==Administration, Rafik Hariri University Hospital==
It was mind-bogglingly easy to make things disappear in the hospital system. There was no oversight, no flagging systems and very few things required any sort of validation for authorization. The logins and passwords for the storage system were on post-it notes attached to the office computer's screen. One of the hotel receptionists called the office and said Ashlee had visitors and described Asun. It was better to have her come up than talk out in the open.
Ashlee offered the women coffee, after she cheerfully greeted them. She was wearing a colorful dress with its sleeves rolled up on her forearms and tied at the waist with a belt. She was unadorned save the light pink smart watch band was the only bit of jewelry she was wearing on her left wrist. Her fingernails were neatly trimmed and rounded with a bit of clear coat.
"Uncle is going to recover nicely. Mr. Verde will need 3 weeks here to recover but he's through the worst of it. I have everything handled on this end, so for a time, no one will ask questions. I'll have to either recover my phone or buy a new one but I've been too busy to go just yet. Did you find out anything new?"
Asun accepted the offer of coffee. Out of politeness. She was afraid of what she in for with Lebanese hospital coffee. "You seem to be handling this well." She seemed surprised with how cheerful Ashlee had seemed. Mutilated corpses were just another day I guess if you worked in a hospital. Or she was faking it, 50/50 odds really. "I haven't found out much. After we got out, I crashed and went to sleep. Although I did find out how Isabel got her window to escape. And where she's went. I have a friend though, we've been looking into some weird things going on and she knows that there's been some weird stuff going on. This Lyre, Orpheus stuff could come back to her as well. Would you mind to talk to her? I don't really understand any of the science stuff.." Asun definitely did not look as chipper as Ashlee.
Nano accepted the coffee and it took massive self control not to sneer or show disgust at the cheerful display. She let Asun introduce her. "Sleep is good, were you injured? The others weren't as bad as Verde and Jenny but, it's something hard to wrap my mind around. I can deal with the tangible aftermath easier than the other part. I'm still in shock but I'm minimizing and taking it one step at a time." Ashlee offered a gentle smile. "Did you learn any more about what the tiger was or how Voro fought it? I remember you took photos. Do you still have a picture of the runes still?"
Her brow quirked up at the mention of a 'weird stuff'. "What sort of weird things? I'm currently investigating something strange as well, but it looks like I'll have to go to the Maronites to ask them some questions. But no, I don't mind explaining what I know."
I was fine. Just my leg's a bit sore. I do have some pictures of Jenny." She unlocks her phone and hands it to Ashlee, "Just email them to yourself. I think I can draw the ones Voro wanted me to carve..." Moving on."Haven't found anything since yesterday, but can go over what happened with the thing and what Voro told us. He had us draw some symbols and he said a bunch of weird stuff. Both in English and some language I've never heard. We can definitely find out more from him. But yeah, so, this is Nano. Nano, this is Ashlee, who was with us yesterday in the hotel. I was hoping you'd have found out more about these brainwaves?" Nano nodded respectfully. “Nice to meet you, Ashlee.” "Nice to meet you, Nano." Ashlee nodded. "I've been busy trying to keep the Ministry of Health out of this incident, so I haven't gotten a chance to look into the brainwave theory, but I can give you a rundown, Nano. How familiar are you with Havana Syndrome?" She waited for Nano's response and then explained her theory on the weapon they encountered and how she thought it worked.
Showing the pictures, and drawing the remaining symbols, Asun explained that he seemed to have chanted some spell and then afterwards told them they could find them at the Temple of Bacchus. Nano shook her head. “Zombie something?” She tilted her head at the pictures, trying to make sense of them."Temple of Bacchus is in the Bekaa Valley. Where Isabel supposedly is." Nano pulled out her phone, still looking at the pictures of the runes. She pulled up her photo app, which had a mirror mode. "This looks.... ancient."
Ashlee pulled extra chairs around her desk so Asun and Nano could sit as she clicked through the photos of the rune carving. With Nano’s comment that the characters were backwards, it changed the assessment of how they should be oriented. Benedict’s comment the day before that the characters were not runes, but letters guided the search. With the shape of the letters that Voro told Asun to carve, they figured out that the characters were letters in the Phoenician alphabet in reverse.
𐤉 Yod: arm, hand.
𐤆 Zayin: manacle or weapon.
OXWPX mirror imaged became 𐤏𐤔𐤕𐤓𐤕.
Ashlee started breaking down the individual characters for a translation, but Asun suggested to search for the whole word in Google. “Astarte.” The first few hits brought them to the Wikipedia pages for the Tabnit Sarcophagus and the page for Astarte.
Don't, don't open it and don't disturb me, for this thing is an abomination to Astarte. And if you do indeed open it and do indeed disturb me, may you not have any seed among the living under the sun, nor a resting-place with the Rephaites.
The question became what the abomination to Astarte was. Between the three of them, they decided it was the act of messing with the dead. The only reason they could collectively think of why they’d carve Astarte’s name on someone was some sort of ritual, but something had gone wrong. If Jenny and Voro were working together to stop Lyre. The thing about invoking ancient gods is that if you mess it up, that wrath turns on you.
They were wrong, it wasn’t a ghost tiger, it was a lion.
From that they drew the conclusion that if Jenny was murdered by Astarte’s wrath. Voro and Jenny had messed up the spell.
Lyre were marked with death by keeping a body on the verge of death and life for five days. Ashlee, Asun, and Benedict had messed with Jenny’s body at the scene to figure out what had happened. Then later Bryson, Ashlee, and Benedict had Frankensteined a hand to life to gain access to the security console. Verde was terrified and in hiding. Verde had told Asun and Bryson that Voro of all of them had to hide from the beast.
“So why did it attack Verde? Wasn’t he just interfering with the demonstration?” Asun recalled that she’d partied with Isabel and on the security footage, Verde was with Isabel and Voro. “How does Isabel know Voro?”
Nano shared that Isabel had made friends with some powerful people in Bekaa Valley. Another search to cross reference the Temple of Bacchus Voro told Asun about. The Temple of Bacchus was in Bekaa Valley and it was home to a Dionysian Mystery Cult.
"You know, this is a lot of information. So I have an idea. I can make a private digital whiteboard to compile all this information on so it's easier to keep track of." Ashlee commented, opening a new tab and started compiling the information together.
- Zahra is using Nano to steal the item from Isabel without telling Nano what it is, using her connection to Isabel to get close without getting involved further ---Nano yoinks it from Isabel, Isbal loses her 18 mill payday and hates Nano. Zahra doesn't give a But because Nano has gotten involved, they'll probably both get iced since they are a liability ---Especially if Nano or Isabel roll on Zahra and pin her with the attempted theft.
This whole conversation, it had made Asun's head spin. She seemed to have landed in some huge plot involving mind altering drugs, cults and what not. Had she tried the drugs that Isabel was selling? She couldn't remember. They'd certainly done a bunch of stuff. No need for Ashlee and Nano to know that currently though unless asked. "Ashlee, you'd mentioned the Maronite church. What do you need to talk to them for? Does it have to do with yesterday?"
Ashlee considered the question for a moment. "I'm not sure. For context, I'm researching what might be an outbreak of a resurgence of a bleeding plague that struck Beirut in 1916 but is much older. It's a disease first recorded after the 2nd Crusade when King Hugh of Antioch was forcing Lady Isabella of Beirut to marry him."
"In 1916, the Wlodimir Ledóchowski, the Black Pope, sent representatives of the Maronite Church to suppress the disease. I need you to look into what information they have. If the Maronite Church found this before, they may have a way to treat it so we can get ahead of this." She rubbed the side of her neck.
"Someone took 2 of the 1916 memoirs from the Saint Joseph University that detailed what happened. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the bible but they quoted Isaiah 9:18 -21 as the sin that afflicted King Hugh's court in the crusades. It was bad enough that the templars worked alongside Mamluk sultan Baibars to stop it. Any information you can dig up from the archives would greatly help. We've lost 70 of the 223 patients with this disease and we don't have the medicine to treat the symptoms."
Had Asun mentioned she worked with the Maronites? It may have come up during their brainstorming session right now, but she couldn't remember it. But yeah couldn't hurt to ask. This sounded really bad and if the church had an answer... "Oh.. sure why not. Guess this city could use a blood plague too" Asun said sarcastically. Realizing how it sounded, she added: "Well, it's terrible. Of course I'll look into. It's just we've been looking into a gang of cannibal human traffickers who try to the eat the chrome out of the blood of young people or something. This country is" She looks around before she'd offend someone, "Fucked up."
Ashlee wrinkled her nose at the mention of cannibals. "...That's... uh... that passage goes:"
For wickedness burns like a fire; It consumes briers and thorns; it kindles the thickets of the forest, and they roll upward in a column of smoke. Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts the land is scorched, and the people are like fuel for the fire; no one spares another. They slice meat on the right, but are still hungry, and they devour on the left, but are not satisfied; each devours the flesh of his own arm, Manasseh devours Ephraim, and Ephraim devours Manasseh; together they are against Judah. For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still.
"I should go focus on other stuff... I still have to do my actual job here with the Ministry of Health and root out this asshole that tried to call a quarantine yesterday..."
Nano fumed. “God dammit, Isabel. Asun, You partied with her. Do you remember taking anything that she might’ve offered you” Her arms crossed over her chest and she leaned back in her seat in thought. The barrage of names she didn’t recognize kept her out of the conversation but she listened intently regarding the Maronite Church. She nodded to Ashlee as she excused herself. “I’d like to keep in contact if that’s at all possible.”
As they got ready to leave, Asun just answered Nano: "Yes, but no super brainpills, sadly."
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