Mistakenly, the Pharaohs’ priests believed the creature worshipped by the cult of Apep to be a serpent, not a Knowledge Bringer. And so Apep was personified and named a snake, Lord of Chaos, and enemy of Ra. So afraid of Apep were they, the priests even hijacked the stories of the orb of knowledge, allowing communication with Huahuqui, and transformed them into the book of Thoth. A poor attempt to wipe away the teachings of the Knowledge Bringers.
Direct conflict with the Pharaohs and their armies would have been futile. So instead, the cult of Apep infiltrated and slipped between the cracks to whisper in the ears of those who advised the kings of old. Pushing and pulling on the strings of fate. Over time, as the world changed, so did they. Their name too, ultimately becoming the Nine Veils. They had spread all over the globe and shaped history beyond the comprehension of any living person. Until the Huahuqui returned nearly twenty years ago. That had changed everything. They tried to work behind a curtain of misdirection, terrorist groups and zealots. But it had been only a partial success. Now, just as Victoria had advised, they had to take control themselves.
The Doyen turned from the setting sun, its warm orange hues glinting from the surface of the rice pools, and headed inside—Neith at his side. A long march through torchlit stone corridors and he reached the command center. Inside, Victoria surveyed a host of monitors.
“You made contact?” he asked, plainly.
Victoria turned to face him, her ice-cold eyes searching his face. “I did.”
“And?”
“She doesn’t know why. She says there was a man. A member of the Stratum who interfered with her concentration.”
“Excellent.”
“What?” Victoria spat.
The Doyen pursed his lips and exhaled frustration through his nose. “Do we have a close up of the male in question?”
Victoria nodded to one of the control operatives who duly punched a few keys. Every monitor flashed up the same image: a video frame of the podium at the Lincoln Memorial. In it, frozen mid speech, was the president of the United States. Just behind her was a young man in his early twenties with blue eyes and chin length wavy hair. At his side sat a bluish-skinned Huahuqui.
“Yes, just as I thought. Kelly Graham Junior. The first child of the Stratum,” the Doyen said.
“I’ll have him killed,” Victoria hissed.
“You’ll do no such thing,” the Doyen interjected.
“But—”
The Doyen raised his hand to silence her. “He is the first to be born with the bond built into his DNA.”
“But—”
“Your own DNA spliced with that of the Huahuqui, Wak, is not quite the same my dear,” he interrupted again, predicting her objection.
Victoria bore a hateful stare into the image of the young man.
“No, let him go. He will be vital in the aftermath.”
Victoria gave a slight bow, then stormed from the room.
The Doyen’s gaze followed Victoria’s explosive exit and came to rest on the large wooden doors which she near tore from their hinges. She was becoming a problem. Her temper grew inversely proportional to his wisdom. As his understanding of the Nine Veils grew, hers seemed to diminish. Victoria’s anger had become a central tenet to her motivation. But, he was too close now to lose focus, and needed her to assist in the final stages.
His stare drifted back to the image on the screen. While the Doyen’s own power was great, and his ability to convey the will of the universe to the Huahuqui under his wing through the last known orb in existence was strong, this American boy had the potential to lead humans and the Huahuqui into the next stage in evolution. He was the first. The strongest. His very being tied to the Knowledge Bringers from birth. The pieces of the grand puzzle were falling into place. Everything in its time, the Doyen thought. The Great Syzygy is finally at hand.
CHAPTER THREE
Location: Wilkes Land, Antarctica
“I don’t like this, Koa.”
Koa looked to Allison, his breath fogging the air. “What’s not to like? At least we’re not out in that bloody wind.”
“Yeah and instead we’re tottering our way down a narrow tunnel we found leading to a... well who knows what.”
Koa shrugged. “Hey, we don’t become world famous archeologists by following the rules. Alpha Base said they’d send people, but who knows how long that will take. They had their pants in a bunch about something.”
“Still, this gives me the goddamn creeps.” Allison shook her head and slowed her pace as they continued down the ever-darkening icy shaft just tall enough for a person. “This was drilled out, a beeline all the way to the structure. Someone’s been here before us.”
Koa clicked on his hand-held flashlight and scanned the icy, wet tunnel walls and ceiling. “Looking at the spiral on this, and the water samples we took, I’m guessing no more than a hundred years, dug out by a big bore. Slowly.”
“Uh huh,” Allison replied, switching on her own light.
The two friends meandered farther into the dark. While still freezing, relief from the battering wind meant Koa could drop his hood. Allison followed suit. Their flashlights offered only meager circles of enlightenment to their surroundings. Ice glistened in the beams of yellow light. But so far, that’s all it was. Ice. A never-ending tunnel that disappeared under the ice shelf at an almost perfect thirty-degree angle.
Koa checked his watch. They’d been marching for nearly an hour. A best guess at their pace was four kilometers, which from where they came in should put them right in the center of the gravitational mass. He glanced back to the freckle of light from the tunnel entrance. No going back now. Without turning properly, he took a stride forward only to be grabbed across the chest by Allison. Koa stumbled, his foot dangling in the darkness. Vast nothingness stretched out before him.
“Holy shit, I could’ve fallen,” Koa exclaimed, his heart slamming against his rib cage.
“You’re welcome,” Allison replied through a clenched jaw.
In front, the tunnel ended abruptly and opened out into a pitch-black cavern. This was the Wilkes Land Crater. Koa held out the flashlight, but the dark swallowed its tiny stream of light revealing only that they stood on a precipice.
“That’ll be a kilometer down,” Allison said.
“Don’t remind me. Any idea how we’re getting down?” Koa asked.
“Not yet.”
“There’s gotta be a way,” he pressed. “No one digs a tunnel down this far for the hell of it.”
“Who dug this anyway?” Allison asked, searching the lip of the precipice.
“Could have been the Americans,” Koa said without looking up.
“You think everything is the Americans.”
“Everything is the Americans,” Koa snapped back. “1946. Operation High Jump.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard it. The KGB released files that they knew the Americans sent a massive operation into Antarctica looking for aliens.” Allison stopped and looked up at Koa. “You’re not looking for aliens, are you?”
“Don’t be daft,” Koa scoffed. “But, if what we saw on the readout was at all real, then there is something down here. And maybe the Americans knew it back in ‘46. Timeline on that tunnel fits—”
“Hey, check this out!”
Koa trudged as fast as he could over to Allison, huffing hot breath and patting his arms to regain some feeling. “Whatcha got?”
“Stairs...” she replied, looking up at him. “I’ve got big-assed stairs.”
Koa frowned and crouched down to his companion, guiding his flashlight over the edge. Sure enough, there were stairs—colossal, rock stairs laid down by someone in antiquity. He stood quickly, pulled a flare from his pocket and popped it. It fizzed bright red in his gloved hand for a second before he hurled it into the black chasm.
The crimson light penetrated somewhat more than their flashlights. As it sailed through the air, it revealed a fleeting glimpse of massive square structures.
Some of the arrangements as big as houses, others smaller, and some seemed to form wide pool-like areas. The flare plummeted quickly down and clattered about a stone floor.
“If this was an asteroid crater, it isn’t anymore,” Allison said.
“I guess not,” Koa replied without looking at her. “It’s more like a self-contained city. But arranged like an inverted pyramid. Did you see? There were four distinct sides on which the buildings sat—and the sides got narrower toward the bottom.”
“Koa, I don’t like this, we gotta go back up. Get a bigger team and more light and equipment.”
“And we will,” Koa replied already shuffling backward on his stomach, legs dangling over the edge. “But, I wanna see.”
Allison grunted. “You’re a pain in my ass, Brown.”
Slowly, Koa lowered himself down. Each block dug into his ribs as he edged over and dropped to the next one. These bricks were easily six feet tall and rough as all hell, which made it even more difficult given his five-foot ten-inch stature. It was a never-ending joke for Allison who was an Amazonian six feet tall. Yet right now, he felt like a giant—an archeological giant. He’d just found a city beneath Antarctica. A goddamn city. Who built it? How old was it? He’d find out and he’d be famous. Hell, forget Koab Crater, he could name an ancient city after himself: Koatlan—Place of Koa, in Nahuatl. It was perfect.
After what felt like hours of grunting, scraping, shuffling and climbing, there were no more stone blocks. Koa’s boots thumped on the bottom of the inverted pyramid city. He turned, holding the flashlight out to survey the surroundings. He was standing in an enormous concourse, though there was no telling how wide it was—the flashlight beam never penetrating far enough. That said, he surmised this must be the blunted tip of the inverted pyramid, so it was likely square.
Allison dropped down beside him with a thud, panting.
“You good?” Koa asked.
“Yeah,” Allison said, brushing the dust and debris from her thick coat. “But you can push my ass back up there.” She looked up to the lip of the precipice.
Koa shone his flashlight beam to the path of her gaze. “Ah, yeah, hadn’t thought of that.”
“Shocker,” Allison said with a huff and marched off into the dark of the courtyard. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Hey, wait up,” Koa called, jogging to catch up.
They tread carefully into what Koa assumed was the center of the square, swinging their flashlights left and right. Tiny crystals embedded in the huge bricks glinted when struck with the yellow rays of light.
“Well at least we know what’s causing the gravity well,” Koa said, eyes squinting in the dark.
“We do?”
“Calaverite,” he replied.
“You think?” Allison asked.
“Yeah. Did you get a good look at the rocks as we were climbing down? That greeny-yellow metallic sheen? These bricks weren’t cut out of the rock, they were cast—mixed with a bunch of minerals, and a shit load of calaverite. It’s dense as hell. Like a specific gravity of 9.5.”
Allison stopped in her tracks to throw him an annoyed stare that penetrated the dark. She pointed the flashlight directly in his face. “You think I don’t know what calaverite is?”
Koa shielded his eyes. “Hey, shit. Sorry, sure.”
Allison grunted and continued on.
“All I was saying was, the density could account for the gravity well. But, why calaverite? Tellerium-gold compounds aren’t the best building material in terms of longevity. Too damn brittle.”
“But it’s an awesome semiconductor used extensively in high-energy, low-heat environments—right?” Allison said.
Koa nodded. “Yeah, that’s true. That would make this whole damn thing a massive semi-conductor?”
“Or a series of linked semi-conductors?”
“Like a computer ...” Koa said under his breath.
“Yep,” Allison replied. “And every computer needs a core.” She stopped dead and nodded ahead.
In the center of the courtyard stood a massive crucible atop a stem easily twenty feet tall and ornately carved. Koa ran up to it, pulled off his glove and ran his fingers along the cold surface. It was full of markings, many of which looked cuneiform, and images of what could only be described as beasts—human-sized animals with enormous frills about their heads and large eyes.
“Fuck me,” Koa said aloud. “We’ve found a Knowledge Bringer site.” He continued to circumnavigate the stone stem, fixated on the bas-reliefs and ancient script, until his foot caught on something and he crashed into the hard stone.
“Koa! Koa! Are you okay?” Allison yelled, running up to the stem.
“Yeah,” he called out from the dark, his voice shaky. “I tripped over a... body.”
“A body? Oh shit!” Allison found Koa and cast her flashlight onto him, then the withered frame at his feet. “Double shit ...” she said, her gaze roving over the tattered clothing of the carcass.
Koa looked up to Allison, his eyes wide. “I don’t think it was the Americans.”
Location: Washington DC, USA
The door to the presidential Cadillac swung open, revealing one of her regular stalwart Secret Service agents, dressed in a customary black suit and wearing dark sunglasses. Hunter was his name if she remembered well. The fact that only he and the other secret service agents even knew how to open the car door still amused Lucy. For all her effort to create a world of trust and edge ever closer to utopia, her beloved United States was still as paranoid as ever. Even the car she rode in, a far cry from the open top motorcade of Kennedy, screamed paranoia: bulletproof glass, hermetically sealed interior, rocket-propelled grenades, night vision optics, a tear gas cannon, onboard oxygen tanks, pump-action shotguns, and even two pints of blood of her exact type. The smirk slipped from her lips. The truth was, it wasn’t paranoia. She and the other world leaders were under attack. They even knew who was attacking them yet were unable to find out where they were hiding.
Lucy stepped out into the midday sun and shielded her eyes. As her retinas became accustomed to the white light of day she could make out the Headquarters Building of the National Security Agency; a diffident nine-story structure with an air of the 1960s about it, tucked behind a lower, even older, mall-shaped building and a pair of much more modern blue-black boxes—Operations 2A and 2B. All four buildings were surrounded by a moat of cars belonging to the employees.
Flanked by her security contingent, Lucy made her way to the NSA building and passed through the various checkpoints and security measures until reaching a large meeting room with a single, long white table surrounded by ten or so chairs. The familiar face of Jonathan Teller greeted her. The last twenty years had taken its toll on Teller’s boyish looks, replacing his dark hair with a salt and peppered crew cut. But more than that, his vigor had been diminished. Lucy could only imagine the strain of caring for someone with a disease like Huntington’s while taking on two boys who weren’t his own.
“Jonathan,” Lucy said, giving him a brief hug.
“Madam President,” Jonathan said, “sorry to drag you here on short notice.”
Lucy nodded as Joshua, her Secretary of State, and Admiral Jim Waltham, NSA Director, entered the room. Each shook her hand, then the door was closed and everyone took a seat.
“Tell me,” Lucy said. There was no need to specify, she needed to know everything they did.
“We’re still chasing down all leads,” replied Admiral Waltham. His deep grey eyes and greyer hair told of a man who had seen much, and refused to be fazed by even the most terrifying of circumstances. “Thanks to Kelly Graham Junior, we have the rifle used during the attempt on your life. There are no prints and so far not a single cell left on there to do any meaningful DNA analysis, but we’re still looking. We’re also monitoring as much data traffic as possible. If a four-year-old with a walkie talkie so much as whispers about something connected to this, we’ll know about it.”
“But I
assume that makes the search harder, since everyone, everywhere is talking about this right now?” Lucy asked.
The Director gave a conceding nod.
“And the puzzle boxes?” Lucy asked.
“So far, they are of no threat. Initial analysis suggests no explosive, chemical, or biological intent. The boys in the lab are working on opening it now.”
“It’ll probably be another dead end, just like the one left by them the last time they reared their ugly head,” Jonathan spat.
The President turned her attention to her Secretary of State. “Have any of our allies had any luck?”
“Nope. Nothing so far. Moscow thought they were close. I’m waiting on an update,” Joshua replied.
“Then why are we here?” Lucy asked, frustrated.
“I need authorization,” came a voice from behind.
Lucy turned to see General Joseph Spratford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Janette Stirling, Administrator of FEMA entering the room. Lucy stood, a frown creased into her forehead, and pushed a lock of greying blond hair behind her ear.
Both shook her hand, apologizing for their tardiness.
“Joe,” Lucy began. “I’d like to say this is a pleasant surprise, but somehow I doubt it.”
General Spratford took a seat, clasped his strong fingers together, and took a deep breath. “I’d like to put operation Swiss Mountain into effect. We both would,” he said nodding to Janette.
This didn’t make any sense. Operation Swiss Mountain had been conceived after the Green and Red Society had tried to fashion an atomic bomb to be exploded in the upper atmosphere, creating a hole in the ozone that would melt ice caps and flood coastal cities. A safety protocol was deemed necessary should such a global threat arise again. The Swiss already had such a contingency, building vast cave systems in the mountains to house nearly their entire population of 8 million people. Of course, there were 300 million in the USA and huge capital was needed. Capital the US didn’t have to spare. But, when the Nine Veils had revealed themselves as the puppet masters of the Green and Red Society, and very much operational, the USA had shared the plan with Russia, Europe and China in hopes of obtaining help. A joint fund had been established and a unified project started. It had taken nearly twenty years, but they were almost finished. Still, evacuating more than fifty percent of the population was a task so vast and complicated it should only be triggered if absolutely necessary.
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