The Omega Project

by Ernest Dempsey

  The guards didn’t know what to do. This woman was threatening to kill the admiral, the man in charge of the entire United States Navy. If they shot her, though, he would die. At the very best, he’d survive and never be able to speak again, but that was a long shot.

  She bent her legs a little more, and the tip of the spike brushed against the admiral’s throat.

  He froze stiff, afraid to swipe at the makeshift weapon lest she drive it through his neck and into the floor beneath.

  “Do what she says, you idiots. She’ll kill me.” His voice was whiny, muffled by the involuntary tears that came instinctively with a broken nose.

  The guards hesitated another second.

  She encouraged them by tilting her head to the side.

  Then the two gradually let their weapons down. They set them on the floor and then stood slowly.

  “Hands in the air, please. I’m sure you two know the drill. Kick those over here for me.” She gave a nod indicating where she wanted the weapons.

  The men did as told, lifting their hands above their shoulders. They kicked the guns, and the weapons slid across the floor, one hitting the admiral on the top of the head, the other skidding to a stop next to her right foot.

  “Good. Now, step over there to the corner.”

  The men shuffled to their left and stopped beside a black wooden bookcase.

  “You, on the floor. Facedown.” She issued the order to the man nearest the bookshelf. “Then you lie down flat on top of him.”

  The two men scowled. “Do it.”

  They hesitated, and then obeyed. The first got down on his hands and knees. The other looked less sure about whether or not he should do it. Then he relented, climbing on top of his partner’s back. He lay down flat with his chest against the bottom guy’s shoulder blades.

  Adriana deftly curled the wooden shard around and began working the edge of it up and down. It took nearly twenty seconds, but she felt a section of the tape split. Once that happened, she pushed harder with the broken chair piece while pulling with her wrists. The tape gave way, and her hands shot free.

  She immediately reached down and picked up the nearest weapon with her right hand, careful to keep it trained on the two men in the precarious position in the corner.

  She stopped next to the other gun and crouched down to remove the tape still clinging loosely to her ankles. Once she’d ripped it out of the way, she picked up the second pistol and stood.

  Winters was wriggling around now, his hands still cradling his nose as he stared furiously at the woman holding the guns.

  “Now,” Adriana said, “it’s question-and-answer time. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I will kill your two men here, and then I will go to work on you. I realize that these two aren’t worth much to you. Sure, they’re loyal, but you’d sacrifice them to save your own cowardly tail.”

  The guards’ eyes filled with questions, worry streaking across their faces.

  Winters said nothing.

  “Where is John Dawkins, Admiral? What did you do with him?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Adriana nodded, her lips sticking out slightly. She stepped backward and stopped next to the desk. The admiral’s cell phone was sitting on it. She touched the screen and found the device was still unlocked. Then she tapped on the camera app and cracked a smile.

  “Not smart, Admiral, leaving your phone unlocked like that. Would be a shame if someone gained access to it.”

  Winters forced an agonized laugh and called Adriana a filthy name in the process. “You think I’m stupid enough to use my personal phone for anything that could implicate me? You got nothing! You hear me? Nothing! And pretty soon the other guards and every cop in this town are going to be here, knocking down my door. You won’t get out of this alive; I can promise you that.” His voice trailed off.

  Adriana snickered. “You’re right. I don’t think you’d be stupid enough to use your own phone for anything that could get you into trouble. That’s not what I was suggesting.”

  His face twisted in confusion as she propped up the phone on the desk and then walked over to where a roll of duct tape sat on the counter.

  44

  Astoria

  Dust plumed up from the opening as Sean ripped up the last of the boards from the floor. The tiny motes were accompanied by a musty odor as they spewed out into the room.

  They each removed flashlights from their gear bags, hoisted them back onto their shoulders, and then shone the lights down into the dark abyss.

  Beyond the fog of dust, they could make out concrete steps descending into the darkness. The steps were lined with more concrete to the right and a painted, metal railing on the left. Chips of black paint had peeled off years ago, exposing the steel underneath to the elements.

  As the three pointed their lights into the cavity, they saw the stairs descending at least two levels. Sean stayed close to the wall, while the other two looked down between the staircases.

  “Hard to tell,” Tommy said, “but it looks like it goes down at least a couple of levels.”

  Sean remained near the wall, unwilling to look over the edge of the railing for fear it was a much farther descent than his friend suggested.

  “Shall we, gentlemen?” Petty asked, motioning down the stairs with his light.

  The other two nodded, and Tommy took the lead, keeping one hand on the rail while he kept the flashlight’s round beam trained on the damp stairs below.

  “Careful, guys,” Tommy said as he took the first couple of steps. “It’s a little slick.”

  Gradually, the three made their way down the first flight, rounded the turn, and continued their descent. Their movements were slow, hindered by the wet stairs. The concrete surface had worn smooth over time, and more than once Sean nearly lost his footing. He was relieved when, after only climbing down three flights, they arrived at the bottom.

  That relief was short-lived as they stepped off the stairs and onto the ground.

  The high shaft of the stairwell ended abruptly over an entryway. It was surrounded by poured concrete on three sides: left, right, and overhead. Plus, directly in front of the three men—opposite the stairs—was a sealed metal door. An old keypad hung from the wall next to it containing all the letters of the alphabet. It almost looked like whoever put it there had taken all the keys from an antique typewriter and glued them into the rectangular metal box. A tiny red light beeped on the top edge of the device that faced the visitors.

  “This thing has power to it?” Tommy asked. “That’s strange.”

  Petty stepped close to the keypad and peered at it. He frowned and pushed on the door since there was no handle, another strange detail he hadn’t really noticed on his initial inspection of the entrance.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  Sean flicked his eyebrows. “Government black site?” he joked.

  “You never know,” Petty admitted.

  He’d heard all about those places, the locations around the world where the CIA interrogated prisoners using less-than-legal methods. This wasn’t one of those and every man in the room knew it, but that didn’t answer Petty’s question.

  What was this place?

  “So, we have to enter a password to get in,” Sean said. “Any clue as to what that might be?”

  Tommy stared blankly at the keypad. His eyes blinked over and over again as he tried to consider what the passcode could be. He doubted there were any traps set, any security measures in place, though that could end up being a dangerous assumption.

  He and Sean eyeballed the concrete box surrounding them and looked back at the staircase, assessing every potential crevice.

  “What about the letter?” Sean asked. “Maybe the clue to the passcode is in that letter.”

  Tommy arched a suspicious eyebrow. “Sean, the letter was written like, I don’t know, 130 years before this place was built. I doubt there’s anything in it that would have been used as some k
ind of password.”

  Sean rolled his shoulders. “Humor me.”

  Petty watched the exchange as if at a tennis match.

  Tommy pulled the letter out of his jacket and looked over the lines, scanning them quickly for any clue that might lead them to a solution for the passcode.

  He shook his head. “Nothing, man. I really don’t see anything on here that would work.”

  Sean was looking closely at the paper, leaning over it and craning his neck to get a better view. “What about that?” he asked, pointing at one of the last words in the letter. “Why is it all capitalized?”

  Petty shifted to get a closer look. “Yeah, that’s odd. And why would he say it like that?”

  Tommy read the final paragraph out loud. “This is the reason for our precaution, our vigilance against such mystical and relentless threats. The ring of three has been spread across the land, and only one with wits, courage, and a humble heart should take the challenge. For if you complete this journey, death must surely await, and the OMEGA will come.”

  “What does that mean?” Petty asked.

  “Omega is the end. You’ve heard that verse from the Bible, right, about the alpha and the omega?”

  Petty shrugged and tilted his head to the side. “I don’t go to church.”

  “But you’ve heard it.”

  “Yeah, it rings a bell.”

  “Well, the alpha is the beginning, and the omega is the end.”

  “It’s all Greek to me,” Petty said with a laugh.

  Sean and Tommy looked at him with disdain.

  Petty settled down again.

  “Don’t do that,” Tommy said.

  “What?”

  “Go for the obvious joke. Don’t do it. You’re better than that.”

  Petty cracked his neck to the right and bit his bottom lip. “Fair enough.”

  Sean got back to the problem at hand. “That still doesn’t explain why James Madison capitalized it.” He paused for a second. “Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Tommy asked, unable to wait any longer to hear what his friend was going to say.

  “What if what’s on the other side of this door is some kind of ancient superweapon? Maybe that’s why Madison emphasized it with all caps, as one last warning to anyone foolish enough to set foot here.”

  “Could be,” Tommy said. “But we can’t just leave. John Dawkins’s life depends on us getting through this door and finding whatever is inside.”

  Sean knew his friend was right. That still didn’t make it any easier. “There could be a failsafe on this keypad, Schultzie. We enter the wrong letter or number; it might go into some kind of permanent lockdown.”

  “You think they had that kind of tech back then?” Petty asked, skeptical.

  “They were way ahead of where most of the public thinks they were back then. Our government has had a remarkable way of staying ahead of everyone, especially its own citizens, for the last few hundred years.”

  “So, only enter the code if you really think that’s it,” Tommy advised.

  Sean stepped close to the panel and stared at it, hesitating. “It’s the only thing we have to go on. Unless you think there’s another word or sequence in that letter we haven’t picked up on yet.”

  Tommy shook his head. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was that. Whoever built this place might have had access to the letter or at least some kind of similar warning from Madison, passed down through history to each leader that followed.”

  Sean gave a determined nod. “Omega it is, then.”

  He raised his hand and pointed his index finger at the O on the keypad. He pressed it. A click came from within the wall. He pressed the letter M and got the same result. Sean realized he wasn’t breathing as he continued pushing on the keys, one letter at a time. When he typed the A, he stepped back and let out a long exhale.

  Several clicks echoed from the other side of the door. The little red light on the top of the keypad turned green. A gust of stale air burst out from between the crack of the door and its frame as the door swung open.

  Sean stepped back, as did his companions, and they stared straight ahead as the thick metal door continued to swing open, driven by a hydraulic piston at the top.

  Their eyes fixed dead ahead into the next area. No one said a word.

  Beyond the door’s threshold was a space that looked like something out of a science fiction movie from the middle of the twentieth century.

  There were weird glass display cases set atop metal stands. The floor and walls were made from the same concrete as the alcove where the men were standing. The ceiling was rock, jagged and naturally formed by time and pressure. Whoever had made this place kept the ceiling the way they’d found it. Perhaps they figured all those thousands of tons of rock were enough protection. From what, though? Nuclear war? Invasion? Worse?

  Sean stepped bravely into the next room.

  It was expansive, stretching a good hundred feet to the far wall. There were no windows, and no portals to allow light to flow into the area. As the others followed Sean into the strange space, lightbulbs flickered on along the walls. They cast a dim yellow glow, barely doing more than the flashlights the men carried.

  A low hum filled the chamber; a constant drone. It sounded—no, felt like it came from within the floor.

  Sean walked slowly, moving with caution as he approached one of the display cases. There were three in the room, all lined up in a single row. Each case contained a stone tablet about one foot in length, maybe ten inches wide. Sean stopped at the first tablet and gazed through the glass, shining his light into the case to get a better look.

  “It’s Greek,” Sean said.

  Tommy was standing close by, just to Sean’s right. He nodded as he looked at the stone. “It sure is.” He frowned. “Very old Greek.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tommy pointed at the piece of stone. “It’s a little different than the Greek I learned. Still, it’s similar enough that I can read it.”

  “What about this over here?” Petty asked. He was standing next to the wall, just to the left of the entrance. He faced the wall where a metal placard was bolted into the concrete at all four corners.

  Tommy and Sean strode over to him and stared at the characters etched into the metal plaque.

  “Japanese,” Sean said.

  “Yeah,” Petty agreed. “It says that the three tablets were discovered by Japanese sailors before the war and that they brought it as well as the weapon to this place, voyaging across the sea and enduring great trials before they left it here—in what they hoped would be its final resting place.”

  Sean and Tommy stared blankly at the man.

  “What?” he asked with a laugh.

  “You speak Japanese?”

  “Oh. Yeah, came with the territory. I was assigned to a pretty big case involving one of the Japanese crime syndicates. Went undercover for six months. Turns out, I picked up quite a bit of the language, though honestly I thought I’d forgotten it. That was years ago.”

  “Sounds like you still got it,” Sean said.

  “I guess so.” Petty beamed.

  “So, it is a weapon.” Tommy reinforced what Petty had deciphered.

  “Now it’s starting to make sense,” Sean said. “The Japanese puzzle box I received; that was why. The Japanese brought whatever these things are to this place. They were the ones who found them first.”

  “And were apparently scared enough to sail across the Pacific to get these things as far away from their country as possible.”

  Sean nodded his agreement.

  “Okay,” Petty said, “so what’s with all the Greek you guys were talking about a minute ago?”

  “Let’s have a look,” Tommy said and turned back toward the first display case.

  He and the others walked over and stood around it on three sides.

  Tommy bent his knees slightly so he could see through the glass without any glare from the lights. His eyes flitte
d left to right and back again as he pored over the lines of the ancient language.

  When he was done, he stood up straight. The color in his face drained to a pale white.

  Sean looked at his friend with concern. “What’s wrong, Schultzie?”

  Tommy took a long breath through his nose and blew it through his lips. “See that?” He pointed at a section of the tablet that had been carved out of the stone in the shape of a small curve.

  “Yeah.” Then it hit Sean. “The ring. These tablets were the containers, so to speak, for the gold pieces.”

  Tommy nodded.

  “What does it say?” Sean pressed.

  “And what is that thing over there?” Petty asked, pointing to something at the end of the row of cases.

  The other two leaned to the right so they could look beyond the other two tablets and see what had caught Petty’s interest. There was a white plinth jutting up from the floor. The concrete surface ended, and where the pillar stood, it was surrounded by metal grates.

  The shape of the pillar was cubical, rising about four feet above the floor. It was cut like a cube, not entirely dissimilar to the tablets in the display boxes, though it was made from pure quartz.

  Tommy felt his heartbeat quicken, and he rushed to the next tablet. More Greek filled the surface of the stone, ending as the previous one had, with the same strange symbol.

  He hurried to the third tablet and quickly read through the engraved message. It, too, had a curved slot for a piece of the golden ring just as the others had. And it also contained the same odd symbol.

  Tommy’s forehead wrinkled. Crow’s feet stretched out from the corners of his eyes. He finished reading the message carved into the tablet and then looked over at the stone column once more.

  He caught a glimpse of something shiny, metallic, on the top of the pedestal. He stepped over to it, followed by the other two, and stared down at the flat top. There was a circle cut into it. Two metal prongs were raised slightly from within the quartz. And there, fit perfectly into the ring, was the third section of the golden hoop.