The Resurrection Key

by Andy McDermott

  ‘The story might have become garbled over time,’ suggested Nina. ‘In this case, a very, very long time. I’ve seen it before – with Atlantis, for one. The myths that led me to it were distorted versions of the true history.’

  ‘I’d say it was like a game of Chinese whispers, but I don’t want you to think I’m racist,’ Eddie said with a grin.

  Hui gave him a puzzled look. Cheng explained in Mandarin. ‘Ah, yes; we call it geese to geese,’ she told the Englishman.

  ‘It’s telephone in America,’ said Nina, ‘but whatever it’s called, it would explain it.’

  She was about to describe how Abrahamic religious lore had been based upon the history of the Veteres when Colonel Wu interrupted. ‘He must be questioned.’

  The translator nodded in response to the officer’s further instructions, then went back to his laptop and began a new exchange with Gadreel. This was less straightforward than before, Zan occasionally appearing confused and rephrasing his words. ‘What’s wrong?’ Nina asked, seeing flashing question marks in the computer’s translations.

  ‘We translated all the records we found,’ explained Hui, ‘but he is using words we do not know.’

  ‘He looks worried,’ said Macy. ‘Maybe he’s asking for help?’

  ‘He’s ten feet tall and can pick someone up with one hand,’ said Eddie. ‘I don’t think much’ll worry him.’

  ‘Macy’s right, though,’ Nina realised. The man before them was not human, but the subtleties of his expression were still recognisable. For all Gadreel’s imperiousness, there was a concern, even anxiety behind it that was nothing to do with the guns still trained upon him. ‘Something’s bothering him. Mr Zan?’ Zan glanced back at her. ‘He wanted to know where his people are. I think we should tell him.’

  Hui was dubious. ‘Is that wise?’

  Colonel Wu was less circumspect. ‘Do not tell him anything! If he knows they are dead, he will not tell us location of fortress!’

  Nina looked sharply at him. ‘What fortress?’

  ‘Nephilim records say a big fortress hidden somewhere. He,’ he pointed at Gadreel, ‘knows where. He tell us where to find it.’

  ‘Colonel!’ said Hui. It was obvious that he had said something she did not want revealed. The soldier responded in Mandarin, equally pointed and with clear impatience.

  ‘Oh, you haven’t told us everything? Golly gosh, I’m shocked,’ said Eddie, deadpan.

  ‘That is not how I wanted you to find out,’ Hui told Nina. ‘Yes, according to the records, there is another Nephilim outpost buried somewhere in this region, but finding it was not my first priority! I was—’

  ‘It is the first priority of the People’s Liberation Army, Doctor,’ cut in the younger Wu. ‘It must be located.’

  ‘What’s in this fortress?’ Eddie asked. ‘More Nephilim?’

  ‘That . . . is possible,’ said Hui. ‘According to the records, it was built as a last defence for them – a hiding place. If the fortress still exists, they could still be there, in stasis.’

  ‘In which case,’ said Nina, ‘telling you how to find it is the only way he’ll see them again.’ She faced Colonel Wu. ‘We have to tell him. It might be your only chance to get what you want.’

  He scowled, but after a moment spoke curtly to Hui. She bowed her head to him, then faced Nina. ‘The colonel has decided that as the scientific leader of the project, I should make that decision,’ she said, with just a hint of snideness.

  ‘Passing the renminbi, huh?’ said Eddie, grinning. ‘Senior officers, same in any country.’

  Neither Wu appreciated his joke, but they let it pass. Instead the colonel issued more commands. The soldiers in the isolation chamber backed out, keeping their weapons fixed on Gadreel until the door was closed in their wake. ‘Now,’ said the commander, ‘tell him. And hope you are right.’

  Hui stepped up to Zan, about to speak – then gestured for Nina to join her. ‘You should tell him, Professor Wilde. You saw the fortress in the ice, what happened to the rest of his people. I did not.’

  ‘He strangles me for waking him, then I get to be the bearer of bad news? I’m glad there’s a thick piece of glass between us!’ Nina reluctantly stepped forward. ‘All right. What the hell do I say?’

  ‘Tell him the truth,’ Macy suggested.

  She smiled at her daughter. ‘Honey, I love you. You’re right; I should. Okay.’ She took a breath, then stood at Zan’s shoulder. ‘Let’s do it.’

  She looked up at the Nephilim, who had realised she was now the focus of attention in the lab and was watching her intently. ‘Gadreel? My name is Nina Wilde.’ Zan began a simultaneous translation, speaking in the giant’s language into his headset. ‘I’m an archaeologist.’

  No sooner had Zan tried to relay that than the computer brought up a warning. Flashing question marks appeared in the Nephilim text, though not the Mandarin; the machine was transcribing as well as translating both sides of the conversation. ‘I don’t know how to say that,’ he warned.

  ‘Okay, how to phrase it? I’m a . . . chronicler of the past?’ she offered. Zan made a hesitant attempt to translate. Both he and Nina were a little surprised when it seemed to succeed, Gadreel cocking his head, intrigued. He spoke in reply.

  Zan translated. ‘Are you a priestess?’

  ‘Ah . . . no,’ she replied. ‘A . . . discoverer of how things used to be?’ The explanation sounded lame, childish, but it was the best she could improvise.

  Again, though, Gadreel appeared to understand. ‘You have the red hair,’ Zan said for him as the giant indicated Nina’s locks. ‘Like a priestess. But you are like me. You seek understanding.’

  ‘That’s a good way to put it, yes.’

  Gadreel’s eyes narrowed. ‘You were with me when I woke. My priestess is not here. Do you have the gift? Did you wake me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The answer surprised him. He looked at the key in its recess, then put a hand to his chin in a very human expression of thoughtfulness. A long pause, then he spoke again. ‘Where are my people?’

  Nina did not answer at once, trying to think of a way to break the terrible truth gently – but that in itself was enough to make Gadreel’s face fall. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re the only one we were able to get out.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘We found your fortress in the ice.’ The computer baulked at translating the last word, and Zan gave her a helpless shrug; it had clearly not appeared in the records found by the Chinese. ‘The, ah . . .’ Nina recalled a similar term used by the Veteres. ‘The cold sand?’

  Understanding came to the giant’s face. ‘Cold sand?’ asked Hui.

  ‘The Veteres came from a hot climate; they’d never encountered snow until they fled to Antarctica,’ Nina replied. ‘“Cold sand” was their very literal way of describing it. And it looks like they share a lot of their language with the Nephilim.’ She turned back to Gadreel. ‘Your fortress was trapped in the ice.’ Zan adapted his translation to include the new term, though the computer was still puzzled. ‘We found you and your people inside. But something went wrong,’ she decided not to complicate matters by giving him the whole violent story, ‘and the fortress fell into the sea.’

  ‘They are all . . . gone?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. I’m sorry.’

  Gadreel’s expression of loss was entirely clear. He stared down at the floor, whispering something.

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Hui.

  Zan shook his head apologetically. ‘I couldn’t hear it well,’ he said, checking the laptop’s screen. ‘I think . . . “We failed”? Or “We lost”? And . . . I don’t know. “Escape”, perhaps. It was too quiet for the computer to hear.’

  Colonel Wu was devoid of sympathy. ‘Where is fortress buried? He must tell us, now!’

  ‘Colonel
!’ Hui rounded sternly upon the officer. ‘This man is not our enemy, or our prisoner. He has just learned he has lost everything – his people, perhaps his family. Have some decency. Give him time.’

  The commander regarded her, tight-faced, but eventually nodded. ‘I give him time. But not a lot. Now, I deal with people who are our enemies, and our prisoners. We question him when I come back.’ He spoke to his daughter, then marched from the room.

  Nina looked back at Gadreel. He had not moved, eyes downcast. His face was not grieving or disconsolate, though; more contemplative, lost in thought. ‘I think we should leave him alone for a while.’

  Hui nodded in agreement. ‘Come, in here.’

  She led the way to a side door. The others filed after her. Nina glanced back at Gadreel. He had registered the exodus, but did not react to it, still thinking.

  She and her family followed the Chinese into a conference room. Hui picked up a remote and activated a wall screen, bringing up a video feed from inside the isolation chamber. ‘We will see if he needs us,’ she told Nina. ‘Now, what are we to do?’

  Major Wu remained standing as everyone else sat. ‘Finding the buried fortress is our top priority.’

  ‘We will find it,’ Hui replied dismissively, ‘but we have much to discuss first.’ She opened a laptop and started a search of the project’s records. ‘The name, Gadreel,’ she said to Nina, indicating the results, ‘in biblical apocrypha is indeed one of the angels who fathered the Nephilim. He was known for two things – the first is that he was the tempter of Eve, an aspect of the serpent responsible for the expulsion from Paradise.’

  ‘Great,’ said Eddie. ‘So we’ve woken up a literal devil.’

  ‘History is always written by the victors,’ Nina pointed out. ‘In this case, the Veteres.’

  ‘The Shangdi, as we call them,’ said Cheng.

  His mother nodded. ‘Shangdi in ancient Chinese theology is the primal deity, the creator of all things. We named the progenitor race mentioned in the Nephilim records after him.’

  Macy gave her a curious look. ‘What did the Nephilim call them?’

  ‘They didn’t give them a name,’ Cheng explained. ‘At least, not in the records we found. They only ever referred to them as “the pursuers” and “the persecutors”.’

  ‘Not best mates, then,’ Eddie noted.

  ‘That’s interesting, though,’ said Nina. ‘The Nephilim obviously saw themselves as victims, the oppressed – but the Veteres had a completely different view. Their side of the story is the one passed down to us through the Book of Genesis and the other early books of the Old Testament – including ones that didn’t make the final cut, like Enoch. The Nephilim were bad guys, abominations, who were eventually cast out and imprisoned for all eternity.’ She regarded the figure on the screen. ‘Two very different stories. But now we get to hear his side of it – first-hand.’

  ‘Why were they cast out?’ asked Macy, intrigued.

  Hui brought up more records, switching the wall screen to display them. All were written in Mandarin, but they included photographs of the artefacts discovered by Chinese archaeologists. ‘The Nephilim say the Shangdi accused them of great crimes – the crime of being children of the Shangdi who were born to humans.’

  ‘Hybrids,’ said Nina in understanding. ‘The Nephilim are a product of both races. In the Bible, they were the offspring of angels and humans – ancient humans saw the Veteres, the Shangdi, as angels. Or at least that’s how the Veteres wanted to be seen.’

  ‘So some of the Veteres couldn’t keep it in their pants around human women – and then the rest took it out on the kids when they were born?’ Eddie said.

  His wife nodded. ‘The mindset of the slave-owner throughout history. The Veteres may have claimed to have lofty ideals about uplifting and educating humans, but they still used them as slaves. In a society like that, punishing the individual slave-owner for those kinds of transgressions is a bit close to the bone; it’s almost a criticism of the society itself for allowing it to happen. So the victims take the brunt of it instead.’

  ‘Scumbags,’ he growled, disgusted.

  ‘I guess it at least proves hypocrisy isn’t a human invention.’ Nina turned back to Hui. ‘So the Veteres were hunting down their own forbidden offspring?’

  ‘They chased them across the world,’ the scientist replied. She brought up a map. Dots connected by arrows formed a ragged path from the heart of Africa through the Middle East and into Central Asia. ‘Each point is a reference to a place from the Nephilim records. Most have not been specifically located, only the general region, but a few we have narrowed down to smaller areas.’

  ‘Like the one near here?’

  ‘Yes. We believe the fortress is within sixty kilometres. But our aerial surveys have not found any trace.’

  ‘Which is why we must question him,’ Wu commented pointedly.

  ‘As you can see,’ Hui continued, ‘the Nephilim travelled a long way to escape their pursuers.’

  ‘A very long way,’ Nina agreed. ‘But they were still being pursued?’

  The Chinese woman nodded. ‘The longest they stayed in one location before Shangdi scouts found them was twenty years. Whenever this happened, they moved on before a larger force could capture them.’

  ‘Capture them?’ Eddie asked. ‘Not kill them?’

  ‘The Veteres considered themselves civilised,’ said Nina, giving the word a caustic edge. ‘Abominations or not, the Nephilim were still their offspring. Imprisoning instead of executing would let them feel they had the moral high ground.’ Something she had said earlier came back to her. ‘Wait . . . in the Bible, the Nephilim were supposedly imprisoned for eternity. And they have a way to sleep for eternity – are the two things connected?’

  ‘We think so,’ Hui told her. ‘What the Nephilim used by choice, the Shangdi imposed on them by force. The Nephilim feared being taken to Tartarus, where they would be trapped in torment beneath the earth, alive but unable to move.’

  Nina nodded thoughtfully. ‘A place from Greek and Roman mythology,’ she added for Eddie’s benefit – from Macy’s look of recognition, her daughter had encountered the name in her explorations of ancient legends. ‘A prison at the end of the world for those who challenged the gods, and for the worst sinners. The version in the Book of Enoch is where fallen angels are imprisoned.’

  Eddie glanced back towards the laboratory. ‘So that sarcophagus was originally built as a sort of eternal torture chamber? And the Nephilim used them voluntarily?’

  ‘They might not have had a choice,’ she mused. ‘If it came down to freezing to death in the Antarctic or putting yourself into stasis, even knowing what that meant, in the hope of being rescued later, what would you do?’

  ‘Put it that way . . . yeah, I’d probably chance the freezer,’ he admitted.

  Macy had another question. ‘What was the second thing Gadreel was known for?’

  Before Hui could answer, there was a knock at the door. A guard entered and spoke briefly to Wu. ‘He wants us,’ she announced.

  Hui quickly switched the screen back to the isolation chamber. Gadreel had stood, donning a robe taken from a previously unnoticed compartment inside the sarcophagus. She rose and signalled for everyone to follow her into the laboratory.

  Zan scurried back to the translation laptop. Gadreel waited until he was ready, then spoke. ‘What is he saying?’ asked Hui.

  ‘He wants to talk,’ Zan replied.

  ‘Good,’ said Wu. ‘Ask him about the fortress.’

  ‘No, no – he wants to talk to her.’ He gestured at Nina. ‘Alone.’

  The Chinese officer turned on the American with deep suspicion. ‘Why you?’

  ‘Yeah, why me?’ Nina asked, equally mystified.

  Zan asked a question in the Nephilim language, getting an answer. ‘He says you were there
when the fortress was destroyed. He wants you to tell him exactly what happened to his people.’

  ‘There’s not really much more to tell,’ she replied. Gadreel watched her from behind the glass. His unblinking gaze was distinctly unnerving.

  ‘No, it could be a good idea,’ said Hui. ‘Not only were you there, but you are the only archaeologist with personal knowledge of the Shangdi – the Veteres. You know things about them we do not. You may be able to use that to gain his trust.’

  Nina was not convinced, but she nodded. ‘Okay. I’ll give it a try.’

  ‘No,’ said Wu. ‘A foreigner, talking to him alone?’

  ‘I won’t be alone,’ Nina pointed out. ‘I can’t speak Gadreel’s language, so I’ll need Mr Zan.’

  ‘And the whole talk will be monitored and recorded,’ Hui added. ‘We can watch from the conference room. There will be no secrets.’

  Outmanoeuvred, Wu gave way, but with poor grace. ‘Do it, then. But do not try to hide anything from us,’ she warned Nina.

  ‘Like what, the recipe for the Nephilim’s special sauce?’ She joined Zan at the window. ‘All right, let’s see what he has to say.’

  Cheng brought Nina a chair, then the guards retreated to a far corner, while the others returned to the conference room.

  ‘Mom, will you be okay?’ Macy asked as she went with Eddie.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Nina assured her. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘I can’t help it.’ Her daughter’s eyes flicked towards the giant. ‘He’s . . . scary. I don’t like him.’

  ‘I’m going to find out if we can trust him,’ Nina said. ‘I hope we can. And I hope he can trust us,’ she added, giving Wu a meaningful look.

  ‘Good luck,’ said Eddie as he and Macy reached the door. ‘And if he starts talking about fava beans and a nice Chianti, run.’

  Nina stifled a laugh, but as she turned back to Gadreel, it struck her that her situation did indeed resemble a famous scene from the movie The Silence of the Lambs. She was about to question a man through a glass wall – and for all she knew, the Nephilim was every bit as intelligent and cunning as Hannibal Lecter. As dangerous, too; the sight of his eyes fixed upon her triggered an almost physical reminder of his unbreakable grip on her throat.