Prague, Czech Republic
Six Days Ago
I sat in my darkened apartment, the only light coming from my laptop screen, its glow flickering against the rain-streaked windows. The manuscript lay open before me, its yellowed pages soaked in shadow.
Having narrowly escaped the armed men who had broken into my previous safe house, I had relocated to a smaller apartment I kept under a different name—an insurance policy for situations exactly like this. The fire escape had led to a back alley, and years of fieldwork had taught me how to disappear in unfamiliar cities.
I traced the symbols with my fingers, my mind struggling to process what I was seeing. I had studied cryptography for years. I had worked with ancient languages, decoded long-lost scripts, unearthed messages that had been buried by time.
But I had never seen anything like this.
This wasn’t just a forgotten language.
This was something else entirely.
I flipped the pages carefully, scanning the symbols, searching for patterns. At first glance, they resembled an archaic script—like something pulled from the ruins of Sumer or the Indus Valley Civilization. But as I looked closer, I realized the terrifying truth.
This wasn’t a language.
It was a code.
A mathematical cipher, hidden beneath the illusion of a lost dialect.
And someone—whoever wrote this—went to extraordinary lengths to disguise it.
The coffee beside me had grown cold hours ago. My eyes burned from staring at the screen, cross-referencing the symbols against every known ancient writing system in my database. Nothing matched. Not completely. There were echoes of Proto-Elamite, fragments that resembled early Phoenician, but they were arranged in a way that defied linguistic logic.
Outside, the rain had stopped, but a heavy fog had settled over Prague, wrapping the city in ghostly silence. Occasionally, I would peek through the blinds, scanning the street below for any sign of the black SUV. So far, nothing. But they were out there. Searching.
I returned to the manuscript, determined to crack its secrets before they found me.
Breaking the Pattern
Every cryptographic system has one weakness: patterns.
A true random sequence is almost impossible to replicate without outside interference. But when humans—or machines—design encryption, they always leave behind a fingerprint.
A repeating number. A mirrored symbol. A placement that shouldn’t make sense—but does.
I pulled out my notebook and began dissecting the symbols, breaking them into sections.
I tried known decryption methods.
Caesar Shift? No recognizable shift in letters. Vigenère Cipher? No consistent keyword length. Transposition? The structure didn’t match any ancient cryptographic principles. Runic Anagramming? Some letters matched, but they were displaced by an unrecognizable logic.
I ran my hands through my hair, frustration mounting. This shouldn’t be so difficult. Every code was designed to be broken—at least by someone. The very purpose of encryption was communication, which meant someone, somewhere, was meant to understand this.
Unless…
Unless it wasn’t meant to be understood at all.
Unless it was designed specifically to be unbreakable.
That was when I noticed it.
A sequence.
It wasn’t in the symbols themselves.
It was in the gaps between them.
I flipped back to the first page, running my fingers across the spacing.
The voids between the letters weren’t random.
They followed a numerical pattern.
I copied them down, replacing each letter with the number of spaces before it appeared.
At first, the numbers meant nothing. They jumped at irregular intervals, forming no readable words, no sentence structure, no linguistic pattern.
Until I tried something else.
Instead of looking at the sequence itself, I compared it to natural sequences.
And that’s when it hit me.
The Fibonacci Distortion
The numbers weren’t random.
They followed a Fibonacci pattern—a sequence found in nature, physics, biology.
But it was wrong.
In a natural Fibonacci sequence, each number is the sum of the two before it.
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…
It was a mathematical certainty. A universal constant.
But in The Lucifer Code?
The sequence had been deliberately altered.
Tiny distortions—almost imperceptible—but enough to disrupt the natural flow of numbers.
This shouldn’t have been possible.
Why would someone go through the effort of distorting one of the fundamental laws of mathematics?
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the numbers.
And then I saw it.
Hidden within the altered Fibonacci sequence—were coordinates.
My heart raced. I was onto something—something big. The kind of discovery that academics spent lifetimes chasing.
But the man who had given me this manuscript hadn’t been an academic. He had been terrified. Running for his life.
And now he was dead. Vanished, as if he’d never existed.
I reached for my phone, then stopped. Who could I call? Who could I trust?
Eleanor was on her way, but she wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow. And even then, could I be certain she wasn’t being watched? That she hadn’t been compromised?
In our field, paranoia wasn’t just an occupational hazard—it was a survival skill.
I returned to the coordinates, determined to solve at least this piece of the puzzle before morning.
The First Location
I typed the numbers into my GPS software.
Latitude. Longitude.
At first, I expected them to lead to a library, an ancient site, a ruin.
Something that would at least make sense.
Instead—
The location was in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.
I stared at the screen, my pulse hammering.
There was nothing there.
No islands. No research stations.
I double-checked my calculations, certain I had made an error. The distorted Fibonacci sequence was subtle; perhaps I had misinterpreted it.
But no—the coordinates were correct. They pointed to a specific location in the Arctic, roughly 300 miles north of Svalbard. A place where nothing should exist.
I switched to satellite imagery, zooming in as far as the program would allow.
Ice. Endless ice.
But then—
Something shifted.
The map flickered.
The software glitched.
And in place of the empty sea—a name appeared.
“The Concordia Anomaly.”
I felt a chill run down my spine.
This wasn’t a city. This wasn’t a ruin. This wasn’t anything that should exist.
I had never heard of it.
I searched online. No results.
I scoured academic databases. Nothing.
The only reference I found was a single, classified document in an old military archive.
A reference to “Project Concordia”—a research station that had been permanently erased from public record.
No history. No coordinates. No survivors.
And now, somehow—
The Lucifer Code had led me straight to it.
I sat back, mind racing. What was this place? What connection did it have to the manuscript? And most importantly—why had someone tried to hide it?
I needed more information. I needed access to classified archives that no civilian should be able to reach.
I opened my laptop again and launched a secure browser. Years ago, during my work with the Smithsonian, I had been given temporary access to certain government databases. That access had been revoked when the project ended, but I had… acquired… a backdoor. A digital skeleton key that I had never used—until now.
I entered my credentials, heart pounding as I bypassed security protocols that would land me in federal prison if discovered.
I searched for “Concordia Anomaly.”
Three results appeared.
The first was a scientific report, dated 1978, with most of its content redacted.
The second was a military directive ordering the immediate evacuation of all personnel from “Site C” in 1982.
The third was a death certificate.
For Dr. Evelyn Sartori.
Dated last week.
I stared at the screen, unable to process what I was seeing.
My mentor. My friend.
Dead six years ago.
And again last week.
How was this possible?
I clicked on the death certificate, desperate for answers.
The cause of death was listed as “exposure to unknown pathogen.”
The location?
“Concordia Research Station.”
My blood ran cold.
Evelyn hadn’t disappeared in Istanbul.
She had been at Concordia.
And whatever happened there—it had killed her.
Twice.
The First Attack
Before I could think, before I could even process what I was seeing—
My laptop shut down.
Not crashed.
Not froze.
Shut down.
Every light in my apartment flickered.
The air grew thick, suffocating, as if something unseen had filled the room.
I froze, listening intently. Had they found me? Were they here?
I reached for my phone, intending to call Eleanor, to warn her away from Prague. But the screen was black. Dead.
No power.
Then—
A knock at my door.
I went still.
Heart pounding.
No one knew I was here. No one.
The knock came again. Harder.
A slow, deliberate rhythm.
I stood, moving toward the door, my breath shallow. My fingers hovered over the deadbolt.
And then—
My phone rang.
It shouldn’t have been possible—the device had been dead seconds ago—but now it was fully powered, screen glowing with an unknown number.
I hesitated. Then answered.
I didn’t speak. Neither did they.
For a long moment, the only sound was breathing.
Then—a single sentence.
Low. Flat. Mechanical.
“Do not open the door.”
I stopped breathing.
My fingers froze inches from the lock.
Outside, the knocking continued.
But now—there was a voice.
Soft. Familiar.
“Nathaniel…”
I knew that voice.
It was Dr. Evelyn Sartori.
My mentor.
Except—
She had been dead for six years.
And again, last week.
The Warning
I backed away from the door, pulse thundering in my ears.
This was impossible.
Evelyn Sartori had been my professor at Oxford. A brilliant cryptographer, an expert in lost languages. She had disappeared six years ago while researching an undocumented manuscript in Istanbul.
At least, that’s what I had been told.
But now I knew the truth—or part of it. She had been at Concordia. Researching something so classified that her very existence had been erased from public record.
And now—
She was standing outside my door.
I took another step back, heart hammering.
The voice came again. “Nathaniel, let me in.”
It sounded exactly like her.
Too exact.
Like a recording.
Like something was trying to mimic her.
I glanced at my phone.
The unknown caller was still on the line.
I brought it to my ear, forcing myself to whisper.
“Who are you?”
The breathing continued.
Then—a whisper, almost too soft to hear.
“They are already inside.”
The call cut off.
And behind me—
A floorboard creaked.
I spun around, adrenaline surging through my veins.
The living room was empty. The kitchen, dark. But the bedroom door—which I had left ajar—was now closed.
Someone was in my apartment.
I looked frantically for a weapon. The kitchen knife block was too far away. The heavy paperweight on my desk might serve, but I’d have to turn my back to the bedroom to reach it.
The knocking at the front door had stopped.
Silence filled the apartment, thick and oppressive.
Then, footsteps. Coming from the bedroom.
Slow. Measured. Approaching.
I backed toward the window, calculating the drop to the street below. Three floors. Survivable, but not without injury.
The bedroom door began to open.
I held my breath.
A figure emerged.
Tall. Slender. Female.
Wearing a white lab coat, stained with something dark.
Her face obscured by shadow.
But I knew who it was.
“Evelyn?” I whispered.
She stepped into the dim light from the window.
It was her. Exactly as I remembered. Not a day older than when I’d last seen her six years ago.
But her eyes—
They were wrong.
Empty.
Dead.
“Nathaniel,” she said, her voice impossibly calm. “You’ve been busy.”
Her gaze fell to the manuscript on my desk.
“You shouldn’t have that.”
I swallowed hard. “What is it? What’s the Lucifer Code?”
She smiled. A cold, empty smile that never reached those dead eyes.
“The beginning of the end,” she said simply. “And you’ve already set it in motion.”
She took another step toward me.
“Give me the manuscript, Nathaniel. It doesn’t belong to you.”
“Who does it belong to?” I demanded, voice shakier than I would have liked.
Her head tilted slightly, the movement too precise, too mechanical.
“To those who came before,” she said. “And those who will come after.”
Another step closer.
“Evelyn,” I said carefully, “you died. Six years ago. And then again last week. How are you here?”
Her smile widened, revealing teeth that were too white, too perfect.
“Death is a mathematical equation,” she said. “And equations can be solved—if you know the formula.”
She reached out her hand.
“The manuscript, Nathaniel. Now.”
I lunged for my desk, grabbing both the manuscript and the heavy paperweight. I hurled the paperweight at her, not waiting to see if it connected.
I ran for the door, manuscript clutched to my chest.
Behind me, I heard nothing. No cry of pain. No sound of pursuit.
Just Evelyn’s voice, as calm as ever.
“You can’t run from this, Nathaniel. None of us can.”
I wrenched open the door—
And came face to face with Eleanor.
Her eyes widened in shock. “Nate? What—”
I grabbed her arm, pulling her away from the doorway.
“We need to go. Now.”
“But I just got here—”
“She’s in there,” I gasped. “Evelyn. She’s in my apartment.”
Eleanor stared at me, concern etched across her face.
“Nate,” she said gently, “Evelyn is dead.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s the problem.”
I glanced back at my apartment door, now standing open.
The living room was empty.
No sign of Evelyn.
No sign that anyone had been there at all.
Eleanor followed my gaze, then looked back at me, her expression a mixture of concern and alarm.
“Nate,” she said slowly, “what’s happening?”
I clutched the manuscript tighter.
“I think I’m losing my mind,” I whispered. “Or the world is.”
Eleanor took my arm, her grip firm, steadying.
“Show me what you found,” she said.
I nodded, still trembling.
“Not here,” I said. “Somewhere safe.”
“My hotel,” she suggested. “It’s not far.”
As we walked away, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched.
By Evelyn.
By whoever was looking for the manuscript.
By something else entirely.
Whatever the Lucifer Code was—it was changing everything.
Including me.