“Good,” she said. “I want intel. Describe this facility. Tell me what its purpose was. I want to know every secret fucking panel in this place, and I want to know where Alexander is likely to be held up.” She glanced down at the legs Ridley was growing. The feet looked like deformed baby’s feet attached to the ends of withered adult legs. “We’ve got a little time before you’re ready to walk.”
“I need some water,” Ridley said.
Queen looked up at Bishop. The big man stepped over and kneeled, pouring water again from his plastic hose, directly into Ridley’s mouth. The regenerating man swallowed in huge gulps, like a man who had just crossed a desert.
“Thank you. This facility was for genetic research initially, but it eventually became a storehouse for archeological finds and artifacts as well. It has three levels, which you would have seen some of to get here. We are on Sub Level 3, which consists of this cell, the outer security room, a loading dock, storage, and a lounge. There’s also a natural cavern that predates the Roman occupation. That’s at the end of the hall. Second floor is all offices and a meeting room. Plus my office. Oh yes, there’s a little kitchen up there too. Sub Level 1 is the labs, and living quarters for the staff. Two ways in and out of the facility: the loading dock and the secret door through the janitor’s closet at the back of the bio lab, on Sub Level 1.”
“We came in that way,” Queen nodded. “What else?”
“Well, from that closet, you might have come in one of two ways: the stairs from the amphitheater, or the tunnel that leads to the parking garage. The garage connects with the loading dock also. From the garage, you have two ways in or out. The vehicle tunnel takes you to the American Cemetery. There’s an emergency ladder from the garage to the unused fountain on the surface, next to the mosque’s parking lot.” The man no longer had sweat popping out all over his head. Queen noticed that his body appeared nearly whole, although he was hardly as muscular as he used to be. Still, he looked like he might be able to walk again soon.
“We didn’t know about the fountain. Nice to see you’re telling the truth,” she told him.
“Why wouldn’t I? I want what you want right now: Alexander.” Ridley pushed his torso up with his newly formed arms. He didn’t have quite enough strength to sit up fully, so he rested on his elbows, looking relaxed and assessing the growth of his legs.
“May I?” Seth asked Knight, attempting to remove his linen jacket. Knight gave a grim nod.
Seth stepped forward into the room, and removed his cream colored linen jacket, gently draping it over Richard Ridley’s exposed genitals.
“Thank you, Seth,” he said. The duplicate nodded, and stepped back.
“How can you tell them apart?” Queen asked. She had only been able to remember Seth based on his being the only one who spoke and by keeping mental track of where he was in the room.
“I created him. And the others. I know them.”
“How many more are there?” Queen asked, pointing to Jared.
“Sadly, these three are the last, but they are my favorites.”
Suddenly, the door to the room opened, and Knight quickly swiveled his weapon toward it. On the other side of the room, Bishop had his weapon up and trained on the door as well. Rook kept his weapon trained on the three duplicates, despite the sudden intrusion into the room. They had discussed close quarters strategies like this on the plane. They each knew their jobs, and Rook’s was to never take his eyes off the duplicates.
Queen swiveled her head toward the door, then stood up and away from Ridley on the floor.
Standing in the doorway was Asya Machtchenko. Pawn. The team had come to know her and love her as family, since discovering that she truly was King’s sibling. Originally attaching herself to Rook on a ship in the Barents Sea, she had proven herself a worthy ally, first with Rook in Norway, and later in a pitched battle involving the whole team. In the year since then, she had been constantly helping King look for their parents. On the few times when she had been back at headquarters, Queen had seen the woman bonding with King’s girlfriend, Sara Fogg, and his foster daughter, Fiona Lane. Asya had very quickly become an unofficial part of Endgame, but a well liked and well loved part.
The woman stood in the doorway with tear-streaked mascara on her cheeks, looking distracted and surprised to find the whole team in the room with four Ridleys.
Queen walked quickly to the woman. “Pawn? Are you okay?”
Asya stood silently, her eyes wide, clearly in shock more than surprise, now that Queen was close enough to the woman.
Queen gently placed a hand on Asya’s shoulder. “Asya?”
Asya blinked, twice. “King is dead.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Location Unknown
King and Alexander smashed into the wall of the cavern, a halo of electric blue light dancing around the ceiling of the space. The men slid down the rough stone wall, and the crackling light winked out, plunging the entire cavern into darkness.
Lying on the floor, King groaned, his ribs having been spared a direct impact, but still protesting from the fall to the floor. “Son of a bitch.” King’s will to fight disappeared with the light. Wherever Alexander had taken him, the way back was closed. His only chance of returning to his family was to stay calm and use his brain before his brawn. The latter wouldn’t do much when it came to a man who could heal from nearly any wound.
Alexander laughed good-naturedly in the dark. “Actually, my mother was kind of a shrew.”
“Alcmene?” King asked, cradling his chest with an arm. He had studied ancient history extensively, and Hercules especially.
Alexander grunted. “You can’t believe everything you read in modern history, Jack. Things get distorted over centuries. Sometimes by accident, but more often by design.”
A brilliant light flared in the dark.
King shielded his eyes for a moment, and then saw that Alexander held a small LED flashlight in his hand. It was tiny — like a keychain light.
“Take me back.”
Alexander smiled. “I need your help to save a woman, Jack. She desperately needs help, and I can’t do it alone.”
Despite his anger, King felt Alexander was being forthright, and his natural instinct was to want to help save a life, but he remained skeptical.
“Where?”
“We are still in Carthage. In the very same cavern.”
King looked around the echoing space. The shape of the room looked similar, but the machinery was all gone, the floor of the room was rough and unfinished, and he couldn’t see the doors in the distant shadows.
“Bullshit.”
“Listen. What do you really know about that technology you appropriated in Norway? About quantum tunneling and dimensions?”
“We didn’t have much time to study that tech before you stole the plans and left your threatening note.”
“Sorry about that. The note did serve its purpose, though. You are here with me, as intended.” Alexander chuckled.
King’s patience waned. He pulled the Sig Sauer pistol and pointed it at Alexander. “I saw what was on the other side of that portal in Norway, and I watched globes of energy destroy entire cities. I’m not going to let you do the same.”
Alexander waved casually at the handgun. “You know that can’t kill me.”
“I can make you hurt,” King countered.
“You might want to conserve your ammunition,” Alexander said. “It’s going to be a long time before you have a chance to find more.”
King, deflated, lowered the pistol to the cavern floor and slumped with his back against the wall. The AK-47 dug into his back, and he pulled the strap off over his head, wincing a bit as he did, but appreciating the fact that the ibuprofen was finally kicking in some.
“Let’s start with Einstein. You know his theory of relativity?” Alexander asked, sitting on the floor cross-legged in front of King. His posture was completely non-threatening now, so King relaxed his guard.
“Ma
th isn’t my strong suit, but I get the basic gist.”
Alexander nodded. “Time and space are joined, but movement faster than the speed of light theoretically allows forward travel in time — or through vast distances in space, yes? The dimensional portal technology in Norway functioned this way. The energy the device used was not only powered by the ocean currents, but also by a special element that came from the other side of that dimensional tunnel — a kind of miniature black hole. A stable one. Infinite power. Enough to punch a doorway to a different dimension.”
“How?”
“Imagine two flat sheets of paper, separated by an inch of air. One paper is this world, the next is…someplace else. The machine, and the black hole, essentially pushed on the outside of both sheets of paper until they ruptured and formed a tunnel between the two.”
“You’re talking about an Einstein-Rosen bridge, right? A wormhole?” King asked.
“Yes, exactly.” Alexander smiled like a schoolteacher enjoying that his pupil was keeping up. “But imagine instead that you don’t need to travel far; it’s not like a ship going through a long tunnel, like in Star Trek. Because the Einstein-Rosen bridge doesn’t form between the surfaces of the planes or dimensions, leaving a long funnel-shaped tunnel. Instead, it draws the edges of the planes together to where they nearly touch. Travel between the dimensions was instantaneous, right? Like passing through a waterfall or even a thin membrane?”
King recalled the feeling from the previous year. “Something like that, yeah. So what?”
“So take away one of the pieces of paper. Fold the remaining paper over on itself in the shape of a sideways letter U, maintaining that inch of distance between the sides of the paper.”
“I don’t follow. Isn’t the paper flat? Doesn’t it have to stay that way?” King asked, interested in the discussion, now that it was beyond his understanding. He frequently looked at learning new things as a challenge to be overcome.
“Einstein’s theory suggested that any mass could curve space-time. Instead of paper, think of a sheet of plastic wrap. If you hold it tight from all four corners, but drop a heavy marble on it, it will bow and distort in the center of the wrap, correct?”
“Okay,” King said, understanding the reference, but not how an entire dimension could curve into a U shape. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Now, what if you used a larger infinite power source — say, another black hole — and you punched a wormhole from one side of the paper to the other. What would you have?”
Thinking he understood, King replied immediately. “Teleportation.”
Alexander let a small smile show. “Close. Remember that the wormhole is faster than light. It’s actually a distortion in space-time on both ends of the tunnel, right? Each side having been pushed inward until they meet. Or, in this case, pushed from one side until the tunnel blasts through the other side. In fact, imagine that instead of a black hole, you have a small ring of collapsing micro-stars that have yet to become black holes. Now picture them rotating and glowing, like the ring around Saturn.” Alexander drew a circle in the air with his finger. “Centrifugal force keeps it all from forming a singularity — or multiple micro-singularities. So there’s no gravitational force at the center of the ring, which would tear you — or anything — apart, as we saw in Paris. Instead, it’s just the opposite. A complete absence of gravity, like floating in space. Low friction. Easy to blast through the center of it, if you had a rocket or a faster-than-light drive of some sort. Keeping in mind the two sheet example, if the tunnel was only an inch thick, or less, even minimal force might be used to get from one side to the other. Theoretically, you would still be travelling faster than light once you entered the tunnel. Distances shrink, and space-time itself ceases to function as it would if you remained on the first sheet.”
“I think I get that,” King said, nodding. “So what happens? Where do you go?”
Alexander stood slowly, then offered King his hand. “Follow me.”
King snatched the AK, took Alexander’s hand and was pulled to his feet.
Alexander led them with the small keychain light to a broad opening in the wall and turned left, to a tunnel hewn from the rock itself. Twenty feet later, the tunnel dead-ended in a long sloping pile of rubble. Alexander turned to the pile and started ascending the slope of scree. King followed him up the loose rocks. Far ahead and above them, there was an opening to the bright blue sky. Alexander moved surely on the loose rock. He reached the top of the underground hill and the opening in minutes. King went slower, because of his rib, but he reached the surface shortly after the larger man.
At the top of the slope, they were outdoors. A brilliant cloudless blue sky greeted them, with a blazing yellow sun over head. King was relieved that it appeared he was still on Earth. Around them and behind them, the landscape was barren rock and sand. In front of them, twenty feet away, was a beautiful turquoise ocean, casting waves at an immense natural barrier of piled rocks that stretched over three hundred feet along the shore. King could see a more sandy beach to the left of the rocky barrier, and the land rose to larger rocks and boulders at the other end of the barrier.
Alexander turned around in a full circle, a broad beaming smile on his face. Then he looked at King and held his arms out to the side, encouraging King to take in the vista.
“The question, Jack, is not ‘where do you go?’ It’s when do you go.”
King looked at the man. He wanted to tell Alexander he was insane. Wanted to write off his claim as a delusion. But he couldn’t. How could someone who’d traveled between worlds believe moving through time was impossible?
Shit.
Alexander continued to sweep his hands around at the landscape. “Look around you, Jack. We are still in Carthage. We are standing outside the Omega facility, and what will one day be the ruins of Carthage. Except the buildings those ruins once were in our time, are not even here yet. Carthage has yet to be built!”
King looked at the shoreline. He had studied maps of the area before arriving from Malta, and he had looked at a map on the laptop with Asya all afternoon. He understood what Alexander was saying. He made mental adjustments for the slight alteration of the coast by time and erosion.
He was looking at the coastline of Carthage.
He drew in a deep breath. The mild pain in his ribs, dulled by the ibuprofen, assured him he wasn’t dreaming. He knew Alexander was telling the truth. They’d traveled backwards through time. It was ridiculous, but not impossible. In his mind, nothing was impossible. Not anymore. But one question remained unanswered. “When are we?”
Alexander looked him in the eye. “800 BC, give or take a year.”
TWENTY-SIX
Ancient Karkhēdōn, 799 BC
“That’s…” King cleared his throat. “That’s a long time ago.” Even in the alternate dimension, he’d never felt so far from home.
“Actually, it’s now,” Alexander said, walking toward the breakwater of giant stones.
King followed him up the rise, taking in the view of the pristine Gulf of Tunis. He looked around again in a full circle. Untouched rocks and sand for as far as he could see, in most directions. Far north along the coast he thought he could make out a structure, but it would have to be only a single story building — possibly a rock. But the geography of the coastline was accurate. He tried to wrap his mind around it. He was seeing Tunisia before it was occupied. Then a history lesson caught up with him. “Wasn’t there a Phoenician city here before the Romans?”
Alexander was stalking around the breakwater, looking at rocks, and sometimes squatting down to peer closely at them before standing in a huff and looking elsewhere. He pointed absentmindedly behind him, at the large boulders to the south of the breakwater.
King walked over to the boulders and climbed them to the top.
South of the breakwater, spread out before him, was a small village. Several of the structures were wattle and daub, but a few were comprised of earth-colore
d stone. At a quick glance, King put the population at fewer than a thousand people. He saw several wooden boats with brilliant white sails tied to a long wooden pier. On the southern fringe of the town were dozens — possibly hundreds — of camels, tied to wooden posts, and in one case, walking aimlessly in a wooden corral.
King walked back down the boulder to where Alexander was still looking at the stones. He was acutely aware of the grenade, still in his pocket. The AK-47 strapped to his back and the Sig Sauer handgun tucked into the waistband of his jeans. Even his garments and his wristwatch. Everything about him marked him as what he was.
A man out of time.
“That’s the mighty kingdom of Carthage?” King asked in disbelief.
Alexander stood upright and smiled. “First, Jack, remember what I said about taking modern history at face value. Second, you’re getting your years mixed up. Carthage, or Karkhēdōn, as the Greeks will come to call it, has existed as a city at this point only for a few years. Carthaginian hegemony doesn’t begin for another hundred and fifty years or so, when they strike out for the island of Ibiza. But trade is going like crazy right now, and it will help us in our mission.”
“And that mission is?” King asked.
“Hmm,” Alexander mumbled as he continued looking at stones.
“What is this mission you’ve shanghaied me for? I think it’s time you told me.”
Alexander looked up at King. “I’m sorry, Jack. You’re right. I’m just getting ahead of myself. We need to get to Rome. We are going to save my wife, Acca Larentia, from her untimely demise at the hands of my Forgotten.”
King was stunned. The man really was motivated by love. “You told me she had stumbled onto one of your labs, when you weren’t there.” King recalled the man’s admission when they had fought side by side under the ruins of Rome’s Lacus Curtius.
“Yes, she did. To my eternal regret. So we have come back in time to prevent that from happening.”
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