The Sixth Seal полностью

Zelda’s recent coming-out party worried Tobias greatly. He always knew that she’d eventually start asking questions about her father and her future role atop the Sixth Seal ladder. Tobias needed to keep a close eye on her. Though he was proud of the woman she had become, he knew she could also become a threat to him and also a liability.

He drove himself around to the left-hand side of the room and headed straight for an oversized double-door refrigerator. Tobias struggled but was able to push himself up and stand in place, a feat few had witnessed in some time. He placed his hand on the fridge’s palm reader until he heard a soft click. Then he opened both doors, basking in the near-freezing temperature of the escaping air.

He missed the frigid air of Antarctica.

Unlike a kitchen refrigerator, this one didn’t have spacious shelving to store large grocery items. This fridge had been designed for a particular purpose. A vault-like door took up the top third, and it held a prize more valuable than all of Krause Global.

He dropped his eyes from the special containment unit and down to the rest of the fridge.

Tobias extended his forefinger and placed it on another identification tool. This one didn’t scan the unique friction ridges in his skin. A small needle quickly jabbed his fingertip and scanned his blood. Three seconds later, a small click announced that the sample had passed the screening and the drawer had unlocked.

Tobias Krause didn’t take any chances when it came to his medicine.

He had tried to take multiple doses at once, with the hopes of decelerating his condition more aggressively, but it almost killed him. He should have known better. It had killed most of his test subjects in Germany, too. Those that survived became permanently comatose. Now, he used their bodies as permanent test subjects.

He pulled open the drawer and smiled when he was illuminated in an undulating golden aura. The journal would have transformed this archaic concoction into a masterpiece. Technological advancements were what they were missing when Project Fleshgod was founded. Tobias understood that. It hadn’t been their science — the technology of their era had blocked them.

But no longer. Tobias had no choice but to do something drastic. The Reliquary wasn’t the only historical discovery the Sixth Seal had made over the years. Shortly after the war ended, something phenomenal had been found in the Amazon by Mengele’s private military, a tactical element that had eventually been absorbed into the Sixth Seal. The discovery had been the main reason he’d preemptively left the Underworld.

And it is there I must go. Not only was the environment as deadly as Antarctica’s, but the rainforest contained countless other dangers. So be it.

He ran his fingers over the drawerful of auto-injector pens and mumbled the words to Happy Birthday.

“Happy birthday to me…”

He picked up a pen, removed the cap, and jammed the tip into his neck. The serum was jettisoned into his bloodstream, making him fall to his knees and gasp for air. But as soon as it started, it was over. Tobias stood on less shaky legs. Regrettably, the youthful feeling of the medicine only lasted a few days.

It used to last months.

“Happy birthday to me…”

He shut the fridge and reluctantly returned to his wheelchair. He needed to keep up appearances, even for the few days that the wheelchair wasn’t needed. He drove himself back to his desk, passing several framed documents as he did. One of them, in particular, filled him with great pride. It was a diploma for a Ph.D. in anthropology that he had received from the University of Munich in 1935.

He wheeled himself behind his desk and pressed the button for the elevator again. It reversed direction and rose away from the floor. As it did, he glanced at the diploma again and silently read the name. The certificate did not belong to 95-year-old Tobias Wolfgang Krause.

It belonged to 112-year-old Josef Rudolf Mengele.

“Happy birthday, Todesengel…”

He still loved that nickname.

Tobias Krause had been a useful alias for Josef Mengele since the war ended. He had visited the best surgeons in the world. After several excruciating procedures, he’d been physically transformed into Dietrich Krause’s late son, a man who had died in an automobile accident outside Berlin. It had helped immensely that Mengele and Tobias already resembled one another.

The alien DNA-based serum had also helped.

It had slowed down the “time-related deterioration of the physiological functions necessary for survival and fertility,” his aging, significantly. It allowed him to stave off death for a little while longer.

No one alive knew the truth.

Not Zelda.

Even Ulrich had been unaware.

He’d used his best operatives to silently eliminate those who had discovered the truth, disguising the assassinations as something else entirely.