by Sean Platt
Kindred couldn’t help but look back at the large metal doors — doors that Peers and Aubrey couldn’t have moved into place by themselves.
“Caution,” he repeated.
But even as they turned to follow the group, Kindred couldn’t help feeling that caution was futile. They were inside with the doors locked, one cave-born trap potentially traded for another.
CHAPTER 9
The Den was intimidating.
Cameron tried to play it cool as if none of this were a big deal, but he couldn’t keep his eyes from looking around. And because the place was so massive — in area, yes, but also in height — his head had to ferry his eyes where they wanted to go. He surely looked like a slack-jawed tourist seeing the big city for the first time. It didn’t matter. The Den was fascinating. It demanded attention, and if he had to appear a naive dullard to take in all there was, then so be it.
Immediately, Cameron was reminded of the ranch his father and Charlie had built inside the rock face in Moab, Utah. The Den was stuffed with scientific equipment, all of it lighting up and flashing, occasionally beeping and churning, vast wet benches like the one Charlie and his assistants used to man while searching for evidence of panspermia. Peers told the group as he toured them around that he’d been obsessed with aliens since before aliens were a genuine thing — and that, too, reminded Cameron of his father. He could imagine their dreadlocked leader in his desert robes like a Benjamin Bannister of a different flavor: drawn to ancient aliens sites, both men mildly (or clinically) obsessed with solving some of the world’s oldest mysteries. Peers told them about excursions in his youth to predictable sites like the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx, alongside lesser-known sites like Palenque, and modern-day curiosities like the Coral Castle and the Georgia Guidestones.
Cameron recognized every one of the names. He’d forgotten so much, but Benjamin’s notebooks — pulled from the same Bannister souvenir stash as the coin he now wore around his neck — helped him to remember. Part was practical: knowledge needed to defeat the Astral menace back when he’d believed that were possible. But most was penance, flogging himself with his father’s obvious, after-the-fact veracity, weighed heavy against Teenage Cameron’s skepticism, shame, and venomous resentment.
But the Den differed from the Utah lab in three obvious ways.
The first was its sheer size. Moab had been a modest lab with a house of about the same square footage across a small lawn — the Den was a flat-out Bat Cave. Titanic, with high ceilings, hints of fathomless depths below, and a footprint that seemed to sprawl forever.
The second was its depth of equipment and supply. Plenty of the Den seemed to be quarters and shared spaces devoid of gadgets, but the enormous central space, like an elongated blimp hangar, was edge-to-edge with consoles, detectors, and God knew what else. All of it was on, functioning as if Middle East Electric still sent this place a generous 120-volt supply line — or whatever the voltage had once been in this part of the world. Moab, by comparison, had felt like Geppetto’s wood shop.
But the third and most disquieting difference between the Den and Benjamin’s old lab was that no one seemed to be present. Just Peers, Aubrey, and Nocturne the lab. Of the three of them, only Aubrey — with his upright manner, crisp London accent, and tidy mustache — looked like he belonged. Moab had been entirely different. While up and running, the lab had been fully staffed: assistants, techs, the apocalypse equivalent of graduate students, even nomads who’d ended up joining the lab by default, like Ivan and his team of militants. But here there was no team.
“We found this place eight months ago,” Peers said as they moved from the huge central space into a smaller, cozier conference-type area — where, thankfully, his voice finally shed its echo. “Aubrey and I had been wandering, as I gather you have. We’d been up near Ankara, headed south toward the Israeli coast. We had no specific aims beyond the obvious: the cradle of civilization, the Holy Land … searching for who knows what to aid us in our Astral quest. Then one day we saw this portal in the rock, and came closer. The doors were open. We added locks to make it more secure, but otherwise the place is as we found it. Something they made, then abandoned.”
“Just like that?” Jeanine asked.
Peers nodded, unfazed by her obvious doubt. “Just like that. We’ve swept it in every way we know. Got the power back up. It’s possible they’re still monitoring this place, but I see no reason why. So we took it over. And now all of this equipment? It’s ours to monitor what we can. To watch them, for a change.”
“What do you ‘watch’?” Piper asked.
“That’s a question for later. For now, all that matters is that it’s home, with beds to lie upon and food to eat. Security so you can properly rest.”
“But is it … networked?” Cameron asked, thinking of the past and things long forgotten. If any place had a way to reach the outside world — not that they needed it much these days — the Den was it.
“Not in the way you mean, unfortunately,” Peers said, pursing his lips in a miniature frown. We had a network for a while, but not since I’ve been here. It was back in my Oxford days, when Aubrey served as my assistant. Years ago, when the Internet was still chugging along.”
Peers raised an eyebrow as if not yet finished. And maybe there was more, Cameron thought. It seemed likely that the Internet would have eventually died under Astral occupation given that the aliens didn’t seem to get it, but that very understanding — the Astrals wanting to investigate humanity’s “external brain,” according to what Piper said the monks in Heaven’s Veil had told her — might have kept it going if Terrence hadn’t botched the network for everyone. The Canned Heat virus had opened a tiny window and might have enabled Peers’s friends to talk to Cameron’s. But over time Canned Heat had won, and the Astrals alongside decreasingly numerous human techs had lost. The world’s information net had darkened again. So the blackout Peers was lamenting? Cameron might have had a hand in it. He might have been on the side of the man who’d unleashed the virus, and caused the collapse.
“It’s time I admit something to all of you,” Peers said, meeting Cameron’s eyes as if tasting the flavor of his thoughts. He looked at Clara then back at Cameron. “I’ve been following you, using the means at my disposal.” His eyes took in the space around him. “And when I came to those caves, it wasn’t entirely coincidental, though it was fortuitous. The truth is, I’ve been hoping to meet you.”
Jeanine flinched. Her hand hitched toward her weapon, then she relaxed, catching herself. They were all scarred by time, and Jeanine always ticked for her gun. Cameron had made that mistake once, and wouldn’t make it again.
“My friends were in contact with a group in America that I believe you may represent. We were part of what was once thought of optimistically as a worldwide resistance. I was always skeptical of that way of thinking: that we needed to resist the Astrals. But you remember how things were back then.”
“I remember the ship that destroyed Heaven’s Veil,” Piper said, her voice uncharacteristically cold.
“And you know why it did that,” Peers said. “Don’t you?”
Cameron watched Piper. She said nothing, but Charlie came unexpectedly to life and answered for her.
“They wanted to find the judgment archive.”
“That’s right,” Peers said. “Before the network went dark, our circle was sharing such a conclusion. It wasn’t clear if you’d reached the same deduction at first, when we lost sight of you and then communication with each other.”
“We figured it out,” Charlie said.
“I figured it out,” Kindred corrected.
Cameron remembered that, too. Kindred had piloted their shuttle eastward for as long as his all-too-human shock response buoyed him, but then the wave struck and laid the man flat. Kindred was human now, but had shared most of the Astral mind at the time. The scream had nearly overwhelmed him.
“I’ve never understood this part of events,” said Aubrey, en
tering the room. Cameron was amused to see him holding what appeared to be a cup of tea.
Charlie watched Peers. He seemed to be assessing the man, determining if this was a ploy to make their group divulge something they shouldn’t. But there were no true secrets anymore. They knew, and the Astrals knew that they knew.
“The Ark,” said Peers, seeing Charlie’s hesitation. “You know about the Ark. That it is an archive of humanity.”
“Human events,” Charlie clarified. “Thoughts. Emotions.”
“So why destroy Heaven’s Veil?” Aubrey asked.
Charlie looked from Peers to Cameron. His eyes were suspicious. But then again, Charlie was always suspicious.
“You don’t trust me,” Peers said.
“It’s hard to trust anyone,” Cameron replied. “Charlie’s just being cautious.”
Peers settled back in what seemed to be a transplanted wooden chair. His glance invited the others to join him around the heavy table, but only Clara did.
“The man we were in touch with in America,” Peers said. “His name was Benjamin Bannister. He sent a group out to a location believed to contain an important relic hidden by the Templars. A sort of key.”
“Interesting,” Cameron said. Peers raised his eyebrows, but Cameron refused to bite at the man’s dangling bait.
Peers shrugged. “I met Benjamin once. In person, in Tunisia, on a dig. We retired for drinks afterward and had a nice long chat.”
“Hmm. Good for you.”
“It’s an interesting charm you carry,” Peers said.
Cameron blinked at the sudden change in topic. “What?”
Peers stood from his chair and stepped forward. “May I?”
Before Cameron could answer or ask for clarification, Peers reached out and pulled the leather lanyard from Cameron’s neck into the open. He set the small coin on its end into the cup of his palm. He eyed it for a moment, then his brown eyes went to his face. “Benjamin told me his work was his greatest accomplishment, and that he was proud of it.”
Cameron felt the leather tug at the back of his neck. He wanted to back away, but the moment was too awkward, and everyone was watching.
“He was driven.”
“He confessed to a single regret: that he always put work before family. In Tunisia, Benjamin showed me a coin. A coin like this one.” Peers turned it over, inspecting its back. “And he told me, ‘This is my ball and chain.’”
Cameron swallowed. He’d heard his father use the phrase in Moab but assumed it was in jest, the way Benjamin joked about most things. He was talking about Charlie as weighing him down, maybe. But as Cameron thought back, he recalled the way his father had always seemed on the edge of saying more, reaching into his pocket whenever he said it, as if his fingers sought the object of his expression.
Cameron had never asked Charlie where, specifically, he’d found the coin that had made its way into Benjamin’s belongings. Or what it might have meant to his father between the day they’d found it and the one when Cameron had run a lanyard through the coin and hung it around his own neck.
“He told me a story. About the coin he wouldn’t even let me hold and see. He said that he’d offered it to his son in spite, during a moment of anger. The coin was meant as a token for his boy. A souvenir of the fact that the son was bullheaded and could never admit when he didn’t know which path to follow or which choice to make. But after the boy left, Benjamin said he found it on his dresser. And he took it for himself and had carried it every day since.”
Cameron had never heard this part of the story. “Why?” he said, before managing to stop himself.
“He said, ‘It wasn’t my son who needed the reminder to be humble — to admit when he was over his head and had no idea what to do next. It’s me who needs it, and that means it’s my burden to carry.’”
Cameron swallowed.
“It’s your choice whether or not to trust me. And if you are not sure which path to take … ” Peers let go of the coin, and it fell against Cameron’s shirt like a nudge. “Then believe me, Cameron Bannister: of all people, having met your father and hearing his story, I will understand.”
CHAPTER 10
Charlie found Cameron alone, outside the Den in the desiccated land, around the corner from the doors, as night approached with the unblemished and cloudless sky stretching overhead. It was cold. A few in the party had seen Cameron leave, but none had asked why or where he was going. Peers had made it obvious that the doors were closed, not locked. An unspoken agreement shivered through the group: some unknown ball had rolled into Cameron’s court, and all anyone could do was to wait for him to decide whether to hit it back.
“It’s in Ember Flats,” Charlie said.
Cameron looked up. He was sitting in a plastic chair, wrapped in a blanket. It was a pouting, petulant little nest he’d made himself. He couldn’t stay out here and knew it. Maybe they were free to go, not pinned in the cave. But what option, other than staying and joining this new cause, was there? To sleep in the sands and freezing? To keep on wandering — with no direction in mind beyond away?
Cameron didn’t bother to ask what Charlie was referring to. This was far from the first time he’d brought it up.
“I know it’s in Ember Flats.”
“Peers knows we have the key.”
“Good for Peers.”
“It’s why he’s been watching and following us.”
“I thought it was because he was my father’s best friend?”
Charlie took a long look at Cameron. Then, seeming to reach an incredibly difficult decision, he pulled over another plastic chair from near the rock and sat beside him. His posture didn’t look remotely comfortable. He sat ramrod straight, head high, knees together, hands on thighs. Whatever Charlie was affecting, it was an attempt at something unnatural. A parody of companionship, trying to be friendly in a way he’d seen in a video, or read in an instruction manual.
“Nobody knew Benjamin better than me.”
“Charlie, I’m—”
“Nobody,” Charlie interrupted. “You spent the first part of your life tolerating him and trying to get away. Once I caught wind of his reputation, I spent most of my time trying to work with him then hooked my wagon to his. I’m a good partner to the right person. I’m not as good on my own.”
Cameron looked over at Charlie in the dim, seeing his neutral, forward-facing stare. There was a single exterior light on the Den, and Cameron had the distinct impression Peers was only allowing it to pacify Cameron. It wasn’t wise to draw attention, even out in the middle of nowhere.
“I keep telling you,” Charlie continued, “that Benjamin wanted us to find the archive.”
“We found the archive.”
“Find it and unlock it,” Charlie corrected. “The Templars separated the key and the Ark for a reason, but it was to keep them both away from Astrals, not human hands.”
“You can’t know that. You saw what happened at Sinai.” He looked at Charlie, trying to imagine emotion in the stoic man. “You even felt it, same as the rest of us.”
“You can’t let your personal baggage get in the way of—”
“Then you take it, Charlie! You and Peers. Take the key and march right into Ember Flats and complete my father’s exalted mission. Peers showed me some of his satellite imagery. If I had to guess, he’s like Nathan — one of the privileged few the Astrals granted access and control so they could keep order. Either way, he’s got some pretty pictures. And not just satellite, or shots from above. It’s like someone stood right in front of the goddamned mega-platform they built for the Ark and took souvenir photos then emailed them over to Peers.”
“He says it’s Astral technology, and that he’s hijacked it.”
Cameron shook his head. Charlie never seemed to accept nuance, or get a subtle point.
“It’s right there in the Ember Flats town square,” Cameron said, suddenly tired. “I can even see the impression, where the key must fit into its front
. I don’t think anyone would stop you if you walked right up to the thing and opened it up. It’s like they’re waiting for it to happen.”
“That’s exactly my point, Cameron. They’re waiting for you to go in and do what needs to be done.”
Cameron sighed. He’d been hearing this same argument for five long years. Charlie had barely wavered, and neither had Kindred — Charlie’s unlikely ally. Charlie wanted to insert the key and open the Ark because it’s what Benjamin’s research seemed to suggest. Kindred wanted the same thing because he sensed something in the Astral collective that suggested breath was being held on both sides, and would be until the deed was done. Delaying, Kindred said, was like a kid locking himself in his room because he was in trouble, hoping in vain that the problem might have disappeared when he finally came out.
But the situation was frustratingly rigid. No matter how many times Cameron suggested the group split so that each contingent could do what they felt must, Charlie and Kindred refused. They wouldn’t take the key to the Ark. They’d stick around and keep insisting that Cameron do it.
“Fuck that, Charlie.”
“You should talk to Peers about this.”
“Well, fuck Peers, too.”
“He’s been attacking the same puzzles as we were. Only he’s been able to incorporate new information and keep working these past years instead of merely running.” Charlie looked quickly at Cameron, eyes behind thick glasses and clearly attempting to take the implied reproach from his words. “Because he’s English, he’s got a slightly different perspective. You may want to hear it.”
“Stonehenge, I suppose.”
“Arthurian legend,” Charlie replied.
Cameron barked a small laugh. “Well, that makes sense. Camelot. You really are becoming the new Benjamin Bannister. I suppose an alien sat around the Round Table?”
“You know how myths are. Over time, they become more symbolic than literally true. Some event happened, and the people of the time built a moralistic story around it. Myths aren’t history; they’re closer to parables. In this case, it’s the myth of the sword in the stone.”
