by P. W. Child
“The artist who made this was Finnish. This chain had to be part of a bigger chain, I mean, look at this . . . eleven links would not be enough to close around anything big enough to merit this size of chain. It was part of something huge, Sam!” Purdue smiled. “Something massive.”
“Something massive . . . in Finland?” Sam teased.
“Drink your whisky,” Purdue sighed at Sam’s mischievous sarcasm. “This is why we need Nina. This cross was crafted in the time of the Second World War in Finland. I can feel it in my gut. There is a lot more to this, not only because it is fashioned from gold, but because by its crude looks you can almost imagine that it was actually used for something.”
“And what would you chain with gold if you could use iron or steel? That’s just weird. Have you researched it on the Internet?” he asked Purdue.
“Need I answer that at all?” Purdue asked.
“No. Nope. Daft question, sorry,” Sam agreed, swallowing the liquor while looking out at the obliterated cross. “It must have been quite beautiful.”
“It was. I suppose I could have it restored, but it would not be the same. Lightning struck it for the first time in almost a century, Sam, to reveal its secret. Wouldn’t it be special if such a thing happened for a purpose?” Purdue rambled in great excitement.
Sam scrutinized the broken relic and considered Purdue’s words. He set his glass down, his eyes never leaving the relic, and dreamily he had to concede that it would be a reach of chance to think otherwise. Gently, Sam noted, “Maybe it was meant to be discovered. Maybe Thor himself pointed you to it.”
Chapter 7
Nina had her captors spellbound for the length of a well-spoken German sentence, explaining to them that the Black Sun sent her to make sure that they had succeeded in their discovery. She used her words evasively in order to make them believe that she knew why they were there, while maintaining that she was merely an emissary who was looking for them.
“I joined the Cammerbach expedition to have a good cover to find you on behalf of the secret organization I belong to, but I could not let the mercenaries know that, could I?” she explained.
“The Order of the Black Sun is reputed to be at a standstill, Frau. That is why we act on our own. The Vril Society has all but fallen apart, but we did not suffer all this,” the mean one elucidated, gesturing to their physiques, “for nothing. We are of the true breed, Thulian in every way, and our pursuits go way beyond association with some society as yours does.”
“You don’t know anything about me, my dear friend, so I suggest you keep those assumptions to yourself. I am no lackey for the Black Sun. I am a scientist and researcher who knows everything about your Thule and Vril Societies, so please do not imply that I am here solely because I belong to an organization. I am here for my own gain, so that I can elevate myself in the order,” she defended as amicably as she could, and, for the feisty little historian, remaining calm when insulted was quite a feat.
They stood in silence after she finished, passing glances. Now that she had a moment to compose herself Nina took a thorough look at them. Now it became clear that they were not yeti at all, only that they were dressed as the mythical abominable snowman to hide their true identities. But that did not make them by any means less curious as men either.
They had freakish features, primitive, with heavy foreheads and deep voices, not to mention that they were unusually tall and muscular. Their eyes were of such a light hue that the gray irises almost looked white and the black borders vividly pronounced. What startled Nina was how ageless they appeared. She could literally not guess their ages. They could have been thirty-five or fifty-two—either would have passed.
One thing was clear to her: these men were definitely not of an average genetic predisposition, but descended from something quite grotesque. Had they looked alike she would have chalked them up to being another Nazi experiment, but their features varied enough to give them distinctive individual traits. They were each unique within the genetic composition of their origin.
“What is your name?” the harsh one asked.
Nina found herself caught off guard at the question, though she should have considered the possibility of it earlier.
“Olga Bremer, third level Black Sun member and rogue scientist,” she lied.
“Which branch of science?” another one asked.
“Physics,” she answered without really thinking. It was a safe answer, since they did not strike her as the time-bending type. It worked.
“There is nothing here for a physicist, Olga.”
“Are you sure? What do you think is hidden in the ranges of Tibet, boys? Why do you think the führer himself came here with his physicists, while Himmler occupied the Ahnenerbe side of the SS?” she challenged convincingly, although inside she was terrified, hoping to sound a lot more versed than she could ever be in truth.
“Now you’ve found us. What is your business with us?”
“Just want to report to my organization that your ventures are not based on myth, that I have seen it for myself,” she replied. Oh, my God, Nina, you are really spreading it thick, aren’t you? she thought. You’d better hope they fall for it. Little did her captors know that Nina had absolutely no idea what they were up to.
“We are wasting time, Thomas. Let’s get the generator and leave. We know who she is. If she makes trouble, we’ll use her up.”
Nina frowned at him, but held her tongue. Use me up? Dare I even imagine what he means?
“Rudi, you and Deiter lead the way. I’ll escort our esteemed colleague, Olga,” Thomas, the mean Alpha, ordered. “Let’s go.”
Nina was scared to death of them, yet somewhere under her anxiety there was a small spark of excitement as to the revelation she came here for. Finally, she would see what they were doing . . . and what the so-called generator was. She was being held in a tight grip by Thomas, his enormous left hand grasping her right arm. Literally steering the small, apprehensive historian, he guided her through the pitch dark behind the other three specimens, who each held pale green flashlights.
“The light is meager. Can I use my flashlight?” she asked.
“No!” came the resounding response from all of them. Thomas scowled and searched her for her light, which he confiscated immediately.
“I need that,” Nina tried to protest.
“Well, we can’t have that. The white beam will alter the energy allotment of Section 1,” Deiter explained to Nina from ahead of her. He did not look back while he spoke, but seemed rather nervous from what Nina could see. “Now, please be quiet.”
Turning a sharp right, they entered a smaller cavern and the men had to hunch over to continue. The air pressure changed discernibly, meaning that they had descended even deeper into the earth. Nina’s feet dragged every now and then, earning her a frustrated grunt from Thomas. But she could not see half as well as they could, and the floor of the grotto was wet and uneven. With all her heart she hoped that her claustrophobia would not rear up. So far the cavern was roomy enough, but it was growing smaller, deeper, darker, and farther. Not a good thing, claustrophobia, and she had it bad.
Nina breathed heavily as the tunnel slanted downward into a long, gradual drop, deeper into the mountain’s bowels. At the freezing temperatures they endured, Nina could not carry on much longer before imminent collapse and she clung to Thomas’ arm with all her weight.
“The woman is weakening,” he announced to the others.
“Give her ear plugs and Decomp, Thomas.”
He stopped momentarily, fumbling in the shouldered satchel he carried. Nina slid from his arm and dropped like a human droplet onto the cave floor, exhausted and gasping for breath. In her chest there was a distinct wheeze.
“I can’t breathe!” she exclaimed. Above her the ceiling of stalactites and glistening protrusions began to spin madly as she blinked rapidly to come to her senses, but to no avail. The claustrophobia had struck. “My chest is caving in!”
One of the men from the front rushed at her with his green lamp illuminating his hideous sneer, “Shut your fucking mouth or else you’ll never breathe again!” His growl was hushed but not an iota less furious. “We cannot be detected, do you understand, Olga?”
Nina was petrified and, to add to her fear of being murdered, she was suffocating rapidly. Her chest refused to expand under the urge of her lungs and the air she breathed was thin and useless. Clutching her chest, she closed her eyes, too afraid to face the mock yeti spitting threats at her. Under her she felt the bitter cold, damp surface penetrate her pants. The atmosphere had not only fluctuated in pressure, but also changed in substance.
From the moist smell of watery rock and rotten puddles, the air was filled with a queer odor none of them could really place. When Nina attempted to suck in as much air as she could, she picked up a distinct whiff of ammonia and somewhere in it, something similar to a tropical jungle. But the climate in the Himalayas could never allow a jungle, she thought. Without warning Thomas stuffed earplugs into both her ears and shoved a device right into her gawking mouth, hungry for oxygen. Like an asthma inhaler, the plastic dispenser sprayed a vile mist into the back of her throat. Nina choked and released a violent coughing spell into the thick padding of her parka, as to muffle the noise.
Thomas and Deiter stared down at her.
“What do you know, it has the capacity to learn,” Deiter told his brother, who managed a smirk at the remark before he pulled Nina to her feet again.
After her choking fit had ceased, Nina suddenly felt unbelievably strong. Her chest inflated with her lungs and the air just about flooded her respiratory system. Even her ears had stopped aching almost instantly and she was right as rain less than fifteen seconds after the application.
“What is this stuff called?” she whispered to Thomas when he started dragging her along, hunching over her in the low roof tunnel.
“Decomp,” he answered. “It’s not available at your local supermarket, little Olga. This is what the scientists of the coming race are capable of. Take note for your . . . your . . . Black Sun’s sake. It might be able to catch up with us in a few hundred years, but it’s doubtful,” he sneered arrogantly.
“What makes you think your members are so much more advanced than the members of the Order of the Black Sun, Thomas?” she asked, still taking long, deep breaths as they progressed.
“Simple,” he replied, “your scientists are human. Humans are primitive, but they delude themselves with a power play and they only fight with others equally small of mind.”
They actually believe they are higher than humans, when in fact they are a step down in genetic experimentation by a bunch of freaks that were equally insane, she thought to herself.
“Here!” one of them rasped. His whispers were hard to hear due to the low sound frequency of his deep voice. “Section 2. Fuck!”
“What’s wrong?” Deiter asked, joined by one of the others Nina did not have in her line of sight. “We have to get to Section 2. It is where the generator is.”
“Can’t. The next corridor is too small to even get my shoulders through and it is too low to even crawl through,” the scout reported. Thomas spared not a moment.
“Olga can get through. We’ll send her through.”
“Verrückt!”
“Nein, nein!” Nina begged, shaking her head furiously. She retreated from the black hole before them, but Thomas blocked her escape with his colossal frame.
“Oh, yes. You go through there, or you die right now,” he growled like the purring of a slumbering dragon.
“I have claustrophobia! That enclosed space would kill me! Or drive me insane! Please, don’t . . .” Nina pleaded, but she neglected to reckon their value for mercy.
“Olga, the generator is in a freezer under the duct you will be crawling through,” Deiter simply stated, ignoring the petite beauty’s plight. “It is bright green, the hue of these lights in our lamps, but think of it as the sun to these lamps, yes? Do not touch the generator. It will disintegrate your tissue on contact.”
Nina was almost hysterical.
“Do you understand? Do not touch it with your hands!” he repeated bluntly, lacking any feeling. All they cared about was retrieving the generator. Nina soon realized that protesting was futile and perilous to her as the threat of suffocating in that beckoning black eye of hell awaited her.
Chapter 8
Sobbing as softly as she could manage for the sake of her life, Nina crawled into the small space while the German giants looked on. It felt as if the roof of the little wormhole was closing in on her and the darkness became a malicious heavy, wet blanket that slowly wrapped her in its folds. Nina’s gasps bounced off against the walls of the tunnel as she progressed, her knees sore and ice cold from the rutted floor under her. Her lantern granted her no solace. It only illuminated her tomb, in her opinion, and to Nina’s wet, bloodshot eyes the green light just showed her the narrow path she had to navigate, the tiny space where not even the echoes of her weeping had proper space to reverberate.
“Oh, God, please don’t let this thing dwindle into a mole hole in front of me. How will I get back?” she spoke softly to herself, if only to remind herself that she was still alive. In her mind she heard Sam’s voice to soothe her, just as he did when they were forced and cramped into that old submarine during the Wolfenstein expedition and she thought she was going to die. Just take slow, deep breaths, Nina, she heard Sam’s scratchy Scottish in her ear. No worries, it’s just for a little while and you’ll be outside again. The voice was so vivid that she almost thought he was really there.
“Sam?” she said into the green darkness, her voice quivering and her pronunciation thrown off by a blocked nose. Nina felt like a helpless little girl; alone, cold and lost. It’s all right, Nina. I’m here. Just keep going.
“But how am I going to go back? I have nowhere to turn around. Oh, Christ, I’m going to die! I can feel my lungs shrivel up. The air just goes through like . . . oh, God . . . a sponge, sponge that . . . doesn’t take in any oxygen,” she cried, her chest burning under her psychosomatic torment.
Ahead of her a small speck of light appeared. She blinked rapidly to make sure that it was not some optical trickery or wishful thinking. As if the light held oxygen, Nina suddenly felt her lungs absorb enough air to help her breathe again. The solace of the light came in the nick of time too, just as she became too dizzy to continue. Something peculiar about her mission dawned on Nina as she approached the brightening exit.
This is an ancient dig site. How the hell could there be a generator down here, in a freezer, no less, she wondered. It was truly curious how her captors would think anything running on electricity or generators could run down here, after the place had been closed up and hidden for centuries, probably a millennium! It was all ludicrous, but she soldiered on solely to complete her forced task for fear of getting snuffed. On chafed knees and skinned palms, she crawled closer to the portal of light, placing her lantern aside for now. There was enough light to see where she was going. The portal was not ahead of her; neither was it a hole under her to pass through. It was tilted between the horizontal and vertical to make for a slight descent onto another lower platform of stone that would lead to a subterranean chamber, where apparently she would have to locate a great freezer and steal the generator from it.
It sounds like horse shit to me, she ranted in her head as she pushed her legs forward to enter the platform area feet first. Oh, shit, what if they only sent me in here to close me in? she panicked. What if they fill up this little tunnel and bury me alive? Nina started hyperventilating again. These men would not be above such an atrocity.
But then she heard a humming sound just past the platform, where it slanted into a short corridor. From there a doorway led into the well-lit chamber she was looking for.
“This is just too fucking weird, man,” Nina whispered in awe as she followed the slight decline toward the chamber where the eerie humming had grow
n louder. “There is
no . . . way . . .” she said, as she stole carefully through the shadows toward the doorway, “there could be lights on . . . here.” It was obviously not sunlight, so the illumination had to come from electricity. The thought mangled her logic. How could there be electricity at work where no one has been for over hundreds of years? Electrical currents as we know it today had not even been invented yet the last time anyone was in here.
Nina warily crept around the doorway, crouching as not to be seen immediately if anyone, by some ridiculous twist of fate, would be present. But there was no one there. Her dark eyes, now slowly recovering from her crying spell, combed the place for movement. But it was what she saw that took the wind out of her sails and perplexed her no end.
It was an engine room. Various machines, some of which she did not even know existed already, stood buzzing in the warm room. There were pods like those from old science fiction movies. Large clocks, dating the year, day, and time of every country in the world filled an entire wall that went up so high into the shadows above that Nina could not discern a ceiling.
Her heart raced, not only in fear of being discovered, but for the discovery she was privy to. In that regard Nina knew that she was just bait, or a helpful little worm to the giant pelt-wearing bastards waiting for her to return. There was no way they were going to let a stranger, a human stranger to them, walk away from a discovery like this. She was as good as dead if she went back to them. Nina was stuck in a life-threatening conundrum that felt like living purgatory. If she returned, she was dead. If she stayed, she’d surely perish. If she was discovered by whatever implemented these machines, God knows what fate would befall her.
“I’m fucked,” she said plainly.
To her right a collection of silver containers hummed, releasing vapor from the small slits in their doors. Worried that it could be liquid nitrogen or its chemical cousins, she took great care not to touch or inhale it. The handles of the containers were not bolted or fastened in any way. She remembered that she was not supposed to touch the generator with her bare hands, which now made complete sense.
