Chapter Three
OuroborosChapter Three
Work over and dinner done, Irene sat at the dining table staring at her phone. It had been two days now without contact from her brother and she was extremely worried. After yesterday’s awakening she was a little relieved that she didn’t have to explain anything to her brother coming home late feeling like she had been hit by a truck. But now after another day of work over there was still no sign of him, not even a phone call.
She had called her brother’s friends if any of them had heard from him but nobody had seen him since the day before, the same day that she had last seen him. The evening was coming and she was ready to go to the police station to give a missing persons report. She had wanted to go in earlier but at the same time she didn’t want to be that kind of sister, that family member that immediately went to the police to file a report of a missing person. The self doubt of when it was appropriate to go and do so ate her inside.
Finally deciding to make a move she grabbed her umbrella and shoulder bag that was always stacked ready to go with her most essentials; laptop, chargers, wallet, basic toiletries. The long nights at the lab often meant she needed to be ready to stay or go at any time with little notice so she had her bag always prepared.
Flicking the kitchen lights off and ducking into her room to check that everything was off before leaving she sat down for a moment to take it all in. Not a few seconds later she heard the front door code lock jingle, the door open and close. Like a spring she was off the chair she had zoned out on and making her way to the front door.
“Isaac?!”
“I’m home sister.”
She turned the corner to the hallway across the living room to see her brother’s back to her, taking his shoes off. Her worried heart was at the brim of exploding and she could feel her eyes well up with tears as the terror and anxiousness she had been holding was about to be released in one fell swoop. She told him off as she approached him while internally so relieved she couldn’t be angry right now.
“You idiot how could you disappear for two days without telling me! You know I was just about to go to the police and-”
“I know I know I’m sor-” her twin brother Isaac turned around and as their eyes met each other in that instant both stopped walking and talking. Deep within her soul, both their souls, recognition hit them. The tears that had been forming at her eyes now spread down her cheeks, and for the first time in a very long time she felt truly heartbroken.
“No… not you. Why you?! Why out of all people you?!”
Taken aback from her shouting but also from the shock of the reveal, Isaac stood there for just a second in silence. Maybe even he felt just a little regret and sadness about this situation, if his soul still possessed an ounce of feeling, a shred of a heart that wasn’t petrified into stone cold nothingness.
“To think that my own twin sister would be The Lock, the search will have ended even before it began,” he said and looked at Irene’s now cold face the few tears in her eyes having now stopped their flow. “Oh you sweet thing, are those tears for me?”
Her face hardening further she stared at her former twin brother now The Door, her muscles tensing and readying herself at the same time.
“These were for who you once were!”
It was a blur of motion as the bag strapped to Irene’s shoulder fell and the vase on the coffee table was flung towards Isaac’s face. Managing to duck the ceramic bomb it shattered behind him with water and flowers flung across the wall and floor. At the instant of the vase exploding there was a loud whack as Irene had bridged the distance between the two and hit Isaac with her elbow to his right temple. Isaac stumbled and his eyes began to circle in his head as he held onto the wall for balance.
“Get in here! She is here!” Isaac shouted before Irene kicked him over the forehead with a quick axe kick sending Isaac to the ground with speed and he was immediately unconscious. Instinctively she knelt down and grabbed his wallet and phone knowing they would be in his front pockets. Through the front door in the hallway she could hear loud steps echoing, rapidly coming closer. It was a small three story apartment building and they were on the second floor.
She dragged the cupboard by the door down onto the floor and in front of the door to block it from opening, grabbed her light green canvas jacket before turning around and running to pick her shoulder bag with her stuff. To the back of the apartment she opened her own room window and stepped out, perched onto the small brick ledge that demarcated the floors. Two metres across a narrow alley was the rooftop of the neighbouring house and with a powerful leap Irene landed gracefully on the other side quickly dashing across the roof before nimbly climbing down the side of the building and running off into the narrow streets of her neighbourhood.
In a few minutes she had found her way far enough from the immediate vicinity of her home and she ducked into a corner. It had been but a few minutes since the revelation and as she finally managed to catch her breath and stop to think about what had happened the tidal wave of emotion Irene had been holding back finally caught up with her and she began sobbing uncontrollably, sliding down the wall of the building crevice she ducked into. She cradled her head trying to take small breaths in between the soul wrenching cries of sadness and frustration. In that moment all strength in her muscles and body had wilted away and pure anguish filled her soul.
Of all the people to be The Door it had to be her own twin brother, someone she loved so dearly. Irene had lost family members and loved ones in her past reincarnations both to disaster and the machinations of the Cultists, but never had one ever been The Door. This heartbreak, this feeling of betrayal that she felt from Isaac being The Door was unlike any sorrow she had felt before. She may have grown accustomed to loss over the centuries, but this was wholly new. This she had never felt before.
She knew it wasn’t her brother Isaac’s fault but just a card that had been dealt to him. Much like her current life as a Korean was a game of chance, there was no way that Isaac could have avoided or decided what soul he would inherit. This she knew, but it didn’t lessen the heart shredding burning of hatred and contempt she had for the soul that was within him. She knew that as much as she had loved her twin brother Isaac, he was no more. All that was left there was The Door; the herald of doom Adhabu.
As the worst of her sorrow subsided and her muscles began to regain some form of control she felt a wave of nausea; all the crying had given her severe headache and she felt lightheaded. Still sitting on the dirty ground of the little alley she fished her brother’s phone out her bag and logged into his bank account as both of them shared their finances openly, that was how close the twins had been. Irene transferred all of his savings and money from his account to her foreign Dutch account. To think that her couple of years of study in the University of Groningen in the Netherlands could become so life saving. She was glad she had decided to keep her account in The Netherlands open and pay the small yearly fees to keep it there. Right now it meant she wouldn’t be broke.
After doing that with her brother’s account she did the same to her own, sending all her money to the foreign account before switching off both phones and taking out the battery and SIM cards just in case they had ways of tracking. She finally had enough strength in body to move. Pulling her hood up she came out of the corner and found the nearest ATM where she maxed out both hers and her brothers cards taking out all the cash she could from them, before taking out any ID’s from the wallets and dumping them down a open sewer grate.
She wouldn’t be able to use her passport or real name in Korea any longer as by now she was certain that Adhabu had woken up and ordered all his minions to guard the airports to make sure she wouldn’t leave. She would have to smuggle herself out of the country illegally where she could be safer and think of her next move.
At least she had thousands of euros in savings now in a foreign account which, to the best of her knowledge, they didn’t know about yet or be able to touch. They would be able to see the money transferred to that account though, so she would need to open up a secondary account and move the money there as soon as possible. Since her identity had been compromised so early she was on her own and had to make sure she wouldn’t go broke until she found one of the Daughter's.
Looking up and down the street Irene hailed a cab to take her to Express Bus Terminal where she could take a coach out of Seoul to Busan. There were fewer major train stations and they would be better guarded both by men and CCTV so she decided a coach would be safer method of travel. Her next step after getting there would be to somehow book a passage out of Korea without her passport, as by the time she reached the south she was fairly certain Abduhu would have her passport flagged. Even if he hadn’t yet the risk was too great, she couldn’t take any risk of getting caught. Next in line was getting a forged ID somehow and then figure out how to find and contact the Daughter’s. Alone they were vulnerable, together they were unbeatable. Always had been.
Abduhu would also definitely get the police involved very soon, most likely putting out a missings persons report much like she had intended for him not ten minutes ago. The irony and twist of fate. He would be able to involve the police without raising any suspicion; it was just familial concern over a missing and lost sister.
One of the first things she would have to do was buy a new phone and a prepaid phone service, one that they wouldn’t know. She was glad that she had years upon years of living life without a phone so that she didn’t feel too right now without one. She could wait until Busan to buy a new one from a random store to limit chances of her being spotted by any surveillance footage. She had no idea just how deep the Cult had infiltrated so she would have to be extra careful. Once she had her phone she could start searching online for some underground service or way to get out of the country. Alternatively she could also go to harbour side and ask around for a passage.
Although it was highly unlikely that anybody could spot her in the back of the taxi, she kept her hood on and leaned low and back as much as possible to hide herself from the outside. Irene was going to take a coach from the opposite end of Seoul, as far away from her house as possible to distance herself and give the best chance of not being spotted. The normally long ride felt even longer with her mind replaying the events, the sorrow, the anger and her worry for all the Daughter's and their wellbeing.
She had been so unlucky to have her identity revealed so soon, and the risks of being revealed was higher than ever before as the world population soared over seven billion. Once their identity was revealed it would be even harder to hide and fade away than before. During the previous cycle the ease of proliferation of pamphlets had already made it difficult to stay hidden once drawings of all of their faces had been made and distributed. With smart phones and cameras everywhere it was now nigh impossible.
The world’s population boom also probably meant there were more Cultists alive than there had even been before. With internet access and forums it was easier to recruit unsuspecting people into their mix and to entice the downtrodden and disappointed into their ranks. Everybody wanted to feel special; a secret society could give you that feeling of being a part of something greater, a part of some elite group in the fringes that only your kind knew about while the world moved on ignorant. It was a powerful feeling.
After what felt like a day and a half of waiting the taxi finally arrived at the Express Bus Terminal. She paid in cash and sped into the station knowing that time was of the essence. Keeping her head as low as possible and her hoods canopy blocking as much of her face as possible, she glanced about to try and discern anybody suspicious around and to spot any CCTV effectively avoiding them. Luckily the counter for the south-east of Korea that included Busan among its destinations was open and had a short line. As the clerk passed the ticket to her she was quick to cover it with her hand to make sure that no camera could catch the destination written on the ticket.
The bus was leaving in eight minutes so she had enough time to grab a drink and kimbap from the convenience store before rushing out to the platforms, finding her bus, boarding it and sitting somewhere close to the back.
The last few minutes of waiting for it to leave were the worst. Eyeing her surroundings from the bus she felt like any minute someone was going to come and grab her. Her fingers dug into the arm rests as she waited and waited with bated breath, every person running around the platforms felt like a possible agent. Just a minute more, just a few more-
“Excuse me, is this seat taken?”
“Ahhh!”
Irene screamed in shock before quickly turning to face the speaker. It was a middle-aged lady now taken aback by her scream.
“I’m so sorry, of course feel free to sit down. I’m so sorry,” Irene mumbled as she cleared her things from the seat.
The lady’s expression softened and she sat down looking at the clearly tense and frightened Irene as her eyes were wide with shock and darting around, constantly looking outside and around her all the while she tried to stay as small and as hidden as possible. The aunties knowing eyes could sense that Irene was running away from someone.
“Is it a man? Your boyfriend?”
“Ahh… yeah,” Irene said quietly averting her eyes as the initial tension eased a little. It wasn’t a total lie as she was running away from a man, or many men and women to be exact.
“It’s okay, you don’t need to say anything more. Nobody will drag you away from me. For this trip you’re my daughter,” the woman said patting Irene’s hand. Instinctively Irene took hold of the aunt’s hand and held on, already feeling comforted of the situation. The bus lurched as it slowly reversed from the platform and finally left the station, heading out of Seoul.
It was going to be okay. She would be okay.
---
“I think they were somewhere here I’m sure…”
Opening the door to a narrow backroom and turning on the lights was the late Choi Kwangsoo’s daughter Yura, snaking herself into the room to have a better look at what was there. Joy peeked into the room behind her while in the back both Wendy and Mina were playing with kids; the three and five year old son and daughter of Yura.
“Hmmm… well they’re definitely in here but I can’t say exactly which shelf it would be, most likely towards the very back considering the box the documents you received came in. The ones in the middle are mostly family photos and records while the files right here in the front are stories he actively wrote and researched on.”
The room was packed with files, boxes, and books from floor to ceiling on shelves that ran from the door at the far right edge to the very end to the left, every part of it occupied with something. The floor was also mostly taken up with stacked boxes and one would have to really snake through to move in there, skipping over boxes to the small sections of the floor that were still visible.
“I guess we’ll start at the back and then have a look at the recent stuff,” Joy said as Yura turned back around to get herself out of the rather dusty room. It had a smell of an archive, one that didn’t see a lot of air movement so the stale dry air would rub the back of your throat uncomfortably.
“You know your dads archive well,” Joy said as Yura finally stepped out of the room and dusted her jeans off.
“I used to spend a lot of time reading there and I guess the news bug bit me after all,” she smiled as her son ran up to her for a pick me up, “I work for the news desk at MBC”
“Oh, well we are in the business of news together then. Nice to meet you co-worker,” Joy smiled before turning to look at the room with all the boxes piled on the floor. “Is it okay if we clear the boxes into this room from the floor?”
“Of course. Feel free to use this room to read through the boxes too. It’s a lot more comfortable in here than there, trust me. If you need anything just let me know, I’ll be out and about in the house.”
“Thank you so much for your help,” Wendy said as Yura’s daughter skipped over to her mother at her beckoning and the trio filed out of the room leaving Mina, Wendy and Joy to the monumental task of going through the boxes in the room.
“Well, let’s get to it then,” Mina said moving in to grab the first box off the floor.
The three cleared the floor first of boxes, quickly going through what they held to make sure that what they wanted wasn’t in there before starting at the very back of the room with oldest records. The box that the material had come in with was from a box of pickled radish that hadn’t been sold since the 1970’s, so the records were most likely of the same old stock.
They were particularly interested in finding more pages of the kind that Joy had found a few days ago. If there were any pages more they might be able to piece more of the puzzle together. Alternatively any text and articles that also talked about their content or associated with it was also valuable to them so they were feverishly looking for any mention of the sort.
After Joy’s call to the Choi residence at the university they had made an arrangement to arrive the following day when Choi Kwangsoo’s daughter Yura was available to let them in. She had prefaced their arrival that the archives were rather extensive so this might be a few day ordeal and as such she would be willing to let them in any following days if their first day of search didn’t bare the fruit they desired.
One by one each woman grabbed a box from the back, dusted it off from the worst of dead skin cells and bugs and systematically browsed through its content looking for the key words or the specific types of paper. Box after box, stack of paper after another they went through like this for a good amount of hours before taking a lunch break and then continuing after. They had managed to make a dent to the boxes by the later afternoon but still hadn’t found what they needed.
The front door opened and Yura walked into the room as she had to come check up on trio and lock the door after them.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing yet,” Mina said letting out a long yawn after.
As it was late evening they all decided to reconvene in the morning. Yura would let them in in the morning and come back to lock the house in the evening. They all left the room and stepped out of the house letting Yura lock the door behind them. Just as she finished this and turned around Wendy walked up to her.
“Are your father’s most recent and unfinished writings somewhere else?”
“Yes, we collected them separately from that stuff as a lot of it can be confidential,” Yura said as the four of them began to walk towards her car.
“I would assume so. Would it possible, if not us, maybe for you to have a look if there is any mention of what we are looking for? Maybe it can point towards the right box or timeframe? Maybe he had them taken out of the archives.”
“Yeah sure, I’ll have a look at them to see if there is mention of… what was it again, Eternal Ladies?”
“Yes. Eternal Ladies, Children of the Void, 1800’s Europe, Herr Bauerschaft. I’ll email you the names in German as well as they might not have been translated yet. Thank you so much.”
“No worries, if it helps then we can all be done with this portion a little faster,” she smiled as they walked her the rest of the way to her car, the three of them splitting after to come back the next day.
Early next morning all three were gathered outside the house. Soon enough Yura arrived with her car at the front door on her way to drop the kids off to day-care before heading off to work. She quickly opened the door and told them to let her know when they were done with everything for the day.
Continuing off from where work had stopped yesterday they continued going through the boxes methodically from the back of the room, reading each head and description of the books, binders, and folders to see if it could contain the information, often skimming through them too in case an errant old page had found its way in between.
This continued in quiet focus, each woman observing carefully through their pages with occasional sighs of frustration. Not long past noon they had managed to almost go through all the old archived boxes at the very back of the room and had stopped to order and eat lunch. While enjoying their food the front door opened up and soon they saw Yura waltz into the study.
“Any luck on this end?” She said entering the room and observing the three ladies munching on their takeaway, with faces exhausted from reading through hundreds upon hundreds of pages of documents.
“None so far,” Joy replied with disappointment clearly in her tone.
“Well I might be able to help with that,” Yura replied beginning to pull something out from her handbag.
“You found something from his recent files?!” Wendy immediately perked up from her position on the floor with eyes wide with excitement and wonder. Both Joy and Mina also turned their attention to Yura, their full focus having completely drifted to her from the food they had been eating.
She pulled out a small file and inside it was a list with short descriptions and paragraphs of stories that his father found interesting and would pursue sometime in the future. When he wasn’t actively writing a story he would often research all the topics he found interesting at once until one of them clearly had a major lead to follow.
“Indeed. Right here there is a mention of it,” she pointed on one of the pages in the file with a short description, “and it points to the location of the box with the material he had for it. It’s one of the recent ones; E-120316.”
Before anybody else managed to do much Wendy was up and in the archive room looking through all the recent boxes and their title codes. “E, e, e, e, e… there!”
From the top right corner accompanied by a small avalanche of dust Wendy pulled the box coded E-120316. There was no other name or marking on the box, maybe to prevent others from knowing the contents of it or maybe Choi Kwangsoo just didn’t need anything else to recognize the contents. She brought it out of the room and placed it on the main coffee table.
Yura had planned to just pop by in between her lunch break to deliver this news but was just as intrigued as the rest to see what was inside and hovered along with the other three to follow the opening of the box.
Carefully lifting the cover off they picked the top file in the box. Just from a visual glance they could see that there wasn’t a whole lot of contents in the box, just a rather small stack of papers. The first file was an overview of what he had found and what the box was about with notes on places and things he would need to research next. Underneath it was one small thin folder and inside the jackpot; a few more pages of similar kind to the old journal entries they had been looking for.
“This is it!” Wendy exclaimed handing over the file to Joy and immediately diving into reading the few pages she had found. They were all in German as well but she sped right through them.
These entries talked about how in between the move from Vienna to Constantinople Herr Bauerschaft and Lady T. had returned to their home in secret and disappeared for a few months without letting the others of the Eternal Ladies know of their location. It mentioned how nobody from the Daughter’s knew about their secret except for Lady W., and even she wasn’t told about their escape to their home.
Next to her with baited breath Joy, Mina and even Yura all stared at her waiting for an answer to the contents of the pages. Wendy sat quietly reading it and she could feel a tear forming in her eye. Not noticing it herself she had also been holding her breath while reading and suddenly let out a huge gasp accompanied by the single tear that had been dangling at the corner of her eye. She quickly wiped it off and let out a little laugh, “So dusty in here.”
“So what’s it say?” Joy asked as Mina reached out to have a look at the papers, Wendy handing them over to her.
“It talks about Lady T. and Herr Bauerschaft’s little getaway escape for a few months to Lindau in Bavaria, Germany, and about a big secret they had.”
“A big secret? I wonder what it was. At least we have a location right? The summary of this file says is Choi Kwangsoo found a descendent of Herr Bauerschaft, a Alexander Bauerschaft of the Technical University of Munich. Apparently he is a professor there, we could contact him and...”
“We should fly there!” Wendy suddenly shouted after being left in her own stupor for a while. The rest of the group was taken aback and all of them looked at Wendy with astonishment.
“Fly there? To Germany? Can’t we just call or send an email or-”
“Yes of course we’ll do all that first to confirm he still is there. But best way to get more information is to meet him personally, if he is willing to. Go to the source!”
Wendy was in an extremely excitable mood. Her nose had picked a scent that she was willing to follow to the ends of the earth. Mina looked over at Joy, both of them a little baffled and worried but also equally eager to actually follow this through. Maybe they could get a holiday out of this.
“Well, neither of us took our summer vacation days and we don’t have any lectures to teach this semester,” Mina said looking at Wendy before turning to Joy. “How about you, can you get time off?”
“You know how freelance my schedule is, I can definitely get the time to go do this. Maybe even get a little funding from the paper to partially cover my ticket.”
Yura standing at the side looked at this group of women who were ready to fly over to Europe for a story, an obscure piece of history and she felt completely at ease with it. It had been the life that her father had lead and she had grown accustomed to it. None of this seemed the least bit strange to her which she knew was unusual in itself.
“I’ll have a further look here on my time off if I can find something more. If you find something interesting on your trip there, please keep me in the loop too. I would love to know what my father had found and was getting into.”
Wendy looked at both Mina and Joy with even more excitement almost unable to hold herself still. They were going to Europe. She was finally finding her way forward.
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