11
ARKANE Headquarters, London, England. May 19, 11.30am
Jake used the elevator from the vaults below up the eight floors to the penthouse of the ARKANE Institute and stood silently in the doorway to the grand office.
Dr Elias Marietti sat at his desk gazing out the bay window, the grey London light giving his face an unhealthy pallor. Even at the beginning of summer, the sunlight had an ashen pall from the pollution of the great city.
The study light was on and papers were strewn across the large mahogany desk. Marietti had told him the desk had been the property of George Frederic Watts, an English painter in Victorian times, who had seen visions of God but rejected religion in his own life. The Director had seen the irony in that.
One of Watts’ paintings also hung on the office wal
