The transition from the freezing abyss of the Himalayan cliffside to the suffocating interior of the pirate vessel was a blurred smear of sensory overload. One moment, Jack was falling into a white void; the next, he was upright, anchored to reality by the excruciating pressure of hemp rope.
The air was the first thing that registered—a thick, stagnant soup of humidity, unwashed bodies, and the sharp, metallic tang of oxidized copper. It was the smell of a slaughterhouse that had been left to rot at sea. Jack's eyes flickered open, but the world was a kaleidoscope of pulsing red veins. His head throbbed with a rhythmic, sledgehammer force that coincided with the sluggish beat of his heart.
He tried to shift his weight, but a jolt of lightning-hot pain shot through his shoulders, originating from wrists that felt like they had been flayed. He was lashed to a heavy, high-backed wooden chair, his arms pulled behind him in a way that threatened to pop his humerus from the socket. Behind him, he felt a solid, shuddering weight. The back of his head knocked against another—Black. They were tied back-to-back, a two-headed beast of bruised flesh and tattered clothing.
"Black?" Jack croaked. His voice sounded like it had been dragged over broken glass.
"Still here, Jack," Black's voice came out as a ragged whisper, yet it maintained that infuriating, core-deep steadiness. "Try not to struggle. The knots are sailors' hitches. They only tighten the more you fight."
"Sailors," Jack groaned, his chin dropping to his chest. "Of course. Why couldn't we be captured by, I don't know, accountants? They'd just tie us up with red tape."
"Quiet," Black hissed. "Someone's coming."
The heavy oak door at the far end of the hold groaned open. It didn't just swing; it complained, its rusted hinges shrieking like a dying bird. Sunlight from the upper deck slashed through the gloom, a blinding golden blade that revealed the filth of their surroundings. Dust motes danced in the light, but they weren't dust—they were flecks of dried skin and wood shavings.
A group of men filed in, their shadows stretching long and jagged across the blood-stained floorboards. At the front was a man who seemed to occupy more space than the laws of physics should allow. He was a mountain of a man, his skin the deep, rich hue of obsidian, glistening with a thin sheen of sweat. He wore a bizarre fusion of modern tactical gear—a Kevlar vest and ceramic plates—over an 18th-century frock coat made of heavy, sun-bleached silk. This was a man who lived across centuries, a ghost of the Atlantic slave trade reborn in the era of high-stakes mercenary warfare.
Beside him walked a woman who looked like a hallucination. She moved with a liquid, predatory grace, her footsteps silent on the damp wood. She wore a tailored charcoal trench coat, cinched tight at the waist, and leather gloves that looked soft enough to be silk but tough enough to handle a blade. Her hair was a sharp, bobbed blonde, and her eyes were a piercing, surgical blue. She looked like she belonged in a high-rise office in Canary Wharf, not in the bowels of a pirate ship.
"Oh, great," Jack wheezed, forcing a crooked grin. "Black Caesar. I'd say it's an honor, but your Yelp reviews really underplayed the whole 'kidnapping and bondage' vibe."
Black Caesar stepped into the center of the room, his heavy tactical boots thumping like a funeral drum. He reached up with a massive hand, his thumb tracing a jagged, ivory-white scar that bisected his left eye. The eyelid was permanently puckered, and the eye beneath was a milky, sightless orb—a dead moon trapped in a dark sky.
"How's that eye, Caesar?" Black's voice was cold, almost conversational. "Still seeing double from the last time we met in the Strait?"
Caesar's voice was a tectonic rumble, a sound that started in his chest and vibrated the floorboards. "You mean the eye that you two almost crippled, Mr. Black? It aches when the pressure drops. And right now, the pressure is dropping very, very fast."
Jack let out a nervous, high-pitched laugh that ended in a wet cough. "It was a mistake, Caesar! Total misunderstanding. We were actually aiming for the guy behind you. You just have such a... magnetic personality. And a large target radius."
Caesar didn't blink. He leaned in, his shadow eclipsing Jack. "The 'Eye of the Mountain' brought you to my doorstep. You have read the Book of Mansa Musa. You know the coordinates of the primary vault. I can either have that information given to me freely, or I can let my crew extract it like a parasite from your gut."
Black didn't look at the giant. His gaze was locked on the woman standing in the shadows. She was leaning against a support beam, her arms crossed, watching the scene with the detached curiosity of a scientist observing a chemical reaction. When Black's eyes met hers, she didn't flinch. Instead, she offered a slow, mocking smile—the kind that promised nothing but beautiful cruelty.
"Is that the plan?" Jack quipped, his bravado thinning like cheap paper. "Torture? How very 17th century. Don't you guys have a dental plan? Or a human resources department we can speak to? I feel like there's a serious lack of workplace safety here."
Caesar's face shifted into a mask of pure, unadulterated malice. "I don't need a department, Jack. I have a specialist. A man who understands that the human body is just a vessel for secrets, and that every secret has a physical location."
He turned his head toward the dark corner of the hold. "Bring in the Marrow Shaman."
The air in the room didn't just grow cold; it grew heavy, as if the oxygen had been replaced by lead. Out of the darkness stepped a figure that made the hair on Jack's neck stand straight up. The Marrow Shaman was gaunt, his limbs long and spindly like a spider's. His skin was painted with a grey ash made from pulverized bone, and he wore a necklace of human vertebrae that clattered with every step. He didn't carry a weapon; he carried a leather satchel that rattled with the distinct, clinical sound of surgical steel.
He didn't speak. He simply hummed—a low, discordant vibration that seemed to bypass the ears and resonate directly in the marrow of Jack's teeth. It was the sound of a wasp trapped in a jar.
"This is the Marrow Shaman," Caesar whispered, his voice almost reverent. "He believes that the truth isn't in the mind. It's in the bone. He's very patient. He can keep a man alive for weeks with nothing but his own skeleton for company. Are you patient, Jack?"
The Shaman approached, his movements jerky and unnatural. He knelt before Jack, opening his satchel. He ignored the eyes, the tongue, the fingers—the usual targets of the amateur. Instead, he pulled out a long, thin needle and a spool of serrated silver wire.
"Wait, wait, wait," Jack stammered, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Let's talk about this! I'm a talker! I've got stories! I know a great joke about a priest and a rabbi in a—"
The Shaman didn't stop. He took Jack's right hand, holding it with a grip that felt like a vise. With agonizing slowness, he pushed the needle through the soft tissue of the wrist, aiming for the Scaphoid bone.
The pain was a vertical spike of white-hot light. It wasn't just a sting; it was a total invasion of his nervous system. Jack's mouth opened in a silent scream, his vocal cords paralyzed by the sheer intensity of the sensation. The Shaman then began "The Rasp"—threading the serrated wire through the hole and pulling it back and forth against the sensitive membrane of the bone.
It felt as if his wrist was being turned into a violin played by a demon. Every pull of the wire sent a fresh wave of fire up his arm and into his brain. He could feel the texture of the bone being ground down, a sickening, vibrating sensation that made his vision turn into a pulsing red void. The detail of the agony was exquisite; he could feel every individual serration on the wire as it snagged on the periosteum. It was a rhythmic, calculated destruction of his sanity.
Beside him, Black was subjected to his own hell. The Shaman used a technique called the "Keel-Stitch," where salt-soaked hemp threads were threaded through the raw nerves of his shoulder and pulled with a slow, mechanical precision. Black's jaw was clamped so tight Jack could hear his teeth cracking under the pressure.
Suddenly, a sharp static hiss cut through the air. A voice crackled through the walkie-talkie clipped to Caesar's belt.
"Caesar! We've got a problem! A ghost ship just cleared the mist on the port side—no flag, no transponder! They're boarding us! They've already breached the lower deck!"
A muffled explosion rocked the vessel, sending a shower of splinters from the ceiling. The ship groaned, tilting slightly as the sea began to churn outside. Caesar growled, his sightless eye twitching.
"You, come with me," Caesar barked, pointing at the Marrow Shaman. "We need your 'skills' on the main deck. The boarders need to be taught a lesson in anatomy." He looked at the woman. "You stay. Keep an eye on our guests. If they move so much as a finger, put a bullet in their lungs. We can still extract the information from the one that survives."
The door slammed shut, leaving the room in a heavy, ringing silence, broken only by the distant sounds of gunfire and the woman's steady breathing. She stepped forward, the golden light catching the sharp lines of her face.
"Black," she said, her voice a cool, melodic British lilt that sounded like expensive gin poured over ice. "Still as charming as ever, I see. Though the new look—'bloody and desperate'—isn't quite your style."
Black coughed, a spray of red hitting the floor. He lifted his head, a ghost of a smirk on his lips. "Eleanor. Eleanor Vance. I thought you were deep undercover in the Kremlin, or perhaps running a shadow government in Singapore. How did a MI6 golden girl get tangled up in a pirate's nest like this?"
"A girl has to pay the bills, darling," Eleanor replied, walking a slow circle around the chairs. Her leather gloves creaked as she flexed her hands. "The crown doesn't pay nearly enough to maintain a taste for 1945 Bordeaux. And Caesar... well, he's a man of vision. Even if he only has one eye to see it with."
"How did you get all tangled in this?" she continued, stopping in front of Jack. "Oh, I forgot. Where you go, trouble follows like a loyal, albeit mangy, hound. And I see you still have Jack with you. Hello, Jack."
"Hi," Jack squeaked, his wrist still throbbing with a phantom wire. "Can you... uh... help us out? Professional courtesy? For the sake of... old times? Or new money?"
Eleanor arched a perfectly groomed eyebrow, her gaze sweeping over their battered forms. "Why? What's in it for me? You're clearly outnumbered, outgunned, and currently leaking all over this very expensive rug. Caesar will win this fight, and when he does, he won't be in a merciful mood."
Black looked her dead in the eye, the intensity of his gaze cutting through the haze of pain. "Because we are the only ones who know how to find the gold, Eleanor. Volkov has the book. Caesar has the brawn. But they don't have the key. We do. If we die, the location of Mansa Musa's hoard dies with us. And you'll just be another mercenary on a sinking ship."
Eleanor stared at him for a long, agonizing beat. The ship rocked violently again—a cannonball had punched through the hull nearby, the sound like a titan's hammer hitting an anvil. Dust and sea spray began to leak through the floorboards.
"I suppose," she said softly, "that is a compelling argument."
She reached into the side of her boot and pulled out a small, ceramic folding knife—non-magnetic, impossible to detect, and razor-sharp. She didn't hand it to them. She dropped it into Black's lap, hidden by the deep shadow of the high-backed chair.
"Don't make me regret this, Black. If you're lying about the key, I'll carve the coordinates into your skin myself."
As she turned to leave, she paused at the door, her silhouette framed against the chaos of the hallway. "Try not to die. It would be such a waste of a perfectly good suit, Black. And Jack? Try to scream a little quieter next time. It's unrefined."
"Don't hurt them too bad!" she called out mockingly as she stepped into the hall.
The timing was impeccable. Just as she vanished, the door was kicked open again. The Marrow Shaman burst back in, his ash-covered face contorted in a snarl. Caesar had sent him back to finish the job before the ship went down. He knew the vessel was compromised, and he wanted the secret secured—even if it meant taking the bones with him.
The Shaman didn't go for his needles this time. He grabbed a rusted, heavy crowbar from a rack near the door. His eyes were wide, bloodshot with the frenzy of the battle outside.
"My turn!" Jack roared.
But he wasn't just shouting; he was moving. While Eleanor had been talking, Jack had been working the ceramic blade. He had sliced through the primary hemp cords, ignoring the way the rope burned his raw flesh. As the Shaman lunged, Jack kicked his heavy chair backward with all his might. The solid oak caught the Shaman in the shins with a sickening crack, sending him sprawling.
The ship chose that moment to die. A massive explosion rocked the port side, and the vessel tilted forty degrees in a sudden, violent lurch.
The floor became a slide. The Shaman, Jack, and Black all tumbled toward the starboard bulkhead. Jack used the momentum, sliding on his back and grabbing a heavy crate of spare ammunition that had broken loose. He redirected it with his feet, and the two-hundred-pound box slammed into the Shaman's midsection, pinning him against the wall like a moth to a board.
Black was up in a flash, his movements a blur of recovered lethargy. He grabbed a fallen cutlass from a dead guard near the door. The ship rolled again as a massive tide shifted, and for a split second, the laws of gravity seemed to suspend. They were thrown toward the ceiling, weightless, before slamming back down as the ship corrected its list.
The Shaman hissed, his hand snaking out to grab the crowbar. He swung it in a whistling arc that would have crushed Jack's skull, but Jack was faster. He grabbed a loose, heavy-duty electrical cable hanging from the ceiling. As the ship dipped into a deep trough, Jack swung out like a pendulum, his heavy mountain boots hitting the Shaman square in the chest just as another cannonball punched through the hull three rooms away.
The shockwave sent the Shaman flying backward. He didn't hit the wall; he hit the "Keel-Stitch" rack he had prepared for Black. The jagged, salt-encrusted hooks caught his tattered garments and his flesh, impaling him on his own instruments of agony. He hung there, a grey ghost caught in a web of steel, as the room began to fill with waist-high seawater.
"Let's get the hell out of here!" Jack shouted, his voice nearly drowned out by the roar of the ocean rushing into the hold.
They burst onto the main deck, and the scene was a descent into the ninth circle of hell. The pirate ship was locked in a death-embrace with a black-sailed frigate. Men were swinging across on ropes, blades clashing in the spray of the stormy sea. The air was thick with the smell of sulfur and ozone.
In the chaos, Jack's eyes found the stern. A small, high-powered motor launch was being lowered into the churning waves. Black Caesar was there, his massive form unmistakable even in the mist. He was clutching a waterproof briefcase—the Book of Mansa Musa. And beside him, as calm as if she were waiting for a taxi, was Eleanor Vance.
She looked back once, her eyes catching Black's across the carnage of the deck. She didn't wave, and she didn't apologize. She simply stepped into the boat as Caesar activated the winches.
"They're escaping!" Jack screamed, pointing. "She's got the book! She played us!"
"She played everyone, Jack!" Black yelled back, ducking as the main mast snapped like a dry twig. The massive timber crashed down across the deck, crushing a group of boarders and cutting off their path to the stern. "The ship is sinking! We have to go now!"
The stern was rising higher and higher into the air, the massive rudder dripping with kelp as the bow plunged into the depths. The water was rushing across the deck in a white-capped torrent.
"We have to jump!" Jack looked at the churning, freezing water a hundred feet below. It looked like a liquid grave.
"No," Black said, his eyes scanning the deck. He spotted a row of heavy depth charges lashed to the tilting rail near the midship. "The suction will pull us under if we just jump. We need a boost."
As the ship reached its breaking point, the deck nearly vertical, Jack and Black sprinted up the rising wood, their boots slipping on the blood and seawater. They reached the depth charges. Black didn't hesitate; he pulled the pins on three of them and kicked them into the sea, timing it for the moment the charges hit the deeper water near the hull.
"Jump! Now!"
They leapt into the void just as the charges detonated. The massive underwater explosion created a colossal bubble of air and a vertical surge of water—a "geyser" of white foam that caught them mid-fall. Instead of hitting the water like concrete, they were cushioned by the aeration and propelled outward by the sheer force of the shockwave, clear of the sinking ship's deadly vortex.
They hit the water hard, the world turning into a cold, dark silent place. When Jack finally surfaced, gasping for air and spitting out brine, the pirate ship was gone. Only a few bobbing crates and a swirling whirlpool marked where it had been.
In the distance, through the spray and the fog, the motor launch carrying Caesar and Eleanor was a vanishing speck, heading toward the coast of Paris.
"She... she took the book," Jack sputtered, his teeth chattering so hard he could barely speak.
"She took the book," Black agreed, his face a mask of grim determination as he treaded water. "But we're alive. And I still have the key."
He reached into his waterproof inner pocket and pulled out the small, blood-stained jade cylinder they had found in Peru. The "Eye of the Mountain" was still theirs.