“That's odd. There are no bars,” Jason said, referring to the cell phone signal. “Wherever we are, it's far from home.”
“How did we get here?” Ashley asked.
“Beats me. One moment I’m sitting there studying my physics book and the next second nothing but darkness. I thought at first maybe the lights just went out, but...I don't think that's it.”
“I agree,” said John. “I felt the ground just now and it appears to be stone of some kind.”
“Hmmm,” Jason replied. “Well, let's have a look around.” Without waiting for the assent of the other two, Jason's light began to move behind him, looking like a disembodied firefly in the darkness. After a few steps he reached a wall. Raising his hands, he placed it against the wall. “It's rock of some sort. Cold. I can't tell which kind in this poor light.”
“Does it matter which kind it is?” snapped Ashley from her position facing the rock wall behind her own chair. “Rock is rock. Let's just try to find a way out of here.”
“Relax, sis, I was just saying.”
John remained silent, feeling carefully along the rocks behind his own chair, using the light as a glow rod to ensure he did not trip or run into anything. He was halfway toward Jason's light when the light cast by his phone was swallowed by the darkness. His right hand pursued the path of the light and felt nothing there. “I think I found something,” he called out. “There's a tunnel here. Grab your backpacks and come over here.”
Jason picked up his backpack from beside his chair, while Ashley picked up hers and John's. They carefully skirted the circular lunch room table and made their way to John's location.
Handing his backpack to him, Ashley asked, “How far back does it go?”
“I don't know. But we're about to find out. Let's go.” Stepping forward, his light held before him like a shield in his right hand, while his left felt the wall, John led the way into the dark passageway.
After what seemed like several minutes, John's light shined upon a wall before them. Stopping, he turned his light first to the left, where only more stone lay, and then to the right.
“Over here,” Jason said, from the right. “The passage continues this way.” Leading the way, Jason began down the second passageway, which proved much shorter than the first one. Jason had taken only a dozen steps at most when he reached another solid wall of stone. His hand brushed the wall on the right, so he turned to the left. “Watch yourselves, there's a turn here.”
Walking forward, Jason thought he saw a light ahead. Lowering his phone in an effort to reduce night blindness, Jason squinted ahead. Yes, up ahead looked gray, which stood in stark contrast to the pitch darkness behind them. There had to be a light source ahead. He increased his pace, though he kept his right hand pressed lightly against the wall as a guide.
Jason's hand had just met the open air and he had begun to wave it around in search of stone, when a bright light erupted in front of them. Three pairs of hands flew to shield three pairs of eyes, phones in hand.
Peaking out through the slits formed by his fingers, John said, “What is that thing?”
In the center of what appeared to be an enormous circular chamber sat a shrine of some sort. “Shrine” was the best word that John could think of to describe the large structure. The shrine was seemingly made of stone and was attached to the ground seamlessly. It tapered up into a large circular platform that stood about waist-high. In the center of the platform was a spire that rose high into the air of the cavern. At the top of the spire was the source of the illumination in the chamber – a large glass orb that emitted bright yellow light.
Sitting on the ledge that was formed between the spire and the edge of the platform were several smaller objects. Finally adjusted to the light, John removed his hands from his eyes, slid his phone into his jeans pocket and stepped forward to inspect the shrine up close.
“They look like bracelets of some sort,” John said as he held one in his hand. The bracelet was made of a silvery metal and felt cold in his hands. It was open, though there was no indication of a clasp or lock on it. He saw two other pairs of the bracelets located around the platform.
Ashley and Jason joined John at the shrine and also picked up a bracelet. “What are bracelets doing in the middle of a cave?” Ashley asked. “And why are there exactly three pairs?”
“It's almost as if someone knew we would be here, or wanted us to be here,” Jason said.
Setting down the bracelet, John said, “That’s creepy. Let's try and find a way out of here.”
The trio began looking around the chamber, running their hands along the walls of the cavern. After several minutes Jason stopped and threw up his hands. “This is useless. We've walked around the chamber several times and found nothing. No seam, no hidden levers, no ways out. The only passageway is the one back to where we came from.”
John turned toward the shrine. “Maybe it has something to do with this shrine.” He walked up to it, picked up a bracelet again and placed it on his wrist. As the two ends of the bracelet met, they merged together, forming a seamless circle around his wrist, and emitting a slight blue glow. He repeated the action on his other wrist. Ushering Jason and Ashley forward, he pointed toward the other pairs of bracelets. “Try them on. There's got to be some connection.”
Ashley shuffled to the shrine and placed a pair of bracelets on her wrists, with the slight glow accompanying the formation of the seamless circle. “I hope you're right about this, John.”
“We've got nothing to lose,” John replied. “It's either this or starve, suffocate or die from lack of water, whichever comes first. If there's even the slightest chance putting these bracelets on can free us, we need to do it.”
Jason was the last to place the bracelets on his wrists. As the last bracelet closed...nothing happened.
John looked around, hoping that some entrance would appear. “Well, it was worth a shot, but it doesn't look like it worked. Let's try to find some other...” he cut off as the blue glow began again and intensified. Soon the blue was intense, radiating outward and eclipsing the bracelet. “Uh, guys...do you see this?” He looked toward Jason and Ashley and saw that their bracelets were doing the same thing.
“Try to take them off,” Jason said. He suited action to words and tried to fit a finger under the bracelet, but found he couldn't. John encountered a similar situation - it was as if the bracelets were melted to his skin.
“It's no use,” Ashley said as she tried pushing the band up her wrist to try removing the bracelet.
After several seconds the bracelets began to expand, encompassing more and more of their forearms. The glow continued from the expanding liquid metal. As quickly as the metal expanded, it began to sink into their arms, like water being absorbed into a sponge. As the last of the liquid metal dissolved into the skin, John turned his wrist over, witnessing the glow cease. What remained was a blue symbol beneath the skin on the underside of his wrist. He checked the other wrist and confirmed that it too had an identical symbol.
The symbol looked like an 8 when his wrists were held perpendicular to his body, and an infinity sign when viewed parallel to his body. In the center of each loop in the symbol, a golden four-pointed star still glowed with an inner light. The entire symbol looked to go beyond an ordinary tattoo. It was deeper; the color was richer and seemed three-dimensional. No ink could do this.
“What the Hell!” John said as he ran his fingers across the symbol on both of his wrists. There was no blood, no pain and no discomfort. John had gotten a tattoo on his shoulder during high school – it was Ashley's name – and he remembered the pain during the process and the care he had to take afterward with it to prevent infection. This symbol looked like a tattoo would after several weeks, yet somehow far more authentic.
To John's left, Ashley was having a similar reaction. She clawed at the spot where the symbol had embedded itself in her skin, as if she hoped to tear it away like one of those stick-on tattoos. Only the inflaming of
her skin resulted from her efforts, however, and after a few moments she ceased her clawing and looked up to meet John's eyes. There were tears in her eyes. “What is happening to us?”
John stepped up to Ashley and took her in his arms, laying her head against his chest as she sobbed. The stress of their circumstances had hit home with the appearance of the mysterious symbols. “It's alright, babe,” John said. “Everything is going to be alright. Jason and I are here – we won't let anything bad happen to you.” He turned her around so that he was facing Jason. “Right, Jason?”
“Huh?” Jason had been studying the symbols, taking pictures of each one with his phone, though they appeared to be identical, and muttering to himself. Looking up, he studied the situation and replied, “Oh, yeah, we've got your back, sis.”
“Any idea what caused this?” John asked
“Hmmm,” Jason said. “There are some metals which are liquid at room temperature and can be absorbed through the skin; gallium is the main one that comes to mind. How the bracelets would go from being solid to liquid without any major temperature change is beyond me though.”
“Well, the temperature did change,” John pointed out. “When we placed them on our wrists they would have started warming to our body temperature, right? Could whatever metal this was have turned to liquid at human body temperature or near it?”
“It's possible. I haven't heard of a metal that does that, but the cavern is quite chilly. Perhaps they were kept low enough below room temperature that they became solid.” Jason pointed to the symbol on his left arm. “That still doesn't explain how liquid metal of any sort formed into a symbol.”
John felt a chill run up his spine that had nothing to do with the chill of the cavern. “Well, it's done. I don't see how we can undo it without cutting into our skin. But nothing...” John stopped speaking as the entire cavern began to vibrate. Before their eyes, the shrine began to sink into the ground, as if it too were formed of liquid metal. As the shrine descended, something else caught John's eyes. Behind the shrine, opposite the passageway they had entered from, a light was beginning to peek through. As John watched, a door began to raise toward the ceiling, exposing sunlight. The light of the orb was replaced by the natural light of the sun as the orb sank into the ground.
Chapter 2 - Into the Light
Further thoughts on the mystery of the shrine, or even the strange bracelets, forgotten for a time, the trio began to move toward the light. Though their eyes had become accustomed to the light of the orb, they still found themselves squinting as they stepped out into the sunlight.
High above them in the cloudless sky sat a bright yellow sun, indistinguishable from the one back home. Are we still on Earth? John found himself wondering. The sun looks the same. But there were many suns in the universe, and the likelihood of another sun having the same, or similar, chemical properties of the Earth sun was rather high, or so Jason had told him during one of their arguments over the existence of other life in the universe.
As John and the others looked around at their surroundings, they found themselves standing at the mouth of a cave. Before them was a clearing, devoid of plants but littered with dirt and rocks. Beyond the clearing, massive trees stood like silent sentinels – a dense forest of them to be specific. Most of them looked to be oak, with some smaller pines and other deciduous trees mixed in.
Stepping out further, John turned around to see what was behind the cave – and found himself looking way up. A massive mountain range, with no top in sight, towered at their backs. Looking to the left and right, John saw the mountain range went on for miles, with no end in sight. This small cave was in the foothills of the mountain – the very base of it. “Whoa,” he said, “check that out.” He pointed toward the mountains and Jason and Ashley joined him to view them. Back home, they hadn't lived near mountains, nor had they ever gone skiing or hiking much, so to see such mountains up close was a momentous occasion.
“Well, we're definitely not in Michigan,” Jason said. “We don't have mountains like that there.”
“No, we don't,” John agreed.
“So where are we?” Ashley asked.
John shrugged. “I don't know, Ashley. But we should probably try and find out. Since we can't go that way,” he gestured toward the mountains, “we will have to go into the forest and hope we find some signs of civilization. Do either of you have any tools or weapons with you?” Both Jason and Ashley shook their heads. “Me either,” he said with a sigh. “All I've got is my backpack, my cell phone and my wallet. My backpack is full of pens, notebooks and books, which aren't of any use here.”
“Yeah, I've got the same, John,” Jason began. “But to be fair, none of us were expecting to be here today.”
Together, the three set out into the woods. After a time, Jason looked down at his wrist. “Guys, we’ve been walking for an hour. If we're on Earth, or a planet like Earth, the sun will be moving east to west. It's been moving in that direction,” Jason pointed ahead of them, “so we must be going west. Judging by the southern orientation of the sun, I would say we are in the northern hemisphere, somewhere around the middle latitudes.”
“Thank you Mr. science,” Ashley said. “Your science classes are finally being put to use.”
“Well, this is basic stuff, Ash,” Jason said. “We learned this back in high school. Don't you remember?”
“Vaguely,” Ashley said with a wave of her hand. “High school is a little...hazy...for me in terms of what we were taught.”
“You know, for being twins you would think we would be more similar.”
“Yeah, it would be nice if you were a bit...cooler,” replied Ashley. John snickered at that. Jason shot him a glare.
John shrugged. “She has a point, Jason. You haven't even had a girlfriend yet and you're twenty years old.”
“I did too,” Jason said. “Remember Penelope Jones? We dated.”
“I wouldn't call going bowling with her one time a date, man.”
“I'm sorry I'm not as good with the ladies as you are, John. Too bad you don't have a twin sister I could date like you are with mine.”
They continued on for a time, before Ashley stopped. “I have to pee,” she declared.
John and Jason stopped. John turned around to face her. “Well, there are some bushes over there,” he pointed toward some bushes off to her right.
“Wait, you mean I have to...over there? But I...I...that's unsanitary!”
“Okay,” John replied with sympathy on his face. “Let me run home real quick and grab some toilet paper for you. Or better yet, I'll just reverse what was done to us and have us transported to the nearest girls’ bathroom!” His face became serious. “Have you forgotten where we are? There are no bathrooms around, so it's either go over there in the bushes and squat down, squat down right here where your boyfriend and brother can see, or pee your pants. Your choice.”
Ashley's face became redder and redder as John talked to her and as he finished she shuddered. “Listen here, you ass. We are in the middle of nowhere and Heaven only knows if we are even ON earth, so you'll have to excuse me if I freak out a little! Cut it with the jokes.” With that, Ashley turned and stormed off into the woods.
Jason turned to John. “Uh, John, I'm kind of with Ash on this one. You were kind of an ass right then.”
John sighed and hung his head. “I know. I didn't mean to be. Maybe the stress is getting to me too.”
“Well, you should probably go after her, don't you think? I'll wait here for you guys. I really don't want to be there for this conversation and it's between you and her.”
John nodded. “Yeah, I'll go apologize to her. We have to stick together. Wait here.” John turned and raced off into the woods in the direction that Ashley had gone, calling her name.
John had gone perhaps a quarter mile north when he heard the sound of rushing water. Calling out Ashley's name again, he continued forward and came upon a small stream. He looked around and found Ashley upstream a
bit, throwing stones into the water. She saw him, but turned her back on him as he approached.
“Ashley, I'm sorry,” John said to her back. “I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I guess it was just the stress getting to me. We need to stay together - we’re all each other has. Will you forgive me?”
Ashley sniffled and rubbed her eyes, before turning to face him. Her mascara was running, creating strange patterns on her cheek similar to ink splotches used in psychology tests, and her eyes were red. She stared into his eyes for a moment before breaking down and letting more tears flow. “Oh, John,” she sobbed as she embraced him and lay her head on his chest. “What are we going to do?”
John placed his hand on the back of her head and ran it down her neck toward the center of her back. The other found a place in the small of her back. “I don't claim to have all the answers, babe, but I have a feeling we're going to be fine. We'll get to see our families again. We just have to figure out what happened to us and reverse it somehow.” In the back of his mind, John knew that such a task was easier said than done, but he knew that Ashley needed to hear reassuring words right then.
For a time, the two remained in that position. Neither spoke while a mutual assurance of comfort passed between them. Finally, Ashley raised her head from John's chest and looked up into his eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Ashley.” He leaned in to kiss her and she met him halfway. As their lips met, their kissing became fervent. All of the stress, fear and anxiety melted away in the heat of their passion. Several moments later, as they drew apart, they looked into each other's eyes and just stared. “Wow,” John said. “We haven't kissed like that in a long time.”
“I don't know that we have ever kissed like that,” Ashley said as she turned back toward the forest, a coy smile on her face. “Come on, we shouldn't keep Jason waiting much longer. You do remember where you left him, don't you?”
The Shadow Trilogy Complete Box Set Page 18
