Dawn of the Epoch

Chapter LIV - Shopping Spree

The quartet made their way to Dodoma, the Tanzanian capital where Tiyana and Hongo reported their passports stolen at the respective embassies. There would be a long wait for the replacements. The doctored ones that they used in Mozambique were missing the Tanzanian entry stamp, but they could probably be safely doctored one final time, especially if they only wanted to cross the border into the Congo. For more extensive travel, Virgil would need new identification. His Tibetan fake was the least believable and the most doctored. They would postpone dealing with it, however, until a later date. At their hotel, they planned their next move.

“A tracking device?” Tiyana asked.

“That’s right. Undetectable. Aldenduenum technology. If Shenouda is with Ghaelvord, we will find him.” Virgil said confidently.

“What if she isn’t with him? What if she tells him about our encounter?” Tiyana asked.

“He might send her away if he knows. He would probably guess that I tagged her. He knows, however, that he does not have the equipment or the technicians to find and remove the tracer. Even still, if we can find her, we can find him. She knows where he is.” Virgil responded.

“But what if he kills her? Look, I don’t want to be the one to say this, but it’s what we’re all thinking.” Tiyana asked.

“If he kills her, then he could hide, but I doubt that he will. I saw the way she moved. I saw her eyes. There is a virus. The Aldenduenum fostered its creation long ago, and then sealed it up. See, they found ways to prolong their lives. They lived, often, for hundreds of years. At one point, they invented a symbiotic virus that put the body into a static state. No aging, and no death, at least for the measurable future until they shut the field trials down. The problem was that the body needed fuel, organic fuel. Furthermore, no animal or synthetic versions of the fuel could be created. Those infected needed human blood to survive. They tried for centuries to develop a viable substitute, but, after enough time lapsed, the program came under heavy scrutiny from the ethics councils of the time. Eventually, they shut it down and boxed it up.”

“This sounds familiar, like Bram Stoker.” Tiyana said with an incredibly skeptical look on her face.

Virgil laughed, “Like most legends, it changed over the centuries. The vampires of old Slavic lore mixed with Coptic Christian influences courtesy of the Ottoman Empire were, to be sure, inspired by the nosferatu outbreak in Western Europe around the beginning of the dark ages.”

“The nosferatu outbreak?” Tiyana asked, puzzled.

Virgil answered. “The dark ages were no coincidence. I spent the better part of a few centuries exterminating every last remnant of that infernal disaster. I believe the outbreak occurred innocently enough. Somehow, someone found a trace of the virus that the Aldenduenum left behind. Without proper control, it turned into an absolute debacle. Shenouda’s situation is different. Ghaelvord does not plan to spread the virus indiscriminately. No, he plans on using it to his advantage. She may be contagious, but I believe that he used some of the control measures that the Aldenduenum had in place when they first created the damnable thing. He would not touch the virus if he did not know how to rein it in. He is too calculating and too methodical for that.”

“So why wouldn’t he kill her?” Hunter asked.

“She will not tell him about our encounter.” Virgil responded cryptically.

“And how would you know that?” Hunter asked.

Virgil responded. “Ghaelvord did not send her to meet with us. Why would he? It makes no sense. She must have come on her own. She must have figured out that we were in the city and visited us. From what you have told us of your conversation, it does not sound like she came with any particular agenda.”