by S. D. Perry
“There’s not much time,” he said. “I lost the two men following me, but they’ll be looking. Listen. My name is Luis Marin, I work for Trinity.”
Lara nodded dumbly, tensing. She hadn’t expected that.
“They’ve—he’s going to do it,” Marin said. “Pedro Dominguez. If he unites the key with the box, he’ll raise Kukulkan. The world will have to be destroyed before it can be recreated, and all those children, the babies…”
Marin’s eyes welled up, his expression anguished and twitching, but he spoke firmly. “You must find the hidden city before Dominguez gets there. Find the silver box, keep it from him.”
“Where is it?” Lara asked. “Is there a map?”
Marin shook his head. “No. But there are more Maya sites in South America. Dominguez spent a lot of time at a dig in Colombia that had inscriptions about the city… And there was a mural with a river system, and mountains. A whole room dedicated to it. Drawings of the cleansing, depictions of a giant serpent.”
Serpent. “Kukulkan?”
“I don’t know,” Marin said. “I’m—I was an engineer, not an archaeologist. I know there was something about the dig that wasn’t right, I’m not sure why… But there was also a puzzle Dominguez couldn’t solve, about the path to the hidden city where the Box of Ix Chel is. His report said there were missing tiles, damage… I know it’s important. He didn’t want anyone else to find the site, he ordered us to set up traps. I led the team that planted them.”
He grabbed her hand as he spoke, pressing a small, hard square into her palm. His fingers shook.
“The triggers are all pressure plates, easily avoided if you know where to look,” he went on. “The coordinates, everything you need is on this card. There’s an extensive cave system surrounding the dig, but the rooms you’re looking for are near the surface, at the top of the tunnels. This will take you a few hours, no more.”
“So there may be information that I may be able to interpret,” Lara said.
Marin continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “The maps of the dig are rudimentary, but I had to draw from memory. I didn’t dare try to log into the database, I’m flagged by now, but there’s enough there to get you safely in and out. It’s likely that they know I’m trying to get you information about one of the digs, but there are a number of sites relating to the rebirth; they won’t know which one. And I’ll die before I tell them.”
Lara didn’t pocket the tiny SD card. Marin came off sincere, but that counted for exactly nothing.
“I appreciate your good intentions, but as I said, time is of the essence and—”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Marin interrupted, searching her with his haunted gaze. “If I’d had time, I could have saved them. The future is just a dream; it can be taken from you in a moment. Last night, my wife, my baby…” His voice cracked as he gestured at the devastated town.
Guilt rose up in Lara’s throat like bile.
His eyes hardened suddenly. “Dominguez has to be stopped, I see that now. I see everything now. I’m paying for what I’ve done. But you took the key, you brought the waves. I thought about killing you, but you owe more than your life. He has the key now because of you. It’s your responsibility to stop him.”
Lara didn’t answer, her personal sympathy for him drying up. He wasn’t wrong about what she owed, though.
He nodded at the card in her hand. “I can give you this. It will help you, I know it.”
Lara reluctantly tucked the card into her pocket. She didn’t dare plug the card into anything that could track her or corrupt her devices, but it wouldn’t hurt to buy a cheap phone and take a look before they got on the plane. They’d fly over Colombia on the way to Peru. Depending on the exact location of this place, perhaps—
She froze. Her eyes had finally grown accustomed to the alley’s shadows, still black as night even as the sun’s first rays spilled over the square, and she thought she saw movement. A flash of shadow beneath the muddled dark, at the alley’s far end. It was low to the ground, half hidden by an overturned garbage bin. A cat?
“Go today, now,” Marin was saying, taking a step backward. “God have mercy on us all.”
The low shadow humped forward, became a crouching figure. Lara didn’t stop to think. She grabbed Marin’s hand and pulled him back into the square, turning to run.
Edging quickly along the north border of the market was the blond woman she’d seen earlier, the tourist, flinty-eyed and holding a pistol down by her waist. Weaving toward them through the tents in the middle of the square was a heavily built guy with a shaved head and a steel SIG just inside his bulging sports coat.
Shit! The only open direction was the way she’d come, past the families cleaning up the shops. Lara hesitated—if they meant to shoot, people could get hurt—but there was no other option. She broke south. Marin stumbled a step to catch up, then ran at her side.
“Get down, get down!” Marin shouted, waving his arms.
There was a shot from behind them, muffled by a silencer but loud enough to draw attention. Lara scrabbled for the Remington as men and women shouted and ducked. She drew the .45, cocked and locked, but left the safety engaged, all too aware of the innocents on every side.
Their pursuers didn’t care. Another shot behind them, a third, and wet mud pocked up behind Marin’s feet. Lara dared a look back and saw four people after them, two more men in addition to the couple, all carrying top-grade firearms. They were dressed in civilian clothes but they could only be Trinity.
“This way!” Marin grabbed her arm and pulled her right, into the open door of a fabric shop. A round tore into the doorframe a handspan behind Lara’s head.
“Through here!” Marin ran for the back of the empty shop, as its proprietor called out from the street in anxious terror, “Get out of my store!” Lara hurtled after Marin, vaulting a cutting table, knocking bolts of brightly colored cloth to the floor. They ran past the counter, Marin leading them toward an unassuming wooden door in the back wall. He stumbled over an open box of ribbon but managed to keep his feet, turning his head to see that she was still with him, his eyes widening as he looked past her.
The next two shots were fast, bam-bam, and one went high, but the other punched into Marin’s left shoulder, blood splashing and immediately spreading down the front of his canvas shirt.
Lara shoulder-rolled across the wooden floor and spun on the balls of her feet, low, bringing up the Remington, flicking the safety off. The couple had followed them in, the big guy in a shooter’s stance with his nine-mil raised, the blond in the doorway behind him. There were people running through the street behind them. Keep it low…
Lara aimed for the guy’s right knee and fired, the .45 round obliterating his patella. He screamed and crashed to the floor, a hundred kilos of thrashing weight rocking the rickety boards.
Marin had pulled his own weapon, a .38 snub-nosed revolver, and he fired at the blond woman, who was taking aim with a cool eye. The discharge was deafening. The round missed but she was forced to duck back into the street. The big guy on the floor was left alone, hyperventilating.
They ran together for the shop’s back door. Marin’s left arm hung limp at his side.
“Stay close,” Marin gasped, his voice tight with pain, and kicked the door open. Behind them, Lara heard the woman shouting in English over the panicked cries of the citizens.
“North end, go, go!”
Marin led her into a narrow alley that ran between the backs of more shops, rotting garbage slick and stinking beneath her boots. She stumbled after him, five running steps south through the muck, the end of the alley opening into the street a dozen meters ahead. She glanced back, saw shadows and garbage bins. How long before they pen us in? Ten seconds? Twenty?
Marin turned suddenly and side-kicked an unmarked door, hitting the latch directly with his heel. The lock held but the wood around it splintered, the door swinging open almost gently into a dark storeroom.
L
ara ran after him, whacking her hip on a shelf she couldn’t see, and then Marin was pushing through a swinging door ahead, outlined in a rectangle of early-morning sunlight. Lara followed him into the front room of a closed souvenir shop, shelves of mugs and banners and painted shells dimly visible by the breaking dawn through the large front window. Marin hurried to the door, turning the lock as he looked out at the street. He glanced back at her, his expression set in a grimace—the bloody patch on his shirt had nearly reached his waist—but his gaze was clear, calculating.
“Straight across,” he said, opening the door, and took off for a block of apartments across the street, four stories of windows and peeling paint. Lara kept the Remington close in and aimed at the sky, her gaze flickering south and then north as she ran after him. She saw people about, but no one was running or pointing anything in their direction.
There was a young couple on the front step, locals, the woman holding a little boy’s hand. The man had set down a battered suitcase to unlock the door.
Bastard. Marin had seen the family before deciding their next step.
The mother saw them coming and pulled her child close, squawking for her husband to get out of the way. The door was open. The man turned with an expression of surprise, and then Marin was barreling past him, through the entrance and up a worn flight of stairs. Lara caught the woman’s terrified gaze as she ran past.
“Come inside, the street is not safe!” Lara called in Spanish, pounding up the steps after Marin.
Marin ran up two flights, then took off down the main hallway of the third floor, long and echoing. An open window at the end revealed a fire escape, but Marin stopped short, at the last door on the right side.
He knocked fast and light with his revolver. His voice shook. “Paolo! Help me!”
Footsteps thudded inside, and then someone was fumbling with the lock. “Luis?”
“My cousin’s boy,” Marin gasped.
A skinny young man of about eighteen opened the door, his eyes bleary, dark hair sticking up on the back of his head. He wore a food-stained tee shirt and boxers.
His eyes went wide when he saw them. “What happened?”
Marin shook his head. “Inside.”
Paolo stepped aside to let them in, staring at Lara like she was an alien life form. “Who’s she?”
Marin turned and closed the door behind them, leaning against it. “Better you don’t know. We won’t stay long. It will be safe for us to leave in a few minutes.”
The single room was strewn with dirty clothes and dishes, and smelled like stale corn chips and teenage sweat. There were two small windows, both open to let in the cool morning air, but they faced another building. No one could see them from the street. Lara allowed herself to take a full breath.
“Mother of God, you’re bleeding!” Paolo shrieked.
The young man turned and grabbed a towel off a heap at the foot of his bed, rushing forward to press it to Marin’s shoulder. Outside, people were shouting, bright sounds of panic and accusation—“Get down, over there, he has a gun!” A police whistle blew, and there were more shouts— but no shots were fired.
Marin exhaled heavily, and staggered to the bed, looking at Lara. “They won’t get into a fight with the local law. At least, that was the agreement until yesterday. You can make it back to your friend now, but you should assume that Trinity is watching.”
“How big is Trinity?” Lara asked. She locked the semi but didn’t put it away. “Where are you based?”
Marin shook his head. “Bigger all the time, and there are chapters across the globe.”
She had so many questions. How were they organized? Who funded them? What was their actual ideology? She’d never gotten any clear answers and it was information that she needed badly… But the question that popped out was the one she wanted the answer to the most.
“Who ordered my father to be killed?”
“I don’t know. Why would I know that?” Marin seemed irritated by the question. “I told you, I’m just an engineer. You should go. You could be at the labyrinth by this evening, if you leave now.”
“The labyrinth?”
“We called it the Blue Labyrinth,” Marin said, gritting his teeth as Paolo applied pressure to his shoulder. “For the caves, and the predominant color of the murals. Maya blue.”
The most sacred of colors. Maya priests were depicted wearing robes in the bright azure shade; victims of human sacrifice had been painted with the pigment before their hearts were cut out.
That wasn’t an especially reassuring thought, and she didn’t trust Marin any more now than she had at the outset… but she didn’t doubt that the loss of one’s family might bring about a sudden change in values.
If that’s even true. This whole thing could be a setup, to keep her occupied while Dominguez searched for the box. Or to use her to uncover another clue, to see if she could solve whatever it was that Dr. Dominguez couldn’t.
Lara sighed, holstering the semi. Her instincts said Marin was telling the truth, at least about losing his wife and child. Which means I have a decision to make, before 0800.
“I’ll look at it,” she said, backing toward the door. “I’m— I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Fuck you,” he said, his voice drained of feeling. “You don’t get to be sorry. Just stop him.”
“You should lie down,” Paolo said, his stunned silence breaking in a rush. “Why did you get shot? Who shot you? What should I do?”
“Keep firm pressure on the wound,” Lara said. “And get him to a doctor.”
Paolo stared up at her with the same look of incredulity he’d worn upon seeing her, like she was a talking dog or a unicorn. From outside, Lara could hear the tone shifting from panic to relief, voices rising to talk about the armed strangers who’d run down the street.
There was nothing else to say, and Jonah was probably awake by now. Lara slipped back into the hallway, closing the door behind her.
* * *
Jonah had worked another few hours after seeing to Lara, helping to set up shelters. By the time it got dark, he was running on empty. He went back to the hotel, gratefully accepting trays of food from the owner’s wife, Luisa. She was using the kitchen to turn out huge vats of beans and rice and corn to send to the nearest aid station, two blocks away.
He checked on Lara, leaving supper and a note. She was in the exact same position she’d fallen asleep in, but her color was back, which was good. She’d been pale earlier, beneath the sunburn and the dirt. Jonah had gone to his room, wolfed down the simple, excellent food and then passed out himself.
The sun wasn’t up when he woke, but he’d gotten close to eight hours and felt mostly recharged. Good thing, considering the day ahead. He wrinkled his nose as he laced his boots. At least a full day of flying, crammed into Miguel’s tiny plane. Fine for Lara; she was little.
Lara. He’d snapped at her last night, when the tsunami hit. He hadn’t meant to, but there had been people drowning at their feet, and she’d only been able to talk about getting to Peru. She was right, Dominguez had to be stopped, but sometimes it was like she couldn’t see the trees for the forest. He’d never known anyone so single-minded.
Except you, maybe. He sometimes wondered which was stronger, her obsessive need to validate her father’s life’s work and keep Trinity in check, or his own commitment to protect her. She was daring and resourceful and she had mad skills, but she was also a trouble-magnet. Their “little” research trip to Mexico had now become a full-fledged life-or-death race to Peru, to keep Trinity from necromancing a Maya god. Lara found apocalyptic prophecies like some people found loose change between their couch cushions.
He packed and then went downstairs and had coffee with the owners. Esteban and Luisa were good people; they had already opened the hotel to their displaced neighbors and the kitchen had been running all night. Jonah paid his and Lara’s bill, adding a substantial sum to help defray their costs. Esteban put up some resistance, but not m
uch. It took money to rebuild a community, and the Croft Foundation could afford it.
Jonah brought a cup of black tea back up to Lara’s room, tapping at the door. No answer.
“Wake up,” he called, knocking again. “Come on, you need to pack. I brought tea.”
Silence.
Jonah had her extra key—in spite of her many talents, Lara had an amazing habit of losing hotel keys—and wasted no time using it. “Hey, I’m coming in. Don’t be naked.”
The door opened into an empty room. She hadn’t packed. Books and maps still littered the desk; her pack was open, with clothes spilling out. There was a piece of paper on the empty tray, next to his note from the night before. Jonah set down the tea and scooped up the paper, frowning.
Jonah—mystery man wants to help, could be important. I’ll be back soon, don’t worry. Thank you for dinner! L.
On the other side of the paper was a stranger’s spiky script describing a meeting at dawn. Unsigned.
Jonah checked his watch. 0712: the sun had been up at least half an hour. The market was a five-minute walk away. Where was she? And who sent the note, and what was Lara thinking?
You expect something different? The meeting promised precious information. When had Lara ever shied away from sketchy circumstances to get what she wanted? It wasn’t like she was some delicate flower that needed to be sheltered, but seriously, there were times she needed to think better. Common sense dictated backup on something like this, and there was no reason he couldn’t have gone with her. He’d been in the next room.
He heard quick footsteps in the hall, and then Lara was standing in the doorway, her eyes bright. She looked sweaty and disheveled, strands of loose hair stuck to the back of her neck, and held a disposable phone in one hand.
“We’re going to Colombia first,” she said.
“Are you kidding?” Jonah dropped the note to the desk. “Why?”
“I met with a Trinity worker,” Lara said, striding into the room. “Ex-worker, I should say. Luis Marin. He gave me data on a dig in Colombia that references the path to the hidden city directly.”
