His eyes moved down to the familiar symbol adorning the cover of the playbill. It was the same early Greek pictogram that adorned most playbills around the world—a 2,500-year-old symbol that had become synonymous with dramatic theater.
Le maschere.
Langdon looked at the iconic faces of Comedy and Tragedy gazing up at him, and suddenly he heard a strange humming in his ears—as if a wire were slowly being pulled taut inside his mind. A stab of pain erupted inside his skull. Visions of a mask floated before his eyes. Langdon gasped and raised his hands, sitting down in the desk chair and closing his eyes tightly, clutching at his scalp.
In his darkness, the bizarre visions returned with a fury … stark and vivid.
The silver-haired woman with the amulet was calling to him again from across a bloodred river. Her shouts of desperation pierced the putrid air, clearly audible over the sounds of the tortured and dying, who thrashed in agony as far as the eye could see. Langdon again saw the upside-down legs adorned with the letter R, the half-buried body pedaling its legs in wild desperation in the air.
Seek and find! the woman called to Langdon. Time is running out!
Langdon again felt the overwhelming need to help her … to help everyone. Frantic, he shouted back to her across the bloodred river. Who are you?!
Once again, the woman reached up and lifted her veil to reveal the same striking visage that Langdon had seen earlier.
I am life, she said.
Without warning, a colossal image materialized in the sky above her—a fearsome mask with a long, beaklike nose and two fiery green eyes, which stared blankly out at Langdon.
And … I am death, the voice boomed.
CHAPTER 8
LANGDON’S EYES SHOT open, and he drew a startled breath. He was still seated at Sienna’s desk, head in his hands, heart pounding wildly.
What the hell is happening to me?
The images of the silver-haired woman and the beaked mask lingered in his mind. I am life. I am death. He tried to shake the vision, but it felt seared permanently into his mind. On the desk before him, the playbill’s two masks stared up at him.
Your memories will be muddled and uncataloged, Sienna had told him. Past, present, and imagination all mixed together.
Langdon felt dizzy.
Somewhere in the apartment, a phone was ringing. It was a piercing, old-fashioned ring, coming from the kitchen.
“Sienna?!” Langdon called out, standing up.
No response. She had not yet returned. After only two rings, an answering machine picked up.
“Ciao, sono io,” Sienna’s voice happily declared on her outgoing message. “Lasciatemi un messaggio e vi richiamerò.”
There was a beep, and a panicked woman began leaving a message in a thick Eastern European accent. Her voice echoed down the hall.
“Sienna, eez Danikova! Where you?! Eez terrible! Your friend Dr. Marconi, he dead! Hospital going craaazy! Police come here! People telling them you running out trying to save patient?! Why!? You don’t know him! Now police want to talk to you! They take employee file! I know information wrong—bad address, no numbers, fake working visa—so they no find you today, but soon they find! I try to warn you. So sorry, Sienna.”
The call ended.
Langdon felt a fresh wave of remorse engulfing him. From the sounds of the message, Dr. Marconi had been permitting Sienna to work at the hospital. Now Langdon’s presence had cost Marconi his life, and Sienna’s instinct to save a stranger had dire implications for her future.
Just then a door closed loudly at the far end of the apartment.
She’s back.
A moment later, the answering machine blared. “Sienna, eez Danikova! Where you?!”
Langdon winced, knowing what Sienna was about to hear. As the message played, Langdon quickly put away the playbill, neatening the desk. Then he slipped back across the hall into the bathroom, feeling uncomfortable about his glimpse into Sienna’s past.
Ten seconds later, there was a soft knock on the bathroom door.
“I’ll leave your clothes on the doorknob,” Sienna said, her voice ragged with emotion.
“Thank you so much,” Langdon replied.
“When you’re done, please come out to the kitchen,” she added. “There’s something important I need to show you before we call anyone.”
Sienna walked tiredly down the hall to the apartment’s modest bedroom. Retrieving a pair of blue jeans and a sweater from the dresser, she carried them into her bathroom.
Locking her eyes with her own reflection in the mirror, she reached up, grabbed a clutch of her thick blond ponytail, and pulled down hard, sliding the wig from her bald scalp.
A hairless thirty-two-year-old woman stared back at her from the mirror.
Sienna had endured no shortage of challenges in her life, and although she had trained herself to rely on intellect to overcome hardship, her current predicament had shaken her on a deeply emotional level.
She set the wig aside and washed her face and hands. After drying off, she changed her clothes and put the wig back on, straightening it carefully. Self-pity was an impulse Sienna seldom tolerated, but now, as the tears welled up from deep within, she knew she had no choice but to let them come.
And so she did.
She cried for the life she could not control.
She cried for the mentor who had died before her eyes.
She cried for the profound loneliness that filled her heart.
But, above all, she cried for the future … which suddenly felt so uncertain.
CHAPTER 9
BELOWDECKS ON THE luxury vessel The Mendacium, facilitator Laurence Knowlton sat in his sealed glass cubicle and stared in disbelief at his computer monitor, having just previewed the video their client had left behind.
I’m supposed to upload this to the media tomorrow morning?
In his ten years with the Consortium, Knowlton had performed all kinds of strange tasks that he knew fell somewhere between dishonest and illegal. Working within a moral gray area was commonplace at the Consortium—an organization whose lone ethical high ground was that they would do whatever it took to keep a promise to a client.
We follow through. No questions asked. No matter what.
The prospect of uploading this video, however, had left Knowlton unsettled. In the past, no matter what bizarre tasks he had performed, he always understood the rationale … grasped the motives … comprehended the desired outcome.
And yet this video was baffling.
Something about it felt different.
Much different.
Sitting back down at his computer, Knowlton restarted the video file, hoping a second viewing might shed more light. He turned up the volume and settled in for the nine-minute show.
As before, the video began with the soft lapping of water in the eerie water-filled cavern where everything was bathed in a numinous red light. Again the camera plunged down through the surface of the illuminated water to view the silt-covered floor of the cavern. And again, Knowlton read the text on the submerged plaque:
IN THIS PLACE, ON THIS DATE,
THE WORLD WAS CHANGED FOREVER.
That the polished plaque was signed by the Consortium’s client was disquieting. That the date was tomorrow … left Knowlton increasingly concerned. It was what followed, however, that had truly set Knowlton on edge.
The camera now panned to the left to reveal a startling object hovering underwater just beside the plaque.