Synarchy Book 2: The Ascension Read online

  Marilyn chatted amicably with the locals, asking after family members and loved ones and the well-being of dogs and goats and the occasional chicken. The man from whom she had been buying fresh eggs for the last twelve years had just finished updating her on the condition of his favorite spotted hen when Marcello spoke. Mari paused, glancing up at her husband, and tucked her carton of newly purchased eggs beneath her arm. "How did that go?"

  "It was... fun." It had only been recently that Marcello had stopped being so much of a ghost in Kayla's life and had attempted to get to know her; or at, least the face, she showed them. Marcello found it difficult to stop the faint smile that touched his mouth. "She has your stubborn look."

  Neither could Mari stop the small, pleased smile that settled along her mouth. Kayla's existence—and now presence—had been trying, to say the very least, but Kayla was Marilyn’s daughter. She was Marilyn’s flesh and blood. Marilyn knew her in ways that no one else did, and she was connected to Kayla in ways that no one else would ever be. It pleased Marilyn that she had passed some of herself into the child that had been a stranger to her for so long. "It's funny how you bring that look out in both of us, don't you think?" she teased.

  "I just have that effect on the women in my life." Marcello winked, his smile deepening.

  SVT Construction was in the process of building a parking garage across the street. The lot was half finished. It was from the second level, absent of the construction workers that had called an early day that the assassin set his eye in the scope.

  "You love every minute of it, too." Mari stepped into Marcello, lifting onto the tips of her toes to kiss his cheek, and slipped her arm through his. The dry, cloying scent of fresh herbs and heavy, fragrant spices drew her further down the aisle, and she stopped a stall laden with sacks of seeds, leaves, and finely ground powders. Mari peered at the selection. "What did the two of you talk about?"

  "Where she wanted to go to college, and whether or not she wanted to join the company afterwards." His mouth twitched. "The conversations that our son tried to avoid."

  The assassin curled his finger around the trigger, slowly turning the weapon. The scope made a bull’s-eye over his target’s chest. He held his breath.

  Mari sifted her fingers through a mound of fennel seeds and smiled over her shoulder. "What did she say? Is she going to follow your footsteps to Harvard?" If a mother's love could turn a killer's heart, then maybe, just maybe, a father's could be softened; allowed to love another girl as completely and as fiercely as he had loved the daughter that he had lost.

  "She's considering it." The whole conversation had amused Marcello. Since coming into his father’s world, one of empires and crime, the time of his life spent in typical academia often felt like it had happened to someone else. "I told her I'd come when the two of you fly out to Boston to take a firsthand look."

  "I'll make the arrangements, then. And after the official tour of the campus, you can give us the real tour."

  The assassin, Matthew DeMarco could wait no longer. He squeezed the trigger, just once. He didn't bother to stick around to see if he'd hit his mark; he knew he had. Marilyn Pearl-Terenzio would die. Abandoning the gun, Matthew turned around and jogged away.

  Passing on the spices for now, she smiled at the young woman behind the stall, thanking her for her time through that simple gesture, and turned toward Marcello--but halfway through that turn, she jerked back. Behind her, a fine red mist that she couldn't see burst into the air. Marilyn's mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her brows furrowed, confusion and shock seeping into her features. She glanced down and saw blood welling in a round, perfectly formed hole in the front of her shirt. "Marcello...?" Her legs gave out, and she sagged against him.

  There had been moments in his life when he felt like the world was giving way beneath his feet. But nothing, nothing was quite as horrifically surreal as the moment he realized his wife had been shot. Shock spread across his face, his eyes dropping towards her chest that was rapidly staining red. No. "Mari?" He stepped into her, catching her weight in his arms. No. No. No. "Mari? Baby?" That smooth, calm voice was suddenly frantic. He sank to his knees and pulled her back from him so he could see her wound. The world didn't give; it shattered. He snapped his eyes up to the woman behind the stall. "Call an ambulance! Now! Tell them Isis is down. Do it!" For security purposes, Isis had been his wife’s code name. After a shocked pause the woman ran off to find the MP Officer that was stationed somewhere in the crowd.

  There was no burst of pain. There was no heat, lancing through her chest. She didn't feel anything but a distant tingling in her toes and a cold weight that spread through her ribs and pushed down on them. The world moved a little more slowly than it should have, and the sounds of the bazaar seemed distant; muffled. She could hear Marcello, though. His voice and the panic that edged it were perfectly clear. Mari dug her fingers into his shirt, holding herself up as she drew a deep breath. It made a wet, bubbling sound and hitched in her chest. She coughed, and realized what was happening when she took her hand from her mouth and saw that it was spotted with dark red blood. She was dying. "Marcello..."

  "Mari, stay with me." He pulled her closer and touched her cheek, his eyes desperate and pleading. "Hang on, Mari, just hang on. Please. Please. They're coming."

  There was no fear. There was no panic; not in her voice, at least. She sank into him, breathing in shallow, bubbling gasps as she wrapped her blood-flecked fingers around the hand on her cheek. "It's okay," she said softly, pressing her forehead to his. "You'll be okay."

  No, it wasn't. No, he wouldn't. Marcello clutched at her hand, willing her to stay with him. "Mari, don't." His voice cracked. He could feel the tears, wet and cool, rolling down his cheeks. "Don't leave me. You can't leave me. I can't do this without you."

  His arms were warm; so very warm, and wonderful. Her one regret was that she couldn't wrap her own arms around him, now, because the tingling was spreading and numbness was following in its slow, cold wake. It was all that she could do to keep hold of his hand; and to smile through the tears that rolled unchecked down her cheeks. "Yes, you can. I love you." Her voice trembled with emotion. So, too, did the corners of her smile. "I love you."

  "Baby, no. Mari, please." Marcello stared down into her eyes and felt like his heart was being ripped out of his chest. "I love you, too. Mari, I love you so much. Don't go."

  Marilyn’s breath came in shorter, desperate gasps. Her pulse tripped erratically in her throat. She felt the seconds stretch longer and longer between heartbeats, and the world went a little darker each beat. Marcello's face—that beautiful mouth and those eyes; how she loved the color of his eyes, like the soft, luminescent gray of the sky after rain—swam in and out of focus, and in a moment of desperate clarity, she clutched his face, wanting to see him clearly one more time. "It's okay," she whispered, nuzzling his face. She brushed his tears away with her thumb. It left a bright red streak down his cheek. She kissed him then, tasting the coppery tang of blood on the warmth of his lips, and gave him one more smile. "I love you, Marcello... I love..." The light went out of her eyes, and her hand slipped off of his cheek. She was gone.

  When those beautiful, expressive aquamarine eyes went blank, for a moment, Marcello was deathly still. When reality swiped its cold, feral claws through his heart, he wanted nothing more than to join her, because surely, he couldn't live with this pain. “Mari?” he whispered, and heard nothing. Gripping her to him tighter, Marcello’s silent tears became a heart-wrenching scream.

  §

  June 22, 1974 - 12:12 AM

  Alcyone Island

  Farmhouse of Marcello and Marilyn

  The silence was thick. It’s presence a weight, staining the air. Marcello sat in his wife’s drawing room, facing the garden. She loved sketching. When he built the house, he had filled up that room just for her. Her drawings were everywhere. He could almost still feel her; see her curled up in her chair in front of the window with pad and pencil in hand.


  Fourteen years ago, he had learned a few truths about the world. Those truths weren’t all about the evil that thirteen men and their alien masters did. Some were spiritual in nature and fascinating in their concepts. Some had amazing potential to be scientifically proven one day. One of them concerned death. Death was not the absence of life; it was a transformation of form. It sounded great. Until they took Mari away from him.

  Marcello closed his eyes against the fierce, painful assault that thought brought. The reality of it crushed his heart; an intense, choking pressure from which there was simply no escape. The Brotherhood had done this. He knew it was Them. Marilyn Terenzio was not a woman with enemies. The strike had been personal.

  He was not young, anymore. He was sixty-one years old. They had been married for thirty-one years, and it wasn’t enough. He didn’t want to hear at least you had that long. If anyone said that to him, they were going to eat a bullet. He shouldn’t have to live without her. It felt… wrong. He didn’t want to live without her. How could he walk the line that he had to walk without her there to keep him from the darkness? How could he be a father to their children, look into the eyes and faces of the lives that carried a very tangible, visual piece of her, and not fall apart?

  Marcello’s hand clenched into a fist that he pressed against his chest. He had spent the last fourteen years collecting information; learning what They controlled, how They controlled it, where their weak points were. It hadn’t been that difficult, once he knew where to look. For fourteen years, he sat on that information, allowing his uncle to play the game as his father instructed, biding his time because Matthew DeMarco had told him that his was a higher purpose.

  A higher purpose that, right now, Marcello didn’t give a fuck about. They were sorely mistaken if they thought that he would just accept this transgression without consequence. Marcello shot to his feet, went into the darkened living room and snatched up the phone. He stabbed the buttons.

  “Joey, Marcello. Meet me in my office first thing tomorrow morning-“

  A scream pierced the silence of the house. Marcello’s eyes jerked to the ceiling.

  Kayla.

  “Tomorrow morning, Joey,” Marcello said before he dropped the phone back into the cradle and went jogging up the stairs. He pushed open the door to Kayla’s room. Mari’s daughter was sitting up in her bed, her hands clenched in her long, blonde hair. Kayla frequently suffered from nightmares. The things the Brotherhood had done to her had left their mark, the demons of the past given free rein in the shadows of her dreams. Mari had been the one to calm her when this happened, but Mari wasn’t here anymore. Heart twisting, Marcello snapped on the dim light on her nightstand, and sat down on the edge of her bed.

  Kayla wasn’t his daughter. She was an enemy sent to kill him. But the only thought that filled Marcello’s head as he looked at her tortured face was that she was Mari’s daughter. “Shh, Kayla, I’m here.” She was trembling. Marcello found her hands and pulled them away from her hair. Kayla jerked when he touched her, snapping frantic eyes up to his own. She stared at him in the silence, uncertainty written across her features. Slowly, Marcello drew her against him, wrapping his arms protectively around her.

  At first, she resisted. After a moment, she sank into him, burrowing into his chest, and let her tears come, open and ragged. They soaked into his shirt. “They got Mom. They got Mom,” she whispered, barely audible.

  Marcello heard her. He wondered if Kayla had any idea what she was whispering, or if she was still too caught up in the scary place between a bad dream and a reality that might have been no better. Swallowing back the lump in his throat, he kissed the top of his step-daughter’s head, and simply held her. “I’m here, Kayla. I’m here.” He wouldn’t tell her it was all right, because it wasn’t. But, one way or another, he’d make it even.

  Chapter 5

  “We Terenzios are always pushing. Sometimes, we go too far.”

  -Liliana Terenzio

  June 22, 1974 - 7:44 AM

  Alcyone Island

  Dion Corporation Headquarters

  Marcello, stop and think.” High above Alcyone on the 52nd floor of the Dion Corporation building, Joey “The Mouth” Terenzio stood in front of Marcello’s desk. “It’s not time to start the war. That isn’t your job.”

  Marcello stood with his back to his younger cousin, staring out at the island paradise below. “They killed, Mari, Joey.” His voice was sharp. Anger hid the nearly overwhelming pain.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know they did.” Joey’s voice gentled. “But if you start this tit for tat, you know what’s gonna happen. It aint time yet.”

  “They took something from me, Joey. Something very precious.” Marcello slowly turned around. “I will not let that slide.”

  “Marc, you do this now you fuck it up for the future, and you know it.” Joey frowned, albeit gently at him. “You’re pivotal. What we are doing right now is pivotal for your grandchildren. You gotta think about them, too.”

  Rational thinking led him to the truth of Joey’s words. His purpose was simple; prepare his family for the Ascension. Stay off the radar, move the pieces into place so when the time came, checkmate would be inevitable. Except, he didn’t feel rational, because a short thirty-six hours ago, his wife of thirty years had died in his arms.

  “Vengeance won’t bring her back. And it won’t take the pain away,” Joey said.

  “No, it won’t.” His eyes darkened. “But it will make me feel better.”

  Joey frowned. Marcello wasn’t going to let this go, and to be honest, he truly couldn’t blame him. Nobody got away with fucking with family, period. “I think I’ve got something, then. It won’t take you to Mari’s killer, but if you want to take a swing at them, this is it.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I think I found Dr. Joseph Mengele.”

  Dr. Mengele was the man who had programmed Kayla against them. “Where?”

  “Ridgecrest, California. And it just so happens I’ve got to be in LA anyway to stick my foot in Jimmy Regace’s ass.” Jimmy Regace was the crime boss in LA. “How about you tag along and get some aggression out?”

  Marcello nodded once. “We’ll go after the funeral.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  §

  June 26, 1974 - 10:10 PM

  Ridgecrest, CA

  Home of Joseph Mengele

  Marcello sat at Dr. Mengele’s desk. Around him, three SVT Security Agents swept the house, making sure it was empty. He didn’t want to be interrupted when the good doctor and his wife came home.

  Marcello flipped open the planner, scanning the appointments listed in it. Finding nothing he wanted in there, he pushed the chair back and looked down at the drawers. A small label, in the upper left-hand corner on the bottom drawer read: Mannequin. Mannequin was the program Kayla had been a part of. Apparently, Mengele was not concerned about his wife becoming curious and rifling through his desk. Marcello went to pull open the drawer just to find it locked. He stood up, motioning one of his agents over to him. “Open it. The other two drawers too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It took the agent two minutes to pick the lock. Marcello sat back down in the doctor’s chair and started pulling out folders. Mengele was extremely organized. His notes on the Project were incredibly detailed—and horrific. Project Mannequin was started by the NSA on underground bases in Britain. The objective of the Project was to create a better kind of espionage agent and assassin; one that would last longer mentally and not be plagued by issues of conscience. They experimented in creating these agents by using forms of mind control and genetic manipulation programming. Joseph Mengele was an expert in trauma-based mind control.

  The ideal patient was five years old or younger. To properly program the mind, first, it needed to shatter. This was done by systematically traumatizing the child, using such means as burying them alive with snakes, or taking them to the edge of death, just to revive them. Once the mind shattere
d into fragments, each child could then be programmed for a different use. Sometimes, an electromagnetic grid was incorporated into the brain to assist with programming. It was called the Mengele Grid.

  The more Marcello read, the more nauseated and furious he became, until his hand nearly shook. That a government that claimed to be a democracy would do that to children—to people—who, ninety-nine percent of the time, were not willing participants, was as disgusting as it was infuriating. Forcing himself to calm, Marcello set the doctor’s general notes aside and moved to the section marked Patients, organized by month and year. He selected the date Kayla would have been involved, and found her folder to be one of the thickest in the drawer.

  Like most of the other folders on the doctor’s “patients,” there were tape recordings, photographs, and pages upon pages of notes. It was an envelope marked From Deucalion that made Marcello catch his breath. Deucalion was Kayla’s biological father, the man who had raped and then drugged Marilyn so that she had forgotten it ever happened. That bomb had been dropped on their world nearly twenty years ago, and Marcello had tracked Deucalion down and killed him. Deucalion’s head was sitting in the cellar underneath the Governor’s Mansion on the Island, next to a few of Marcello’s father’s enemies that had pushed SVT too far.

  February 17st, 1957

  Doctor Mengele,

  I hope you are still finding America to your liking. We are very pleased to have you as the lead scientist of a program that is so important to the future of the world. We’re not so much different from Hitler, are we?