Jason pointed behind her. ‘Where’s he going?’
Sarah turned to see Goodwin disappear into the mist. She swore and waved them on. ‘Let’s go, we can’t afford to lose him again.’
The three friends pursued Goodwin across the plaza, Sarah leading, Trish following and Jason bringing up the rear.
Further ahead, the shimmering light of the Pharos disappeared from view and they slowed their approach.
Goodwin, oblivious to their presence, reached the slope, crept up it and vanished into a dense bank of fog.
Sarah grasped Trish’s hand, who repeated the process with Jason and, linked together, the three friends inched forward, fearing what was ahead as much as what lay behind.
Sarah’s visor fuzzed as she entered the freezing cloud. The vapour clung to her like an apparition and blocked out all vision. If she’d put a hand in front of her face she wouldn’t have been able to see it. She felt Trish tighten her grip.
Seconds later the way ahead cleared a little and Sarah saw Goodwin crouched down in a shallow trough next to a towering wall encrusted with ice. A hundred feet away the light from the Pharos shone through slow, swirling mists. If it had spotted them it didn’t show it, and Susan was nowhere to be seen.
Sarah dropped down onto one knee behind Goodwin. She glanced left to see a deep alcove sunk into the wall. The tall, coffin-like aperture looked like a gateway to another world as its deep interior was wreathed in an icy miasma. Two hundred feet on their right, and in mirror image to the one next to them, another frost-encrusted wall could just be glimpsed soaring into the dark. Between them and it, a massive silver statue towered over them. Half shrouded in cloud, the figure sat upon a golden throne and Sarah felt her gaze drawn upwards to its beautiful, feminine face. It reminded her of a larger version of the Ageless King she’d seen in Sanctuary’s military vaults. Either side of it, two massive sculptures of Anakim sphinxes lurked in the dark, their forms exact replicas of the monument in which they now found themselves trapped.
As she looked back down, something caught her eye. Two bodies had been laid out in offering before the god-like silver statue. Their static forms peeked out through the mist laden ground, and the sight of one of the two made her feel dizzy with grief. Riley lay in unmoving death beside his friend and teammate, the late Jefferson Church. Both men had been arranged in the shape of a star and Sarah felt all reason leave her. She stood up, meaning to go to him, but Trish grasped her arm and pulled her back down.
‘Sarah,’ Trish said, her expression full of sympathy, ‘you can’t help him now.’
Sarah stared at the lifeless form before Goodwin whispered something to her.
She looked back in a daze to see him pointing beyond to where the Pharos lurked. ‘Your way out of Sanctuary is through there,’ he said.
He crawled forward and Sarah, her mind in turmoil, glanced back at Riley before following.
‘What’s he doing?’ Jason said.
After ten more feet Goodwin stopped at a second alcove in the wall, and Trish lent past Sarah and touched his shoulder. ‘We need Susan, she has the pendant.’
He looked startled by the news, nodded, and then turned to face the wall. He ran his hand over the frost to uncover a transparent surface beneath. Where the first alcove had been deep, this one was shallow, as if it had been back-filled.
With care, Goodwin stood up and wiped away more of the icy coating. After the shock of seeing Riley, Sarah felt her attention returning and she kept her eye on the Pharos in case it decided to move. When it failed to do so, she looked up to see a figure inside the crystalline structure. It was a woman. This must be Rebecca, she thought, the person Goodwin said he wanted to free.
Goodwin placed a hand against the crystal and Sarah was shocked as the woman’s eyes moved inside her solid prison. At least she thought they’d moved. Goodwin meanwhile slid his hand over the surface as if looking for some way to release Rebecca from her bonds.
Sarah could see another person trapped inside the transparent wall behind the first. Much like the woman, the man looked to have been frozen mid-pose. On a hunch, Sarah pressed her ear to the cold surface. Concentrating, she could hear the steady rhythm of the woman’s heartbeat and as she listened a second beat could be heard, fainter and erratic, but it was there.
‘They’re alive,’ Sarah said.
Goodwin crouched back down beside her. ‘No – only Rebecca.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘I heard two heartbeats.’
Goodwin gave her a sharp look before pressing his ear to the wall. His eyes widened as he heard what she had.
‘It’s impossible,’ he whispered, ‘Joseph died.’ He looked up at the man and his expression turned to astonishment. ‘His wounds are healing.’
Sarah saw gunshot holes riddled the man’s clothing. Within these, the flesh was red and laced with blood vessels, but the wounds were shallow, not deep penetrations like a bullet would make.
Sarah gazed into the wall, counting the number of bullets that must have torn into the man’s chest. ‘You saw him shot?’ Sarah said.
Goodwin didn’t reply.
Sarah yanked him round. ‘Did you see him get shot?’ she said, her eyes intense.
He stared at her through his transparent helmet and gave a nod.
Sarah looked back into the wall before the ground trembled and a glow of light blossomed into being alongside the Pharos.
‘Susan,’ Goodwin said, turning.
The ground shook and the Pharos moved towards them.
Trish grasped Sarah’s arm. The creature let out a shriek and sped past them into swirling mists, and they breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Meanwhile the ethereal light shone brighter to reveal Susan’s shadowy outline next to an altar much like Sarah had seen in her vision.
Sarah turned her attention back to the wall which now glowed from within, and looked past Goodwin to see more alcoves lining its crystalline structure at regular intervals.
‘Can you get them out?’ she said.
Goodwin gave her a look of despair. ‘I don’t know, I think the altar controls it somehow.’
Sarah looked back towards the light. ‘And Susan controls the altar.’
She took one more look at the alcove and then ran towards Riley.
‘What are you doing?!’ Trish said, standing.
Sarah reached Riley’s body, grasped his climbing harness and dragged him towards the nearest alcove. ‘I can bring him back.’
‘What?’
‘I can bring him back!’
Jason tried to stop her, but she pushed him away, her look ferocious.
‘Help me!’ Sarah said to Trish.
Her friend looked at her, uncomprehending, and Sarah continued to drag Riley’s corpse across the ground.
Reaching the alcove, she heaved his body inside its icy mist and waited for something to happen.
‘Sarah, he’s gone,’ Trish said. ‘You have to let him go.’
‘NO! I can heal him.’ She crouched down and touched his face. ‘I can heal you.’
Chapter Fifty Two
Sarah kissed Riley’s cold lips and turned away from the alcove to look for Goodwin.
‘Sarah,’ Jason said, grasping her shoulders, ‘Riley’s dead, you can’t heal him.’ The distant roar of a Pharos echoed through the sphinx. ‘We need to get out of here.’
Sarah pushed Jason aside and joined Goodwin, who stood facing the strange glow that permeated the misty air a hundred feet away. She made to move towards it, but Goodwin grasped her arm.
‘Wait,’ he said, ‘something’s not right.’
A faint light spread through the mist-shrouded ground and a strange vibration rippled up through their feet. They retreated, but seconds later the sensation ceased and the illumination faded. The vapour that covered the ground cleared to reveal a massive, circular crater, two hundred feet across and twenty feet deep. Whether this feature was newly formed or had been concealed by the mist all along, Sarah d
idn’t know, but the concave depression bridged the gap between one iced wall and the other; both of which pulsed with the faintest light. Her visor fuzzed and adjusted to the changing range to reveal a massive, metallic pentagram resting at the bottom of the crater. In its centre, steps led up to a raised, circular dais on which stood the altar, and standing next to this was the small figure of Susan. The woman was looking straight at them with bloodshot eyes. It was as if she was waiting for them to approach. Sarah zoomed in her visor to see she held the pendant clutched in one hand.
Something moved in the dark and Sarah’s eyes grew wide as Dresden Locke appeared through the mist and grabbed Susan from behind. A second later he’d wrested the pendant from her and sent her tumbling down the steps.
‘You’re too late, Morgan,’ Locke said, holding up the pendant, ‘you’re never getting back to the surface!’
Rage swamped Sarah’s senses like nothing she’d ever felt before, and she went to jump down into the crater, but Jason hauled her back.
‘Get off me!’ she said, writhing in his grasp.
‘Sarah, no,’ Trish said, ‘look!’
A dark liquid gushed up from the bottom of the depression to cover the giant metal pentagram, which lurched into a clockwise rotation. Locke saw his escape route disappearing before his eyes, while Susan had already made it to the far side and scrambled up the slope to safety.
Locke jumped down onto the moving pentagram, intending to follow her, but seconds later he was wading waist deep in viscous oil. He looked around him as the level reached his chest, then cried out and clutched his head in pain. Unable to make it out, he staggered back to the steps and up towards the altar, his face contorted in agony. By then he was covered in black ooze and he fell to his knees to writhe in torment. With a sudden screech, he reared up and dug his fingers into his face, tearing into his flesh with his nails. He screamed and screamed again before gouging his knife into his cheek and down into his neck.
Trish gasped and averted her gaze as the blood flowed. The oil surged higher, and in a moment of lucidity Locke managed to drag his grappling gun clear and fire it towards them. The bolt whistled past their heads and punched into the glowing wall, but the discharge from the device ignited the oil. Flames licked up his arm and over his body. An instant later Locke had turned into a human torch as the fires raged and spread. With a final bloodcurdling shriek of terror, the SED facility commander plunged the blade into his own chest, once – twice – three times. The knife fell from his grasp and Dresden Locke slumped onto the steps and slid down into the black fluid to vanish beneath its burning surface.
Sarah stared in shock at the fiery lake that now encircled the central platform. Locke was gone, and with him her chance to save Riley.
‘My God,’ Jason said, ‘what is that stuff?’
‘It’s a neurotoxin,’ Goodwin said, ‘or a hallucinogen, or both. It’s everywhere down here. I had to swim through it to get here the first time. It nearly killed me. I think it’s used as some kind of test.’
‘Test?’ Jason said.
Goodwin looked past him to Sarah. ‘A test of faith.’
Sarah held his gaze for a moment before looking back to the central dais through the waves of heat and noticed something glinting in the oil near the altar’s base. She zoomed in her visor to see the edge of something metallic. It was the pendant.
She looked at Goodwin. ‘What did you just say?’
‘It’s a test of faith.’
‘No, before that; you said you swam through it?’
He nodded. ‘I used this.’ He indicated his helmet and baggy decontamination suit. ‘It doubles as a diving suit.’
Sarah looked down at her own suit and back to the pendant, then reached up to remove her Deep Reach helmet, which she held out to Goodwin.
He considered her for a moment and a sense of shared understanding passed between them. They would each do anything for the ones they loved. Goodwin twisted his transparent helmet from its locked position and they swapped headgear.
Trish grasped her arm. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going to get the pendant.’ Sarah secured her suit’s breathing mask over her face, then pulled on Goodwin’s helmet, locked it in place against her collar’s mechanism, and switched on its head-up-display.
‘It’s gone,’ Jason said, ‘we’re done.’
‘No, it’s there, I can see it.’ Sarah pointed in its direction and Jason turned to look.
‘It doesn’t matter if it’s there or not,’ Trish said, ‘you just saw what happened to Locke.’
‘And you heard what Goodwin told us,’ Sarah said, ‘it’s a test and without the pendant we can’t activate the Anakim tech and we’ll be stuck down here forever.’
‘I worked the megalith without your pendant,’ Goodwin said, ‘you just need the blue crystals.’
Trish gestured to him. ‘See, we might not need it!’
‘Although,’ – Goodwin looked at the frozen form of Rebecca – ‘it controlled me more than I did it … and someone died.’
Sarah stared into the burning oil that flowed round in a spiral from the crater’s centre out, its speed increasing into a slow, hypnotic whirlpool of flame.
‘I’m not sure if the suit will withstand the heat,’ Goodwin said, following her gaze. ‘The longer it burns, the hotter it’ll get.’
The roar of a Pharos echoed through the sphinx, sounding closer than before, and Sarah pulled up the zipper on her suit. ‘Then I better get moving.’
‘No.’ Trish moved in front of her. ‘It could kill you!’
Sarah glanced back at Riley’s alcove through the clearing mists. The vivid memory of his look of shock as the knife pierced his heart replayed over and over in her mind. ‘I have to try. I have to try and bring him back.’
The speed of the fiery whirlpool increased and the flames grew higher.
‘You can’t go in there,’ Jason said, as they backed away from the heat, ‘it’s too dangerous.’
‘I have no choice.’ Sarah hugged him. ‘Find the transportation device; if I don’t make it, you may still be able to get to the surface with Goodwin’s help.’
Goodwin shook her hand. ‘Call me Richard.’
She gave him a tired smile. ‘With Richard’s help.’
Goodwin stepped in to check her breathing apparatus. ‘The oil will enter the helmet,’ he said, ‘and as soon as it touches your skin the hallucinations will start. You’ll need to focus your mind, or you won’t come back.’
‘If I can get the altar to work,’ she said, ‘I’ll do my best to free your friends.’
Goodwin gave her a grim nod. ‘Good luck.’
‘Sarah,’ Jason said, ‘please don’t do this.’
She touched his cheek before Trish dragged her into a fierce embrace.
Sarah held her friend tight, the agony of separation unbearable. She made to pull away, but Trish wouldn’t let go.
‘I have to go,’ Sarah said.
Trish shook her head and mouthed ‘no’ as a tear ran down her face.
Sarah prised herself away and moved towards the flames, but her friend held onto her hand. Sarah gave Trish a fond smile and squeezed her fingers in a final farewell before turning to face the sinister crater, her expression hardening into determination.
Chapter Fifty Three
Alone and bereft, Sarah approached the inferno, which swirled past with ever-increasing speed. She double-checked that her helmet was sealed and dropped into a crouch. She could just make out the metal pentagram at the crater’s centre as the oil was thrown out from its rotation. The metallic structure spun faster around the dais, which remained static, and Sarah fought back her fear of the terrifying flames.
The heat built and she knew she couldn’t afford to wait any longer. She rocked back on her heels, took a deep breath and leapt into the swirling cauldron.
Fire roared around her before she plunged into the oil and darkness swallowed her like the blackest night. Swept sideway
s, she sank to the bottom, where the oil cooled and thickened. A flash of terror tore through her mind and she gasped in shock as horrific thoughts and images bombarded her like the strobe from hell. Fighting back a scream, she bowed her head and crawled forward against the flow. Sparks of electricity flashed before her eyes as the oil poured into her helmet. The internal display flickered dead and the hot, viscous liquid crept higher.
Blinded, Sarah felt the oil seep into her mask and she coughed and choked as noxious fumes made her eyes water and throat burn. Strange, ethereal lights flickered around her and the visions intensified. Panic swelled as pain seared her body and oil flowed into her mouth and up her nose.
Swept up by the whirlpool, she floated in semi-conscious freefall along the bottom of the crater. Her helmet clonked and scraped across its surface before shattering into pieces. Oil flooded into her lungs and Sarah spun into the pitch-black, out of control … and out of time.
Chapter Fifty Four
Sarah groaned and opened her eyes. A strange object moved in front of her. It flickered with a dull orange light and spun on its axis like a giant spinning top. Pain filled her chest and she coughed and retched as she choked for air. Rolling onto her front, she vomited up a gallon of black oil and sucked in a shuddering breath. The shock of reality returned and she saw the thing she’d been looking at wasn’t moving at all, she was. I’m on the pentagram, she thought. The steps of the dais that led up to the altar were thirty feet away and it was that which she’d seen moving round and round.
She glanced back to see a wall of black oil forced out by the pentagram’s speeding rotation. Five feet above, on the surface, the fires still raged and she clung on as the centrifugal force tried to cast her back into the seething flow. The metal pentagram must have risen ten feet, she realised, and the faster it spins, the higher it gets. As if on cue, the pentagram’s speed increased again and the structure inched higher, while buffeting winds caused her oil-damp hair to flutter in its wake.
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