2041 Sanctuary (Dark Descent)

by Robert Storey

  ‘What do your girls normally choose?’

  ‘I wouldn’t take any notice of Petra, she has a tendency to stir things up.’

  ‘So, how many conquests have you brought here?’

  ‘I’d hardly call them conquests, but if you’re asking, the answer’s two, and that includes Petra. I actually got her the job here.’

  ‘Hence she owes you.’

  He nodded. ‘I worked in this place for a while when I was in the army, ferrying things into the vaults down the service road. I never really got to see anything much, just things going in and out, covered up or in crates. But one time I was asked to help carry some boxes into one of the vaults and I was hooked. The mystery and magnificence of the artefacts I saw inside blew my mind. I wanted to know everything about them, where they came from, who made them and why. All those questions and more fuelled my desire to join the SED. I wanted to be the one to find those ancient relics, to unearth them, to be the first to glimpse their wondrous forms emerging from amongst the rock and soil. To hold them, touch their tactile surfaces and discover the civilisations that gave birth to them. The touch paper to my imagination had been lit and it was never going out.’

  Sarah looked at Riley anew as he surveyed the vaults in front of them, his thirst for knowledge and the need to satiate the addictive thrill that only archaeological discovery could deliver a familiar tale of obsession; indeed, his words could have been her own. ‘I never knew you felt so strongly.’

  Riley smiled at her. ‘Don’t bandy it about, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.’

  ‘You’re secret’s safe, Ace.’ She took a step forward. ‘So, what vault do you recommend first?’

  ‘Well, five of them contain items fresh from site. There won’t be much to see in those. The Boneyard,’ he pointed to the vault at the far end, ‘should be left till last, so we’ll start at six.’

  Walking to the vault with a large white number six painted on its grey façade, Riley pulled out his multifunction card and swiped it across a pad attached on one side. He entered a code and in response a mechanism inside the door shifted, the clank of metal and the hiss of hydraulics resonating through the structure. The gap between the thick steel portal and its housing edged wider and wider. Instead of being greeted by a gaping opening, inside stood a concave, frosted glass panel surrounding a smaller, transparent door. Next to this smaller entry point various warning signs and instructions had been posted.

  ‘There’s a decontamination procedure before you get right inside,’ Riley told her, ‘you’ll need to close your eyes and hold your breath for ten seconds on entering.’ He bowed. ‘Ladies first.’

  Sarah smirked and walked inside and onto a metal grid where an orange light blinked on. Closing her eyes she breathed in. A buzzer sounded and a blast of fine mist engulfed her, blowing out her hair and ruffling her clothes with its intensity. Almost as soon as it had begun, the process was completed, the buzzer sounding again prompting Sarah to open another door and pass into a low-lit interior. Ahead, a wide hallway stretched back into the vault with an even number of rooms on either side consisting of more frosted glass. Above her head, only darkness could be seen. Behind, Riley went through the same procedure before joining her.

  ‘We won’t be able to go into any of the rooms,’ he said, ‘they’re hermetically sealed, automatically regulated and require a full body suit and extra decontamination. Trust me, we don’t want to be getting into that rigmarole.’

  She looked at him in concern. ‘You think someone might catch us in here?’

  ‘No, we should be fine at this time of night, but it’s best not to tempt fate. Besides, if we went into every room we’d be here for days.’

  Moving past the air and gas-tight units, Sarah saw a flaw in his plan. ‘If we can’t go inside, how are we going to see anything?’

  He stopped next to a room. ‘Aha,’ he said theatrically, ‘watch and be amazed.’

  Next to the entrance and attached to the non-transparent pane sat a small control pad. He pressed a button and the frosted panel shifted, its opacity evaporating to leave behind crystal-clear glass in its place.

  ‘Impressive.’ Sarah gazed inside with interest, her eyes becoming transfixed with the object now on display. To protect any artefacts from being exposed to bright light the room was only dimly lit; however, the illumination was strong enough to expose the treasure within. On a table secured between two posts rested a single sword of dazzling beauty. The blade itself appeared to be an abstract weave of two separate blades, flowing into one halfway along its length. It glittered in the dark, an array of colours reflecting from its unblemished surface. The hilt and pommel, wrought of gold, melded into leaf-like structures that acted as a guard, their tendrils flowing up into the blade itself. The craftsmanship was sublime.

  ‘Oh wow,’ she said, savouring the sight, ‘how long would you say it is?’

  ‘Longer than I am tall, maybe eight feet?’

  ‘I wonder if they used it with one or two hands?’

  ‘Depends on the owner.’ He tapped at a computer screen built into the glass. ‘According to this, it’s seven hundred and fifty-five thousand years old, which puts it in the Permunioteric era. If I remember rightly the peoples of that age were averaging nine feet tall, so they could have been wielding this thing single-handed.’

  She shook her head in wonder. ‘Nine feet, that’s crazy.’

  He grinned. ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ He pressed another button to make the sword disappear from view. ‘Come on.’ He headed off to the next room.

  After seeing a variety of artefacts Riley surprised her again when he activated another system, sending the floor they walked on up to the next level in the vault. The lights above them powered up as the whole floor moved upwards, stopping at the next row of rooms.

  ‘How many floors are there?’ she asked.

  ‘Five per vault. A few of the military ones have ten, five in this chamber and another five below.’

  ‘I can never get used to this place,’ Sarah said, ‘the USSB, I mean. It’s like the surface, but with an extra dimension; there’s always something above or below you.’

  He smiled. ‘It does take a little getting used to; still, you’ve got the rest of your life to adjust. Once a Sancturian, always a Sancturian, as they say.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, the reason for her being there reasserting itself in the forefront of her mind.

  After visiting a few more vaults and being wowed many times over by their contents, Sarah decided to enquire about her pendant, initially in a roundabout manner.

  ‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘about the artefacts I had with me when I arrived at Sanctuary.’

  Riley looked at her questioningly.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d know where they’d be stored, do you? I’d really like to see them again.’ Mentally she cursed the obvious nature of her request while waiting apprehensively for a response.

  ‘Hmm, good question.’ He didn’t display any kind of emotion other than mild interest; and why would he do otherwise, she thought, he has no idea what the pendant can do. ‘I can check for you on the archive database, if you like?’ he added.

  ‘You can do that?’

  ‘Team leader privileges.’ He breathed on his closed hand and rubbed it against his chest in a show of self-praise.

  ‘Excellent,’ she said, watching as he accessed a computer in the vault they were currently touring.

  He glanced at her. ‘Right, description of items please.’

  ‘The first one is a small pendant.’

  ‘Composition?’

  ‘Metal, with markings on. There are actually two of them, both pentagonal.’

  ‘Ah, like the symbol on your Deep Reach helmet.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, impressed but also concerned he recalled her idiotic decision to put such a shape on her helmet in the first place.

  More moments passed as the system searched for the set of parameters. ‘Hmm,’ he said.r />
  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Well, they’re on the system, along with the other objects confiscated from you. Parchments and a Mayan tablet, yes?’

  She nodded. ‘And the bad news?’

  ‘They’re not in the museum, but in a vault.’

  ‘That’s great, we’re in the vaults,’ she said, trying to pretend she hadn’t planned for such a scenario.

  ‘It would be if they were in the Smithsonian’s vaults, but they’re not; they’re in the military vaults, number three to be precise.’

  Sarah’s face dropped and with it her hopes of ever seeing the surface again. Part of her was happy, but another, a far greater part, was mortified.

  ‘Let’s take a look at the Boneyard,’ he said, unaware of the significance of the information he’d just divulged, ‘that’ll cheer you up.’

  Sarah agreed half-heartedly and he led her out to the final vault, number eleven. Entering and undergoing the same decontamination procedure as before, Sarah found herself distracted. No pendant, she thought, barely noticing the strange pungent smell of the vault tugging at her senses. Trish and Jason will be devastated when I tell them.

  By now Riley had switched off the frosted panel on the first room, which was larger than those in the other vaults.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said.

  Sarah’s eyes focused and then widened at the sight that greeted her. As with every other room she’d already seen, the lighting had been set to a low level, casting deep shadows over the most magnificent mummy she’d ever seen. Dressed in a fantastically ornate gown of slate-like material, inlaid with a wealth of silver designs of a complex simplicity, the amazingly well-preserved remains of an Anakim man sat upon a chair, facing her.

  Despite his undoubted age and the black desiccated skin pulled tight over solid flesh, his features were still well defined; eerily so, in fact. The strange features of his species, Homo gigantis as she knew it, were more than prevalent, announcing to any observer that what they looked upon was not human. Although, if the abnormal construct of the individual’s facial bones didn’t give away his ancient origins, his intimidating size had to have done. Even though he sat, Sarah found herself gazing up into his face, a face that lived countless lifetimes back in the depths of a distant past consumed by time.

  ‘So beautiful,’ she murmured.

  ‘Magnificent, isn’t he?’ Riley said reverently.

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘He’s pretty young in the scale of things. Only two hundred and thirty thousand years. He’s been nicknamed the Ageless King.’

  ‘King?’

  Riley pointed a finger. ‘Look at what he’s sitting on.’

  Sarah’s eyes moved to the object beneath the mummified remains. She could only see the edges of dark cracked earth behind the decaying garments. ‘I can’t make it out.’

  ‘Hang on.’ He pressed some buttons on the control pad.

  The mummy slowly rotated on its platform and, coming into view from out of the darkness, a slim yet majestic throne, half caked in the sediment of aeons and half shining with a reddish golden hue.

  ‘They’re still in the process of restoring it,’ he said, as the mummy’s face reappeared, only to stop before them once more. ‘Perhaps the most astounding aspect is the age they estimate he lived to before he died.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Three hundred years, give or take a decade or two.’

  ‘Three hundred, how’s that possible? Nowhere in the museum do they say Homo gigantis lived any longer than we do.’

  ‘It’s not common knowledge. I only know through a contact in the SED and they haven’t published their findings yet. Obviously if their work is corroborated by a separate team things could get very interesting.’

  Before she could take everything in, Riley was guiding her to the next room. This one contained a stone sarcophagus that stood fully forty feet in length. Its design was reminiscent of the Egyptian pharaohs, except the stylisation on the lid looked to have been far more detailed, from the few sections that remained intact.

  ‘I take it the occupant doesn’t take up the whole length of that thing?’ Sarah said.

  Riley chuckled. ‘No, they extracted a mass of the deceased’s burial possessions, some of which you saw in the other vaults. The owner had succumbed to the ravages of time, even the bones had disintegrated. He, or she, was a little smaller than the Ageless King, about eight and half feet.’

  Riley showed her a few more incredible mummies and unearthed burial caskets before taking her to the top floor. This level consisted of just two long rooms, one either side of the one hundred foot walkway in the middle.

  Riley paused before revealing their contents. ‘You’re probably wondering by now why this place is called the Boneyard.’

  ‘Not really, seems pretty self-explanatory, it’s where all the Anakim remains are kept.’

  ‘But you haven’t seen any bones per se.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘Brace yourself.’ He pressed a button to reveal not just one room, but both. The frosted panes she’d grown accustomed to dissolved into clear glass along the whole length of the walkway. Lights inside both areas bloomed to life, caressing their steady yellow light over a sight that literally made her jaw drop.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ she whispered.

  Chapter Forty Nine

  The top level in the final Smithsonian vault had relinquished its final secrets and they stunned Sarah beyond imagination. Skeleton upon skeleton, each complete, stood next to one another, lining the sides of each of the two rooms. Attached to some of these long-dead individuals clung the remnants of clothing as weird and wonderful as that displayed on the Ageless King himself. This astounding array of remains stretched the full length of the rooms on either side; around twenty-five individuals stood shoulder to shoulder in the front row; but arranged behind these was another row, and behind those, yet another.

  ‘How many are in here?’ she asked.

  ‘Around a hundred and fifty – come and look down here!’ Excited, Riley walked to the far end with Sarah following.

  ‘These two are the biggest we’ve found,’ he said, ‘I know the guy on the Deep Reach team that unearthed them.’

  Steadying herself against the glass, Sarah gazed up at the stark white bones of two long dead Anakai. ‘They must be over ten feet tall.’

  ‘Ten and half,’ he said, staring at them.

  ‘Their bone structure looks different to the smaller ones.’ she said, comparing the skeletons around them.

  ‘Yes, I think they might be an offshoot. Like these.’ He turned round to indicate a set of skeletons in the opposite area.

  Sarah felt a jolt of recognition. These bones were much slimmer, their height seven to eight feet. They reminded her of the skeletal remains she’d found in the South African cave she’d uncovered with Jason and Trish. Unlike hers, however, these specimens came replete with skulls.

  She noted the differences in the facial structure. There was also a distinct variation in their clavicle and the formation of the humeral head. ‘They’re a whole different species.’

  ‘Well, definitely a sub species,’ he said.

  Sarah and Riley spent another hour in the Boneyard discussing the ancient specimens and the various stories and theories surrounding them before finally leaving. Riley slid his card across the entry system to the vault after the door had swung ponderously shut, securing it in place once more.

  ‘Can I access these with my card?’ Sarah held up her multifunction card.

  He shook his head. ‘No, you wouldn’t even get into the surrounding corridors. You need level eight clearance or above and you’re only a measly seven. Plus, as Deep Reach team leader I get access to places other level eights don’t. And this is one of them.’

  She looked over at the wall barring her view of the military installation beyond. ‘And there�
��s no way you can get into the other vaults?’

  He hesitated and then shook his head once more.

  ‘Wait; there is, isn’t there?’ Her posture straightened at the possibility glimpsed in his Freudian slip.

  Riley looked up at a camera array above the vault, before motioning for Sarah to walk with him back to the bridge.

  ‘There is a way,’ he told her, ‘but I’m not prepared to risk my job over it.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  He sighed. ‘Don’t tell anyone about this.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I mean it, Sarah. Promise me, not a word to anyone.’

  ‘Cross my heart.’ She made the movement across her chest.

  ‘In the Boneyard, there’s a disused service elevator beneath the room containing the Ageless King. I think it’s there in case they want to expand the vault’s capacity at a later date. It also happens to back onto a small passageway which runs out to the military vaults on the other side.’

  ‘How do you know it’s there?’ she asked.

  ‘Because when I worked on the military side I found a way through.’

  ‘You just found a way through? Surely they’d make it more secure than that?’

  ‘Well, perhaps forced a way through is more accurate,’ he said, noticing her raised eyebrow. ‘What can I say? I used to get bored over there, standing around for hours on end waiting to drop off and pick up loads. I used to spend half my day wandering around and when they were refurbishing two of the vaults they used to be left open and one thing led to another—’

  To be fair Sarah didn’t really care about the how or the why, the fact that it existed was good enough for her.

  ‘There are actually routes through from each of the military vaults, but I only unblocked one.’

  ‘Does it take long, to get through?’ she asked, as they walked back across the bridge.

  He laughed. ‘Why? Are you thinking about breaking into them?’

  She mustered a hearty chuckle in response. ‘Yeah, good one,’ she said, her duplicitous behaviour coming worryingly easily, ‘and while I’m at it I’ll storm General Stevens’ barracks and give him a wedgie.’