by Rick Jones
She closed her eyes.
“Ms. Moore.”
“I heard you,” she said. She then forced herself into a sitting position; her cheeks stained with tears, and swept an arm across her face, wiping it dry. “I heard you,” she repeated drearily.
“Ms. Moore, we need to move on . . . if possible.” He then placed the flat of his palm against a wall where there were no riddles etched upon its side that would at least allow them the opportunity to move on. Just a barrier that was as cold to the touch as the surface of ice. Then: “Ms. Moore, please.”
She looked at Demir, their eyes meeting for a long and quiet moment.
“We need to move on,” he repeated unemotionally. “But there doesn’t seem to be a way.”
“There’s a way,” she said. “There’s always a way. These temples never paint you into a corner. They’ll drive you forward in sinisterly fashion—always marching you until no one is left, always offering a sliver of hope when there really isn’t any. But in the end, if you’re lucky enough, it will show you its secrets. And once you see them, and if you’re luckier still, it’ll show you the way out.” She sighed. Then: “Like John always said, there’s a solution to everything.” She moved to the wall and placed her palms against them. Like John always said, she reminisced as she could hear the echo of his voice traipsing through her mind, there’s a solution to everything.
Oh, John.
And at that moment she wanted to weep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
They had been rerouted. The scarabs driven to every nook and cranny Mintaka offered, working avenues that guided them toward their prey, hungering. The temple shift was a temporary setback, the reconfiguration providing minimal obstacles.
The beetles had climbed and ambled through cracks and fissures that were created in the black silica walls when the pressures of the weights and balances proved too great for the aged fortifications to handle, the structure giving at points that had grown feeble over time.
Their olfactory senses told them that the scent of their prey was nearing. They could detect the ooze and sweat from their pores as signs of fear and could feel their weakening repose as they stood on a landing less than forty feet from their position.
The scarabs pressed forward as Mintaka offered them a bounty.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The wall held steadfast.
“There are no riddles,” offered Demir. “Just a wall.” He then looked over his shoulder to the funnel-shaped room below and to the abyss. Then he turned back to Alyssa. “Surely it is as you say, that the temple would not paint us into a corner—whatever that means.”
“It means that Mintaka, like the temple of Eden, would not push us into a situation where there was no way out.” She shined her light upward, hoping that there was a landing above the wall. But there was nothing. It was just as Demir stated—it was just a wall.
This didn’t make any sense to Alyssa. Mintaka was purposely driving them toward the Chamber of the One. For those who survived, they would eventually look upon the face of God. And for those who didn’t would fall short after failing to meet the challenge of the riddles. But there were no riddles, no etchings, no script or cuneiform of any type—there was just a landing that overlooked the abyss, its surfaces as smooth as glass.
She then looked over the remaining faces and felt disconnected, not knowing a single soul other than Demir, the only member of the group capable of speaking English, the great communicator. She scoffed inwardly. Life truly sucked at the moment.
But something tugged at her reasoning, a familiar voice telling her that just because something went unseen didn’t mean that it didn’t exist. Sometimes objects of interest exist in plain sight.
She then looked at the floor of black silica, her eyes roaming, scanning, Demir’s teammates giving her a wide berth as she continued to examine the surface.
“Do you see something, Ms. Moore?” asked Demir.
She shook her head: not yet.
She tested the flooring for weaknesses, putting her foot on a certain spot and gently rocking her weight. Then she found it. It was a tile made of black silica which was masked by the color of the surrounding floor, also black, with its seams barely perceptible in the light. In the center was a marking of an unknown symbol, the engraving somehow alien and familiar to her at the same time.
She got to her knees and traced a finger around the edges a moment before flashing her light elsewhere along the landing, finding no other seams or symbols. “Here,” she said. “There’s a tile of black silica that’s covering something underneath.”
Demir placed a foot on the tile and gently forced his weight, the cover bending little. “There’s something definitely below this tile,” he said. “It’s hollow underneath.” He quickly got to a knee, raised the stock of his weapon, and brought it down against the floor, creating a star-point crack in the tile’s center, right at the mark of the symbol. The second blow caused lines and fissures to spread openly across the surface, the sound very much like ice cracking. And the third blow struck home, the tile breaking all together.
“Careful,” said Alyssa. “The edges are razor sharp.”
Demir cautiously removed the pieces of black silica and set them aside. Sitting inside the small recess was a single dial. Demir sat back. “It’s similar to the dials of the ‘Riddle of the Shadows,’” he said. “But why hide it?”
“It wasn’t,” she said. “Not really.” She picked up a broken piece of silica and held a light to it, the light flashing through the pane as if it was nothing more than tinted glass. “It’s thin but strong,” she added. “You have to remember that Mintaka provides an answer to everything, no matter how challenging. Since there is no way up, down, or through this wall, the answer had to be here on this landing. Mintaka would not push us into a situation that couldn’t be solved.” She raised the broken pane once again, showing the engraved symbol no larger than a thumbnail. “It’s small,” she said. “But X still marks the spot, doesn’t it?”
“We could’ve sat up here all day and not be the wiser.”
“Mintaka is not going to make this easy for any of us,” she said. “Not one bit.”
He looked into the recess and at the dial. “Well,” he began, “we’re not getting any younger.” So he turned it, the dial moving easily in his grip.
Then the wall began to rise into the ceiling very slowly, ultimately giving passage to a hallway that was dark and uninviting.
Alyssa sighed. Then she looked over the edge and to the hole leading to the abyss. There were different levels of loving someone, this she knew. Loving a parent was different than loving a spouse. Loving a spouse was different than loving a child. And loving a child was something indescribable all together. But loving John Savage the way she did and his sudden death left her with a void that was as cold as the vacuum of space. But as whole as that vacuum may have seemed, it was not complete or absolute.
She brought a hand to her abdomen.
For six weeks she had been pregnant and was already in love with the baby—an indescribable love that went above and beyond anything she could ever imagine, the moment now bittersweet, the child’s father forever gone. She wanted to wait and to surprise him, to tell him with a shower of kisses knowing that he would be as excited for the baby as she was, something they created with unbridled, unmatched, or the undeniable love they shared with one another.
She looked into the hole and into its darkness.
Then suddenly a tear slipped from the corner of her eye and trailed along her cheek where it dangled precariously at the tip of her chin a moment before falling.
“Ms. Moore.” It was Demir. The others had taken to the corridor. “We need to move on.”
Her hand was still on her stomach. “I’m coming,” she stated listlessly.
Then, as she looked into the abyss, she thought: I’ll miss you, sweetheart, with all my heart. I should have told you about the baby sooner. But I wanted the moment to be ours—you
rs, mine, and the baby’s. I just want you to know that we’ll always love you.
“Ms. Moore.”
She finally turned away from the edge and stepped into the corridor of shadows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When John Savage came to, Hillary was flashing a light into his eyes. “Are you all right, John?”
He was looking skyward at the hole, a perfect ring of darkness fifteen feet above them. “What happened?”
“I’m afraid we all took a rather nasty fall,” said Hillary. “You’re the last to come around.”
Savage was aided to his feet by the archeologist, his world spinning as nausea crept up his gut. For a brief moment he leaned against Hillary to gather himself. Then he looked upward at the circle, bracketed his hands around his mouth, and shouted out. “Alyssa!” His voice echoed throughout the chamber. “Alyyysaaaaa!”
“They’re gone, John. I’ve already called for assistance. We even tried the headset. Either the walls are impeding the signal or they’re too far ahead.”
John’s last recall was of the elevator-like landing moving ceilingward with his outstretched arms reaching out to Alyssa, their attempts to grab each other failing, and then his long fall into darkness.
Savage came to a single conclusion: They left us behind because they think we’re dead.
“Are you all right, John?”
Savage removed his hand from Hillary’s shoulder and tested himself, making sure he was capable of solid footing. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine.” Beneath his feet was the circular emblem that corkscrewed downward the moment he turned the dial, the opening to what he thought to be the mouth of an abyss was in actuality the emblem merely circling downward to a lower level fifteen feet below.
He walked around the crystal insignia that was scribed with symbols, pictographs and archaic characters, something he had seen before. “What’s this?” he asked. “You know?”
Hillary flashed his light against the circular plate embedded flush against the black silica floor. “Do you recognize it?” he asked.
“I’ve seen it before, yes.”
“You’ve seen part of it before, I’m sure,” said Hillary, taking position next to Savage, the men standing shoulder to shoulder as they examined the symbols and took mental notes of the precise configurations between the sun, the moon and the stars. “Do you know what it is?”
Savage cocked his head. “It’s a calendar.”
“Precisely. And not only just a calendar, but very reminiscent of the Mayan calendar, don’t you think?”
John studied the symbols further. Hillary was right—the symbols were the same, or at least very close. The position of the sun and the moon and the stars were spot on. “It is the Mayan calendar,” he said. “Isn’t it?”
“No.” Hillary tracked his light over certain images. “What you see to the left of this calendar is the beginning, or the resetting, of time. This calendar actually begins when the Mayan calendar ends, on December 21, 2012, and continues on to a new ending, which are these configurations.” He flashed the light to the right side of the circular almanac, to a strange set of images neither Hillary nor Savage had ever seen before.
Hillary hunkered down. “If you had told the Mayans that they had predicted that the world was going to end on December 21, 2012, they wouldn’t have known what you were talking about. Their calendar was a measurement of cycles in which the planets would realign themselves and start a new cycle lasting millenniums. And this is the calendar—a calendar created nearly 9000 years before the Mayan calendar.”
“Why?”
Hillary got to his feet. “Because this calendar actually does have the End of Times on it,” he said flatly. He kept his flashlight to the right side of the almanac. “These symbols represent the closing of something and the beginning of something new, a resurrection. But what that is I don’t know. I’m afraid those skills of interpretation belong to Alyssa.”
“Then we need to get going,” said Savage. “Maybe we can intercept them.”
“There’s another problem,” said Hillary.
It wasn’t what John wanted to hear, not now. “What?”
“This way.” Hillary led him to where the two ministers and Demir’s team of three waited, apparently monitoring one of the soldiers who lay against the wall in apparent agony. “I’m afraid this young man is out of commission.”
John looked at the man’s legs. Two compound fractures, one in each leg, both horrific breaks. This soldier was going nowhere.
“How’s your Turkish?” Hillary asked Savage.
“About as good as my French.”
“And how good is that?”
“About as good as my Greek.”
“In other words, you don’t speak the language at all?”
“Not a word.”
“Then I’ll translate.”
Hillary placed a hand on the commando’s shoulder. “Amerikan askerinin burada istediğiniz gibi.” The American soldier is here as you requested.
The Maroon Beret offered John his assault weapon. “Bu. Ilk olarak.” Take this. You’re going to need it.
John accepted the weapon. “What about you?”
Hillary translated.
The commando listened, then: “Başka hiçbir şey yoktur, beni kaydedin. Biz erkekler, ordu. Bu yüzden her ikisi de gerçeği biliyor. Bu yeri olduğu anlamına gelmeyebilir. Biz bile bunun biliyoruz, her zaman hareketli.” Take it. There's nothing that can save me now. We're both men of the military. So we both know the truth. This place is alive. Even when we can't see it, we know that it's always moving.
The soldier then reached into his backpack and removed a grenade, held it up in display. “I yalnız kalmayacaksınız.” I won’t be alone.
John patted the man on the shoulder, a measure of respect from one soldier to another no matter the rank, division or command. They all shared heart equally.
John stood with the MP5K in his grip, could feel the goodness of its weight, the power it exuded, the sense of security it offered. He nodded to the soldier: Thank you.
Savage stepped back and strapped the weapon over his shoulder. It was time to leave. “We need to catch up with the other team,” he stated in general.
Hillary translated, galvanizing everyone to their feet.
John flashed his light down the corridor, noting that the hallway was in a continuous incline, a very good sign.
“It appears that the temple of Mintaka has divided the team,” said Hillary.
“That just doubles our chances to reach the Chamber of the One, should one team fail to do so.”
“This is true.”
“But my agenda at the moment is to team up with the other group and get the hell out of here.”
Hillary remained quiet as his sense of ‘self-preservation’ warred against his academic ‘need to know.’
“What’s that smell?” asked Savage, advancing into the tunnel. “Smells like oil down here.”
“It is,” confirmed Hillary. “Behind us where the corridor is closed off, it appears that the conduits running crude oil to the wells of these cauldrons to provide light to the hallways when lit, have cracked. The oil has been seeping into the passageway for some time now, collecting as pools. So it appears that Mintaka is not the engineering marvel we all believed it to be, at least not completely. It does have its weaknesses.”
Savage made his way to the point of the corridor where the ramp began its incline, a thirty-degree angle that was eventually swallowed by darkness and beyond what their lights could penetrate. But before he took another step forward he turned to the wounded soldier who lay there with awful twists and bends to his legs, with spearhead projections of bone poking through the fabric of his uniform. And he offered the soldier a nod, one of respect. After the commando offered a quick salute and feigned a smile meant to mask the pain, John turned away with heaviness in his heart, and led the team forward.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Alyssa moved ahead in sile
nce, her mind wandering while her heart remained as heavy as her mood, crushing her by the inches.
“I know it’s hard,” said Demir. “John Savage was a good man.”
“You didn’t even know him.”
“I know enough to draw an impression of a man’s character after meeting with him, even if it was a short time. Immediate evaluation of someone is part of the process of leadership.”
They continued to press on, the shadows falling away from their lights, the corridor never-ending.
“Your English is very good,” she offered.
“That’s because I studied in England. At Oxford, actually.”
“Oxford. That’s impressive.”
“Not so. When you come from a family of money, a family who donates a substantial sum to their coffer, acceptance is pretty much a given.”
“And you became a soldier?”
“I followed my heart instead of the wishes of my father who wanted me to become a legal representative in Turkey’s judicial system.”
“A lawyer.”
“And eventually a judge, like him.”
They took a bend, the corridor beginning to descend at a slight angle.
“And?”
“Well . . . I went against his wishes, which caused a rift between us because I opted to remain in the military instead of seeking a post within the judicial council. My mother didn’t care as long as I was happy. But eventually he grew to the idea after I became a commander in the Maroon Berets. Now he boasts.”
Alyssa smiled faintly, her eyes distant as if they were looking at something far off, a memory lodged deep in her mind slowly coming forward. “John was a Navy SEAL,” she told him. “He was a leader of his unit, too.”
“I know,” was all he said.
They moved in slow progression, his remaining team cautious, their weapons held forward with their trigger fingers applying more than the required pressure necessary to set off the weapon if necessary.
