by Nick Thacker
Jen left the tent to resume her dinner preparations for the evening, and Alex went back to reading some of the early research they’d been trying to fit together.
“You really think there’s anything here, Sarah?” he asked. “It just doesn’t — none of this makes any sense.”
“There’s evidence, we just have to piece it together the right way.”
Alex nodded. “I know, but I’m not sure how. The American Indians who lived here didn’t leave much in the way of ancient artifacts. All we’ve got is their historical record.”
“Then that’s going to have to be enough.”
Sarah had had this argument before, plenty of times. If the American Indians from this region — and plenty of other regions dotting the Americas — had so many similar myths and shared legends, it stood to reason they were all derived from the same common ancestors. Many historians believed this ‘common ancestor’ was the group of people — or groups of people — who traveled over Berengia when it was an ice bridge, connecting modern-day Alaska with Russia.
The issue she had with this belief was that the myths that were common to the otherwise disparate tribes were all stories that reflected the memory of a cataclysmic event that flooded the world ten thousand or so years ago. The well-known ‘flood myth,’ as it was called, was a myth Sarah had tracked nearly all around the globe, from the ancestors of the Europeans and North African and Indian peoples to North and South American civilizations.
The flood myth had turned up everywhere on Earth, it seemed, but one place: The vast, wide plateau that made up most of the present-day continent of Asia. As this was the same area the early nomadic peoples that settled the American continent had supposedly descended from, the fact that the early American settlers had the same flood legend meant that they had to have learned of it from someone besides the Berengia nomadic peoples.
Sarah’s hypothesis was simple: the Americas were not settled just by the Berengia travelers, but by peoples that predated their arrival by millennia: a people who came not from the East, but from the West.
She wasn’t sure how or when it had all happened, but her heart told her that she was on the right track. This research project might not be as fruitful as she’d hoped, but she wouldn’t give it up. It may cost her a career, but she’d find her answer.
Jennifer left the tent, and Alex turned to face his team lead. “Are you sure about this, Sarah?”
She looked him over, trying to figure out what he was playing at. “I’m positive. The evidence is there, we just have to find —”
“No, I’m not talking about the prehistoric link,” he answered, “I’m talking about the money. Are you sure you can afford it?”
She sighed. He wasn’t stupid; none of them were. Her students knew full well that she would be paying them out of her own pocket, and they also knew how shallow those pockets were at the moment.
“I’m sure,” she said. “Thank you, Alex. Speaking of, I wanted to give you your bonus.” Sarah reached into a pocket of her khakis and pulled out an envelope. “It’s not much, but with the usual pay, it’ll make for a decent night out on the town.”
“Sarah — Dr. Lindgren,” he said, falling back into the more formal address. “I can’t accept that. You’ve already done too much, paying us from your own account and all. It’s honestly no big deal to head back to Egypt, just for the —”
“Nonsense,” she said. “Take it. And don’t get any ideas. There’s one for each of you.”
She made a show of grabbing the other two envelopes from her pocket, one for Jennifer Ortiz and another for Russell Aronson, the graduate student she’d brought on the trip. She set the two envelopes on the camp table next to a pile of small instruments and gear.
“I’ll tell Jennifer hers is here,” she said. “Any idea where Russell is?”
Alex nodded. He pulled out his phone, opened an app, and showed her on the map. A blinking dot appeared on the screen — the location of Aronson’s phone. “He’s in town, getting supplies, just like you told him to do. But —” he double-tapped the screen, zooming in a bit, and held it up to her face again as he smiled. “Looks like he stopped for a burger.”
Sarah had instructed her field students to download the app and install it on their smartphones. She had done the same, and it allowed the group to know where the other members of the team were at any time. It was a requirement of the university, for liability reasons, but it was also an extremely handy apparatus. Sarah only had to pull it up and let it load to see how spread out her team might be at any given moment.
“Well let him know I’ve got something for him if you see him before I do,” she said.
“You got it, boss.”
Alex turned back to the work table and started fiddling with something. Sarah watched the muscles in his triceps bulge a few times, then forced herself to turn around and leave, the envelope with her father’s letter and the artifact under her arm.
Just as she reached the front flap of the tent, Jennifer appeared.
“Jenny,” she said, “I have something for you. It’s over on —”
“There’s a call for you,” Jennifer said. “On the sat phone. Apparently urgent.”
12
Rachel
“HELLO, MS. POLANSKI,” RACHEL SAID. “I hope you are well.”
It was small talk, something of which Rachel was not a fan, but she was hoping to break the ice with this woman, just a bit.
After all, she thought, she could be one of us.
It was unlikely, but the test would tell them.
The trial had been a success. News reports were now calling the event a ‘massive terrorist attack,’ but to Rachel it was simply a public reveal of what she and her team had been working on for nearly a decade. It was the first of hopefully many trials.
They were getting closer, but they weren’t there yet. This woman, Jennifer Polanski, was but the latest in a never-ending stream of evidence to that fact. She had passed the trial at the museum, but she still needed to pass one more test.
This test.
Jennifer looked up at Rachel with puffy, confused eyes. Her face was burned, shining red where the bandages on her neck and cheeks ended. The hospital had done their best with her, but burn scars were going to cover most of her body for the rest of her life.
A life, Rachel knew, that might end right now.
“I want to apologize, Ms. Polanski, for the loss of your husband.”
Jennifer sniffed, or did something that seemed to be a sniff, and her eyes welled up. She tried to say something, but her mouth was swollen shut.
“It’s okay,” Rachel said. “I hear he was a jerk anyway.” She snickered. “You’re probably not even upset about that.”
She looked down at the patient on the hospital bed, a questioning look on her face. After a few moments of silence, Rachel began again. “Shh,” she said. “No need to respond. I know you’re in pain. I want to end that pain for you, Jennifer.”
Jennifer was on a bed that had been cleaned and sterilized, then rolled into one of the many chambers inside the facility. This room, like all of them, was nothing but four walls of stone, with a stone floor and a stone ceiling. It had no natural light, but her team had mounted lighting fixtures — simple bulbs — to provide a bit of workspace illumination.
The rest of the room was empty, save for a cabinet and a coiled hose in the corner.
“It took a bit of persuading, but I was able to convince the hospital to allow my team to bring you back for rehabilitation efforts.
“Jennifer, you’ve been through a lot,” Rachel continued. “You were the only survivor who was in the room. The only one who came in direct contact with our trial and yet still made it out alive. That is quite the feat.
“It wasn’t easy, but you passed the first of our tests. Your genetics are strong, Jennifer, and they got you this far. I almost didn’t believe it when they told me, but seeing you here — right now — it’s miraculous.”
; Jennifer frowned a bit, her face scrunching up in a painful, forced way. Her eyes watched Rachel with interest, curiosity, and not a little bit of terror.
“We need to make sure you’re one of us, Jennifer. That your genetics are pure. We’ve almost perfected the synthetic mixture, the one we used in the museum, but — as you can see — it’s not quite ready. It is close, but it leaves… side effects.” Rachel waved her hand up and down above Jennifer’s body to underline her point. “I wish it wasn’t painful for those who are able to make it through, and that is what my team is working on. Once we have a perfect copy of the original compound, our trials can run indefinitely. We’ll have an endless supply of the compound, and we won’t need to worry about less-than-effective copies, or losing the precious originals any longer.
“Until then, our trials will have to be a bit… rough.”
She paused, making sure Jennifer was still with her. She was, barely. Her eyes were still puffy, and there was a glassiness to them Rachel hadn’t noticed before. “My team is going to bring in the bell, but this time we’re going to use a small amount of the original compound inside it. This one is the real deal, Jennifer. It’s what the Ancients left us, and it is what will tell us, without a doubt, if you are one of us.”
Rachel shifted on her feet, then smiled. “We will be able to tell right away if you are actually as pure as our trial originally thought.”
She didn’t feel it was necessary to tell Ms. Polanski what would happen if she failed the test.
She backed away a few steps, then motioned to the door. A staff member wheeled in a cart that had a pedestal balanced on it. On the top of the pedestal sat a small, foot-tall bell-shaped object. It was congruent to the bell that had been on display in the Antiquities of Thera exhibit at the National Museum of Archeology in Athens, but this was a smaller copy. And, unlike the artifact in Athens, this bell had been manufactured here in her laboratory. It had a piped-in power supply, using the lab’s power to run the heat source within it.
The technician rolled the pedestal to the center of the room, about five feet away from Jennifer’s bed. He plugged in the power source to the back of the bell, then checked his work. Satisfied, he turned back to Rachel and waited for her approval.
She nodded, and the man left the room.
“Jennifer,” Rachel said. “We’re ready. I hope you are, too. And I truly hope I get to welcome you to the other side.”
She smiled again, then backed out the door and closed it behind her.
The man was waiting in the hallway, and she turned to address him. “Get Drs. Shaw and Mikhail. Let them know we’re ready when they are.”
“You got it,” the man said. He immediately swung around and jogged down the hallway.
Rachel stayed for a moment, watching the closed door. She thought about the woman on the other side, wondering if — hoping — she would be able to pass the test. We need more, Rachel thought. We need so many more.
Her battle — their battle — would not be fought while hidden in the halls of this ancient site, nor would it take place in the museums and public places they had planned for their next trials.
Their battle was an ancient one, and it would be fought everywhere. The civilizations of humanity had been fractured and disconnected for far too long, and their battle — their war — was to fix that. Rachel was the one who had been chosen by her ancestors to lead the charge, and she intended to see it through to the end. They were so close.
She stayed for a few more seconds, and then she too turned to leave, heading back to her own office. She would wait there, anxious. It would only take fifteen minutes to hear the test results, but she wouldn’t be able to work on anything else until she knew for sure.
The truth was that Rachel felt responsible for Jennifer. Knowing that she might be one of them, of true pure blood, made Rachel feel like her kin. She could be closer to Rachel than a sister, and that meant Rachel was responsible for her.
But the tests don’t lie, she thought. The trials aren’t perfect, but the tests with the original compound never fail.
She knew that personally. The majority of her staff had been handpicked and tested, a grueling, decade-long process that had nearly depleted their supply of the original compound. Work on the replacement synthetic compound was under way, but as the trial in Athens had proven, there was still more work to do.
She only hoped she could finish the work before the next test.
They had one final test scheduled to take place the following evening. This was the test she had been putting off for so long. She’d tried to reason her way of it entirely, but she knew it had to be done.
What we will gain is far more important, she told herself as she walked down the narrow corridor. Far more important than anything we might lose.
Far more important than anything I might lose.
13
Sarah
SARAH FROWNED. “I HAVE A CELL PHONE. Why would they use the sat phone?”
It was common practice to pack in extra supplies and equipment, even on a short three-day trip like this. The sat phone typically sat in a bag, unused, but it was university policy to keep it on, ‘just in case.’
Apparently it had rung, Jennifer had answered, and now Sarah was being summoned. She returned the envelope to the table and smiled at Alex.
“I’ll just be a minute,” she said.
“That’s fine,” Alexander said. “I have to Jennifer with dinner, anyway.”
She nodded and walked past Jennifer, trying to remind herself that it wasn’t Jennifer’s fault that she was no longer alone with Alexander in the tent.
Knock it off. You were just leaving anyway. She felt like a schoolgirl, the memories of petty fights over boys flooding back into her mind. You have a job to do.
She walked toward the second of the larger tents they used for cooking and dining. They had each brought a small personal pup tent for sleeping, and the four of them were set up and spread in a half-circle around the two larger tents. Sarah’s tent was in immaculate condition, as she had been spending the majority of her nights back at the small apartment she’d rented for three months while she’d set up the dig in preparation for her students’ arrival.
The tent was empty — nothing but a folding table, cooking equipment, and a pile of gear inside. She strode to the table where Jennifer had left the sat phone and picked it up.
“This is Dr. Lindgren,” she said.
A voice cut into her ear, quiet but clear. It was heavily accented English. “Dr. Lindgren, my name is Agent Etienne Sharpe of Interpol.”
“Interpol? Like the global police?”
“Yes. I am calling from our Lyon headquarters, in France.”
She waited. Get to the point.
“Dr. Lindgren, I am calling in regards to your father, professor Graham Lindgren.”
“My… father? What about him?”
“Well, Dr. Lindgren, he was declared missing roughly forty-eight hours ago.”
She wasn’t sure what to say. She gripped the phone tighter. “I — I… I’m not sure I understand. He’s ‘missing?’”
“Yes. He was last seen leaving his apartment in Stockholm, but he failed to check in with his girlfriend.”
She recoiled. Girlfriend?
“He… okay. I didn’t realize he had a girlfriend,” she said.
“Dr. Lindgren, were you not aware that he and Mrs. Lindgren had split up?”
“I was aware of that, but I didn’t realize he had actually… moved on.”
Her parents had split a few months ago, and while on the surface both seemed to be happy Sarah knew that without one another they were hopeless. Now, to hear that her old man had a ‘girlfriend…’
“Yes, well,” the man on the phone continued. “I wanted to reach out to you personally as we begin the investigation. Since your father and mother are no longer together, I have not yet attempted to reach her.”
She nodded, not realizing that the man wasn’t able to see h
er.
What’s going on? Sarah wondered. “Okay, I don’t — I’m not really sure what to do,” she said. She felt her heart rising in her throat, the fear and shock of the revelation already starting to take its toll.
“At this point, Dr. Lindgren,” the man said, “there is nothing to do. I have a team handling the investigation, led by me personally, and we will keep you informed of the progress. If you —”
“So you just called me to tell me not to worry?”
“Ma’am, it’s protocol, we just —”
“It’s my father, Sharpe. He’s gone. You think I’m just going to sit here and wait around until you find him? What if he doesn’t show up? What if he’s…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Ma’am, I would strongly urge you to keep in mind the fact that we are more than capable of handling an investigation such as this. Our staff is already preparing a brief for the local municipalities that need to be informed, and we will have agents in the field by this evening.”
“But it’s my father,” she said again. “I can’t just wait around for —”
“You must, Dr. Lindgren. Any involvement on your part could be easily misconstrued as obstruction of justice, and our agency has little tolerance for vigilantism. I am merely contacting you to keep you informed, and —”
She cut the man off. “Well I appreciate your obvious concern for my sanity,” she said. “But don’t worry about contacting me until you’ve tracked him down. I don’t want you wasting any more time just ‘keeping me informed.’”
She smashed the ‘end’ button on the phone’s dial pad, wishing there was some sort of seat or charger she could have slammed the receiver down into.
My father’s gone missing. Interpol is on it.
She wasn’t sure which statement was more unbelievable. She had nothing against Interpol, but it seemed surreal — a worldwide police organization contacting her directly and apparently launching a campaign to find her father.
Dr. Lindgren took a moment to breathe. She calmed herself down, but the questions raced through her head. Has he really been kidnapped? Who would want to take him? And why?
