Unearthed

by Amie Kaufman

  I yank off my wrist unit, which is Earth tech, but at least conductive, holding it over the little chamber, but it’s no good—it won’t stretch one end to the other, I can’t even pretend to make it fit. I need something the right size—and an instant later I know what, the realization a second punch in the gut. “Your phone,” I say. “I think your phone will fit.”

  “But it’s dead,” she protests, and I know that’s not her only reluctance. Of course it’s not.

  “It’s still conductive,” I reply. “I’m sorry—but you’re no use to Evie if you die trying to hold on to a picture of her.”

  She nods, and though I can see what it costs her in the tightness of her mouth, she doesn’t hesitate. She digs the phone out from her pocket, shoving it into the hollow, and it’s a perfect fit.

  We exchange a glance—surprised, relieved, confused—as it retracts back into the stone once more, and inside the huge doors we hear the familiar grinding of gears and machinery that tells us the temple’s about to unleash something new. We tense, ready to duck or leap, to make a quick and desperate play for survival, but then the doors simply slide open, retracting into the rock on either side.

  We both flick up our lights to look through, but they illuminate little of the dark chamber waiting beyond it, and we don’t have time for the caution we’ve both learned over the last few days. I reach down to curl my hand around hers, and she weaves her fingers through mine and squeezes. Whatever this is, we’ll do it together.

  We take one step through the archway, onto the first paving stone inside. I feel it click, and a jolt of fear goes through me—are we standing on a pressure plate? Is something swinging at us through the darkness even now? But all that happens is a rumble of stone as the doors grind back into their original position, sealing behind us once more.

  Mia turns—I let go of her hand reluctantly—and uses her whole body weight to shove against one of the doors, failing to budge it. “Well,” she mutters. “At least we’ll hear them trying to get through.” She doesn’t say what we’re both thinking—her phone is lost now, sealed into the wall on the other side. “Let’s see if this place has, oh, I don’t know, maybe an exit sign somewhere.”

  Together we swing our flashlights up once more, illuminating a chamber with huge, vaulted ceilings, and something in the center, a large mass that I can’t make out. The room itself is immense, but I don’t see a single glyph to explain why this place should be important. My twin goals beat like drums in my head—I have to find out why the Nautilus led me here. What could possibly justify a warning hidden in a transmission, in a temple, in the very architecture of this place.

  And we have to find a way out of here that isn’t back the way we came, because if Liz catches up with us, I don’t think she’s going to be in the mood to negotiate.

  “Come on,” Mia mutters, edging out carefully, testing every step before she commits her weight, as she’s learned to do, a little slower now we’ve got more solid rock between us and Liz. I keep my flashlight down, examining the floor in front of her, making sure I’m following in her steps exactly. When she stops abruptly, I fetch up behind her with a bump, sliding one hand quickly around her waist to make sure I don’t knock her forward onto untested ground. She tenses a moment, then leans back into me.

  “What did you see?” I ask, lifting my gaze.

  “There’s something…Hold on.” She shuts off her light, and at her gesture, I do the same. “Up there, Jules.”

  And so there is. Very faint, high above us, there’s a steady, pale spot of illumination that does nothing to dispel the darkness of the room, but has an entirely different quality to the light from our flashlights. My heart thumps. “It could be some sort of residual power signature from the door,” I make myself say. “Or a trap.” Because what I want it to be so very badly, and what I know she’s thinking too, is that it could be sunlight. And if it’s sunlight, it might be a way out.

  “They would give us light, after all this time, and make it a trap,” she mutters, cynicism almost as thick as the darkness surrounding us. “Come on, what do you want us to do with it?”

  “Maybe a stone just came loose up there,” I suggest, but we both flick our lights back on, swinging them around the chamber in search of a clue. It’s Mia who finds it, letting out a little victory cry, as she squeezes back past me to hurriedly retrace our steps to the door once more. And now I see what she sees.

  Running down from the blackness of the ceiling, there’s a set of cables made of a strange, silvery-gray material that looks almost wet in the light. She swings her light across to the other side of the door, and there’s a second set—they both rise to meet one another at the top of the huge doorway, and disappear into the dark above. Beneath each set of cables, sitting parallel with the wall, is a huge lever.

  The old Mia would have simply started hauling on it without a second thought, but she’s learned, and she looks back at me. “Can you see any reason I can’t pull on this?”

  “I can think of a dozen nasty things that might happen,” I admit. “But we can’t stand here for eternity either. The cables are visible, and so are the levers, so they’re not intended to be a hidden trap. I think we might as well pull as not.” I’ve made my way over to join her now, and by the light of my torch I can see her faint, wry smile. Perhaps I was supposed to say something slightly more comforting. I’m not good with cues. “Just in case,” I add, “it’s been a pleasure knowing you.”

  She snorts. “It’s been a hellish nightmare, Oxford.”

  “Well, I’m English,” I point out. “I’m quite good at enjoying myself under even the most miserable of circumstances. And I did like riding the skimmer bike.” I’m joking, playing for another chance to see one side of her mouth tug up in that reluctant smile, but it’s true. Parts of this trek have been a pleasure. Though I’ve learned things I wish I didn’t know about my fellow human beings, I’ve learned some things I’m glad to know, as well. I’ve met Mia.

  Together, we’re something more than we are apart, something more than I’ve ever been before.

  Something I don’t want to give up.

  I’d like more time to parse that thought, but she’s grabbed the lever, and after a gentle pull on it does no good, she’s applying all of her weight to trying to move the thing down to a horizontal position. Ancient machinery groans above us, and the light up at the apex of the ceiling intensifies ever so slightly, like a beam being focused.

  There’s not enough room for two sets of hands on the lever, but I reach up to grab the cables, leaning backward and letting them take my weight. It’s not like any material I’ve ever felt—strong and unyielding as metal, but somehow seeming to squirm under my touch in a way that makes my stomach turn. But slowly I take up more slack, and the light brightens, the beam growing stronger and broader. There’s no mistaking it—it’s daylight, but so far above us we have no hope of reaching it. This set of cables is attached to something like a retractable roof, or a sunshade over a skylight. “What’s it for?” I mutter. “Why did they want us to do this?”

  But when I glance across at her, Amelia’s not looking around. She’s visible in the dim light, looking at the second set of cables on the other side of the door. “I’ve got a feeling…” she murmurs, and I know to wait as she pauses, let her complete the thought. I’ve picked up on these little cues, over the last few days; she’s thinking, and the further outside the box her thoughts go, the more intensely she goes silent.

  I’m repaid for biting my tongue when she continues. “In Chicago,” she says, voice taut with excitement, “cell reception sucks. Something to do with protons or ions or something in the desert winds, I don’t know. Anyway, sometimes I’d earn some cash playing lookout for one of the gangs, and since you can’t just text, and you definitely can’t shout to raise the alarm, you need a visual signal. At night, it’s this.” She flickers her flashlight on and off, the change still visible in the faint daylight. “But during the day…during the d
ay, you use mirrors.” She swings her flashlight up to where the cables divide, branching out and angling every which way around the room.

  I have absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. “But there aren’t any—”

  She walks across to the other side of the door, grabbing the lever there, and throwing her weight back against it. “If there is one, it would be a way to redirect—” she says, then falls silent to swing her weight against the second lever again. It doesn’t budge for a moment, and then with another round of grinding machinery, slowly it begins to lower from vertical to horizontal, Amelia’s small frame hanging off it. The beam of sunlight begins to strengthen and brighten, and I can make out the outline of a reflective disc, and another set to catch its light once it rotates into place, before the reflected sunlight grows too bright for me to look at it. Then, between one heartbeat and the next, as the mirrors align, the chamber transforms into a sea of rainbows.

  Sunlight shatters across every surface in the room in a dazzling, shocking flash, and from somewhere to my left there’s an undignified shriek as Mia comes barreling straight into me. My arms go around her automatically, and they stay there as our surroundings blaze to life with a brilliance that’s momentarily blinding. My vision’s dancing with stars and sparks, and as I try to blink away the tears and focus, she turns in my arms to gaze out at the chamber of light.

  “Holy…” She trails off, staring at the beams of light, lips parted in awe. As the cables above us groan and settle, the rainbows glimmer, and Mia’s wonder is writ clear on her face. “It’s so beautiful,” she whispers, face tilted up toward the domed ceiling and walls covered in the fractured rainbows. “Do you think they knew?” She finally tears her gaze away, just enough to look up at me. “Knew what beauty was?”

  My heart’s slamming against my chest, and it’s not just that I’m holding her in my arms again, that I’m gazing down at her, her mouth only a breath from mine. It’s that in this instant, she’s me, back in Valencia. Opening herself to exploration. To curiosity. It’s not just that for a moment she’s sharing in my thrill of discovery. She’s experiencing it. She understands.

  As she reaches out across the millennia to the Undying, to wonder if they knew what beauty was, to wonder why they created something so delicate and perfect, she’s opening her mind to all the possibilities they represent.

  She’s communicating with them, by picking up the stories they left behind and adding her own words, a sking her own questions. This is what I do—what exploration and archaeology is—and in this moment, Mia’s in it with me. In this moment, all our questions and suspicions about the Undying are set aside, as we share this thing with them, left for us all this time. “I think they must have,” I murmur. “Known what beauty was. Look what they made.”

  “Whoa, Jules. Look what else they made,” she murmurs, eyes no longer on the ceiling but staring toward the center of the room.

  Illuminated by the refracted sunlight, a huge monolith stands there, a towering piece of black stone. Invisible in the dark-ness before, the massive stone structure is impossible to miss now that we’re not distracted by the beauty of the lighting. It’s nothing like the red and blue-gray and creamy colors of the Gaian bedrock in this area, or the metallic stone the Undying use to build—it’s nothing like I’ve seen anywhere on this planet.

  It’s at least twice my height, and its edges are jagged, save for one side, which has been cut and polished to marble smoothness. It stands atop a low stone plinth, and a huge circle made of the same stone frames it like a picture. It’s the centerpiece of the room, no doubt, but I have no idea what it’s for.

  Mia steps away from me, and we both move cautiously across the floor, though we’re more and more certain there are no traps here. This is the end of the hunt, it’s whatever we came to find. We’ve passed the tests, and the traps are behind us.

  The secret Nautilus equation buried in the broadcast, each hidden spiral scratched into the stone rooms of this temple and woven into its very architecture, they all led me here. And now I’ll find out why.

  We shine our lights up, and now that we can trace the cables across the vaulted ceiling, we see that instead of the one or two mirrors Mia supposed might be used to light the chamber, there are dozens upon dozens, all angled now toward a multifaceted crystal set up near the ceiling. It scatters the sunbeam into rainbow fragments that paint the walls in swaths of color, daylight-bright.

  The purpose of the huge chunk of rock and the stone frame that arches around it is considerably less clear. I stand in front of the polished side, staring up at it, but it’s completely free of glyphs or instructions. “This must be what we’re meant to see,” I say. “There’s only one thing in the room.”

  “This is the final room,” Mia says. “But…” She trails off, turning in a slow circle, taking in the rainbow-clad walls that enchanted her a minute before. “Nothing,” she says, her voice dropping suddenly. “No way out. There’s just this hunk of rock.”

  “There must be something,” I say, but I’m echoing her movement, spinning in a circle, and my heart’s dropping with every second. How did I fail to look for another door? Because it was dark at first, and then the rainbows, and Mia’s wonder at them, and my own anticipation, and I…There’s no exit.

  We’re trapped here, and Liz is on her way. And there’s no sign of the Nautilus—or what it means.

  “The vent,” I try, squinting up at where the sunlight is, pushing aside the question of the Nautilus for a few moments. It’s of no use to us if we’re dead.

  “It’s too high,” Mia replies, voice still quiet, staring at the huge rock in the middle of the room as though it’s to blame for our predicament. “We don’t have a rope long enough. Our climbing gear wouldn’t reach, even if we had a way to toss it up and secure it.” She doesn’t even have to look up to be sure. “We’re going to die here, Jules.” The scattered light does nothing to hide the distress on her face, her reddened eyes and nose, the exhausted desperation in her gaze. So much for the wonder of discovery. Impending doom will do that to you.

  Her voice breaks as she speaks again. “We’re trapped in a place nobody but you could ever reach, except for the trained scavver crew that’s coming through that door to kill us as soon as they get here and plant explosives. And even if they pick the wrong passageway, or they can’t break in, we’ve got food for maybe a week, a breather that’ll last less than that, and there’s not even a pebble-sized scrap of tech here we could use to bargain our way off the planet, let alone for Evie!”

  Her whole body’s tensing, hands curling to fists at her sides, and when I take a step toward her she turns sharply, stalking around to the other side of the monolith, putting it between us.

  “Deus,” I mutter, running one hand through my hair, grabbing a handful of it in frustration. There has to be a way out of this. And we have to find it now. Liz won’t hesitate to shoot Mia the moment she sees her. And I won’t be far behind, either because I won’t stand by and let Mia be hurt, or because Liz will realize I’m done cooperating.

  Which means we need to find an exit, and find it fast. I close my eyes.

  If this whole journey is the Undying’s version of a test, determining our worthiness as a species, then there must be an answer. Unless we’re not worthy, my panicked mind supplies. Unless the solution is beyond what we can reason.

  Then Mia’s voice cuts through my tangled thoughts, coming from the other side of the rock. “Jules, what does ‘pergite si audetis’ mean?” She speaks the words haltingly, cautiously.

  I blink. “When did you learn to speak Latin?”

  “I didn’t,” she says, her voice thin, and as I make my way around the plinth to find her, she looks across at me with huge eyes, then points down at the base of the plinth. “It’s carved right there.”

  I look down, and sure enough, there the letters are, carved into the base of the stone.

  PERGITE SI AUDETIS.

  My throat is dry, my heart a f
rantic drum in my ears. Mia’s looking at me, her alarm spiking when she sees whatever’s written on my face. She’s waiting for me to explain, and it takes all my effort to force myself to speak. “It means—it means ‘onward, if you dare.’ ”

  LATIN. IN A TEMPLE ON the other side of the galaxy built by creatures who went extinct long before Rome ever existed.

  My mind’s spinning, and I know Jules is as thrown as I am.

  “This message is for us,” I say, my voice hoarse. “For humans.”

  “Yes,” he whispers.

  “I mean, it’s freaking Latin!” I actually squeak the last word. “What the hell, Jules?”

  “They used the same words in the broadcast,” he says, dazed, his gaze barely focused. “ ‘Onward, if you dare.’ And now here it is, it’s…The test was always for us. It was us they were testing for worthiness.”

  “I don’t like this,” I murmur, staring up at the black monolith like it might move. “I don’t trust it. We’ve been doing our best to explain everything away—fifty thousand years, convergent evolution, but—”

  “I’ve been explaining it away,” he corrects me, still soft. “You’ve been asking what other ways they might be similar to us. Whether they could lie. Deceive. We have your answer now.”

  “But the answer’s impossible,” I reply. “The answer is that they’ve been seeking humanity, targeting Earth all along. That’s impossible.”

  “And yet there it is.” I think something’s broken in his head—intellectual overload, or whatever. He just keeps shaking it slowly, staring at the Latin.

  A sound, tiny and far away, yanks me back to myself. Maybe I’m imagining it—Jules certainly doesn’t hear it, too lost in his own mind—but it reminds me nonetheless that whatever we’ve just discovered, we’re still in a race for survival.

  I want to give him a shake, to shout that Liz is on our heels, and she won’t bother to solve the door puzzle—she’ll just blast her way through it. But I need him thinking.