by Chris Fox
“Very succinctly put, Doctor Roberts. We have no idea what the ELF are used for, but we know two things: First, that they emanate from the central chamber. Second, it would require a very unique power source to continue broadcasting for as long as we believe it has.”
“We already figured that part out. It couldn’t have tunneled out of the earth without some sort of power. That room is full of radiation, isn’t it?” Blair asked, setting his coffee down on the folding table.
“Yes,” Jordan replied. There was no point in denying it, not when they’d clearly puzzled out the truth. “We believe that to be the cause of Doctor Galk’s deteriorating health.”
“Yet you’re sending us in there anyway?” Bridget asked. “Steve could die. We could die.”
“That’s a risk all of you were aware of when you signed your contracts, as was I.”
“Don’t pull that legal bullshit with us,” Sheila snarled, poking him in the chest with an outstretched finger. “You owe us more than that. If that place is dangerous, you should get us hazmat suits, or—”
“They wouldn’t help,” Jordan said, cutting her off with a wave. “This radiation isn’t the most friendly variety. It pierces cloth. It pierces metal. If you’re down there, you’re going to be exposed; it’s that simple. That means some, or maybe even all of us, might die exploring this place. That sacrifice is necessary.”
“Why?” Blair asked.
“Because of who built this place. We know nothing about them, but their technology could exceed our own. This place returned on a very specific date, and if my employer has any idea why it’s above my pay grade. For all we know, it could be a giant bomb. Until we know otherwise, this thing is a threat, and you’ve been hired to help us neutralize that threat,” Jordan explained. The Director would be furious that he was revealing so much of their mandate, but what choice did he have? These people were going to mutiny if he didn’t give them something. Even if they didn’t, Smith could withhold the information he desperately needed.
“He’s right,” Smith said, drawing surprised looks from his colleagues. Only Bridget seemed of like mind, reaching up to squeeze his shoulder. He flinched, just slightly, but enough for Jordan to catch the pain in his eyes. “We have to get inside, have to learn how or why this place was built. That’s worth the risk. Besides, I think I can get us in. We only have to be down there for a few hours more. Hopefully that much exposure will be safe.”
“Excellent, Professor Smith. I’m glad you understand. How do we proceed?”
“How the hell could you possibly know how to get inside? We’re nowhere near understanding their language,” Sheila said, rounding on Smith.
“We don’t need to understand their language. Many of their glyphs are highly detailed pictographs that tell a story. I’ve spent a great deal of time studying the passages in the south corridor, the one Bridget showed me when we first went inside,” Smith explained. His eyes were alight, and the others seemed to pick up on his enthusiasm. “We assume it’s some sort of rite of passage. This wolf-headed goddess raises up champions to help battle whatever the red figures depicted are. In every case, the ritual begins with her grasping their hand. This symbol is repeated over and over.”
“Oh my God,” Sheila said, her oatmeal tumbling to the floor. “The statue in the central chamber. It represents the wolf goddess.”
“Right. So if we grasp the hand, I’m betting we’ll initiate whatever rite of passage we see depicted in the glyphs,” Smith said, grinning now. He was clearly proud of his discovery, and he had a right to be. Jordan was impressed.
He fished his radio from a vest pocket. “Yuri, assemble Alpha. Have them set up all four turrets in the central chamber. Also, send a priority message to HQ and let the Director know that Professor Smith may have found a way into the inner structure.”
Chapter 11- The Mother’s Hand
“I have never been so terrified in my life,” Sheila murmured so faintly Blair could barely make it out. She was crouched behind him in the shelter of the doorway. He couldn’t blame her. The longer he spent in the central chamber, the less he trusted it. That was before Jordan had revealed the truth about the radiation. The wondrous had become the sinister.
The ramp descended into deep shadow, completely swallowed around halfway down. The room was more brightly lit than he’d ever seen it. Fuel for the generator was sparse, and not because of money. Their employers had no lack of that. No, the logistics of carting hundreds of gallons of gasoline made supply an issue.
The stand lamps in each corner fought a losing war with the darkness, but they gave shape to the room. Blair had seen the obelisks with his headlamp, but this was the first time they had any real context. They sat at perfect cardinal directions, the one in the center nearly twice as tall as the others.
Below each obelisk sat a boxy turret that would have been at home in the movie Aliens, each about waist height with a broad body atop a tripod. They clicked and hummed as they scanned the darkness, a bright red beam shining from each.
“Steve?” he called into the darkness. In spite of the better illumination, there was no sign of the man. Somehow, that made sense.
As he took a step down the ramp, a wave of dizziness overcame him, a flash of something bright robbing him of sight. It was an image, a stern but beautiful woman with silver hair and commanding eyes. She held a golden staff clutched in one hand, she wore regalia that wouldn’t have been out of place in Egypt.
“Smith, are you all right?” Blair heard in the distance. He blinked, turning slowly to face Jordan. The man looked…Was that concern?
Blair turned to face Jordan, the soldier filling the space beside him like some movable wall. “Do you feel that? It’s almost like a humming in the air.”
“Is right. Yuri feel it too,” the Russian rumbled, emerging from the shadow of one of the smaller obelisks. He held aloft a small tablet that displayed a fluorescent green graph. “Readings increase forty percent in last hour. If continues, all dead in four hours.”
“Readings?” Blair asked. The dizziness was passing.
“Radiation. This place is getting more dangerous by the minute. Let’s get this done,” the commander said, striding boldly down the ramp without waiting for a reply, not that Blair had one ready. How could one respond to that?
“Blair?” came a raspy voice from the shadows near the southern obelisk. A figure moved in the darkness. Jordan had a pistol out and aimed before Blair even registered the fact that he’d moved. Another gun cocked behind him, probably Yuri’s.
“Blair, did you solve it? We have to open the…” Steve mumbled, lurching into a pool of light. His dark hair was matted to the side of his face, greasy with sweat. The clothing draping his skeletal form was crusted from weeks of wear, and the pungent odor of the long homeless wafted through the room.
Steve’s gaze focused as he noticed Jordan, Bridget, and Sheila. His face twisted, spittle flying as he roared, “Why did you bring them? They’re not of the blood. They don’t belong here. Their very presence taints this holy place. The whelps will be punished for this insolence.”
He lunged for Blair, hissing like a snake. There was nothing left of the man he’d known, only a shell of rage and madness. Blair stumbled backward, shielding himself with his arms. Then Jordan glided forward, jerking the butt of his pistol down on the back of Steve’s skull. He collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut, falling limply at Blair’s feet.
“Steve,” Bridget shrieked, her headlamp bobbing as she hurried down the ramp. She knelt next to Steve, raising two fingers to his throat. She turned a glare at Jordan. “He’ll live, but I’m betting he’s got a concussion. We should carry him up. He’ll need medical attention.”
“He’s dying of radiation poisoning. A concussion is the least of his worries. Yuri, restrain the man in case he’s still agitated when he wakes,” Jordan ordered, dismissing Bridget with a wave as he holstered his pistol. Sheila gave a squawk of protest as she finally entered
the room, but Jordan silenced her with a look. “I’m not in the habit of explaining myself, but as I still need your cooperation, I will make a final exception. We’ve entered a combat situation. Doctor Galk was a threat to Professor Smith. Professor Smith is our best chance of finding this secret chamber, so I eliminated the threat. I will do the same to any other threat without hesitation. Now, let’s get in and out as quickly as possible. Unless you all want to end up just like the poor doctor.”
Yuri knelt next to Steve, rolling him onto his stomach. The Russian gave a snort of disgust, removing a white zip tie from his pocket and binding Steve’s wrists together. He repeated the process with the ankles leaving Steve trussed and bleeding on the marble. Part of Blair was horrified, but he mostly felt relieved. Whatever Steve had become terrified him.
Blair moved to the floodlights that had been carted in, flipping the heavy red lever to crank the generator from medium to high. It read Aziz in bright green letters, shiny enough that the thing could have been made yesterday. Light flooded the chamber as the generator roared to life. The stench of gasoline and carbon monoxide belched from the motor, but the chamber was large enough that airflow wasn’t a problem.
The light didn’t quite banish the shadows, but it did reveal the reason they’d come. A nine-foot statue stood at the far side of the room near the south wall, its right hand extended in a gesture that might have been friendly had it not been for the statue’s bestial countenance. The nobility, the exquisite detail with which the obviously feminine features had been crafted, once again struck Blair. It made the Egyptians’ finest work look like the macaroni pictures hung on your fridge. The statue also confirmed his earlier observation. Except for the gender, this was Wepwawet. An indisputable connection to ancient Egypt, on a continent thousands of miles away.
Blair strode through the lingering darkness, standing beneath the magnificent statue. He glanced behind himself as booted steps echoed dully. Jordan stepped up next to him, with Bridget and Sheila just a few paces behind. Yuri scanned the darkness, rifle in a death grip.
“So how do we activate it?” Jordan asked. He stood coiled, like some snake ready to strike. Blair was strangely comforted by his presence, though he doubted anything he did here would require armed intervention from the soldiers.
“I don’t know,” Blair said. He placed his palm against the statue’s. “There might be a lever or a way t—“
The statue’s hand tightened around his, locking it in an implacable grip. The hand didn’t grind or move like stone. The way it twisted had been just like a living person’s.
“Smith?” Jordan asked, raising an eyebrow as he inspected the statue.
“The grip isn’t painful, but my hand is stuck. Hold on a sec; the stone is getting warm,” he explained. An odd blend of curiosity and unease settled over him.
“Yuri, do you have the bolt cutters?” Jordan called over his shoulder.
“Hold on; let’s not be hasty,” Blair said, waving his free hand. “We want to get inside, don’t we? This might be part of the process.”
“Or it could be a trap,” Bridget countered, moving from Steve’s side to inspect the statue. She shot him a worried glance. “I don’t see a way to loosen it. We’ll have to break the hand off. Jordan is right about the bolt cutters.”
“You might be right. It’s getting hot now. Really hot,” Blair grunted, tugging as hard as he could. The statue held him fast. He gave Bridget an earnest look. “Just be careful. I write with this hand.” Sweat flowed freely down his face. The generator’s acrid exhaust stung his eyes. His nerves were jagged glass, like the early stages of a migraine.
“Have bolt cutters, but stone too thick,” Yuri explained, gesturing with a two-and-a-half-foot tool. “Explosives, maybe. Or bullets if desperate.”
Jordan moved behind the statue, examining the wrist. “I can shatter this with a few well-placed shots. Marble is tough, but it can’t handle this kind of ordnance.”
“Are we that stupid now?” Sheila said, muscling her way past Jordan to the statue. “If you fire at that arm, the bullet will ricochet through the room. Even if it didn’t, it’s going to send chips of high-velocity stone right at Blair. Not to mention damaging the most priceless archeological find in history. No, what we need to do is—“
The statue grew hot, as if it had been left in the afternoon sun for the weight of the day. Blair twitched and flopped, fire flowing up his arm and into his chest. It surged through his body like flame over gasoline, obliterating all except the pain, a deep white agony. Even his eyes were thick with it.
In the first instant, he longed for death. What felt like an eternity later, he knew death had betrayed him, unwilling to free him from the pain. So he endured. The inferno rampaged through him as though he were a dry forest. When its fury was finally spent, he found himself huddled at the base of the statue.
“Commander, south wall. Ten o’clock,” Yuri barked, ducking behind an obelisk.
“Handle it,” Jordan called back, looming over Blair with outstretched hands. The Commander’s eyes had widened. So odd, that tiny gesture. The man had a level of control Blair had never witnessed, yet something he’d just seen had rattled him. The soldier was shocked. Shock. Blair was in shock, wasn’t he?
“Blair?” Bridget called. She seemed a hundred miles away. She knelt next to him, her clean fragrance a welcome balm to the echoes of pain haunting his limbs. “Look at me. I think you’ve just been electrocuted. Can you tell me your name?”
She seized his chin, forcing him to look her in the eye. Such pretty eyes. Pools of brown. Some of his happiest memories dwelt there.
“Gash. Abnat,” Blair said, shaking his head to clear it. A distant part of his mind recognized the aphasia, but he was powerless to articulate that.
“Jordan, how quickly can you get a doctor out here?” Bridget asked, looking up at Jordan.
Something rumbled behind him, but Blair was too weak to find out what. The best he could manage was to loll his head to the side. Instantly alert, Jordan and Yuri snapped their rifles up. Sheila had stumbled backward, both hands clasped over her mouth. Clean white light burst all around Blair, overpowering the sad stand lamps.
Bridget squatted next to him, squeezing his shoulder. “You’re going to be all right. We’ll get you out of here.”
“No,” Blair croaked, pausing as he gathered another breath. “I want to…to see. Show me.”
“Jordan?” Bridget called. Her voice was further away now. “Jordan, can you carry him inside?”
Inside? Inside where? Jordan’s daunting arms were suddenly around him, hoisting him effortlessly into the air. Blair’s vision spun, finally coming to rest on a wide chamber where the wall had been moments before. It was the single greatest discovery in history, more momentous than the cave paintings the Cro-Magnon left in France thirty millennia earlier. It changed everything.
The clean white light emanated from the room’s ceiling, clearly illuminating the brilliant hieroglyphs lining every wall. Unlike the others, these were quicksilver, each symbol flowing and alive. Seven sarcophagi radiated around the room from a central point, each a pure block of glass inset with rubies and emeralds and diamonds. Pulses of light flowed between the gems in straight angles.
Only one sarcophagus was occupied, yet Blair couldn’t make out much about the occupant. Darkness ate at the edges of his vision. His heartbeat had slowed, awarding a grudging beat every few moments. Every breath was a battle, a ragged gasp for whatever oxygen he could find.
“My God,” Sheila said, staggering toward the sarcophagus. She planted her palms against the glass, ignoring the pulses of light that flowed around her. “It’s not possible. She’s breathing. This woman is alive.”
Blair fought for another breath, but this time his lungs refused to obey. He waited for another thud, but his heart was stubbornly silent. He wasn’t a medical doctor, but he didn’t need to be to understand the darkening of his vision. Blair was dying, poisoned by whatever the st
atue had done.
“Blair? Blaaair!” Bridget screamed.
Chapter 12- Blair’s Dead
Jordan compartmentalized the situation, allowing his training to take over in the face of the incomprehensible. He knelt swiftly, laying Smith on the ground just outside the chamber they’d discovered. Blair’s eyes were closed, his chest unmoving. Jordan feared the worst. He applied two fingers to the man’s throat, giving a long count to ten. Nothing.
“Yuri, get the scientists topside. Radio HQ and tell the director we’re initiating containment protocol. We need a team here ASAP,” he barked, shrugging out of his windbreaker and laying it gently over Smith’s limp body.
“What are you doing?” Bridget shrieked, dropping beside him and yanking the jacket away. “Blair? Blair, can you hear me?” She shook the man, but there was no response.
“Yuri,” Jordan barked, shooting the man a glare.
The beefy Russian gathered Bridget in a tight grip, hauling the woman to her feet and away from the body. She resisted violently, fists beating against Yuri’s chest as she raged. “Let me go. You can’t do this!”
“He might still be alive,” Sheila pleaded, eyes shining with unshed tears. “There might be something we can do.”
“You know there isn’t,” Jordan countered, replacing the windbreaker. Smith deserved some peace. “We have no idea what killed him, but make no mistake. This man is dead. I understand he was a friend and colleague, but that doesn’t change my job. I have to protect the rest of the team. Whatever killed him could be contagious.”
“Then we’re all exposed.” Sheila roared, balling her fists. “We should all be quarantined, which means there’s no reason not to stay down here and see if we can do anything for Blair.”
“You can’t just give up on him,” Bridget said, finally calming. Yuri still held her, but his grip had relaxed.
“We don’t have a choice,” Jordan replied, shaking his head. “The radiation was bad down here before. Opening that chamber dramatically increased it. Right now we’re facing an unknown threat, and that calls for a tactical retreat. We’ll have a containment team here in twelve hours, and then we can find some answers.”
