Chapter 998
Gemma looked up. “You.”
“Me,” Skye said, sitting down. “The bad sister. The murderer. The bully.”
“They tried to kill me,” Gemma whispered. “Arthur promised I would be safe. He said I just had to cry on camera.”
“Arthur is dead,” Skye said. “And the people he worked for don’t leave loose ends. You’re a loose end, Vanessa.”
Gemma flinched at her real name. “Help me. Please. I don’t want to die.”
“Tell me about the map,” Skye said. “The coordinates.”
“I don’t know!” Gemma cried. “Arthur just said… he said the map was a body.”
Skye paused. “A body?”
“He said the Administrator was obsessed with ‘the anatomy of the earth,’” Gemma stammered. “He said the map isn’t geography — it’s acupuncture. The coordinates correspond to pressure points on a human body projected onto the mountain range.”
Skye’s mind raced. She had studied traditional medicine in her previous life, a hobby she had picked up to please Liam’s grandmother. Meridians.
𝗧rе𝗇𝖽𝘪𝗇𝗀 n𝗈𝘷e𝘭𝗌 o𝘯 𝗴a𝗅ոo𝘷𝗲𝘭𝗌.c𝘰𝘮
“And the key?” Skye asked, setting the Ouroboros key from the doll on the table between them. “Did Arthur tell you what this opens?”
Gemma stared at it blankly. “I don’t know. He just said the doll was important. He never let me touch it. He said the ‘heart of the snake’ held the secret.”
Skye frowned. “The heart?” She picked up the key. It was shaped like a snake devouring its own tail — an Ouroboros. But snakes didn’t carry their hearts in their heads. She ran her thumb slowly along the body of the brass serpent.
“Parker,” Skye murmured into her comms. “Run a density scan on this key.”
A moment later, Parker’s voice crackled in her ear. “Skye, there’s a hollow cavity in the head of the snake. It’s not solid brass.”
Skye examined the key again. The snake’s head was thick, its jaws clamped shut. “Alistair. Knife.”
Alistair handed her his tactical blade. Skye carefully worked the tip along the seam of the snake’s head. It popped open.
Inside, curled tightly, was a tiny scrap of microfilm.
“Get a microscope,” Skye ordered.
Ten minutes later, Parker had a digital magnifier set up in the hallway. The image on the screen was grainy, black and white.
It was a photograph of Dead Man’s Peak. Superimposed over the mountain was a sketch of a human spine, and at the base of the “skull” — a rock formation near the summit — was a single marked point.
A specific tree. A twisted pine that resembled a vertebra.
“The Atlas,” Skye whispered. “The bone that holds up the head. That’s the entrance.”
Her phone rang. Julian.
Skye answered on speaker. “You have five seconds to explain why the assassination order came from your server.”
“Because he hacked me,” Julian’s voice was weak, barely above a whisper. “The Administrator has backdoors into my system that I didn’t know about. I’m purging them now.”
“Or you’re covering your tracks,” Skye said.
.
.