by J. N. Chaney
“Alright, Leon. Stay on standby. We’re entering the vault. Communication may get cut,” I said.
“You got it, Alphonse.”
There was a tense moment when we all held our breath as though the door might slam shut behind us. Despite my own misgivings, I stepped forward, then turned in anticipation to see if anything might happen. It didn’t, and the door remained open, much to my relief.
Marcella laughed and Dorian shot me a grin. “See, I knew this wasn’t a complete deathtrap.”
We moved deeper into the rock and followed the hallway before it went right, then turned sharply to the left. Another 50 meters, and it turned again, back to the right. I was almost expecting another turn, but the passageway suddenly stopped in a dead end.
The etchings on the wall were more pronounced here, less a subtle set of lines buried in the metal with deeper grooves. I reached out and touched a design. It flashed with an internal power and a tone reverberated in the chamber. I pulled my hand back. After a few seconds, the light turned off and the tone stopped.
“Leon, we have a dead end down here.” Nothing but static came from the comms.
I looked from Dorian to Marcella. “About what we expected. Ideas?”
Dorian looked perplexed. “Not yet, but then, this isn’t really my area of expertise. Marcella? You’re the one with an archeologist lineage.”
Marcella approached the etchings and studied them. “I love music. Studied it some after my dad left. That sounded like a note to me. It’s really just a form of math. If we can figure out what the tones mean, maybe we can make it move?”
I kneeled and inspected the floor. It was flush with the walls around, the same layer of red dust. Still, the passage had to go somewhere and an elevator into the depths of the canyon was most likely. “You might be right. It’s plausible that this is a lift of sorts. Give it a shot,” I said, stepping back to give her room.
Marcella traced her fingers over several etchings softly enough not to engage any of them. She seemed to be getting a feel of the patterns and placement. After analyzing them all, she pressed one after another, pausing between to listen to the tone and wait for the symbol’s light to fade.
“I think I’ve got it,” she whispered. “Here goes.” She pushed an etching that resembled a star, then another like a sun on a horizon, and then a barge tipped on its side.
Each brightened with an internal blue light. Each emitted a tone that harmonized with the next into a chord. There was a shift in the pressure of the chamber.
We reflexively went for our air masks and then relaxed when the pressure change subsided. The movement kicked up a spray of red dust that caused us to cough, then the walls began to move around us. No, I realized, the floor was moving. I’d been right; we had been standing on an elevator. The vault lift was underway.
18
Beyond the small square of light produced by the wall and the floor, everything was dark. There was a faint hiss as the lift settled and then a click as it fully integrated with the floor. As it did so, the same subtle glow that lit the areas above came on.
Light snaked out from the central platform. We now stood in an alcove roughly 20 square meters in size. The lights continued to illuminate a branching set of paths going out from the alcove in three separate directions.
Marcella walked from one entrance to the next, peering down the long tunnels. Each was longer than the passages above and ended in a door. The doors were attached to a thick conduit mounted across the ceiling that wound into the alcove, around the lift, and joined with the northern door. There, the three lines terminated in dark recessed boxes.
The boxes seemed straightforward enough. Assuming the other doors were accessible, they would house something that locked this final path.
Dorian hadn’t moved from the central platform as we inspected the pathways and marveled at the installation. “I’ve been to a lot of planets. I’ve seen the inside of a lot of prisons, panic rooms, and safehouses, and the one thing they all had in addition to physical barriers was active security. Tread lightly.”
Marcella fixed him with a sardonic look and raised an eyebrow. “I thought I was the one with archaeologist lineage, Mr. Tribal?”
“And I’m a Renegade. One with a sense of self-preservation.” That said, he left the platform and headed to the eastern passage. “Might as well take it clockwise and see where it goes.”
I nodded and followed along, with Marcella just behind me. The eastern door was shut but not sealed, we discovered. As soon as Dorian was within five meters of it, the central bar turned 90 degrees, and the doorway parted in the middle.
Beyond was a small cubic container. Attached to it was a conduit line, which went up to the ceiling and out the door.
Dorian took up the lead as we slowly inched forward, looking for signs of danger. “Whatever that is, it clearly needs to be powered up. The question is how, and is it only going to power the door?”
The room was ridiculously cold. Aside from the cube, four tubular objects stood in the corners of the room. Each was topped with an oddly shaped metal piece that had notching around the edge. The base of the cylinders linked into the wall.
Once Marcella stepped five meters beyond the door, it cycled shut. She gave a bit of a jump and ran back to the door. It immediately cycled open again, and she let out a whistle. “Look at that, Dorian. You have me so paranoid, I’m afraid of a door.”
Dorian frowned. “Better to look silly being cautious than die looking brave.”
I shook my head. “Let’s not linger. Staying in this room for too long isn’t a good idea. I don’t know what’s making it cold, but I doubt the cold, or the air quality, is good for us.”
I looked closely at the object in the center. It was featureless, a perfect cube only slightly smaller than the platform it rested on. I traced a finger along the side, seeing if it had a dormant interface.
Dorian drew himself into a defensive stance, but he said nothing.
I noticed the cube glow ever so slightly from my touch. It reverted to its dull color when I pulled back my hand. “I think it responds to heat.” I leaned forward and breathed hard on it for a moment. It started to glow as my puffs hit it but quickly reverted. “Check the devices in the corners. I think they may be heaters of some kind.”
Dorian stood his ground, hand in his coat, ready to act. Marcella brushed past him and moved to the device in the back right corner. I moved to the back left.
The base cylinder was solid and mounted into the wall. The top part looked as if it could be repositioned.
Marcella confirmed this suspicion. “You can pull the thing on top off. It rotates and then sucks back down, like a magnet.”
I pulled up on the metal piece. It came away with a little pressure but could only be raised about an inch off the cylinder. Pulling it beyond that point met with fierce resistance. At that height, it was easy to rotate and then place back down. Doing so had a noticeable change to the device and the room in general.
Lights danced in the cylinder and the temperature of the room shot up.
Marcella pulled and snapped her device into a new configuration. The room temperature continued to increase.
“It’s a key,” I realized. “Or a dial to control the heat output.”
Dorian was watching the cube carefully. “Makes sense. It’s starting to light up, Alphonse. What are we hoping for?”
I signaled to Marcella and we walked to the devices in the other corners. “Like the lift and the vault lights, I think we are aiming for a mild reaction, something of a pleasant ambient glow.”
Dorian nodded. “You’ve got a dull glow so far.”
I picked up the key and turned it in my hand. The configuration of notching allowed it to sit in different positions on the cylinder. I set it down, turning it horizontally and getting feedback from Dorian.
“You’re getting somewhere. Each turn is making the cube change. Sometimes it flashes and other times it seems to change color.”
I did a quick check on the math. There were eight unique positions each key could be placed in. With four across the chamber, this gave us thirty-two combinations. “Any significance to the number thirty-two in music, Marcella?”
She smiled wide and ran to me. “Yes! Many songs follow a thirty-two-bar structure. It repeats the harmonies twice, changes to a minor harmonic, and then repeats the original again. A pretty common form, actually.”
I nodded. “Alright, so we need to change each one of the keys to represent the form.”
Dorian scowled. “Shame you already moved everything. We have no idea what is different or what needs to be placed back.”
I considered that. “I don’t think it matters. As long as we follow the pattern, assuming our guess about the music is correct, it will still work.”
I turned the keys on my side to a matching orientation in relation to the central cube. “Marcella, match this in the far corner and then change it up in the corner you started from.”
“I’m on it, Alphonse.” She maneuvered the first key, then ran across the room to the other. She picked it up, considered her options, and placed it down gently. The temperature in the room climbed rapidly and stabilized at the same level as the outside corridor. The cube hummed rhythmically as the glow inside grew to a pleasant ambience. The conduit attached flashed brightly.
Dorian relaxed. “You two are something else. Music. Clever, when you think about it.”
We walked out of the chamber and followed the corridor along. The conduit along the way flashed with light until it too gained a steady, ambient hum.
We headed south to the next door. Like the eastward door, it cycled open at five meters and cycled shut once we passed that threshold within.
This chamber also featured a central cube connected to a conduit on a column. The room was the same temperature as the outside corridor, and I didn’t see any objects on the walls. The floor and ceiling, however, showed three symbols on each segment. We stood in the vestibule near the door and inspected the floor. The segments were spaced so a total of eight of them stretched from wall to wall with a gap of blank segments directly in front of the cube column.
I turned to Marcella. “Any chance you have information on the significance of eight?”
She clapped her hands and whistled. “As a matter of fact, there are quite a few uses for eight in music. Too many to make a guess, though.”
Wanting to think, I began to pace and considered everything we’d learned so far. I avoided accidentally stepping on the floor symbols by retreating through the vestibule to the door and back. The door cycled open and closed each time I neared it, but it was slightly off from the other doors. This distracted me and I passed through it a few more times, then stopped pacing.
“Wait here, I need to go verify something,” I told them.
As I’d suspected, the other doors were indeed different. The key was that when this door sensed my approach and opened, it did so from much farther away than the other. “Add the significance of five to eight. The other doors have all opened at a set distance of almost three meters, this one does at five.”
Marcella clapped her hands again. “Oh. I have it!” She leaned down and tapped the largest symbol on the segment nearest the wall. The segment pushed up and began to spin. A glow started in the cube.
Dorian studied the cube with fascination. “Is it supposed to be doing that?”
Marcella waved him off. “It’s just a pattern. Don’t worry, Dorian. I’ve got this.” She touched the smallest symbol on the next segment and then the middle-sized one. She finished with another small symbol. She was grinning and whistling as she made her way to the other wall and set out another set of symbols. Large, small, small, middle.
The cube flickered and glowed, but a softer light than the ambience. The sound of the segments spinning at various speeds echoed loudly in the chamber and made communicating difficult.
Marcella strained herself to be heard. “Something’s missing.”
Dorian backed another step up but stuck to the wall, keeping his profile rigid as the cube spun faster and created a powerful wind. “We’re getting out of here. Now.”
I grabbed Marcella’s hand. “We need to regroup. Maybe it will reset.”
She pulled herself from my grip and stared at the ceiling. “Hold on, I know what to do. Five-eighths time. I just needed the fifth parts.” She reached up and hit the smallest symbol on both segments in the middle, directly above the cube column.
The cube column that sat exactly above where she was standing and reaching.
I jumped forward and grabbed her, tossing her back toward Dorian. I tried to duck down, but it was too late. The ceiling segments dislodged and swung low and hard, scraping just past the sides of the cube and right into my head. I was pulled off my feet and thrown backward by the force.
Everything went black for a brief moment and my mouth filled with the taste of copper. My vision was blotchy, and my jaw ached where it had connected with something hard. I’d taken a heck of a beating.
Marcella was stooped over me, yelling something, but my ears were ringing, and it drowned out her words. Dorian grabbed me and dragged me into the corridor. As we moved, I saw that the conduit had started to glow.
I tried to stand up, but the world wouldn’t stay still. “Is the vault collapsing? The floor has tilted.”
Dorian scowled down at me. “You got hit on the head, possible skull fracture and definite concussion. The floor is fine, but your equilibrium isn’t. We’re getting out of here.”
I pushed him away and struggled to my knees. “No! We have to recover the artifact. We have to finish this. For Marcella, for her father, to stop Evelyn. I’m fine. One wound in the field. Nothing I can’t survive.”
Dorian stared at me as if debating whether or not to let me make the call, then nodded. “You stay on the ground, you consult. You touch nothing. I’ll finish this.” He pulled me to my feet and propped me up, then helped me through to the westward door.
The third chamber, predictably, had another cube on a column. The room itself was larger than the other two and the walls were rounded, as were the floor and ceiling, making a sphere. A series of four holes were set in the floor and ceiling around the column in evenly spaced intervals. They did not correspond with the walls or the layout of the corridor.
Dorian pointed a stern finger at Marcella. “Stay with him. Neither of you are to move beyond this point.” He stepped into the sphere and started a slow circuit around the cube.
“I see a series of etchings on protruding stones around the center of the sphere,” he called out.
I couldn’t picture what he was seeing from the descriptions he called out to us so I looked to Marcella, but she shook her head.
“It’s impossible to guess from out here, Dorian. If you let me come in…”
“No, if something happens in here, we can’t both get taken out. Then nobody will be able to make it out alive. I’m going to test out each panel and see what they do, then get your take.”
A beam of reddish light flashed from the ceiling and floor, meeting in the middle and then spreading out laterally. It fluttered like a holo flag caught in a gentle breeze.
Dorian continued around the room, randomly turning panels on and off. A second light snapped on, then a third. The lights started to turn, propelled by something we couldn’t see. Then the sphere started to move, and the cube gave off a glow.
“Only a few more,” Dorian called out. A second later there was a shriek of metal and the rumble of rock, loud enough to cut through my fog. The light in the cube grew brighter than ambient, much brighter, and spilled out of the sphere-shaped room. It burned intensely and Marcella shielded my view, then pulled me stumbling out into the corridor.
After making sure I was okay, she darted back to, I assumed, look for Dorian.
Marcella reappeared almost ten agonizing minutes later, pulling Dorian with her. He held his arm out awkwardly and kept trippi
ng over debris as he went. As the Constable drew nearer, I realized he couldn’t see and that his eyes were swollen and red from whatever had happened in the room.
Marcella guided him to the lift, then came back and helped me sit next to him. Then she was gone again.
“Son of a bitch!” Dorian said.
The man must have been in agony because he pushed his palms against them, pressing and blinking, pressing and blinking, then moving his head around wildly.
“Hold on, Dorian, let me look through the medkit.”
The light of the cube seemed to have temporarily blinded him. I couldn’t stand and my mentor couldn’t see. This mission had turned into a disaster.
I removed the pack from my back with some effort and began to rummage through it. I came up with bandages and some ointment gel for burns and hoped it was enough to give him some relief.
By the time Marcella reappeared holding a crude stone cylinder with markings along the side, Dorian had the gel slathered over his wounds and gauze wrapped around his head to cover his eyes.
“You got it,” I said weakly.
We were wounded, but the artifact had been successfully retrieved, so it would be worth it. Everything was going to be fine.
“I spotted it when I pulled Dorian out. I couldn’t just leave it there. Okay, don’t lean on the wall, we’re getting the hell out of here.” She helped us to the center, then prodded the etchings on the wall once more. The lift shifted and moved up smoothly. I had no idea what notes she played or what chord meant return to the start, but it looked like she had mastered the strange communications of this place.
The lift merged with the top level and we were alone in the simple corridor covered with red dust. Marcella locked hands with Dorian and levered him up, then did the same with me. I used the wall as a sort of crutch on my right while she stayed on my left. Since Dorian could walk, he held her arm and moved cautiously with one arm out in front of him.
I noticed the way Marcella hugged the artifact as we emerged out onto the platform. She was excited and happy, and despite my injuries, my heart swelled a little.
