by Sean Ellis
She secured a reel of monofilament with a climbing piton wedged into a crack, and then swam into the passage, the line spooling out behind her like spider’s silk. The thin nylon strand would show the rest of the team where she had gone, but more importantly, it would show them all the way to get back out.
The passage became a descending stairwell, and if there had been any doubt that the tunnel was the work of human artifice, the precision and perfection of the steps removed it. There was no question now; she was in Lemuria, in the tower that had occupied the center of the vast city.
The stairs became another horizontal tunnel, which in turn fed into a cavernous chamber so vast that the shaft of light from her headlamp stabbed out into the blackness and vanished. She tilted her head down to the floor and immediately recognized where she was. The proximity of the matrix’s energy vibrated through every nerve of her body, leading her on like a beacon.
She swam toward the source of the sensation and quickly arrived at another flight of stairs leading up.
No, she corrected. Not stairs but the outer flank of a step pyramid. She angled herself upward and started ascending.
There was a splashing sound and her center of gravity shifted suddenly. The change disoriented her for a moment, but she sensed no danger, and as her equilibrium was restored, she realized that she had broken through the surface. Her head and shoulders were above water.
She removed her regulator mouthpiece and took a cautious breath of air. There was a faint hint of algae and salt, but nothing that smelled noxious. The air was fresh. She knew that she was well below sea level; evidently the mass of air trapped in the chamber was holding back the sea. She climbed up onto the next step and removed her mask, getting her first unobstructed view of the cavern.
The headlamp could only reveal disconnected glimpses of the chamber, but it was enough to trigger memories of the place. The structure beneath her was not merely a utilitarian way of lifting Le’Mu above the masses, it was a temple to the Trinity. Pyramidal architecture had been used in all the ancient cities as a way of focusing the power of the talisman, and she had no doubt that it served the same purpose here.
She left her SCUBA gear on the first dry step and began climbing. Eighteen steps, each two feet high, brought her to the apex, which resembled a stone gazebo, open on all four sides. In the center of the structure, another set of stairs awaited, spiraling down into the interior of the pyramid.
Mira felt her pulse quicken. The matrix lay directly below. The urge to proceed was overwhelming, the strange attraction now an almost explicit appeal from the Trinity: Hurry! Make me whole again!
The thought thrilled and frightened her. She was being invited to forge a weapon that could be used to destroy her, and possibly the world, and yet she could barely find it within herself to resist.
53.
Booker was still in shock. He had grieved for Mira. He had blamed himself for not saving her, for letting her down.
Not only was she not dead, she was helping the enemy.
Collier had said nothing more on the matter, evidently satisfied with letting the Trinity do the talking. When Booker let go of the ring-shaped talisman, reeling from what he had seen, Collier returned it to his pack and motioned for his former subordinate to join him on the helicopter.
Booker didn’t recognize any of the men sitting in the jump seats, geared up for battle, but judging by the fact that, in addition to a full combat load, they were outfitted with wetsuits and Drager rebreathers, he assumed they were SEALs from one of the other teams. As the impact of the revelations about Mira began to fade, he suddenly felt conspicuously naked; riding out to face the enemy, unarmed, in the same battered civilian clothes that he’d been wearing since Tibet. One of the SEALs took pity on him and slid a black assault pack over to him. Inside was a spare rebreather and diving mask, along with several other pieces of equipment that might or might not prove necessary. He found a climbing harness, night vision goggles, and a shoulder holster rig containing an M11 Sig Sauer P228 and two spare magazines.
He stared at the semi-automatic pistol, wondering if he would have to use it against Mira.
What was she thinking? To help the Chinese, after all they had done…the bombing of Potala Palace, the assassination of the Dalai Lama. No one had yet claimed responsibility for the latter action, but there was little doubt in Booker’s mind who was behind the crime. And now Mira was on their side.
He didn’t believe for a second that she was a Chinese sleeper agent or even an opportunistic turncoat. He would have believed that she was being forced to help them, but the impression he’d gotten from the Trinity was that she was willingly cooperating.
Did she know something he didn’t?
No. That doesn’t make any sense. Maybe I misread the signals. Maybe she is being coerced.
Or maybe he just didn’t want to accept the obvious explanation. Mira’s ancestors, the Ascendant Ones, had been destroyed by the Trinity. It had been created to suppress her powers. Of course she would try to prevent it from being restored.
She had chosen her side. There was nothing he could do about it now.
The Sea Stallion skimmed across the water and before long, their destination appeared on the horizon, jutting up out of the sea like shark teeth. Closing the distance did little to change the impression that these islands were little more than rocks, which hadn’t quite sunk below the surface. It was only when they were within a few hundred yards, The Snares now filling the front windscreen with their bulk, that the reality finally sank in.
This was Lemuria, or at least the part of it that was still visible from the surface, and Mira was already there.
The pilot nosed up at the last moment and the Sea Stallion seemed to leap over the island. Booker caught a glimpse of a boat in a sheltered inlet on the south side of the island.
Collier glanced down at the boat and then made a gesture to the SEAL sitting behind one of the door guns. The man answered with a nod and then reached forward with both hands, and grabbed the charging handles of the Browning .50 caliber machine gun. There was a rasping sound and a mechanical clank as the bolt was pulled back, and then, without any hesitation, the man depressed the butterfly trigger with his thumbs.
The fifty cal beat out a steady rhythm, hurling rounds as big as Booker’s pinkie finger down at the boat. Splinters of fiberglass and wood erupted amidst a growing fog of smoke, and after just a few seconds of constant fire, the boat broke in two.
Booker stared, frozen in astonishment, as the shattered hull quickly filled with water and slipped beneath the surface. He knew, somehow, that Mira had not been on the boat, but someone had been aboard, maybe several people, and now they were all dead.
The first shots of the war had just been fired.
54.
A splashing sound from behind her stopped Mira in her tracks. She looked back to see men in SCUBA gear emerging from the water. Sergeant Li was one of the first to arrive and Xu wasn’t far behind. She remained where she was, waiting for the party to regroup, resisting the impulse to simply forge ahead.
Remake me!
The plea wasn’t verbal, but it might as well have been. She had not felt it so strongly in Shambala and wondered what was different this time? She sensed a wrongness, and not just with respect to the Trinity’s original purpose to destroy the Ascendant Ones. There was danger of a different sort looming, but the presence of the Trinity’s matrix made it impossible to focus on anything else. Like the corona around a solar eclipse, the energy from the matrix was blindingly powerful but there was nonetheless a pervasive temptation to look directly into it.
Xu charged up the steps and stopped beside her. “It’s here,” he said, breathlessly. “I can feel it calling to me.”
Mira felt a jumble of conflicting impulses. Stop Xu. Urge him on. Get ahead of him and reach the matrix first. Make a plea for caution.
The latter was a weak voice among the chorus, and probably the only one that originated from her o
wn conscience.
Behind and below them, two more figures splashed up onto the pyramid, one a PLA marine, the other Zhu Kiong. It was strange to see the blind woman swimming and climbing. In almost every instance where Mira had seen her, she had seemed completely immobile, as if the combination of sight and sightlessness had left her without the ability or the need for physical movement. She wondered what Kiong saw now. Whose eyes was she looking through?
Xu didn’t wait for the rest of the party, but started down the steps into the heart of the pyramid. Mira let herself be swept along in his wake. The interior of the pyramid was dry, the air surprisingly fresh and smelling faintly of ozone. The angled walls lent a surreal aspect to the descent, like a crooked house at a carnival, but she focused on the steps before her and Xu’s retreating back to overcome the sense of disorientation.
And then, they were there.
At the center of the chamber, directly beneath the apex of the pyramid, was a squared column, like an obelisk with the top removed. Instead of a pyramid capstone, there was a depression at the top of the column, and in it, something that looked like a pool of molten lead. Mira’s overall impression was of some kind of avant garde birdbath sculpture.
Remake me.
The substance in the basin began to shimmer and vibrate, and Mira realized that it was not a liquid at all, but rather a collection of tiny solid particles—Trinity nano-particles—suspended in a static energy field like a layer of fine sand on a drum head.
Xu reached out to it, holding his hands above the shifting mass as if warming himself over a fire, and then without the least trace of fear or hesitation plunged his hands into it.
Mira braced herself for some kind of reaction. An explosion of energy…the Trinity exulting at its rebirth…a premonition of danger. But none of those things happened. The particles swirled around Xu’s hands with just the faintest crackle of light, like static discharges visible only in a darkened room, and while the persistent sense of danger that she had been feeling did not diminish, neither did it spike in intensity.
The basin of the matrix emptied, revealing bare stone underneath, and suddenly Xu was holding a silvery ring, studded with a translucent white hexagonal crystal.
A new segment of the Trinity had been born and now just one task remained.
Remake me!
No, Mira wanted to shout. I will not let that happen.
“Let’s go,” she told Xu. “We need to get out of here; get that thing back to China and bury it somewhere.”
Xu stared at her, incredulous. “Bury it? This is the weapon we will use to defeat the Americans. And when we have utterly annihilated them, I will find the rest of the Trinity and make it whole again.”
He held the talisman above his head as if taunting the heavens… and then cried in alarm as the Trinity was ripped from his grasp. It moved so fast that Mira saw only a streak of light, her headlamp reflecting from the metal as it shot straight up, a meteor in reverse. She hastened forward and stared up, through the center of the descending stair spiral, and saw the Trinity, now in the hands of someone else.
Recognition hit Mira like a staggering blow. Collier!
This was the source of the danger she had sensed, not the Trinity, but Collier, stealing up behind them to seize his prize.
Heaven, it seemed, had answered Xu’s challenge.
55.
It was like watching a movie on fast forward. Everything was happening so fast, almost too fast for Booker to keep track.
The SEALs under Collier’s command swarmed out of the helicopter, scanning in every direction for a target, and converged on the fissure that led down into the subterranean world. Booker followed along, feeling like an unwelcome spectator.
He caught up to the group just as they were beginning to rappel down into the pit, using the lines that their enemy had so kindly provided and foolishly left unguarded. Of course they did, he thought. They have no idea that we’re coming.
Collier seemed to have advance knowledge of what they would find in the pit, and had already ordered the SEALs to equip their rebreathers and find the lead line that would take them into the heart of the sunken city. Booker donned his mask and rebreather as well, and then took hold of the nearest belay line, wrapped it around his body and rappelled, Aussie-style, down the cliff face.
The water was stunningly cold. Without a wetsuit, he figured he had only a few minutes before he started feeling the first signs of hypothermia. Fortunately, the other SEALs had already found the guide line and were waving him on like impatient drill instructors. He plunged his head beneath the surface and started swimming.
The battle was already over by the time he arrived at the far end. There were at least half a dozen bodies, some floating in the water, some sprawled on the flank of what looked to Booker like an Aztec pyramid, all of them killed with suppressed shots before any knew they were under attack. One of the corpses bobbed near the place where he now swam. Despite the deformation caused by the bullet that had entered the man’s cheek—the wound was just a ragged hole around swollen tissue, most of the blood already rinsed away—the man’s ethnicity was readily apparent. Chinese.
As Booker crawled up onto the pyramid, he surreptitiously checked the other bodies, not sure whether to hope that Mira was among their number or not. She wasn’t. All the dead appeared to be male, and several of them were still clutching compact Type 95 rifles—standard issue for the People’s Liberation Army.
Booker took a few tentative steps up the side of the pyramid, and as he did so, he realized that the SEALs had not killed everyone. The squad was clustered around a pair of prisoners, a Caucasian man who looked vaguely familiar, and a Chinese woman who, despite the dark environment, was wearing sunglasses. Both were unarmed, a condition which had no doubt spared their lives.
A few seconds later, Collier emerged from the water, climbing the submerged steps as if he had walked the whole way.
He wore no diving gear, yet seemed impervious to the cold and untroubled by the pesky need to breathe. He stopped on the step just below Booker to survey the aftermath of the one-sided battle, then turned his attention to the prisoners.
“Atlas,” he said, addressing the man. “I did not expect to find you here.”
Atlas stared back defiantly. “You must be the Wise Father’s latest puppet. You don’t have to do this, you know.”
Collier gave an indifferent shrug then stared at the woman for several seconds as if trying to figure out who she was. Just as quickly, he seemed to lose interest. He turned to the squad leader. “Secure the perimeter. I’ll take care of the rest.”
The rest? He means Mira.
Collier effortlessly mounted the high steps and Booker had to scramble to keep up with him. He found the former SEAL commander just inside the structure at the top of the pyramid, staring into the opening in the floor. Booker could see a faint glow in the darkness below, and considered delving into his assault bag for the night vision goggles, but then Collier did something completely unexpected. He reached his hand out over the opening and held it there.
There was a flash of movement, and then, like a magician producing a bouquet of flowers out of thin air, Collier was holding the Trinity.
Except it wasn’t the Trinity, not the metallic ring with two crystals that Booker had found in Libya with Mira, and which he knew that Collier was carrying in his backpack. This ring was thinner and there was only one crystal.
That’s it, Booker realized. The missing piece. Mission accomplished.
It surprised him that he felt absolutely no sense of triumph. This victory had been too costly, and now he wasn’t even sure if he was on the right side. He couldn’t help but think about his final conversation with Mira.
Are we sure this is a good idea?
He thought he’d been sure, but now he couldn’t remember the reasons for his certitude.
What do we really know about the Trinity? How do we know that we’ve been told the truth?
This is
all part of some ancient plan. But what is the plan?
What had Atlas just called Collier?
The Wise Father’s latest puppet.
It didn’t matter. The deed was done. His part in it was finished.
Collier regarded his prize for a moment, then lowered his arm, letting the talisman hang at his side as he gazed down into the pyramid’s interior.
What’s he doing?
Suddenly, two more people were standing at the apex. It was like the two figures had simply materialized in an instant. Even though he knew what had just happened, knew that Collier was up to his old tricks of manipulating time and space, Booker started visibly, almost losing his footing and falling down the side of the pyramid. Then he recognized one of the two figures standing before him.
Mira.
56.
Mira gaped in disbelief. Her surprise at what had just happened—the seizure of the Trinity and her subsequent translocation—was nothing compared to this new development. Del Booker was alive.
It took her only a moment to process this. Of course he was alive. She had survived the collapse of Shambala, so there was no reason to believe that he could not. Her surprise and joy quickly soured into self-recrimination—
I didn’t even look for him. I just gave him up for dead.
—and then acceptance.
How could I? I barely made it out myself.
Then she realized that Booker was not alone. Eric Collier stood beside him, the Trinity Xu had just created now gripped in his right hand. “Hello, Mira.”
His tone was sardonic, menacing, and Mira realized that he was the source of the premonition she had been feeling. Something fundamental had changed in her relationship with him—perhaps with both men—and she was the only person who didn’t know about it. She glanced past them and saw the scattered bodies of the marines, and Atlas and Kiong surrounded by a knot of men in camouflaged wetsuits.