The Search for Artemis - By P. D. Griffith Page 0,105

forehead were bulging, his heart trying to keep a supply of blood to his failing organs.

As a chill ran down his back, Landon realized the strange sense of discomfort he was feeling. It was as if his body and mind didn’t know how to react to what he was witnessing. How would it feel to watch another human die before his eyes knowing there was nothing he could do to save him? Landon leaned in and held Dr. Pullman’s hand.

Following a few violent convulsions that appeared to leave him in a state of muscle failure, Dr. Pullman shifted his deep blue eyes to focus on Landon. For a split second, Landon could see gratitude register in the doctor’s face, and a tear fell out of the corner of his eye and streaked across his temple, disappearing in his silvery hairline.

“Find . . . Artemis,” the doctor repeated. They were no more than small movements of his lips, and in his last breath, they became his final words—a message to a boy who’d come to help him in his time of need. As the muscles of his entire body released, Dr. Pullman fell back onto the gurney, his weight sinking into the steel.

Landon stood beside him without reaction. The doctor’s head was turned toward him, his eyes now dilated to a point that his deep blue irises were nothing more than a thin aura around a black hole. He couldn’t explain it, but following the doctor’s death, Landon felt a strange sense of calmness about himself, as if in the few short minutes he’d accepted the inevitable departure of the man he’d found in Room 132.

Landon turned the handle, exited the examination room and returned to his bed. He never fell asleep, but lay atop the sheets, staring at the ceiling for the remainder of the night, contemplating what he would need to do next. He had a singular mission now—find Artemis. He now knew he was looking for a real person, but by seeing those memories, Landon was now unsure of everything he’d been told since being brought to the Gymnasium. Artemis had to carry the answers to their origins, the Gymnasium and the Pantheon.

As Landon stared up at the ceiling, the thought continued to repeat itself in his mind. Find Artemis . . . find answers.

• • • • •

Landon lived out the remainder of his stint in the medical wing without a word of discontent. Instead, he occupied his time running through the events he’d seen in Dr. Pullman’s mind, scouring his memory of them for any clue to this elusive Artemis he’d been told to find. Could she be the woman he watched get the Prometheus gene injection in 1980? Or perhaps it was the child she carried?

After dismissing them as possibilities, he recalled the research he’d done months before on Artemis in the mythology and folklore section of the Library. The previous search went nowhere. Back then the thought had crossed his mind, but he’d never fully believed that Brock and the Cranes were looking for a living, breathing person.

The more Landon recalled about who the mythological Artemis was, the more he became concerned about the woman he was told to find. Any woman who would call herself by that godly pseudonym must be a terrifying individual. Artemis, the goddess, was a frightening figure, hell-bent on punishing everyone she considered her enemy. What would this Artemis do if he somehow managed to insult her?

But then, the day before he was released from the medical wing with a full bill of health, he realized something. Could Artemis be a member of the Pantheon? Once he thought of it, he couldn’t get the possibility out of his mind. It made so much sense; however, Landon knew that there was no active operative in the Pantheon that went by that code name. Were there other active members of whom he was unaware? Or perhaps she was a former member? Could Artemis be one of the girls from the Pantheon demostration Pullman showed him in his memories?

Landon had imagined she must be at the Gymnasium if Dr. Pullman believed he could find her. Was she one of the teachers? A tutor? Was it Sofia?

It seemed possible. Landon thought about every interaction he’d ever had with Sofia Petrovanya. She seemed connected and informed as she was of a high position in the Gymnasium. She was their Collector, bringing students to the facility after their apocratusis. Why couldn’t she have been a