Century #4: Dragon of Seas (26 page)

Ermete soon starts to get it. Sharp toenails … Mademoiselle Cybel wants to use them to get the tape off his mouth so he can call for help through the manholes!

A ridiculous, exhausting, crazy plan. But maybe their only chance of getting out of there alive. Ermete nods. Then he stretches his neck out toward the woman and lets himself be struck by another massive kick, which knocks his head back against the cement wall.

This time, he feels the inside of his lip sting. He jabs his tongue
against the tape and has the sensation his gag might have moved a fraction of an inch.

He stretches out his neck.

Again.

And again.

Meanwhile, the water below him continues to rise.

Nik Knife is at the controls of the Sikorsky S-61. The copilot is seated next to him, checking the instruments.

Behind them, in a black leather seat, an expressionless Heremit Devil wears a dark gray life vest over his impeccable Korean jacket. The man is rigidly clutching a handle, a seat belt strapped over his chest. All that’s seen through the windows is the flat expanse of the ocean. A shimmering slab of slate. Gray everywhere, except for the long crests of the waves.

“Fog at twelve-six-six,” Nik Knife says into his microphone, which is connected to the copilot’s headphones.

The noise on board and the vibrations of the bulkheads prevent any other communication. The knife thrower slows down the engine and descends. Now, under the helicopter’s belly, the uniform expanse of the waves becomes crystal-clear, revealing the shimmering backs of schools of silvery fish. A breathtaking sight that whizzes by at 212 kilometers an hour before Sheng, Harvey, Elettra and Mistral’s eyes.

The four kids are sitting one beside the other, like parachutists ready to jump. They don’t know what’s going to become of them. And they don’t know what’s become of Ermete.

“I’m sorry,” Sheng told the others when they were pushed on board.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Harvey told him.

The American boy looked at the two gagged girls. Elettra, in her insulating straitjacket, and Mistral, who had a long scratch on her neck. Signs of a pointless struggle.

We were outnumbered
, he told himself. In his mind’s eye, he could still see the top floor of the building, with gusts of rain and wind coming in through the shattered windows. The distant sounds from the street. The shouts of the service staff. The electrical circuits shorting out, letting off bursts of sparks. The elevators coming to a halt. The printers spewing out tons of paper, the hot tubs going berserk, the electric furnaces overheating. And insects everywhere, in their eyes, in their ears, in every room. Hopeless.

Totally hopeless.

“I should’ve been there, too,” Sheng murmured, letting them strap a seat belt on him.

“Nobody should’ve been there,” Harvey replied as the helicopter climbed into the air and left Shanghai behind it.

The sea disappears from sight as the helicopter flies into a thick bank of fog. The emergency lights go on. And there’s nothing more to be seen.

“Slow down,” Nik Knife says into the microphone. “Let’s descend twenty meters.” As they zoom along, the shuddering, whirling turbines rip the fog to shreds.

Heremit Devil stares straight ahead. Then he looks at the four chosen ones, his eyes lingering on Sheng, as if he wants to ask him something.

But he doesn’t.

* * *

“I see it. One o’clock,” Nik Knife says half an hour later. He points at a flashing green blip that has just appeared on the radar. All around them, fog. Thick, dense, mysterious fog. “Twelve kilometers. Approaching. Ten.”

Heremit Devil leans forward to rest his hand on the pilot’s seat. “How big is it?” he asks.

“It looks like an atoll. Seven, eight hundred meters in diameter at most. We will begin to descend.”

The Sikorsky’s nose dips forward and the helicopter drops down almost to sea level. Looking outside, Sheng has the sensation he can almost hear the waves churning. The fog thins out and offers a trace of visibility. It’s like an empty gap between two walls: gray fog above, dark water below.

“There,” Nik Knife says, pointing to the right.

Far off on the horizon, the fog thickens into a storm. A gray curtain indicates the line of the rain, which seems to hide everything else from sight. Sudden bolts of lightning streak from the sky to crash down into the sea. And in the middle of that raging sea, between heaven and earth, the darker line of an island.

Penglang.

The island of the eight immortals.

The helicopter reaches it in just a few minutes and flies over it once: it’s small, not much bigger than a soccer stadium in hard black rock, covered with calcareous concretions, slick seaweed and shells. Glistening rivulets of dark, brackish water stream out from its jagged hollows and flow back into the sea. The frothy ocean waves crash down against its rocky sides. The island is like
a giant turtle shell rising up in the middle of the sea. On the turtle’s back are strange rocks that look like spires, sticking out of it like little harpoons.

“Sir,” the copilot says, pointing at the instruments, “the compass has gone haywire.”

Nik Knife flies over the atoll a second time, descending even farther.

Everyone is asking themselves the same question: how can the island rise up from and sink back down into the waves every hundred years? It’s a rare phenomenon, but not impossible. Harvey’s father could explain that in 1963, a series of volcanic eruptions off the southern coast of Iceland created Surtsey Island, which still exists today. Then there’s Ferdinandea, an island that appeared between Sicily and Pantelleria in a matter of days in 1831 and disappeared a few months later. In the Venetian Lagoon, the isles of Caltrazio, Centranica and Ammianella appear and disappear as the tides command. But none of these phantom islands have the same wild, primordial allure as Penglang: magnetic rock capable of interfering with the helicopter’s instruments. Volcanic, furious, contorted. Neither birds nor other animals are in sight; just a few fish flopping around as they try to escape the pools of water in which they’ve been trapped.

On their third trip over the island, the chopper’s blades raise up sprays of froth. And the strange rocky formations that look like harpoons prove to be something even eerier.

They’re statues. Ancient profiles of divinities, sovereigns, queens, heroes, giants, goddesses that have been worn away by the water, encrusted with mollusk shells, adorned with stoles and cloaks of seaweed. Statues that were carved into the island’s living
rock and now, centuries later, sparkle in the sunshine, eroded and silent.

But still standing. The statues of the immortal inhabitants of Penglang.

“Take us down! Land!” Heremit Devil snaps at the pilot, pointing at the rocky black island, his hand trembling.

The nine-fingered man shakes his head vigorously. “There is no room!” he replies. “Besides, the island has a strong magnetic field! The rotor is not responding as it should and—”

“Then open the cargo door and lower me down!”

“Sir, it is dangerous!”

“Lower me down, I said!”

Nik Knife points at the helicopter’s gas gauge. The tank is almost half-empty. “Another time, sir! We can come back! We do not have much fuel left. In order to make it back to Shanghai—”

“I don’t care about getting back to Shanghai! I want to go down onto that blasted island!”

Nik Knife consults with the copilot. “Twenty minutes, sir!” the copilot says. “Twenty minutes, no more. Then we’ll need to leave or we won’t make it back!”

“Twenty minutes,” Heremit Devil repeats. “Fine.”

The lord of the black skyscraper unbuckles his seat belt with shaking hands. His left eye is almost constantly shut now.

Nik Knife leaves the commands to the copilot, slips on the backpack containing all the objects that belonged to the kids and makes his way into the rear section of the helicopter. He clips a snap hook onto Heremit Devil’s life vest and attaches it to a line that’s connected to the hoist on the Sikorsky’s belly.

“Well, then, we will go down, sir!” he says, shouting so that he’ll be heard over the roar of the rotors. “Are you certain?”

“Open the door!”

A blast of ice-cold air mixed with a spray of water sweeps over the side of the helicopter. The copilot corrects their angle, passing over the island for the fourth time.

“I will lower you down now,” Nik Knife says. “When you reach the ground, unhook yourself here and here!”

Heremit Devil’s eyes slowly drink up the mystery of the volcanic rock. He feels ruthless euphoria running through his veins, making his temples throb and his hands go numb. A mix of panic and terror, of omnipotence and grandeur. Heremit Devil takes three steps toward the door and reaches the edge, his legs as heavy as bricks.

“Them too!” he shouts as he prepares to lower himself down the line. “I want them to come, too!”

Nik Knife tries to protest, but the man doesn’t give him the chance. His fourth step is into thin air. Then the hoist slowly starts to lower him toward the place he’s been trying to track down for five years.

The place others have kept secret for six thousand years.

The moment she’s dangling in the void, her hands free, Mistral rips the gag off her mouth and breathes in the damp air, which is pungent and salty. Harvey and Sheng are already on the ground, six meters below her. Elettra is peering out of the cargo door, beside Nik Knife. Mistral breathes in hungrily as the wind stirs her hair. When she’s only a meter off the ground, Harvey and Sheng
help her, unclipping the line and leaving it free to go back up to the helicopter.

“It’s beautiful!” Sheng exclaims, his voice filled with a strange exhilaration. “It’s a beautiful island!”

Mistral looks around, thinking the exact opposite. Penglang is dark, harsh, slimy and pummeled by waves coming from every direction. Beyond the edge of the rocks, the seafloor seems to drop straight down, becoming an abyss of black water.

Heremit Devil is a few steps away from them, his hair blowing in the wind. His left eye shut. Hands in his pockets. His body moving awkwardly.

He’s afraid
, Mistral thinks, looking at him.
For a man who’s never left his building, the sight of such a wild, primitive island must be quite a shock
.

Mistral shades her eyes with her hand and watches Elettra’s descent. A few seconds later, the Italian girl touches down and unclips herself. The kids hug, holding each other tight. They’re together again.

Nik Knife comes down last, and the moment he reaches the ground, he checks his watch. “Eighteen minutes!” he shouts to his boss as the helicopter flies off over the open sea.

The noise of the chopper blades fades away.

Leaving only the wind and waves.

And a barren island of black rock.

“So this is the objective behind everything?” shouts the man who’s been pursuing them all this time. “A reef? Show me what we’re looking for.”

“We don’t know what we’re looking for,” Harvey replies, the other three behind him. The four kids are standing close together, forming a sort of wall. They made it here together and they’re going to stick together to the very end.

Heremit Devil laughs. But it’s a nervous, hollow laugh. “I don’t believe you!” he exclaims. “I don’t believe that your masters didn’t tell you what was on this island!”

“Why don’t you tell us?” Elettra shoots back. Her hair is whirling in the wind.

“The archeologist didn’t know!” Heremit Devil shouts.

Nik Knife walks over to one of the statues sticking out of the rock. It looks like a man with bare legs and sandals.

“None of them knew,” Mistral says. She turns to the others, waiting for them to back her up. “We’re the first ones to get here.”

“I want an explanation!” Heremit threatens. “We didn’t come all this way for nothing! I want to know what gave my son his power!”

Sheng takes a step forward, his palm raised in a peaceful gesture. “The truth is, none of us knows why everything led here, Heremit. But … maybe … maybe there’s a reason we all ended up here.”

Sheng is right. The kids feel a vibration here on the island. It’s as if their hearts are bigger. Their heads more receptive. Their eyes sharp, their ears attentive, their noses and throats more sensitive than they’ve ever been before.

Heremit Devil looks around suspiciously. He doesn’t feel any of these vibrations. He only has a desperate desire to understand. To find something. To take it with him.

“You have fifteen minutes,” he says, stepping aside. “Give me the answer I’m looking for … or I’ll leave you here.”

The kids begin to explore the rocks.

Apart from the statues, there’s no sign that humans have ever been on the island.

Harvey rests his hands on the ground and listens.

“What do you hear?”

“The sea. And voices. They’re faint. Far away. Really far away. I … I can’t make out a single word of it.”

Mistral continues to watch Heremit. He’s walked up to the edge of the rocks, where he lets the spray from the waves wash over him. Near him, Nik Knife is constantly checking his watch.

“Let’s think this through,” Elettra says. “How long has it been since anyone stepped foot on this island?”

“Our masters never made it this far.”

“Neither did the ones before them.”

“And we don’t know what happened before that. But we can bet nobody’s been here for at least … two hundred years?”

“One, two, three …,” Elettra starts to count. “And seven. Seven statues. Just like …”

“The days of the week,” Harvey says.

“The tops,” Mistral says.

“The Jesuit said something about eight immortals,” Sheng remembers.

The statues are featureless figures, worn and eroded.

Sheng studies how they’re arranged. “These four … make a sort of rectangle.”

“With a handle … formed by these other three statues,” Elettra says, following his logic.

“Seven statues, seven stars,” Harvey concludes. “Yeah, you’re right. The statues are positioned like Ursa Major!”

“What does Ursa Major point to?” Elettra asks.

“It always revolves around the North Star.”