by Nick Thacker
She looked at him. “My great-grandfather was in charge of the Die Glocke project; he found the bells and put them to use for the Reich’s research.”
“The Nazis didn’t create these?” Julie asked. “And there’s more than one?”
“No, and yes. My ancestors — and his ancestors — were the ones who created the test. They created the technology. Their descendants tried to copy the compound that tests the purity levels, as they were the ones who were going to bring it around the world, to continue what the Ancients started.”
On the television screen as the woman spoke, Reggie noticed movement. A door had opened somewhere offscreen, as the room brightened a bit. Two silhouettes appeared, their dark outlines rendering them unrecognizable.
Except…
Reggie leaned in closer. Is that…
He thought the person on the left looked thinner — smaller. And then when the person was pushed farther into the room, he knew.
Sarah.
He pushed his chair back, flying upwards and planting his good leg on the ground. “That’s Sarah!” he shouted. “You son of a —“
He felt a crack, and immediately fell back into his chair. The soldier standing behind him had smashed the butt of his rifle into the back of his bad leg, cracking a bone somewhere inside. He groaned in agony but didn’t fight back.
Ben, next to him, was seething. The big man was staring a hole through the television, his eyes fixed on the screen.
Reggie watched on. He could tell Sarah was fighting, struggling to get free. But the man who had pushed her inside had the advantage, and with a final shove he flung her across the room, almost to where the bell was sitting, and left.
He saw her scream out, but heard nothing.
“The trial is about to begin,” the woman said. She pulled out a walkie-talkie from her pocket and started talking into it. “Bring in Professor Lindgren.”
Reggie’s eyes widened. For a moment he forgot about the pain he was in.
One of the soldiers standing behind him turned and opened the door. Two more men — scientists or employees by the looks of them — pushed in a gray-haired, tired-looking man. He was feeble, holding onto the mens’ shoulders as they led him in, but he seemed otherwise healthy.
And the determination in his eyes told Reggie everything he needed to know.
This is Sarah’s father.
The woman nodded at the man, then spoke again into her radio. “Dr. Shaw, we’re ready in room 23.”
Reggie heard a man confirm, then give a five-second warning. Reggie’s eyes were glued to the television.
Five seconds, he thought. I have five seconds to figure out what to do.
He knew that meant he’d have to take out the soldiers, with an injured leg, with no weapons, then run down the hallway and get into the locked room.
In five seconds.
He let out a breath.
Ben squeezed his shoulder.
Mrs. E and Alex were staring at the television, their faces registering their shock.
He heard Julie sobbing quietly.
73
Sarah
THE SCARIEST MOMENT OF SARAH’S life, up to that point, had been many years prior. Once, when she was about eight years old, she and her mother and father had hiked to the top of a waterfall, where they had a picnic on a large, flat rock that overlooked the falls. The view and the setting was unbeatable, and Sarah remembered the scene vividly.
When they were ready to leave, Sarah stood up and prepared to hop across the rock’s surface to the shore, but her foot slipped on a wet spot, and she fell backwards.
Over the edge of the waterfall.
Her mother had seen the entire thing happen and lunged forward, just barely grabbing Sarah’s shirt as she fell over the side. Her mother fell to her stomach and stretched out, holding onto the shirt and reeling her daughter in carefully, slowly.
Sarah remembered the feeling of falling, then the feeling of knowing she was about to die.
She remembered that feeling even more vividly than the scene itself, and it haunted her to this day.
Today she was feeling that same feeling, but the panic had been replaced by confusion.
Why is this happening? What is happening?
She was locked in an empty room, nothing but some weird artifact standing silently nearby.
The bell-shaped object in the center of the room was electronic, apparently, as she could see a black cable snaking around the room and disappeared into a cabinet that stood in the corner. A hose, coiled nicely, sat next to it on the floor.
The bell suddenly whirred to life.
What the?
Sarah studied it for a moment. It looked familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d seen it. She walked a slow circle around it, noticing that it was gently heating up. She placed her hand out, feeling the radiant temperature building on the bell’s surface.
Her face was heating up, too.
She wondered if the bell was giving off some sort of ultraviolet light, something that would cause sunburn. She rubbed her arms and hands. Am I heating up?
The bell’s whirring sound rose in intensity and started to become an ear-piercing screech. She covered her ears, but was shocked to feel how hot they had become.
I need to turn this thing off, she thought.
She looked around, frantic. Her panic grew and her breathing became more labored. It’s like I’m breathing thinner and thinner air.
She whirled around again, her eyes now displaying everything in a blurry, incoherent frame. Something… I need something…
Her brain was mush, and the heat was now radiating out from her. She stepped toward the door, then started banging.
“Help!” she shouted. “Please! Dad!”
She knew there would be no help. She was being punished. Or rather, her father was being punished — she was just the sacrificial rat in whatever experiment this was. Whatever their captors were looking for, they hadn’t found it.
Her father hadn’t been able to tell them what it was.
He hadn’t even known what it was.
She knew that if he had, he would have told her — or he would have told them. He wouldn’t have let it get this far, let them take his only daughter…
The cord.
She scrambled over to the corner of the room, aiming for the cabinet. Before she reached it, she fell. Her knees had grown weak and her vision was now dancing faster than the room was spinning. The bell’s sound was blood-curdling, the noise blocking out even the rising pain in her face.
The pain.
She touched her face. It felt like it was about to melt, as if she’d been exposed to some sort of intense chemical radiation that was eating her alive.
She crawled over to the cord.
So close.
She yanked on it. Please. She pulled it by twisting her wrist backwards, then bending her arm into it to apply more pressure. She needed leverage, and she found it by grabbing her wrist with her other hand.
Nothing happened.
The cord didn’t budge, and the cabinet it snaked into barely shook.
No…
She tried again. She pulled, harder this time, shaking the cable as she tried to roll over and put some weight on it. She was too weak to stand, but she knew she could put enough force into it to unplug it.
She felt it give a little, just a bit. Yes. Please.
She tugged again. Turn. Off. She tried willing the cord to unplug itself — prayed, even.
The heat in the room had grown to an insufferable level. She couldn’t breathe, didn’t want to. Her breaths were jagged, each one taking a bit of life from her chest. She began to wheeze, drool building on the side of her lip and caressing down over her cheek — it was far cooler than the air in the room, and almost soothing.
She rolled to her other side, her strength nearly gone. One. More. Time.
She yanked on the black cable, as hard as her arms could manage.
It didn’t give.
She sobbed once, then closed her eyes and lay her head down on her shoulder.
74
Graham
DAMMIT SARAH, GRAHAM THOUGHT. Get up.
He was crying, the tears flowing freely down his face. No one seemed to care — no one even noticed. They were all, just like he was, fixated on the television screen that had been rolled into the front corner of the room.
He’d watched on in horror as his only daughter, his only family remaining on this planet, had been shoved into the room at the end of the hall. Room 23. It was the room that apparently served as the entrance to the Great Hall of Records, but Graham had been suspicious of this story from the beginning.
For one, Rachel Rascher had allowed him to examine the room himself, hoping that something inside might ‘jumpstart a memory’ about something that might help her. He’d sworn to her that he had no idea how to open the ‘door,’ if such a thing actually existed.
Rachel hadn’t believed him since they’d brought him in — she had been dead-set on proving that Professor Lindgren was hiding something, that he knew of some way to open the Hall’s entrance chamber.
He, of course, did not. He had never seen the place before in his life, and aside from a few references in mythological sources, he had never heard of the place.
She claimed it had been built by the ancient Atlanteans. That they had somehow traveled here and taught the Egyptians how to build, farm, and act like a civilized group of people.
All of that he could believe.
He could even believe that this woman, Rachel Rascher, was descended from that same race of people. Over the course of his career, he had seen more than enough evidence to believe that there had in fact been some sort of ancient race of humans, and that those humans had expanded their reach to all corners of the globe. He had discovered some of that evidence.
But what he couldn’t believe — what he would not believe — was that this same woman would go to such lengths to prove her point. That she would terrify him and his daughter wasn’t surprising.
That she was threatening to kill her for it was.
And now, watching the horror unfold on the screen, he had to come to grips with the reality.
Sarah is going to die.
My only daughter is going to die because of me.
He was still confused about how this was his fault, but he was past caring about that. This was his fault. He had failed to take care of her, and now he was paying the price no father ever in their wildest dreams thought they would have to pay.
Get up, Sarah.
Sarah didn’t move. She was sprawled out on the floor of Room 23, her legs and arms spread-eagled over the rock.
Rachel began to talk, and Professor Lindgren tried to ignore her words. It didn’t work.
“At this point, the compound is heated to a point where it turns into a vapor, nearly a gas. This is similar to one of the compounds the Nazis used in their concentration camps to gas their prisoners.
“Like us, the Nazi party was trying to understand how to replicate the compound that they found here. They failed, as we have, to create a perfect copy, ending up with the infamous compound, Zyklon B, used in gas chambers at the death camps. But we are far closer, and you are seeing the effects now.”
She looked again at Agent Sharpe. “Unfortunately our trial in Athens revealed another set of chemical errors in the compound. We brought one subject back to our lab and administered a second dosage, but she was unable to survive that test.”
Sharpe’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t move.
She lifted her hand to the screen as she continued, as if she were nothing more than a museum curator pointing out a new acquisition in their French Impressionists wing.
“Dr. Lindgren is slowly asphyxiating, her lungs contracting but not finding enough oxygen in the air. But unlike the Zyklon B gas and its alternatives, this compound has a psychological and hallucinogenic effect. Dr. Lindgren’s brain is registering heat — it is not actually hotter in the room, however. Her face feels, to her, as though it is melting. The skin peeling off from the bone, and —”
“Stop,” the man in front of Graham said. He was tall, but he was sitting awkwardly in the chair, holding his leg, which was bleeding and dripping all over the floor.
Rachel continued. “She will die of poisoning if she doesn’t asphyxiate first. But most of our test subjects —” she looked around the room, her eyes landing on Graham and the man standing at attention in the opposite corner — “were able to withstand the lower oxygen levels for a significant amount of time, leading me and my team to believe we had in fact found a pure subject.”
“You’re testing her purity?” one of the women at the table blurted out.
“Yes,” Rachel answered.
“By killing her.”
“I admit, we are unsure exactly how the Ancients’ compound actually works, but our best guess is that only by subjecting their bodies to extreme stress levels can the compound analyze their genetic composition. In a very literal sense, it’s a stress test. The strongest survive, and the weak break.”
“You’re a monster,” the woman said.
“I’m a scientist. And I am very close to understanding exactly how this process works. Dr. Lindgren is but one of many subjects we’ve studied, and — judging by her skin tone — she will, unfortunately, not pass.”
Graham rushed forward, but the two men who’d carried him in had been replaced by a large, buff soldier. He restrained him without even flexing.
“You murderer!” Graham shouted.
Rachel turned to him and smiled. “There is still time, Professor. Tell me how to open the door and I’ll let Sarah go.” She turned back to the television for a moment and then addressed Graham again. “From what it looks like, Sarah has approximately one minute — maybe one and a half — to live.”
He was still crying, but he forced the tears back and allowed his rage to work up into the front of his mind. “I — I’ll kill you,” he whispered. “I’ll murder you. And everyone here.”
“There’s no need for unnecessary aggression, Professor,” Rachel said. “Like I said, just tell me how to open —”
“You can’t open it,” he shouted. “It’s not real. You believe a fairy tale — a myth. The Atlanteans, or whoever they really were, were just a race of people. Just like the Minoans, or the Babylonians. They were around back then, but they didn’t… they didn’t run around building fanciful pyramids and using bells to poison the ‘unworthy’ masses.”
Rachel opened her mouth to speak, but the man sitting in front of Graham interrupted her.
“He’s right,” the man said. “You bought into a lie, lady. You’re delusional, and you’re going to have to pay for that.”
He stood up, slowly, and the man sitting next to him stood as well, helping the injured man to his feet.
“That woman in there — she’s…” the man faltered as he saw the image of Sarah, unmoving, on the floor. “She’s everything to me.”
He glanced at Graham. “And this guy — her father — he doesn’t know how to open your stupid vault. Can’t you see that? He wouldn’t be lying to you. Not anymore. Look at her in there. You think any father could bear to see their kid inside that torture chamber and not come clean? You think —”
“My father was not pure,” Rachel said.
The man’s jaw dropped. “You — you tested your own father?”
She nodded. Graham thought he could see a flash of light in her eye. The sparkle of a tear, revealed by the single bulb that hung over the table. As quickly as it appeared, it sunk back into her eye.
“You’re sick, lady.”
Graham looked again at the television just as the woman sitting next to the injured man spoke. “She’s getting up!”
Graham’s heart began beating faster. Maybe there’s a chance…
He was nearly certain they were out of time. She’d told them that Sarah had less than a minute left.
Bu
t she was moving. Sarah was rolling around, trying desperately to find her feet. She got to her knees and started shuffling toward the opposite wall, barely able to keep her balance. Finally she stood on shaking legs.
Come on, Sarah.
He wasn’t sure what she was doing — what she was thinking. But she had it in her mind to stand up, and she was doing it. Graham saw the stubborn, beautiful, determined woman at that moment — her mother. She wasn’t going to die lying down in a puddle of her own saliva. She was going to —
Sarah fell, lurching forward and smacking hard against the rock wall, face-first.
Graham’s heart sank, and his head fell.
No.
Sarah lay crumpled against the wall, not really on the ground but not really standing, either. Her face and chest was smashed flat on the rock, her feet about a foot away from it. The rock wall had caught her fall, but it seemed the timer was up.
“Well, that was exciting,” Rachel said. “Now, if we can —”
Her voice was interrupted by the sound of a deep, low rumble. It grew in volume until Graham felt the ground shaking beneath his feet. He felt the fear in the room as all eyes danced around to one another, no one having any answers.
For a moment they were all on the same team, a group of scared humans in an underground room that could be collapsing around them. They were the same then, each as confused as everyone else.
The rumbling grew again, but then became steady.
75
Graham
“WHAT IS THAT?” RACHEL yelled. “What’s causing that? Is the demo team working today?”
One of the soldiers shrugged while another shook his head. “I don’t think so, ma’am.”
The rumbling continued, and Graham noticed dust falling from the cracks in the room where the ceiling met the walls. Small pieces of rock chipped off and became part of the swirling sandstorm falling onto their heads.
