Chapter 100: Past Fragment: No Planet for Old Men (1/2)

An atheist had once told him that though he never believed in God Almighty, the Chapel Sistine made him doubt.

How could anyone question the existence of God in this room? Cardinal Andreas Torque had seen many sinners repent in tears the moment they raised their head at the ceiling, to witness the glorious work of Michelangelo. No man’s heart could remain unmoved at this architectural and visual perfection. Most only remembered the Creation of Adam part of the frescos, but Michelangelo had painted many more stories, each marvelous in their own way. The Cardinal could spend hours marveling at this divine feast for the senses; and the sight of tourists taking pictures of this wonder without appreciating it made him weep inside.

But these were not the opening hours of the Vatican Museums. Only a single man’s footsteps echoed in the chapel to join his superior, as the clock struck midnight.

“Father Torque,” Inquisitor Ambrosio greeted the Cardinal, dressed in the black garments of the Roman Catholic Church. Ambrosio was more than twenty years Andreas’ senior, his head balding, his golden beard falling off at the edges. Yet his green eyes shone with the same witch pyre that warmed Andreas’ heart.

Andreas Torque was one of the youngest Cardinals in the Catholic Church, by decree of His Holiness Jean-Paul II; he had not yet reached forty. Many had questioned his appointment, his virtue, and his achievements. He had no great deed to his name, and he liked it this way.

His work was best done in the shadows.

The Malleus Maleficarum, the Vatican’s secret service, did not exist, even to most of its members. The Church was officially neutral in world affairs, and only worked through its extensive diplomacy network.

It was a lie, of course. The Catholic Church had many enemies, and needed fiery swords as much as quills. The Malleus Maleficarum’s purpose was to keep His Holiness aware of all dangers threatening the true faith, and to advance the Catholics’ interests across the world.

When Andreas had joined the service, he had been nothing more than an Inquisitor, the lowest rank of this secret fraternity. The future Cardinal had spent most of his career undermining the communist plague that had infected Eastern Europe, and revitalizing the Church’s influence in the broken USSR’s regions. When he eventually became the organization’s Inquisitor-General seven years ago, Andreas Torque had worked on His Holiness’ behalf to check the influence of terrorist groups in the Middle East. Even though Jean-Paul II was on his deathbed, surrounded by scheming Cardinals, the Malleus Maleficarum worked tirelessly to fulfill the Pope’s wish of universal peace.

In short, Andreas Torque was used to fighting human evil.

But the horrors they were facing nowadays… were something else entirely.

Something unnatural.

The two priests sat on a bench, with Ambrosio giving his superior a twenty-five page long file. Only two words were written on the cover.

‘Stanford Incident.’

Andreas’ eyebrows furrowed deeper with each line he read, and the priest outright scowled when he reached the first picture. “Who else knows?” Torque asked.

“Only the Americans for now. And us.” Father Ambrosio joined his hands, a thoughtful frown on his face. “But a video already made its way on the internet. It’s only a matter of time before MI6 and the Russians find out too.”

The internet made keeping secrets from the world harder than ever. The Cardinal was surprised the Americans could keep something that big under wraps, but he wondered for how long.

They could hide a village’s destruction, but not a roaming monster.

The photo showed an abomination straight out of the deepest pits of Hell. A white-skinned, faceless beast lifting a car as easily as a chair. The arms were abnormally long, and a luminous light glowed where the face should have been. Considering the height difference with the man it crushed underfoot, the monster had to be six meters tall at the very least. A shroud of blue mist surrounded it like swirling winds.

All his life Andreas had only ever seen the hand of man at work. But that thing… what could it be but a true demon of flesh and blood, as described in the Holy Scriptures?

“This is Satan’s work,” Andreas declared firmly. “A demon.”

“This was a man, Father,” Ambrosio replied grimly, sending shivers down the Cardinal’s spine. “Keep reading.”

Andreas skimmed the report’s content, summarizing it out loud. It helped him memorize information. “Stanford, Nevada, two-hundred and two inhabitants. On its way to becoming a ghost town since their iron mine dried up. Half of them are dead or missing, and the other half in government custody.”

The event happened on November 14th, six days before the report reached the Cardinal. According to survivors, the monster had burst out of the local clinic at around seven and a half in the evening, and gone on a rampage. The beast tore men apart with its bare hands, and breathing the mist that followed in its wake turned people feral. By the time survivors managed to contact the authorities and the government quarantined the area, the monster had escaped into the Mojave Desert.

The lack of internet and telephone coverage had made it hard for the government to respond quickly, but easy to cover it up afterward. Always the same pattern.

“All the previous incidents took place in similarly isolated areas,” the Cardinal noted.

“But never with such deadly consequences,” Ambrosio replied. “The monster is out there, and the USA’s government hasn’t caught it yet. It won’t stay hidden forever.”

“No, it won’t.” Whoever was responsible was getting bolder, more reckless. Andreas flipped the page, until he found the picture of a thuggish-looking man so skinny, that the Cardinal wondered if he suffered from malnutrition. “James Poole?”

“Some dirt poor repairman,” Ambrosio said. “He was due to receive a second shot of Tetanus vaccine, after the first was found to be a placebo. The town’s doctor, Jason Hopfield, was supposed to receive him at seven and thirty.”

The report indicated that the doctor’s body had been found in the wreckage, gutted chin to groin like a fish.

“Both the vaccines came from a private company called New H,” Ambrosio continued. “You know the Americans, they always mistrust their healthcare. Some think their government puts microchips in them, and so they look for ‘alternative’ sources.”

A microchip would have been a kinder fate than turning into a monster. Andreas offered a prayer to both the doctor and patient. “What do we know of this company?”

“Little, except that that paper trail leads nowhere.”

The Cardinal grit his teeth. “So it’s another dead end?”

“Not quite,” Ambrosio said, as his superior flipped the report’s pages. “The town’s sheriff took a picture of the vaccine’s deliverer. Something about her behavior unsettled him.”

Her.

That woman again.

Andreas quickly found her photo, and scowled. It was her, short black hair, blue eyes, eminently plain, thirty-something. She had worn a cap when she made that delivery, but it was the clearest picture of her that the Malleus Maleficarum had found so far.

November 14th, November 14th… A doubt wormed its way into the Cardinal’s mind. “At which hour was this photo taken?” he asked his fellow priest. “Universal Time Coordinated?”

“One AM UTC, I think.”

Torque closed the file, clenching his jaw. “Inquisitor Silus sighted her near an illegal laboratory in an Uzbekistan frontier town at two AM UTC, before he went silent.”

They hadn’t yet recovered the body, but though the Cardinal prayed for his agent’s survival, he knew better than to expect it. The laboratory had turned into a smoking ruin by the time reinforcements arrived, with Silus nowhere to be found.

Ambrosio registered the words and frowned. “Are you sure it was her?”

“Silus’ description matched that photo.” The agent had been tracking that individual down for a year, since she had been sighted during the Burning Woman incident in Tajikistan.

“How can a woman move between two sides of the Earth within an hour?”

“Or she was in two places at once.” Who was that woman? What was that woman? Some kind of witch or demon? “Have you used our facial recognition software on the photo?”

“Yes, and it came up with a name,” Ambrosio replied. Though most priests were too old to understand new technology, the Malleus Maleficarum had invested heavily in them, to always keep an advantage. “Combined with the previous sketches, the program came up with a name: Eva Fabre.”

Eva Fabre, Eva Fabre... The name sounded familiar. Thankfully, Andreas had a prodigious memory, and he quickly remembered where it came from. “The GEIPAN French files,” he said. “The Antarctica mass-suicide of 1992.”

The French kept a not-so-secret archive about UFOs sightings, and Andreas heard rumors that they intended to make a few of the files public… but none of the truly interesting ones, of course.

France might have split from the Catholic Church a century ago, but the Faith still had friends in high places. A French general had shared with the Malleus Maleficarum a copy of the GEIPAN files, some of them were quite disturbing.

Much like many countries in the world, the French maintained a presence in Antarctica. They had an official research station there, studying penguins... but Torque knew for a fact that France once had a second, secret laboratory deeper inland called Station Orpheon. Secret, because the station had been dedicated to studying bacteriological weapons away from civilization. Eva Fabre had been the base’s lead geneticist.

“On the night of December 12th, 1992, Station Orpheon contacted the French Ministère de la Défense to inform them of a peculiar event,” Andreas whispered. “The scientists saw a flash of purple light in the skies, and then an unidentified object crashing in a glacier nearby. The French authorities had lost contact with the station two days afterward. When French soldiers reached the station to investigate, they found twenty-two of the twenty-three researchers dead.”

An experimental, deadly bacteria had escaped and infected the staff. The soldiers thought it had been an accident, until they checked the radios and found them sabotaged. Though almost all the researchers had been accounted for, Eva Fabre’s body was never found.

The French government quietly covered up the incident, and after five years of searching for the missing scientist, closed the file. Eva Fabre had probably caused the outbreak before killing herself, they figured. Isolation drove men and women mad. Neither had the investigators found any trace of a meteorite impact, not even with satellite surveillance. The event had joined the other strange tales of the GEIPAN files, and been forgotten.

Ambrosio searched inside his garment for a photo, which he handed to his superior. Torque raised an eyebrow, before comparing it to the sheriff’s snapshot.

Not only could Eva Fabre teleport, but she hadn’t aged in nearly twelve years either.

Somehow, the Cardinal wasn’t even surprised.

“How cold?” Andreas asked, after putting all the pictures inside the file and closing it. “The New H lead, I mean?”

“The Americans couldn’t find anyone employed by this company, but my informers had more luck with the vehicle used for the delivery,” Ambrosio explained. “It was purchased through an American shell company, owned by a Swiss bank.”

Probably the same bank that funded the illegal lab in Uzbekistan. “Find someone and make them talk,” Andreas ordered. “These incidents are escalating in severity, which means they’re building up to something.”

“A confessor informed me that one of the bank’s administrators could be… open to collaborating with the Church’s investigation.”

“For the sake of his soul?”

“For the sake of his bank account.”

In this era of greed, Mammon ruled absolute. “How much?” The Cardinal asked, and scowled deeply when his agent told him the amount. “That’s a hefty price. Even Judas only asked for thirty silver coins.”

“Traitors are more expensive than ever nowadays, Father Torque. Supply and demand.”

“I will have to ask for his help then.” Thankfully, he was the next appointment. “I will wire the money to the usual account. Do not fail.”

Ambrosio took a deep breath. “If I may ask, Inquisitor-General… what are we investigating?”

“I don’t know,” the Cardinal admitted, “and that’s what I’m afraid of. Communists, terrorists, they’re all humans in the end. But that woman, and these abominations… they’re something else.”

“You think time is running out?”

“How can you doubt it now?” the Cardinal asked. “If this snapshot made it to us, then it means she isn’t hiding anymore. His Holiness will perish soon, and then there will be a time of crisis. The Church must act now, before it is too late.”

“May the Lord be with us,” Ambrosio prayed before taking his leave, leaving the Cardinal alone in the chapel.

Andreas’ eyes wandered to the ceiling, to the sight of God’s hand reaching for the first man. He pondered how events had progressed to today, inexorably.

A string of disappearances in early 2002, all in the southern hemisphere. Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Tanzania… hundreds had vanished without a trace with nothing to tie them together. Nothing, except the fact they happened in isolated areas, and the same woman had been sighted in three of the cases. Then people started vanishing in the northern hemisphere too.

2003. A woman spontaneously caught fire in Tajikistan, killing fourteen. A laboratory was discovered in Siberia, with human test subjects found inside. Some had extra organs, or limbs, and all were missing people from last year. A scaled thing capable of turning invisible was caught on tape in Utah.

As for 2004… A man had shot a Serbian war criminal in his own home, only for authorities to learn that the killer had been made of bolts and wires. Sarajevo suffered from unexplained earthquakes, people swearing that they heard gears moving below the earth.

And now this?

Andreas Torque was finally starting to see the bigger picture, the trend that united all these events into a coherent narrative. It clicked when he had heard the word ‘vaccine.’

Tests.

Eva Fabre was testing something on people, turning them into monsters. That was the only explanation that made sense to Andreas Torque, though he couldn’t understand whatever science or sorcery made it possible.

Whatever the case, this wicked woman was a threat to the world’s natural order, and she had to go.

The Cardinal would find Eva Fabre before she claimed more victims. He would listen to her tale, let her confess her sins so that she might earn absolution from the Lord. And then he would burn her like a witch.

Andreas looked away from the ceiling, as he heard new footsteps. Ambrosio’s had been soft, careful; these ones were firm, heavy with power and purpose. The man that walked in the chapel was in his mid-fifties, a veteran of half a dozen mob wars, a titan in a red suit bought with drug money. The Cardinal could almost hear the blood dripping from his hands, though they looked clean. His cold, heartless eyes didn’t hide anything. One couldn’t see this man and not doubt for a second about his true nature.

“Janus,” the Cardinal said.

“Andreas,” the man answered with a shark-like glint in his eyes. “You look concerned.”

“I am. We live in strange, dangerous times.” The Cardinal invited the mafioso to sit down, but he declined. “The bench is warm.”

“I would prefer we meet in the classical art gallery,” the mob boss replied. Unlike any sensible soul, he didn’t even bother looking at the ceiling.

Janus Augusti was a godless man, but he served the Lord all the same.

“What is on your mind, my friend?” Janus asked, looking down on the seated priest. Though many men would have shaken in dread at this man’s presence, Andreas Torque remained serene. “I assume this must be urgent to organize this meeting so late.”

“I will go straight to the point.” The Cardinal took a deep breath, having hoped not to resort to this. “I need millions.”

“You will have your funds. If you clean them.”

Of course. Some officials in the Vatican Bank laundered mafia money to fill their pockets, but Andreas Torque did it for a higher cause. The Malleus Maleficarum needed a black budget, independent from the Holy City’s finances to maintain plausible deniability. It was a dirty job, but all was forgiven if done in the Lord’s service.

Janus was no member of the Malleus Maleficarum though, and the less he knew about the Vatican’s secret activities the better. Andreas could tell that if he let this man sink his claws into the organization, he would corrupt it as he did with many others. His influence over the Neapolitan Camorra was almost unmatched, and from what Andreas had heard, he intended to expand. Nobody was able to resist him for long.

Unfortunately, Janus Augusti smelled weakness like how a shark could detect blood from miles away. “The situation must be dire for you to ask for so much,” he said, examining the priest suspiciously. “If you need my protection, you only need to ask.”

“The Lord protects me.”

“He would not protect you from me, if I wished you harm.” A blasphemous boast, but the man was not to be underestimated. He had filled entire cemeteries, cementing his empire of sin with blood and tears. “But I am genuine. You are almost a friend now, and I need men with your talents.”

“I may serve as your wife’s confessor, but you are a necessary evil as far as I am concerned, Janus,” the Cardinal replied. “Let’s keep it that way.”

The mob boss chuckled. “A necessary evil you say? I suppose it is appropriate. I do separate the worthy from the unworthy. Truly good and strong men wouldn’t need my services.”

Andreas didn’t miss the not-so-subtle taunt. “Do you think of me as evil, or weak?”

“There is no good or evil, Andreas, but I do wonder what your pope would think upon seeing us together. Somehow I doubt he would approve of your work.”