‘Whoever, or whatever, “they” may be, the first part of the first message is perhaps the most troubling.’
‘It’s too late?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Too late,’ Goodwin murmured, ‘too late to hide?’ A recollection of Rebecca quoting the Bible drifted up from the past. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. ‘Jude, chapter one,’ he said, ‘verse six.’
‘Sir?’ Hilt said, confused.
Goodwin gave a shake of his head. ‘It’s nothing.’ But is it? he wondered, is it nothing? The ‘great day’ must mean the Apocalypse. And the next wave of meteors due to impact the surface in less than a year couldn’t be viewed as anything else.
Goodwin knew Hilt wouldn’t shy away from any biblical fervour; the Darklight Commander would supersede any personal judgement with an open mind and a deliberate logic. And yet Goodwin didn’t want to risk damaging the man’s trust in him. After all, he hasn’t seen me at my worst. But the question remained: is the passage from the Bible a prophecy from the past, a truth hidden in plain sight, or just a fanciful reach conjured forth by my own desire for answers? The latter seems the most likely. Except, he thought, the message left for Hilt said otherwise. What if it wasn’t the Pharos that ‘knew they were here’, but the beings I saw in the Anakim frieze, the Nephilim? He recalled something else Rebecca had said when they’d first been investigating his theories. The Nephilim were one of four things: the children of fallen angels and human women, fallen angels who possessed men, the descendents of Adam who followed false gods, or ordinary men who rejected God and chose to be wicked.
The second definition in the list jumped out at him: Fallen angels who possessed men. If Joseph and Susan hadn’t been possessed, he didn’t know what was. And even though he’d kept his sanity, however tenuously, he accepted he may well have been a victim of a more insidious type of possession. Which means the Pharos could be the Nephilim. He shook his head. Only they don’t match the beings depicted in the Anakim friezes. He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced. You’re going round in circles, Richard!
‘Are you alright?’ Hilt said.
‘Yes, I’m fine, just a headache.’ Goodwin looked round at the small mentally-handicapped woman as Hilt’s previous words returned to haunt him. ‘So, you think Susan isn’t Susan anymore?’
‘She’s still her,’ Hilt said, ‘she’s still in there, but so is something else; at least we have no reason to believe whatever was controlling her has gone.’
‘The rash on her arm,’ Goodwin said, ‘from the blue crystal bracelet, it’s faded.’
‘And that proves what?’
Goodwin looked down at his own wrist where his skin healed from a similar inflammation.
‘That the visual indicator has gone,’ Hilt said, ‘doesn’t mean the cause has. How many viruses stay in the body and show no symptoms? I can think of a handful without any effort.’
‘You think it’s dormant inside her?’ Goodwin touched his wrist and looked at Hilt. ‘Then that means—’
The Darklight officer held his gaze.
‘That’s why you were reluctant to tell me, isn’t it?’ Goodwin said. ‘After I told you about Joseph and what happened to me you think it’s still in me too.’
‘It’s a possibility.’
Goodwin felt dizzy and he moved away from Hilt to gather his thoughts. That he’d rather have not known about the latent entity that might be residing in his mind was an understatement. But equally, he reasoned, forewarned is forearmed. A part of him had known, anyway, that whatever had disturbed his mind might still be there, he just hadn’t wanted to accept the reality of it. Except now he felt like a noose hung round his neck and that any moment the trapdoor could be opened.
Goodwin heard the crunch of stones underfoot as the Darklight leader returned to his side.
‘You saw how Dr. Vandervoort viewed Susan,’ Hilt said, stopping next to him, ‘and she didn’t even have the whole picture. Would you want her viewing you with the same hostility, the same distrust?’
Goodwin had already experienced such a scenario, but it would be nothing to how people would view him if they knew the full truth. ‘And you want me back in charge?’
‘From what you’ve told me, this thing wasn’t able to control you as comprehensively as it did Susan and Joseph, which gives us an advantage. A window into how it thinks. If it happens again, we’ll have the opportunity to anticipate its next move. As to being in charge, I’ll leave that up to you. Do you think you’re still capable?’
Goodwin considered his options. Hilt obviously still trusts me. God knows why. And I do feel better. Kara was right; my mood has lifted since the ceiling activated. So what do I do? Take control of my destiny once more, or sit back and wait for things to take their course? Deep down, Goodwin knew he was fit enough to lead, at least, for now. ‘I do,’ he said, ‘I am, but as soon as I show any sign of …’
‘Losing it?’ Hilt said.
‘Yes, we’ll revert back to Kara taking the lead.’
‘Agreed.’
Goodwin stood in silence, watching while Susan continued to rummage in the pebbles close by, and then he thought of something. ‘Do you think the Pharos chose Susan and Joseph because of their learning difficulties?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Then what about me?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If that’s the case why choose me? Do you think it sensed my depression as a weakness, making me easier to control?’
‘It’s possible.’
Goodwin cursed inwardly. Hilt could be a frustrating man to talk to at times. ‘Unless I was chosen by chance. Although, you said the Pharos would only be found if they wanted to be found, and you’re probably right. Which means it revealed itself to me and Kara first, on purpose. It selected me on purpose.’
‘Why not?’ Hilt said. ‘It makes sense if it knew you were our leader.’
‘We say “it”,’ – Goodwin picked up a handful of pebbles – ‘but there was more than one of them.’ He launched a stone into the lake in frustration. ‘We know nothing about them; we’re as lost as we were before.’
‘Only now we have light,’ Hilt said. ‘It changes everything.’
‘Does it though – really? We’re still trapped down here; the surface is beyond our reach. You’ve located USSB Sanctuary, but it’ll be more hostile than ever. Everything is different, but we remain – cut off from the rest of humanity.’
‘For now,’ Hilt said, ‘but now we have a living ecosystem that could sustain us, and light to live by. Our position has improved beyond measure. Maybe not in the way we foresaw, but it’s in the right direction. And it’s all down to Susan.’
‘Don’t you mean the thing that was controlling her?’
‘Maybe, except after she’d stolen the crystal from my armour she appeared to be her old self. When we’d seen her before, under the creature’s thrall, her eyes were bloodshot and her movement was … abnormal.’
‘She got the blue crystal from you?’
Hilt nodded. ‘When I was trying to free Rebecca from the wall.’
‘How did she know you had it?’
‘A sixth sense from whatever’s inside her? I don’t know.’
‘So Susan saved Sarah?’
‘It appears so.’
‘Or there’s still the possibility she was being controlled,’ Goodwin said, ‘and the thing inside her just wanted to activate the device.’
‘Yes.’
‘So basically we have no way of knowing what really happened, or why. We may have light, but we’re still very much in the dark.’
Hilt tapped the Darklight emblem on his chest. ‘Then it seems I’ve come to the right place.’
Goodwin managed a smile before looking up at the ceiling. ‘Will this last, do you think, now that it’s activated?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see, but if these Pharos wanted the ceiling operational, I doubt they would have gone to so much effort for just a few hours, or days, of light.’
Goodwin threw another stone into the lake and studied the concentric rings that rippled out across its surface. ‘I hope you’re right,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I could have gone on much longer the way we were.’
‘You’d be surprised, the human spirit can shine unbreakably bright,’ Hilt looked at Susan. ‘Where strong men and women would have broken, a fragile child in an adult’s body survived.’
Goodwin flicked a pebble to the ground. Hilt’s right; I could have gone on, but I would have been existing, not living, and what life is that? Life is still life, his other voice said, and where there’s life there’s hope … beautiful hope.
‘So the question remains,’ Hilt said, ‘what was it all for?’
Goodwin sighed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We’re always falling into the same trap; we get blinded by events and the one question we need to ask, we don’t. We know these creatures, the Pharos as you call them, are highly intelligent. They’ve proven again and again that they can manipulate and control us, if not directly then indirectly, although it seems, if they have the mind, even the sanctity of our inner reasoning, even our dreams, can be influenced. They can outthink us, pre-empt us and devise a complex web of unconnected events that will further their plans.’
‘What are you getting at, Commander? As you’re not inspiring confidence.’
Hilt looked out at the city as the Anakim sun dipped below the chamber’s horizon. ‘The Pharos led Sarah Morgan to us, or us to Morgan. It was waiting for her, like it knew she was coming. She was crucial to its plan, as Susan was, as Joseph was … as you were. The central spire was activated well in advance, in preparation for the final act. It conspired across hundreds of miles of underground terrain with exact precision. To me, that smacks of a higher power … of a controlling, singular force.’
Goodwin watched as a simulated dusk took hold. It was an awe inspiring sight and yet he felt the oppressive weight of the dark returning.
‘The ceiling’s activation helps us, but the question is who – or what – else does it help?’ Hilt pointed at some of the distant spires, which had retained the faint glow of energy, the vision only now revealed by the fading light. ‘And why,’ he said, ‘did it want Sanctuary’s power turned back on?’
Goodwin stared at the gleaming towers of the city, unable to answer the Darklight leader’s questions.
The flicker of purple lightning preceded a rumble of thunder before the pitter patter of rain drops could be heard falling from the skies above.
Water trickled down Goodwin’s face and neck, but the uncomfortable sensation couldn’t distract his mind from what Hilt had just said. Why has light returned to Sanctuary? What do the Pharos want? Is there something guiding their actions, and who – or what – knew they were here?
A fluorescent shimmer caught Goodwin’s eye, momentarily distracting him from his deliberations. A beautiful butterfly fluttered through the air towards him as it sought shelter from the cloudburst. He held out his hand and the creature landed on his palm while it’s tiny red and blue wings vibrated and shook from the impact of the continuing fall of rain. Goodwin considered the tiny creature for a moment before moving his other hand to shield it from the growing storm.
As the ceiling’s lightshow finally ended, Goodwin looked up through the clouds to see starlight constellations twinkling high above on the chamber’s ceiling. And in the distance, hovering over the abandoned city, the white glow of an artificial moon hung in suspended animation. The long dead Anakim architects had designed Sanctuary not only to stand the test of time, but to replicate the surface above in all its splendour.
‘And God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light,’ Goodwin murmured.
‘And God saw that the light was good,’ Hilt said. ‘Revelations, chapter one, verse four.’
Goodwin looked up at the Darklight leader, who was watching Susan as she held her arms aloft while a small host of luminous butterflies swarmed above her head.
The certainty with which Hilt had quoted the scripture and its location was a revelation in itself. Goodwin was surprised, shocked even. He wondered how much more of the text the Darklight man knew.
‘And God separated the light from the darkness,’ Goodwin said, ‘God called the light Day—’
‘—and the darkness he called Night.’ Hilt looked at him, his expression full of shared understanding.
‘And there was evening and there was morning,’ Goodwin said, his heart lifting, ‘the first day.’
‘And tomorrow will be our first day,’ Hilt said, ‘the first of many.’
‘They know we’re down here, now,’ Goodwin said. ‘Sanctuary’s generals, Terra Force … Joiner. Whatever else, we know that much, they really do know we’re here.’
Hilt nodded. ‘As do the Pharos.’
‘And they’ll be back.’ Goodwin felt his spirit falter as the rain eased. ‘They might all be back.’
‘They might, and if they do return …’ – Hilt’s face darkened – ‘we’ll be waiting.’ He reached out to remove Goodwin’s hand from its protective duty and the butterfly he’d been sheltering flew up into clearing skies.
The beautiful, glowing insect flitted away to join its siblings as they headed towards the distant gleam of the Anakim city. And as Goodwin stood there gazing out at the fantastical vision of the underground world, he wondered what they should do next. He wondered how he could continue to protect those under his care and how he could answer the confounding riddles posed by circumstance and the immense structure that continued to hold them hostage within its endless halls.
The greatest wonder the world had ever seen was thrust into illumination once more, as it had been when the mighty Anakim had once strode the Earth, eons past. At least part of their ancient realm had been resurrected and regardless of what happened next, Goodwin knew the darkness may have been vanquished for now, but the days ahead were still fraught with peril.
The questions remained. Was Goodwin’s mind still his own? What did the Pharos want? Why had the light returned? No one knew, but one thing was for certain, Sanctuary, the once eternal domain of darkness, the most majestic of ancient structures on Earth, would never be the same again.
Chapter Seventy
As the storm retreated into the distance two lone men, the deposed Director of USSB Steadfast, Richard Goodwin, and the indomitable figure of the Darklight leader, Commander Hilt, made their way back to camp. But as they reached a rise, they paused and looked back the way they’d come.
‘Susan,’ Goodwin said, ‘Susan, come on, this way!’
Further down the beach, the small woman remained deep in concentration as she placed down a final stone before rising and running to catch up.
Left on the ground behind her, positioned in near perfect formation, was the outline of a symbol made out of pebbles, a symbol of forgotten origins and one – had Goodwin seen it – that would have sent a shiver of warning coursing down his spine. Comprising a five pointed star and a surrounding circle, it was a symbol loaded with both human and Anakim meaning … the symbol of an inverted pentagram.
Symbol
Chapter Seventy-One
‘Sir, the second expedition should be two days’ hike away from our location. Shall we rest up and rendezvous with them here?’
The Terra Force commando, Major Delph Armstrong, turned to his lieutenant before looking up at the twinkling stars on the ceiling of the cave system they now traversed. ‘No, we wait for daybreak and then head back to base.’
‘Daybreak?’
Armstrong gestured towards the roof of the cave. ‘We’ve had a sunrise and sunset on the last two days; do you think it’s going to change now?’
The lieutenant peered up at the strange, but welcome, phenomena. ‘It’s not really the sun though, is it, Major? More like a bri
ghtening light.’
‘I don’t care what it’s like, all I know is it’s better than the pitch-black.’ Armstrong stowed his weapon on his back-plate and looked behind. A few thousand Special Forces soldiers wound their way through a long system of tunnels as they retraced their steps to USSB Sanctuary. Ever since their encounter with the Darklight mercenaries and the three lights – the things the assassins had referred to as Pharos – the mission had imploded. They hadn’t been expecting a war, no one had. They were there for one thing and one thing only: the capture of Sarah Morgan and the retrieval of the stolen artefacts. And even though they were trained to expect the unexpected, the three phantom lights had struck fear into the hearts of all but the stupid or psychopathic.
Armstrong signalled a halt and the column of soldiers slowed their forced march to a stop. ‘Send out the scouts, I want the way ahead secured. I don’t want any more surprises.’
‘The Pharos?’ The lieutenant grasped his rifle tighter. ‘Sir, what are they? Some are saying they’re some kind of guardians of Sanctuary.’
Armstrong stared into a dark tunnel where the ceiling had failed to activate. Its sinister blackness seemed worse now that the rest of the area sparkled with simulated stars. ‘I don’t know what they are,’ he said, ‘I just never want to see one again.’ A memory of screaming, dying men flashed into his mind before a whisper of movement made him reach for his weapon.
‘I’m afraid, Major,’ said a chilling voice that made Armstrong freeze in place, ‘on that score, you’re going to be disappointed.’
♦
The tall figure of Ophion Nexus emerged from the darkness. The camouflage on his armour shimmered back to gleaming chrome and the Terra Force commandos relaxed their guard a fraction.
‘I thought you were all dead,’ Armstrong said, gesturing for his lieutenant to lower his rifle.
Ophion raised his visor. ‘The weak always doubt the strong.’
Ancient Origins: Books 4 - 6 (Ancient Origins Boxset Book 2) Page 31
