“Please don’t get me wrong Ms. Neveu, I understand the Fibonacci Sequence and I understand your plight, however I fail to understand why.”
Sophie sighed heavily. “Mr. Gray, Saunière, the ‘corpse’ as you so eloquently put it, is my estranged grandfather. He was so close...”
“So close to what?”
“To finding the Holy Grayl, the secret of eternal youth...”
“Oh.” Said Dorian, a nasty feeling pooling in the pit of his stomach, “And what exactly is this Grail?”
“Grayle,” Sophie corrected, “It’s like the fountain of youth, but Dorian...” She grabbed his shoulders in a vice-like grip, “It’s real, I know it is... Wouldn’t you like to live forever?”
“I’m sure it’s probably not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“You said that you understood the Fibonacci Sequence, we couldn’t put a name to it until you arrived, it’s such ancient code,” Sophie’s eyes were pleading and he could not deny her an explanation.
“The Fibonacci sequence is simple. It’s an integer sequence.” Dorian advised, “In mathematical terms, the sequence Fn of Fibonacci numbers is defined by the recurrence relation; Fn = Fn-1 + Fn-2.” He stared at Sophie’s confused face, “One plus one equals two, two plus one equals three, two plus three equals five, five plus three equals...” he prompted.
“Eight!”
“Well done,” he resisted the urge to pat her on the head. “This code appears to lead us to a safety deposit box. Do they still exist?”
“They do,” Sophie smiled, “Where?”
“It points to Zurich.”
“Oh!” Sophie exclaimed, ”That’s in the south western sector. It’s where the Louvre visitors put their luggage...”
“So the sequence relates to a locker number,” Dorian deduced, “It’s locker 555.”
“Then that’s where we have to go,” said Sophie determinedly, “That must be where the cryptex is.”
Her joy was short-lived however as the bathroom doors burst open and the Louvre Tactical Guard poured in en-masse, surrounding Dorian and backing him up against the wall.
“Dorian Gray,” they spoke as one, “You were forcibly ejected from the Parisian planet in 1994 after your attempted invasion and subsequently banished to London. We are here to forcibly eject you once more.”
Dorian stared at their identical blue armoured uniforms, each sporting an identical sidearm. As he looked up at their faces, covered with identical visors, he realised they weren’t human. They were simply too identical, their voices, their movements, everything.
He laughed as he looked into the visor of the nearest Guard, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but this isn’t exactly Paris anymore, it’s a Museum planet.”
“Does... Not... Compute...” the Guards said.
Dorian took full advantage of their momentary confusion and grabbed the nearest Guards weapon before putting his head down and barrelling through their ranks to join Sophie on the far side of the room. As one, the Guards turned, each reaching for their weapon, even the Guard who was now lacking in that particular department.
“Shoot them!” Sophie yelled. Dorian pulled the trigger an instant before the Guards did the same. He watched in amazement as they seemed to be enveloped by a forcefield, their own shots ricocheting off of it and straight back at them as they crumpled to the ground, twitching and convulsing as their circuits fried under the massive blast of power contained within such close quarters.
“Gotta love a pulse rifle,” Sophie grinned as she grabbed Dorian’s hand and dragged him out of the bathroom. “Shoot anyone who tries to stop us,” she called back to Dorian as they ran, “It’s a Neuro stunner, they’ll recover.”
Dorian lost count of how many times he fired the pulse rifle as they made their escape, through the many service corridors hidden within the Louvre. Countless flights of stairs later, they clambered out on to the apex of the pyramid through an industrial air duct hidden under the belly of the spaceship.
Sophie pushed a button on the ships key fob and a tiny hatch slid silently open, accompanied by a slim ladder. The second they were inside the ship, the ladder retracted and the hatch slid closed. Sophie ran to the centre console and began to push buttons and pull levers until the ship’s engines roared to life once more.
In under a minute they were safely outside the Louvre’s atmosphere. “I swear I’m gonna dismember that son of a bitch circuit by circuit and sell him for scrap, I knew he didn’t like you.” Sophie fumed.
“Who, Tim? But he seemed so... cheerful.”
“I know. Never trust someone who’s happy all the time Dorian, it’s not natural. Doesn’t matter whether they’re Human, Droid or otherwise. We have to get to Zurich before the Louvre alerts the Enforcers.”
Deciding that he most definitely did not want to meet the Enforcers, whoever they were, Dorian joined Sophie at the console. “Tell me Sophie, how are we going to get to Zurich, find Locker 555 and get out again without being caught?”
“Gimme a sec,” Sophie flicked a switch on the console and a holographic screen flickered to life in front of them. “Show Contacts,” Sophie said to the screen and a list of names appeared instantaneously. “Search T-tango,” again the screen changed. “Call Teabing, Leigh.” A pixellated hourglass materialised in the centre of the hologram, turning back and forth. Dorian recognised it instantly.
“Windows runs your ship?” He chuckled,
“Unfortunately... Ah! Sir Teabing,” Sophie smiled as the face of a well groomed man appeared on the screen.
“Sophie, darling, what can I do for you?”
“My friend and I are in a spot of bother. Do you still have the prototype?” Teabing winked and patted the side of his nose. “Saunière was murdered a few hours ago. He was onto something about the Grayl, we believe there’s a clue hidden in one of the Key Safe lockers at Zurich. We need to get in and out before the Enforcers find us.”
Teabing nodded, “I’ll power her up now.”
“Set her down right next to the locker room’s north emergency doors and stay cloaked. Open her up when you see us running.”
“Will do Sophie, take care.” The transmission terminated and Sophie turned back to Dorian. “We need to make a hyper leap. These two buttons,” she pointed to two blue circles at opposite ends of the console, “Need to be depressed at exactly the same time. I’m gonna need your help. Programming coordinates... get your finger on the button Dorian, and go on my count. Engaging Hyper drive in three... two... one... Go!”
Dorian pushed down and saw stars, quite literally flash past the ship as they made the leap before coming to a halt on the opposite side of the planet. “That was quite exceptional,” he beamed, “Now then, let’s go find this locker.”
Sophie nodded and guided the ship downwards, landing it in the visitors port because, as she had explained to Dorian, it was an investigatory ship given to her for use when assisting the police with deciphering codes. It was able to leap so she could get to crime scenes quickly but as it wasn’t meant to pursue criminals, it had no secrecy or cloaking functions.
Exiting through the hatch in the belly of the ship once more, Sophie and Dorian skirted through the port, ducking from ship to ship until they reached the entrance to the Safety Deposit locker room. It was almost as big as the visitors port and contained tens of thousands of lockers. The nearest locker bore the number 5219, while the locker opposite bore 5119.
“This way,” Dorian pointed along the edge of the rows, and they ran once again, skidding to a halt in front of locker 555. “Please tell me you know the code for this thing,”
“Shit.”
“Think Sophie, the pen in Saunière’s hand was pointing to the Vitruvian Man. What year was it drawn?”
“Fourteen eighty seven.”
“Good, and there was a pentagram, a five tipped star.” He twirled the dial on the locker, “Five, one, four, eight, seven. Bingo.”
“Halt!” Cried a voice from across the room.
“Enforcers,” Sophie cursed as she grabbed the contents of the locker and sprinted in the direction of the north exit. As soon as they were outside the building, a small craft materialised out of thin air, it’s boarding ramp already lowered. The ship began to take off and the doors closed the second they were aboard.
“Shields up!” Sophie commanded as the Enforcers fired their weapons.
They were too late. The Enforcers watched their lasers pass through empty space.
The ship was gone.