Authors: Angella Graff
He hesitated in waking Abby; she was exhausted from the drive as well as the fear and emotions coursing through her. The trip was only beginning, and if someone was shielding Yehuda from Mark, things were going to get ugly.
Eventually, Abby stirred and cracked one eye open. “Are we here?” she asked in a groggy voice.
Mark gave a short nod. “The hospital gates are locked. I'm going to have to come up with a way inside without alerting anyone to our presence.”
Abby was growing more alert by the minute. She rubbed her eyes and stretched, peering around the area. They were in a back alley, surrounded by two tall buildings, and just down the way sat the locked back gate to the hospital.
“I suppose it would be pointless to try and just climb the fence,” Abby said with a shrug.
“Probably so,” Mark said, closing his eyes in thought. “We need to remember this isn't a prison, nor is it a hospital containing the mentally unstable, so security isn't going to be high. There's a chance we could find a place to slip in where cameras aren't placed, and all we really need to do is get inside the doctor's office.”
“Are you absolutely sure he has something to do with this?” Abby asked.
“No,” Mark answered her honestly. “However, I know the doctor is... special.”
“Special?”
Mark struggled to explain what he meant in a way that Abby would be able to comprehend. “You have to think of life beyond just human consciousness, and what lies beyond can sometimes touch people in their lives. That touch can sometimes mean a curse, like what happened to me, and to Yehuda. Sometimes that touch is simply just a touch, leaving people with a spark. Because of my curse, I can see those sparks, like little flames inside a person's soul. The doctor has such a spark, and with his interest in Yehuda, I'm afraid he's my number one suspect.”
Abby stared at him with wide eyes. “So there are others like you?”
“Not exactly like me. In all of my years I've not met a person who could not die, however there have been many who possess certain abilities that could only be gifted from what lies beyond.”
Abby rubbed her face with her hands and shook her head. “God, I wonder if any of it will ever make sense.”
“Don't count on it,” Mark said a little sardonically. “I'm over two-thousand years old, and capable of very strange things, and I still don't understand it all.” With that, Mark opened up his car door and got out.
Abby followed suit, but stopped Mark as he started towards the hospital. “Do you have any means of... you know... defense?”
Mark quirked an eyebrow. “Defense?”
“Well I hate to say it,” Abby hesitated, “but you know maybe like a gun, or something? I mean, you said earlier that you might have to kill.”
“I don't need guns, Abby,” Mark said gravely, and with that, he started away.
Abby followed close behind, but stayed back when Mark held out a hand for her to stop. He nodded for her to slip back against the building, her figure darkened by the deep shadows of the late night, and he moved forward to the fence.
The fencing around the hospital was rod iron, which Mark didn't view as a problem. What he did find problematic were the security cameras lining the top. There were only a few of them, on each corner, but it was clear they were high tech and had a wide range.
Mark knew their images had already likely been captured, however that wasn't the problem. By the time security viewed the tapes, Mark and Abby would be long gone. The only problem Mark had was entering the hospital without getting noticed.
Mark judged the area from the fence to the hospital doors to be about two hundred yards. It was a distance he could cover, if he tried, in a matter of seconds on his own, and a minute if he took Abby along with him.
Pulling out his cell, Mark went forward with his plan. He switched the device on and went to his menu where he had the number to the security desk saved. He pushed send and waited for the response.
“Security,” came the greeting.
When Mark spoke, his voice was high, panicked and worried. “I'm pulled over by your front gate,” he said in a breathy tone. “There's a woman by her car, and two men... they're... I don't know. She's screaming. Please send someone out. I called the police but I don't know if they'll get here in time. God, they have a knife or something oh God oh...” and then Mark hung up.
Abby ran up to Mark, her eyes wide. “What did you just do?”
Mark switched his phone off and shoved it into his pocket. “Created a distraction.” He pointed to the front doors where three security officers were bursting out. Mark gave a sideways glance to Abby, grabbed the bars of the rod iron fence and wrenched them apart.
With little effort, the bars were pulled to the side, providing a hole big enough for both Mark and Abby to climb through. As Mark expected, Abby was frozen in surprise, so he reached out, took her arm and pulled her through.
“You can sit in shock later. Right now we need to move,” Mark said, and with that, put his arm around Abby and pushed her to run at a speed that few were capable of. They made it to the front doors and slipped inside virtually unnoticed. Mark stood behind the wall, glancing out front where he could see the security officers at the gate, looking around desperately for a woman in distress.
“Let's go,” Mark said.
Abby was in stunned silence, out of breath from being dragged across the lawn, but she complied and hurried down the hall towards the stairs. The doctor's office was on the sixth floor, Mark recalled, and there weren't any patient rooms, but they still ran the risk of running into nurses or other personnel.
Mark was now out of tricks aside from using force to get past a person, and at the moment he wanted to avoid that at all costs. Pressing a finger to his lips to signal quiet, the pair tiptoed up the stairs, flight after flight until, completely out of breath, they reached the doctor's floor.
“What now?” Abby gasped in a whisper.
Mark peered out of the small window, straining to see left and right. From the limited view, Mark didn't see anyone, so he pushed the door open and they walked into the hall. “We need to get into his office as quickly as possible,” Mark breathed.
Abby gave a slight nod. “Okay. You know where it is?”
“I went up there a few times, but I'm going to have to remember it by touch,” Mark said. He had gone there, but as a blind man, and had navigated his way with his cane and steps. Closing his eyes, Mark put one hand on the wall and began to remember.
Luckily for the pair of them, the office wasn't far. They turned the corner and Mark stopped directly in front of the doctor's office door. Opening his eyes, he reached for the handle and gave it a turn, but didn't expect to find it open.
“Can any of your magic powers unlock doors?” Abby asked in a hushed, shaking tone.
“They're far from magic, and no, they can't,” Mark said irritably. “Hopefully this won't make too much noise,” he added, and then with a hard push, Mark turned the handle with the lock and snapped it clean off.
The noise wasn't as loud as he thought it was going to be, but the snap echoed through the hall and the pair froze. The door was open, but neither one of them dared to move for several moments. When it became clear that no one had heard them, Mark pushed the door open and attempted to set the handle in the open hole to look as though it was still attached.
“It's dark,” Abby complained. “Can you see anything?”
“I don't need to,” Mark said. His lie had come in handy more than once, learning to navigate the world as a blind man, and taking Abby's arm, he led the way through the lobby of the doctor's office, to his private quarters. That door, thankfully was unlocked, and a low light from the desk was burning.
There were no windows, which Mark found curious, but it didn't matter right then. The moment Mark stepped into the office he could feel it, the presence of the beyond, as he often called it. It was touching everything in this office, and Mark began to suspect that this doctor was a lot more powerful, or at least more in touch with the beyond, than Mark had originally thought.
“Where do we start?” Abby asked. “I suspect we don't have a lot of time.”
“I think we're okay,” Mark said as he turned the lock on the door. “As long as security didn't see us come in, which they should not have, we have all the time in the world. It won't be until they review the security tapes that there was a break in.”
“Oh,” she said quietly. “Ben is going to kill me.”
“Likely so,” Mark said with a short laugh, “but that is a problem for a new day. We need to start looking for information about this doctor. Asclepius, it sounds so familiar to me.”
“Greek God of medicine,” Abby said absently as she sat down behind the doctor's computer and turned it on. “That mean anything to you?”
Mark frowned. “Not particularly. The name isn't common, but a lot of the deity names from the old Greek and Roman mythologies have transferred into surnames passed down through the centuries.”
Abby gave a little shrug and began tapping on keys. “I don't know what I was hoping to find other than a password screen,” Abby said with a sigh. “If Ben were here, he could probably figure this out.”
“Unfortunately my knowledge does not extend much into the world of computers. Something I should remedy, once Yehuda is back in my custody and we've left this country.”
“You're going to leave the country?” Abby asked, her voice high. “Why?”
“We've just broken into a hospital and are attempting to steal medical records,” Mark said, his voice slightly patronizing. “There is no escaping the need to flee the country. There are detectives who already find me suspect, your brother included. My actions are far from innocent, and I cannot risk having myself or Yehuda incarcerated.”
Abby licked her lips and pushed the chair away from the desk. “I can't believe I'm doing this,” she muttered. She opened up the top drawer of the desk to find prescription pads, a few notebooks with scribbled phone numbers and addresses, but not much else.
Moving to the second drawer, she opened it up, and what she saw made her pause. With wide eyes, she held a piece of paper out to Mark with trembling fingers. “It's Ben's address and phone number.”
Mark took the paper from Abby's hands and read it. “Alright,” he said shortly. “What else is in there?”
Abby pulled out a few composition notebooks and flipped through the pages. “I don't know what this is. It looks like... a medical journal, maybe? Patient J, and then a bunch of stuff I don't recognize at all. It looks like formulas and stuff.” She handed it over to Mark who opened the book to the first page.
“Patient J first arrived comatose, and MRI reveals high brain activity but no response to outer stimuli. Patient's pupils are unresponsive to change of light, and pain sensors appear to be numb. Attempt at IV was unsuccessful for several days until patient started to display signs of dehydration. IV administered with fluids, no apparent negative reaction. Was able to draw blood to run through labs.” Mark read aloud, finding the language layman. It was obviously a personal journal for the doctor, one written in haste, and simple.
Mark flipped on for a few pages until he froze, his eyes stuck on a passage that made his heart start to pound. “Results from the lab have returned, confirming our suspicions about this man. Body remains like a time capsule, the bacteria and genetic code are similar, except un-evolved, dating back to c. 32 BCE, matching the last data records I possess from that time period. It is A's assumption that this man is called Yehuda, commonly known as Judas Iscariot. From what A's people believe, he has a companion somewhere, likely nearby. A believes his people will try and take him, must keep security at a maximum. They've been making moves a lot lately, and it will only be a matter of time before they try and take him. I believe the blind man is this Yehuda's companion but A disagrees. Will consult with detective this afternoon.”