by Nick Thacker
The door to Reggie’s left began to slide open, and one of the doctors walked in. It was the woman — Dr. Jenner — who had treated him in the other room. She entered, hustling toward them, and the door slid shut behind her.
Before she’d reached the dais and the raised platform, Reggie called out to her. “I’d say the yeast is settling in nicely, doc. Just need to get this hand chopped off. You think I’d be able to get a prescription for codeine or something when we’re done?”
The doctor looked down at Reggie and forced a half-smile. “I need to ensure the placement of the blade will sever the joints without stressing the body.” Her words were stilted and robotic, as if she were talking to herself.
“I really appreciate that,” Reggie said. “We’d hate to be in stress when you cut our damn hands off!”
He spat the words, hoping to get the woman riled up. It worked, at least partially. She got closer. “You think you are my first patients?” she asked. “You think I am going to be affected by your petty pleas? This is my job, and I take it quite seriously. Do you even understand how impor —”
Reggie reached out with his free hand and snagged the woman’s lab coat. He yanked it as hard as he could and the much smaller woman flew toward the stone table. As she fell, Reggie reached his arm up and around her neck, latched his hand onto her chin, and spun her around.
She lay on her back, frozen in place and unable to move beneath Reggie’s monstrous forearm, which was squeezing the soft tissue under her neck. He had a handful of her now-disheveled hair in his fist.
Backup hair, he called it. Any time a combatant had long hair, he liked to get a handful of it ready in case they wriggled free. A quick snap of his wrist would bring the person’s head right back into his control.
The doctor whimpered. “I — I can’t…”
“Shhh,” Reggie said. “I don’t think this is a good time for us to be getting to know each other. You’ve got two options. Do exactly what I say right now, or I break your —”
“Please!” she screamed. “I don’t know anything! I’m just —”
Reggie roared, lifting his bicep from the woman’s neck and throwing her outward at the same time. She rose to her feet and had almost gained her balance when her head snapped backward with an insane force, chunks of hair ripping out of her skull. She fell back into the same place she had been in before, and this time Reggie kept his bicep flexed.
“Do you think I was joking?” Reggie screamed. “Is this a game to you?” He breathed in a few times, trying to calm his rage. “This — this woman has been tortured, abused, and terrified she is going to lose her hand. Because of you. So do not tempt me again. Your worthless life is absolutely nothing to me right now. Got it?”
The woman nodded quickly.
“Great. I figured we’d be on the same page. Now, back to doing exactly what I say: that walkie on your hip. Under your lab coat. Right side, right hand. No funny business. Take it out, put it on the stone next to my left side.”
She did. “It won’t — it’s only meant for close-range —”
“Shut it.” Reggie continued. “Dr. Lindgren is going to be freed. By you. These straps are tie-downs, with quick-release latches. Reach out with your right hand and —”
“I can’t do that,” the woman said, sobbing. “I’ll get —”
“You’ll get killed if you don’t,” Reggie said. “How’s that sound?”
The woman hesitated.
“Do it.”
The door slid open again.
“Now.”
Still, the woman balked. Reggie caught a glimpse of the two people who had just entered. It was Vicente Garza and Dr. Prichard. They were whispering about something, but Reggie saw them stop and tense up when they caught sight of their colleague in Reggie’s grasp.
“Dammit,” Reggie whispered. “You made me do this.”
He took a deep breath, then twisted his forearm upward as hard as he could, taking the woman’s head with it. Then he smashed it back down against the side of the stone table. The doctor’s neck cracked and popped twice, and her skull smacked against the platform with a sickening thud. She fell limp to the dais, a crumpled heap of hair and blood.
Without stopping, Reggie grabbed the radio and pulled it up to his lips. “Ben! Julie! If you can hear me, we’re in a… stone temple of some sort. Round, like a big stone circus tent. We only have about fifteen minutes left! Garza’s here, with —”
The gunshot cracked through the air, reverberating forever around the room, but Reggie’s call for help was cut short by the radio exploding into a million pieces, the bullet’s impact a direct hit.
He looked over to Garza, who was shaking his head.
“Red,” he said. “That was a severe mistake.”
61
Victoria
“So this woman told you she had the journal of her great-grandfather, a Nazi scientist working on experiments he claimed were inspired by Atlanteans?”
Victoria’s voice barely hid her skepticism. In all her years as a professor, she’d never come across something so… out of left field.
“That is exactly what I am saying,” Agent Sharpe said. He stepped closer to her, his white apron dancing in the shadowy light. “Sigmund Rascher was a well-known —”
“I’ve heard of him,” she said. “Please, continue.”
“Right. So his great-granddaughter found his journal, which includes snippets of The Book of Bones in it — Plato’s Hermocrates — and that story claims that the people who became the Chachapoyas came to South America with the descendants of the Nephilim.”
The three men in front of her nodded.
“And that is the ‘proof’ you have that they’re still here?”
“Well,” the leader of the Guild Rite said. “Not exactly. The —”
Sharpe interrupted. “From what we can gather, the Book of Bones describes the method that was used to create these giants.”
“I thought the Nephilim were divine beings? The offspring of sons of God, daughters of men?”
“Well, yes, but… like in most biblical historical allegory, there is a scientific explanation for most divine results.”
Victoria thought about this and couldn’t argue. In her classes, she often took a biblical story and compared it to a secular, or worldly, one. The similarities were often nothing short of uncanny, and she would end the lesson ‘proving’ that the biblical myth wasn’t a myth at all but simply a certain peoples’ written understanding of events that had transpired.
Noah’s flood, for example, was often viewed as a biblical ‘myth’ by her students, intended to coach its readers against hubris and corruption, but she pointed out that the story was actually corroborated by the recorded histories of worldwide civilizations, all scattered so far from one another that communication would have been impossible.
“Okay,” she said. “So you think the Nephilim were one such myth? A race of giants, birthed by the unity of god and man?”
“Of angels and man,” the second man said. “Numerous places in the Bible expound on this truth, and I know you’ve read the Apocrypha and Dead Sea Scroll references as well.”
She had, in fact, read them.
“And you must look no further than the Greek mythological heroes — Jason, Achilles, Heracles, or Hercules, Poseidon — to see more of the truth. Poseidon, a god, lay with Cleito, a human woman, who gave birth to five sets of twins. Heracles was the product of Zeus, a god, and Alcmene, a human. These were all heroes who were born of human women and descendants of the Nephilim or the Titans, the second generation after.”
Victoria pulled at a strand of hair. “Okay, okay. I get it — it’s compelling, but I would need to see more. Still, how does that answer my question: where are they now? How do you know they still exist?”
“We found a bone,” the leader said.
“A… bone.”
“A femur. Just outside, in the jungle. It was buried about a foot deep, but it was in reaso
nable condition.”
“Reasonable condition?” she asked. “Then how can you know —”
“It was in impeccable condition, considering there was hardly any of it left.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, we had a doctor perform an analysis on it. It was nearly disintegrated, broken in over a hundred locations, and it was deteriorating quickly. But for its age, the doctor said it was in immaculate shape.”
“So how old is this femur?”
“It’s gone now — it essentially evaporated, as if it had been made of ice. Our doctor told us it was one of the most remarkable things he had ever seen, like it were eating itself from the inside out. But he estimated that the femur had been in the ground for fewer than fifty years.”
Victoria scoffed. “That’s impossible. A human femur completely disappeared in fewer than fifty years?”
“That is not even the most incredible part,” the man said.
“Do tell.”
“The bone shards we recovered were found to have signs of osteoporosis and a lack of necessary calcium.”
“And that means what?”
“It means that someone was subjecting these bones to radiation therapy — shooting radiation into the bones to stunt the growth of cancerous tumors.”
So the bones couldn’t have been old, she thought. “So the bones were not ancient in any way.”
The leader of the Guild Rite shrugged. “That is what the doctor believed. And that answers your previous question. The reason the bones of these people — the descendants of the race of giants, the Nephilim — are no longer around is that their skeletal structure is somehow different from ours. They are strong, huge, tall, like the legends say, but they are simultaneously weak, their bones brittle and quick to fail, and therefore any fossil record we would hope to have of them has been lost to time.”
“Okay, fine. You’re looking for giants, and you can’t find them because they don’t stick around after they die. That’s not uncommon — only a small fragment of a percent of what’s lived on Earth leaves a trace in the fossil record. But I still don’t understand why you think these guys are supposed to be here. In Peru. In the Chachapoyas region.”
When she said that, the third man — Etienne Sharpe of Interpol — began to speak again. “Well, Sigmund Rascher, who claimed to have had access to a full account of Plato’s Book of Bones, wrote that the ancient Atlanteans eventually sailed ‘to the islands and continents of the Atlantic, landing in and settling the lands beyond the Pillars of Hercules.’ Plato wrote that these people, after having their world destroyed by the Great Flood, reached out to distant civilizations in order to rebuild and repair their race.”
“What does that have to do with the Nephilim and Chachapoyas?”
“He wrote that the Atlanteans ‘took up their ancient charge,’ meaning they set off to find a new land, a new place to protect their ancient secretes. Plato wrote that they ‘imposed their own exile, seeking new treasures to enhance their old.’”
“So they came here,” Victoria said.
“Yes, precisely.”
“But the femur you found,” she said. “You said it was no more than fifty years old.”
The man nodded.
“And the radiation therapy to stall the growth of tumors: It means someone else is here, and they’re trying to figure out how to make these giants again. They’re literally growing them.”
62
Julie
“Ben! Jul — hear me, we’re — some sort.”
Julie heard the words flying out from her radio and she whipped it up to her ear. She turned up the volume. “It’s Reggie,” she said.
Ben nodded back at her, his head cocked sideways as he listened to the feed on his own walkie-talkie.
“Round — big stone circus — only — fifteen minutes — Garza’s —”
“Garza’s here,” Julie said. “This is the right place. Ben, we’re here.”
Ben drove along silently. He sped up, but the severe potholes prevented them from moving rapidly.
“He said ‘fifteen minutes.’ What does that mean?”
Archie spoke from the back seat. “Best case, there is fifteen minutes left before Garza does something terrible. Worst case…”
“They’re in trouble,” Julie said. “Ben, can we make it?”
“We have to,” he said. “We have to.”
“What about ‘big stone circus…’?” Julie asked. “Circus tent?”
“That would be my guess,” Archie said. “Perhaps it is where he is being held?”
“Sounds like the kind of place you can’t miss,” Ben said. “That’s what we’re looking for, got it? Eyes up, guns ready. I’m not going to screw around with Garza. You see him, you shoot.”
Julie nodded, and Ben caught Archie’s eyes in the mirror. He had a grave expression on his face, but he too nodded.
63
Victoria
Victoria saw a fourth man enter the lit area, stepping out of the shadows and jogging toward the group of three men in front of her. He whispered something to the leader.
“Now?”
The man nodded.
“I see.”
The leader turned to Victoria. “Ms. Reyes,” he said. “It appears there has been a… complication. Our work will continue, but we need to attend to something. Do you feel comfortable here?”
“Not at all,” she said.
He smiled. “Not what I meant, but do I have your permission to leave you here? To work? I can have my men bring in whatever you need so that you may help us. Our first order of business is to understand this place. This temple.”
She frowned. Whatever’s going on has them pretty worked up. “You’ll just… leave me here?”
The man seemed to contemplate this from a new perspective, then his eyes widened and his face lit up. “Ah, I see. You feel that by staying here alone, you will somehow be able to escape.”
“Something like that, yeah,” Victoria said. “I mean, you did kidnap me. It’s sort of a built-in natural response. Get kidnapped, try to get free.”
“Of course. Well, I expect you will explore. But you know where we are. You also, therefore, know where we are, regionally. The dangers that await you there far —”
“— outweigh the ones in here,” she quipped. “Yeah, I’ve seen those movies.”
“In that case, know that there are four Guild Rite members just outside the doors, armed and expecting you to escape. They have been informed that if any such thing is to happen, they have my permission to shoot on site.”
“Got it.” Victoria said. Now that sounds more like an expected kidnapper move.
The men, without fanfare, turned to leave.
She wanted to know what they were doing, what they had been informed of. But she also had some ideas…
The things the man had told her about the Guild Rite, the ancient races of men, the history of the Freemasons and their ongoing war with the Church… all of it was beginning to take shape, at least loosely, into a connected set of patches.
And she wanted to add those patches to her quilt.
She walked over to the dais, stepped onto it, and kneeled in front of the round pillar. It was like a table, about chest-high, but there was no protruding edge on top. It would be uncomfortable to sit there on a chair, as there was nowhere for legs to go.
She examined the stone face of the pillar, finding that there were nearly invisible lines pockmarking the facade. Faint, worn, and nearly smooth. But the lines weren’t accidental. She noticed they were ordered in some way, as if…
Hieroglyphics.
She couldn’t see the images clearly, but by rubbing a hand over them she felt some of their characteristics. Where Egyptian glyphs were often blocky, with hard angles, these felt more like Chinese text, the lines curved and some parts rounded. And while she had no working knowledge of the language, she knew enough to know it wasn’t Chinese text.
So what is it?
No. Something closer to here. South America? She remembered the Olmecs’ language in ancient Mexico, the ‘Epi-Olmec,’ but these symbols were more advanced.
Something closer to… where the creators of this place came from.
There was an article she’d read long ago about the history of communication, specifically through writing. Most scholars believed that the first ‘true’ writing system had been developed in ancient Sumeria, or present-day Iraq.
The Guild Rite had given her an alternative view of history, but this writing style could fit that alternate view perfectly. She examined it more.
The pillars of Solomon’s temple. Jachin and Boaz. Victoria’s mind raced with the possibilities, narrowing them down to the one that made most sense. Solomon’s temple, built by Hiram Abiff, had a porch which had two pillars named Jachin and Boaz.
She recalled the verse immediately: 1 Kings, chapter 7: ‘And he set up the pillars in the porch of the temple: and he set up the right pillar, and called the name thereof Jachin: and he set up the left pillar, and called the name thereof Boaz.’
And it was less than a week ago when she had taught this lesson to her class, talking about the Masonic text called the Cooke Manuscript… and that he would write in the two pillars all the science, and crafts, that all they had found, and so he did…
The two pillars were the pillars of Solomon’s temple. Built by one of the most famous Masons in history, and upon those pillars he wrote all the science, and crafts, that all they had found…
Her mouth dropped.
All the science, and crafts…
In Antiquities of the Jews, a text written by a Roman Jewish historian in the time shortly after Christ’s life, Josephus wrote that Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, was given the heavenly wisdom — the seven sciences of Freemasonry — and that his descendants built the pillars of the sons of Seth, which were two pillars depicting that knowledge and the secrets of the sciences. Cain, his older brother, was also given this knowledge, but it led to corruption and the drive for power.
