New World

by Nathan Hystad

  We were still wearing our helmets, just in case the room was sealed off or some deadly gas had seeped through the ground, ready to kill us on arrival. The sensors showed there was air, oxygen levels normal. I unclasped the mask, the hiss loud in the quiet area.

  The air was stale. It was like walking into the back of my grandfather’s barn when I was a kid. Layers of dust had covered countless items he’d stored away from the turn of the century. The only living things to even go into that room were the spiders, who made happy homes of their own on the old oak furniture.

  I assumed spiders would be prevalent here as well, but when I looked for them, I saw nothing but dirt walls and dust particles floating around as we disturbed the portal room.

  “The door’s over here,” Leslie said, in her more than familiar voice. “It looks like stone.”

  We didn’t know just which pyramid we were under, or if we were going to be stuck trying to get out. I’d had nightmares the night before that we arrived, only to have the doorway inside covered by fallen rocks. It had been a few centuries since the portal had been used, so we had no idea what the condition was on the other side of the door. I pushed my fear of the unknown down, not letting myself worry.

  “Open it,” I said, and walked to them as Terrance used his weight to push on the large stone wall.

  “It won’t move!” Terrance grunted.

  Magnus moved beside him and started to push. After a minute of exertion, they gave up.

  “Wait. It wouldn’t be on hinges. It’s probably round. We need to roll it away,” Mary said, and I pictured a large stone circle on the other side. I lowered to the ground and saw slight openings at the corners of the doorway.

  “She’s right. We need to roll it.”

  “Which way?” Leslie asked. We had no way of knowing.

  “Look up here. I think these are handles.” Magnus ran his hand over the stone slab and showed us where a couple of handholds were recessed. “Not much room, but I bet we can get enough leverage, as long as there isn’t something jammed on the side of the circle out there.” I went beside him and jammed my fingers into the second opening. We pulled to the left, and after ten seconds of hard yanking, it started to roll. We kept pulling, and it rolled open.

  My heart hammered from effort and joy at our success. It was short-lived when I thought about how much further we needed to go before we could come back to this room to leave. It wasn’t going to be easy.

  We all ushered out of the portal room. “Should we close it up?” Mary asked me.

  “Good idea. I doubt anyone’s coming down here, but better safe than sorry. Mary, can you pin our location on your GPS?” I asked as Magnus and Leslie rolled the door back closed. The hallway we’d emerged into was shallow and went beyond the room in both directions.

  All we knew was we were underground, a pyramid on top of us. We just needed to get to higher ground, and then we could find our way out.

  “Look for elevation changes in the pitch of the ground,” Mary said, and we chose to go left from the room, because it seemed to rise slightly as you walked along it.

  The ceilings were low, and Magnus had to duck a few times to avoid hitting his head on jutting rocks. The halls were primarily dug from dirt, but rock was stuck into both the walls and ceiling, probably to help support the opening. We walked along the path for ten minutes, slowly moving and breathing in stale air. Mary had elected to put her mask back on her helmet, and Terrance joined her. If we didn’t get out of the basement here soon, I’d need the fresh air as well.

  “I’ll be damned,” Magnus said, stopping so suddenly that I walked right into his broad back.

  “What is it?” I asked, stepping around him to see for myself.

  The hall opened to a room, this one with more hieroglyphs. These looked different from the Shandra ones and were most likely done by ancient Egyptians. It showed small figures bowing on the ground to large people in animal masks, presumably their representations of the Theos they wouldn’t have ever seen.

  “At least they were smart enough to seal the portal and build a pyramid overtop it,” Mary said, running a gloved hand over the stone walls.

  “Do you think…?” I started to ask and let the question fall quiet.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and I bet some sad soul was lost on the other side a few times before they assumed their friends were just being killed.” Magnus was filming the room with his suit’s surveillance.

  I pictured an ancient Egyptian child playing with his sister, chasing her down a tunnel they’d found in the desert. She made it to the room first, awestruck by the glowing gemstone. She stood still, the game all but forgotten. The walls began to glow as she neared the table, and the pretty drawings put her into a trance. Her brother called to her from the doorway, older, more aware of danger. She ignored him, her heart pounding so loud she could hardly hear his words. She touched an image on the screen. The room shone brightly, and when it subsided, the boy was left alone.

  I opened my eyes and wondered if that had happened, or if my imagination was just filling in the blanks.

  “This way. I see stairs,” Leslie called from the far corner.

  Each step kicked up a puff of dust as we climbed them. They were made of stone now, not carved out of dirt like most of what we’d seen so far. I guessed this section was newer than the other one, added on when they were about to build the pyramid, or built afterward to connect the two.

  We found another door at the top, a stone circle we had to roll out of the way. Once out, we followed a hall in the dark, our suits lighting the way. I spotted old torch holders on the walls, some of the torches still mounted, the majority of their shapes gone to dust.

  “Anyone else feel like lighting one of those just to see what happens?” Magnus asked, and I could almost hear his grin.

  “I imagine they’d burn for a minute, then be ashes in your hand. They don’t just look a couple hundred years old, they look a couple thousand years old. I don’t need a carbon dating test to know that,” I said, trying to remember anything from the documentaries I’d seen as a kid in school. “If I recall, the pyramids housed the tombs of a queen and king, each in separate chambers. I’m sure there’s more to it, but if we follow the path that leads us up, we should be able to either get out or go to the ancient Egyptian mummified royalty.”

  “That sounds right to me too,” Mary confirmed. “I don’t know which pyramid we’re in, but they all took an insane amount of effort. I can’t believe there’s been a hidden portal down inside, and no one’s found it.”

  That got me thinking. “These days, they have all sorts of ultrasonic sensors that tell them what density of soil and rock are under things. How did they not learn there was an opening down here?” I asked, perplexed.

  “No idea. I’ll chalk it up to ancient alien gods,” Magnus said.

  I looked back at the hybrids, who had remained very quiet to this point. “Are you guys okay?”

  “The sooner we get out of this dusty tomb, the better. I’m not a fan of tight underground spaces,” Leslie said.

  Terrance slid his hand into Leslie’s. “Me neither.”

  The walkway kept going slightly uphill, but eventually, it came to an end. Magnus was ahead; he and Mary were feeling the walls.

  “There’s no exit,” Magnus said, and I instantly felt the walls closing in on me.

  “What do you mean, there’s no exit?” Leslie’s voice lifted, on the edge of panic.

  “We’ll find a way out,” Mary said.

  I tried to get a feel for where we could be. We’d walked a short way, and at an uphill trajectory. We were probably near the ground level, where they’d plopped the pyramid on top of the portal access. If archeologists hadn’t found what was below, there had to be a layer of thick rock between the levels.

  We spent an hour looking for any sign of an exit, and by the time we’d given up, we were covered in dust and Leslie was crying.

  “We’ll be okay. We can always
go back,” Mary said, trying to comfort her.

  “We aren’t going back!” she yelled. “Our family is up there, stuffed away in a prison, tormented and dying. I’ve seen enough of humans to know how they’ll treat us.”

  “Kind of like how you were trying to fly our comatose bodies into the sun, hey?” Magnus asked, egging her on. It was clear he was at his wits’ end with Operation Stuck-Under-a-Pyramid too.

  “I don’t have to justify it. You all know our story. We repented and asked forgiveness. Some of you gave it, some of you couldn’t.” Terrance took over for his sobbing counterpart.

  “The last time anyone from Earth knew what was happening, you two escaped a secret military base and snuck around the Long Island camp, having midnight clandestine meetings. Remember the bodies? Who do you think they blamed for that?” Magnus added fuel to the fire.

  “We did it for them!” Terrance said, pushing himself chest to chest with Magnus, though he stood a good six inches shorter than the Scandinavian.

  “Lot of good it did them. You two were living easy on planet log-cabin, and they were blamed for everything!” Magnus yelled back, spittle flying from his mouth as he shouted.

  “It was your goddamn friend Mae that killed those guards! We aren’t to blame!” Leslie screeched from the ground, her hands on top of her head in a frantic gesture.

  “Enough!” I called, standing between the two men, pushing Magnus back. For a second, he looked like a Rottweiler who’d had a bone taken from its mouth; I was worried he was going to snap at me. But his common sense took over, and he turned, walking away. “Neither of you are right, and neither are wrong. Both sides are to blame. We may not be able to fix it, but we can change the outcome now. We won’t be able to do that and set an example if we can’t even work together without fighting.”

  Terrance leaned against the wall and slid down until his butt was touching the dirt floor beside Leslie.

  The hall had gotten pin-drop quiet, and Leslie broke the silence. “You’re right. We’re with you. No more bad blood. I’m sorry for all the trouble we caused. If we hadn’t escaped, you wouldn’t be here right now. Maybe humans would eventually have seen us as friends. Instead, we ran away, which was exactly what Mae wanted. The Bhlat are now knocking on your door, and it could be our fault, and we made you lose seven years of your loved ones’ lives.”

  We hadn’t told them all of this, so clearly, they’d been listening as we talked to Kareem. Something struck me at that moment. Something Kareem had asked, or almost asked.

  “Guys, Kareem started to ask if we had our...something…then cut himself short before he looked at the pin on the uniform. What if someone added a lift on the other side of the ground? Anyone with this technology could press their pin, glow green, and lift toward the target embedded above by the Deltra or some other ancient race after the pyramid was built.”

  I walked around the halls again, this time with a renewed vigor. Magnus and Mary were near the end, and I moved them out of the way as I searched, this time not for a handle or a secret door or hatch in the ceiling, but a sign on the floor. I used my boots to brush away dirt from the ground near the end wall and found that section was really a slab of stone with dirt covering it. Mary got down on her knees, and I joined her, wiping the stone surface with our gloved hands, clearing the dirt off, until we could see it.

  Laughing, tired, and covered in dust, we hugged; the image of Earth’s icon was emblazoned on the rock.

  “You did it again,” Magnus said, clapping me on the shoulder after he helped Mary up off the dirt.

  “I’ll go first.” I looked up at the ceiling, wondering how thick the space between us and the well-trodden paths of the pyramid above was.

  “Are you sure?” Mary said, worry thick in her voice.

  I nodded, ready to get out of the sealed-off trap we were in. “There have to be openings here too; otherwise, we wouldn’t be breathing in this stale air. If anything happens to me and my plan fails, look for a spot with air flow. It may be your way out. And if that doesn’t work, go back and convince Kareem to give us what we asked for. We’ll bring your friends back after we deal with the Bhlat.” The last bit was for Leslie and Terrance. I caught his gaze and held it there for a moment. He nodded solemnly.

  Mary took my face in her hands. “Do it. Communicate back to us, and we’ll be right up.” I felt the press of her lips against mine. They were dry and covered in old sediment, but I didn’t care. Not caring who was watching, I kissed her back.

  “Enough already. Tell you what. You get us out of here, and you two can have seven minutes in heaven at the Queen’s chamber up above,” Magnus said.

  I stopped the kiss short and smiled at Mary. She was so beautiful; so wonderful. The few months we’d had on New Spero just being a couple was the best time of my life. We walked Maggie, tended the garden, chopped wood… that was the life I wanted for us, at least part-time. She seemed to be reading my mind, because she just gave me a slow, soft nod, her eyes just on the brink of tearing up.

  “See you on the other side.” I clasped my helmet tight, hearing the familiar hiss as it pressurized, then hit the pin on my uniform. The familiar weightless feeling engulfed me, and I floated upward.

  SEVENTEEN

  I forced myself to open my eyes, only after a count to five. I instantly regretted it. I was still inside the rock, and even though I couldn’t feel it, I thought it was going to crush me. Just as I calmed myself out of the sudden shock, I emerged from the stone.

  The green light around me dissipated, leaving me on shaky knees in the pyramid passageway. My lights were on, and they showed me two directions to go. One careened at a downward angle, the other elevated at an acute pitch. That was the way we needed to go.

  “Dean, are you there?” Mary’s voice carried into my ear. I’d been so distracted, I’d forgotten to tell them I made it.

  “I’m here and the path is clear.” I stood out of the way, making room for my counterparts to float their way to the main section of the pyramid with me.

  “Gotcha,” came the reply.

  Soon four figures covered in green breached the hard floor, and I noticed the link in the ceiling above. There was another symbol on the ceiling, which was at least ten feet high here, too high for most people to reach unaided. The Deltra must have planted the beaming magnet above the symbol.

  “Let’s move. We wasted enough time down there.” Magnus moved past me, taking charge. I was happy for him to do it. “Shouldn’t we run into tourists or something?”

  “After everything that’s happened, and is currently happening to Earth, I think the travel business to ancient structures is a thing of the past,” I said, hoping I was right. We wanted to get in and out as stealthily as possible.

  The pyramid paths were much cleaner up here, the walls cut out of large stone blocks. We came to a set of stairs leading up, and knew they’d been added in the past century. Long wooden rails lined the sides, with manufactured steps to keep tourists from falling or suing someone. The sudden jolt of modern in the ancient pyramid was jarring.

  “Looks like we’re on the right path,” Terrance said from behind us.

  We kept moving up the stairs, taking two at a time in a jog. It didn’t take us long to get to a fork where there was an option to turn a one-eighty and go up again. Signs pointed with images of a tomb for the Queen’s chamber and the King’s chamber above, with pictures in the backdrop of the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the seven wonders of the world.

  “Now we know where we are, at least,” Mary muttered.

  It felt far from Russia, and we just hoped that when we got outside, we weren’t too late.

  “As much as I want to go see a real mummified corpse, let’s make a move,” Magnus said. When no one disagreed, he moved for the exit.

  I expected to be blinded by sunlight as we left, but it was night; the area’s lights were shut down. Closed for business. We left, ready for anything as we did so, passing two columns at the front o
f the pyramid. At the same moment, we all craned our necks to the sky, looking for signs of battle or destruction.

  Nothing. Just the light of a half moon, and stars shining at us from light years away.

  Magnus looked at me and shrugged.

  “How do we reach Dinkle?” I asked, though we’d been over it a few times.

  Magnus pulled out a tablet. “We left the cell technology on our tablets for just such an emergency. As long as Jeff is still kicking, we should be able to reach him. Patty asked him to stay behind so that someone she trusted was here.”

  “Did he want to leave?” Mary asked.

  “He was the world’s most alien-obsessed man, with a talk show about it. Of course he wanted to get to a colony planet. But at the end of the day, he listened to her because she heard him out at the start and brought him onto the team. He was there when we tested our cloaking technology and dismantled the Kraski ships. It was the equivalent of you seeing the inside of the Yankees’ locker room.” Magnus walked some way out, and even in the dimly-lit night sky, I could make out the smaller pyramids nearby, the grounds a barren rocky plateau.

  That brought me back to the day two years ago, when I’d gone to Yankee Stadium with my new little friend, Carey. Running the bases with him chasing after me had been a bright spot in an otherwise overwhelming time.

  Magnus opened the facemask on his helmet, and we removed ours, stashing them in a sack from my pack, and placed them under a grouping of broken rocks where they would be almost impossible to find. We also slipped off our uniforms and did the same thing with them. We were going to be conspicuous enough walking around with rifles in our bags. Blending in was going to be key.

  Magnus was fiddling with his tablet, and after he tapped the screen one last time, he crossed his other fingers and looked to the sky. “Jeff?” he asked, speaking into the earpiece mic. “Oh, thank God. It’s Magnus. We need your help.”