The Anubis Plague полностью

Mom would be proud. The thought was short-lived, though. Would she? The discovery had led to some very bad people trying to do very bad things.

The stone tube that had housed the scroll for centuries laid on the table just a few inches from the relic found within it. Baahir could easily use the tube to destroy the glass pinning the scroll in place. Then, all he’d have to do was tear up the artifact. The idea had been short-lived. Baahir could never do such a thing. He didn’t have the heart to destroy the scroll, no matter how foul the subject it contained was.

“Dr. Hassan?”

Baahir took his eyes off the scroll long enough to see a thin, hunched man standing off to this right. Salem was the oldest person here by several decades. While Baahir’s conversations with the elder had been brief so far, he found the man to be kind and incredibly knowledgeable.

“You don’t believe in all of this, do you, Salem?”

The other man’s eyes narrowed. “I do.”

“Really? You believe that this scroll,” Baahir motioned to the Book of the Dead, “contains directions to a place to help replicate the Biblical plague? The ‘Temple of Anubis?’”

Salem’s face was stoic and unemotional. “I believe in what Khaliq believes.”

“But why?” Baahir asked, turning in his stool.

“Because the man terrifies me, and I find it better to be on his side than oppose it.”

Oh. Baahir had thought it was because Salem shared the same radical beliefs. But, no, it wasn’t that at all. He identified with Khaliq as a way to ensure his survival.

“How long have you been working for him?”

Salem’s eyes fell. “Too long.”

Baahir didn’t push it. It was plain to see that the subject was a rough one to talk about. But maybe the old man could help Baahir understand something.

“What about me?”

Salem regained some composure. “What about you?”

“Why am I here?”

“Your sister—”

“Besides that,” he interrupted. “There has to be more to it than just being a shield against my sister's sword. Khaliq doesn’t like my family. That much is easy to see. Every time he says my last name, his voice is laced with disdain — Ifza too.”

Baahir’s eyes opened wide. “Is there any information, unrelated to the plague, that we have access to down here?”

“There might be something, yes.” Salem thought it over. “We have looked into the Ayad family tree extensively. There could be something useful, I suppose.”

It’s worth a shot.

Baahir stood. “Show me.”

Salem led him over to a computer that was in desperate need of an upgrade. The load time was slower than Salem’s footspeed, which was hard to believe. Once it booted up, Salem walked Baahir through the process of pulling up the research that had been done over the years.

Decades of research.

“Woah,” Baahir said, “you weren’t kidding.”

“Yes, we’ve been very thorough.”

Baahir scrolled down to the origin — the first name listed.

“Anubis… Of course, it says Anubis.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

Baahir sat back in the creaky folding chair. “Because Anubis wasn’t real! Sure, maybe there was a person who believed he was a god, but it wasn’t actually Anubis in the flesh. He,” Baahir jabbed a finger at the screen, “was just another man.”

“A man far more intelligent than anyone of his time.”

Yes, that too. Baahir also believed that whoever this person was, he was far beyond the human understanding of science at that time in history. After “Anubis,” Baahir didn’t recognize a single name — and there were too many of them to sort through. Each person had a subfolder with in-depth information about who they were and what they did.

So, Baahir decided to start from the other end of history. He scrolled up to two names. Khaliq Ayad and Ifza Ayad. The modern descendants all possessed pictures next to their names too. Their father had been a man named Aaftab Iyaan Ayad. Aaftab had four siblings — one girl in the bunch — that were quite a distance apart from one another age-wise.

Baahir mentally did the math. Twenty-two years.

He recited the brothers’ and lone sister’s names in order from eldest to youngest. “Aaftab, Jabbar, Haamid, Galib, and Kamaria.”

Baahir scrolled past the names and pictures, but paused, seeing something odd. He wheeled the mouse back up a bit. The one woman looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. Based on her age, she’d be in her sixties today. Baahir clicked on Kamaria’s name, and it brought up her file. Baahir was hoping to see something about the woman he recognized. Maybe he had met her before in Egypt — at a conference perhaps?

“Who are you?” he asked himself.

Her file contained a bevy of information, but it concluded after her death. He was about to close her file but stopped. His right hand rapidly began to shake the mouse cursor all over the screen. The only tidbit of information Kamaria’s file had that intrigued him, besides her familiar face, was the dates of her birth and death.

Both are the same as Mom’s.