The Pandora Room: A Novel

by Christopher Golden

  The USAMRIID tech kit had included sterile sample bags. Dr. Tang opened one, inserted Lamar’s wallet, pens, mints, and the journal, then resealed the bag. It felt somehow heavier than it ought to.

  As she stood, she heard a cry out in the corridor. Without thinking, she ran toward the sound. Only as she left the room did she realize how foolish she’d been, that this might be another attack and that she had no weapon and no protection other than an unarmed grad student named Zehra.

  But when she ran into the hall, she saw it wasn’t Zehra who had cried out.

  A man stood a dozen feet to her left, in the shadows of the east wing. Long-bearded, draped in cloth, he held a child by the arm as he beat her. The child cried out again, raising her other arm to defend herself, which infuriated the man even more. He clutched her arm, twisted it behind her. The snap of bone echoed through the stone corridor, and yet her scream seemed only a whisper.

  The man hurled her to the ground and kicked her, but suddenly no sound came from either of them. Not even the sound of flesh upon flesh. The girl turned to look at Dr. Tang as if pleading with her, and though they had felt so tangible in the gloom of the barely lit corridor a moment ago, the girl now seemed a phantom. A specter with pain and terror in her eyes.

  Dr. Tang found herself as soundless as these phantoms, for she thought she recognized the girl, though she hadn’t seen her in many years, and even then only in a mirror.

  Then they were gone, as if they had never been there at all.

  * * *

  Soon, Walker thought. The firefight aboveground would end soon. No way could some upstart jihadi army get the better of the hundred or so American and Kurdish fighters in the camp. Even if the odds were against the coalition fighters, air support would show up soon enough. It couldn’t take much more than two hours for them to scramble a couple of combat helicopters and get them here … unless they were engaged elsewhere. That last part was his fear. Had the New Caliphate started trouble elsewhere, drawn away the most likely air support to some other conflict? If someone needed to cut through red tape to get the support they needed, how long would that take? An extra hour? Two?

  Walker told himself not to worry. The coalition forces topside could take care of themselves. But the courageous volunteer Sergeant Dunlap had assigned to monitor the situation at the mouth of Derveyî had yet to come running down with good news, and in this case, no news was bad news.

  He told himself it would be over by sunrise. The U.N. peacekeepers would arrive shortly after that. USAMRIID had been informed of the murders of their techs, and a full emergency response team was en route. The jar would be taken away, and a mobile lab would be installed in the camp. Derveyî’s staff would be examined, starting with those not suspected of exposure to the jar, and if they seemed healthy they would be transported to a secure facility where they would undergo a period of observation, just to be certain. The others—those who’d been inside the Pandora Room or who’d been near the jar after the camera bag had fallen—would take a little longer to get cleared, but they would be all right.

  Walker told himself that.

  The problem was the jar. He doubted very much that the U.N. would decide to put the jar into American hands, but he thought it highly likely that USAMRIID would be tasked with transporting it. If he had to guess, Walker suspected it would be remanded to a special research lab in Switzerland. In his tenure with the National Science Foundation, other potentially dangerous items had vanished inside that lab for study by the U.N. science council and never seen again. In this case, Walker’s job was to make sure that did not happen. It would have been impossible for him to get the jar out of Derveyî now, with the firefight raging aboveground, and just as impossible once USAMRIID came and really clamped down on the quarantine. Walker would be stuck here while the jar was spirited away.

  Somehow, he had to make sure that didn’t happen, but there were other obstacles to contend with first, all of which focused on keeping himself and Kim alive—and the others in Derveyî as well, if at all possible.

  What troubled him the most was Charlie. His son had grown up accustomed to him being away for long periods, but Walker had been trying to change that. At first the boy had not wanted to depend on him, but Walker had promised to call him every week when he was traveling for work. Tomorrow, he and Charlie were due to have their weekly phone call, but he had a feeling he was going to disappoint his son, one way or another.

  For the moment, he was glad to have a task on which to focus, to distract him from everything else. Dr. Tang had caught him as he returned from the surface, drawn him aside, and told him she thought there were people in the abandoned east wing who were not a part of the Beneath Project. Not jihadis, she said, or at least she did not think so. One of them had been a little girl.

  The story sounded crazy, but Walker had not wanted to share that observation with Dr. Tang and he did not mind the diversion, so he had told her he would do a little exploring of his own.

  Much of the underground labyrinth was empty, abandoned. Some spaces still had lighting rigs and power cords, but others were as dark as the darkest places he had ever been. As dark as the sea caves in Guatemala, where hungry things with sharp teeth and fish tails had come out of the water and trapped his team. Killed most of them.

  This darkness meant nothing to him. He’d survived so much worse. But he still kept his filtration mask on, just in case.

  Whatever work the Beneath Project had done in the east wing had been halted. Some evidence of their activity remained, including several sawhorses blocking passages and a few lighting rigs that had been left in place but disconnected from the dig’s generators. He passed the room Dr. Tang had converted to a temporary morgue and moved deeper into the eastern part of the warren of tunnels and caves and stairs until he came to utter darkness.

  Slipping a small but powerful flashlight from his pocket, he clicked it on, moved around a sawhorse, and strode carefully into the dark. The flashlight beam turned the corridors and abandoned rooms into eerie, yawning holes. Walker felt as if he were diving in some nameless depth, the beam of light his only illumination in this strange and silent ocean.

  Then a cry broke the silence. He froze, listening intently to discern the source of the cry and for any further sounds. He heard panicked voices, speaking in hushed tones, and then another startled cry. Rapid footfalls echoed along the corridor, rushing toward him, but even with his flashlight piercing the darkness he saw nothing until a cold blue light began to glow. One of the voices rose to a shout, a woman, on the edge of panic.

  Walker switched the flashlight to his left hand and drew his acquired gun with his right, hurrying up the tunnel. To the left, a passageway opened to a ramp, and he saw two figures rushing up toward him, little more than silhouettes behind the sphere of blue light.

  “Just go!” a man’s voice urged. “Move!”

  “It’s following.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “It’s following!”

  Walker took a defensive posture, aimed the flashlight and the gun at the same time.

  “Stop where you are and identify yourselves!” he barked.

  The man cried out in alarm.

  “Jesus,” the woman said from the darkness behind that blue light, “you scared the shit out of me.”

  The blue light had stopped moving, and now Walker could see it came from a handheld lantern. The silhouettes had taken shape, their faces in strange blue shadows in the tunnel.

  “Identify yourselves,” he said again, less urgently.

  “Fuck that, masked man. We work here. Who the hell are you?” the man said.

  Walker took two steps forward. “My name is Walker. I’m armed, and I’m asking for your names.”

  The man had been carrying the lantern. Now he lifted it up so that their faces were better illuminated. “I’m Dmitri Koines.”

  “You’re the cook.”

  “Rachel Porter,” said the woman, her face twisted up in a mix
of emotions—anger and something else. “Can you put the gun away, please? We don’t want to be here right now.”

  She glanced back over her shoulder as Walker processed what she’d said and what he’d heard.

  “You were shouting.” He slid the gun back into his rear waistband. “What was that about?”

  Dmitri lowered the lantern now, and those blue shadows enveloped their faces again. As Walker flashed the beam of his own flashlight at them, he saw them exchange a hesitant look, and then Rachel glanced over her shoulder.

  “Look,” he said, “with all that’s going on here, you need to tell me what just happened. You’re walking around in the dark in a part of the dig that’s been basically blocked off, I hear shouting, and I’d like to know what the shouting’s about. I’m not the only one who’s going to ask that question, so you might as well—”

  “Ghosts,” Dmitri said, locking eyes with Walker. “We saw ghosts.”

  “Jesus, Dmitri,” Rachel hissed.

  “Well, what else would you call them?”

  “It just sounds so stupid saying it out loud.”

  Dmitri nodded in agreement, then glanced at Walker. “It sounds stupid. We’re going to look like assholes when you talk to Dr. Durand, but I don’t know how to say it differently. Apparitions. We were down by one of the blocked exits—the ceiling caved in centuries ago, and there’s no way past it.”

  “Why would you two…” Walker started to ask, but he saw them exchange a different sort of glance, and he realized why they’d wanted to be alone together. “Okay, go on.”

  “They were fighting,” Rachel said. “Two of them, but one had the upper hand. The one kept smashing the other’s head into the ground, and I heard the noises, even grunting. The smack of his skull—”

  Dmitri stared at her. “That’s not what I saw.”

  Walker moved nearer to them as they began to argue. They were both sweating and skittish in the light of his flashlight, irritated by his closeness.

  “One was a woman. She straddled his chest and strangled him. They were in among the rubble, so I couldn’t see very well, but—”

  “What are you … that’s not right,” Rachel argued. “It was two men. They were in the alcove there on the left, just before the rockfall area.”

  The two of them stared at each other, and their expressions seemed to slacken with confusion.

  Walker used his flashlight beam to examine them more closely. They were visibly exhausted and pale, despite Dmitri’s Greek complexion. Their eyes were wide, with dark circles beneath, and he could not deny they looked unhealthy. But it was when Dmitri turned to address Rachel again that Walker felt a tremor of fear. A bruise-purple lesion marred the side of Dmitri’s neck. It could have been some kind of love bite, a hickey from whatever the two had been up to down in that tunnel, but that was not at all what it looked like.

  “I feel so stupid,” Rachel said. “Saying it out loud makes it sound ridiculous, but I know what I saw.”

  Walker wasn’t sure about that. “I’ll walk you back to the atrium, but I don’t want you going to your quarters yet. I’ll go see Sophie—Dr. Durand—and explain the situation, but I want you to wait in the atrium for Dr. Tang. She needs to take a look at the two of you.”

  “Who the hell is Dr. Tang?” Rachel asked.

  “Just do it, please,” Walker said. “I promise I’ll bring Sophie to you. There’ll be nobody in the atrium at this hour, I don’t think. I’ll find you a place to wait, and I’ll bring them to you.”

  Both still rattled, they followed him. Walker kept up a brisk pace but still wished they could move faster. Alarm bells were going off in his head that had nothing to do with ghosts. Behind him, Rachel began to complain that she felt unwell. Dmitri admitted to feeling slightly queasy.

  “It’s hot in here,” he added. “It’s usually cold at night.”

  They had almost made it back to the atrium when the cook asked for a rest. Walker turned, prepared to urge him on, but saw that his olive skin had turned ashen. They had a small stairwell to descend and they would be in a tunnel that fed into the atrium, but Dmitri looked like he might pass out.

  “I need to sit for a minute,” Dmitri said, but it seemed as if he might be talking to the air rather than to Rachel or Walker. “Just a minute, okay?”

  Rachel nodded and voiced her agreement, but she seemed distracted by an itch on her scalp. She glanced back the way they’d come, but they had moved beyond the sawhorses now, and there were lights strung along this part of the tunnel that were still attached to the generator. Not all the lighting rigs were on, but enough so that the shadows back the way they’d come seemed less ominous now. Less full of ghosts.

  Walker made a decision. “Sit. I’ll bring Sophie and Dr. Tang here.”

  “I’m sick, aren’t I?” Dmitri said, his voice cracking. His hand went to the side of his neck, and he used a fingernail to pick at the lesion there.

  “Don’t—” Walker started.

  “I knew it,” Dmitri went on. “I saw this in the mirror an hour ago and tried to tell myself it was nothing. I thought, No, not me. I don’t know what happened to the jar, but I know we’re fucking quarantined and you people are in those damned masks, saying you’re protecting us when you’re just protecting yourselves.”

  “That’s not true,” Walker argued, but Dmitri’s eyes had gone glassy and he wasn’t listening.

  Rachel slid down the wall, slumping to the ground. She stared at Dmitri, tilted her head, trying to get a glimpse of the side of his neck. “You thought you were … infected or something? And you still brought me down there? We still…”

  She didn’t finish the thought, but Walker didn’t need elaboration.

  “I’m coming with you,” she said, struggling to stand. “I can’t stay with him. If he’s sick, I’m not staying here.”

  “You have to, Rachel. If he has anything contagious, you’ve already got it and we can’t risk transmitting it to others. You look pale. Maybe feverish. And I can’t help thinking these ghosts might be hallucinations.”

  Rachel laughed darkly. “Well, at least there’s a bright side.”

  “What bright side?” Dmitri said, an edge of sorrow in his voice. His eyes had filled with unshed tears. “I’d rather it be ghosts.”

  Walker thought that, on the whole, he would also have preferred ghosts.

  “Sit tight,” he said. “I’ll get Sophie and we’ll decide what to do.”

  “Take your time,” Dmitri said. “We’re under quarantine and trapped in a man-made cave system. It isn’t like we’re going anywhere.”

  FIFTEEN

  Sophie couldn’t help wishing she had never left New York, or that she’d moved to Paris with her mother. Her irritation with her boss had grown into venom. Alex Jarota had planned to exploit her for his personal glory, and now he had abdicated any responsibility for what happened next. The old adage insisted that a captain go down with his ship, but Alex had been the first to abandon the boat.

  Walker, she thought angrily.

  She’d had it with men who weren’t what they appeared to be. Steven’s face flashed through her mind, and she allowed a moment of resentment before firmly reminding herself that in that case, she was the one who had abandoned ship. But that didn’t make her less disdainful of Alex’s attitude, and it didn’t mean she was willing to put up with being deceived.

  “What are you going to say when you find Walker?” Beyza asked, hurrying to keep up with her.

  Sophie reached the narrow, curving stairwell that led from the west wing down to one of the balconies overlooking the atrium.

  “Don’t worry about what I’ll say,” she said, descending swiftly, her footfalls echoing off the walls below. “Worry about what I’ll do. I’m in the mood to punch someone in the throat, and it might as well be Ben Walker.”

  She came around the corner and nearly collided with him. Beyza swore, bumping into Sophie from behind. If Walker hadn’t grabbed her shoulders, she would hav
e stumbled into his arms like they were in some old romantic comedy.

  Glad as she was to be saved that embarrassment, she pushed him away.

  “Watch the hands,” she said.

  “Just saving us from smashing heads,” he replied. “I was on my way to see you.”

  “Coincidence. I was looking for you.”

  The yellow industrial light of the bulbs strung along the stairwell made his eyes look black instead of brown, like they were nothing but dark pits in his skull.

  “So I heard. Though I’d prefer you not punch me in the throat.”

  “What if you’ve got it coming?”

  Walker glanced past her. “What about it, Beyza? Do I have it coming? You clearly know what this is about.”

  They both turned to look at the other woman. Beyza narrowed her eyes. “I’m sure you can guess, Walker. You’re not who you say you are.”

  Sophie studied his face. At first he seemed ready to argue, and the good-natured confusion in his expression had a rough charm to it, but then he exhaled and his face changed entirely.

  “You know what? We’ve got bigger problems than this, so I’m going to give you the short version, if that’s all right?”

  “Try me,” Sophie said. “I’ll even help out. You work for a different agency than the one you claim. I just don’t know which one.”

  Walker raised his hands, palms facing her as if surrendering. “Succinct. I like that. I can’t say much, except that I do work for the American government and my job includes making sure the jar doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Under present circumstances, it also includes trying to keep the people down here alive.”