by Michael Rigg
Bryce said, "So, what were you doing here? What was this team you're talking about?"
I glanced at him as I continued forward. The corridor dipped slightly and wound deeper into Atlantis. I ran my fingers across the carved history of Bryce's reality. "We thought we were stopping terrorists."
"Terrorists?"
"Remember when you found me? Remember my reaction to the towers?"
He smiled at the memory, but the smile quickly faded. "You screamed. It was the first I'd heard your voice."
I nodded back the way we came, to the right wall. "In 2001 my country was attacked by terrorists. They destroyed those towers."
Bryce pondered this. "I've never known such an effrontery. Activists took down a Tesla bridge in 1999." He shrugged. "They were found and arrested. It never happened again."
“How many died.”
“None, as I recall.”
“Wish I could say the same for my reality.”
We continued walking in silence until I could swear we had covered a mile or two. The corridors turned abruptly, branched off unexpectedly. I was completely lost. My reality was long gone, angling off in another direction as Bryce's reality continued toward what I thought was the center of the city. The walls here became translucent, the sculptures appearing backlit by the phosphorescence embedded in them. We stuck with it until we reached a panel that made us both drop our jaws.
Bryce reached out and touched my sculpted face as I reached out and touched his. The rock was warm and made the fine hairs on my arm stand on end. I tasted copper in my mouth.
"How could this be?" He whispered.
It was both of us down to the last detail. Even the gun held at my side. The image showed us reaching out toward the symbol that had appeared in every marker depicting each century, what Bryce's people referred to as the mark of the Trinity. Beyond that the wall was smooth. "What's this?" I said as I pointed to the unfinished stone. "Why does it stop here?"
"You don't know?"
As I shook my head we heard a blood chilling scream echo toward us from below. I flinched and raised the pistol but no one rounded a corner toward us.
"That must have been one of Thorne's men."
Then we heard another scream that abruptly stopped short.
"Come on!" I called back to Bryce as I sprinted forward toward the sounds.
"Alice! No, wait!" But he had no choice. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Bryce following me. We reached the end of our corridor, then turned left, then right, then down, then left again. I knew we were close to something because the carvings had ceased. The walls were all smooth as ice and just as slippery. The air grew warmer, dryer. I smelled the electrical snap of ozone in the air.
The hallway opened into a peanut-shaped room with glass panels set into ornately carved frames stretching to a double-domed ceiling. We both stopped and our jaws dropped, but not at the intricate beauty of the ancient room. Thorne and his men were here.
Sort of.
"Bryce, no," I cautioned, and reached out to stop him as he stepped forward. He stopped and I moved up to stand next to him.
"What happened to them? Are they real?"
Thorne's men were gathered here, frozen like statues. Some were locked in an eternal stare, taking in the architecture of the room. One man was on his knee frozen in the act of tying his boot. Thorne and the big man with the cutter were standing near the front and center of the group. They, along with some of the men next to them, stared fixed at a point in front of them, a doorway. One of the men stood frozen, his finger pointing where they were looking, his mouth hanging open. I could tell by his wide eyes and the lines around his mouth that he was screaming when he froze.
"Are they statues?"
"I'm not sure."
"Did you see this before?"
I nodded and moved closer.
"Alice, don't."
I waved back at him that it was okay, but only weakly. In truth, I couldn't be sure if it was okay or not. I remembered this happening before in a brief fraction of a second to two of the others from my team—just before I woke up in the void room, and moments before they branded me with their electric fork and marked me with their symbol.
"Are they all here?" I asked.
"What do you mean?"
"When this happened the last time they had taken me. It was Ray, I think, who saw one of them and called out to us. Then this. Then... I wasn't here anymore."
Bryce stopped in front of Thorne and waved his hand in front of his unblinking face. He lowered his hand and looked at me. "You weren't here anymore?"
I could feel my face blush, the heat wash over my face and neck as I remembered being strung up in that room naked as they stared into my soul with their malevolent albino faces and pig-like eyes. My blush clashed with a chill and sweat broke out on my face and sides. I shook my head but couldn't meet Bryce's eyes. "They took me to another place. They said things to me, branded me with this mark."
Bryce looked back at Thorne and poked him in the chest. "And the others? They were left like this while you were...?" Then it occurred to him why I'd asked if they were all accounted for. One or more of them must have been spirited away to the void room.
"I didn't see them, Alice," he said as he counted. "Remember, I popped in by you courtesy of Pandora."
I stepped back and slowly shook my head as I realized everyone was accounted for. Bradford Thorne and his boarding party were all here. I hadn't counted them before, but I was pretty sure this cluster of living statues was about the size of the group that cut their way into the city.
Bryce said, "But if they're all accounted for, then who...?"
I nodded as the realization dawned on him. I said, "It's us, Bryce. They're centering their attention on both of us."
"But you've got their mark. I don't have anything. We're completely different."
I drew a cold breath and shrugged. "One of us is the escort of the other. That's my guess."
I saw Bryce's Adam's apple move as he swallowed hard, looking up, his eyes tracing the carvings in the tall domed ceiling. "Well, I think it would be rude of us not to let them know we're here."
My shoulders sagged as I looked over Thorne's petrified adventure party. Bryce nodded. "Agreed. Let's go. If you still want to."
I lifted my chin slightly. “I have to, Bryce. I have to know.”
He nodded and bowed slightly. “Then let's find you some answers.”
I led the way out of the peanut-shaped room and followed the slopping corridor down to our left, a long octagonal hallway that seemed brighter than the other alternatives. I also remembered that the center chamber of the city was an enormous amphitheater set deep within the structure's center. It was essentially their "town square" surrounded by a vast honeycomb of interconnecting passages sculpted with artistic renderings of historic events, not all of them real to everyone.
We eventually made our way to a wide corridor that was lit by cracks of illumination in the walls and ceiling around us. It didn't seem like the phosphorescent moss from the water-level chambers. This was channeled from somewhere else, the main room, as I remembered.
"We're getting closer."
Bryce nodded to the gun. "Maybe you should get rid of that, show them we mean peace."
I looked down at Thorne's revolver in my hand. I had forgotten I was carrying it. Bryce had a point. In fact, I recalled Ray Simcoe saying the same thing as we entered the main chamber, just before the rest were frozen.
I wondered what happened to them. Ray and I were transported into different times in this reality. I wondered where they ended up, if they'd returned to whenever or wherever they were from. I still didn't remember the simplest details. I didn't remember their names and only vaguely what they
looked like.
I shrugged and tucked the gun into my pants. "I don't think it'll matter much. I think I was armed when I was here before."
Our hallway opened into an enormous round room with steps ascending all around. The ceiling collected into a dome carved into a starburst pattern, a single beam of light shining down onto something that reflected back, filling the room with radiant yellow-white illumination. It was as though the sun penetrated the depths of the Atlantic Ocean to reach down into this room. In the center of the domed room were steps ascending to a pedestal where the light collected in a recessed area.
Seated half-way up the steps of the amphitheater were the two Clockwork Carpenters I had seen before, the man and the woman. Both watched us with their dark eyes and pale faces framed with silver hair. Both were dressed in period finery, the woman idling twirling a parasol on her shoulder and the man nodding slightly with his fingers on the brim of his top hat.
Bryce gasped and held out his hands. I motioned for him to move slowly. "No. It's all right."
"But they... They..."
I only nodded and stepped into the room. As I stepped in, Bryce followed. The pair stood up and smiled at us, the man leading the woman down the steps toward us. A chill shuddered up my spine as Bryce and I stopped. Then we walked slowly toward the base of the steps leading to the center pedestal.
Bryce leaned forward and whispered—though the acoustics of the room made secrets impossible and his whisper echoed throughout the entire chamber—"Were they here before, when you were here?"
I answered by barely shaking my head.
“Welcome,” the man said. “I'm Adam.”
The woman curtsied slightly. “And I'm—”
“Eve,” Bryce finished.
“Jeanette, actually,” she smiled at him, her dark eyes tracing his contours, “but rather investigatively perceptive of you, Captain Landry.”
"What is it you want?" Bryce said.
Adam said, "It is you who have intruded into our sanctuary. It is you we should ask."
Bryce bowed slightly. I can't say that I blamed him. For all intents and purposes, we were standing in a room that was the center of all creation—as far as Bryce's reality's history was concerned. He was treating them with the same reverent behavior, I imagined, that he would show the Holy Trinity.
"I've been here before," I said. Then I motioned to Bryce. "He accompanied me, to help me regain my memories. That's all."
The couple's eyes shifted slightly to focus on Bryce though Adam continued to speak to me. "You weren't welcomed here before, and you are not welcomed now."
"I know. I am sorry, but you took my memories." I found myself sneering. “Maybe you should have left the memory that we're not welcome here.” Then I remembered more. Portions of the dreams came into focus. The pain. The prodding. Then the memory wipe. "If you didn't want me to come back here, you shouldn't have erased that simple fact from my mind," I repeated.
"They would have come," Jeanette said. She nodded toward the hall that led up to where Thorne and his men were frozen.
“How do you know that?”
“It is you,” Jeanette said as she pointed her closed parasol at me, “You who offset the order. It is you who moved the lines into chaos.”
“The lines?” Bryce asked.
Adam said, “The lines of time and being, the reality of all living things.”
"I'm sorry," Bryce said. "...If- If I may ask? How do I address you?"
They said in unison, "You may call us God. We are the orchestrators of the universe, the carpenters of the clockwork of time and reality."
As Bryce stared, disbelieving, I spoke up. "No, you're not."
Bryce looked at me. "Alice! What are you saying? They're obviously—"
"Obviously playing with us." I stepped forward and gestured to them. "Look. You have shown you have great power and tremendous, um, talent. But do you expect us to believe that you are God?"
Jeanette said, "Who else would we be?"
Adam smiled. "How would you define God?"
In a silent lightless flash, the couple stood before us, transported across the theater from where they stood to appear right in front of us without even moving the air.
Bryce moved quickly behind me, grabbed me by the arms and held me back to his chest as if he could pull me out of harms way. Then he positioned himself so that he stood between me and the strange couple. "Don't you touch her!"
"How would you define God?" Adam repeated.
I shouted past Bryce, "God is all-knowing! God is compassionate, the creator of everything. He loves us despite our faults, despite our sinful ways. At least... that's what I recall from Sunday school."
The Carpenters both smiled and Jeanette shrugged. "You have described us."
Adam repeated, "Therefore, we are God."
I shook my head. "No. No, this doesn't feel right."
"How should it feel?"
"It should be, I don't know, more angelic. I should feel the love coming off of you, not some detached scientific monstrous glare like we're lab rats or something." I stepped around Bryce and pointed out the parasol and top hat. “God wouldn't dress like a Victorian nightmare.”
Bryce looked at me, his eyes wide.
I thought I saw Jeanette's mouth twist into a smile. She looked at Bryce and spoke to him, ignoring my protestations. "Captain Bryce Landry of Louisiana."
Bryce nodded, glanced back at me, then to Jeanette.
"You brought her here to save your world, didn't you?"
He shook his head. "I brought her here to send her back home, in the hopes I could find where she came from and send her back to her loved ones. I-If that was even possible."
Adam said, “In truth, you hope it is not.”
Bryce reached out and pulled me close to him. He held me tight against him. “I won't lie to you. I care deeply for this woman. And... it's because I care that I want to see her fully restored no matter the cost to me.”
I looked back at Bryce and saw the sincerity through the hurt in his eyes. I shook my head. No. No, this isn't right. This isn't right at all.
The Carpenters looked at me. "Did she not tell you? That is how she came to you in the first place."
And then it happened.
The floodgates opened.
I remembered. Everything.
I pressed my hands to my face as tears burned the rims of my eyes. I shook my head. "No... No, no." I backed away from them. "Oh, my God, no."
"Alice? Alice, what is it?"
My eyes still locked on the strange couple before us—or “aliens” as my strike team called them—I told Bryce what he needed to know.
I said, "My name's Jennifer."
Jeanette nodded slowly. Adam clapped quietly like a spectator at a golf tournament. "Tell him, Jennifer, how you came to be in his company."
"No," I shook my head. I turned to the steps and started up toward the light. “Oh, God, no.”
"Alice— Jennifer!" Bryce called out. He turned and started after me but I was already on my way up to the opening, the gateway. I had to see it the way I remembered it.
There, set in the stone floor at the top of the pedestal, was a mirror so polished and clean it looked like an undisturbed pool of mercury. The bright light from above bounced off its surface and bathed me in its intoxicatingly warm glow.
"Wait!" Bryce called out again. He came up next to me and reached out, but I pulled away. "...Jennifer?"
I looked from the mirror pool, to Bryce, to the darkness outside the light. The beam was so bright, the reflection so warming, I couldn't see anything beyond us. It was like being on center stage with a spotlight in my eyes. I could no longer see Adam or Jeanette—if that really was
their names—but I could feel them watching us.
I turned to Bryce who searched my face for answers. So I told him.
"Josh was our translator. He translated the runes around us. He told us that there was some kind of gateway at the center of all this." I pointed to the rectangular pool. "Ray... He..." I shook my head as the memories came flooding back. I didn't know how to place them. It was as if I was given a box of puzzle pieces, then shown a picture of what the puzzle was supposed to look like. I didn't know where to start.
"Slowly," Bryce said. His smile was kind, but I now felt like I hardly knew him.
"I'm sorry, Bryce." I looked into the quicksilver and told him, "It was the anniversary of 9/11—the day I told you about when the terrorists attacked. It was September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary. While the nation mourned and honored those who were killed, our team was loaded aboard a chopper and brought out to an undisclosed location in the Atlantic where a carrier waited for us. We all thought we were going to stop another attack." I looked into his eyes. "Everyone was afraid they'd use the anniversary as a reason to strike again."
My lower lip puckered. I bit it to fight back the swell of emotions that came with the puzzle of memories.
"It's okay," Bryce said. "I'm following you."
"It wasn't a terrorist lead. It was some kind of subterranean energy signature.” I shook my head. “The president re-opened the Black Budget—the one used specifically for UFO crashes and stuff like that—things no one could explain. It was our job to capture data and debunk what we found." I looked at Bryce's frown. I knew he didn't know what I was talking about, but I pressed on anyway. "No one knew what this was all about. We didn't realize until we'd set foot inside Atlantis why this particular team was assembled. I was the project lead, the one given the most intel—but that was only at the last possible second.
"Everyone saw the president on TV, laying wreaths and saying words. All of that was recorded the day before." I stared down into the silver. "He was actually talking to us through a closed SAT-COM from a safe location." I shrugged. "We didn't know what it was. An alien artifact, a missing Russian sub from the cold war, a strange and lost civilization, or a terrorist weapon. No idea."
