Arthur Alexander's clinic, in Valence carried the scent of antiseptic and tranquility. It was a tidy room that kept disorder under control. Giovanni perched on an examination table shirt removed, a figure of embarrassment. Isabella remained near the window her resolute exterior breaking to expose surprise.
Arthur carefully dragged his magnifying lamp over Giovanni's skin, his certain logical perspective beginning to waver. "No swelling. No evidence of injection or injury. This ink…it's embedded in the dermis yet there's no scar of a needle." His tone, steady and reassuring carried a trace of amazed confusion. ". It's shifting."
The maze on Giovanni's forearm was truly transforming. Not the lines per se. The shadow, at its center. It throbbed like a dormant jellyfish, ripples of darker blackness spreading across the complex routes.
"It showed up while Osborne was speaking " Giovanni stated plainly. "It seared. Unlike the rest."
"Others?" Arthur exhaled.
With a breath that felt laden, with the burden of time Giovanni shifted a bit exposing his back and chest to the illumination.
Isabella emitted a gasp. Arthur's usual professional calm vanished completely. Stretching from his shoulder blades down to his waist crossing ribs and flank lay a yet disturbing collection. A gnarled key in one spot a crying eye in another a bridge, a chain, with one broken link. Scores, hundreds of distinctive symbols overlapping each other in a wordless deafening symphony.
"My God " Arthur whispered. "Each one…a falsehood?"
"Every single one." Giovanni's voice resonated emptily in the space. "Spoken before me. For two decades."
Isabella moved nearer her reporter's intellect overcoming fear with inquisitiveness. She indicated a distinct emblem by his shoulder: a stylized gavel split down the center. "This one. What was the falsehood?"
Giovanni didn't have to glance. "A judge. He informed a journalist he had never encountered the defendant prior, to the trial.. He had. Very closely."
". What about this?" Her finger lingered above a blossoming flower, with a snake curled at its core.
"A woman, speaking to her spouse. She mentioned he was the first person she loved."
At last Arthur regained his voice the foundation reestablishing its hold. "This cannot happen physiologically. It contradicts every principle of dermatology and immunology…" He looked into Giovanni's eyes. ". It exists. You are not imagining things. This is… genuine."
"Authentic to take a life over?" Isabella questioned, her eyes fixed on the throbbing maze. "Osborne passes away, than twenty-four hours after delivering a speech that grants you this. That's not chance. This emblem isn't merely false. It's the falsehood. The very one that led to his assassination."
A forceful bang, on the clinic's entrance startled everyone. It wasn't a patient's tap. Commanding. Persistent.
Isabella glimpsed two figures, behind the glass. One was stout the slim. "Police " she murmured.
Fear flickered in Giovanni's eyes. He hurriedly grabbed his shirt. Arthur acted swiftly his role, as a healer eclipsing his surprise. "This way " he instructed, guiding them to a storage room. "Exit through the alley. Avoid going Giovanni."
As Arthur moved to open the door Isabella held tightly to Giovanni's arm. His skin felt chilly. "We must decipher this symbol. We require someone who interprets more, than words."
Maria Magnolia was discovered in a cramped herbalist's store tucked away in Grenoble's district. The atmosphere was heavy with sage, myrrh and an ancient scent. Maria was a woman, with eyes and tender hands her hair streaked with silver resembling moonlight on tree bark. Upon seeing Giovanni's forearm, marked by the pulsating maze her expression became calm and grave. She. Questioned nor hesitated.
"Sit " she ordered, her tone resembling rustling leaves.
She ignited a bunch of sweetgrass filling the space around them with wisps of smoke. She moved her hands above the tattoo without contact her eyes partially shut. "This holds no falsehood " she whispered, the mystical interpreter regaining her voice. "This is a structure of deception. A fabricated existence. This man…he wasn't merely lying. He embodied a lie. His essence, his foundation…empty. A maze with nothing at its center but a hungry dark."
"What significance does the darkness hold?" Isabella inquired, her notebook left unattended, in her grasp.
Maria's eyes flickered open brimming with an understanding. "It signifies his falsehood devoured the truth. Consumed it. Created an emptiness.. Emptiness…demands to be filled. This mark isn't inert. It's a link. A root." She gazed at Giovanni with compassion. "It's fixed within you now.. Through you it might still be anchored…to him."
An eerie stillness enveloped the shop. Giovanni sensed the maze throb, a reverberation coursing through his veins. He wasn't an observer. He was entwined in the crime scene. The. The terrain, alike.
"We have to locate people " Isabella declared, her resolve hardening into a definite strategy. "People familiar, with Osborne. Who could have noticed the core."
"And we require safety " Giovanni stated, the phrase, on his tongue. He had never requested that previously. "The authorities visited Arthur's clinic. Another party is searching."
As if called forth by his anxiety the shop doorbell rang. A man stood in the entrance. He was solidly built, with a serene expression. Jacques Jones. Years back he had been one of Arthur's patients recovering from a dockside work injury that nearly led to leg amputation. He was indebted to Arthur. During their escape the doctor had sent him one urgent message: Protect them.
Jacques observed the setting—the librarian, the determined journalist, the insightful woman, the foreboding ink—and offered a deliberate slow nod.
"The car is back " he stated, his tone a deep growl of steady assurance. "Where are we headed?"
Giovanni gazed upon the maze its core throbbing, like a compass needle directed at a dreadful reality. He had moved beyond survival. The archive was revealing itself. "We require a historian " he remarked, contemplating records, sequences, across time. "A person who uncovers what has been concealed."
Isabella nodded. "I know a man." The hunt, and the pursuit, had truly begun.