The morning hung heavy over the coast. Gray yielded only slowly to blue, tatters of fog drifting across the water. Leaves still gleamed dark from the night’s rain, and even the wind had gone into hiding.
Marit insisted they have breakfast in the garden. No one really had an appetite. The rolls remained untouched, the scrambled eggs went cold. Only the flies and bees delighted in the strawberry jam. You could taste the worry for Sina even in the butter.
Katja propped her chin in her hand and stared at the bathroom window. In her memory it opened a crack, and something dropped to the terrace stones. That anyone could ever miss such a thing… crazy.
Birds twittered. Sparrows waited at a safe distance for the first crumbs, and yet an uncanny silence stretched between the voices.
Marit set down a pot of coffee. “If she’s still alive…” Her voice was barely audible. “…she doesn’t have much time left.”
“Maybe it wasn’t even an abduction,” Konrad muttered. “Maybe she just… left with someone.”
Sven sat at the far end of the table, tablet balanced on his knees, brow furrowed. He scrolled, stopped, scrolled back. “Nothing on the BHRA,” he finally said. “Just the official stuff: Bio Human Research Alliance. Supposedly headquartered in Kelowna, British Columbia. Branches in Boston, Zurich, Cape Town, Osaka… and Berlin. Stralsund’s only a tiny admin office.”
“And what do they do?” Katja warmed her fingers on her coffee cup.
“Officially? Cancer research. Clean ledgers, partnerships with hospitals. All spotless.”
Marit reached for a roll, split it open, spread it thick with butter and an even thicker spoonful of jam. With a faint smile she slid it in front of Konrad, who thanked her with the smallest nod.
Sven leaned forward, a sly grin tugging at his face. “Make me one too, honey?”
Katja blinked at him.
“With butter and honey, please.” He kissed her cheek.
“Don’t make a habit of it,” Katja said with a wry smile. “Though you’re not wrong— we know they’re into something else. Cancer is just their cover.”
Marit pulled her cardigan tight, and for a moment silence bound them together before Konrad broke it.
“Where’s Henning?”
“Sleeping it off.”
“And now what? Prosecutor’s office? Say: our friend from the year 1489 has vanished?” Katja’s tone was sharp.
Sven shook his head. “Best we’d get is a charge for making a false report.”
The knot in Katja’s stomach grew heavier. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a movement at the garden gate. She nudged Sven. “Look.”
A woman came in, slim, white-blond hair wound tight in a bun. Everything on her was cream-colored—pants, sweater, coat, shoes. Behind her, a black limousine idled. In front of it stood two men, dark suits, sunglasses, faces set in stone.
The elegant woman pushed a wheelchair. Sina, wrapped in a blanket, raised a weak hand. Her hair was tangled across her forehead, her eyes open, her lips curving in a frail smile.
Marit clapped a hand over her mouth. No one spoke. For a heartbeat, the impossible drifted through the garden like a fleeting angel. Her fingers trembling, she knelt beside the chair. Tears slid down her cheeks, dropping onto the blanket. Gently she brushed a strand from Sina’s face, as if to make sure she was truly there, and pressed a kiss to her brow.
The woman behind the chair introduced herself. “Good day. I’m Dr. Ulla Vogel. Thank you for receiving us.”
Sina looked wretched. Her face was ashen, her skin paper-thin, veins etched blue, and a milky film veiled her eyes like frosted glass.
Marit’s breath caught. “She’s dying!” She looked up at Ulla. “What did you do to her? She looked sick before, yes, but not… like this.”
“The serum is spent. It no longer works,” Dr. Vogel answered evenly.
“What serum?” Sven’s voice cut sharp.
“That…” Ulla paused, as if weighing each word. “…one thing at a time.” Her gaze flicked over their faces, measuring whether it was worth speaking openly.
Katja was already at the table, not meeting her eyes. “Sit.” She pushed a cup toward Ulla, her gesture curt, almost formal. “Coffee?”
“Gladly.” Ulla folded her hands, sat, her eyes fixed on Katja’s averted profile.
Sven leaned back, glancing toward the two men by the limousine. “And your guard dogs? Do they get some too?”
A faint smile tugged at the corner of Ulla’s mouth. “Lars and Felix. They’ll stay where they are.”
“Sit, stay, heel,” Sven muttered under his breath.
Konrad folded his arms. “Those are the ones who stole the shroud from my lab.”
“No,” Ulla said evenly. “That wasn’t them.” Her gaze slid to Sven. “But at your house, Mr. Widahn—yes. They were there.”
Sven’s head snapped up. “And you just say that so casually?”
Ulla sipped her coffee, calm as ever. “You’re fond of animals, aren’t you? Then forgive the… dogs for treating an open window like an invitation.”
A chill crept over Sven’s skin. “So much for forensics, I suppose?”
“No,” Ulla replied. “They belong to N.O.X.—Nova Obscura X. An internal strike unit of the Bio Human Research Alliance. Their training is… let’s just say, exceptional.” She set her cup down. “The coffee is excellent, by the way, Mrs. Nyborg. Disciplined, precise, discreet access, neutralization, psychological profiling, tactical procedure. They’re trained at the highest level not to be seen. And if they are seen, only what you’re meant to see.” Her gaze cut straight through Sven. “They leave nothing behind. Not even a shadow.”
Henning staggered into the garden, pale and bleary-eyed. “If the good Lord had been awake, He would’ve brought me coffee in bed.”
“Oh, Henning… you poor sap.” Marit gave a crooked grin and slid a cup toward him without a word.
He took it, but his eyes immediately went to Ulla. They darkened, hostile, before he deliberately stared into the black surface of his drink. Speaking without looking at her, he asked, “Were they at my place too?”
“No, Mr. Tiedemann. That was a different team.”
Henning stood there, eyes fixed on the garden as if studying each blade of grass just to avoid her face. His hands buried in his pockets, shoulders slumped forward—a man clinging to something that had already slipped away.
“I brought Sina back to you,” Ulla said into the silence, not bothering to meet his gaze. “It was her choice. We do nothing against a person’s will. Despite everything… she’s still human.”
At last Henning forced himself to look at her. His stare wavered between fury and despair. “You’re the woman Meike was with, aren’t you?”
Konrad and Marit gently eased Sina onto the garden lounger, adjusted her pillow.
Dr. Vogel nodded. “We loved each other,” she said plainly. “But Meike would never have left you, Mr. Tiedemann. However she sometimes saw it, she loved you too, in her own way.”
Marit pulled the blanket up beneath Sina’s chin while Konrad placed a glass of water within reach. No words passed between them, only that quiet, unspoken agreement to be there for her.
Henning leaned forward slightly, as though weighing Ulla’s words. “Then who killed her?” His voice was sharp now, sober.
“No one. She took a curve too fast. It was a tragic accident, and it haunts me as much as it does you.”
Katja cleared her throat. “Meike was enthralled by everything she experienced. We found her diary. It’s not just personal, it’s professional, too. Not easy to make sense of.”
Sven tapped the tabletop with a finger. “And none of what we read in Meike’s notes shows up on your official website. Why all the secrecy?”
Ulla held his gaze, her eyes narrowing as if measuring whether he was even ready for the truth. “Because people have always destroyed what they don’t understand.”
She leaned back slightly, as if ordering her thoughts, then began: “For eight hundred years, the original order existed, the Ordo Silentii. Their obsession was to outwit death. To find where life truly ends. To discover what consciousness is, and where the soul resides.”
Marit leaned forward, fingers laced tight as if to catch each word before it could fall. Her eyes shone with the taut attention of a student who finally hopes to solve a riddle.
“They came here from all corners of the world, but that you already know.” Ulla paused, tracing the rim of her cup. “Back then, had the people learned of it, they would have lynched them all. So they retreated, built chambers beneath monasteries, vaults, bunkers, not only here on Rügen but across other hidden sanctuaries known only to the initiated.”
Sven lifted his head as if to press further, but held his tongue.
“And yes,” Ulla continued, “their methods were crude, inhumane, brutal.” Her voice dipped, brushing against a shadow. “Today, our means are different, quantum physics, resonant fields where frequencies meet.”
Marit’s eyes were wide, her breath steady but intent, as if she needed to file each word into the right place in her mind.
“If people today knew what we were doing…” Ulla’s eyes swept the circle, her voice steady. “…they’d storm the place. Everyone would beg for the chance to preserve their consciousness, their ‘self,’ their soul.”
For a moment the only sound was the whisper of leaves outside. Katja cupped her mug as if the warmth might help her process Ulla’s words. Her eyes flicked to Sina, motionless on the lounger, breathing shallow, and then drifted into the empty space, caught between resistance and the pull to accept an unbearable truth.
“And you pay off the families, so they don’t ask questions, isn’t that right?” she finally muttered, not looking directly at Ulla.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand euros for each transfer, through a life-insurance policy with our organization,” Ulla said evenly. “We call it collaboration.”
Katja’s thoughts felt like a carnival ride, spinning, clashing.
Ulla inclined her head ever so slightly, as if she’d expected exactly that reaction. “Let me put it this way: We’re in a developmental phase, and yes, we use human subjects. But we’re very selective. We seek out only those who know they’re near the end. And so far,” her gaze flicked briefly to Lars and Felix, still standing like tin soldiers by the car, “no one has ever refused.”
Marit frowned, her fingers drumming lightly against her thigh as if to measure the weight of every word.
Dr. Vogel set her cup down gently on its saucer. Her gaze moved to Sina, whose chest rose and fell so faintly it was almost imperceptible. Konrad, kneeling at her side, pulled the blanket higher and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, his eyes never leaving Ulla.
Sina’s eyes remained closed. It was impossible to tell if she heard any of it.
“For every subject there’s a contract with a strict confidentiality clause. Notarized. Airtight. Legally flawless,” Ulla went on.
Sven gave a dry laugh. “And all of this has to be funded somehow.”
Dr. Vogel looked at him, silent, pleasant.
“Doesn’t it?”
“Don’t trouble yourself over who pays for what. It’s all handled.”
Sven tapped his cane against the ground in sharp rhythm. “So it’s the same old story. Eternal life, reserved for the rich and powerful. Figures.”
Katja took the cane from him, the staccato made her nerves buzz.
“And in the meantime you store the… souls, consciousness, memories, whatever you want to call it. Where? In some invisible quantum vault?”
She glanced at Sven again. She couldn’t tell if he was chilled by the unimaginable or simply refusing to understand.
“And how would that even work? You can build bodies that last forever?”
Dr. Vogel shook her head. “No. A biological body will always decay, no question. We can slow it, extend life. But our work is moving toward synthetic bodies, indistinguishable from human. Fingernails, hair that grows, all five senses, even elimination and hormones. What they can’t do is get sick or die. And they can’t conceive or bear children.”
Marit swallowed hard. “And then you… put a brain into these plastic people?”
“God, no. We code the consciousness, like a blood sample, extracted through resonance fields. The ‘self,’ with its memories and awareness, leaves the old body but doesn’t die. It waits. Think of it this way.” She looked at them as if telling children a bedtime story. “We all go to sleep at night and wake up the next morning. Now imagine you sleep, and when you wake, it’s in a new body, one that feels exactly like your old one, but never ages, never hurts, never gets sick, never dies.”
“And Sina?” Henning asked, staring at her as Konrad adjusted the blanket again. “Why did she get a dying body? At first she seemed strong, and now…”
“Sina wasn’t planned. According to the records, Frau Fehrmann was executed in 1489. But,” Ulla’s eyes flicked to Sina, who seemed to sleep, “in 1489 her daughter, Alina Fehrmann, was killed. The mother was condemned as the murderer, based on fabricated evidence. Why the Fehrmann family was targeted isn’t entirely clear. Meike,” her glance skimmed toward Henning, “believed the father, the daughter, and a monk had gotten too close to the Order and had to be silenced. And to make sure Sina asked no inconvenient questions, she was considered very clever in her village, and not everyone liked that, she was dealt with directly.”
Ulla hesitated, the composure in her voice faltering for the first time. “She was left hanging at the gallows just to the brink of unconsciousness, and then…” A small, dismissive gesture of her hand. “You understand. That’s how fragments of her brain were preserved. The Order kept artifacts from every subject, histories, clothing, the last thing they wore. If they ever succeeded in breaking mortality, the subjects were meant to be restored exactly as they were in life.”
Sven took a long sip of coffee and looked skyward. “What kind of twisted minds dream this up?”
“God, I feel sick.” Marit buried her face against Konrad’s shoulder.
“Yes, I can understand your outrage. And to bring this story, this cruel past, to a close, we are emptying the archive. On the night of last Tuesday, a preserved brain section, the precuneus…” She glanced meaningfully toward Sina. “…was scheduled for destruction. An employee isolated it while Elin was dying. Her body was empty, her self extracted. He gave the body, the host, a unit of our TZSF-C serum.”
Konrad lifted his head. “A what kind of serum?”
“A biorestorative serum. It slows cellular decay, stabilizes vital functions. Unfortunately, only for a few weeks. No more than four units are possible. Elin had declined the serum for herself. She wanted to die naturally. The employee acted on his own. He transferred the coding of Sina Fehrmann into Elin’s body, convinced it wouldn’t work.”
“What kind of nonsense is that? You try something you’re already convinced won’t work?” Konrad stroked Marit’s hair gently.
Dr. Vogel ignored the question. “It didn’t look like success. The vital signs were falling.”
Sven leaned forward again, took Katja’s cane from her. “All right, I think we’ve got it by now. Not the internal quantum stuff, but the fact that your organization managed to capture a person’s self, and that Sina was the result of an employee not exactly thinking things through. But I have one question.”
He pushed himself up awkwardly and stared at the apple tree as if he wanted to count the cherry-sized fruit. In truth he was remembering Meike’s diary entry. “If you really want nothing more to do with the Order, why the tattoos? That symbol belonged to the Order, didn’t it?”
Dr. Vogel smiled. “Today the pattern is nothing but camouflage. When we tattoo, we implant microscopic sensors that adapt to your blood. They monitor your body continuously, inside and out, and transmit the data, encrypted, to our organization.”
“Surveillance state with the subjects’ consent, written into the contract, right?” Sven’s voice was sharp with sarcasm.
“Of course.”
“And the cemetery?” Henning still couldn’t keep his emotions in check. If everything is so perfect at your place”—he left open whether he meant Ulla Vogel personally or the organization—“why did you dump them in a graveyard where anyone could find them?”
“Because nothing in this world is perfect, Mr. Tiedemann. The cooling unit had failed. And the employee’s plan was to bury the two of them in a cemetery.”
“Right. Buried alive next to a naked Muslim in a Christian graveyard. Hilarious.” Sven shook his head in disgust.
Dr. Vogel’s eyes went cold again. “Not everyone thinks about religion when they’re in crisis. Since Sina’s host body showed no further vital signs, he assumed it was dead. Naturally, the intention was for everything to remain discreet, unnoticeable.”
“Drug dealers try that too.” Henning couldn’t hold back his frustration.
Dr. Vogel let the remark pass. “Sometimes one thing leads to another. We were interrupted, first a barking dog, then a pastor arriving and at exactly that moment Sina woke up. And… well, now here she is.”
The silence in the garden was heavy, almost solid.
“Faris was transferred to Dubai,” Ulla said at last. “Elin’s body will go to the forest cemetery. Everything is documented.”
“And if we go to the press?” Katja asked.
Ulla rose and stepped in front of Sina, who still lay with closed eyes. “That’s your choice. Do it. But you wouldn’t make it as far as the garden gate. Hold on to what you have instead: a friendship, however short it may be. That’s worth more than any truth that isn’t yet allowed to be official.”
She bent to Sina, stroked her arm. “Goodbye. You’re free.”
She nodded to the others. Everything seemed to have been said. Konrad followed her a few steps.
“Why all this?” he asked. “Why outwit death and then only for the elite?”
Ulla stopped just before the garden gate. “If all people were made eternal, we could no longer have children, and everything would grind to a halt. In general, we need new life, new thinkers, new patterns and old ones that fade, new ones that rise. That’s how we exist. But a few among us should remain… or be given a second chance. And that is exactly what will happen.” She handed Konrad a business card. “Maybe you still have a day or two with Sina. Or maybe only an hour or two. Who can say? But when it’s over, let us know. We’ll take Elin and fulfill her contract. She wanted to be buried here on Rügen, in the forest cemetery.”
Konrad stared at the plain card. “And Sina?”
“We let her go. What else?”
She closed the garden gate behind her and never looked back.
The tall blond man opened the car door for her. The smaller one started the engine. Konrad walked back, his eyes still on the gravel path behind him, now swallowed by shadow. The voices in the garden had fallen to a hush, as if someone had turned the volume down.