2041 Sanctuary (Dark Descent)

by Robert Storey

  An hour later, the three friends sat next to a burbling stream in a picturesque café in one of the parks that surrounded the museum complex. This was the first time they’d had the luxury of an in depth discussion since they’d been in the USSB, Sarah’s latest arrest having thrown a spanner in the works of any meaningful conversation when they’d visited the museum almost a week earlier.

  She filled them in on her new job at the SED and how Riley had ended up saving her bacon, a big turnaround from initially being the villain of the piece. Of course, she wasn’t supposed to disclose such sensitive information, but quite frankly she didn’t give a damn.

  ‘You’re a jammy bastard,’ Jason said with envy. ‘I’m stuck with refuse collection and poor old Trish is working in some kind of sweatshop.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that bad,’ Trish told Sarah, giving Jason a withering look. ‘I work in a factory; we produce machine parts for the construction industry, which is expanding the base. It’s quite important, really.’

  ‘Well, none of our jobs matter anyway,’ Sarah said. ‘Now that I’m going to get access outside the base we can begin to plan our escape. In the meantime we can all keep documenting Sanctuary, the museum – everything.’

  ‘We wondered what had happened to you,’ Jason said as they sipped their drinks and nibbled on a rich selection of iced cakes Sarah had ordered for them. ‘It was only when some guy came to see us a few days later that we found out you’d been arrested by the military again.’

  ‘What guy? Riley?’

  Jason looked thoughtful. ‘Yeah, I think that was his name. Tall chap, yeah? Seemed nice enough. Same bloke that gave you your job, I suppose.’

  Sarah looked to Trish. ‘You met him too?’

  ‘Yes, I was with Jason when he came round. He’s rather nice, isn’t he?’

  Sarah gave a shrug. ‘He’s okay, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Sarah, he’s more than okay. He’s gorgeous; tall, handsome, in control and definitely charming.’

  ‘He looked like a bit of a twat to me,’ Jason said.

  Trish frowned. ‘You just said he seemed nice.’

  ‘I was being kind; it’s not nice to put someone down when they’re not around.’

  ‘But you’d do it to their face, then, would you?’ Trish said, unconvinced.

  ‘I might do, if I wanted to. Anyway he was a bit of a letch, he probably only gave Sarah that job to get into her knickers.’

  Sarah crossed her arms. ‘Oh, thanks.’

  ‘No offence,’ Jason added, with little deference.

  ‘Some taken.’

  ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it,’ Jason continued, unabashed.

  ‘What is?’ Trish asked, her tone hardening.

  ‘Single guy. It would have been his main driving force. I’m a man—’

  ‘That’s debatable,’ Trish said.

  ‘I’m a man,’ he repeated, ‘and if I was in a position of power—’

  Trish snorted at the prospect.

  ‘—I’d employ young single women, not some old frump who was over the hill. It’s the way of the world. Sarah could have been some boss-eyed goon, but if she had a nice bum and a good pair of legs then she’d have got the job.’

  Trish picked up a piece of cake and chucked it at him in disgust. Jason looked down at the offending projectile, picked it off his shirt and popped it in his mouth. ‘Thanks,’ he said with an insolent grin.

  ‘You disgust me,’ Trish said.

  Jason appeared smug. ‘Just telling it how it is, way of the world ‘n’ all that.’

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ Sarah said. ‘The reason Riley gave me the job had nothing to do with my hard-earned qualifications or skills in the field, but because I’ve got a nice bum and a good pair of legs?’

  Jason put a finger to his nose and pointed to Sarah with his other hand as he munched down another cake. ‘Correct!’ he said with his mouth full. ‘And to be honest, your legs and bum don’t even need to be that nice, as long as you’re youngish and firm you’d have got in, no probs.’

  This time a whole cream cake flew into Jason’s face; he squawked in protest. ‘Oi!’

  ‘Nice shot.’ Trish held out her hand to Sarah, who slapped it with a resounding smack of solidarity.

  ‘Some people just can’t take the truth,’ Jason muttered to himself, as the two women looked at him with a mixture of amused disapproval and superior contempt.

  While Jason cleaned himself up, Sarah told Trish more about her new position at the SED and how they might use it to their advantage.

  ‘Perhaps you could get us on the team, too?’ Jason suggested, butting into the conversation as he rid himself of the last remnants of Sarah’s cake attack.

  ‘It had crossed my mind.’ Sarah glanced at Jason and then turned to face Trish again. ‘If all three of us had passes out of the base, then it would make things a lot easier.’

  ‘You could put in a good word for us,’ Jason said. ‘We’ve got good field experience and we’re good archaeologists, too.’

  ‘There’s one problem with that,’ Trish told him. ‘Your legs and bum are hideous and hairy and as for your face – well. I suppose we could shave you and put you in a dress, but we want to get a job in the SED, not in a cabaret club for the blind.’

  Sarah couldn’t help but laugh as Trish turned the tables on Jason’s previous outdated rhetoric.

  He held up his hands. ‘Okay, perhaps I deserved that, but—’ He got to his feet and turned round to stick his bum out. ‘This is one fine piece of Welsh rump. I reckon it’d get me in, what do you think?’ He wiggled his bottom round and round and then jiggled it up and down energetically.

  Trish looked mortified as other patrons of the café peered in their direction. ‘Oh my God, stop it!’

  Sarah, not wanting to encourage him, turned away and put her hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter as her shoulders shook with mirth.

  Jason sat back down again with a big beaming grin on his face, his attempt at reconciling their differences by self-humiliation a resounding success.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ Trish told him.

  He gave her a wink. ‘And proud of it.’

  As time went on, their fleeting altercation forgotten and Jason’s misogyny forgiven, talk inevitably turned to Sanctuary, the museum and Homo gigantis.

  ‘Can you believe there are forty-five underground bases around the world?’ Jason said. ‘They kept that quiet, didn’t they? You’d have thought word would have got out that these places were being built.’

  ‘They won’t all be as big as this one,’ Trish replied, ‘but yes, you’d think there would have been rumours or leaks at some point.’

  Sarah sat up straighter. ‘They must have been building them for a long time. The cost must have been monumental; so much for the governments not having much money to spend.’

  ‘Well, that’s probably true,’ Jason said, ‘because they’ve spent it on all these bases. Oh, and what about the induction video?’ he added, his eyes alight with excitement.

  ‘What about it?’ Trish asked.

  ‘The bit where that professor guy said put your hands up if you thought aliens built Sanctuary. I put my hand up, I said it was aliens, didn’t I?

  ‘Yes, you did.’ She looked at Sarah and rolled her eyes.

  ‘Even though I thought it probably was Homo gigantis, I said aliens, as it’s—’

  ‘Always aliens,’ Trish and Sarah said in unison, stealing his punchline and laughing at his perplexed expression.

  A waiter came over to the table. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said, addressing Jason, ‘one of our female customers asked me to bring you this drink.’ He placed a lavish cocktail down on the table.

  ‘Excellent!’ Jason picked it up and saluted his admirer a few tables away.

  The waiter coughed. ‘Yes, sir. She also asked me to give you a message.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘The lady said, “You can wiggle your booty for her
anytime”.’

  ‘No way!’ Trish said, looking at the woman in question. ‘Is she blind?’

  The waiter leaned forward. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ He extended a hand and plucked a cake peanut from Jason’s hair and placed it on his plate.

  ‘Thanks.’ Jason picked up the offending item and popped it in his mouth.

  ‘All part of the service, sir.’ The waiter moved away.

  If Jason’s smile gets any bigger it’s going to swallow his head, Sarah thought.

  ‘Am I dreaming?’ Trish asked.

  Sarah laughed. ‘No, ’fraid not.’

  While Jason basked in his glory and savoured his free drink, Sarah continued the conversation with Trish. ‘I’m gutted we haven’t made the find of the century. I thought we’d found ground-breaking evidence of Homo gigantis, but with this place sitting down here it pales into insignificance.’

  Trish shook her head. ‘You don’t know that. What about the pendant? You figured that out and from what Jason and I saw in the museum they haven’t figured out how to operate any of the ancient technology they’ve found. They haven’t even been able to decode any of the languages yet, as far as I can see.’

  Jason sipped his drink. ‘There was also no sign of any pendants like yours in the display cases.’

  ‘That’s something, I suppose.’ Sarah felt a bit more upbeat. ‘That’s what we need to do as well; recover our artefacts and gear, mainly the artefacts.’

  ‘Your higher clearance might make that easier,’ Trish told her, ‘although the military might still have it all under lock and key.’

  Sarah pursed her lips. ‘Riley said he used to be in the military. I’ll try and broach the subject at some point and see what he thinks. You never know, the Smithsonian might have it by now; they are after all Anakim related.’

  ‘I wonder what happened to our camp on the surface?’ Jason said. ‘The canister and bones might still be up there, sitting out in the open for anyone to get their thieving hands on.’

  Trish lent forwards. ‘I’ve been thinking about that too. They’re either still where we left them or the locals or Vatican have nabbed them, or maybe the military from this base sent out a communication to have everything picked up and brought back down here.’

  ‘Sadly, we may never find out,’ Sarah said. ‘I try not to think about it. We have enough to worry about down here. We can think on that when we get to the surface.’

  ‘If we don’t find any trace of our stuff down here that is,’ Jason added.

  Sarah nodded in agreement. ‘I have to admit, though, the knowledge that this place exists and actually being in it comes a very close second to having discovered Sanctuary ourselves, don’t you think?’

  ‘Most definitely,’ Trish said.

  ‘Bloody hell, yes,’ Jason agreed. ‘This place is unbelievable.’

  Sarah looked around, making sure they remained out of earshot of any eavesdroppers. ‘It shouldn’t be a secret, though. To keep something like this hidden is a crime against humanity. Also, some of these people may seem nice, but I don’t trust any of them; we are basically prisoners down here for all intents and purposes. We must never forget that.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Trish said.

  Sarah looked up at the sun, or at least the simulation of sunlight, from the dome above. She thought it strange to be underground and basking in this light, whereas on the surface everyone else was consigned to living beneath a blackened sky. It was perhaps this abstract image, in a roundabout way, that made her realise she needed to unburden herself. ‘There’s something I need to tell you both.’

  Trish and Jason looked at her expectantly as she struggled with how to begin. ‘After my artefacts were stolen in Oxford, I realised my previous discoveries hadn’t been taken from me in freak occurrences. The stolen femur and burnt maps must have been the work of the same people who broke into the vault in Oxford. The confrontation with Carl and the Italian in Turkey reinforce my certainty that my theory is actually fact and that the Vatican was behind all four incidents.’

  Sarah halted and fiddled with her fingers as she sought more words to say while Trish and Jason exchanged looks, unsure where this was leading.

  ‘As the maps were taken from me on purpose,’ Sarah continued, ‘that also means the fire was started deliberately and in turn my mother’s subsequent death was no accident. The inconclusive report on how the fire started also lends itself to arson. Since they targeted my maps and I put the maps in my mum’s house for safekeeping, it’s down to me that she died before her time.’

  ‘Sarah, no!’ Trish’s voice was full of concern. ‘You can’t possibly blame yourself for that, you didn’t start that fire and even if someone did do it to destroy your evidence of gigantis, then they are to blame, not you!’

  Sarah knew her friend was right, she didn’t start the fire and couldn’t have prevented her mother’s death, but it didn’t stop her from feeling a deep sense of guilt, shame and despair about her indirect contribution to it. ‘They may have started the fire, but it was my actions that led to her death and there’s nothing you can say to convince me otherwise. It’s a fact.’

  Trish looked at Jason for some support, but he seemed reluctant to say anything. Trish frowned at him and with a subtle head movement indicated she wanted him to say something supportive.

  ‘It might not have been deliberate – the fire,’ Jason said at Trish’s instigation. ‘It could have been just an accident, a coincidence.’

  Sarah gave him a weak smile and knew he meant well, but she could tell he believed that as much as she did. ‘I want to bring the people responsible for her death to justice,’ Sarah told them, her voice flat and cold as she fought to keep her emotions in check.

  ‘How will you do that?’ Trish asked, choosing her words with care. ‘The police didn’t find anything at the scene, if I remember rightly.’

  Sarah shifted in her seat ‘I don’t know, but I won’t stop until I find out who killed my mother, or at the very least expose the cover-up of gigantis, which will strike a blow at the Vatican and the people that work for them.’

  ‘Is that why you were so intent on extracting that Mayan plaque from the monument in the Copán ruins?’ Trish said, finally able to understand her friend’s motivations.

  ‘And why you were so keen to go to South Africa, despite the danger involved?’ Jason added.

  Sarah nodded.

  No one spoke for a moment as they digested Sarah’s revelations.

  ‘Have you considered the GMRC or U.S. Government might have started the fire that destroyed the maps?’ Trish asked, her tone tentative.

  ‘The thought crossed my mind,’ Sarah admitted, ‘but my online group always fingered the Catholic Church for the cover-ups, especially in Europe. Plus our run in with the Italian all but seals it for me. There were other fires that destroyed gigantis evidence in the past, according to my group, and from records found dating back to the middle ages the Vatican even admitted they set fires to purge heresies from being spread; specific cases even hint that the objects targeted for destruction may have been of gigantis origin.’

  ‘That the Vatican set fires to maintain their doctrine isn’t new, Sarah,’ Trish said, ‘and your group can come up with some pretty outlandish claims in their quest to prove gigantis exists.’

  ‘I don’t think the U.S. or GMRC had anything to do with the fire or the theft of the other artefacts,’ Jason said to Sarah. ‘There was mention of the Catholic Church’s activities in Sanctuary’s museum; I saw it on the day you got rearrested. It goes into some detail about the lengths that the Catholic Church went to in covering up the existence of gigantis in Europe and South America. The U.S. Government had altercations with agents of the Church back in the eighteen hundreds and even as recently as the late twentieth century. The major difference between the two factions – the Vatican and the U.S. Government – is that one wants to destroy the existence of gigantis, while the other just wants to keep it hidden. The museu
m we visited should be testament to that fact on its own.’

  Trish looked at Jason with some surprise, clearly impressed by his serious and well thought out argument.

  Sarah wasn’t taken aback by Jason’s new information, but it did confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt who was to blame for the fire that had robbed her of much more than evidence of the historical existence of giants.

  Jason leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘The references in the museum also indicate that there is still friction between the Smithsonian Institution and the Vatican to this day. It didn’t go into details, but that’s what it implied. There was also one interesting passage of text about another organisation that has links to the Roman Catholic Church and one that may have knowledge of the Anakim.’

  ‘What are they called?’ Sarah knew every scrap of information could help her in her quest for justice.

  ‘The Apocryphon. It doesn’t say anything else about them. I thought you might be interested so I looked up the term on the USSB’s library database and there’s no further reference to it anywhere.’

  Sarah listened as Jason described other interesting titbits of information he’d unearthed at the museum and Trish also joined in, relaying details of her own discoveries. Sarah, happy to let talk divert away from the painful subject she had finally had the courage to share with her two friends, sat back, only joining in to ask the odd question. Some time later she took her leave and made her way back to her new digs, the emotional drain from bringing up the subject of her mother making her seek out her own company.

  ♦

  Trish, now alone with Jason, had time to discuss Sarah and the concerns she had for her friend.

  ‘I’m just worried about her,’ she said, as they walked around a small lake in the park.

  Jason made a dismissive gesture. ‘She’ll be fine. She’s just got a lot on her mind, is all.’