by Nick Cook
Jack’s eyes lit up. ‘Try it, Lauren.’
I grabbed the Empyrean Key out of my rucksack again and struck it with my tuning fork. The crystal-clear tone ran out, seeming much louder in the confined space. I stared at the stone orb, willing it to activate.
‘Come on, come on…’
A flicker of light danced over the Empyrean Key and then a single icon appeared – an arrow pointing upwards.
I punched the air. ‘Yes!’
Jack stared at me. ‘You’ve found a way to open it?’
‘Only one way to find out for sure…’
I rotated the arrow into the selection window and flicked my wrist forward.
The icon turned green and a grinding sound came from the slab of stone as it began to slide up into the ceiling.
Jack whooped and drew me into a fierce hug. ‘You genius!’
I laughed. ‘Why, thank you, kind sir.’ His hands hung on to me and I felt a tickle of electricity. But too soon his arms dropped away and he gave me a lopsided smile before turning away to peer into the inky gloom beyond and the hint of a large chamber.
My insides sank as the moment slipped away, and my Sky Wire burst into life.
‘We’ve got serious trouble,’ Mike said between pops of static.
I pressed the speak icon. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the last five minutes. Villca and the rest of them are back. They’re on their way to the Solar Observatory right now.’
‘Shit, then get the hell out of there,’ I said.
‘But what about you?’ Mike whispered.
‘We’ve just discovered a chamber. Hopefully we can find another way out from it or hide inside. We’ll wait for the coast to clear before making a break for the surface. Get back down to Aguas Calientes and if we haven’t turned up by tonight, contact Niki and tell him to bring in the cavalry.’
‘Right…’ There was a pause and I heard voices in the background growing louder. ‘Got to go. Good luck to us all.’
‘Amen to that,’ Jack said.
A faintest pinprick of light that was barely a star appeared at the top of the shaft behind us.
‘I’m guessing that’s not Mike,’ Jack said.
‘Fuck, we need to kill our torches!’ My breathing seemed impossibly loud as we turned them off and plunged ourselves into darkness.
‘You know you opened the door – do you think you can close it behind us in the same way?’ Jack whispered.
‘Let me try.’
Heart racing, I gripped the Empyrean Key and struck the tuning fork against it. A deep note hummed out and an icon blazed into existence over the orb – a downwards-facing arrow. I quickly selected it and rotated my wrist forward, my jaw tensing.
A low grinding sound came from the passageway and the door slid shut behind us.
‘Oh, thank god,’ Jack said from the darkness.
‘At least that will buy us some time,’ I said. ‘Now let’s see where we are.’ I turned and flicked my torch back on. Jack and I gasped at what lay before us.
We were standing in a large vaulted chamber about five hundred metres wide. At the far end towered a giant stylised stone figure with hollowed-out eyes, holding a skull in its hand. But it was what lay before it that stole all the attention. Surrounded by a moat was a large plaza. A vast ziggurat stood in the middle, covered in what appeared to be solid gold stretching up towards the ceiling.
I turned to Jack, slack-jawed. ‘What the hell is this place?’
Jack stared at me. ‘Exactly that, Lauren. I think we’ve just stumbled into the Inca version of hell.’
Chapter Thirteen
If the scene before us was overwhelming for me, I could only begin to imagine what it was like for Jack. He stared at the view open-mouthed. A gurgle of water gently echoed throughout the room from the small streams emerging from holes ringing the chamber. They cascaded in a series of small waterfalls down into the rectangular moat below.
The faintest breeze brushed my face. I sucked in a lungful of the fresh air and the light-headedness began to evaporate.
Jack put his hands on top of his head. ‘This is beyond anything I could have ever imagined.’ His words amplified as they bounced around the chamber.
‘Bloody hell, talk about an acoustic effect,’ I whispered, my words coming back at us in just a murmur this time.
‘Interesting,’ Jack replied, also in a hushed tone. His torch beam played over the ceiling, revealing scallop shapes carved into it. ‘I bet you that those have something to do with the echo effect.’
‘You think this chamber was deliberately designed to amplify sounds?’
‘It could have been, especially if the Angelus had anything to do with it.’
‘I thought you said aliens hadn’t built this place.’
‘Up there maybe, but down here I’m not so sure. Anyway, whatever else this might be, I’m pretty certain this chamber represents the Inca version of the underworld – Ukhu Pacha. The symbolism down here is a whole area of research in itself. Even the moat round that temple is significant.’
‘How so?’
‘Like many cultures, the Incas believed that hell was where bad people ended up. But in their religion Ukhu Pacha also represented rebirth, symbolised by water, hence the significance of a moat. They called our physical world Kay Pacha and, going by the location of Machu Picchu directly overhead, this probably represented that. Then there was Hanan Pacha, the upper realm of the Inca sun god and moon goddess in the sky – so where else would they build one of their most sacred cities but as close to heaven as possible.’
‘And what’s the deal with that huge statue?’
‘That’s Supay, leader of the demons. But he isn’t like the Christian version of the devil. Ukhu Pacha can also be thought of as their earth mother and even our own inner world, so it’s not all bad. Man, I’d need several lifetimes to study what’s down here.’
I gestured back to the corridor we’d emerged from. ‘Unfortunately, we don’t have long before Fischer and her team try to blast their way in here. Our priority must be to locate the micro mind. Everything else is secondary to that, even one of the most significant archaeological discoveries since Tutankhamun’s tomb. After all, the fate of our world is hanging in the balance.’
Jack sighed. ‘Don’t I know it.’
Together we headed down the steps and over a bridge crossing the moat to the large open plaza in front of the gold ziggurat.
Jack took out his Sky Wire and began taking photos. He caught me giving him a sideways glance.
‘Something for me to study afterwards,’ he said. ‘I’ll probably never get a chance to see this place again.’
‘I can already see your TED talk to a packed room of people about your archaeological discovery of the century. But to admit to the world that we’d been here at all would open up a can of worms about who we are and what we were doing here.’ I didn’t voice my other worry that grew by the second – I couldn’t help feeling that we’d just created a trap for ourselves. There was no other obvious exit out of this chamber. I also couldn’t see anywhere obvious for us to hide. That meant we would have to leave the way we came. And how would that work out if Fischer, Villca and their people were on the other side of the door?
I kept my concerns to myself as we crossed the plaza to the golden ziggurat glinting under our torchlight.
Jack gestured to the Empyrean Key still in my left hand. ‘Is it worth trying your magic eight ball again?’
‘Definitely.’
I took hold of the tuning fork and gave it a sharp tap on the stone. The orb lit up with two icons hovering over it. Next to the door control, a stylised sun icon was now blinking.
‘Oh, this is new,’ I said. I rolled the sun icon into the selection window and flicked my wrist forward. Golden light shimmered into existence from a dozen crystal spheres mounted in the ceiling, making the gold-covered temple almost incandescent. It also revealed a series o
f frescoes carved into the walls of the chamber. In the panel directly over the doorway, a stylised version of Machu Picchu with its stepped terraced construction clinging to the top of the mountain had been carved into the rock. But it was what was in the next panel that made my pulse amp.
I grabbed Jack’s wrist and pointed at the inverted tetrahedron shape hanging over Machu Picchu. ‘Look!’
Jack gawped at it. ‘Holy crap. If we needed confirmation that the Angelus once visited this site, that pretty much seals the deal.’
My gaze swept hungrily to the next pictogram. In it, the micro mind was now floating at a forty-five-degree angle to Machu Picchu, a light beam blazing out from its tip towards the ancient city. And where the beam struck the ground, figures were on their knees with their heads down and arms extended.
‘That looks like an act of worship to me,’ Jack said.
‘Me too. The gods from the sky making that house call we talked about.’
In the next pictogram, a cross-section of the mountain showed a group of people following the light beam’s path as they dug a tunnel down it into the mountain.
‘That has to be the shaft we came through,’ I said.
Jack nodded. ‘Which suggests that the Angelus were instrumental in directing the Incas to this chamber. It had probably formed naturally. In other words, the Angelus gave them the highway straight to Ukhu Pacha.’
Together we gazed at the next panel. It showed thousands of workers building inside the underground temple, constructing the giant statue of Supay. The final panel depicted the chamber as it was now, but with one major difference – there was a starburst blazing from the summit of the temple.
My back tingled as I gestured towards it. ‘Do you think…?’
‘That X marks the spot for the location of the micro mind? I certainly pray so. But you should give your magic eight ball another tap to see if it turns up anything else.’
I struck the tuning fork again. This time another icon appeared and this one was familiar – a circle with an arrow left and right of it.
A slow smile filled my face.
‘What is it?’ Jack asked.
‘You remember that galactic map back at Skara Brae? I think I might have just found something similar here.’
‘So try it already.’
‘Oh, I’m all over it.’
I selected the reverse arrow and activated it. At once, hundreds of beams of light burst from the orbs in the ceiling, illuminating the chamber like a disco. But rather than stars, ghostly figures appeared where the beams danced over the plaza, then vanished. The scene stopped and a crowd of ghosts – at least a thousand – froze in place as they headed over a bridge and on to the plaza. There were men and women, bare-armed and -legged, all wearing embroidered cloths and large ornate necklaces.
‘I wish you could see what I’m seeing, Jack.’
Jack turned towards me with a stunned expression. ‘Don’t you worry about that, Lauren Stelleck. This isn’t your synaesthesia. Those orbs in the ceiling must be some sort of holographic projectors, because I can see this as well as you can. These people have to be the original Aztecs who built this place.’
‘But as supremely cool as that is, why are we being shown this, Jack?’
‘It has to be for a reason.’
‘So let’s find out for sure…’ I gazed at the circle now pulsing in between the two arrows and rolled my wrist forward.
Like a movie fast-forwarding, all the figures burst into sped-up motion and moved towards the ziggurat temple where they gathered at its base. A figure in long robes stood in front of a doorway near the top of a stepped structure, arms spread wide as he gazed down at the people below him. Then the holographic movie slowed to normal playback speed.
‘Is that guy that some sort of priest?’ I asked.
Jack nodded. ‘The Willaq Umu, the high priest – and usually the brother of the emperor. That suggests that this was some sort of important ceremony.’
The figures in the plaza knelt down like some sort of choreographed flash mob, all eyes on the priest, who slowly raised something shiny into the air. For an awful moment I thought it was a knife and we were about to witness a human sacrifice.
Jack grabbed his binoculars and peered through them at the shimmering figure above us.
He grinned and pointed to the Empyrean Key in my hand. ‘I think he’s holding one of those. And that’s a huge deal because, as far as I’m aware, one of those stone orbs has never been found outside Europe.’
Anticipation was now running circuits in my stomach as we moved forward towards the edge of the holographic crowd. We began to pick our way among the people now raising and lowering their hands. Many in the town had the same physique as the modern-day Peruvians we’d met in the town.
Finding his path blocked by a closely packed group, Jack was forced to walk straight through a woman who bowing. She shimmered slightly as he passed through her. I managed to make my way round her. There was no way I was walking through her – far too weird for me.
We reached the edge of the golden temple, almost blinding now under the lights. My heart began to accelerate as we ascended the oversized steps. Were we really about to find another fragment of Lucy’s consciousness?
The priest thrust the round stone orb aloft. The holograms of the gathered crowd threw themselves flat to the ground.
‘Whatever this ceremony is, it looks as if it’s about to reach its climax,’ Jack said.
As we finally reached the same level as the priest, he turned and went through the open doorway behind him.
Every fibre of my being tingled with excitement as we followed the ghostly apparition inside and found ourselves in a little room with a smaller version of the holographic projector set into the ceiling. The priest stood in front of a raised stone plinth that held a model Inca city about three metres wide. It was intricately carved, from the statues to the buildings with frescoes on them. All it needed was miniature llamas and it would be set. But although similar in style to Machu Picchu, its layout was different.
‘Talk about a letdown,’ I said. ‘I really thought we were about to discover the micro mind. Do you think it’s buried beneath this ziggurat?’
Jack shook his head and tapped his finger on his lips. ‘There’s something familiar about this model – and look at the priest now.’
The holographic man held his Empyrean Key carefully over the model city. I could now see it was almost identical to the one in my own hand. Eyes closed, he appeared to be chanting.
Jack let out a sigh. ‘I knew I recognised this place. This is a model of Choquequirao. It was a contemporary of Machu Picchu and about sixty miles from here.’
‘So why place a model of that city in this chamber?’ I asked.
‘Whatever the reason, it has to be significant,’ Jack replied.
As if in answer, the priest’s eyes snapped open and he lowered his Empyrean Key towards a building in the top-right-hand corner of the model city.
I noticed a semi-circular depression in the building’s roof, in which a real-life Empyrean Key was already nestling. The priest placed his holographic version over its counterpart, his image flared with light and he and his phantom orb disappeared, leaving just the physical version behind.
Jack turned towards me. ‘Did you just stop the playback?’
I shook my head. ‘It has to be end of the recording. And this must be significant.’ I reached out and took hold of the other stone sphere.
‘Stop!’ Jack shouted.
But I’d already started to lift the other Empyrean Key. At once, a rumbling came from outside. I bit my lip and dropped the stone orb back into the depression.
The rumbling grew louder.
‘Shit!’ I said.
We both dashed outside. The holograms of the crowd had vanished, presumably at the same moment the priest had. The small streams that had been flowing out of the walls had turned into major torrents, making the moat rise fast. The thunder of the water
bounced around the walls, making my ears ring.
‘Jack, I’ve got a bad feeling about this situation is about to get a lot worse.’
‘Me too. That stone orb must have been booby-trapped in case someone helped themselves to it.’
‘What the hell have I done?’ I was meant to be the leader and already I’d screwed things up for us.
‘Never mind beating yourself up right now,’ Jack said. ‘We have more pressing matters!’
The rapidly rising water had already covered the bridge and was now surging over it towards the temple. I scanned the room, but still couldn’t see any obvious exit.
Jack was staring round too. ‘We need to get to the highest point.’
I gestured to the top of the temple. ‘That’s going to be as good a place as any.’
We climbed the final steps to the summit of the ziggurat. Even though it took us moments, by the time we’d reached the top the water was already lapping about the base of the temple, starting to swallow it step by step.
‘We’re going to die down here, aren’t we?’ I said.
‘As they say, hope is that thing with wings,’ Jack replied.
‘I’d settle for a bloody life jacket right now.’
Despite the tension in his face, Jack chuckled. ‘You’re quite a woman, Lauren Stelleck.’
‘So you keep telling me.’
The water rose ever quicker, surging up until it lapped round our feet. Icy numbness spread through me as it covered our thighs, waists and chests until we were floating up from the ziggurat, treading water.
Jack grabbed on to me. ‘Isn’t there an override for any of this on your Empyrean Key?’
I had to shout over the deafening roar of water. ‘Damn it, I didn’t think to check!’
Kicking hard, I lifted the stone clear of the water and raised it above my head. Jack wrapped his arms round me for support as he kicked hard to lift me. I kept my hands clear of the frothing water and raised the tuning fork. Please, god, make this work.
I struck the tuning fork against the orb.
My stomach balled into a hard lump when no icons appeared over the orb. There wasn’t even the open-door command, which would at least have released some of the water.
