[Agatha]

The effect of the drugs was even milder than the day before. I had endured the four-hundred-pounder dose losing consciousness for what I thought was less than a quarter of an hour. This morning, Doctor Godefray upped the dosage of the sodium thiopental and 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate to what would have been enough to knock out four adult males and added ethanol and scopolamine for good measure. It was increasingly clear he was grasping at straws at this point and was just going through the motions to avoid looking like a total incompetent in the abbess' eyes.

Because the abbess was there, and since yesterday she was closely following my so-called debriefing. Now the audience was composed of Abbess Litvin, Doctor Bailey, Doctor Godefray, Doctor Estrada and a never-seen-before gaunt monk called Abbot Edevane, who I later understood was Abbess Litvin's husband, plus a scattering of aides and orderlies I didn't get to see because of the blindfold.

I felt the familiar cold and damp touch of antiseptic-drenched cotton in the crook of my arm.

"I can't see any vein," a male aide complained.

"Put a tourniquet on her upper arm," Doctor Bailey suggested. "It should help. But if we plan to go on like this, she will need an intravenous line."

"We will not go on like this for long." Somehow, the abbess' statement didn't reassure me the least. "If we don't get results within the next twenty-four hours, we will switch to other techniques."

"What techniques?" I asked.

"Nothing you should worry about for now." Icily.

The tourniquet squeezed my arm. Then I felt the needle coming in. It stung and burned. The thing that was protecting me from the psychoactive effects of the drugs wasn't doing a bloody thing for the pain.

I waited.

And waited.

And unconsciousness didn't come.

I was wide awake.

In the end, I decided to play along and made my body go limp and let my head rest against the leather restraining strap.

"It took longer this time," Abbess Litvin pointed out. "Doctor Bailey?"

"All right, let's begin." He cleared his throat. "Wednesday, April 12, 4211, forty past nine a.m. Attempt number eight. For the dosage and the composition of the chemical cocktail please check Doctor Godefray's notes. I am now initiating the extraction protocol. Doctor Estrada?"

I felt the old hag's cold fingers rummaging down the neckline of my robe and inserting a stethoscope. It was the first time I witnessed this kind of operation, since the other times I had been out cold. I did my best to keep my pulse under check, and somehow it worked.

"Pulse ninety-two beats per minute. Go ahead."

"All right." Doctor Bailey cleared his throat. "This is Doctor Bailey of Typhon Library, Order of Remembrance clearance code golden - golden - alpha - zero - two - eight. Please confirm."

"Clearance code confirmed." It was my voice. "Please go ahead and state your request."

What the hell. I was saying things. Things that didn't make any sense. And I was saying them without any kind of conscious control.

It must be the drugs.

Yet I didn't feel groggy or high.

"I want to extract the information that has been stored inside this carrier."

"I need you to be more specific." Again, my voice. Then I got it. It was some post-hypnotic suggestion I had been given back at Manticore Library. It had to be.

"This carrier had been entrusted with scientific research from Manticore Library. I want to retrieve that research."

"That can't be done." Here we go, I thought.

"Why can't it be done?"

"That can't be done." My voice was resolute.

"You are wasting my time," the abbess snorted. "All of you are wasting my time, Doctor Bailey, Doctor Estrada and Doctor Godefray."

Doctor Bailey sighed. "I know. Please take note that I debriefed all the other carriers without a hitch. I think I'm at the end of my rope here."

"What are you suggesting?" Doctor Godefray, mildly annoyed. Apparently, seeing his proficiency with drugs questioned was ruffling his feathers.

"Enhanced interrogation techniques." Abbot Edevane.

"You mean torture," Doctor Bailey sighed.

Bloody hell. I managed not to jump on my chair, but it was a close call.

"My husband is here to help," Abbess Litvin pointed out. Her husband. A match made in heaven.

"I fail to see how torturing a teenage girl can be considered within our operating parameters." But I could feel disgust beneath Doctor Bailey's strictly formal words.

"Torture is a misleading term." Abbess Litvin. The old harpy.

"The selective application of physical pain has been proven crucial on more than one occasion," Abbot Edevane purred. "There are jammed mechanisms in the subconscious mind that can be unlocked by means of hurting the body."

"I want it on record that I strongly disagree."

"Duly noted." Which actually meant the harpy didn't give a damn. "Doctor, I hardly need to remind you we are sorely pressed for time. The rubbish that Captain Shaikh fed the kids about Royal Air Force airships coming to their rescue in six days expires in three days. Our allies are due the day after tomorrow. I still can't believe the captain hasn't found that the telegraph lines have been rerouted, and the messages he's getting from Camp Kelpie are actually from a League Army listening post."

"Clara, is it wise to be so explicit?"

"We're among friends, Hugh. Or co-conspirators, if you like it better. The aides have all gone out. There's just us and the doctors here."

"As you wish. May I remind you that Count Delauney has been most insistent about the secrecy of the operation?"

"You bet he was. All the knowledge Doctor Bailey has extracted from the survivors of Cheetah Library and Echidna Library will mean a significant leap forward for the League." Abbess Litvin was positively gloating. I was feeling ice running through my veins. "I'm sure those transcriptions are going to speed up the Chancellor's plan to rule over the Bridges by years, if not decades. All nicely packaged in three crates, sitting in the Library's storeroom, ready to be shipped to Count Delauney. Maybe it's not the Holy Key, but surely, it's the next best thing."

"Guess it'll have to do then." A brief pause. "Now I have to go. Right after breakfast, I got an encoded telegram. Our friends at the sentry post on the Karshvar Path need to see me urgently. I'll borrow a horse from the Marines, I think I'll be back by tomorrow in the early afternoon." Abbot Edevane chuckled. "And to think that idiot Captain Shaikh is going to lend me his best horse without knowing it's just gonna hasten his and Turquoise Company's demise." The abbot chuckled, then I heard the smile fading away from his face. "Doctor, that sets your deadline. You have until tomorrow in the afternoon. If you don't get results, I'll take over from there and use enhanced interrogation techniques. Am I making myself understood, Doctor Bailey?"

"Perfectly, sir." A faint vein of despair in his voice.

***

[Tristan]

Back in the Current Events and Latest News section, it all made a lot more sense after what I had read about the Age of Monsters. Of course, not knowing what the Invisible Light was, was a big hole in the picture, but for now I had to make do with what I had.

The Order of Remembrance team that had been sent to Finisterre from Gryphon Library was composed of five elements, three women and two men. Eshika Nayak was the leader and geographer, a slender woman with jet-black hair and intense dark eyes, judging from the pictures. With her there were Xiuying Wu, a petite and enigmatic history expert; Liam Rechemay, a fair-haired and athletic folklore expert; Darcy Holmes, the team's physics expert, a tall young woman whose features were always hiding behind a strategically placed bangs; and Jamal Clarke, a burly and steely-eyed security operative. There were plenty of pictures, and may the heavens strike me with lightning if one wasn't of Xiuying Wu shaking hands with a much younger but already majestically mustachioed Paul Graham.

According to the articles, Darcy and Liam could barely stand each other. They were members of the most capable team the Guild had been able to assemble to investigate the events unfolding in Finisterre, yet they couldn't stop squabbling. The other team members had to intervene on a daily basis before the two went at each other's throat.

The team had been following leads of Invisible Light emergence events in the Haeata region for the previous six months (judging by the journalists' cautious choice of words, I strongly suspected they were at a loss as to what exactly an Invisible Light emergence event was). The most recent and reliable rumors of Invisible Light emergence events had come from Nemea and Finisterre, two towns almost eight thousand miles apart, but since Finisterre was much closer to the Haeata region, and Nemea was a League stronghold, Eshika Nayak had chosen Finisterre as the final destination of their scientific tour.

When they reached Finisterre, the Order of Remembrance scientists were an attraction: young, well-read, mysterious, sophisticated, with a collection of exotic and shiny instruments as their luggage. Much to their dismay, and Jamal Clarke's understandable concern, they were soon sought after by city politicians, opinion makers and local celebrities, who would have merrily stabbed each other in the back to be seen around in the company of those charming strangers.

Unbeknownst to them, League undercover operatives under the command of Count Delauney had already passed word along their chain of command that something was going on in Finisterre, and Count Delauney had sent a twelve-strong black ops team to keep an eye on them and, if deemed suitable, intervene.

One night, while going for a stroll after dinner, Liam heard a street poetess singing a poem about benign ghosts in a nearby temple called Yuki-Onna. He stopped in his tracks to listen to the whole poem, as it was ringing a whole set of bells in his mind, and after tipping the poetess generously, he brought her to a pub and bought her a seemingly unending series of beers, until he had written the whole story down in progressively more garbled handwriting.

The Temple of Yuki-Onna had been built in the first century of the Age After, approximately nine centuries before. It was meant to be a shrine for a local deity that had something to do with fertility or fecundity or both (accounts varied), but in a few decades the place had earned a reputation for being particularly close to the afterlife, because lots of pilgrims and worshippers fell into a trance and talked to deceased loved ones. A powerful monastic congregation called the Samal Naga stepped in with the support of the Earl of Finisterre, razed the shrine to the ground and built the current, much bigger temple. As the years went by, not only the visions became more frequent and vivid, but began to entail collateral effects on the bodies of the faithful: nosebleeds at first, then headaches, then seizures, and finally the first deaths. Mental aftereffects too spun out of control: short-term amnesia, personality changes, weird compulsions, and finally flat-out madness.

About a century after Samal Naga had built the temple, the Earl of Finisterre (great-great-great grandson of the one that had welcomed the monks) kicked them out, had the abbot executed, and declared the site cursed. The Temple of Yuki-Onna was then all but forgotten except for local thrill-seekers, who anyway contented themselves with looking at it from a safe distance.

Apparently, that kind of story had Invisible Light written all over it, so the next day, severely hungover but full of excitement, Liam told all to Doctor Nayak, and she bought into the idea wholeheartedly. After a few hours spent checking the local maps against the hints and clues Liam had got out of the poetess' song, the team was ready to hit the road. At Jamal Clarke's insistence they packed their rucksacks with the bare minimum and left all the rest of their luggage at the inn where they were lodged.

They had barely set foot outside that the even more severely hungover street poetess came under a barrage of questions from the local gossip press. Needless to say, one of the journalists was an undercover League field operative who passed on the information right away.

The team reached the Temple of Yuki-Onna in a little more than eight hours of strenuous and impatient walking on rough and disused trails, often resorting to dead reckoning through the uncharted jungle. The temple stood on the top of a low hill, so low that it barely emerged from the expanse of treetops that stretched as far as the eye could see. The temple itself was typical 34th-century architecture, a marble central nave surrounded by fortified living quarters for the monks and nuns, embellished by flying buttresses and slender towers. Most of the nave roof had collapsed, and a couple of towers too, but the armored abbey still looked in decent condition.

As the sun went down, Doctor Nayak and Jamal Clarke scouted the place and found that the apse dome was still standing because it was reinforced with a lattice of steel bars. As the others established a perimeter, Doctor Holmes checked her instruments (judging by the deceptively casual shortage of details in the articles, the journalists had no idea what those instruments were, and were just putting on a good poker face) and declared that was the right place to look for an Invisible Light emergence event.

Doctor Holmes decided to begin her activities the next morning (again, reading between the lines, I was pretty sure nobody had the slightest clue about what Doctor Holmes' activities could be, the only clear thing was that her goal was making the Invisible Light manifest itself; it sounded vaguely voodoo to me, but since four fifths of the team had a Doctor before their name, it had to be science), and as they got settled for the night Jamal Clarke set a rota to keep watch all night long.

Maybe it was destiny, maybe it was the mysterious forces haunting the place, but Doctor Holmes woke up before dawn, set up her instruments (here some articles hinted about dials and gauges and lenses, but I wasn't sure it wasn't just wild speculation) and began doing her thing with the Invisible Light.

Apparently, results were slow in coming, since she was still busy with her instruments when Jamal Clarke glimpsed shapes in the forest and determined they weren't alone anymore. Clarke had packed a whole armory for the trip, so he quickly issued guns to the rest of the team, and as Doctor Nayak pointed out that they weren't sure the newcomers were hostile and violence had to be only the last resort, the first gunshots echoed from the forest and the first bullets began hitting the temple, showering them with marble slivers. So, after a few shouted instructions to Doctor Holmes to keep on doing what she was doing (still no detail about it in the articles), the three academics and the hired muscle climbed on four of the towers and set up to defend themselves in a siege situation. Clarke suggested dropping the academic titles for the time being and go just by first name, and Doctor Nayak (that is Eshika) grudgingly agreed.

As the morning gave way to midday six besiegers lay dead or dying, while only Xiuying had been slightly hurt, grazed on her side by a bullet that had ricocheted off a balustrade. Jamal had just proposed to canvas the forest around the temple to see if there was someone else hiding, when an airship appeared above the horizon, heading in the direction of the temple at full speed. In a few minutes the airship arrived within a few hundred yards from the temple and stopped in mid-air. Ropes fell out of the gondola, and League Army crack commandos abseiled quickly to the ground.

The airship turned to present its starboard side to the temple, and snipers began firing from the gondola as the commandos closed in on the Order of Remembrance team. Tense and expletive-laden shouts were exchanged among the scientists, a significant part of which aimed at inviting Darcy to speed up whatever she was doing. Eshika declared that everybody was free to make their own decisions about what to do, while she was going to try to hold on as long as possible to give Darcy a chance, and everybody replied they were ready to fight until the end.

The first casualty was Eshika herself, hit in the chest by a large-caliber slug from a shipboard sniper. She fell backwards, with a red flower blooming above her heart.

The second was Xiuying, throat slashed by a commando that had crept undetected up the tower where she was barricaded, an expression like a smile on her lips.

Jamal and Liam rushed to Darcy, who was still performing her activities, both already wounded, both ready to sacrifice their lives even if the mission looked all but failed.

As four commandos entered the temple nave, Jamal went running towards them firing from both guns, and was mowed down by the portable Gatling gun the commandos were carrying.

And then it happened.

This was the point when no two articles said the same thing. One said that a blinding while light exploded in the temple, so bright to be seen from Finisterre ten miles away in full daylight. Another said that the sky turned pitch black all at once, and a giant lightning bolt reached down and hit the Temple of Yuki-Onna smack in the middle of the apse dome. Another said that everything began to quiver as though every straight line had become a winding spiral.

What all the accounts agreed about was that the effects of the event were astonishing. The commandos on the ground were pulverized, their black-clad shapes turned into mounds of ashes dispersed by the wind, guns and knives falling to the ground. The snipers on the airship fell backwards as hit by invisible punches with their eyes and mouths bleeding profusely, and all died within a few minutes. The airship crew in its entirety passed out. The majority didn't wake up anymore and died in their sleep. Some of them regained consciousness, but with their minds completely wiped, like they had turned back into newborn babies. Two or three made some sort of recovery in the following days and were able to land the drifting airship three hundred miles from Finisterre.

And what about Darcy?

That was the only clear part.

All of the newspapers agreed that a couple of days after the event she stumbled back into town, mumbling incoherently and supporting a barely conscious Liam Rechemay. Darcy wasn't sure where she was coming from or what had happened to her, but she was most insistent that the Invisible Light had emerged, had engulfed her, and had given her the Holy Key. Pressed by the crowd to show them the Holy Key, she explained that it was inside her, but she was not the right one. She was only a temporary bearer and was going to hand it over to the rightful owner, because the rightful owner of the Holy Key would heal the Bridges and rule over them, and the Bridges would obey him or her.

Then she passed out, and never regained consciousness in Finisterre.

A couple of days later, possibly tipped off by the unusual presence of an Awakening League Air Force airship in the area, or maybe alerted by a message sent from Jamal Clarke before leaving for the Temple of Yuki-Onna, a Royal Air Force attack airship landed at Finisterre carrying a group of Order of Remembrance members from Gryphon Library, who took Liam and Darcy away.

They were never seen again in Finisterre, and the only other piece of news available that year was that Liam Rechemay never recovered, never regained consciousness, and died only a few weeks later at Basilisk Library, where he had been admitted to try a treatment.

Of Darcy Holmes there was just a note in the July4196 issue of the Finisterre Observer. It said that according to a merchantband passing by, she had been running from the League agents since the Miracleof Finisterre and had eventually been killed when her airship was shot down byan Awakening League Air Force sneak attack as she was coming back to GryphonLibrary after more than a year in hiding.

***

NEXT UP:  Agatha and her friends realize they have to get the hell out of Dodge ASAP, but it's way easier said than done