Alexander Kleios knows he has just minutes left to live. Even now, moving down the dark hall in long, brisk strides, the color is all but gone from his face and his hands shake all the more violently. Thunder rumbles somewhere outside in the distance, far beyond the handsome tapestries and marble sculptures here within the ancient institute he has long considered a second home.
No rain follows, not yet.
Just the promise of a storm.
No one is coming to help him. He knows this now, knows it as deeply and as true as he knows the furrow of both his children’s brows, the rich deep warmth of his wife’s laughter, the wine-dark swells of the Sargasso Sea. Even if his distress call reached the person it was intended for, she won’t get here in time.
Time is running short, but his task is nearly complete. A cold sweat breaks out as he manages to close the grand oak-and-iron door behind him, alone now in his mahogany-lined office. Just him and the furious wind raging against the tall windows rattling in their clear-glass panes. Between the dim fire crackling low in its grate and the comforting weight of the curious little object clutched tightly under his arm, a sudden calm descends upon him. A calm he wouldn’t have thought possible ten minutes ago.
In the shadow of the dark pre-dawn, he crosses to the far end of his office, over to where a row of quite unremarkable wooden panels line the wall. Second panel from the left where wood meets molding, he digs his shaking fingernails into the well-worn groove and pulls. A thin compartment slips free, and he slides the leather bindings from beneath his arm and into its depths.
There, he thinks, shutting it firmly closed again. We are not lost yet.
He’s done all he can, and somehow the thought lightens his heart even as his hands shake beyond his control. A scrawled note slipped in his secretary’s inbox some floors below, the only person in the world who knows this secret cache. He’ll find it, and deliver it to his daughter’s safekeeping. Years may pass before she learns how to read it, but it will not now pass into the wrong hands. It will not now be used to the wrong ends.
She will learn to read it someday, of that he has no doubt. He’s taught her too well to consider the alternative. And perhaps, after all, the passage of some time and acquired wisdom will prove an advantage for her. He had not meant to burden her with this for many years to come. Not when she’s too young to truly understand. Too young to avoid the same mistakes he’s made.
But there’s no value in regrets—though he has many of his own—and even less in worrying for a future he can no longer control. So Alexander Kleios sits at his desk, and he waits for the end.