Inferno (Page 121)

Sienna shouted for help, but nobody paid attention to her cries. Only fifteen feet away, she saw an old woman sitting on a tire, carving the rot off an old onion with a rusty knife. The woman did not even glance up when Sienna shouted.

When the men seized her and dragged her inside a little shack, Sienna had no illusions about what was going to happen, and the terror was all-consuming. She fought with everything she had, but they were strong, quickly pinning her down on an old, soiled mattress.

They tore open her shirt, clawing at her soft skin. When she screamed, they stuffed her torn shirt so deep into her mouth that she thought she would choke. Then they flipped her onto her stomach, forcing her face into the putrid bed.

Sienna Brooks had always felt pity for the ignorant souls who could believe in God amid a world of such suffering, and yet now she herself was praying … praying with all her heart.

Please, God, deliver me from evil.

Even as she prayed, she could hear the men laughing, taunting her as their filthy hands hauled her jeans down over her flailing legs. One of them climbed onto her back, sweaty and heavy, his perspiration dripping onto her skin.

I’m a virgin, Sienna thought. This is how it is going to happen for me.

Suddenly the man on her back leaped off her, and the taunting jeers turned to shouts of anger and fear. The warm sweat rolling onto Sienna’s back from above suddenly began gushing … spilling onto the mattress in splatters of red.

When Sienna rolled over to see what was happening, she saw the old woman with the half-peeled onion and the rusty knife standing over her attacker, who was now bleeding profusely from his back.

The old woman glared threateningly at the others, whipping her bloody knife through the air until the three men scampered off.

Without a word, the old woman helped Sienna gather her clothes and get dressed.

“Salamat,” Sienna whispered tearfully. “Thank you.”

The old woman tapped her ear, indicating she was deaf.

Sienna placed her palms together, closed her eyes, and bowed her head in a gesture of respect. When she opened her eyes, the woman was gone.

Sienna left the Philippines at once, without even saying good-bye to the other members of the group. She never once spoke of what had happened to her. She hoped that ignoring the incident would make it fade away, but it seemed only to make it worse. Months later, she was still haunted by night terrors, and she no longer felt safe anywhere. She took up martial arts, and despite quickly mastering the deadly skill of dim mak, she still felt at risk everywhere she went.

Her depression returned, surging tenfold, and eventually she stopped sleeping altogether. Every time she combed her hair, she noticed that huge clumps were falling out, more hair every day. To her horror, within weeks, she was half bald, having developed symptoms that she self-diagnosed as telegenic effluvium—a stress-related alopecia with no cure other than curing one’s stress. Every time she looked in the mirror, though, she saw her balding head and felt her heart race.

I look like an old woman!

Finally, she had no choice but to shave her head. At least she no longer looked old. She simply looked ill. Not wanting to look like a cancer victim, she purchased a wig, which she wore in a blond ponytail, and at least looked like herself again.

Inside, however, Sienna Brooks was changed.

I am damaged goods.

In a desperate attempt to leave her life behind, she traveled to America and attended medical school. She had always had an affinity for medicine, and she hoped that being a doctor would make her feel like she was being of service … as if she were doing something at least to ease the pain of this troubled world.

Despite the long hours, school had been easy for her, and while her classmates were studying, Sienna took a part-time acting job to earn some extra money. The gig definitely wasn’t Shakespeare, but her skills with language and memorization meant that instead of feeling like work, acting felt like a sanctuary where Sienna could forget who she was … and be someone else.

Anybody else.

Sienna had been trying to escape her identity since she could first speak. As a child, she had shunned her given name, Felicity, in favor of her middle name, Sienna. Felicity meant “fortunate,” and she knew she was anything but.

Remove the focus on your own problems, she reminded herself. Focus on the problems of the world.

Her panic attack in the crowded streets of Manila had sparked in Sienna a deep concern about overcrowding and world population. It was then that she discovered the writings of Bertrand Zobrist, a genetic engineer who had proposed some very progressive theories about world population.

He’s a genius, she realized, reading his work. Sienna had never felt that way about another human being, and the more of Zobrist she read, the more she felt like she was looking into the heart of a soul mate. His article “You Can’t Save the World” reminded Sienna of what everyone used to tell her as a child … and yet Zobrist believed the exact opposite.

You CAN save the world, Zobrist wrote. If not you, then who? If not now, when?

Sienna studied Zobrist’s mathematical equations carefully, educating herself on his predictions of a Malthusian catastrophe and the impending collapse of the species. Her intellect loved the high-level speculations, but she felt her stress level climbing as she saw the entire future before her … mathematically guaranteed … so obvious … inevitable.

Why doesn’t anyone else see this coming?

Though she was frightened by his ideas, Sienna became obsessed with Zobrist, watching videos of his presentations, reading everything he had ever written. When Sienna heard that he had a speaking engagement in the United States, she knew she had to go see him. And that was the night her entire world had changed.