The Pandora Room: A Novel

by Christopher Golden

  A moment later, Walker saw that he’d been wrong. Two sentries had been left behind, dark silhouettes of men guarding the entrance, preventing anyone else from getting inside but not ready for someone trying to get out. Lamar ran toward them, calling for help.

  Smart son of a bitch, Walker thought even as the sentries turned toward the sound of his shouting. They knew Lamar a hell of a lot better than they knew Walker. Dunlap would have known who to shoot, but the sergeant was back inside the cave, restoring order underground.

  “He’s one of them!” Lamar shouted. “He’s gonna kill me!”

  Walker had been shot before. He didn’t want to die, but more importantly, he couldn’t take the risk of letting Lamar outside. The jar might be empty, but even the chance that it could be deadly meant he had no choice.

  He went down on one knee, took aim, pulled the trigger. Two gunshots echoed off the stone walls. One bullet punched through Lamar’s thigh, and the other hit him in the lower back, just to the left of his spine. He stumbled, but momentum carried him forward, and he crashed to the tunnel floor with the camera case still strapped across his chest. Both Lamar and the cushioned case bounced once and then went still.

  The sentries shouted. With the weird play of light and shadow from the lighting in the tunnel, they might not know what they were looking at, but they took cover on either side of the exit, thinking more gunshots were on the way. One of the sentries ducked in and squeezed off a barrage. Bullets chipped the wall, even as Walker threw his gun away. It skittered along the stone floor, and he went down on his chest, hands stretched out in front of him.

  “Don’t shoot! I tossed the gun. Get Lieutenant Cobb!”

  That gave them pause. “Who the fuck are you?” one of them barked.

  “Ben Walker. I’m unarmed.” His voice echoed, despite being muffled by his filtration mask and because he lay on his chest.

  The two sentries hustled down into the tunnel, both covering him with their weapons, ready to put a dozen holes in him. One crouched to check Lamar’s pulse, and Walker craned his neck to watch them. He saw the pool of blood spreading around Lamar.

  “Weak pulse,” the crouching sentry said. His name tag read RUIZ.

  The other one reached for the camera case.

  “No!” Walker shouted. “Don’t touch it. Just get Cobb and Dr. Durand. Whatever the hell you do, do not open that case.”

  TWELVE

  Martin had spent his life blending in. He had always had a way with a joke, but he had rarely been the funniest guy in the room. In school, he had quietly excelled, never quite earning the same approbation from his instructors that the more outspoken students had. In a club, he would wait until his friends had all gone off to dance before asking a woman to dance with him. Working for Sophie on the Beneath Project had changed him, changed his life. She had made him site supervisor three months earlier, when the person who’d held the job had finished up work in the east wing and gone home. The courage he’d mustered up to flirt with Sophie, even obliquely, had come from some hidden reserve within him. It had been idiotic and inappropriate, but she had always seemed amused, and somehow—though he had known the flirtation meant nothing—it had given him new confidence.

  But Martin still loathed being the center of attention. And that had never been truer than now.

  “Martin, brother,” Elio Cortez said, “you want to tell us what’s going on here?”

  Alton asked if that had been gunfire that they’d heard, which Martin thought had to be the stupidest question he had ever heard. He and Alton had become friends, and he respected the man as an archaeologist, even hoped to be half as good at his job as Alton was, once he received his doctorate. But they had all seen Dunlap and Walker kill the two jihadis—or whoever they were—who had infiltrated Derveyî. They had all seen Lamar running for the exit with Kim shouting after him and with Walker and Sophie giving chase.

  The atrium shook with the impact of another explosion aboveground. Dozens were gathered in that space and some of them shouted, even screamed. Rachel and a historian named Mursal held on to each other and went down on their knees, heads bent almost as if they were in prayer, but Martin thought it was just a strange attempt to protect themselves if the ceiling should cave in. They were brilliant people, but of course kneeling and covering their heads would not save them.

  The sound of gunfire—of war, really—echoed down through the entryway of Derveyî all the way to the atrium.

  “Martin?” Cortez prodded.

  “Lamar is dead. Someone’s going to have to—”

  Dr. Tang caught up with him from behind, making Martin realize how slowly he was walking.

  “I need volunteers to move Lamar and the two intruders,” Dr. Tang said, glancing around at the gathered staff members as she walked beside Martin through the atrium. “If there’s a space away from everyone, isolated, that I can use temporarily as an examination room, that would be helpful.”

  So cold, Martin thought. Clinical. People would not love her for it, but they responded to that sense of authority and practicality.

  Several hands went up.

  Beyza stood in the midst of those gathered in the atrium. “The first chamber on the left as you enter the east wing,” she said, glancing at the volunteers. “There’s still lighting rigged in there, still connected to the generator. Nobody goes in there from now on without Sophie, myself, or Dr. Tang giving you the okay.”

  Dmitri the cook separated himself out from the others. “Can someone please tell us what the hell is going on here?” he snapped. He wore an angry expression, but his voice cracked with fear as he pointed at the camera case, which hung from Martin’s shoulder. “And what the fuck is that supposed to be?”

  People milled around, but now they fell silent, staring at Martin, making him the unwilling center of attention again.

  “It’s … it’s Lamar’s camera case,” he said.

  Dmitri started toward him, and several others also began to approach. Bastien and Mursal, Rachel and Cortez … they all drifted nearer, frustration and fear on their faces. The cave shook, and everyone took a collective breath, listening to the crackle of gunfire from outside, hoping Derveyî did not collapse around them.

  “I know it’s Lamar’s camera case,” Dmitri said after a moment. “What I want to know is, what’s in it? Lamar ran for the exit. I figure he was stealing something or Walker wouldn’t have shot him.”

  Cortez laughed. “Are you stupid, chef?”

  Beyza shot him a dark look. “Elio, don’t.”

  In that moment, Martin realized the rumors about Beyza and Cortez were true, but that thought vanished in an instant as Dmitri and Bastien came toward him. Dmitri spoke, angry and afraid, but it was Bastien who grabbed the strap of the camera case and tried to tug it off Martin, even though he had slung it across his shoulder.

  “No! Don’t!” he called.

  Cortez moved in, grabbed Bastien, and shoved him back. The camera case jostled and bumped against Martin, and he held his breath inside his filtration mask, hoping Lamar had thought to cushion the stolen artifact well. Pandora and Anesidora did not seem like myths to him in that moment, and neither did the curses of the gods.

  “Please!” he said. “Don’t do that!”

  Beyza put a hand on Dmitri’s arm. “Are you stupid? Don’t touch that!”

  They all went silent, staring at her instead of Martin. He understood. Beyza might be serious about her work, but she had never shouted at any of them before.

  “You fool,” Cortez said quietly to Dmitri. “It’s the jar. Lamar tried to steal the jar.”

  They all shifted, some just a few steps and others much farther, and suddenly a path opened right down the middle of the atrium. Nobody wanted to get in Martin’s way now.

  “Are … Martin, are we in danger?” Marissa asked.

  He looked at her, this hardworking woman who had taught him as much as he had learned from Sophie and Lamar combined, because he had learned from them b
y observation, while Marissa had gently corrected and instructed him for months, making him better at his job every day.

  Martin smiled. “Do you hear gunfire? We are under attack.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Dr. Tang took his arm and gave him a soft push, getting his legs moving again. “The answer to your question is that we do not know, but I am going to do everything in my power to find out.”

  “In the meantime,” Beyza said, “it’s best you all return to your quarters and stay there until we know more.”

  Some of them nodded in relief and began to move off immediately. Others milled about in clusters, talking among themselves. Dmitri stood with Rachel and Bastien and several others.

  When the cook began to cough, hardly anyone took notice.

  * * *

  Everything had changed. Sophie and Kim had taken a few minutes to bring order to chaos, but they had left the atrium before the others had come down from topside. Beyza, Dr. Tang, and Martin had gone to join Walker there, to help with the jar and with Lamar’s body.

  The thought sent a tremor through Sophie. Lamar’s body. The phrase broke something inside her.

  Now she stood in the column chamber and listened carefully. The explosions had ceased, but the sound of gunfire still filtered down through ventilation shafts. At first she had thought this was a good sign, that it meant the jihadis would not just overwhelm them, sweep through the camp, and invade Derveyî to kill them all and take the jar. Upstairs, while Sophie had stood staring at Lamar’s bleeding corpse, Walker had explained that he would have expected the New Caliphate to hit and run, that an ongoing fight would mean they believed they had superior numbers and could take the camp.

  Sophie did not share Walker’s opinion with anyone else, but with every minute the combat raged on, her disquiet and sense of urgency grew. Dread slithered through her with the thoroughness of the best drugs and the worst. She stood in the column chamber, at the top of the steps that led down into the Pandora Room, and stared at the dead soldier on the floor, facing away from her. The way he had fallen, he might have been sleeping if not for the pool of blood around him, and the wicked knife that lay like a stained, gleaming island in the midst of that pool.

  “Sophie?” Kim said. The woman stood a few feet behind her, awaiting instructions.

  If Beyza had followed orders, the staff had been instructed to seek shelter in their quarters, to gather any weapons they could find, and to stay in groups. It seemed far too little, but as soon as reality began to settle in, they would all realize the hard truth that Sophie had confronted the moment the attack topside had begun—they had no way out of here, no way to escape if the New Caliphate made it into the tunnels. The original layout of the place had included at least two other doors that they knew of, but they had not gone to the trouble of excavating those entrances, thinking it would only make the dig harder to protect.

  “Just … give me a minute,” she said now. Her throat felt dry and raspy, and her chest ached. It would be so easy to attribute that to Lamar … to the sting of his betrayal and her grief at losing him.

  Dead. Lamar’s dead. The concept felt so difficult, like trying to tell herself the world had indeed been flat all along.

  How did I not see it? How did I not know?

  She told herself there would be answers. His bank accounts would be researched, his whole life autopsied in the quest for an explanation for his behavior. It had to be leverage, she felt sure. Whoever had done this had some kind of pressure to use against him. He’d known the risks—even if he had never really believed the jar might contain curses or disease, he’d known the possibility was there.

  “Asshole,” she whispered. If only he’d talked to her. If only …

  The worst words in the English language. If only.

  “I’m sorry,” Kim said quietly. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Not you, Ms. Kim.” She gave the other woman a weak smile. “Not you.”

  The dead guard had fallen to the left of the stairwell entrance. His blood had pooled and run into cracks and runnels in the stone floor, but it wasn’t the only blood up here in the column chamber. They had passed a smattering of red on the floor a dozen feet back, red turned black by the glare of the industrial lighting. Dr. Tang had said this was where Lamar had assaulted her. She had come back down, wanting another look at the jar, wanting to talk to the USAMRIID techs. They were her colleagues, and she wanted their input.

  According to Dr. Tang, she had been nearly to the worship chamber and she’d turned around, come back down to speak with those techs. She had not yet reached the stairs when she heard the scuffle. She saw the guard, bleeding and dying, but from down those thirteen steps she’d heard a gunshot, a fight, something shattering.

  Now Sophie descended the stairs herself and entered the Pandora Room, leaving Kim waiting in the column chamber.

  One of the techs lay off to the right, the clear plastic face shield of his hazmat suit completely painted with gore from the inside. The bullet seemed to have gone through the back of his head, the results spraying out the front. The other had been beaten with one of the lighting rigs. The gun had somehow landed in the far corner of the room, in the shadows born of having a quarter of its illumination used to commit murder. The tech had grabbed for the gun. Sophie didn’t need to be a forensic scientist to work it out. She had unearthed enough death sites as an archaeologist to see it in her mind’s eye. The tech had gone for the gun and they’d struggled, but the tech had won possession of the weapon. Lamar had grabbed the only thing nearby, the metal lighting rig, and smashed the gun from the man’s grip, and then kept smashing.

  Lamar. Her friend had done this. Sophie thought she ought to be crying, but no tears came to her eyes. The Pandora Room had never felt so small, so suffocating. The copper stink of blood filled the air, and she felt nauseous. She coughed through her filtration mask, and it hurt like hell. A little bile rose in her throat, but she swallowed it down.

  She stared at the altar, at the empty space where the jar ought to have been, and she jumped a little when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye, but it was only Dr. Tang entering the room.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “It’s fine,” Sophie told her.

  “Martin will be here in a moment. He’s being very careful with the camera case.”

  “I have no doubt,” Sophie replied. “You gave the soldiers filtration masks.”

  “All of the soldiers down here with us, yes,” Dr. Tang replied. “We’ll need them to guard this room, so they received masks. I think I only have one other.”

  “It doesn’t feel right,” Sophie said. “Us with masks on, and most of the staff without them.”

  “You know why that is,” Dr. Tang replied. “We’ve had exposure to the Pandora Room. To the jar—”

  “They’ve all had exposure to the jar now,” Sophie said.

  Dr. Tang hesitated. Even with the mask covering the lower half of her face, her eyes revealed her disquiet. “It was inside the camera case, and the atrium is an enormous space. I think they’re safe.”

  We don’t even know if there’s anything for them to be safe from, Sophie thought. This woman was the expert, but they were in uncharted territory here, and the world had no experts for this.

  “Since we can’t know if Lamar’s behavior resulted from desperation, outside pressure, or something more … some illness or episode,” Dr. Tang said, “we must be even more vigilant with our masks. I think it’s best we separate those who’ve spent time in the room from the rest of the staff.”

  Sophie turned toward her. “So we’re segregating the team? You know there’s a war going on over our heads, right? The only thing we need to worry about is whether or not jihadi-fucking-terrorists get in here and kill us all.”

  Dr. Tang regarded her calmly. “That is, unfortunately, not our only concern. Lamar spent more time in this room than anyone. We can’t ignore the possibility that his behavior mi
ght have been affected. I intend to examine his remains, and the others as well.”

  Sophie shuddered and tightened her mask a bit more. “Do what you need to do.”

  Dr. Tang went to the doorway and called up the steps. “Bring it down. Let’s do it right this time.”

  Corporal Taejon was the first one down the stairs. He had been part of the coalition unit assigned to the site before the discovery of the Pandora Room. He’d rotated into the assignment five months earlier, and Sophie felt sure he was regretting it now. Some members of his unit must be dead now, up on the surface. Others would die before sunrise. But Taejon was a professional. He and Private Ruiz had been on sentry duty when Walker had shot Lamar, and they had helped bring Lamar’s body back underground, even after Dr. Tang had told them they might not be able to leave until she cleared them.

  Quarantine, Sophie thought. That was where Dr. Tang was headed, she had no doubt. It was premature, but at the moment it didn’t matter. With the battle still going on, they were all stuck down here for now, anyway.

  She wondered how fast reinforcements could be sent, or an airstrike. How far away were the forces that could help them? Sophie had no idea. It was the sort of question that had never interested her before, and now she wished she knew.

  Sunrise, she thought. By then it would be over, the jar would be removed to wherever the U.N. wanted to send it, and soon afterward, they could all go home.

  Except you don’t have a home, she thought, and perhaps for the first time, she regretted having left New York. Regretted having left the soon-to-be-married Steven. Regretted leaving her teaching position.

  She’d go to France and visit her father, who would not remember her, and her mother, who had given up her daily life in an act of kindness and sacrifice Sophie felt shamed by. She could never have done that for another person. You just haven’t met the right person, Lamar had told her when she’d voiced her self-doubt.

  Martin came down the steps next, his scruffy face strangely distorted by his mask. He carried the camera bag in front of him, the strap over one shoulder.