well expressed through minute details of the skin and muscles and the yellow eyes.

“Freeze, dude!” Linda was looking right at Max.

He stood still, looked at Linda, and then at his hands. They can’t see them. She was speaking to Eddie.

Linda made a quick, almost invisible movement and the shuriken propelled through Max’s left eye. Not a pleasant feeling, even while intangible. He stepped aside and kept on watching, this time from behind Stinger and Linda.

Eddie was still trying to pull the first shuriken out when another one hurtled by his ear and sank right beside the first one. Eddie gave a start and went pale. Beads of sweat appeared on his temples.

“Hurry up, man! You’re slowing us down,” Stinger urged Eddie, putting his file into the pocket and sinking into a wide armchair beside Linda. He touched her rear, moved down to her knees, then back up before giving her a light spank.

By then, she already had another shuriken in hand and was lightly tapping it against the table.

“Your life depends on your speed,” she whispered, and flung it at the sheriff.

The temple of the dummy now had three shurikens next to each other.

Eddie shrank his head into his shoulders but stubbornly kept trying to pull the star from the sheriff’s wooden head.

“Damn! Ouch!” He hollered and jerked his hand, sending several blood drops onto the wall.

“Hey, assistant, are you certain that Max didn’t stash another miraculous thingamabob somewhere? What if he’s standing right here and listening to me, huh?”

Stinger entered the floor with the dummies.

Eddie was all too absorbed with the injury to hear him. He stared in desperation at the shuriken with which he had cut his fingers. Even though blood was dripping on the hardwood oak floor, he kept trying, and eventually managed to pull the shuriken out.

“No! No!” Eddie was almost crying. “I promise, we did all the testing together. And we have only one lab and only one sample!”

“Together, huh? Well, maybe you can create an invisible body by yourself? Or at least something that lets one see it? Huh? I can’t believe you’re so dumb!” Stinger went on.

“I promise, I don’t know all his formulas or the principles of the Switch. He never told me the important stuff. I don’t know, I swear, I don’t know… I’m only an assistant…”

Linda entered the floor. She dexterously fiddled with the four-ended shuriken.

“Only an assistant, huh? Then what use are you to us?”

Stinger shrugged and looked at Linda with a question in his eyes. She mounted a cougar dummy and stretched on its back.

“I start to doubt our friendship,” said Stinger. “’Cause your friend easily could stand right here and you’d have no means to know or prevent it… It’s hard to see whose side you’re on.”

“Perhaps you’re no friend of ours.” Linda squinted and aimed her shuriken at Eddie.

He shrank and winced. Linda fixed her hair with the shuriken and lowered her hand.

“Now tell me, when the body becomes intangible, it can pass through barriers other than walls too, right? Perhaps it can even fall down through the floor or fly?” asked Stinger.

“Nah… that doesn’t happen.” Eddie barely forced a smile, as if the stupidity of Stinger’s question amused him. “This is beyond our ability… Max said you couldn’t do that.”

“It doesn’t make sense, though. Walls yes, floor no,” remarked Linda, sitting on the back of the cougar and fiddling with the shuriken.

“Right, it doesn’t,” agreed Stinger. “I don’t like the train of your thought, assistant. You must be withholding something. Linda, keep going! You look gorgeous with these starlets!” Stinger sank into the armchair again and gazed at her.

“Hey! Don’t! Max… he doesn’t fully understand the thing either. He got his father’s records, but he hasn’t quite figured out everything yet.”

“Linda, shoot!” ordered Stinger.

Eddie froze, his forehead went sweaty. “I remembered! Damn it! I know! I know how to see an intangible body! The glasses! I had them… wait…” Eddie fumbled in the pocket of his jacket and fetched the glasses, which looked completely normal. Linda and Stinger watched his frantic movements.

“Put these on and you can see an intangible body!” Eddie shook the glasses in front of him in excitement.

Max backed to the wall. How could he have forgotten about the other pair? This was a big mistake. He’d given them to Eddie recently and should have taken them back.

Stinger and Linda exchanged looks.

“And why do you say it just now? You withheld this fascinating gimmick from me?” asked Stinger.

“No! No!” shouted Eddie and ceased smiling. “I just forgot about it! I swear! They were in my pocket all the time, I didn’t think about it. I don’t even need them! Max wears them day and night, looking for his Dad…” Eddie sneered and jumped toward Stinger, subserviently offering him the glasses. “Here.”

Stinger took the glasses and moved them to his face.

Max, who stood right in front of him, briskly backed off.

Stinger put the glasses on.

CHAPTER 9

Osiris

Athena was in the driver’s seat when Max suddenly materialized beside her. Gloomy and preoccupied, he didn’t even look in her direction.

“That was quick,” she said.

Max sighed hopelessly. “They’ve got the glasses now.”

“Shoot! How?”

“Eddie. He told them about me and our research…  And now he’s given them the glasses.”

Athena sighed, and Max clenched his fists.

“And that thug doesn’t seem to part with his file, round the clock.”

Max was looking in vain for a solution, trying to cope with his exhaustion, which increased every minute. On top of that, his right hand was getting number.

“Max, when you left, I saw the same guy as yesterday in the lab again. I was scared!”

Max gazed upon her skeptically.

He fetched the glasses, put them on, and saw the street, houses, people, all bluish. Nothing special.

He looked at Athena and noticed from the corner of his eye a motion in the back seat. He quickly turned around and halted. An odd passenger sat there. With the same bluish outline, it was possible to examine him. A man in a cloak stared at Max, relaxed. His eyes sparkled like two fireflies.

“Holy crap!”

“What?” screamed Athena.

“This isn’t happening…” whispered Max.

Athena fetched another pair of the glasses, put them on, and froze. “Wh… who is that?” she stammered.

“He says he came to help us,” said Max, still gazing at the intangible stranger.

“Can you hear him? He’s saying something?”

“I lip read.”

Athena looked closer. The stranger was saying something, or, rather, his lips were moving.

Max turned to Athena. “Let’s go!” he said resolutely.

* * *

The three of them arrived at Max’s place around 10 a.m.

Athena entered the office and turned around to look at the stranger. She could see he was handsome. He stood with a straight stance, somewhat majestic even. When he looked right at her, she felt uneasy and turned away.

Max and Athena sat in the armchairs, and the intangible stranger stood opposite them. For some time, they remained silent, studying each other. Then the visitor moved his lips to say something.

Max peered at his mouth, trying to catch every word.

“He wants me to materialize him, and says that we’re in danger.”

Athena didn’t move and almost didn’t breathe. She felt she was dreaming and wanted to pinch herself to wake up. She used to do so when she was a child, when she was scared. Now she was an adult and realized it was very childish, but she still pinched herself on the arm. “What kind of danger?” she asked.

The stranger continued his silent talk.

“You understand it well yourselves,” Max was lip reading. “I come in peace and only to help you.”

“Do you know about the stolen bracelet?” asked Athena.

He nodded.

“This and a lot more that you do not know,” articulated Max.

“What does that mean?” asked Athena.

“Okay, first things first. Let’s materialize him,” said Max, standing up.

In a few minutes, they were in the lab, and the visitor was observing Max set up the bracelet.

“Stand here,” Max said, pointing in front of him. “The Switch wave will be directed at this spot.”

The stranger moved and halted.

The bracelet emitted a barely noticeable bluish ray, and Max directed it at the man. Having hit the intangible body, the ray widened and merged with the stranger’s outline.

A few moments later, a man of around fifty appeared in front of Max and Athena. He was wearing a baggy robe. It was the same man, but now he wasn’t glowing blue and was totally tangible.

Suddenly, he tottered and fell to the floor. Athena and Max leaned over him. Max took his hand to feel his pulse.

“I… I seem to have forgotten what it’s like to have a body…” whispered the man. He closed and opened his eyes.

He looked around as if he were lost, tried to say something, and fainted.

“Looks like he hasn’t stood on his real feet for a while,” said Max.

“I’ll bring a pillow and a blanket,” Athena told him.

“Yes, please.”

She came back a few minutes later. They put the blanket on the floor near their prone guest and moved his body onto it. Athena delicately put the pillow under his head.

“I thought a body could remain in the intangible state for a few decades, but…” Max paused to think, “it looks like I was wrong.”

“He looks different,” said Athena. “As if he is from another world. But he speaks our language, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does… I don’t know… I can’t help but think I’m about to wake up…”

* * *

Athena was cooking dinner when she heard Max’s voice from downstairs, calling her. She went to the lab in a hurry. Max hadn’t left the whole time.

The man had been unconscious for about an hour. He was now sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, looking around dully.

“Are you okay?” asked Max.

“My lengthy imprisonment is over!” He smiled as he looked at his arms and legs. “And it seems I held up just fine.”

“What’s your name?” asked Athena.

“My name is Osiris. And I’m extremely grateful for your help.”

“Nice to meet you. You must be hungry?” said Athena.

“I am indeed! My body craves some food.”

Osiris tried to sit up carefully, leaning against the floor. Max and Athena helped him.

They went to the kitchen and sat at the table.

“Salad? Pasta?” offered Athena.

“I shall take anything you offer, sweetheart. I’m certain any dish will amaze me.”

Athena looked at Osiris with some surprise. Questions swarmed in her head, but she couldn’t make up her mind whether to ask them. For some reason, she felt uneasy under his piercing eyes. She had a feeling that he was penetrating her thoughts.

She put the plate of pasta in front of Osiris and sat at the table.

“Where are you from?” asked Max.

“I came from far away,” answered Osiris matter-of-factly, devouring the food.

Max’s hand holding the spoon halted on the way to his mouth.

“Meaning?”

“I’m an emissary from a lost civilization.”

For a little while, the only sound that broke the silence was the fork knocking on the plate and the sounds of Osiris eating. Max lowered his spoon.

“What are you talking about? Which civilization?”

“You know nothing about it, it is very long gone.”

“So how old are you?” Max continued, looking at Osiris with suspicion.

“About twelve thousand…” Osiris answered and kept on eating. “Though I look much younger, don’t I?” He smiled widely.

Several wrinkles had appeared on his face. His young look and lively eyes could confuse anyone and made it impossible to figure out the age of his body.

Max remained serious, but Athena eventually resolved to ask.

“Please excuse me—”

“I understand, it’s hard to believe…” interjected Osiris, “But just wait. You’ll see for yourself soon.”

His subtle smile caused Athena to look away.

“And did they speak English in your civilization?” asked Max, who was quite calm, unlike Athena.

“Of course not,” answered Osiris. “You see, my friend, with such an abundance of free time, the language is not really a problem, it happens all by itself… It tastes really good, this pasta, I ought to say.”

“Okay, assuming this is all true,” Max continued, “please tell me something: you came here and said that we’re in danger and you were going to help us, right?”

Osiris nodded.

“We do need help and there is a danger…” Max clenched his fists. “So, I would like to understand who you are and how exactly you plan to help us out. And how on Earth did you know that the Switch was stolen?”

Now Athena decided to interrupt. “And would you please also explain why we should believe what you say?”

“You shouldn’t.” Osiris turned to Athena, and now he was not smiling. “I suggest you verify. Verify and then believe. Deal?”

The certainty with which he spoke left no chance to doubt his words. They both nodded.

“Thank you for the food, sweetheart,” said Osiris, and pushed away his plate. “Now, let’s go down to your lab and I will show you something, and then tell you how I plan to help. Does that work for you?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” said Max and stood up.

So did Athena. At this instant, Max tottered, and he leaned against the table.

Athena reached out to him. “Are you okay?”

“My feet again. Weakness. No, darling, I’ll be fine.”

“We ought to hurry,” said Osiris.

Soon they were going down to the lab.

“Twelve thousand years ago, civilization was almost terminated by a powerful wave of dematerialization, which moved across the globe,” began Osiris.

“Wave of dematerialization?” Max’s eyes became round.

“A phenomenon which swept the entire civilization off the face of the Earth. They called it The Energy Flood. Have you heard of this?”

“I don’t think so. Does it have anything to do with the Flood as known in religion?”

“Not really. What you ultimately should know is that it all started as harmlessly as now.”

“Harmlessly?” wondered Athena. “What do you mean?”

“Now you think of a couple of people who became hostages of circumstance, in other words, yourselves. And I can understand that,” answered Osiris. “But I am talking about the entire planet turning into a barren desert within a few hours. A desert with restless ghosts tearing about hopelessly… It is hard to describe the ramifications of this.”

“Yet, please, tell me, who you are and how you managed to survive until today,” insisted Max.

Osiris concentrated and, looking at Max and Athena, said, “I am the one who could have prevented that catastrophe… And now, I am under obligation to mankind.”

CHAPTER 10

The Drills

The lab was a good place to talk. Athena and Max were heeding every word of their guest, who was emanating waves of inexplicable magnetism and wisdom.

“Now, I have to understand how the Switch works,” said Osiris. “Give it to me.”

Max took the bracelet off and offered it to him. “Touch screen, you have to touch it,” Max started to explain. “This is the timer, it sets the duration of intangibility. And this…”

“I have it,” interjected Osiris and put the bracelet on.

He did the manipulations with certainty.

“Put on your glasses and watch me.”

Max and Athena complied.

Osiris took a few steps back and disappeared behind the wall. Max and Athena waited a bit and started to look around.

Suddenly Athena had a feeling that someone was calling her. She felt uneasy and instinctively grabbed Max’s hand. Something forced her to look up. She saw Osiris floating there, upside down in the lotus position near the ceiling of the lab, watching them.

Athena patted Max on his shoulder and motioned to him to look up. Max did and his jaw dropped.

Osiris stood up. Now he was standing on the ceiling, upside down, with his head level with theirs. He slowly moved back toward the wall, stepped on it with one foot, then the other, then quickly walked down the wall and disappeared beneath the floor.

Max took off his glasses. “I can’t believe it!”

Athena also took off hers and walked to the spot where Osiris had just disappeared. She squatted and touched the floor. “Did you see that?”

Max didn’t answer. He put the glasses back on and looked at the opposite wall. There, on the wall, sat Osiris in the lotus position, totally serene.

“Athena, put on the glasses!”

At this moment, Osiris stretched and lay on the wall, parallel to the ceiling and put his hands under his head.

Athena stepped back. “I’ll be damned…” she whispered. “I want to do that too!”

Osiris lay there a bit longer, then stood up and took a step along the wall, then another one… His legs seemed to stick to the surface, as he walked to the corner and stepped onto the other wall. Shortly after, he was running and jumping from one wall to the next.

Max and Athena had to spin around in order to watch him. Osiris accelerated in his sprint, then suddenly moved onto the ceiling and started to jump. At some point he just stopped in midair and kept floating, head over heels.

“Amazing!” shouted Athena.

A moment later, Osiris made a somersault and landed on the floor, then kicked off the floor and soared into the ceiling and disappeared above it.

“Yeah, now I believe him,” said Max.

Athena nodded as she kept staring at the spot where Osiris had just been.

In a second, his hand grew from the ceiling, fumbling, and then his face came out of it. The face seemed to have been carved on the ceiling like a bas-relief. Then another hand came out. He hung for a bit, holding onto the ceiling, and then landed on the floor.

They froze in awe.

The bluish silhouette turned into the tangible body of Osiris. Athena and Max took off their glasses.

“How is that possible?” marveled Max.

“Can you teach us?” asked Athena.

“You know how to do this, sweetheart.”

With a subtle smile he offered the bracelet to a baffled Max. “Fancy a try?”

“I have tried, many times! I can’t do that!”

Osiris reached for the glasses and Max gave them to him.

“You want to say that you’re no good?” Osiris asked as he put the glasses on.

Max didn’t answer. Instead, he attached the bracelet to his wrist and turned it on.

Athena put on her glasses. Now she could see intangible Max, who jumped clumsily and landed on the floor. Then he jumped again, flapped his arms to jump higher, but still landed on the floor.

Osiris suppressed a smile and Athena laughed.

Max kept jumping and flapping his arms as if trying to fly, and each time he failed. After several attempts, he materialized in the middle of the room beside the table.

“I’m glad I amused you,” he said desperately.

“Why do you think you can’t do it?” asked Osiris.

“I don’t know.”

“Why can I do it and you can’t?”

“I said I don’t know!” Max was getting exasperated.

Not a single muscle moved in Osiris’s face. “My friends, I must reveal a very important truism: without the body, your capabilities have no limit!”

“But there is a body! It’s just intangible, invisible!” parried Max.

Osiris walked up to him. “When you’re in the intangible state, your body exists only here.” He stabbed Max’s forehead with his finger. “It’s in your mind.”

“But it contradicts natural laws, doesn’t it?” shouted Max.

“Natural laws are like any other.” Osiris pointed his finger at Max’s head again. “You must learn to break them.”

“But…”

“My friend,” Osiris interjected, “the fact is, it is thought that controls natural laws! But you turned it around here! Your modern civilization has created a cult of things like bodies, money, food, sex… Yet you know nothing about the mind’s capabilities! By the way, why do you think Stinger and his peers want your Switch? Now? When the entire world worships these gods of money, power, and sex?”

Max and Athena looked at Osiris silently, as they had no answers.

CHAPTER 11

Breaking the Natural Laws

For half an hour, Athena had been ransacking the wardrobe, looking for some clothes for Osiris among Max’s things. With the difference in their builds and heights, it was not an easy task.

“What about these?” She showed Max another pair of jeans.

Max shrugged.

“Maybe… they were always too big on me.”

Athena took them and a few t-shirts that she had found earlier, and left the bedroom. She went upstairs, walked to the guest room, and knocked. It sounded oddly loud, and Athena quickly withdrew her hand. She heard footsteps and the door opened.

“Come in,” Osiris said cordially.

Athena felt uneasy at his overly frank manner. And this feeling grew when Osiris shut the door and approached her.  Like a sunbeam, he emanated admiration, gratitude, and, she thought, something else.

A light touch on her hand woke her from her reverie. She lost her breath and felt her cheeks flush. She tried to cope with her discomfort as she looked at Osiris, but suddenly got a light feeling of déjà-vu. Athena couldn’t explain what was happening to her, so she quickly put the clothes on the bed and walked to the door. There she turned around.

“Thank you,” Osiris nodded with a friendly smile.

She returned the nod and left in a hurry. In the hallway, she saw Max carrying an armful of things.

“Here’s some more. Might fit, too,” he said.

“Okay,” murmured Athena, throwing Max an absent look before rushing downstairs. “I’ll make tea, come down when you’re done!”

In the kitchen, she grabbed a glass, poured water into it, and emptied it in one gulp. Then she stared out the window contemplatively.

Both Osiris and Max took their time, while Osiris was getting dressed.

The jeans appeared to be too short, but otherwise fit well. He put on one of the t-shirts, and though it fit fine, modern clothes looked a bit weird on him.

“Max, have you ever been to Egypt?” asked Osiris.

“Yes, why?”

“We’ll have to be there today.”

“Today? And how is that possible?” Max arched his brows. “We don’t have a private jet. And even if we did, Egypt is some six thousand miles away. Plus, why?”

“If you want to live, we have to hurry. There’s poison in your body, and it must be neutralized.”

“And what does Egypt have to do with this?”

“Your salvation is there. And we urgently need to start the next stage of your training.”

* * *

The three of them stood on the skyscraper roof with bracelets on their wrists. The roof offered a gorgeous panorama of Lower Manhattan and more—a large part of the city was in full view. Down there, tiny colorful spots of cars moved about, punctuated by even smaller spots of people.

Max tried his best to not look down; it was scary. Instead he looked at other rooftops, which resembled islands floating in midair.

“So, my friends,” said Osiris. “Let’s start. Rule number one: your mind is the boss, and natural laws are subordinate to it.” With an enigmatic smile, he walked to the edge and looked down at the busy street. “The mind rules natural laws or breaks them.” With these words, he activated the Switch and vanished.

Max and Athena put on their glasses.

Their mentor, gleaming blue, stood on the very edge, facing them. Then his silhouette started leaning back and slowly hung above the abyss, with his feet still on the roof. He looked down over his shoulder.

Athena halted and felt butterflies in her stomach. Instinctively, she reached forward.

Intangible Osiris winked and, still standing on the edge, started to regain an upright position. But halfway through, he stepped back and floated above the gap.

Heart aflutter, Max watched him. How many times had he imagined this? How many times had he tried, in the very beginning, to lift himself at least one inch above the ground? And here it was: another man levitating at a dizzying altitude.

A few moments later, Osiris glided to the edge of the roof, stepped back onto it, and materialized.

“Welcome to the Natural Laws Violators Clinic! Today’s lesson is about breaking the law of gravity.” He gestured for Max and Athena to move closer. “Look there.” He pointed down.

Athena hesitantly walked to the edge, looked down, and quickly retreated. Max didn’t move an iota.

“I told you, I ain’t no good with heights. I’d rather practice in the lab…” he mumbled.

“Do it,” insisted Osiris.

Coping with his fear, Max took a few steps toward the edge.

Suddenly, the image of the girl falling from the skyscraper flashed in his head.

Another step. His heart started to pound; the butterflies in his stomach prepared to dance. He halted and closed his eyes.

“I won’t… I can’t train here,” he said, clenching his fists.

“Look at me!” said Osiris, in a can’t-resist-me tone.

Max opened his eyes but didn’t move. He looked at Osiris, still trying to avoid looking down.

Osiris walked to the edge again, this time with his back to his apprentices. He was in the tangible state now, and when he walked another half-step, Athena’s heart skipped a beat. Osiris’s feet were half-way above the void. He balanced on his heels. Max turned around.

“You must learn to bravely face your fear. Otherwise, you will not overcome the barriers that you put there yourselves. And your mind will remain in this prison,” he said calmly, as he carefully turned around.

Now he balanced on his toes, with his heels in the air. Max was fighting his nausea and other unpleasant, growing sensations.

“Face your fear, and it will lose its power,” Osiris went on. He turned 90 degrees and strolled along the roof edge. “He who walks forward wins, in spite of fears and doubts. And he who hesitates to face what scares or stops him…” Osiris halted for a second and pointed down and resumed, “…loses. He accepts it a priori.”

He turned around again and started along the edge toward Max and Athena, who stood still.

“Your only enemy is your own fear within. Remember that. It forces you to stop when you must move, or to fall when you must run, or to remain quiet when you must yell. It sets its own rules, it controls you… but! It all happens only if you accept its supremacy. When you first refused to face it, it grinned and turned you into a slave. You may continue to obey it…” At this instant, Osiris started to lose his equilibrium and flapped his arms, balancing on the edge. “You may hide and flinch, allow yourselves to be weak… to lose…” He swayed and fell over the edge.

“Oh, my goodness, what is he doing?” Athena screamed, putting her hands to her face.

She rushed toward the edge and watched as their mentor fell. It wasn’t a trick. Osiris’s tangible body approached the ground in full compliance with the law of gravity.

Max got to Athena and forced himself to look down.

“Push the button, come on! Push the button,” he chanted.

Suddenly, they couldn’t see him. They looked down in total dismay.

“But you can act alternatively,” Osiris’s voice came from behind.

The couple turned around and froze—Osiris was there before them, intact.

“Just tell your fear to go to hell! You can do it! And the first step is to face it.”

Osiris flourished his arms as he spoke. He walked to Max and Athena and turned them by the shoulders, facing the gap.

“You can! Now the question is: will you?”

Athena felt her hands chill, but she walked to the edge and looked down.

Max’s head felt like it was going to explode. He vividly imagined Athena falling. The sensation of her imminent demise was paralyzing. He made one step hesitantly, totally freaked out. He stepped to the edge and immediately backed off. “No, I can’t. I can’t…”

“Give me your hand,” said Osiris. “We’ll try it differently.”

He took Max’s hand and guided him to the edge. Max didn’t resist. Now they both stood a mere inch from the air.

“We’re short on time, so we’d better speed up,” said Osiris.

He quickly grabbed Max’s wrist and pushed him forward. Max lost his balance and slipped down from the edge, but Osiris stepped back and knelt, still holding him as he hung helplessly over the void.

“No! Please! Don’t!” pleaded Athena.

Shaking his legs, Max tried to get hold of something with his free hand, but it was all in vain. The frantic movements quickly drained his strength.

“Just face whatever you’re trying to avoid. Be stronger than your fear!” the mentor insisted.

“Look, I don’t want that! Get me back! What the hell do you think you’re doing!”

“You’re wasting time,” Osiris said calmly. “Actually, I didn’t plan to throw you off the roof today. But since you’re so stubborn…” He slightly released his grip.

Athena screamed and froze.

“Enough!” yelled Max.

“You have your bracelet on now. Even if I let you go, just activate it and become intangible. You won’t crash to your death!”

“It’s impossible!”

“You walk through walls! How do you do that? Why don’t you do the same thing now?”

“The floor is solid! I can stand on it! The ground is also solid!” yelled Max.

“Please stop!” interjected Athena, but Osiris paid no attention to her.

“What’s the difference between a wall and a floor? In the intangible state, you can pass through anything! Even through the planet’s core! There is no body, you understand? None!”

Osiris seemed to be deriding Max. “Now, decide who is stronger! Who?”

“I am…” he forced himself to say.

“Prove it!” Osiris insisted.

Max looked down. The street, the tiny spots of cars and people, everything was all blurry.

“Just keep looking!”

“I am looking!” yelled Max.

Down there he saw the city. From this height it looked like a huge toy. And yet it was the same city, with skyscrapers, cars, streets, traffic lights… He looked down at all these and felt that something had changed. As if his head had been under a press and had been suddenly released.

Osiris pulled Max up.

With a tottering pace, Max took a couple steps away from the edge and sat down. His head and hands dropped in exhaustion.

“You’re crazy!” Athena yelled, hugging Max.

“I didn’t say it would be easy. I said it’s feasible,” Osiris said with a smile. “I’m glad you made it. So, let’s continue.”

Max was feeling nauseous. He wanted only one thing, to get to bed and fall asleep.

“Okay,” he said, suddenly looking up. “But this time I’ll do it myself.”

“Awesome! I’m impressed with your courage, my friend!” Osiris offered his hand to help Max stand up.

Athena cast a fearful glance at Max, who was still panting.

They walked back to the edge of the roof. Max walked with a noticeable limp. That’s due to the poison, Athena thought with pain.

“Remember! When you’re intangible, natural laws have no power over you…” Osiris told them.

He seemed about to add something but Max suddenly wobbled, his right leg bent, and he tipped over the edge.

It happened so quickly that Osiris and Athena could only watch him fall. His scream faded into the gaping abyss.

It took less than a second. Athena caught Max’s petrified gaze, and then he was gone in the patchy chaos of streets.

She yelled and rushed forward. Osiris grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her back.

“Shh… shh… Easy, easy…”

But she didn’t hear him. “It’s you! You did it!” She punched him in the chest and pushed him away.

“He’s got the bracelet, remember.”

“To hell with the bracelet! He crashed!” She broke into tears.

Wind swept the roofs, growing and fading in force. Sometimes it filled the duct shafts and produced a humming sound. Nothing else broke the silence.

Suddenly a cell phone buzz came from Athena’s jacket. She paid no attention to it.

“It’s your phone,” said Osiris.

She didn’t listen, just kept crying, with her hands on her face.

“It’s your phone!” He shook her by the shoulders.

The phone kept buzzing.

“Go away! I don’t want to see you!” Athena pushed his hands off her and stepped back.

He walked up to her. “Answer it,” he repeated.

Athena kept sobbing, unable to move. Osiris plunged his hand into her pocket. Athena tried to stop him, but he offered the phone to her.

“Answer the phone. Look who’s calling!”

It was Max.

CHAPTER 12

The Succubus

The light coming from the luxurious azure-blue pool glittered on the walls and the ceiling. By the pool there were two lounge chairs and a small glass table. On the table sat a bowl of strawberries, a bottle of Jack Daniels, and two glasses of whiskey and ice cubes.

Stinger was sitting in the lounge chair. He was wearing his black velvet robe, playing with his file, and casually looking at Linda. She stood up and walked to the pool, untying her red silk robe. It was hard to look away, and the view of her curves distracted Stinger from his heavy thoughts.

Linda took off her robe and, fully naked, gracefully walked into the water. Stinger gazed at her. When the water reached her shoulders, her long hair floated and drifted apart. There was something mysterious about it.

Linda dove and swam across the pool under the surface. Then she kicked off the far wall, turned around, and floated motionless. Her body kept drifting along for a few moments, then stopped.

Linda stared at the ceiling. The angels pictured there seemed to be looking down on her in disapproval of her beautiful body.

Stinger put his file into his pocket, got up, and walked to the edge.

Linda turned over and swam toward him.

“I don’t quite get what you want from me, darling,” he said.

“I want you to quit this game.”

Stinger chuckled.

She leaned up onto the edge. “Did I say something funny?”

“Look, darling.” Stinger squatted. “I don’t mind quitting, but first I want to visit the treasure spots in Zet’s maps and get to places that we could not reach before.”

Linda said nothing. She got out of the pool, wrapped herself in her towel, and sat on the pool chair, reaching for a strawberry.

“The bracelet must be destroyed. Here and now. It’s best for everyone,” she said.

Stinger approached the table, helped himself to whiskey, took a meditative sip, and put the glass back. Suddenly, as if he’d remembered something, he turned around, walked up to Linda, and sat on the edge of the pool chair. He took her hand in his and kissed her fingers.

“Do you have any idea what is on those maps?”

She looked away, released her hand and tried to get up. He put his hand on her shoulder and softly but insistently pushed her to remain seated. She arched her eyebrows in surprise.

“Everyone takes their own loot in this world. The bigger it is, the better… so that kicking the bucket eventually won’t hurt so much,” Stinger whispered into Linda’s ear. “Or do you think you’ll live forever, as my brother does?”

He threw his head back and laughed, though it sounded forced and theatrical. Linda attempted to get up, but he pressed her down even harder. A diabolical fire started to burn in his eyes. He leaned in and kissed her on the neck.

“We should help each other, cherish our alliance…” he whispered.

She drew back. “What the…? Are you drunk?”

Stinger ignored her questions. “I just want to take what is mine… as we all do. This is how it works and I can’t change it.”

He released her shoulder and got up.

“Did you try?” she chuckled, as she got up and headed for the exit.

Stinger emptied his glass in one shot and stared into space, clenching his fists. Yes, he had tried. Seven years ago. When he really had believed that the world could change…

* * *

Stinger sat at the round table opposite his older brother in the conference hall. It was just the two of them. The weekly meeting of adepts had finished and everyone had left. While his brother spoke, Stinger was all ears, as usual. At thirty-three, he was a handsome, lively young man, inspired by the work Zet and he had been doing for over ten years.

To say that he was “inspired” was an understatement. He was a zealot, because he knew he was helping the Master in his work, which was to rid the world of sinners. He also knew that he had been chosen by Him as one of the key adepts. Stinger was a true believer; he was willing to fulfill his duty till his last breath. Zet was proud of his younger brother and trusted him with the most difficult and delicate matters. One of these he wanted to discuss right now.

“We have a lot of men coming to us. Every age, every walk of life. And the most common reason is their moral decay caused by women. Luring, seductive, like succubi, they enchant men,” Zet said.

Stinger paid attention to his brother’s words. Vengeance was not targeted at every sinner. But if Zet tackled the case, it meant Providence itself had authorized him. And that meant that the sinner really deserved punishment. It was always this way. Stinger trusted his brother unconditionally.

“She works in a brothel,” Zet continued. “She serves a whole variety of men. Mostly the married ones. They need a break from their wives, need to add some spice to their sex lives. Yes, this is a sin too, but they understand that and therefore come to us when…They repent…”

Stinger nodded.

“This case is special. The woman is a true succubus. With her diabolical tricks, which she utilizes very skillfully, she ensnares weak men. Having visited her once, they won’t be able to do without her or her charms. I won’t tell you what she does exactly, as other adepts have already heard that during confessions. But one thing I will tell you. They felt so uneasy after hearing those confessions they had to purify themselves many times after that abomination. And that was just from hearing things about her! Now imagine what ordinary people felt when they encountered the spells of that sinner. They didn’t belong to themselves any longer! They forgot their wives, their lives. They kept visiting that whore and their souls sank deeper and deeper into a hell of no return. The world must be stripped of this blight, and a lot of souls will be freed and recover their purity.” Zet finished and dropped his head. He ran his fingers slowly through his beads.

“I got you,” Stinger said after a brief pause.

He tried to not lose control, but it was obvious that rage boiled inside him. The passionate speech of Zet had ignited righteous hatred. It was not the first time that he’d had to get rid of the devil’s minions. And never did he feel any remorse or disappointment for what he did. Those women… they deserved vengeance. Covetous, dissolute, deceitful, and sly women they were. Stinger was certain that Zet was talking about one of those.

“Where do I find her?” he said through his teeth.

Zet’s face remained still. He got his phone from the cloak. He swiped through several pictures, found the one he needed, and gave the phone to Stinger.

One glance was enough. A striking beauty looked at him from the screen. Long dark hair framed her face, one of regular features, but phenomenally deep eyes, which emanated magnetism even from the picture.

Chills ran down Stinger’s back. She hadn’t changed a bit. Here she was, the same as she had been seven years ago. He could not look away from the picture. He felt an adrenal spike and his heart pumped faster. He didn’t say a word, trying to suppress his emotions, but Zet had caught his hesitation.

“What?” He looked at his brother suspiciously.

“She’s beautiful indeed,” Stinger said with constraint.

“Yes, she is. Your heart is cool, and that’s why I trust you with this uneasy task. I’m certain you can do it.”

“Have no doubt, I will do it. Give me the address.”

Stinger listened to the instructions; he would not say that he recognized her. At least for now…

An hour later, Stinger arrived at the destination. The building was in one of the roughest districts of New York City.

He parked his car a few blocks away to walk the rest of the way.

Night came and the street lights went on. In this neighborhood, however, they were mostly broken, and the streets were heavily littered with trash. The place grew busier as its usual night life began.

Stinger walked past the local hot spots. Strip clubs, beer pubs, adult theaters, cheap diners. Some freaks sneaking about. The whole variety of the criminal world could be seen here: pimps, candy men, thieves, hookers.

He walked along the gloomy street and turned into the lane he needed. A small dim street light shone on the whorehouse. Stinger approached the door and pushed the bell. He could hear it ringing inside. Shortly, a sweet woman’s voice answered through the intercom.

“Good evening. Please state the purpose of your visit.”

“I’ve come for Daisy,” Stinger said.

Zet had warned him about the local rules. Those were simple but necessary for security reasons. Girls’ names were used for passwords. Any visitor had to get through a professional face control.

“Come in,” the same voice invited.

The heavy door opened with a click. Stinger entered and found himself in a small entrance chamber.

The security guard cast a suspicious glance at him, frisked him without a single word and scanned him with the metal detector. He didn’t skip the private parts either. Stinger indifferently let him do his job.

“You’re okay,” the guard uttered.

Stinger walked down the hallway and entered a sitting room with sofas and armchairs. Dim light and a sweet aroma brought about a feeling of serenity. He sank into one of the armchairs.

He didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes later, a slender beauty came in. Her face was cared-for and pretty. A low-cut dress outlined her exquisite curves. She approached the visitor with a warm smile, offering her right hand, with the left behind her back. “Welcome to our club!”

Stinger stood up and returned the handshake.

The woman piercingly looked into his eyes, as if trying to read something that people normally wouldn’t ask about directly. Stinger felt a little uneasy.

“Make yourself at home,” she went on. “This place is visited by those who lack comfort in their everyday lives. Here their dreams come true. You have dreams and whims, don’t you?”

These delicate, unexpected questions confused Stinger. But before he had a chance to answer, she interrupted.

“Don’t bother. Relax. She who will guess all your desires awaits you.”

With the same smile, she reached out with her left hand and opened her fingers. In her palm lay a round metal token that looked like a coin. Stinger took it with caution. On the gilded token, which covered half of his palm, was a girl’s portrait. He would recognize her among millions of others. Astounding! It was her…

He turned the token over. There was an etched flower and the name Daisy.

Stinger looked questioningly at the hostess.

“It’s the key. She’s waiting.” She pointed up the staircase to the second floor.

Stinger nodded and, with the token in his hand, walked toward the stairs.

The hostess watched him go and then left the room.

The hallway on the second floor had nice soft carpet and a tapestry on the walls, which absorbed any sound. He couldn’t hear his own footsteps as he walked down the hallway.

There were several doors along the wall. He noticed in the middle of each door a round slot with an image of a flower. Rose, tulip, lotus… Stinger stopped at the door with the image of a daisy.

It’s here, he thought with excitement. His heart skipped a beat. He was astonished that his emotions and feelings were still alive after all these years.

He opened his hand and held the token to the slot. It happened to be a simple magnetic lock, as they usually have in hotels. With a click, the door opened. He gave it a light push and entered. The door closed automatically.

Stinger found himself in a small, dark entrance hall. From here he could see the bedroom, from which emanated soft music and the flickering of lit candles. He hesitated for a moment, then took a deep breath and entered the room. There was a huge round bed in the middle and the curtains were tightly drawn.

There was nobody in the room. He looked around and noticed two more doors. One must have led to a bathroom, the other maybe a closet or another room. Both doors were closed.

Suddenly, he heard steps behind one of them, and she entered.

Stinger was thunderstruck. He could not speak a word, and there was no need to. A pair of huge eyes looked at him…

Yes, it was Linda. She stood there for a few moments and without a word looked at her guest. She suddenly buried her face in her hands and started to cry. She sobbed, her shoulders moving up and down.

“Linda!” Stinger broke the silence.

He approached and hesitantly hugged her. She did not resist, cuddling up to him and putting her hands around his neck.

“Hello,” Stinger said quietly.

“You? Is this you?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

They stood there in silence. He was hugging her and she was crying.

“Where have you been?”

Linda looked up at him. Her eyes reflected so much pain that he could not find the words, so they stood in silence.

“Linda, I’m sorry,” he said eventually. “Let’s sit down. I’ll tell you everything.”

They sat down on the bed. Stinger could not believe his eyes. He recalled how they’d met seven years ago in Miami. She’d come there with her friends for a weekend, and he had been on a business trip. Several unforgettable nights…That had been the kind of affair after which lovers understand that they’re meant for each other. These two had known that from their first moments together.

“Thirty minutes after your plane took off, I got into a car accident. I survived by miracle… My ID, money, phone disappeared from my car. The cops didn’t find anything. I stayed in the hospital for months. When I got out, I started looking for you, I drove every street racer in Detroit nuts bugging them. But without your phone number or your last name even…”

“I didn’t return to street racing. I quit.”

“Yes. They told me they hadn’t seen you in a while. I tried to find you. I’m sorry…”

Linda looked down quietly as she listened to him, but then spoke. “I’ve been waiting for so long… A week after we parted, my Diablo was stolen. I rushed to the phone every time it rang. I lost count of days, weeks, months…” She had calmed down and was now speaking in a low and monotonous voice. “A year later I stopped caring. My friends suggested I try some junk. I agreed… I don’t remember how long I was on it. It was a nightmare…” Linda paused and continued. “And recently, I got into this fine establishment. You know, I didn’t much care much…”

Stinger stood up and knelt before her. He took her hands in his. It wasn’t easy to catch Linda’s eyes. She stared down, her hair covering her face.

“Listen, you’re in danger.”

She jerked her head up and looked at him. “What?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

She looked at him cautiously, like a scared wild animal.

“I’ll hide you where you’ll be safe. You’ll stay there until I sort it out.”

He walked away, got his phone, and found Zet’s number. He typed the text in agitation: ‘DONE.’ He hesitated for a second and then sent it. Then he took Linda’s hand and they walked out.

* * *

Stinger’s usual parking spot near the Church of the Spider was occupied by the red Lamborghini Diablo. Stinger moved closer and saw the door slide up and his brother get out. He wore his usual long cloak, which swept the scarlet threshold of the car and then the concrete slab of the parking lot.

Stinger felt uneasy chills running down his spine as he parked by the Diablo and got out. Zet chuckled, watching his brother.

“Do you recognize the wheels?” Zet asked.

Sure, Stinger did. It was that very Diablo, Linda’s favorite car, which she had been driving in Florida and which had been stolen right after they had parted. Without a word, he walked to the scarlet Lamborghini and touched it.

Zet’s lips curved in a sneer. “Have you ever wondered why everyone has been tried but you?” he asked.

“No, I haven’t. We’re brothers after all. Why would you try me?”

“Well, you know, all are equal before the Master. And laws of the Church are uniform. Every adept is to be tried.”

“Did you steal her wheels?” Stinger asked.

“Sure. This too.”

Zet fetched Stinger’s phone out of his cloak, the one which had disappeared after that car accident. He set it on the scarlet hood.

Dark suspicions popped into Stinger’s head, increasing his anxiety.

“While you were in the hospital, I checked your phone and understood how you ought to be tried.”

Stinger’s stomach tied in knots. He tried hard to not lose control and smash Zet’s sneering mug, and continued their talk. “You wanna tell me that my test is to kill the girl I still love?”

“We only kill those who are weakened by their sins.”

Stinger felt his despair mix with hatred, the emotional cocktail about to burst out any second.

This was Zet, his own brother, the person Stinger trusted more than he did himself.

“Oh really? And I believed that you were a true… messiah, empowered by the Master, and we adepts are His instruments…” Stinger said.

“What do you mean?”

Stinger didn’t answer. The veins on his head were popping out.

“What do you mean?” Zet repeated louder.

“But for you, she would have never become the sinner which she is now!” Stinger yelled.

Zet’s eyes glared. “It’s odd to hear this from you. We’ve been working together for years. How dare you question my authority? Did you forget how we went to the bank and collected gold bullion from the safe-deposit boxes? The bullion I left there in my past life! You knew well that I could have never earned so much gold in this lifetime. And you knew well how old that bank account was, and it was there waiting for me! You forgot how we went to Mexico and I pointed to the exact spot where the treasure was buried. And we found it! Because it was I who buried it there, three hundred years ago! What about the other things?”

“I remember everything,” answered Stinger.

Zet narrowed his eyes. “Of course, you do! Because you took part in all that! I am endowed with divine power, and it is His providence! I am the Only One among you. And how dare you question my mission?”

“I dare!” squeezed Stinger. He banged the hood with his open hand, and his eyes became bloodshot with anger.

“Listen to me,” Zet forced out the words. “I’ve been to every nook and cranny of this planet, and I know things that your wisest men have never heard of and that your ancient Vedas don’t say! I’ve been reincarnating for eons, waging justice on this damn planet, which is swarming with sinners! And you must thank me for that alone, be grateful that I let you be near me and help me! Just to be near me…”

“Enough!” Stinger interrupted him. “I’m sick of you clamoring about your Oneness. I know you’re just a murderer that created a brotherhood to cover up your pathetic practices, and I don’t want to be part of that anymore!”

Zet’s face contorted. He believed in his brother, his right hand, and didn’t want to lose him. And it badly hurt him that he would probably have to do it.

“Had you not been my brother, I would’ve put a bullet in your head right now,” said Zet. “But a while ago, I already did a terrible wrong by my brother and was punished for that. So I will never make that mistake again. You’re my brother-in-arms. And you must walk this path with me to the very end. This is the Creator trying us! You just need to keep doing your work. You’ve done a lot, we are bound…”

Hatred overwhelmed Stinger and burned him to his very heart. So Zet was coercing him. Had he run out of reasons?

“I do not want this.”

“Look, it’s all immaterial,” Zet interrupted him. “We’re killing real sinners, those who do not belong among the righteous! We are authorized by the Spider himself, we help him. And it doesn’t matter what means we choose… I will reveal the secret of reincarnation to you, I will teach you this! I will give you the technologies of the ancient civilizations that were here long before!”

Zet drilled his brother with his intense gaze. Stinger had never seen Zet so angry and at the same time full of hope.

“I failed my trial,” said Stinger. “She’s a regular girl, and I’m in love with her. I thought I was making this world clean through punishing the worst sinners, but now I doubt that. I might have taken much more sin on me than all of them collectively… I truly believed that you were a messiah, but in actual fact you’re just a murderer.”

Stinger made a step toward the Diablo. When he passed Zet, his hand touched his cloak. It seemed to him that the fabric was ice cold. Or was the ice in Zet’s eyes following him?

Stinger did not look back. He got into the car and activated the door-closing mechanism.

Zet started to finger his beads again. His dispassionate eyes were still looking at his brother, who had literally disavowed their church a moment ago. Zet halted and clenched the beads. The thread gave in and broke, setting the beads free. They fell to the concrete slab of the parking lot and scattered in all directions.

“No, I am not just a murderer,” he squeezed the words out as the Diablo made a low growl and took off. “I am an immortal one…”

CHAPTER 13

The Main Weapon

“Max! Is that you? Where are you? Are you okay?” Athena was shouting into her phone, her breath skipping with excitement and joy.

Osiris watched her in silence.

“In the subway? How did you get there?” she stumbled as her wonderment grew. “That’s impossible,” she said, and paused to listen to Max. “Okay, darling, we’re waiting for you!” She hung up and put the phone back in the pocket. “He is coming… he’s not far from here. In the subway…” Her voice broke and she flushed.

“Don’t bother, sweetheart,” said Osiris. “I heard it all. Now our friend knows that ground is not hard.” He winked and smiled.

“He fell through to the subway. And called me from there,” Athena said with excitement.

“It happens to beginners. A bit more practice, and he will be in full control. And it will take him seconds to get from the subway to the roof.”

It didn’t take Max long. Five minutes later, he was standing before them. Athena rushed toward him and hung on to his neck. Max staggered but remained standing.

“Max… Max, darling, I was so scared. I worried about you. What happened?”

“Honey, I also was scared.” He stroked her hair, trying to calm her.

“But this is not the problem now. I almost don’t feel my right leg. It happened there, on the edge. It seems to be partially paralyzed.”

“Oh my God! So, what do we do now? Can you walk?” Athena fussed. “What do we do now?”

Max hugged her tight, without a word.

“My friends! I know how to save you. That’s why I’m here. Remember?” said Osiris.

They’d almost forgotten about him, and now Athena looked at Osiris with hope.

“We’re about to engage in some more serious drills, and then we’ll head to Egypt.”

“But why?” asked Max.

“Your cure is there, my friend. But I need your help too…”

“How? How can I help you?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there. That’s where your cure is.” Osiris stared into space. He seemed to be contemplating some memories.

In a few minutes, the three of them were standing on the edge of the roof again. Another height, another wind, another boundless space that they found hard to treat without awe. Osiris demanded they break natural laws. Max had experienced that it was possible; however, he still was afraid to look down.

“Now, you must learn to think outside the physical universe’s boundaries,” said Osiris. “Think, dream, unleash your imagination, let it guide you. You are not bound by any rules or laws of this physical universe.”

“No rules or laws…” Athena whispered, and asked Osiris, “And what should I imagine? Anything at all?”

“Exactly!”

He pointed at the Switch on her wrist and put on his glasses. So did Max. Athena touched her bracelet, froze, and vanished.

“Remember, there’s no body,” Osiris’s voice followed her.

He watched her through his glasses. Her bluish intangible shape looked really weird here, on the roof, as if it came from another parallel universe.

“Now dream!” Osiris added.

She moved closer to the edge, looked down, and halted.

“What did you dream of when you were a child? What did you see in your sleep? What could you not do before? Imagine that now! Release your imagination! Forget about the body, you don’t have one now. You’re free from the physical universe’s laws!”

Athena looked up, spread her arms as if she wanted to take off, made a cautious step forward, then another one… and suspended near the edge of the roof.

Max froze.

The other steps, now across the void, were easier for her. She looked down and then around. Her bluish face was shining with triumphant smile. Athena turned around and ran across air, then stopped and started to soar slowly. Then she stopped again and started to move faster, now and then suspending herself in the air, as if she were accumulating more certainty and strength.

Then she soared until she was just a tiny speck in the sky, practically invisible.

Max and Osiris were watching her.

Suddenly she began to fall, darting past them like a whirlwind, and kept falling below the roof level.

Max rushed to the edge, but saw her soaring again and backed up.

Now her arms and legs remained still while she was moving around in all directions, a featherlike wisp.

“She’s a goddess,” said Osiris, watching her.

Athena soared again, this time even faster, like a rocket. As she zoomed higher, she switched direction, swooshing down just above the skyscrapers, farther and farther from the roof where Max and Osiris stood. Then her trajectory changed. Athena descended almost to the ground, rushing just above the street with its cars and traffic lights.

Then she meshed with the swarming crowd for a little while. Then the bluish wisp appeared again and started spiraling up along the skyscraper wall till she ascended to the roof level.

She floated in the air in front of Max and Osiris, in the lying position.

“I can’t believe my own eyes!” said Max.

The bluish shape began to move away, this time toward the nearby skyscraper, and shortly Athena was standing on its roof in the tangible state, waving at them.

“Go join her!” said Osiris.

Max looked askance at him and said nothing. He activated his bracelet but didn’t move.

“Come on! Go!” Osiris nudged him.

Max did not move. His bluish shape was fluctuating.

“Okay, listen to me,” Osiris went on. “You hear me, don’t you?”

Max nodded.

“And do you see me?”

Max nodded again.

“And do you have ears?”

Max shook his head.

“What about eyes?”

Max shook his head again.

“So how do you hear, see, and understand me?” Osiris kept going. “I’ll tell you how. It’s your mind that controls it. Not your ears, not your eyes, not your body! You!”

Max got to the very edge. Down there, he saw the busy street swarming with living parts.

“Join her,” Osiris repeated.

Athena was watching them through her glasses. “Come on, do it…” Her lips were chanting these words like a mantra.

Another uncertain move, a step into the abyss…

Max spread his arms, floating a few inches from the edge.

“Well done!” Osiris clapped. “Don’t forget, now you decide which laws work and which don’t!”

A few more steps in the air and Max was floating again, balancing with his arms. Then he soared, stopped, turned around and, now not moving his legs, floated toward Athena.

Osiris watched Max materialize and Athena rushed to cuddle up to him.

A few moments later, they were standing next to their mentor, happy and proud.

“People underestimate their imaginative capabilities,” said Osiris to Max. “Now, my friend, imagine you’re in your bedroom.”

Max blinked, looked at Athena hesitantly and shut his eyes tightly. “I’m imagining.”

“Good. Now dive into your imagination, deep into those pictures. But first turn this on,” he pointed at the bracelet on Max’s wrist.

Max paused shortly and activated the Switch. He shut his eyes again and saw his bedroom with the unmade bed…

Suddenly he felt some sort of a wave swoosh through him, then the air changed and the wind died down abruptly. He opened his eyes to realize that he was in his own bedroom.

This was mind-boggling! An instant ago, he had vanished there, on that roof, and now he was here. He thought about this… simply incredible!

He didn’t move, scared this illusion would disappear. But of course, he wasn’t sleeping. A new reality that he just discovered was unfolding in front of him right now.

Osiris was right. Nothing was impossible. And there were no physical limitations.

* * *

Max appeared on the roof where Osiris and Athena were waiting for him. His eyes were glowing.

“This is incredible! Honey, this is so much cooler than anything we ever did!” He grabbed Athena by the shoulders. “It’s a miracle! I had no clue…”

“You did it?”

“Yes!”

“And how? Just by thinking of it?”

“Yes!” Max was radiating. “Look, I don’t get how it happened! I just imagined it… It’s a miracle!”

Osiris smiled. “When your mind and imagination are in order, you can do anything! Remember that! You must be certain for it to work. You can do anything you want with the physical universe. You just decide that you’re somewhere, and you are.”

“But…” Max tried to object, but Osiris stopped him.

“Thought is your main weapon. This universe is as complex as you made it. Decide that something is impossible and it will be impossible. The secret is within you, it’s within your mind.”

“But we’re here… now… we think differently.” Athena threw her hands up.

Osiris nodded.

“Yes, I know. Okay, my friends. Let’s get to business.”

“Now me?” asked Athena.

“Yes… You say she’s got a fancy car?” Osiris looked at Max.

Athena reached to the Switch and closed her eyes…

In a few minutes, the door of Max’s garage opened and a car came out with Athena behind the wheel. She was happy. Just an hour ago, she’d thought she could only dream about this.

CHAPTER 14

Twelve Thousand Years Ago

“We’re short on time, but I promised to let you in on something…” Osiris gazed into space thoughtfully, where the sun was slowly setting.

“Twelve thousand years ago, everything here was different,” he began. “Another Earth civilization, just one of many, ascended into the next stage of its development, with supercities and spaceships orbiting the planet. This was the golden age. We had just arrived on Earth with the task of exploration…”

“Where did you come from?” asked Athena.

“My home planet is at the opposite side of this galaxy. Veles, our ship, went under the ground and stopped about a mile deep. We took reasonable precautions, as Terrans were no friendlier than they are now. At that time, we used dematerialization technology for various purposes. One of them was concealing our ships under the surface of the planets which we had come to explore. But these technologies were available only to task forces like ours. We’re entrusted with a great mission, and we are the civilizers.” Osiris paused for a bit. “So, our task force consisted of six persons. We had been doing our job and were preparing to return home when I ‘spilled milk,’ as you say it. And it was my, and only my, mistake. Surely, there was no room for it.” A deep line creased Osiris’s forehead. “And I still pay for that negligence. My younger brother was with us. He had many unique abilities; he was my right hand. And he was about to complete his civilizer internship.”

“Civilizer internship?” asked Max.

“Right. He had to complete a few things. But that’s a different story. Now, one of his abilities was to remember his past incarnations. I am able to remember mine too. My brother and I are not prone to the amnesia that mental bodies, or souls, as you call it, have after the physical body’s death. We shared this ability, and as far as I know, it is quite rare on the inhabited planets I am aware of.”

“To remember past incarnations? How is that possible?” said Athena in astonishment.

“Yes, it is possible,” Osiris continued. “My brother was always interested in secret civilizers’ projects. I trusted him, but I should have known better than to tell him about them, intern that he was. Prior to our departure from Earth, he insisted that I tell him about dematerialization and wanted me to teach him to use that technology. I refused. And I took a note of his odd persistence. But I thought we would handle it when we got home. That was my fatal mistake…” Osiris again stared into the distance, where the buildings’ outlines were distinct against the sunset. “We were in my cabin. The other crew members were on the other end of the ship. He put a sleeper into my drink. I got groggy and realized I was not in control of my body. When I fell asleep, my brother put me into the dematerializer pod.”

“What is a dematerializer pod?” asked Max.

“That’s the device we use for long-distance travel. Looks like a glass sarcophagus.”

“Goodness me!” Max chuckled.

“It is useful. In that state, we can travel any distance and reach the most distant galaxies. So, I was in that pod and my brother was near the dematerializer control panel. It was connected to the other pods and the ship itself. Just try to imagine the power of the system capable of dematerializing the spaceship, putting it under the ground, then taking it back to orbit and teleporting to any part of the galaxy. So, he was one-on-one with that control panel… This was the beginning of the end and the harbinger of the global catastrophe never before seen on this planet…” He thought for a moment, as if he were shuffling the pages of that lifetime. “My brother synchronized the system with my mental body. This way, it was easy to decipher any thoughts generated by the mind and put them into the computer. In short, he scanned my thoughts and found out what he needed: the basic ideas of dematerialization, the principles of the control panel’s operation and the dematerialization processor built into Veles. But since he lacked training and competence, he made a gross mistake… He set up a field that responded only to the mental bodies of the crew members. That field rejected our mental bodies by shoving them away from the ship and not letting them in. My brother set the field and put it up…”

Osiris lowered his head. He seemed to have forgotten about his listeners.

“And what happened next?” asked Athena impatiently.

Osiris started, as if the question had woken him up. “They all died inside the ship; that is, their physical bodies died. And their mental bodies were thrown onto the planet’s surface… They are still here, among us. Living their normal Terran lives…”

“Are they?” said Athena in surprise.

“That’s right.”

“And what happened to your brother?”

“I can only guess. He made sure that I stayed on the ship alive. Because I am the keeper of information of great importance. And with my unique abilities, I was the only one who could have stopped him from making his vile plans come true. If I had been reborn on Earth in another body, as the rest of our crew had, I would have found that scumbag. And he knew that, so he locked me up, intangible in that pod, for millennia.”

“In the intangible state? Sort of canned you?” asked Max.

“Exactly. And I could not get out till it ran out of power by itself. And then the field, which was still active, threw me out of the ship. When I was leaving Veles, I noticed the ashes of my brother near the control panel.”

“But he shouldn’t have… I mean, his physical body shouldn’t have died,” said Max.

“That’s right, my friend, the field shouldn’t have killed him. So, I can assume that what happened was this: my brother put up the field and returned to the control panel. Then he must have made a mistake, and the dematerialization wave went out of control. The impulse was so intense that it quickly overwhelmed the entire planet and turned all of Earth’s inhabitants into ghosts. And my brother’s body was destroyed by the energy outburst. And he’s here on this planet and has been living in different bodies ever since. He, as well as other crew members, cannot enter the ship due to some kind of safety device which protects Veles from being ‘hacked.’ But since my brother is capable of retaining memory of his past incarnations, he can achieve a lot here. He may be anyone, anywhere. And if he lays his hands on our technologies again, it may bring about another catastrophe… Now you understand how important it is to protect the Switch?”

“So, what do we do?” asked Athena.

“Right question, sweetheart,” answered Osiris. “And now I’ll tell you about another of Veles’s secrets.”

“Yes, continue,” said Max, who was feeling really crappy now. He was having a hard time breathing; his body lacked oxygen. He could barely keep in the upright sitting position, even though Athena was supporting him.

“So, there are a lot of things on Veles which are normal for me, but not so normal for you. One of them is a set of nanocells, which are used in healing almost any injury in the physical body. They locate damaged cells in the body and replace them, thus recovering the functions of the body part.”

“Like stem cells?” Athena asked.

“Similar, but not quite. The replacement takes place really fast. To start the process, the nanocells must be injected into the injured body. Unfortunately, they cannot fully neutralize the poison, but they can considerably slow the process down and buy us some time. Now we must get to Veles, break in, and obtain the crate with the nanocells.”

Max’s eyes gleamed again. Incredible! He’d thought he had no chance, and now…

“We must get in there right away!” said Athena.

“Sure enough. The faster, the better. But let’s first clarify where exactly we must travel. Veles is right under the Great Pyramid. And we cannot get inside all together. The field is still up, and it recognizes mental bodies of all crew members. If I enter, it will shove me away. Thus, it must be just the two of you.”

“Maybe I go alone?” Athena anxiously looked at Max.

“We never go alone anywhere. Always with a partner. That’s for safety,” answered Osiris.

“But how will we find the crate?” asked Max.

“This I will show you now. Give me a piece of paper. I’ll draw the plan for you.”

“I’ll get one,” said Athena, reaching for her bracelet.

In a minute she was back with a sheet of paper and a pen.

“You’re a wonderful student,” Osiris praised her. “Now, I’ll draw the plan and then we’ll get to the exact spot.”

CHAPTER 15

Under the Pyramids

In the dead of night, three people materialized on the very pinnacle of the Great Pyramid.

“Let’s go over it again,” Osiris said to Max, who wasn’t even trying to stand up now. “Both of you transfer exactly one mile down, and get through the armor and into one of the modules. I don’t know exactly where you will be, so you’ll have to figure it out yourselves. There’s a plan on the wall in each module, like the one I gave you. You just look at it and see where to go. Inside, you stay together.”

Max’s condition was worsening every minute. His arms were almost numb. The upper part of his body was still in control, but he felt weaker and weaker. It was clear that he would become paralyzed within ten or fifteen minutes.

Osiris was quickly giving them the last directions. “Okay, now go! And may luck be with you!”

Max and Athena gave each other a hug and simultaneously disappeared.

For a while, Max felt physical discomfort. Very weird sensations, as if he was fighting his way through some gooey matter or a web. Then it suddenly stopped, and he opened his eyes. It was pitch-black around him. Stale and dry air scratched his nostrils.

He heard some unpleasant rustling and moaning somewhere nearby. He realized that only one person could be producing these sounds, and it was Athena.

Suddenly, soft, cold lights came on; perhaps the sensors had caught their movements. Max saw Athena on the floor. Her body was contorted and motionless. Her right arm was visibly swollen and unnaturally angled. But a fractured arm was not the worst thing…

“No!” Max said quietly as be bent over her, trying to feel the pulse on her carotid. He could not feel it.

He started to shake Athena by the shoulders. But like a rag doll, she was totally listless, with glazed eyes and a greyish face.

Anxiety immobilized Max’s body like he was caught in a pair of vise. What happened? Was it because of the resistance of the Terran matter? Or the pressure jump? How much time has she got? Thoughts swarmed inside his head, and he could not concentrate.

There must be an optimal solution. Something had hit her. There was no time to figure out what it was. He had to save her urgently! The remedy to recover a physical body was somewhere nearby. He had five minutes, six tops. Then nothing would reanimate her, as clinical death would become real death. Her brain would die and there’d be nothing to save her, and he’d follow shortly after.

Max set the timer on his Switch for six minutes, fetched the plan that Osiris had given him, and started to examine it.

His eyes frantically scanned the walls. Where was the space plan? The room was narrow, probably a kind of hallway between units. There were huge trap doors along both sides, all shut. About to collapse, Max crawled to the nearest one and noticed the floor plan. It was carved into the wall and showed all the hallways and cabins on the floor.

It was clear that they were on the eighth deck, the top one, and the sick bay with the crate was on the seventh, but in the opposite wing.

Max activated the Switch. As his left arm got weaker, it was harder to operate it. The poison was steadily doing its job.

He got to the opposite wing of the ship. Again, total darkness surrounded him. If only there were motion detectors to turn the lights on…

But time went on and there was no light. Max started to panic and forced himself to wave his right hand to activate the detectors.

Eventually light went on; it was as soft and cold as in the other room.

This room, however, was totally different: there was a bed, a desk and a chair; the walls were a system of drawers and shelves, seemingly to save space. When Veles had been inhabited, someone had lived here. However, it definitely was not the sick bay.

Max again began to scan the wall, trying to find the floor plan. It was near the door. He had to crawl again to examine it. His attempt failed, as he was totally exhausted. Numbness and dizziness were taking over.

Max activated the Switch again and got to the spot just below the floor plan. He looked at the timer and thought that he should have done so in the previous room rather than crawl and lose so much time.

He had just under two minutes left. Max regained control of himself, as only one thought was beating inside his head: things had never depended upon his speed as much as they did now.

He examined the floor plan. It looked like the sick bay itself was in the next cabin, this one being the cabin of the medic.

This time he got into the sick bay and didn’t wait for the lights to turn on, but actively waved his hand so that the detectors would respond faster.

It worked almost immediately. Max looked around. Drawers, shelves along the walls, a desk opposite him. Osiris had said that the crates with medicine should be on the right if you stood by the desk. One of them would have what he needed. He activated the Switch again and got to the shelves.

Okay, the second one from the bottom left corner. Max touched the screen on the door of one of the shelves, but needed to enter a combination.

He fetched the plan from his pocket, unfolded it on the floor, and straightened it with his right hand, which he could hardly move now. The paper was all worn and the combination… Damn! Some unknown characters, each one very much alike.

Max looked at the timer. Every second resounded inside him. Less than a minute left. There was no time to return to Osiris. He scrutinized the characters, looking for their differences, and started to enter the six-picture combination.

The first attempt failed. The screen turned pink and the crate remained locked. Osiris had warned him that he would have only three attempts. After that, it would lock him out for seven hours.

Heart in mouth, Max scrutinized the alien characters, and re-entered the combination. He failed again. A bead of cold sweat appeared on his forehead and ran into his eye. He squinted and tried to wipe it with his sleeve.

Last attempt. The mysterious characters blurred; he was passing out. Max compared the characters on his paper and the panel several times, making sure that he entered them all correctly. His brain resembled an overheated computer, and a buzzing filled his head.

He entered the last character. With a quiet click, the door slightly opened.

Max sighed with relief and opened it fully as quickly as he could. Inside, he saw a small crate with a handle. To open it, one would need to enter the same combination. Max had already learned it by heart.

Now came the most difficult part. With his half-paralyzed fingers, Max set the Switch to dematerialize the crate.

He didn’t look at the timer counting down the last seconds. A bit more effort, and he got back to Athena. Her motionless body was still there. With his heart skipping beats, knitting all his strength together, he entered the combination and opened the crate.

He grabbed the little pistol-like device, put it to Athena’s hand, and pushed the button, just like Osiris had directed.

For a few weary seconds, Athena remained motionless. But then her fingers jerked, she unevenly inhaled the air, and turned her head.

Max beamed. And suddenly she had a seizure, as if she was being electrocuted. Then another one. Then she went unconscious again.

He bent over her, felt her carotid… There was no pulse.

Despair seized him. Was she dead? Had it all been in vain?

He felt a lump in his throat. What had happened? Had it not worked? Had it gone bad after all the millennia? Whatever it was, Athena was dead…

“Damn ship! Damn trap!” In anger, Max was hitting the floor with his half-numb hand.

Shards of Osiris’s story flashed in his memory. Ship… Control panel… Villain brother who had put up the field… Osiris unable to penetrate it… Stop! The field!

Max glanced at Athena’s breathless body. But what if… What if she was somehow affected by this field?

There was no time to think. Anyway, they had to leave the ship. Up there, he would figure it out.

Max shut the crate, used the dematerialization wave on it, and squeezed it between his feet. Now he had to crawl closer to Athena, which was extremely difficult. Nevertheless, he managed to cross those infinite several inches and cuddled up to her. “Darling, hold on a little longer…”

His tongue was barely moving; words didn’t come easy. On his last leg, he activated the Switch. A moment later, they were on top of the pyramid.

They materialized right in front of Osiris, both unconscious. Wind caught Athena’s hair.

Osiris looked at their breathless bodies and tried to feel their pulses. He felt Max’s but not Athena’s.

He opened the crate, took the device and injected the preparation into her. Then he did the same with Max, sat down and watched them.

A few seconds later, he saw the swelling on Athena’s arm shrink. And then her arm straightened, as if it had never been broken.

Osiris reached for her neck again, but stopped. She started to show signs of life. First, she started to breathe, then moved her fingers and her head, then finally opened her eyes and looked around. A few moments later, she propped herself up on both elbows and stared at Osiris.

“What happened on the ship?” Osiris didn’t wait till she had come around fully.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, and rubbed her arm where it had been broken. “Damn! It hurts… I wasn’t there at all… At first, I felt pain, as if I was electrocuted. I don’t remember anything…”

She glanced at Max, then back at Osiris, as if she was afraid to voice her question.

“He’ll be okay,” said Osiris. “So, you say that you weren’t on the ship? Or you just don’t remember?”

“No… I don’t know.”

“Well, I think I know what happened to you.”

She sat up, still looking at her mentor. “What?”

“Welcome back to the team,” Osiris said with a smile.

* * *

Max finally came around, his heart throbbing. Warm air filled his lungs. He could move his fingers, which were no longer numb. He was still weak, but it felt like he was half-awake rather than sick and dying.

 “How are you, honey?” Athena’s voice seemed to be coming from a distance. The buzzing hadn’t stopped yet.

Max opened his eyes. “Darling, you’re alive?” he whispered.

Osiris bent over him.

Max spoke again. “She… Athena was there… on the ship. She was dying… I don’t know what it was. I tried to save her, I had to…”

“If you had delayed a little longer, you both could have stayed there forever! Why didn’t you use it on yourself first?” said Osiris.

“I was afraid there was not enough for both of us. What’s up with your arm? Wasn’t it broken?” Max looked at Athena’s arms with surprise. There was no sign of the fracture.

“There’s plenty of it for the entire crew.” Osiris smiled. “And it completely regenerates the injured tissue.”

Athena rubbed her arm where it had been broken. “It hurts a bit, but not as bad.”

“If I had invented such medicine, I would have named it ‘Lizard Tail,’” said Max.

Osiris smiled. “You can totally call it that. We called it just ‘the regenerator’.”

“Okay. But I’m more interested to know what happened to her on that ship and why.”

“The field. It affected her.”

Max’s jaw dropped. “But why?”

“She’s from Veles,” answered Osiris.

“How is that possible? Athena?”

Unbelievable! Athena. His Athena. Could she have been on that ship originally?

“Let’s get to a more hospitable place and talk,” said Osiris.

A moment later they vanished, leaving the wind to play with the sand, whirling it on top of the ancient pyramid.

CHAPTER 16

Sophie

The little time that passed seemed like an eternity. The breeze outside dashed between the trees in the yard.

“What did you agree upon? What time and where?” Osiris sank in the armchair opposite Max.

“Linda and I meet each other in a couple hours. I do not know what to do. If I don’t give them the combination to unlock the Switch, the poison will kill me.”

“That’s right. The nanocells will block the poison for 24 hours at most.”

“So, what do we do?”

Max thought for a moment. “I have an idea…” he said slowly.

“Tell me.”

“The Switch has two lock functions. One of those is active now. In about two hours, I will be able to unlock it. It will require my fingerprints and the combination that only I know…” Max looked at the bracelet and his fingers stroked the body of the Switch. “But there is another one: the emergency lock-up. It has never been utilized. It will simply put it out of order for good.”

“And?” Osiris leaned forward.

Athena entered. She was carrying a tray with coffee and sandwiches. She put it on the table and sat down beside Max.

“There is a combination that locks up the Switch entirely after the second activation. In short, if one activates this mode…” Max held out four fingers in a tricky way, “the Switch will work and dematerialize a body. After that, it will materialize the body as usual. But if one activates the Switch after that, it will turn off forever and the body won’t materialize ever again. Neither will the Switch. This time will be its last.”

“Are you sure that this will work?” asked Osiris.

Max was silent. His eyes grew dull with a barely visible trace of some old reflection. He didn’t want to remember that, quite the opposite—he wanted to forget it, hide it from everyone including himself. “I am,” he said. “It worked once before.”

Athena looked at him with surprise. “Tell us.”

Her voice echoed inside his head. Yes, perhaps, I need to tell them. It’s not easy to think about it and much harder to recount. But it’s even worse to hang on to it…

Max rubbed his face, straightened up, and sat back.

“All right. I had a girlfriend. Her name was Sophie. We went to university together. She helped me a lot…”

Max looked at Athena. She held her breath and listened.

“We experimented with dematerialization and it was going well. Sophie knew all about the discovery. After a while, we needed a good software developer, and we called Eddie, who was a student, like us. He was good at science too, but he only developed software for us. Sophie helped me create the Switch based on my father’s studies. We tested the very first model: we disappeared, reappeared, disappeared again…but it was bulky and inconvenient to use.”

Max stopped talking and covered his face with his hands again.

* * *

The desk lamp softly lit the small lab. Clothes were scattered on the floor. A blonde girl with lively blue eyes was sitting on the desk and dangling her legs. She was wearing nothing but a light woolen blanket, which Max had just put on her. She was gnawing at an apple and still managing to talk a mile a minute. Max was standing there listening to the trills of her voice, which interspersed with a really contagious laughter. Max always smiled when Sophie laughed. He loved her laughter, her eyes and hair. He reached for it and tried to neaten up her messy curls.

“Your wild hair,” he whispered in her ear.

“Of course!” she said with another trill of laughter. “You were like a caveman.”

“I wanted to see if this desk could take it.” He pushed against it.

“Well? How did it hold?” She squinted and smiled to show her even pearls of teeth.

“I wouldn’t mind testing it again,” he whispered in her ear.

He moved his hands onto her hips. The blanket, which was about to fall down anyway, did so, revealing her slim shoulders and the rest of her body. Her lips lured Max and he reached for them.

“Okay, stop.” She put out her hand to block him. “We planned to do something, did you forget?”

“No,” said Max with disappointment.

Of course, he hadn’t forgotten. Today they planned to run the first test of the portable Switch. They had successfully created a smaller version, which could be worn on the wrist. The first Switch was right on the table behind Sophie. The clumsy stationary unit could not be taken outside. To dematerialize, one had to enter a set of characters on the control panel, including duration, which could be between one and five minutes. The object was automatically rematerialized after the set period.

But the new Switch… It was gorgeous! Not only did it have a timer, there was something else. They had successfully created the touch-screen version of the control panel, which was very convenient.

Sophie jumped off the desk and grabbed the bracelet. Max tried to concentrate, but watching her graceful, dancing movements, it wasn’t easy. Her slim, attractive body always drove him mad.

“Wait!” he said. “Let me do it.” Max reached for the bracelet.

“Why?” Sophie dodged him and hid the device behind her back.

“Because it’s too big a risk.”

“Yeah, right…”

Max reached for the bracelet again but she kept stepping back and dodging him like a little girl who doesn’t want to give away her favorite toy.

“Sophie, listen to me…”

“Oh, come on! It’s all the same, but this time it’s tiny and comfy.” She made another step back, put the Switch on, and squinted playfully. “Besides, I’m totally ready.”

And this was true. She was standing before him, totally naked. The Switch, even if portable, didn’t belong on her fragile wrist, which she had already raised to activate the gadget. “We don’t even need to handle my clothes,” she added.

“Wait!” Max tried to stop her, but couldn’t.

His heart started to skip beats.

“Come on, don’t worry. It’s gonna be okay. We’re the greatest inventors and we’ve always succeeded!” Her eyes sparkled again as she activated the Switch and disappeared.

Max stood there for a while and stared absentmindedly at the spot where Sophie had just been. Then he snapped out of it, walked to one of the shelves, took the glasses, and put them on.

The familiar bluish shape across the room calmed him down a bit. Sophie looked at herself. “We made it!” Max could lip read. She was as happy as a child who’d accomplished something. And they’d been waiting for this for years. Max was happy too.

Sophie danced a bit and started to close in on him. When there were just a few inches between them, he backed off, but Sophie’s bluish figure came right up against him and they merged.

“Now, it’s time,” said Max, and raised his hands, as if trying to catch her.

Sophie dodged him again and stopped a couple feet away. Then she started to whirl like Tinkerbell.

3…2…1…

She was supposed to materialize, as had happened many times before, with the old Switch, when the timer reached zero. But she didn’t.

Max’s heart skipped beats again. “It didn’t work. Let’s wait four minutes more for the safety mode to activate.”

But four minutes passed, and still nothing happened.

The additional safety mode with a seven-minute timer didn’t work either.

Sophie raised her head, and Max saw something that scared him. She slowly turned her head left, then right.

“No! No!” he whispered.

They were struck with the same thought simultaneously. Sophie pointed at the computer and Max, as if he’d read her mind, was already rushing toward it.

The operating system seemed to be booting for an eternity… After it finished, Max started to hammer the keys frantically, opening programs and staring at an unending stream of code, formulas, and symbols on the screen.

What was wrong? Why didn’t it work? Where was the error? He looked here and there, catching calculations, charts, switching from one thing to another, his fingers hammering the keyboard.

At some point, Max froze, scrutinizing the calculations, and he saw Sophie’s hand, which had become totally transparent. The bluish outline of her hand pointed at the exact formula on the screen, where he was looking.

He seemed to have read her mind again. That was it: the procedure responsible for rematerialization…

Max felt dizzy. He quickly stood up and turned to Sophie. He knew what he would see.

Her flimsy silhouette…her face had already gotten too blurry to be recognizable. He could only see the outline of the head. Her hand reaching for Max’s face instead of the screen. It was almost too thin to be seen…

“Sophie! No! Sophie!”

He reached for what was left of her intangible body, trying to hold on to the barely visible, ghostly shape, which now looked like a pencil sketch being indifferently and inevitably erased with a rubber.

They’d found the error but had no time to correct it.

Max wanted to hug Sophie, to hold her tight. But her remaining outline was evaporating in front of him, turning into a wisp of smoke. Before long, even the wisp was gone.

* * *

“Why didn’t you use the beam?” Athena asked Max as he finished his story.

“The beam was invented later. After Sophie was gone, all I worked on was getting her back. I developed the beam, with which we rematerialized Osiris. But there was no way to save her.”

“But why?” quizzed Athena.

“Our calculation error… it resulted in the Switch being set up to self-destruct.” Max glanced at Osiris. “That’s why. I fixed everything and the next generation of the Switch, the one we use now, works well. But I kept the self-destruct mode. It can be activated on any bracelet. One just needs to know the combination.”

“So, can she return?” Athena asked again.

Osiris broke the long silence. “I doubt it.”

Max looked at Osiris with eyes full of pain.

“I can only imagine how long you studied this and how many times you’ve attempted to return Sophie,” said Osiris, “even though you’ve long since realized that it was all in vain.”

Max nodded.

“Your suggestion to use the Switch to get rid of Stinger is really a good idea, but we can’t use it,” said Osiris.

“Why?”

“Because there are others who will not leave both of you alone. Do you see what I mean?”

Max did. So did Athena. Linda and Stinger’s minions most likely would keep hunting Max. Knowing about his invention, they would sooner or later find him and obtain what their boss longed for. Information. And sure enough, they would get hold of the other Switches, which Stinger didn’t know about yet.

They needed a different plan.

“There’s a single solution,” said Osiris. “But it is rather… how do you say it… inhumane.”

“Murder?” Athena asked.

“Not quite. There’s something that we need on Veles. Max, I need a sheet of paper and a pen.”

A few minutes later, Osiris was pointing at one of the squares that he’d just drawn. “So here is my module. There are some shelves on the wall. They can be opened with combination locks. The tools we need are in there. You need to open the box. Here’s the combination.” He drew several pictograms.

“In the box you’ll find the Eraser. It’s kind of a dematerializing weapon. It resembles a regular pen like this one, even in size. But it’s a little thicker. It is made of metal that is like your aluminum but a bit heavier. It can’t be found here on Earth.”

“A weapon?” Athena asked, fiddling with her hair.

“Yes, our weapon. It affects material objects, causing them to disappear. You’ll remember.” Osiris kept sketching. “You’ll need to get the antidote from Stinger, inject it, and then dematerialize the bad guys.”

“All of them?” Max recoiled.

“You have a choice: either you do this, or millions will die in a short time.”

“There must be another way,” said Athena.

“Probably there is, but we don’t have time to look for it,” answered Osiris. “Max, as a scientist, you must have wished mankind well. But remember: angels have two faces. You must learn to attack as well as defend. You must be able to give life, but you also must be able to bring death when it is warranted. Now it is warranted.”

Max didn’t say anything. It was beyond him to digest all this.

Osiris handed Max the space plan and he put it in his pocket.

Then he walked to Athena and kissed her. “Love you,” he whispered. “See you soon.”

A moment later, only Osiris and Athena remained in the room. Her eyes were full of curiosity.

“Tell me about… me,” she said, cozying up in the armchair.

Yes, Osiris did have a lot to tell the girl.

“Say, are you capable of something distinctive?” he asked.

Athena didn’t answer, but it was obvious that she was thinking about whether she should.

“I have a secret,” she said slowly. “And nobody knows about it.”

“Tell me.”

“This always helps me win tennis tournaments.”

“Intriguing.”

“I can see the trajectory of the ball before the opposite player hits it. In other words, I can somehow see the future a bit. Especially when I close one eye.” Athena said the last sentence as if she had just given up a sin that had long been a burden.

“I thought so. Each one of us had some specific ability, and we complemented each other well. That’s why we ended up on the same team.”

“Like the Fantastic Four?” Athena smiled.

“Kind of. Fantastic Six rather. Look, you were the best navigator I’d ever known. Not a single error in calculation, never a single inch off course… You were the best.” Osiris looked at her with respect.

“I remember nothing.” She looked down.

“Never mind. You will. You were the best one on the team. You were my right-hand man. And this isn’t our first mission. We’ve traveled the length and breadth of our galaxy. We’ve been everywhere! You have a unique ability to see the future. You used it when setting the course. You saved all of us several times. And you still have this ability.”

He paused. Athena needed a little time to digest all this. It was mind-boggling! Unique ability? She couldn’t believe it. As she listened, she tried to imagine it. And she tried to remember Osiris. She scrutinized his face, tried to find some clues in his eyes. She felt some magnetism she couldn’t explain. Magnetism that he emanated… She had another déjà vu feeling.

“Sweetheart!” said Osiris, and the word made Athena shudder. “We’re in a bind here, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t work it out. We will make it. We will get home…”

“I want to remember.” Athena stared into space. Her mind and body felt numb, as if hypnotized.

“You will. We just need to get to Veles.”

“But how? How can we get there?”

“We have just one chance: find the others…”

“Find the others?” Athena’s eyes grew round and the numbness was suddenly gone. “You mean…?”

“The rest of our team. Without them, we won’t be able to complete the mission and leave this planet.”

“But why would we leave this planet?”

“We must go home! Sweetheart, they’re waiting for us…” His voice softened and his eyes radiated tenderness and love. He reached out and carefully touched Athena’s fingers. The touch made her shiver. She looked into his eyes. And at this second, the déjà vu feeling turned into recognition. No, she hadn’t remembered Osiris and the details of her own past life that he was telling her about. But she recognized him! And now she knew that he was the one she knew long ago and the one she’d been looking for all this time…

CHAPTER 17

The Temptation

For Eddie, time had stopped. His life had been calm and steady until these people had popped out of the blue and kidnapped him. Now his reality looked like a nightmare that he wouldn’t be able to forget, if he ever managed to get out of it.

He tried to push these thoughts away as he sat in the armchair in the guest room at Stinger’s place. His hands were automatically fiddling with the glossy magazine pages as he looked at them without purpose.

Suddenly, the door flew open and Linda entered. Eddie fidgeted and tried to find a place for the magazine, which he’d taken from the nearby table. But Linda had already seen the nude pictures on the pages. Eddie’s face flushed.

“Again?” she asked.

Eddie didn’t answer. He tried to be as small as possible and looked at his knees.

“Pleasuring your jagged ego?” she continued.

Silence.

Linda walked around the armchair and lightly touched his neck. Eddie jumped. She pulled one of the chairs and put it about five feet opposite him and gracefully sat down. Her light black dress was barely covering her hips.

Eddie swallowed. He had a hard time trying to look away from this thrilling view. With such beauty so close that he could hear her breathing and almost taste her subtle perfume…

“You must feel so lonely,” Linda said with a put-on sympathy.

Eddie took off his glasses with trembling hands and started to rub them with the lower part of his greasy t-shirt.

“Let’s talk about this.” Linda continued to demonstrate amiability.

“About what?” Eddie got anxious.

“About what I can do for you…” She put her foot on top of the chair. Her left hand graciously lay on her knee, and with the other hand, Linda slowly adjusted the dress to cover her underwear.

Eddie skipped a breath. Under the dress, on her left hip, Linda wore a tiny sheath. This accessory, normally hidden, was now exposed.

Eddie felt a lump in his throat, and his palms got wet. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Linda took a more comfortable position. The dress slipped up even more, totally exposing her hips. Eddie tried to look away from her curves, but his eyes kept coming back frantically.

“Sometimes I also feel lonely,” she whispered, leaning in to Eddie.

Each motion and each word were clearly a pretense. But Eddie didn’t notice that.

“I understand…” he babbled.

Linda set her hair right and then her hand slowly moved down her neck, lower, stopping on her chest. “In such moments I feel like confessing, unburdening my heart to someone…”

Eddie panted, unable to speak a word.

Linda crossed her legs, causing her dress to slip up even more and fully revealing the miniature sheath with the dagger in it.

Eddie jumped up. “What do you want from me?”

Linda sneered and sat back. “Sometimes, I really want to get rid of all my sins,” she said, fixedly gazing at him.

“This I really can’t help you with. You should go to church,” Eddie said irritated, moving away.

“When I was a child, I wanted to become a saint…” Linda said with a faraway look.

Eddie was pacing back and forth, to the window, to the door, casting nervous glances at Linda. She was still sitting in the chair and caressing the sheath. Her eyes glowed fiendishly. “You better sit down, buddy,” she ordered.

Eddie walked to the armchair and sat down, rubbing his wet palms.

“I wanted to be a saint, but life made me a sinner. And you know what the worst part is?”

He looked at her, haunted, and didn’t answer.

“I remember all my sins!” She slowly got up and walked toward the window. She moved the curtain, leaned on the windowsill, and looked at the yard. “Do you remember yours?”

Eddie attempted to look away from Linda’s buttocks, which were barely covered. “I have no sins!” he said, with some challenge in his voice.

Linda suddenly turned around. “Oh really?!” she sneered. Her left hand moved closer to the sheath. She pulled her dress up just enough to touch the dagger handle.

Eddie froze.

Linda examined him with disdain. At some point, she seemed to have lost all interest in him and started to turn around, but within a second, she changed her mind, produced the dagger, and threw it in Eddie’s direction.

Eddie didn’t even get what had happened as the small dagger plunged into the seat right between his legs, one inch away from his crotch. He squealed, looking at the dagger and then at Linda.

Her face was beyond recognition as she diabolically sneered. “I believe the biggest sin is being blind about one’s own sins. When you hide them.” She paused. “Even from yourself.”

Matter-of-factly, she walked to the window and drew the curtain with determination. Then she walked to the armchair where Eddie was sitting still struck, bent to show him a seductive look, and took the dagger out of the upholstery. Then she grabbed a magazine and threw it on Eddie’s lap.

“Relax, Mr. Holier-than-thou!” She spat on the busty girl on the cover, and walked out of the room.

CHAPTER 18

At Stinger’s Place

Max’s return had interrupted the conversation between Athena and Osiris.

“I have it.”

Osiris nodded with approval. “Well, let’s see it.”

Max got an oblong greyish object out of his pocket and handed it over.

“That’s it.” Osiris examined it.

Max’s cell phone started ringing and he answered the call. “Yes, it’s me. Ready. Got it. I’ll be there.” He put the phone in his pocket.

The three exchanged looks.

“Linda will pick me up on Lydig Ave, third block from the Morris Park station. In one hour. I don’t know where we’ll go then.”

“That’s okay,” said Osiris. “We’ll dematerialize and follow you. And we’ll back you up as needed. But now we should figure out what to do.”

Max frowned.

“Don’t forget that Stinger believes you’re under a powerful paralyzing drug. Nobody knows that the poison is partially neutralized, so you’d better act like you’re dying.”

Max nodded.

“You will go with Linda wherever she takes you. Without the Switch. It’s too risky, as they might find it. You’ll take this instead.” Osiris handed him the Eraser. “Here is the control panel with indicators. The device won’t turn on by itself. You need to touch it with two fingers simultaneously, twice.” Osiris showed him how to turn it on.

After a few operations, a dim neon-like light appeared in the very center of the Eraser. There were two icons on the control panel that looked like icons on a smartphone touch screen but smaller. Both were colorful triangles pointing outward.

“The green triangle activates the Eraser, the red one turns it off.” Osiris aimed the weapon at the mug on the table. He held it so that the control panel was visible, and touched the green triangle. The mug vanished.

“Holy shit!” Max gave a cry of surprise.

Touching the red triangle immediately turned off the control panel, and the weapon in Osiris’s hands again turned into a pen.

“Be careful with it,” Osiris warned Max, handing him the Eraser. “You will need to use it right away. You will have to dematerialize each witness. One by one.”

He got silent as he pierced Max with his look. They had already discussed the potential disaster many times. Dematerializing several people was the price of saving millions.

Max fiddled with the Eraser, which looked like a regular pen.

“You will have to use it right away, once you get the antidote,” Osiris repeated. “Don’t give them a chance to stop you.”

The Eraser felt good in his palm. Its smooth yet rubbery surface provided a nice grip. Max was itching to touch the green triangle; he aimed at another mug. So he does it and another mug will be gone from this Earth. But what about the living souls: will they just be gone too? But I’m not a murderer. But I’ll have to dematerialize those people, have to murder them?

“No,” his answer was quiet but firm.

“Do you mean you will deal with those guys? You will simply walk up to Stinger and take the Switch from him? Just like that?” asked Osiris.

Max wasn’t really listening. He touched the green triangle; the Eraser vibrated and the mug was gone.

“You will be there watching me, won’t you?” said Max.

“Yes, I will, but you’ve got to understand: if you don’t get rid of them, they will come after you eventually.”

“I know!” exclaimed Max and put the Eraser in his pocket. “But I’m not a murderer.” He looked askance at Osiris’s gloomy expression.

Athena walked up to Max and hugged him tight. “Promise me it’s gonna end today. Please,” she whispered, hardly able to hide her unease.

Max hugged her back. A light kiss on the cheek was meant to comfort her. “It’s gonna be okay, darling,” he said.

* * *

The red Lamborghini Diablo slowed down and stopped near Max. The door slid up. Max walked up and looked inside. He recognized the luscious girl in the driver’s seat as Linda. She cast an impassive look at Max and motioned to him to get inside, which he did. The door slid back down and the car started along the road.

“Well, hello,” said Linda, sizing up her passenger. “I see you look just fine.”

“I’m holding up,” said Max, as he leaned back and closed his eyes.

The car accelerated, then stopped at a red light before speeding up again. Max started to feel carsick, and he opened his eyes.

Buildings, windows, traffic lights, hasty yellow taxi cabs ran by. The usual urban life.

Linda was driving masterfully and remained silent all the way, so Max closed his eyes again.

After a while, the car stopped and the engine ceased to rumble.

“Get out,” said Linda, as she stepped out herself.

Max shivered. Maybe it was due to the evening chillness or the anxiety of total uncertainty.

He looked around and recognized the place. Linda left the car on a small pad and went toward the entrance of Stinger’s home. “Follow me,” she ordered, and entered the dim entrance hall.

Max hesitated for a couple of seconds and complied.

Suddenly, someone grabbed his arms from the dark behind him and twisted them, then pushed him forward so he had to practically run to remain standing. He tried to break free, but they twisted his arms even more.

“Keep it cool,” Max heard a deep voice say.

They walked a bit more and found themselves in a spacious, well-lit hall.

While Max was restrained, all he could see was the perfectly even parquet floor. Yet he managed to look up a couple times, and he saw several paintings in posh frames and a big sliding door, behind which he saw Linda walking by.

They rudely shoved Max forward again, and he eventually got to the living room. Two burly men were still holding him, though not as tightly.

Now he was able to look around. The posh interior indicated that the owner did not skimp on anything. An elegantly carved fireplace with comfortable sofas around it and several floor vases in the corners of the room emphasized the luxurious classical style.

Right there, in the armchair, to the right of the fireplace, Max noticed Eddie, with dark circles under his eyes, who started fidgeting and looked away when he noticed who’d entered.

Another of Stinger’s minions stood in the corner to the right, indifferently fiddling with a pair of brass knuckles.

Linda walked to the window and leaned on the sill. Now Eddie was to her right.

Stinger was standing in the center of the room as he welcomed Max. “Well, well, good evening!” he said with a smile.

Max looked at him sullenly. “Not quite good, considering how I was dealt with when I entered. Would you tell your watchdogs to let me go?” His hands were numb and stiff. But the worst thing was that the Eraser was in his vest pocket, and Max couldn’t reach it.

“To be honest, I don’t really want to play with you.” Stinger made a face as he walked up to him. “Besides, I don’t really trust you. Search him.”

The order was addressed to the hulks who were holding Max.

They let go of him and started to frisk him. Keys, bank cards, everything traveled from Max’s pockets onto the small table near the exit. At some point, the pen-like object was also fished out of the pocket.

“What’s this?” Stinger took the unusual thing from the guy.

Max didn’t say a word. Every beat his heart made resounded in his head with a thud.

“I said, what is this?” Stinger repeated his question and moved the pen all the way to Max’s eyes.

Max didn’t say a word again, but groaned and dropped to the floor, as the goons weren’t holding him anymore.

Stinger watched Max’s limp body with a sneer. “Get him seated!” he ordered in annoyance.

They dragged Max to one of the sofas near the fireplace and threw him onto it. He lay there, like a rag doll with his head thrown back. Both goons stepped back and took position beside the floor vase in the left corner, the one closer to the exit.

Stinger walked up to Linda. She was standing by the window, gazing outside.

“Take a look, honey.”

She fiddled with the Eraser and shrugged. “No idea.” She handed it back.

“For Pete’s sake,” grunted Stinger.

He returned to the table and the pen joined the heap of confiscated belongings. Max heard it clatter into the pile and a cold wave of despair overwhelmed him.

“All right, let’s start.” Stinger rubbed his hands and approached Max. “I see you don’t feel very well.”

Max opened his eyes.

“This will end soon,” Stinger continued. “Now you will unlock your… uhm… invention, and then I’ll give you your medicine.”

His file appeared in his hand, glinted before Max’s eyes, and disappeared back into a pocket.

“I need the combination and the user’s guide. Then I will let you go, and we’ll never see each other again. To be honest, I’m sick and tired of meeting assholes like you and your assistant.”

Someone knocked on the door. The guards grabbed their guns and turned toward the exit.

Stinger and Linda exchanged looks.

“Front door! We have an intruder! Deal with them!” Stinger ordered.

Both guards ran out of the room. The one who was on the right took a position closer to the door, his gun ready.

There were sounds of wrestling and a struggle, and then a muffled shot.

Stinger put his file in his pocket and grabbed a gun.

The sounds were getting louder, with new groans. Another shot, then a third one.

Stinger clenched his jaw, turned around, walked to Max, and put the gun to his head. Max recoiled, but Stinger grabbed him by the hair.

“Sit up and don’t move!”

Linda crossed the room and stood beside Eddie.

“Leave me alone! I’ve got nothing to do with this!” He tried to get up.

They heard steps in the hall. Apparently, there were several “guests.”

“Shut up, you bastard, or I’ll slit your throat,” hissed Linda as she got out her dagger and held it against Eddie’s neck.

Two men in long black cloaks popped up in the doorway. Stinger’s guard, who was standing to the right of the entrance, was ready for them, and once they entered the room, he fired.

The one who was closest collapsed to the floor. But the guard wasn’t fast enough to shoot again. The other man responded lightning-fast. Something glinted in his sleeve with a pop.

The guard wobbled. As he was falling, he shot three more bullets, and then collapsed too. One bullet reached its target and the other uninvited guest thudded beside the first one.

Four more cloaked men slipped into the room like shadows. Stinger’s guard, who was still bleeding, attempted to reach for the gun, but one of the four saw the motion and fired. The bullet nailed the guard to the floor, and the shooter slowly came up to him and kicked the gun away. As if he were following some plan, he went to the living room, with his gun pointed at Linda and Eddie. The second guest pointed his weapon at Stinger, and the third one was standing beside Max.

The fourth man looked around, made a step toward the door, and motioned invitingly.

Zet entered the room. “Good job, Philip.” He patted him on the shoulder.

“You… Is this you?”

Eddie stared at Zet. He couldn’t believe it. How could he be here? Perhaps…

“You came to save me! Please, help! I… these people… they… please help me!” Eddie was totally tongue-tied.

“Shut up!” Linda snapped, pressing the blade to his neck, making a light cut, which started bleeding.

Eddie squealed and shut up.

Sinewy arms appeared from inside the shapeless black cloak and removed the hood. Watchful, keen eyes scanned the room and stopped on the small table near the doorway with Max’s belongings. Zet walked up to the table and took the pen-like object.

Max watched the Eraser be examined it by the stranger, who, with a satisfied chuckle, hid it inside his long black cloak.

Zet sneered as his eyes met Stinger’s hateful stare. “And who welcomes one’s brother like that? Guns, blades…” He threw up his hands.

“You’re no brother of mine. You haven’t been for a long time.” Stinger forced the words out between his teeth. He looked at Zet sullenly, holding the gun against Max’s head.

Zet slowly approached him. “Why all this fuss?” he continued calmly, and again spread his arms and stopped opposite his brother. “I came in peace…” He paused, leaned forward and said softly, “I am open to negotiations…”

When he received no answer, he made several steps toward Linda. He stared at the sobbing Eddie, whom she was still holding by the shoulder with the dagger against his neck.

“There she is…” he mused, looking at Linda.

“What do you need?” Stinger snapped.

This woke Zet up.

“You want to get rid of these jerks?” Stinger motioned at Max and Eddie. “Okay. And then what? What’s next?”

Zet plunged his hand into the cloak and fished out a gun, flipped off the safety, and slowly aimed it at Linda. “Perhaps I’ll just get pissed and finish her off…”

Stinger’s eyes flared, but he stayed where he was.

“Or maybe not.” Zet moved the gun down and then back up, but pointed at Stinger. “Should I do him first?” he asked Linda. “And then we’ll have time for some fun… They say you’re a great lay.” He gave a sick grin.

Linda shot him a look of detest, and pale Stinger practically vibrated with hatred. Now he was willing to kill his brother without a second thought.

“Who are you and what do you need?” said Max in a low voice.

Zet lowered the gun and slowly paced the room, looking at Stinger, then Linda, then his assistants, who were still aiming their guns at both of them, and eventually stopped at Max.

“It’s all too damn confusing, isn’t it? I don’t want to fight. Look.” And he threw the gun away. It hit the floor and bounced over to the wall.

“I am not armed now,” he said, raising his hands.

Suddenly there was a rustling sound in the doorway, to the right of which stood Philip, and a shot followed. Eddie jerked. Philip’s eyes grew round with surprise, he tried to turn around but started to slide down the wall. One of Stinger’s guards appeared behind Philip. He was covered in blood, with his gun aimed at Zet. Blood was soaking under Philip’s hand.

Zet responded lightning-fast. With a swift motion, he pulled the pen-like object from his cloak.

Max had chills. The Eraser…

Zet indifferently aimed at the man who had shot Philip, and in a second there was nothing there.

Everyone was rooted to their spots as if enchanted. Only dying Philip, leaning against the doorframe, groaned audibly.

Zet turned off the gadget and put it back inside his cloak.

Considering how agile he was with the Eraser, Max understood that he had something to do with Veles. And with Osiris, and with himself for that matter. Compared to Zet, Stinger was a joke.

“Yes, my scientist friend,” said Zet, as if he’d read Max’s mind. “I also have some inventions, so to speak, And quite a few questions for you.”

There was a sudden bang, and Stinger screamed and grabbed his left shoulder. The gun dropped from his hand right onto the glass table. It cracked. It was one of Zet’s people who’d been aiming at Stinger all this time. The gun was still smoking, and the shooter watched Stinger with satisfaction.

“Well done, Martin!” said Zet, then grabbed Max by the neck, propelling him toward his assistant.

Max fell to the floor on his stomach in front of Martin, who kicked him hard, then pressed him down with his huge boot, while he pointed the gun at him.

Zet picked his brother’s gun up from the table and walked right up to him while he was still writhing on the floor. “Sometimes things are so complicated, but… the right move totally changes the game.”

He lifted his brother by the neck, shook him, and drove him to his knees. The cold barrel touched Stinger’s temple.

“What do you want, you scum?” Linda yelled deliriously.

“Well, that you behave, to begin with. Or…” Zet motioned at the bodies scattered on the floor. “Or else.”

Linda was about to burst into tears. Eddie was shaking and moaning right next to her.

Stinger panted as he stood on his knees and dropped his head. Zet crouched but still held the gun against Stinger’s head. “You’ve been looking like crap lately. You shouldn’t have messed around with her.” He glanced at Linda. “You needed to get rid of her back then.”

Linda jerked toward Zet.

“Darling, don’t,” Stinger growled and looked up. “Don’t.”

Zet smirked. “We’d been working well together. Do you remember that dork, how you planted the spider in his apartment?”

Stinger winced and dropped his head again.

“You do remember,” Zet nodded. “It was a very large female wolf spider. Adrian didn’t want to give her up. Must have had a gut feeling.” He laughed. “Wolf spiders are venomous, but their venom can’t really harm a human. But that sinner…” Zet leaned forward. “As far as I remember, he was a college professor who’d jump anything that moved. He deserved what he got. But what happened then…The guy was a total moron!” Zet paused and continued. “Wolf spiders never attack first. But if you annoy or attack them… Newspapers wrote about that horrible fire at the apartment building. Yeah, that asshole sinner caused a lot of trouble. We knew he was afraid of spiders, so we thought we’d just scare him a bit, right?” Zet scrutinized Stinger’s eyes. “You remember, don’t you?”

Stinger nodded.

“Never attack a wolf spider, or it will attack you,” Zet chuckled. “But that idiot didn’t know that. Or maybe he did, but he went mad and did the dumbest thing. Would you set fire to the spider that got into your home?”

Stinger didn’t answer and kept his head down.

“Well, that idiot did.” Zet chuckled. “He set fire to a spider! Can you imagine? But he really had to make it happen! And the moron saw the spider crawling across the floor, ran and got his matches or lighter or whatever it was… And he set fire to the freaking spider!” Zet threw up his hands but then quickly returned the gun to Stinger’s temple. “What was he thinking? Perhaps when the spider caught on fire, he thought he’d handled the problem. And how astonished he got when the huge flaming wolf spider jumped onto the bed. And the bed also caught on fire. I can see it now; the goggle-eyed idiot rushing to the bed, trying to put out the flame. What could he do? Stamp out the fire? Blanket it out? But the spider didn’t want to sell his life cheap, did he?” Zet now moved really close to Stinger and shouted. “The hero jumped again! And wolf spiders do know how to jump, don’t they, brother? So, it jumped back to the floor, ran a few feet, and got into the curtain. Totally unpredicted, really dangerous! Who would know that the female wolf spider on fire would be capable of such heroism? Nobody! Because there are very few morons on Earth who would set spiders on fire. Our sinner hadn’t thought that the spider would climb up the curtain. Because these idiots aren’t capable of thinking with their head unless it’s a dickhead. Their thinking stops right there. So… it occurred to him to set the spider on fire. And now, his bed was in flames, the burning wolf spider climbed up the curtain, leaving a burning trail behind, and all our moron could do was stand there and stare. And then the fire got onto the battle-scarred sofa, blocking the door. The rest of the story we know from the news. Fire alarm triggered, but it was all too late. Several apartments scorched, people evacuated, and the guy paid for everything with interest: they took him to hospital with severe burns. But the plan was different, right?”

He paused again and waited for his brother to answer. But Stinger didn’t say a word. Only his uneven breathing and growling indicated that he was conscious and able to hear everything.

Zet leaned to his ear and pressed the gun harder into his head. “Today you’ve set the spider on fire, brother,” he whispered. “Though I thought you were smarter.”

He shot a glance at Linda, who blushed while still holding the dagger against Eddie’s neck.

“So, let’s make our exchange?”

Linda’s eyes filled with tears.

“You know well that I don’t lose anything,” said Zet. “If I get rid of him, I only win. I have almost won already…”

“Nobody’s won yet,” Max interfered.

“Buahaha,” uttered Zet theatrically. “It’s so touchy, considering that the man who said it has a gun to his head and is dying of poison!” He turned to Linda and repeated, “So, do we exchange?”

Linda hesitated a second and shoved Eddie toward Zet as if he was a piece of junk. Eddie stumbled and nearly crashed to the floor. But Zet caught him and redirected him to his assistant.

“Take it, Sam!”

Sam grabbed Eddie, dragged him into the corner and pointed his gun at him.

“Thank you, brother Zet…” Eddie whined.

“Shut up!” snapped Zet. He hid Stinger’s gun in his cloak and turned to Linda with a satisfied look. “The true queen!” He motioned his head at the dagger in her hand and added, “You won’t need this thing anymore.”

She clenched her teeth and with glare, threw the dagger out the window.

CHAPTER 19

The Familiar Look

“No! This isn’t possible!” exclaimed Athena. “What do we do now, Osiris?”

They had materialized at Max’s place.

Osiris didn’t answer and rubbed his forehead. He just saw how a seemingly regular person had brilliantly used his weapon; the weapon which hadn’t existed on Earth for thousands of years and wouldn’t exist in the next hundred years for sure. That man could only be a member of his team. And he knew who it was.

“I must go back there and find a solution,” he said. “I don’t see any other option.”

“You mean us?”

“No, just me.” He got up, ready to set up the Switch.

“I have a feeling that this has already happened once,” said Athena.

Osiris took her hands in his.

“Like, we had to part but swore to each other that we’d meet again and complete the mission…” she whispered. She was speaking slowly; the words didn’t come easy. She looked Osiris in the eyes, as if trying to find there the missing pieces of her puzzle.

“Yes, my love, that’s what happened,” he squeezed her hands. “And we’ll do it… but not now.”

He stepped back and resumed setting up the Switch.

“I’m going with you,” asserted Athena.

“No way!”

“But why?”

“Because we won’t be able to locate each other fast enough while in the intangible state. You must stay here.”

“But…”

“No buts. Stay here. This way, if I need your help, I will know where to find you.”

* * *

The living room at Stinger’s place looked more like a slaughterhouse. Three dead bodies lay in a pool of blood by the doorway, covered with black cloaks. To the door’s right lay the guard in an unnatural position; he had been the first to find his death in an attempt to save the boss. Two of Zet’s burly assistants were holding Max and Eddie at gunpoint. The owner of the house was lying by the fireplace, bleeding and writhing in pain. And one more person in a cloak stood closer to the doorway, watching them all.

Once Linda had thrown her dagger outside, Zet lifted his brother and shoved him in her direction. Stinger crawled to her, leaving a scarlet trail on the floor. His hand, pressed to his chest, was covered in blood, just like his clothes. Linda sat down and carefully lay his head on her lap.

“Here we go,” Zet rubbed his hands. “This is much better. Check them, Martin.”

Martin suspiciously looked at Max, who was lying on the floor beside him.

“Don’t worry. He’s not going anywhere,” Zet assured him.

Martin approached Linda, who didn’t pay any attention to him. She sat on the floor supporting Stinger, with her head down and her shoulders jumping as she sobbed.

Martin crouched and searched her. Linda didn’t move. He switched to Stinger. First, he checked the pants, and as he moved further and touched the shirt, all soaked in blood, he recoiled in disgust. “It’s all good.” He walked away and wiped his hands on his cloak.

Zet gave an approving nod and Martin returned his gun to Max’s head.

“Well, let’s start,” said Zet. “As I understand, this scientist here invented some special gadget, right?”

The question was addressed to Max, who was lying on the floor and not saying anything.

Zet nodded and moved toward Stinger and Linda. “And then, somehow, most likely illegally, since I know my brother well…” Zet chuckled and pointed at Stinger. “Nobody knows how it happened, but this gadget ended up in bad, very dirty hands.” Zet stopped in the corner. He resembled a preacher addressing his parish. There he could see all and be seen by all. “Many of you know well who I am and what I am doing here. My mission is and has been for the last millennia…” Zet paused. “My mission is to find and punish the worst sinners, to police the morals of and help mankind survive in this world by purifying it of evil.”

He went silent.

Eddie was shaking. He lay on the floor in the fetal position, embracing his knees and hiding his face.

Max scrutinized Zet’s face, though it was hard to call the indifferent and cold mask a face, and the fanatical glare in his eyes resembled hellfire. But not only that: the look in those eyes seemed rather familiar. Max had a feeling that he had already seen it, and quite recently. He’d seen it in the eyes of…

Max shuffled through the faces that he’d seen lately, but he couldn’t quite remember which one it was.

And then it dawned upon him! Osiris! Yes, Osiris! Knowledge and wisdom were in those eyes. As well as calm and certainty. He hadn’t seen such eyes in the past. Only when he looked at Osiris. As if he knew everything about everyone. And now he saw similar “enlightenment” in the eyes of this other man: Zet. But it was the opposite, the dark side of that light.

I’ll be damned… Is that him? Max got cold at the thought.

“So, here and now I observe non-optimal events,” Zet resumed his speech. “Serious evil is being done. And it is my duty to restore the balance and contain the evil… Thus I cannot let the devil’s weapon end up in such treacherous hands…” He approached Stinger, bent over him, and said loudly. “Yours!”

Linda’s eyes were burning with rage. She looked up at Zet, and he recoiled. His face contorted for a split second and he looked away, addressing Max and Eddie.

“To make a long story short, I need your gadget. And I will take it. And one of you will show me how it works.”

Max was lying on the floor, barely breathing. Eddie didn’t change his position, waggling left and right and babbling something.

“As I can see, Max here is not feeling well.” Zet kicked him lightly and looked at Eddie. “And you? You’re his assistant, aren’t you?”

Eddie couldn’t think straight at all. He just wanted to pass out. But the sharp pain of a heavy boot forced him to come around.

He moaned. “No! You’re my brothers! Please! Don’t kill me! Please!” He started to cry like a baby.

“Easy, easy! Nobody’s gonna kill you.” Zet crouched beside him with a smile and touched his hand. “You’re our parishioner, and therefore a friend.”

Eddie stopped weeping at once. “You won’t kill me, will you? You… I am your parishioner, yes, and you…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Zet interrupted him. “I just know you’re a good person and you’ll help me, right?”

“Yes! Yes! Of course, I will help you,” blabbered Eddie.

“You heard everything, didn’t you?”

“Of course!” Eddie started to nod.

“I’ll repeat anyway. I want your gadget, and I want to know how it works. That’s all. Once you show me how it works, you can go. You want that, right?”

“Yes! I do! I will tell you! But… well, it…” Eddie hesitated.

“What?”

“Ehm… it doesn’t work.”

“Is it broken?”

“No. Max, he locked it, for twenty-four hours. But I think it’s over and now it can be unlocked.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Only Max can do it! It requires his fingerprints.”

Zet got up and walked up to Max. “We can’t help but bother you, my scientific friend.” He signaled his assistant to lift Max from the floor.

Now Max faced Zet, slightly rocking and panting. The assistant held him upright, with the gun still chilling his temple.

“He has the antidote!” Eddie pointed at Stinger.

“Does he?” Zet moved closer to Max, lifting his head by the chin and looking him in the eyes. “I don’t think we need it yet.” Zet shifted his glance to the assistant. “Martin, take off the bracelet and hand it to me.”

Martin complied with no delay. He crouched beside the bleeding Stinger and reached for the bracelet, but Stinger wasn’t going to easily part with his loot. His hand escaped Martin’s. Martin chuckled and put the gun to Stinger’s head.

“Give it to him,” whispered Linda.

Stinger looked away and groaned.

Martin took off the bracelet and walked to his boss.

Max didn’t want to believe it. But Zet put the bracelet on, and Max couldn’t do anything about that.

* * *

Athena clenched her fists and looked at the bracelet. She really wanted to get to Max. Blood was pumping in her head. She broke down, covered her face with her hands, and cried.

Suddenly, there was a rustle behind.

She didn’t have a chance to turn around as someone’s hand covered her mouth. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape, she was lifted from the armchair, and her arms were twisted behind her back. Cold steel on the wrists, a snapping sound, and her hands were in shackles.

They pushed her in the back and she lost her balance. Falling, she noticed two men wearing long dark cloaks.

She felt the gag in her mouth and smelled plastic.

Strong arms squeezed her painfully, preventing any resistance. Someone put a sack over her head and it got dark. She felt herself being carried. Then the darkness lessened and she heard the sounds of the street. Then a slam and more pain. Athena felt herself being thrown somewhere.

By the smell of rubber and gasoline she understood she was in a trunk. She jerked a few times, trying to remove the sack from the upper part of her body, but immediately got punched in the head. It knocked her out and she drowned in the darkness.

The engine vibrated and the car started down the street.

CHAPTER 20

Flower and Dagger

“So, it all goes well,” Zet smugly examined the Switch on his wrist. “Very well done to all of you! You’re excellent assistants and this is good. Because you participate in a good and useful proposition.” He scanned the room and looked at Max. “And we’re almost done here. As far as I understand, the gadget just needs to be unlocked.”

Max turned away.

“Come on, just do it, and you’re free to go. You can just leave and get on with your life.” Zet reached out with his left hand, the one with the bracelet.

Max didn’t answer. He was frantically trying to come up with a solution.

“Don’t do that, scientist,” a husky voice said quietly. “You know he won’t leave you alone…”

Max and Zet simultaneously turned around.

Stinger made an effort and sat up. Linda was supporting him by the shoulders.

“Don’t do it,” the voice repeated insistently.

Zet lowered his hand, slowly walked up to Martin, who was still pointing his gun at Max, took it from him, and without a single word aimed at Stinger and pulled the trigger.

Despite the silencer on the gun, everyone jumped. Eddie yelped and covered his face with his hands.

Stinger groaned and grabbed his thigh. It was fountaining with blood. Linda pulled her stockings off and started to twist it as an improvised tourniquet. Her hands were failing her and her body was shaking with silent sobs.

Zet returned the gun to Martin and switched his attention back to Max. “Sorry for the inconvenience, I hope it’s not going to happen again.” He was irritated. “Shall we continue?”

A wave of rage rolled up to Max’s face and burned his cheeks. Now he fully realized who this Zet was. His tone of voice, what he was saying and how he was saying it… He might be a messiah for the others, but Max knew Osiris’s story and he could see deeper. He saw the potential disaster in Zet. And he also realized that this man was the one to blame for the apocalypse Osiris had told them about.

Zet reached out with his hand again. “Max, don’t do that,” the quiet voice whispered again. “He has no right to punish anyone for their sins… It’s a lie, a sham, a cover. He…”

Zet snatched the gun out of Martin’s hands again. The following shot interrupted Stinger in mid-sentence. The bullet hit him in the chest and threw him back into Linda. She reflexively embraced his heavy body in an attempt to keep her balance.

“He…is…a murderer.” His last words were uttered with little pulsing fountains of blood from his chest. Stinger groaned, turned to Linda, and went limp in her arms, staring at her face with glassy eyes.

Linda bent over him and burst into tears as she closed his eyes. “You piece of shit…burn in hell!” she yelled.

Zet paid no attention to her words. He returned the gun to Martin and approached Max again.

“Well, now we won’t be interrupted for sure. Unlock this gizmo and we won’t see each other ever again. Frankly, I’m bored of all this drama.”

His cold voice cut the air. There was no sarcasm or covert hostility in it. No theatrics or play. Mere nonchalance.

Zet reached out for a third time and looked at Max questioningly.

“No,” Max snapped.

Zet raised an eyebrow. “You’re stubborn.” He lowered his hand. “Well, perhaps you will need an additional motivation.” He fetched a phone from his cloak. He dialed a number and put it on speaker so everyone could hear.

They answered on the other end. Max could hear engine and street sounds.

“Yes, Zet,” a male voice said.

“Hello, Adrian! How are you?”

Zet clearly uttered each word, looking directly at Max.

“We got her,” said Adrian.

“How did it go?”

“She was at home… now she’s in the car with us. Safe and sound. We’re en route to you.”

Max went pale. He realized who they were talking about. His heart skipped a few beats. Athena! His Athena! Had they taken her?

Zet hung up and put the phone back inside his cloak.

“I see you got it,” he said, still looking at Max. “In ten minutes, your sweetheart will be here. And then our conversation will slightly change. She might get hurt. You understand that your… heroism… isn’t worth a red cent. You’d better agree to the deal.” He paused, waiting for the answer.

“How do I know you will let her go?” Max forced out the words.

Suddenly, a childish voice came from outside. “Linda!”

Zet froze. “Who is that?” He peeked through the curtain.

“Some kid taking a selfie!”

“It’s the daughter of my neighbors,” answered Linda.

“Listen to me. If the kid comes in, she won’t leave the house. You get what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“Make sure she leaves!” Zet snapped, and pushed Linda toward the window.

An eight-year-old girl was taking pictures of herself in the yard. “Hi, Angela, baby!” Linda shouted.

“I left my doll here yesterday, can I come and get it?” the girl asked, picking a bright flower and taking another selfie with it.

“Hold on,” Linda hesitated and turned to the raging Zet.

“Where is the freaking doll?” he asked.

“In the hallway.”

“You will go to her now. I will follow you. You’ll give her the doll, tell her you’re busy, and send her on her way. Got it?”

“Yes,” answered Linda.

She got out of the room and walked toward the exit with Zet following.

The doll was lying in one of the big armchairs in the hallway. Linda picked it up and went outside, leaving the door open. Zet could not be seen in the darkness from the yard, yet he could see and hear everything that was happening there.

Angela walked to Linda with her hands behind her back. Golden, curly hair fell in her eyes.

Linda crouched and handed her the doll. “Here it is.”

Angela looked at the door. “May I come in?” she asked.

“Baby, we’re very busy now, sorry. You can come tomorrow.”

 “Okay…” she pouted.

Zet was watching, but only saw Linda’s back. Though it was enough if he needed to use the Eraser.

“This was in the flowerbed.” Angela handed Linda her miniature dagger.

Linda took it and hid it in her stocking discreetly. Her heart was pounding as if she had run a few miles.

The girl took her other hand out from behind her back, holding a flower.

“It’s beautiful, like you…” she said.

“Thank you, baby. It is very beautiful.” Linda smiled and took the flower. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” the girl said cheerily, and ran away happy.

Linda waited for her to leave and went back inside.

Zet came out of the darkness. “Come back in!” he said.

Linda didn’t resist and crossed the dark hallway. Zet followed her. She stopped in the doorway, the sight of dead Stinger filling her eyes with tears again. She knelt beside him and put the flower on his chest.

Zet moved his eyes from Linda to Max, who was still sitting on the floor at gunpoint.

A car stopped outside. Zet stepped toward the window, looking at the bracelet on his wrist. Adrian’s black SUV was parking in the driveway.

“Well, here she is.” Zet looked back at Max. “Are you happy?”

Max tried to get up to get to the window, but Martin stopped him, pressing the gun to his temple even harder.

“Easy, easy. Wait there,” Zet sneered and looked outside again.

Two men in dark cloaks got out of the car and walked to its rear.

Zet fetched his phone and dialed a number.

The phone rang right when Adrian and his partner opened the trunk. They looked inside and stopped in their tracks.

The trunk was empty. They stared at it for a few seconds.

Adrian answered his phone at last. “Yes, Zet,” he whispered.

There was a short pause and Adrian’s face changed as if he had just eaten a lemon.

“She’s not here,” he mumbled, grabbing the sack, which had been on their prisoner when they put her in there.

The handcuffs fell out of it with a clank.

“She’s vanished,” Adrian went on in dismay. “I don’t know… she was in the trunk… with the handcuffs on. Now she’s gone.”

Adrian listened to the loud yelling from his phone. “Yes, I got it.”

He thought for a second, put the phone back and said, “Get in the car.”

CHAPTER 21

The Chase

She’d been brought around by a sudden jolt. The car made a sharp turn and Athena reflexively planted her feet against the interior of the trunk. A pulsing headache reverberated in her ears.

She opened her eyes in pitch darkness, and was filled with fear. The cramped space made her panic with desperation.

Then she remembered that she was still wearing the Switch, and turned it on. The screen dispelled the darkness a little. She activated it behind her back, thinking only of getting out of there as soon as possible.

The bracelet worked. Cold air filled her lungs, replacing the trunk’s odors and bringing relief. A jolt, then another one. Athena realized she was rolling downhill and tried to grab hold of grass, but only managed to grab air. Another attempt to stop resulted in an impact, the pain piercing her wrist. She ended up in cold water. It filled her nose, eyes, and mouth. Her wrist was going numb. She coughed and quickly got to her feet to find herself knee-deep in the water. She heard the sounds of the highway coming from somewhere above.

She looked around and saw that she’d materialized in a ditch. Sure enough, she’d forgotten about Osiris’s drills and advice, and at the moment of panic had just concentrated on just getting out. And voilà.

The ditch was littered with junk, boxes and plastic bags, and the water stank of slime.

Athena kept coughing as she climbed out of the ditch. Her clothes were wet and clung to her body. She started having chills. Her body looked like one big bruise, and she felt dizzy.

She looked at the bracelet. It was wet. But even worse, the screen was cracked. Now she could feel dull pain in her wrist. I must have hit it against a rock when I was rolling downhill. I hope it works. Horrified, she tried to touch the screen, but the panel didn’t light up. Again. Nothing. Some indicator kept blinking, but she didn’t know what it meant. Water must have gotten inside through the crack and put it out of order. Athena took it off and started to shake it intensely, hoping to get the water out, then put it back on and tried again. The same result: it wasn’t working.

She started limping up the slope toward the road.

It got dark and she kept stumbling, but after a few minutes she was standing on the side of the road.

Athena looked herself over. Torn clothes, wet and stained jeans. Her cheek was burning. She touched it and winced in pain. There was blood on her fingers. Her body and clothes stank.

Athena headed along the road toward the area where she could hopefully find a cab.

The chilly evening air was biting through her wet clothes. Athena walked along the road and tried to activate the bracelet again. Surprisingly, the screen turned on, and the familiar symbols appeared. However, a moment later, it blinked and went out again. Athena stopped and pushed the button over and over. The screen was going on and off. Apparently, the normal operation mode hadn’t recovered yet. She nervously knuckled the screen.

Suddenly something occurred to her, some blurred scraps of a dim memory. Athena froze. No, it wasn’t a memory. It was a vision, just like the ones she used to have during tournaments.

Her nervousness went away, and Athena listened to her feelings, closed her eyes and tried to gain control of the unclear images.

She saw the highway with its lights through the car window. She was sitting in the back seat. Some shadow to her left. No, not shadow, it was a large man in a long black cloak. He was sitting next to her. Another one in the driver’s seat. The car was shooting down the road at a crazy speed.

A long honk interrupted her vision. Athena started and felt her heart skip a few beats. It seemed she could literally hear her own pulse. A highway truck swooshed by, leaving turbulent air behind. Athena rushed to the safety again.

It wasn’t easy to concentrate again. But she felt some inexplicable urge to. She went along with it and closed her eyes again.

At first, she couldn’t see anything. Then Athena invoked the same image by memory: being inside the car, two men looking like infernal shadows, the car tearing along the highway. Suddenly, this image was replaced with another: this time Athena was in the driver’s seat, tearing along at a mad rate, with no one else in the car.

The vision was interrupted again, this time by the screeching of brakes behind her. The rustle of the tires on the wayside, the steady hum of the engine. And silence. She opened her eyes and turned around.

She saw that same dark SUV and two men in dark cloaks. Like infernal shadows. Athena shivered.

The men slowly walked toward her, and she could see that one of them carried a gun.

Athena raised her hand and touched the bracelet. The Switch turned on and stayed on. She forced herself not to shout for joy and aimed the face of the Switch at the parked SUV, then touched the screen again to activate the invisible beam.

Then another memory occurred to her: she and Max in the lab, him persuading her to test the Switch and everything going well, except for her rematerializing totally naked. Athena smiled elusively.

She looked up in defiance at the two menacing men. Despite their cloaks, it was obvious that both were very sturdy. Both were considerably taller than Athena, and their savage, examining looks boded no good.

“I will tell you what time it is,” said one of them in a deep voice and chuckled. He must have thought that Athena was looking at her watch. “Five seconds to you coming with us, and around five minutes to you arriving where we are very much expected.”

Athena lifted her hand and glanced at the Switch again.

“Then my watch is right.” She headed for the SUV, followed by the confused looks of the guys.

She’d surprised them, but they followed her. Athena got seated in the back, one of the men beside her, the other one in the driver’s seat. The doors locked with a click, and the SUV steered onto the highway. Shortly, it skimmed the road again.

“She stinks,” said man number one, the one sitting beside Athena.

Man number two didn’t answer, as if he hadn’t heard.

“She stinks,” repeated man number one, this time louder.

“You suggest we stuff her in the trunk again?” said the driver, annoyed.

“By the way, how did you escape?” Man number one turned to Athena and stared at her with narrow eyes, which looked too small for his rather large face.

“Well, had you been smarter, you’d not have stuffed me into the trunk, and we’d have arrived already.”

“You didn’t answer,” he insisted, while looking at her with cold, empty eyes.

“Why should I?”

“Do you know who we are?”

“I do. You are two thugs with no brains, who managed to lose me from the trunk, shackled and with a sack on my head.”

The eyes piercing her got even narrower.

The phone rang. The driver picked up. “Yes, boss. We’re on our way. Yes, soon.”

He hid the phone back inside his cloak and put both hands on the wheel. The SUV accelerated. At full speed and no brakes, they easily passed the other cars.

“Looks like you got some spanking.” Athena sat back. “Step on that gas, or your boss will fry your ass again.”

She giggled, and the driver clenched his teeth and kept steering.

“Shall I shut her up?” said man number one.

“Yes, shut me up and stuff me in that trunk again,” Athena interfered.

“Listen to me, bitch,” the driver said, “you don’t know who we are, and you don’t want to find out. I don’t care how you managed to escape, but now you’re here, and I’ve got a whole arsenal of tools to make anyone very humble. I see you think you’re brave and a gun doesn’t scare you. But I’ve got a shot with a cocktail that will turn you into a vegetable for a few months. I’ve got a whole set of blades for different purposes. So you better shut up for real, unless you want to get familiar with those tools.”

Athena glanced at the speedometer. It showed almost 100 miles per hour, and the driver maintained it. Her heart sped up too. It was time…

“Your tools?” She leaned forward and whispered, “I’d rather introduce you to mine.”

Man number one turned around, and his narrow eyes became round.

“But unfortunately, you won’t have a chance to appreciate my tool, what with you being chunks of meat scattered on the road.” Athena leaned back. Her fingers slid across the screen of the Switch and she vanished, and so did the SUV, propelling the kidnappers forward by inertia. They flew a few feet and thudded onto the road, rolling head over heels.

The driver was luckier. By some miracle, he managed to tuck his head down and was thrown off the road. But his partner was crushed under the wheels of a highway truck. His body spun, his bones crushed, his skull smashed and his guts turned inside out. Then his body was dragged a few more feet and eventually stopped, a wet stain on the road. The neck crooked, a jelly-like substance where his face had been, one arm almost torn off, the shredded torso bleeding and soaking his dark cloak with blood.

The SUV materialized on the road out of nowhere.

Athena clutched the wheel. It was still warm from its previous driver’s hands. She pulled over. Athena sat back, and a smile appeared on her pale and tired face.

* * *

“So, it’s time to wrap things up.” Zet looked at Max, who was sitting on the floor at Martin’s gunpoint. “Say, I’m really curious. How did you manage to invent this thing? And was it actually you?” Zet brought his wrist with the bracelet to Max’s face. “And why do you need it? To peek on girls? To eavesdrop on someone’s secrets? Or maybe to blackmail someone? Tell me! Why do you need it?”

Max looked down and didn’t answer.

“Or maybe you’re just such a chivalrous superman, who saves the good and punishes the bad?” Zet scoffed. He fetched the Eraser from his cloak, crouched, and aimed it at Max. “I see you aren’t inclined to have a dialogue… Doesn’t matter. In fact, whether you’re a filthy blackmailer or noble superman, you see, the next second you’ll just vanish.” Zet got up, walked up to Eddie, and put a hand on his shoulder. “But your assistant and I will figure it out. We already know where you live, where you keep your records, studies, whatever you scientists have. What’s the point of refusing to help me? I will figure it out anyway.”

Something screeched downstairs, and Zet grew quiet and listened. He looked at Martin with a question in his eyes, then at Sam, then at Eddie and Linda. Seeing their confusion, he tensed up and stepped toward the window, motioning to Martin to cover the doorway.

“Eddie, are you here?” Max heard a voice; this time it came from above.

Max recognized the voice—it had become so dear to him lately. It was Osiris.

“Where is the device? What should I take?” The voice came from above again, from the second floor, but loud enough to hear.

Everyone got silent. Eddie’s eyes grew so round that they almost popped out. He cautiously looked at Zet, then at Max and Linda.

“Eddie, where are you? We’re here,” the voice insisted.

“What the hell? Who is that?” Zet grumbled and grabbed Eddie by the neck.

“I-I-I don’t know. I-I didn’t call anyone! I’ve never been here before!”

“Go check it out!” Zet ordered.

Martin nodded and left the room with his gun ready.

Osiris was on the staircase of the second floor. His eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. He had just been in the basement where he’d turned off the power to the second floor.

Martin moved up the stairs cautiously. He tried to turn on the light and didn’t get why it wasn’t working, so he used his cell phone to light his way, still holding the gun in his right hand.

He felt a few sudden punches in the back and the neck. There was no pain though. He tried to look back, but his eyes dimmed and the stairs seemed to have run from under his feet.

He dropped his phone, and its light was the last thing that Martin saw before he snuffed out.

Osiris caught the limp body and dragged it into the corner. The martial arts techniques, learned millennia ago, had helped him then and didn’t fail him now.

The whole minute of silence got Zet really tense.

“Eddie, are you here or not?” the voice came from upstairs again.

“What is this damn circus?” Zet exploded.

“I don’t know! I really don’t!” squealed Eddie. Panic paralyzed him, and the shirt by which Zet lifted him started to strangle him. “Let me go! Please! I don’t know who this is! I really don’t!” Eddie sputtered.

“Tell them you’re busy, and they can come later,” Zet squeezed out and released Eddie’s shirt.

Eddie jumped back, holding his neck and coughing.

“Say it! Now!” Zet ordered.

“I’m busy! Come later!” yelled Eddie through the cough.

“I don’t get it!” The voice insisted. “What about the gadget? And the money?”

It ceased to make any sense.

“Take them, whoever it is! I’m sick of this damn clown show!” Zet ordered Sam, trying to keep calm. “And you.” He looked at the third guard. “You stay here!”

CHAPTER 22

Angels Have Two Faces

Despite being well trained and having a gun in his hand, Sam felt uneasy. And the fact that Martin had just vanished didn’t make things any better.

There were dead bodies all over the hall on the first floor. Sam had all his attention upstairs and tried to make out at least something in the dark. He tried to turn on the lights, but nothing happened.

Something was really wrong, and he decided to go to the basement and check the fuse box. He headed downstairs when he felt punches in his neck and back, turned around, and saw the outline of a man. Suddenly, his knees gave way, and the man reached out and pushed him lightly.

Fainting, Sam heard a sound. In the last moments of his life, he realized that this was the sound of his own bones breaking. An instant later it ended, and there was just silence.

Osiris raised his hand to activate the Switch when he felt someone’s presence behind him.

It took a fraction of a second. A popping sound, a burning pain in the back. Falling, Osiris turned around and saw the shooter. Zet stood in front of him with a gun. His face was contorted with indignation and dismay as he recognized his brother Osiris.

Osiris’s lips stretched in a snide smile. He also recognized Zet. He would, no matter the body. He would always know that look.

With a groan, he thudded to the floor. Zet stood above him, afraid to move. Shortly he recovered from the shock, crouched, and started frisking his brother, taking his Switch.

Here we go! Now he knew how Osiris dealt with his men so easily. There was another bracelet. And now it was clear where the Eraser had come from. Someone had penetrated the ship. Max, who else… Osiris couldn’t, thus it was Max, so Max was Osiris’s puppet? Damn you, brother! They were working together.

Zet’s anger grew into rage.

This should not have happened. How had he managed to get out of Veles? And even so, he shouldn’t have been in this body. Max… Somehow, he had found Max, and Max had materialized him.

Zet was about to go berserk. He had just killed the physical body of his own brother with his own hands and thus made it possible for him to live on. Now he had no idea when, where, and who Osiris would be in the next minute! Besides, now, after dying, he didn’t have to wait to be born again, but could simply take over any adult body, for example if they were unconscious. Zet also could, but he really hoped he wouldn’t ever need to use this ability.

He frantically put Osiris’s bracelet into his cloak, turned around, and hurriedly walked back.

Nothing had changed in the room. Max was still sitting on the floor.

In a rage, Zet walked up to him with his hand behind his back. “Get up!” he bellowed.

Max slowly raised his head. Linda started, and Eddie cast a terrified look at Zet.

“I said get up!” Zet repeated, this time not so loudly.

Max complied.

Zet had the Switch in his hand. Max stood transfixed: it was over.

Zet was furious. “Who are you?” he collected himself, looking Max in the eye.

Max looked at the enemy sullenly and didn’t answer.

“You may remain silent. I know the answer anyway. Do you really think I will beg you? Your girlfriend will be here soon. She has such beautiful eyes…” Zet’s said in a low and suave voice. “I will take her eyes, and you’ll be watching, and then,” he hissed, “she won’t get out of here alive unless you do what I tell you.”

Zet stepped away, took his cell phone from the cloak, dialed the number, and waited for the answer.

* * *

A local homeless person was walking along the highway and heard a melodic ringtone. He sped up and ran. The ringtone grew louder. Now he could hear that it was coming from the ditch beside the road. He ran further and shortly saw the owner of the phone.

A big guy lay in the ditch, not moving. A hood covered half of his face, which was stained with blood. The rest of his body was covered with dark, loose clothes. The bum stuck his hand under them, fumbling for the insistently ringing phone. Eventually, his hand felt the cold, vibrating metal object and grabbed it.

He picked it up and put the phone to his ear. “Yes?”

“Where the hell are you?!” the voice snapped on the other end.

He looked around in bewilderment. “On the road…”

“Which road? Damn it! Adrian, is that you?” the voice insisted.

“And who are you?” asked the bum.

Zet was wound up. He looked at the screen of his phone. Yes, it was Adrian’s number. Then what on Earth is happening there? He put the phone to his ear again. “Who am I talking to?” He forced himself to sound composed.

“I am… ehm… I was walking by. It looks like your friend is dead…”

“What?” Zet’s face flushed with anger.

“He’s lying by the road and… doesn’t seem to be breathing,” said the bum, kicking the body.

Zet didn’t say a word and kept holding the phone by his ear.

“Hello? Hello!” he heard the stranger’s voice on the other end. “May I keep the cell?”

Zet hung up and put the phone away. His jaws clenched.

“Assistant!” Zet yelled, casting a scorching look at Eddie.

Eddie got up.

“You’ll show me how this bloody thing works, won’t you?” He offered Eddie Osiris’s bracelet.

“I’ll tell you everything! Everything I know! I’m all yours, till the end of time!” babbled Eddie, crawling to Zet on his knees.

Suddenly it dawned on him. Of course! The bracelet in Zet’s possession belonged to Osiris. And it wasn’t locked.

“I’ll show you,” Max forced himself to say it.

Zet turned around.

“Eddie doesn’t know how to operate it, he never used it. So I will show you.”

“I know a lot! I’ll be useful!” shouted Eddie.

Zet smiled malevolently and offered Max Osiris’s Switch. “Well, now we’re talking business!”

The screen went live when Max touched it. Closely supervised, Max was inputting the necessary settings.

“And none of your games, you got it?” Zet warned him.

“Touch it here.” Max offered the gadget to Zet.

Zet suspiciously did.

“Now only you can activate it. I will not be able to dematerialize you. This is the way it works. The Switch is synchronized with its owner, and only the owner can operate it. Now you’re the owner.”

Zet’s eyes sparkled. He fastened the bracelet on his wrist and stroked it with contentment.

“Now I’ll show you how it works,” said Max.

Zet examined the touch screen of the long-awaited gadget. Shortly, all his plans would come into fruition.

Suddenly, a quiet crack came from behind. The smile vanished from Zet’s face. For a moment, he let his guard down, and Linda took advantage of it: she got Stinger’s file from his jacket and her dagger from under her dress. Even though she tried to be as quiet as possible, Zet heard her.

She threw both weapons simultaneously, one with each hand: the dagger at Zet and the file at Eddie.

Had Zet turned around half a second later, he would have been dead at once. But he managed to dodge the dagger which only scratched his cheek. The file, however, entered Eddie’s throat up to the hilt. Eddie froze with his mouth open. His scream stayed in there forever.

Linda adroitly made a side roll and grabbed a gun that was lying on the floor near one of the dead bodies.

The last of Zet’s guards, Ray, aimed and squeezed off several shots at her, but they both missed their mark.

Linda propped herself up on one knee and shot back. Ray clutched his chest and toppled over. A dark red pool grew under him on the floor.

Zet was the next target. But he’d already aimed at her and she didn’t have the time to pull the trigger.

The bullet pierced Linda’s chest. The gun slipped out of her weakened hands; she slowly dropped to the floor. Life quickly faded in her eyes. Soon her long eyelashes lowered too.

Zet turned to Max. His cut cheek was bleeding, but he still sneered. “And now no one will interrupt us!” He burst into uncontrollable laughter. “Now you, bastard, will show me how to use this goddamn thing, or I will start slicing you up slowly and you will bleed, with squeal of pain, begging for mercy. But you won’t die. And then I’ll find your juicy girlfriend, and I will find her…” Zet growled. “And I will get the worst perverts to rape her in all the ways you can only imagine. And I do have a couple of such… sinners in mind.” Zet laughed again.

“What’s your problem?” Max said calmly, and raised his hands as if he was soothing a violent patient. “I thought we had already reached an agreement.”

Zet frowned, his face flushed, and he threw forward his hand with the bracelet.

“Here,” Max pointed at one of the icons on the touch screen, “is the main start button.”

And he proceeded to give Zet precise guidelines on how the Switch worked and its functions. He didn’t skip any detail.

Zet calmed down a bit and hung onto Max’s words. He had an easy time understanding Max. The miracle of materializing could astonish only these Earth aborigines at the current stage of their technological development. For Zet, it was a thing of the past. He was amused with the ancient look of the gadget and puzzled by the fact that Max had been able to isolate the principles that were in the far future of this backward planet.

“Okay, I got it.” Zet jerked back his hand and got ready to activate the Switch. “Now I will run a little test, a practice run so to say. You stay here. I will be nearby. We’re not done yet.”

Max nodded.

“I shouldn’t forget about clothes, right? Okay.” Zet chuckled, touched the screen, and disappeared. He re-appeared almost instantly, a few feet away from Max. “Well, your thing works, scientist. Good job. Even though you’re not so cooperative, but it’s fine. You helped me a lot. You’ll come with me…” With a scowl, he fetched the Eraser from his cloak. “You don’t mind, do you? We’ll find your little angel, and it’s gonna be fine…”

“Angels have two faces,” a woman’s voice came from behind.

Everything happened in an instant. Max hit Zet’s hand holding the Eraser. It flew off toward the window. Zet tried to catch it but failed. He looked back and saw Athena in the center of the room with a gun aimed at his head.

Zet’s eyes flared with rage. He raised his hand with the bracelet. “And the Master has none,” he growled into her face and vanished.

Athena stood rooted to the floor and stared at Max across the room. He rushed toward her.

“Athena! Darling! You’re here!” He kissed her on the forehead, cheeks, hair.

“He… He will come back now,” she forced out words.

“No, he won’t come back,” said Max.

* * *

“Where’s the antidote? Did they give it to you?” Athena asked with a shaking voice.

Exhaustion and anxiety caught up to her. Max shook his head.

“Where is it?” Athena asked.

Max pointed at Eddie’s body.

Athena got to it and pulled out the file from the blood-stained flesh.

She wiped the blood with Eddie’s clothes, felt a small button, and pressed it. A thin blade popped out. She pressed it again, and the blade popped back in. Athena examined the fine artifact with engraved letters on it. She stroked them, and as she touched one of the letters, a thin needle appeared from the other end. Athena’s heart skipped a beat.

“It works!” Max said as he watched Athena’s actions.

“Yes, but we don’t know whether it’s the poison or the antidote.” Athena touched the same letter again and the needle moved back in. She touched another letter, and a smaller needle appeared.

“Damn it,” shouted Max. “So, which one is the antidote?”

“I don’t know,” answered Athena.

She touched other letters, but no more needles popped out. Only two letters appeared to be the buttons. The needles only differed in length.

“Let’s try,” Max suggested and took the file.

“Are you crazy? We can’t risk it like that!”

They both looked at Stinger and Linda. Their bodies lay on the floor with no signs of life.

“Are they dead?” asked Athena.

Max nodded.

“For how long?”

“He was killed a while ago, she was shot just before you arrived.”

Athena’s eyes gleamed, and she quickly approached Linda’s body while getting out a familiar object from her pocket. Yes, that very device with the nanocells, which Max had once dubbed ‘the Lizard Tail’. With no hesitation, she injected it into Linda’s neck.

“Perhaps it’s not too late yet,” said Athena with hope.

“You think she’ll help?”

Athena nodded.

“They just tried to kill me! They threatened me!”

“Linda must know about the antidote…”

Max didn’t answer. He leapt to Athena, as if he had remembered something, and snatched the Lizard Tail from her hand.

“What’s wrong with you?” Athena watched him rush toward the exit.

“Osiris!” Max shouted as he approached the door and stopped in his tracks.

There stood Osiris, safe and sound. “Where is Zet?” he asked.

Max stepped aside. “He… will not come back. We’re safe. But how are you…” Max’s eyes grew round.

“Athena helped me out just in time,” said Osiris.

At this moment, Linda made a quiet groan, and several seizures shook her body. She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling, then put her hand on the chest where a moment ago there was a huge wound. She looked down and suddenly sat up.

As she looked up at her rescuer, her eyes filled with sickened horror. She was dying and probably had already reached the end of the tunnel, and now… Her wound had closed and she was alive. Wasn’t that a miracle?

“Now it is your turn to help us,” said Athena.

Linda got up and scanned the people in the room.

“I need the antidote,” said Max, walking up to her.

Linda rushed toward the door.

Athena tried to block her but had no chance. The resurrected Linda slipped out of the room.

“Wait!” Athena shouted and ran after her.

Linda didn’t respond.

Athena, Max and Osiris rushed outside, only to see the dimly lit lawn and walkway. No sign of Linda.

“I don’t know which needle is poison,” said Max as they walked back. “The only difference is the length.”

“Do you remember which needle it was when he injected the paralyzer?” asked Osiris.

“Of course not,” Max answered quietly.

“We can’t risk it. The nanocells have only slowed down the paralyzer, but it is still in your body, all of it. If we inject the poison, you will OD and die.”

As they walked into the living room, some vague pictures rushed through her mind. She closed her eyes and saw Max’s face. He was looking down. Athena tried to concentrate, but Max’s face had gone into the darkness. Images began to ripple, and she felt her legs go weak, not obeying her.

No, not now. She needed to concentrate, no matter what. Athena was angry at her inability to control her visions. She closed her eyes again and made another attempt to recreate the picture she’d seen moments ago.

Max’s face again. Looking downward. What was there? Darkness moved away, and new images appeared. Osiris holding Stinger’s file with the needle. Max looking at the longer needle sinking into the vein on his arm. His neck strained hard. Osiris concentrated…

Darkness again, and the image vanished. Athena clenched her fists, focused again, and suddenly saw a night sky with stars in it and the lawn in front of the house, dimly lit with street lights. She recognized this lawn. She had just been there chasing Linda, but now there was someone else. Three people were crossing it: Osiris, Max, and herself. She clearly saw it. And no blurring, a very clear and sharp picture. The three of them were walking away from the house and talking animatedly.

Athena opened her eyes, beaming. “We will make it.”

The men looked at her. Osiris’s face softened when he saw Athena smile.

“Now I recognize you,” he said.

“We will make it,” she repeated and approached them. “Inject it. The longer needle.”

“But…” Max looked at her in confusion. “How do we…”

“Just do it,” she told Osiris.

He nodded.

Max was breathing hard, watching his elbow. The long needle slowly plunged into his vein. He almost felt no pain. Anxiety overrode the pain and the unpleasant sensation of the injection itself.

Everything stopped for a few moments. Max was afraid to move. Athena, totally certain a minute ago, was anxious too. Osiris was also strained, but didn’t show it.

Eventually Max moved.

“I’ve never played Russian roulette before.” He sighed in relief.

“And this is not a game either.” Osiris winked at Athena.

She nodded, covered her face with her hands, and sobbed.

“Well, well,” Max hugged her. “Looks like we made it, just like you said.”

“Yes, we did.” She looked at Max.

“We need to finish something,” said Osiris looking around. “We need to dematerialize all these bodies.”

“Why?” Max asked.

“There is evidence of many crimes here. We can’t have the police on our back. Where’s the Eraser?”

“Should be here somewhere.” Max walked to the window. He squatted and examined the floor. Soon enough, he found the Eraser right by the window. Max picked it up and offered it to Osiris.

“You finish it,” he said, walking back to Athena.

“Tell me what happened to Zet,” said Osiris.

“I set the Switch to emergency lock. I told you about this, remember?”

Osiris frowned. “Didn’t we agree to not do so?”

“But he won’t come back! That’s it! We’re safe,” Max repeated.

“Well,” Osiris replied. “You’re mistaken, my friend.”

“How so?”

“You’re mistaken if you think he won’t come back. And you’re mistaken even more if you think we’re safe.”

“Why?”

“Because now he will take a new body, and he may become anyone anywhere. And we have no means to prevent it.”

To be continued…

Soon on Amazon

THE IMMORTALS

Book Two

The Intangible World Series

by Alex and Kris Astremsky

CHAPTER 1

The Strange Passenger

A strong medical smell assaulted his senses. His heart pumped in his chest like a hunted beast. With the chilled air and a light numbness in his limbs, his waking up was not pleasant, to put it mildly.

He forced himself to open his eyes. Light was peeking through the blinds and softly filled the room. The  bed and IV stand to the left made the room slightly resemble a hospital ward, but everything else— the posh, ivory-colored armchair with cushions, the books on the bedside-table, and the orchids in the window— created a rather homey environment.

Deep breath caused pain in his lungs and he drowned in a coughing fit. His whole body shivered and prickled. He cautiously moved his fingers and toes. The numbness was receding and he was starting to feel responsive again.

He slowly sat up and felt a light dizziness, which was gone in a few seconds. It was replaced with pain in his left arm near the inside of the elbow where the IV tube was attached. He slowly removed the needle. Several beads of blood dripped onto the snow-white bedsheet. However, he didn’t pay much attention to it. He wiped the blood from his arm with the bedsheet, got up and headed toward the door.

Someone’s steps and voices outside made him freeze. His hand stopped halfway to the door knob. When the noise was gone, he opened the door a bit and peeked outside, made sure there was no one and went down the hall where he ran into a nurse. She jumped from her chair  and rushed toward him with a worried look on her face.

“You must not get up! Please get back to bed! I will call your doctor! Please!” She tried to stop him from walking away, but he didn’t seem to care or even notice her.  He kept walking toward the elevators.

Seeing that her attempts to stop him were useless, the nurse returned to her desk, took the phone with shaking hand and dialed a number.

The patient pressed the elevator button and looked at her askance.

“Yes, from the fifth ward… He woke up… Yes, of course, I’m certain! I just saw him walk out. He’s by the elevators!” Her voice was breaking.

She got quiet again, listening, then helplessly glanced at the patient as he entered the elevator.

* * *

A middle-aged man with messy hair and stubble, wearing hospital clothes, walked along the busy streets, trying to flag a cab, but they were driving by without stopping.

The man kept trying.

One of the cabs eventually pulled over. Behind the wheel sat a guy of about twenty, wearing a cap.

“Sleepy Hollow. I’ll show you where. I’ll pay triple,” said the man.

They started down the street.

“You wanna change?” said the driver matter-of-factly, as if he had passengers in hospital clothes every day. The car entered the highway and picked up speed.

“I like you,” chuckled the passenger. “Look, let’s make a deal: you drive me around today and once I wrap up my stuff, I pay you well, okay?”

The guy nodded with a smile, keeping his eyes on the road.

“But your part of the deal will be no questions.” The passenger theatrically shook his finger at the driver. “I just haven’t been feeling well lately, you know?”

“Deal!” said the guy quickly and reached for the radio. “How about some music?”

“Go for it.” Light music came out from the speakers.

The passenger sat back and closed his eyes. He looked sick indeed. With black circles under both eyes, his pale face was almost transparent. Stubble at least a week old made him look even more exhausted.

He was around forty-five. His hospital clothes made it impossible to tell if he was a regular person or a jailbreaker.

The cab skimmed along the road and, in thirty minutes, crossed into the Sleepy Hollow Village.

“Where to now?”

The driver’s voice made the passenger open his eyes.

“I took a little nap… Turn right here.”

The cab steered into a nice neighborhood.

“Pull over there.” The passenger motioned curtly.

The car stopped at the curb.

The passenger got out and looked around. The street was absolutely empty. The driver also got out to stretch a little.

“Wait for me here. I won’t be long.”

“Sure,” answered the driver.

“Can I borrow your cap? The sun is so bright.” The man looked up and squinted.

“No problem!”

The guy took off his cap and handed it to the stranger. He put it on so that its peak covered half of his face. He made several steps and turned around.

“You’re an interesting guy!” he told the driver. “And you got some balls. Why do you trust me?”

“Why would you screw me over? Plus, I can see you need help.”

“Well, true, true…” he man nodded and disappeared around the corner.

He had to cross another block.

He quickly found the house he wanted. At the door, he looked around to make sure nobody was watching, and rang the bell. Though, he didn’t expect anyone to open the door, he rang the bell again. And again nobody answered.

However, the door was unlocked, so he went in. Apparently, nobody had been here since last night. And it seemed nobody had called the police.

His eyes became accustomed to the dim hallway and he saw an odd scene: clothes scattered all over the staircase. He sneered and headed upstairs, examining everything he came across along the way.

On the second floor, he found himself in a well-lit hall. There were clothes on the carpet as well, some of them covered in old blood stains. He started to scrutinize the floor, picking up each thing and dropping it again.

The scattered things led him into a room that would have horrified even a director of the goriest films. Stains of dried blood were everywhere: the door frame, the walls, the floor. It looked as though a set designer for some gothic horror movie had had a hand in it. The awful scene was complemented by the black cloaks scattered all over the floor.

He rummaged through everything he could get his hands on. He stopped at a heap of clothes soaked with blood, squatted and picked up a jacket. It looked as though it had been expensive, but now it was completely destroyed. There was not even a shadow of disgust on the man’s face as he searched the gore soaked pockets.

Suddenly something drew his attention. He dropped the jacket and picked up a pair of glasses. They were quite unusual, with bluish lenses. His eyes sparkled, as if he had found some ancient artifact. He examined the glasses, put them on and turned around to the door warily. His strange movements resembled an animal being hunted by a predator.

He picked up one of the black cloaks, gave it a shake, and a wad of money fell out of it. A half-smile appeared on his face for a split second.

“Thank you, Philip,” he said theatrically and put the cloak on. “You were a loyal servant!”

THE IMMORTALS

Book Two

The Intangible World Series

Soon on Amazon

Intangibleworld.com