The Bone Labyrinth

by James Rollins

  “Who? Chang?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know. It makes no sense.”

  Kowalski offered his own viewpoint, calling from the truck bed. “I don’t care who’s doing it! Let’s get our asses out of here before we become pancakes.”

  Monk nodded. “What about the way we entered, the loading bay? It’s two levels deeper. It might still be open.”

  Kimberly lifted her satellite phone and examined the station’s schematics. “We can try, but . . .” Her voice died away.

  “But what?”

  “That path is going to take us straight through the area where those gorilla hybrids are loose.”

  Monk exhaled. “Great . . . but I don’t see we have any other choice.”

  Kimberly agreed and instructed Chin on where to go.

  They were soon racing back the way they had come, the beams of their headlights drilling through the smoke. All the while, the facility continued to crumble and crash around them. Kimberly did her best to guide them, but she had to continually recalculate their route, sending them zigzagging around collapsed hallways or skirting fires that had broken out.

  More and more people began to appear, some in lab smocks, others in uniforms. All were dazed, bloody, or panicked. A few soldiers took potshots at them, but their efforts were halfhearted. Chin took to beeping his horn, chasing stragglers out of his path, while rifle blasts discouraged the more persistent.

  Down one side hall, Monk spotted a pool of sunlight. He called for them to stop, only to discover a collapse that had broken through to the surface. Unfortunately, the way up was too narrow, too treacherous to climb. Even as he examined it, the opening began to crumble in on itself.

  Still, for a moment, to see the sky was both heartening and disappointing.

  So close, yet so far.

  They continued onward—only to come upon an even stranger sight. As they sped toward an intersection, a ghostly row of shapes raced through the smoke and vanished.

  “Were those wolves?” Monk asked.

  Kimberly stared toward the cab’s roof. “While the zoo might be evacuated, the animals are still up there.”

  Monk pictured the roof collapses creating sinkholes within the various habitats above, allowing the beasts to escape their confinements and flee underground. More and more evidence of such incursions revealed themselves as they headed deeper into the heart of the facility.

  As the truck swept along, movement drew Monk’s attention into a shattered lab. He caught a glimpse of a pair of lionesses dragging a body behind a table. Down another dark hall, the yip-yipping cackle of a pack of hyena echoed ominously, punctuated by a sharper scream.

  Chin hunched further over the wheel and got them moving even faster.

  “Take the next ramp,” Kimberly ordered, pointing ahead.

  Chin obeyed, only to find the lower level raging with fires, the halls choked by an oily smoke. Brighter explosions echoed off in the distance as additional gas lines and propane tanks blew in a fiery chain reaction, spreading ever wider.

  “Can we make it through here?” Monk asked.

  “It’s the only way to reach the exit below,” Kimberly explained.

  Monk stared out at the hellish landscape, knowing the savage fires here would soon burn through significant support structures, bringing more of the facility crashing down on their heads.

  They had to keep moving—and quickly.

  As they entered into this subterranean inferno, something large and angry bellowed back at them, the noise echoing all around, making it hard to tell where it originated.

  But what made that noise was incontestable.

  Kowalski moaned from the rear bed. “They’re here.”

  24

  May 1, 2:13 A.M. ECT

  Andes Mountains, Ecuador

  Another loud chime reverberated across the crystalline chamber, reminding Gray that he was running out of time. He studied the star-shaped pattern formed of thumb-sized spheres of black metal and white crystal, reviewing all his options.

  I have to get this right the first time.

  While he concentrated, Roland paced one side of the golden skeleton. On the other, Lena stood with her arms nervously crossed. Seichan merely waited on the far side of the waist-high pillar that supported this mysterious pattern.

  “Having second thoughts?” she asked.

  “I think I’m on my hundredth,” he answered, offering her a tired smile.

  “Then hopefully the hundred and first will be the charm.”

  He hoped so, too, but he knew it would take more than charm to solve this.

  Over the past few minutes, he had turned the pattern over and over again in his head. He had asked twice to see Father Kircher’s old journal, which Roland carried in a waterproof sleeve. He spent time studying the Jesuit priest’s calculations, knowing the man’s particular fascination with numerology, both the pure mathematics of prime numbers and the cabalistic mysticism of gematria.

  Gray ran through the multitudes of opposites inherent in the puzzle.

  Bright and dark . . .

  Heavy and light . . .

  Black and white . . .

  Metal and crystal . . .

  Fundamentally he kept circling to the same conclusion.

  They’re all mirrors of each other.

  “That has to be it,” he mumbled. “Mirrored pairs.”

  “What are you getting at?” Lena asked. “Maybe if you explained it to us, we could help.”

  Another loud gong shook the room.

  Seichan frowned. “That was only ten seconds apart from the last one. At the rate these intervals are shortening, you have less than a minute to solve this puzzle or forfeit the prize.”

  Gray pictured the walls of water surrounding this dry well at the heart of the lost city. He swore he could feel the hydraulic pressure of all that dammed water, but he knew it was only his internalized frustration.

  “Maybe you should talk it out,” Seichan offered. “You’re not alone here.”

  He nodded. He had planned on testing his theory with them, but first he had wanted to firm it all in his head. He finally relented and pointed to the star-shaped spread of small spheres.

  “From the symmetry here, the answer must be tied to mirrored opposites. You can see it on the board, represented by black metal and white crystal, but the same repeats outward to the libraries on either side of the room.” He motioned to the two open doors. “One contains books crafted of metal. The other holds texts carved of crystal. But there’s another mirrored pair buried within this design, one tied to mathematics, specifically to prime numbers.”

  Roland nodded to the board. “The 73 pieces to this puzzle. That’s a prime number.”

  “And we know the mirror to that prime number is 37, which as we discussed before apparently has levels of significance from our DNA to the movement of the stars.”

  “Still, what does 37 have to do with this particular puzzle?” Seichan asked.

  “Because of that.” Gray turned and pointed to the golden skeleton on the glass dais. “This sculpture also hides a mirrored pair, mixing male and female conformations to form a whole. That’s the answer.”

  He read the confused expressions as another chime shook the room, this one loud enough to rattle gems loose from the capitals of the surrounding pillars.

  Time was running out.

  Lena and Roland looked as anxious as he felt, while Seichan simply appeared impatient, fully trusting him, waiting for him to go on.

  Taking strength from her confidence, he continued, “Back at the gravesites in Croatia, Eve’s grave was adorned with this same star-shaped pattern of 73.”

  Lena nodded. “And the bones of male Neanderthal hybrid—Adam—were marked with the smaller star pattern of 37.”

  Gray hovered his palm over the puzzle. “You can plainly see Eve’s star depicted here—composed of 73 pieces.” He stared hard at the others. “But where’s Adam’s smaller star?”

  No one answer
ed.

  He pointed. “It’s here, waiting to be revealed, to make this pattern as whole as those golden bones.”

  The room shook again with a booming chime, cracks skittered up the walls.

  “Just show us, Gray,” Seichan warned, looking around. “Now or never.”

  He knew she was right. Setting aside his misgivings, he began shifting the crystal and metal spheres into their proper locations, slowly revealing the smaller star within the larger.

  Gasps rose around him as the others began to see the pattern, too.

  Lena’s voice filled with wonder. “The two stars . . . they are both here.”

  Gray hurried, sensing what was coming. Before he could finish, another clang of metal on crystal echoed forth. But this one didn’t stop. It amplified louder and louder, rising up toward a final crescendo.

  He rushed to roll the last marble into place, completing the design. As he did so, a bright crystalline note hung in the air, vibrating the room’s very molecules, then collapsed into a deathly quiet.

  They all held their breaths, but nothing worse transpired.

  “You did it,” Lena finally exhaled.

  The group stared down at the completed design.

  Gray had gathered the 37 crystal spheres into the larger star’s center, forming Adam’s smaller star within Eve’s.

  “The pattern,” Roland said. “One star within the other. Representing the male within the female. I think it’s supposed to mirror the act of procreation . . . of life, of the promise of generations to come.”

  But that was not the only revelation that the pattern heralded.

  Beyond the waist-high column that held the completed pattern, the far wall cracked open, parting along two plates of quartz that covered the stone. A new passageway opened before them, exposing another set of dark stairs going down.

  No one moved for a full breath.

  In the silence, an immense ticking echoed up from that threshold.

  Seichan finally spoke, but even she whispered. “Let’s hope that’s not another timer, some countdown to doom.”

  Fearing she might be right, Gray got everyone moving. They headed toward the stairs. Gray stopped at the top and shone his light down the long flight, but he could not make out the bottom. He felt a trickle of trepidation at trespassing here, but he remembered Seichan’s recommendation upon first exploring this lost city.

  Just go look.

  That sentiment had been the driving force behind humanity’s progress across the ages, a simple imperative fueled by our innate curiosity: to discover what was around the next bend, over the next horizon. It was that same inquisitiveness that impelled us to explore who we are, where we came from, and where we are headed next.

  Gray took one step, then another, leading the others downward.

  As they descended, the air filled with energy. It tingled his skin and coursed through the static of every hair on his body. He could even smell it, like a summer breeze during a lightning storm.

  When he finally reached the last step, he stared into a vast chamber that opened before him. His mind struggled to comprehend the sight before him. In shock, all he could do was get out three simple words.

  “Oh, my God.”

  2:21 A.M.

  The sudden silence disturbed Shu Wei.

  Since surfacing within this subterranean city, she had been greeted by a distant ringing of bells. She had once hiked the Himalayas and had heard similar chimes echoing faintly off the mountains, often rising from monasteries many kilometers away. She took the bells as a promising sign and followed their periodic tinkling as she led her team up from the flooded antechamber and down a long hallway inscribed with row upon row of ancient languages.

  The bells grew ever louder and clearer, ringing with the certainty that she was closing upon her targets at long last. She welcomed that moment, knowing she outnumbered the others nine to four.

  Plus I have the element of surprise.

  While traversing this buried city, she had continued to keep her team moving silently, using minimal light. Here in perpetual darkness, she could not rely on night vision alone, as some ambient light was necessary for such gear.

  Then, a moment ago, when they had been crossing a chamber decorated with animals sculpted of precious metals and gemstones, a loud ringing of chimes cut off abruptly. She had lifted a fist, calling a halt, suspicious at the sudden silence.

  Several of her teammates used the moment to gaze at the wealth stored in the chamber. Even her eyes fell upon a gold panther with emeralds for eyes. After she had gained the information she needed from her targets and dispatched them, she would return here.

  Maybe the Black Crow will not be the only one returning home with a trophy.

  She glanced over to Major Sergeant Kwan, who kept a grip on the native boy’s shoulder. Her second-in-command did not even glance once at the treasures here. Then again, his trophies were of a more personal and particular nature.

  As the silence stretched, she finally relented and lowered her fist.

  Bells or not, it was time to continue their search. She headed for the next set of stairs, ready to flush her targets into the open and put an end to this mission.

  Kwan swore, drawing her attention. The boy had broken free of his grip and fled down the steps, moving as swiftly as a gazelle, vanishing into the darkness below. Kwan pointed his pistol, then lowered it, knowing the boy was gone.

  Shu Wei stepped beside her second-in-command. She didn’t deride the man, nor did she console him, as she knew Kwan’s failure was punishment enough.

  Ultimately the boy’s escape would do little harm to the mission. Even if he reached the others and alerted them, thus removing the advantage of surprise, her team still outnumbered the enemy. And from the information gained by interrogating the boy and old man, her team had arrived with vastly superior firepower.

  “Keep moving,” she ordered. “But proceed cautiously.”

  With the enemy alerted, she did not intend to be ambushed.

  As she headed down, a moment of petty irritation flared at the boy’s small act of betrayal. Once this was over, she would free the Black Crow to collect full payment for this stain upon his honor. From the way Kwan walked stiffly beside her, all but trembling with fury, he would exact his revenge most coldly.

  2:23 A.M.

  Roland gaped at the impossibility that rose before him. It was as if he had stepped into a clock designed by the Lord himself. A loud ticking echoed off the walls of a cavernous space, a perfect sphere of open air that dwarfed the group gathered at its equator. They were perched halfway up one curve of the wall. The roof arched smoothly above, stretching as high as the first level of the lost city, while the floor delved as deeply below.

  The entire vastness was covered in beaten gold.

  He was also enthralled by the energy trapped within the dark space. He felt it coursing across his skin, his hair, hanging in the air itself. He watched bluish coruscations skitter softly across the roof and crimson scintillations dance along the mystery below.

  But it was what rose before them in the middle of the space that defied reason, that unhinged his senses. Between those plays of energy hung a massive sphere, filling a quarter of the cavern space. One half appeared to be the same blackish magnetic metal that bound the books in the library; the other was quarried of the same white quartz found in the opposite library. The two surfaces were not smooth like the walls, but inscribed with meteoric impacts defining large lakes and low mountains.

  “It’s supposed to be the moon,” Lena said.

  He inwardly nodded, afraid to move, lest what he saw vanished.

  They had all stopped at a ledge that circled the room’s equator. A series of tiered levels continued down from here. But none of them dared venture farther, as if innately sensing that this was beyond all of them, that they were trespassers upon a sight they were not yet ready to view.

  He continued to study the giant sculpture of the moon. It hung in the ro
om with no support. He could not fathom what energies suspended it—perhaps some mix of magnetism and charged forces.

  Equally inconceivable were the details captured in this rendering. Every lunar mare, crater, mountain, ridge, fault, and channel was carved upon the surface in perfect clarity. And it wasn’t just the crystalline surface, which clearly represented the day side of the moon. The hemisphere of dark metal was also similarly inscribed and sculpted, revealing the hidden face of the moon’s dark side.

  Seichan stared up at that metallic surface, her eyes pinched with disbelief. She kept her voice to a whisper. “How could that be? How could these ancient builders know what was on the other side of the moon?”

  Gray noted another mystery. “It’s turning. The sphere, it’s slowly but definitely turning.”

  Roland realized the man was correct. The moon wasn’t just hanging in space, but it was incrementally rotating. Again the loud ticking struck his ears, making him think of a giant clock, reminding him of something he had read.

  “Sic mundus pendet et in nullo ponit vestigia fundo,” he whispered.

  Lena glanced at him, but only for a moment, before returning her attention forward.

  He translated the Latin: “ ‘Thus the world is suspended, resting its feet on no foundation.’ Those words were written by Father Kircher, inscribed on a clock he devised, one driven by magnetism. It was a hollow glass sphere full of mineral oil, which held a copper globe of the earth suspended inside, slowly turning, marking time.”

  “Do you think he got that idea from here?” Lena whispered.

  “I don’t know, but Father Kircher believed it was such forces that drove the motion of the planets.” Roland pointed beneath the giant moon. “But undoubtedly Nicolas Steno must have been here and reported his discovery.”

  Filling the bottom of the gold-plated cavern was a labyrinth of raised copper walls, easily as tall as a man, as if inviting one to walk into that maze. However, the entire structure was flooded with a dark fluid, almost to the top of its walls.

  “It’s similar to the labyrinth gilded on the cover of Kircher’s journal,” Gray said.