by David Wood
Jade’s view was crystal clear. She wondered what that seeing would cost her.
As her awareness returned, she caught a glimpse of what was transpiring less than a hundred feet away. Shah had left the vault’s interface, a room similar in design to the Hypogeum, situated right above the orb-shaped chamber where Jade now was. The spherical room served the same function as the lens in an eyeball, focusing the infrasound created by the machine and directing it into the interface. Shah had received a vision too, but of what, he alone knew. Now, he was with the others, the Changelings who had been waiting for him. Waiting for all of them.
They’re going to kill Professor.
The thought snapped her back into herself. She needed only a fraction of a second to reorient herself, and another to find the wall with an outstretched foot in order to begin climbing back to the balcony. Urgency gave her a strength that had been lacking during her earlier mishap on the rope. A few moments later, she was able to reach the balcony rail and pull herself over.
She wrestled out of the harness and sprinted for the stairwell. She had no doubt of where it would lead. The vision had shown her the way forward and now she was intimately familiar with the stairwells and tunnels and passages of the vault. What was not as clear was what she would do when she arrived at her destination.
As she neared the top of the stairs, she slowed to a walk and flicked off her flashlight so as not to betray her approach. She could hear their voices clearly now, not a trick of acoustics but rather a matter of proximity. The woman Changeling was trying to convince Shah to kill Professor in order to hide the existence of the vault from the outside world, and from the sound of it, Shah was about to do it.
She saw shadows on the curving walls of the passage. A few more steps, and she would be able to see the bodies who cast them.
Her foot struck something. She froze, wincing at the clatter, but evidently no one in the passage beyond heard it. She looked down and saw what she had kicked. A semi-automatic pistol. There was a second one, still tucked in a clip-on holster, a few feet from the first. She took both, clipped the second to her belt, then eased the slide back on the first to ensure that a round was chambered. She still wasn’t sure how to save Professor, but at least now she was had some equipment to work with.
Before she could take another step however, the sound of a shot assaulted her ears. The close confines of the passage amplified the noise and set Jade’s ears ringing deafening her even to her own cry of alarm. She ran forward, aiming the pistol ahead of her, ready to avenge Professor’s death.
There was a second shot, the sound considerably muted after the first, and then a third as Jade rounded the bend. Her eyes went immediately to the man lying motionless on the floor.
“Professor!”
Blood was fountaining from his chest, soaking his shirt and staining the floor beneath him.
So much blood.
She did not let her gaze linger on him, but turned to look for the gunman and take her shot before he could think to shoot at her. Her attention fixed immediately on Shah who held the smoking gun. He was turned away from her, presenting his back as a target at point blank range. She could not miss.
But then another man dropped to his knees beside Professor. It was Jordan Kellogg. His hands were clutching his chest, trying in vain to stem the torrent of red flowing from a pair of wounds near his heart.
That was when Jade realized that the other dying man was not Professor, not her Professor, but the Changeling who had attempted to impersonate him. There was no uncertainty about this identification. The stricken man still wore the same clothes she had seen him in during their brief meeting in Malta. He even had Professor’s watch and fedora, though the latter item had rolled away.
The real Professor was still standing, unhurt, a few steps away from both Shah and the two Changeling men. He saw Jade and his eyes went wide in a mixture of surprise, fear, and relief. He shouted to her, words that she could barely make out. “Jade! Look out!”
Jade was not sure exactly what he was warning her about. Shah appeared to have come through for them, turning on the Changelings and sparing Professor. She swung the barrel of the pistol around, aiming it at the dark-haired woman in sunglasses who seemed completely oblivious to what had just occurred. That was when Shah finally noticed her. He spun around on his heel and aimed his pistol right at her.
Jade was caught off guard by the suddenness of this apparent reversal, but her nerves were already primed for action. Reflexively, she brought her own weapon to bear on him. In the brief instant that followed, she read his intention. His was not a reflex action brought on by her unexpected return. He meant to kill her.
He fired.
She fired… Or would have if Professor had not caught her in a low tackle that not only rushed her into the darkness behind them, but also removed her from Shah’s field of fire. In the tumult that followed, Professor managed to relieve her of the unfired pistol, whereupon he rolled onto his back and pumped several rounds in Shah’s direction. Jade wrestled the second pistol from it holster, but Shah was already gone, fleeing back down the rotunda. The woman was gone too, either having fled or in Shah’s company.
Professor looked over at Jade, panting to catch his breath, just as she was. His lips moved but she couldn’t make out what he said, so she answered simply, “Hey.”
He flashed her a goofy grin then got to his feet, hands gripping the pistol, and started forward. “Shah!” he shouted.
She heard that just fine, but no answer was forthcoming. “What the hell is he doing?” she said.
Professor returned an uncertain headshake and kept moving. He said something, stay behind me, or keep your head down. The ringing in her ears was gradually subsiding, but he was turned away from her and whispering. She hefted the pistol, muzzle pointing up, and followed.
They crept along at first, but then quickened their pace when it became evident that Shah was not waiting to ambush them. When they reached the doorway connecting the rotunda to the landing outside, Jade glimpsed movement on the spiral staircase overhead; Shah and the woman ascending but making slow progress, probably because the latter was being dragged along unwillingly.
Professor shouted again. “Shah! Let’s talk!”
Shah’s answer was a fusillade of rounds fired down the center of the shaft. The angles were all wrong for him to hit them, but the resulting spray of stone chips and bullet fragments drove Jade and Professor back through the opening.
“Idiot,” Professor rasped. He looked at Jade. “You okay?”
She laughed despite herself. “Stupid question.” At least I can hear again, she thought. “You?”
“Better than my evil twin.” He nodded in the direction of the stairwell. “What do you think got into Shah?”
Jade bit her lip guiltily. “You remember how I had to make a deal with him? Well, the deal was that if we found anything that might call the origins of Islam into question, I would let him destroy it.”
Something like anger or disappointment flickered across Professor’s face, but before he could voice his disapproval, Jade went on. “I didn’t have much choice. There was literally no one else I could trust. At least with Shah, I knew where I stood. And he did help. I just didn’t think we would actually find anything here that would fit the bill.”
“You really blew that call.” Professor’s demeanor softened a little. “I suppose given the circumstances it was the right thing to do. And I am grateful that you were willing to do that for me. So what do you think pushed him over the edge?”
“This place. It’s like a gigantic infrasound hallucination machine.” She decided now wasn’t the time to go into detail about what she had seen in her own frequency-induced vision.
Professor nodded slowly. “The Changelings told him that Muhammad and all the other prophets revered by Muslims came here to receive visions from God. I suppose, from his point of view, something like that—an alternative version of events that doesn’t agree with
what the Quran teaches—could be construed as blasphemy.”
“And since he can’t destroy the vault, he decided the next best thing was to kill all the witnesses. The Changelings and us.”
Professor nodded. “There’s only one way out of here. If he’s up there waiting for us, we’ll have to shoot it out. But he’s already fired eight rounds. I counted. That means he has seven more, eight max if those Changelings kept one in the chamber, which I doubt. He has no training, no fire discipline. All we have to do is make some noise and get him to shoot off the rest of that magazine. Then we’ll leave on our own terms. Over his dead body if necessary.”
“I’m remembering the last time you counted the bad guy’s bullets. It didn’t end well.”
“Very funny. This time, I know he doesn’t have any extra rounds. Besides, you’re hardly in a position to be questioning my judgment.”
Jade thought better of replying. She gestured to the doorway. “Lead the way.”
He flashed a grim smile then stuck his head out. “Shah! We’re coming for you!”
There was no answering fire, so he circled the landing and started up the steps. Jade stayed close on his heels. The stairs were familiar to her, the memory of traveling them implanted during her vision, but it wasn’t until she was halfway up that she realized that she had been here before, actually as well as virtually. She had fallen through the central shaft after solving the ring puzzle and opening the door to the vault.
The memory nagged, a dire warning of a danger that she couldn’t quite wrap her thoughts around. Not Shah… Something else.
The stairs. Something about the stairs. Where did they come from?
One moment, she had been in the submerged chamber, sliding the pieces of the ring puzzle into place. The next she was falling, caught in the rush of water pouring down through the midst of the steps.
The steps….
In her mind’s eye, she saw it happening, like a video playing in slow motion. The last piece of stone sliding into place, the rings completed, and then….
And then the sphere began to move. It had seemed random from her perspective, trapped in the flooded chamber, but it was anything but. The movement of the sphere was as precise as clockwork. As was what happened next.
The sphere had opened like the petals of a flower, the individual tiles shuffling and rearranging to form the stairs that led down to the vault itself. The unfurling had of course triggered the flood that washed Jade away, and that indeed had been somewhat more chaotic, but the unfolding of the sphere chamber had been exceedingly exact. When the puzzle was solved, the door opened. Simple as that.
And what happens when the door closes?
“We have to get off these stairs.” She said it once, too softly to be heard. Then repeated it again, louder so that Professor could hear.
She saw the unasked question and knew that if she didn’t at least try to explain, precious moments that might mean the difference between life and death might be lost.
“Once he reaches the top, the lock will reset. These steps will disappear.”
Professor seemed to grasp the broader point. “And we’ll be trapped in here.”
Before Jade could respond to his hasty conclusion, Professor leaned into the stairs and poured on a burst of speed that she was hard-pressed to match. She heard him shout again, and then the noise of multiple reports filled the shaft. She threw herself flat as stone chips and dust filled the air. Jade tried to count the number of rounds fired, but it was difficult to distinguish one shot from the next, to say nothing of differentiating Professor’s gun from Shah’s.
After a few seconds, the shooting stopped. Something flashed through the air, hit the wall behind Professor and rebounded away, skittering across the steps and ultimately sailing out into the abyss. It was a gun. Shah’s gun. One less thing to worry about.
She raised her head and caught a glimpse of Shah running, still dragging the dark haired woman behind him. He was on the far side of the shaft, nearly at the top of the stairs, and even though Professor was closing the gap, it seemed unlikely that he would be able to catch Shah in time to stop him from slipping through the exit passage. Nevertheless, Jade’s sense of the place told her that close might be good enough. The ancient architects of the vault had designed the lock room to function like the automatic doors at a supermarket. As long as Professor was within reach of the exit, the mechanism would not reset.
Suddenly the stairwell erupted with another blizzard of gunfire. The incoming storm of bullets and debris was so intense, it forced Jade to retreat back down the spiraling steps until she was almost directly below the exit, out of the shooter’s line of fire.
Professor scrambled back down to her position. “Son of bitch brought reinforcements,” he growled. Before she could think to ask what Professor meant, he pointed at the pistol in her hand. “Let me have that. I’m out.”
She passed it over. “How many?”
“Too many. But unless you know of a back door, the only way out of here is—”
Before he could finish, an ominous grinding sound filled the shaft as the steps on which they were standing, and all the others above and below, began moving.
THIRTY
Shah crawled down the cramped passage, one hand stretched awkwardly back to drag Gabrielle along. Though he had only been in the vault a short while, he was desperate to be in the open, breathing fresh air again. Perhaps having the sky above him again would help to purge his memory of the things that had been revealed to him, but somehow he doubted it. The truth would haunt him to the end of his days.
Gabrielle was sobbing behind him. That was something new. In all the time they had worked together, all the intimate moments they had shared—all a lie—he had never seen her cry. Her despair comforted him. She had brought his world crashing down; a little suffering was the least he could hope for.
He would put an end to her misery soon enough.
The jihadists’ arrival could not have been more timely. Though he had only been able to give them vague directions in his text messages, the men had correctly divined the significance of the little cave in the sheer face of Bell Rock and rigged their own belay lines in order to transport the material he had requested and expedite his escape. Two were waiting in the niche at the end of the passage. The others were bringing up the rear, wriggling through the passage behind him. Shah did not know if Jade and Professor would attempt to follow, but if they tried, it would only hasten their inevitable appointment with fate. He could not allow them to leave the vault.
He emerged from the cramped passage and hauled Gabrielle forward. She went sprawling and would have tumbled out through the mouth of the cave if the two jihadists, uncertain of his intentions toward her, had not caught her.
Shah did not actually know why he had brought her along. He should have left her behind, both as a practical matter and a moral one. She was the enemy, his enemy and the enemy of Islam, and she always had been. Every word she had uttered, and a thousand implicit promises never spoken, were false. Everything they shared, a deceit. And yet, here she was, still alive.
What power does she have over me?
Gabrielle raised her head. She had lost her sunglasses during their transit to the surface. Her tear streaked eyes staring at nothing. “Atash,” she wailed. “What have you done?”
Shah choked on his disbelief. “What have I done? I?”
Her head turned toward the sound of his voice. “You have everything. You have seen. You are the Mahdi. The Prophet returned. I did this for you.”
Rage in Shah’s chest like steam in a geyser. She actually believed she had done him a favor. “I guess you never really understood me at all then.”
He turned to the nearest jihadist and held out his hand. The man placed a pistol in his palm. “Did you bring what I asked you to?”
One of the others—the young man from California, the geologist’s son—stepped forward. “Only about fifty pounds. All I could get my hands on.”
As the jihadists set about their task, he placed the muzzle of the pistol against the back of Gabrielle’s head. Before he pulled the trigger, he leaned close and whispered in her ear. “I didn’t see anything.”
THIRTY-ONE
In a matter of seconds, the stairwell transformed into something else. The blocks that had arranged themselves in an orderly spiral began to shift and slide, changing position with mechanical precision. Some disappeared altogether, sliding into recesses in the wall, their purpose served, while others protruded further, tilting and rotating, rising or falling, reassembling the spherical chamber that was the entrance to the vault.
Professor grabbed Jade’s arm and was about to start up the treacherous steps but Jade pulled free. “No! Down!”
“We’ll be trapped in here!”
There was no time to explain to him that trapped was preferable to being dumped down the full length of the vertical shaft or crushed between blocks of stone, so she let her actions do the talking. She turned away from him and started down the stairs, or rather tried to. Negotiating the descent was part fun-house, part obstacle course. Every step took her from one moving surface to another and she wasted precious seconds with each move just to keep her balance. They were nearly clear of the blocks that were rising to form the sphere. Below, the steps were simply retreating into the walls, all the way down the landing. If they could not reach the passage back to the rotunda before the steps vanished, they would fall into the cistern below, as Jade had done earlier, but from more than twice the height.
