Whispers: The Reincarnation Series (Book 2)

by R. E. Rowe

  I get the hint. It’s time to leave. I stand as calmly as I can. Time to get lost? Is that it? I suddenly feel out of place. My body stiffens and my legs seem as though they stand up on their own. “Nice to meet you, Daniela. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say, doing the best I can to stay calm.

  “That’s awkward,” Bouncer says.

  “Will you stop it?” Honesti says.

  I glance briefly at Bree. She’s frowning. I see curiosity in her eyes as she studies me. “I’ll walk you out, Reiz,” Bree says.

  “Be up at 5:00 a.m. sharp,” Mack says.

  I ignore him and stroll out of the restaurant with Bree on one arm. Her perfume still makes my head spin. I will myself to move my feet. “How long have you lived in Malta?”

  Bree laughs softly. “Lately, I’ve been traveling a great deal. But before that, I lived my entire life in Malta.”

  “You’re Mack’s construction company photographer?”

  “I suppose you might say it’s one of many jobs. But I do love taking pictures.”

  “Me too.”

  I hear Bouncer chuckle.

  I feel like slapping myself since I’ve never taken a photo in my life.

  “Maybe you can show me your techniques,” she says.

  “I think she likes you,” Bouncer says.

  “Aimee won’t be happy,” Honesti says.

  “Sure. I guess.” I really need to get Mack alone. Why does he know so much about me? And how could he know about Aimee? Who is General?

  We stand at the top of the stairs outside of the restaurant and silently gaze at each other. There’s something oddly familiar about Bree, but I can’t put my finger on it.

  She leans over and kisses me softly on one cheek, and then kisses me on the other. “See you tomorrow, Reiz.”

  The girl is crazy amazing. I feel tingly and electric. “Later,” I stammer.

  Richard waves from the black sedan idling on the street at the bottom of the stairs. He stands awkwardly next to the open backdoor of the car.

  I try not to trip as I jog down the stone stairs. When I reach the bottom, I glance up to where Bree is standing. Sure enough, she’s still watching me. She smiles and waves. Even her wave is sensual.

  I do my best to act cool and return the wave, but stumble into the car in the process.

  “I think she likes you, Reizo,” Richard says, smiling.

  “Yeah, right.” I turn around and look through the back window.

  Sure enough, she’s still watching me. As the black sedan pulls away, she waves once more.

  “Ha!” Richard shouts.

  I blush, but instantly feel guilty. Aimee.

  “Of course, I’m sure she’s told you about her boyfriend,” Richard says.

  “Boyfriend?” It’s not a surprise. I figured a girl that cute would already have someone in her life. I’m disappointed, but I could care less. Yet, for some reason, the disappointment lingers.

  “Bummer, dude,” Bouncer says.

  “Why, yes. She’s presently romantically involved with a very dedicated young man. A lieutenant, to be precise.”

  “An older guy?”

  “Not by much, perhaps a year, maybe two.”

  “How can he be a lieutenant?”

  Richard pauses for a moment and then says, “ROTC, I believe.”

  “Ames,” I whisper. “Will you talk to me?”

  “He can hear you,” Bouncer says, extending out each word.

  “Excuse me, sir?” Richard asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m sorry, Reiz,” Honesti says. “It must be hard without her. We’re still trying to convince General.”

  I wipe tears from my eyes and stare out the window feeling sorry for myself. Bouncer and Honesti are whispering like crazy about General and Aimee. I tune them out, trying to remember Aimee’s face and how soft her fingers were when she touched my face. But now all I feel is Bree’s warmth, and my stomach flips.

  Wait. What did Honesti say? General.

  “Convince General? You know General?” I ask under my breath.

  Bouncer and Honesti don’t respond.

  I realize now is not the time to press with Richard a couple feet away driving the car. I’ll get the answers to my questions later. I have no other choice.

  chapter fifteen

  Chien shuffles through a bunch of papers that one of my clones has handed to him as we leave the plane. “It’s not working. Even our scaled down QCC communities are experiencing unrest.”

  “How can that happen?” I ask. “Those people have everything they need. Freedom. The essentials: food, water, and healthcare. Beautiful housing. Interesting jobs. A paycheck. What more do they need?”

  “It seems some still feel they aren’t receiving what others are receiving,” Chien says, as we walk in my camouflaged aircraft hangar to the elevator.

  “Ridiculous. That’s not true, is it?”

  “Not at all. Gossip appears to grow into false truths, spreading through the community causing suspicion and trust problems.”

  “I thought Dennis was going to manage the flow of communication in each community. What is he doing?”

  “He tells me he’s working on it. However, QCC citizens are forming their own groups within the community. They don’t trust anyone outside of their group. They’ve become suspicious of all outsiders. We also have a few issues related to competing religious beliefs and values. Most issues relate to an us-versus-them mentality. The communities view the outside groups as a threat. Franz says it won’t be an issue for silica human forms once he resolves the bugs he found within his entanglement process.”

  “Bugs? I thought everything was going smoothly?”

  “He ran into a few unexpected anomalies. But don’t worry. Knowing Franz, he’ll have fixes soon.”

  A silent moment passes between us before the elevator reaches the lowest level of the command center.

  I let out a loud sigh as we walk out of the elevator four hundred feet below into a maze of modernized tunnels. “I’m really surprised. The people in our QCC communities have everything they need, yet they still find ways to suffer, be fearful, and use free will to cause innocents pain.” My neck throbs as I try to calm myself.

  “Why not install a modified golden device into the forearms of every biological human?”

  “The flood of memories from the cloud would overwhelm most of them. Many would die or be driven mad. You know how the process works. Too much past life memory at one time causes extreme confusion.”

  “If that’s the case, why not just wipe the world clean of biological humans and start fresh with silicon hosts? It’d be faster.”

  “Never. This is exactly what General tells others we are doing. He says I want to destroy biological humans. His lies cause fear and distrust. No. I won’t force souls to take a silica form. Souls will have a biological option. We will allow both.”

  We push through a set of double doors and walk side by side into a huge, busy room the size of a movie theatre. A massive screen in the front of the room displays live video feeds from QCC communities all over the globe. Thirty rows of desks with a hundred of my clones work on computers around the room. Competing conversations and incoming communication make it difficult to understand at first glance what’s happening.

  When a red light above the display screen starts to flash, the entire room goes silent. All heads turn to watch Chien and me as we walk to the front of the room.

  “Bree has made contact, Carmina,” a voice says over an intercom. “We will know soon if the enforcers will join us.”

  chapter sixteen

  Richard greets me in the lobby. “Good morning, Reizo. You are looking very stylish this morning.”

  I'm not in the mood for cheerful, but I chill. “Yeah, thanks to you.”

  Caring about clothes is usually the last thing on my mind, but I have to admit I like the variety of long sleeve button down shirts Richard picked out with matching colored undershirts and three di
fferent styles of jeans.

  “Acid washed jeans with a blue-green oxford button-down shirt,” Honesti says. “Very handsome.”

  “Don’t let it get to your head,” Bouncer says.

  “Bree will be impressed,” Richard says with an elbow jab to my side.

  As if I care.

  Parked cars and old, jammed together two-story homes line the city streets. When we arrive at the site, it’s still dark outside.

  Richard stops the car in front of a house. “This is Kercem, It is shortly after 5:30 a.m. Bree will be waiting for you inside. Please go on in ahead. I have to attend to some other matters.”

  I grab my backpack and stumble out of the car, then lumber up the cement walkway to the front door. Why am I here again so early? I remember the Swiss bank account and Mom’s new job and keep walking.

  Without thinking, I immediately stand taller when I see Bree as I walk in to the house. She’s wearing tight blue jeans and a red sweater with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She stops snapping pictures of the inside walls and smiles.

  I suddenly feel overheated. From the inappropriate noises Bouncer is making inside my head, he’s overheated too.

  “Please,” Honesti says. “Don’t be like that. It’s not polite.”

  “Morning,” I say with a yawn, stretching my arms out in a lame attempt to look unaffected by her choice of outfit.

  “Good morning, Reiz.” She smiles and gives me a kiss on my right cheek, and then on my left. Her lips are soft, warm and there’s sweetness in her breath.

  I look away. “Been here long?”

  “Perhaps an hour or so. I have the camera for you. Let me get it.” Bree opens her backpack and retrieves a large camera. “All you do is point and press the button. It’s automatic.”

  “Sounds easy,” I say, looking at the camera. The thing has a display screen and rotating switches. It’s way more sophisticated then a cell phone camera.

  “Push this button to zoom in. Make sure the frame is full of the image you want to capture.”

  “Got it.” I grab hold of the heavy camera. “So what are we taking pictures of anyway?” Her brown eyes glisten and shine; they’re stunning this morning.

  Each room of the old home has a gold colored theme. There’s a gold couch, gold-framed glass tables, large gold light fixtures, gold trim everywhere, large gold and red Persian floor rugs, and long, full gold curtains. “I guess the owners like gold.”

  Bree glances back. “This way.”

  I follow her farther down into the basement of the house where workers have dug up the floor.

  “What you’re about to see is incredible,” she says. “Two months ago there were two five-thousand-year-old tombs unearthed during construction work at the local parish priest’s home here in Kercem.” Bree points, presumably in the direction of the church. “The foundation was being repaired and reinforced when they discovered the larger tomb under the basement floor in this house. The Parliamentary Secretary for Public Dialogue and Information called Mack’s company to manage the excavation. The contents have already been removed.”

  “Why’d they call Mack’s company?”

  “That was my question too. Daniela told me one of his companies develops technologies and tools to help archeologists with artifact research, translation, and cataloging. His company provided some of his prototype tools on this project.”

  “So our job is to take pictures of an empty tomb?”

  “Exactly. Follow me.”

  We walk down a narrow staircase into a lit-up cement basement. A four-foot-tall portable fence surrounds a square open hole in the basement floor where the top of a wooden ladder is sticking out. Workers in yellow vests, dark pants and white hardhats are busy and moving around everywhere.

  “Down the ladder?”

  “Yes, place the camera in your backpack.”

  I follow her to a thirty-foot-by-thirty-foot empty room. As I step off the ladder, the smell reminds me of the old shelter on Murdock’s ranch.

  The walls and floor are old, dusty marble blocks. Men and women workers speak a language I don’t understand. I look closer at the sections of the wall already cleaned by the workers. There’s strange writing on the walls. It looks old. On one dirty marble wall, I notice an outline of a door.

  “What language are the workers speaking?” I ask Bree.

  “A number of different languages: Maltese, Arabic, and some Italian. Many come from different nations around the region to work here in Malta.”

  “What sort of pictures does my cousin need?”

  “Take photographs of the walls after the workers clean them,” Bree says. “The ministry wishes we record everything that might be considered culturally significant.”

  “Significant? Like a drawing or something?”

  She nods. “Anything unusual.”

  I point the camera at the wall and push down on the camera’s button. It automatically takes a series of pictures.

  “Easy, Reizo. Not so fast, just take one image at a time.”

  I point the camera at Bree and snap five more.

  Bree grins and shakes her head.

  “Don’t tell me you just did that,” Bouncer says. “Lame.”

  “I think it’s cute,” Honesti says.

  “Blahaha, cute my—” Bouncer says.

  “Sssh!” Honesti shouts.

  We spread out. Soon, I’ve taken a couple hundred close-up pictures of the walls as the workers clean them. I notice the workers whispering to each other and pointing at images that look like old writing on a recently cleaned part of the wall.

  “Hey, Bree, got a second?” I ask, interrupting her as she snaps a picture.

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  “These workers—”

  “Oh, they’re harmless. Just day laborers commissioned by the Ministry,” Bree says. “Nothing to worry about.” She walks back to a nearby wall to take more pictures.

  I approach one worker who is using a paintbrush to wipe off dirt from the old wall. The outline of the door has become more distinct. I can tell it's two-feet wide by six-feet tall. I tap the worker on the shoulder. “Here, here.” I point and gesture for him to clear the dirt from the outline.

  “Bree, check this out.”

  She walks over and inspects the outline. “Interesting. It does look like a door.” Bree snaps a dozen close-up pictures.

  “Look at that.” I point to the center of the door outline. “It’s an indentation filled with dirt.” I dig a small section of dirt out with two fingers and a larger clump falls to the floor.

  Bree whispers something to the worker who takes out another tool and uses it along with the paintbrush to clean the dirt from the wall. The tool appears to be part hand-vacuum and part drill. When the worker presses a button on the drill part, it rotates and buffs as the vacuum part collects dust. A bright red line appears to move across the surface near the tool.

  “That’s crazy looking. What is it?” I ask.

  “One of Mack’s archeological aids. It collects surface material as well as exposes what’s under it. A laser scanner records images as an area is uncovered.”

  Something catches my eye. “Hey, that looks like some kind of symbol...” I clear away the area on the door. It’s a one-foot-by-one-foot square in the center of the door with a solid, raised six-inch knob precisely in its center. “A door knob with a key hole?”

  “Interesting,” Bree says. “Did you bring the key?”

  At first, I’m shocked by her question, and then I realize Mack must have told her about my key.

  “Yeah.” I take the skeleton key out of my backpack and insert it into the knob. I turn it. The triangle moves about an inch. I tap the worker on the shoulder, and then point to the knob. “Right here.”

  I grip the raised triangle and the worker puts both hands on it. We turn the triangle together. Suddenly, it moves freely and a cloud of dust puffs up from the outline of the door. The door opens a few inches on its own.

&n
bsp; I push the heavy stone door further until I can see into a darkened room behind it. “Bree, hand me a lamp.”

  Light fills the small room as I step into it with Bree following behind me. It’s as big as my bedroom back home with shelves carved out of the rock walls. The shelves are loaded with the rocks resembling smaller versions of Mack's shooting star stone. Piles of jewels in silver boxes, a few golden statues, and artwork are spread across the floor. I see dollar signs as I calculate how much red stone is on the shelves.

  “This place is nuts.”

  We both move in opposite directions and look over the contents of the shelves.

  “Amazing discovery. Good job you two!” Mack shouts, causing us both to jump. “You found the ancient treasure room. I knew it was down here somewhere.”

  Daniela and Mack walk into the small room. Both are wearing blue jeans and khaki work shirts with black boots. They look ready for a safari.

  “Oh my God. This is incredible,” Daniela says.

  “Nicely done,” Mack says.

  I give a nod trying to act cool, but the discovery reminds me of the storm shelter Aimee and I found on her uncle’s ranch. I flash back on how we lifted up the hatch and climbed down a ladder into a dark room full of books. My stomach tightens. Aimee was the real treasure I found that day.

  “Reizo has natural talent,” Bree says to Mack, winking at me.

  I force a smile and look away.

  “Where’d the workers go?” Daniela asks.

  “They were out there a few minutes ago,” Bree says.

  “Not anymore,” Mack adds.

  “I’ll see what’s going on,” Daniela says. She returns to the main room while we all stay in the treasure room. Suddenly, we hear a loud crash from the other room followed by a thump.

  “Hey, the ladder!” Daniela yells. A moment later, she screams. “Bomb!”

  “Get down,” Mack yells, and runs out to Daniela.

  Bree and I have no place to go. We jump to the far corner behind the solid stone door as an incredible explosion sends dust and shock waves slamming into us. Luckily, the stone door diverts the main impact of the blast, but shock waves still manage to send us both onto the dirt floor.