A young man wakes up in the desert. The wreckage of an ambulance lies smashed against a boulder and charred to a crisp. By the stitches on his head and face, he assumes he was the patient. But why was an ambulance driving through a desert? Where wa...
The brig was more comfortable than she thought at first, although she would rather sleep standing up than on that musty bed where Ace was slumbering like a baby. He no longer seemed worried about anything; he had made sure Skyler was not there, in the rubble, and losing Skyler's smell to the fire had made him go to his hideout in the garden, where he'd buried everything his master gave him as a toy, digging it up to find again that paternal aroma. That legendary stupidity was about to save both their lives and unfold a whole new range of questions.
But this was not the time.
Her failure to put up any resistance and her lack of weapons had granted her a momentary benefit of the doubt, allowing her to keep her belongings until further notice. She made sure no one was watching her before pulling out the magazine, Atlas Aid Uncut, which seemed to address issues about hiking, scuba diving, and other types of adventure. On the cover appeared the perspective of a city with a large mountain in the distance. She leafed through the pages of the magazine and found exactly the kind of articles that she would expect. She did not know where to start looking, but she knew the key should be visible to someone who didn't know there was a key in the first place; not only that, there should be a primitive signal, something to draw one's attention right off the bat. And that could be nowhere else but the cover, which she scrutinized to the inch.
She went back to the title. Atlas Aid Uncut, she said to herself. She thought that through for a moment, and then she saw it suddenly, as sharp as ever: it was an anagram for Atticus Landau. That was the signal, but not the key. Again, on the cover, she stared at that striking long, white monument imposed on the skyline over the tile roofs. It was the monument to Victor Manuel, and so the city was none other than Rome. On one side of the image of the mountain was the words: "Italian Journey Volume IV." And below, in a sub-title: "Whatever one needs to prepare for the ascension of the Vulcano Laziale and enjoy from its top the unique sights of the Capital of Julius Caesar."
Why did that caption not refer to the city as "the eternal city," or simply as Rome? Its clear intention was to emphasize the concept of Caesar. She connected that quickly with the idea of shift cipher, also called Caesar cipher, since it was the primary method he used to encrypt documents in ancient Rome. It was a basic method of cryptography that consisted of moving each letter three spaces to the right, making an A become a D, and so on. Including the number IV in the title seemed to indicate that one should move each letter not three, but four spaces. However, using that sort of encryption would make each word in the encrypted text devolve into a bunch of unconnected letters, and every magazine article was written in the most polished English. The message, therefore, had to be hidden not behind every word, but behind just some words. Or rather, behind only some letters.
Back to the cover, her eye caught the word "Capital," the only word in the subtitle that shouldn't begin with a capital letter. Perhaps that was it. Maybe she just needed to decrypt the capital letters in the issue. She had something. Why not? She took a long piece of toilet paper and a pen from her jacket and wrote on it methodically all the capital letters she found in order, including stops and commas wherever they appeared after a word with a capital letter. Once she jotted it all down, she wrote it again, making the decipherment and applying spaces as the letters conformed to words. Those complex and yet simple actions ended up untangling a message which then presented to her as obvious and insulting as the issue itself:
I HOPE YOU ARE ABLE TO DECIPHER THIS MESSAGE. IF I HAVE NOT CONTACTED YOU IN A MORE DIRECT WAY, IT IS BECAUSE THIS IS THE ONLY MEANS THAT I HAVE FOUND ABLE TO OVERCOME THE SECURITY FILTERS AROUND YOU. YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT YOU HAVE BEEN WATCHED ALL THIS TIME, GOING BACK TO WHEN YOU WERE TWO AND MOM, YOU, AND I CAME TO AMERICA. YOU SHOULD ALSO KNOW THAT THE PEOPLE WATCHING YOU ARE VERY DANGEROUS, AND THAT YOU HAVE HAD YOUR SKIN IN THE GAME FOR MANY YEARS. IN ORDER TO GET IN TOUCH WITH ME, YOU MUST DIAL THE NUMBER ON THE BACK COVER AND SAY THAT YOU WANT THEM TO WRITE AN ISSUE ABOUT HIKING ON MOUNT KAILASH. IF YOU DECIDE TO CALL ME TO HELP YOU ESCAPE, PREPARE A BAG WITH ONLY THE ESSENTIALS, AND ABOVE ALL ELSE, DO NOT TALK TO ANYONE ABOUT THIS. AS SOON AS YOU MAKE THE CALL, A COUNTDOWN WILL BEGIN, AND YOU WILL BE GIVEN A SERIES OF INSTRUCTIONS THAT HAVE TO BE FOLLOWED TO THE LETTER. ONCE YOU MAKE THE CALL, THERE WILL BE NO TURNING BACK. THOSE WHO ARE WATCHING YOU WILL TRY TO HUNT US DOWN. THAT IS WHY, IF YOU DECIDE TO ESCAPE, YOU NEED TO KEEP A COOL HEAD AND BE BRAVE. YOUR BROTHER HAS NOT FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOU AND I HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON.
The magazine slid down to the bed. She didn't really know what to say, or what to think. Furthermore, that name, Atticus Landau. She had already heard it before. Not from Skyler, but who? Not any colleague or neighbor of his. Not even from Colt. She thought she could even make out his face. Maybe from a picture at Skyler's, maybe even from the news...
The dog snored and tore her away from her lethargy. She stood up and approached the bars.
"Hey, excuse me."
The jailer walked reluctantly closer.
"What now?"
"I want to make my phone call."
She was handcuffed and carried up to the phone booth, on which she dialed by heart the barcode numbers. She didn't hear many waiting beeps until someone picked up the receiver on the other side.
"Atlas Aid Uncut's customer service. How can I help you?"
"Uhm...could you please write about trekking on Mount Kailash?"
"Wait a moment."
She heard an instrumental version of Born to Run's first few seconds as holding music. The jailer grew impatient.
"Miss, I'll give you half a minute."
"Wait, for God's sake."
At that moment, the receiver spoke, this time with a much more masculine voice.
"Hello."
"Are you Atticus Landau?"
"Who's asking?"
That was certainly Atticus Landau's voice. She knew that, despite not knowing why she knew it. Without an iota of doubt in her blood, she hung on to that knowledge like a sunbeam surrounded by death.
"I'm Dr. Erika Light. I've been working with your brother on the King Acid Project."
"One moment, I'll put him on..."
The receiver went silent for a few seconds, and then the silence filled suddenly with a word. A word which, for her, meant the whole world.
"Hello."
Light felt catatonic for a moment, as though she had just heard the voice of a dead man.
"Skyler? Is that you?"
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