Guardians of the Four Shields: A Lost Origins Novel

by A D Davies

  Toby firmed up his gaze toward her. “No wonder you fled.”

  “I looked up some old colleagues, somewhere off the grid.”

  “The guys Tane was undercover with,” Jules said. “They’re rural, pushing far-fetched conspiracy theories…”

  “Exactly,” Tane said. “We kept tabs on them, and when this unknown girl showed up—someone we’d connected to your pal Valerio—we checked her out. Recruited her. And here we are.”

  “Top secret.” Prihya faced Toby. “It was a bummer that I dropped out with no warning. But I wasn’t allowed to make contact.”

  Bridget said, “She could be working you.”

  “Feeding back to her boss,” Harpal added.

  Steely analysis, unblinking, from Charlie needed no words. Dan gave a sigh and pinched his lips, unwilling to voice his dissent from Toby’s relief at finding her here. Only Jules appeared nonplussed by her reappearance.

  Prihya said, “I’m not working anyone.”

  “We had her under surveillance for long enough,” Tane said. “And we continuously monitor all workers here. She isn’t in cahoots with anyone but us.”

  Prihya aimed a smile his way. “What do you need me to do here?”

  “Perhaps you can explain this better than me.” Tane patted the stone compartment that appeared to be linked to the orb and the plate above. “I’ve been out of the country for months. You’ve made some upgrades.”

  “Of course. If everyone here can get over past mistakes?” She stared at the LORI contingent one at a time, challenging anyone to voice further suspicions. “Good. Then this is what we call an ‘activation suite.’ It welcomes either densely muscled or DNA-rich participants who can activate the tech…” She dipped her chin toward Jules. “We have reverse engineered some of the active molecules of the meteor rock that made up those bangles and gear it to existing DNA that we keep on-site.”

  Charlie’s eyebrows popped up. “Reverse engineer?”

  “That’s an oversimplification. Much cleverer people than me—physicists—took years to work out the behavior of certain particles. Now we can charge this up and keep the sphere going.”

  “Like a capacitor.” Charlie had branched off, all business, her distaste for Prihya all but forgotten. She climbed up on the console desk and examined the array of wires and a stack of other equipment. Cables fed in and out, specs flashing up on screens that required Prihya to enter a code on her e-tablet to unlock. “This is incredible.”

  “And we found something else while you were away.” Prihya gave Tane another shy smile and crossed to one of the frosted panels and tapped on the frame. It morphed into a display screen, black with symbols and glyphs. They were positioned in the form of an arch, like they had been inscribed around a doorway. “We used a contraption similar to the one Valerio had. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it when I first got here. But we scanned the casing that the Elder Race left here—”

  “Sorry, ‘Elder Race’?” Bridget said.

  “What you call the Witnesses, the New Zealand scientists call the Elder Race. The branch of humanity that existed before ours.”

  All nodded slowly, getting the idea, understanding all this was connected. All led back to the people who’d disappeared just prior to the Younger Dryas epoch. What was more, Toby recognized the glyphs as the ancient language Bridget had partially decoded. And since Prihya had broken into their chateau and accessed Bridget’s work, Prihya would know it, too.

  Toby said, “That’s the Witnesses’ language. The precursor to Indus. What does it say? I see codes for power, for circuit, and for… I don’t know enough. Bridget?”

  “For engineer,” Bridget answered, drawing closer to the screen.

  “I remembered a bit of what I’d learned in the buildup to Valerio’s scroll obsession,” Prihya said. “I could see the dimensions of the chamber were no accident.

  “It needs a ‘worthy knight’ to activate it,” Bridget said, concentrating on the symbols. “It’s been a while since I had access to this material, but it looks like a different type of DNA to Jules and the bangles, or the neutrino network.”

  Still frowning, Bridget turned to Prihya, who was nodding, grinning. Bridget mirrored the grin, as if the pair were best girlfriends bonding over boyfriend news.

  “Isn’t that extinct?” Bridget said, returning to the screen. “How can you—”

  “What is it?” Jules asked, scanning the screen too. Although he’d be able to recall the meaning of any symbols he’d observed with perfect clarity, Toby had seen how Bridget’s mind turned differently to Jules’s. While the lad was like a wild computer, in addition to his eidetic qualities, he determined facts and drew conclusions based on available evidence, whereas Bridget’s process was more creative and imaginative. “Ain’t I needed? Because if that’s the case, I can jump on a plane and go home.”

  “It’s overengineered,” Charlie said, hopping down from her examination of the melding of twenty-first century electronics and millennia-old mechanics. “There are machines on top of machines, redundancies that could be eradicated by stripping it back to its core purpose and setting up from scratch.”

  “Unfortunately, we can’t do that,” Prihya said. “We built one part that performed one task, but we needed to add something else to test it. Then the next piece wouldn’t work without the middle one. If we turn it off to dismantle and improve the efficiency—”

  “You’re concerned the orb will deactivate,” Charlie finished for her. “And then you’ll never get it back on. Even if you plug the right person’s DNA into the compartment.”

  Prihya gestured loosely toward the machinery. “So we can do things with it, interrogate the makeup of the rock used to house the trigger person’s DNA, but we can’t be sure we’ve covered absolutely everything. The modern world doesn’t have the technology to examine the workings of it. The circuits around the world between the orbs—the neutrinos that started talking to one another and woke up this machine—works on a unique system to the one disseminating information and sending the signals. The Elder Race, your Witnesses, added to existing phenomena, which might be natural, or even yet another distinct race.”

  “Yes,” Toby said, feeling the need to speak up after digesting as much as he could. “We learned that when Jules’s mind linked to the machine in Africa. They were built or adapted by an even earlier pre-cursor to the Witnesses, or perhaps a parallel branch on the evolutionary tree.”

  “I’m lost,” Dan said. “Just for once, can’t we pretend it’s aliens?”

  Harpal patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t think too hard about it. It goes: us, then hop back to the Sumerians who invented language. Before that, it was the ice age and those surviving people. Centuries earlier, it’s the Toba catastrophe, which is about the time the Witnesses disappeared and humans started getting cleverer. Go back, and you have our primitive ancestors living at the same time as the Witnesses for generations. Only, our Witness friends lived separately and built all these places. What our mates here are saying is, these rocks that the Witnesses used to accomplish all sorts… no one knows if they formed naturally, or if there was another, even older race who set it up.”

  Dan stared at Harpal, his old friend. Toby had hoped that this mission might bring them back together, that recovering their initial prize would be enough to re-employ Harpal and keep the family unit together. It didn’t seem like financial recompense was on the cards, though, so maybe they would have to wait a little longer.

  “What I’m hearing,” Dan said, “is that there’s a possibility… no matter how tiny… that these orb things talking to each other through the earth… might, possibly—”

  “Still not aliens, big guy,” Jules said. “More likely that solar flare and magnetic pole flip Toby mentioned back in Alabama. Right, Professor Smith?”

  Toby stuttered a moment. Few people used his title, so he was unsure whether there was sarcasm present. “Yes, indeed. The magnetic poles may well have flipped due to a
huge astrophysical event. This may have had other consequences, too. Perhaps… yes, they could have used the shields to deflect an extinction level event.”

  “You don’t know that, though,” Dan said. “Could be used to hide from hostiles, too. Not just deflect their attack.”

  “Show them,” Bridget said.

  Toby’s curiosity ramped up. He wasn’t usually slow on the uptake, but Bridget and Jules had plainly worked out something he’d missed. “Show us what?”

  “The interconnectedness of the machines might be an accident,” Bridget said.

  Again, Prihya nodded. “It needs unique DNA, which is how we know it’s so utterly tied to nature, to the Earth itself. The person who activates this has to be in sync with the planet.”

  “Not the universe?” Charlie said. “Because quantum entanglement isn’t just an Earth thing.”

  “The only universal points relevant here are Earthbound.”

  “Universe?” Dan said. “It’s sounding more like—”

  “It’s time,” Tane said. “I promised you’d be amazed. I have to check now…” He’d reverted to his earlier excited manner.

  “Wait,” Sally said. “This isn’t it? I thought an ancient race of super-brained bipeds with an impenetrable power source sounded pretty incredible.”

  “Pfft,” Dan said. “We’ve seen that a dozen times.”

  Prihya placed her hand on the frosted screen to the side of the symbols. “Now?”

  “It’s time,” Tane said.

  Prihya placed her other hand on the glass, generating a beep on her e-tablet. She took back her hands and entered a code. The frosting faded and all the panels converted to transparent glass, revealing the volcano’s interior in all its glory.

  The lower angle made it look wider and more complex, with routes furrowed through the trees, and a sparkling lake—or large pond—nearby. Above looked like a mist layer on a chilly morning, concealing this veritable Garden of Eden from the uninvited.

  “Oh, my god,” Bridget gasped.

  “That’s…” Jules leaned on the glass, one forearm horizontal, his head leaning on it as if he was out of breath.

  “What?” Dan said. “We saw this from the chopper.”

  Toby rarely agreed with Dan when he was being dismissive of something intriguing, but in this case, it was just a new angle.

  Except… it wasn’t.

  Harpal slung his arm around Dan and adjusted his position, pointing at something in particular. Toby followed his directions and blinked hard.

  Sally, again, took off her glasses and rubbed them before putting them back on.

  “That can’t be,” Toby said, his heart thrumming hard.

  “It is,” Tane replied. “The center point of the Guardian Protocols. The reason I do what I do.”

  “Okay, you got me,” Jules said. “Now I’m amazed.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Dragon’s Pit, North Korea

  The shield, which Ah Dae-Sun delivered last night on his way to his next mission, reflected the Executive’s face, distorting his fingertips as he reached for it. Hanging in the cradle that would deliver it to the matrix and seal Korea’s safety forever, it was truly a marvel; a surface that shone golden at first glance, but on closer inspection it shimmered and swirled like a liquid yet was solid to the touch. Alone, surrounded by all he’d achieved, this was as close to isolation as he ever came. And he had never been closer to immortality than this moment.

  Ryom Jung-Hwan had spent his life enveloped in security. Constantly. There was no telling when an enemy from abroad or a jealous rival from within the Republic might strike. The Party tolerated Executive Ryom more than accepted him, largely because he exemplified an economic success story admired in the West. This led many ultra-loyalists to believe his company should be nationalized, owned, and controlled by the ruling government. However, he’d taken precautions that made a hostile act all but futile and would serve no one.

  Because of his company’s sprawling nature, Ryom had sunk tentacles in every continent and in every country with a GDP sufficient to benefit his profits. He’d started with state-sanctioned partnerships via friendly Chinese companies, learning about numbered accounts and how to hide behind shell corporations. It was a facility their enemies used to fleece the rest of the world, so why shouldn’t Koreans take advantage of this? Especially when it enhanced his people’s lives.

  Indirectly, of course.

  The ruling party were clear that they didn’t like Ryom Jung-Hwan operating with such impunity, in pronounced contradiction to their founding principles. But the wealth he brought in, the respect he commanded with foreign powers thanks to his under-the-radar leaps in research and development, made up for a compromise in philosophy. The only condition for allowing him to work this way was absolute secrecy; no one in the country, nor within enemy states, could know of their agreement.

  Enquiries and assaults on his Antipodean holdings by Tane Wiremu and his infernal NZSIS colleagues had almost brought about Ryom Jung-Hwan’s downfall. If it weren’t for the Dragon’s Pit and the ultimate defensive weapon he had promised the party, he would most certainly be wearing the baggy, gray coveralls of the people digging and constructing this place rather than the genuine Armani suit he sported—and which he had to present as a very good counterfeit.

  This secret arrangement had one major downside: there were many brainwashed idiots out there who believed in the deification of the country’s rulers and worshipped at their feet with religious zeal. Which was ironic considering religion was banned, and rightfully so. But those fools who idolized out of love and blinkered obedience rather than fraught co-existence pondered in secret if Executive Ryom held something over the party, and if doing away with him might somehow benefit the greater glory of the Republic.

  They were almost as big a threat as the aggressive saber-rattling of western countries. Not as destructive or evil as the world’s policemen—otherwise known as the United States and their lapdogs of Great Britain, France, and a dozen others whose pious arrogance and objective hypocrisy fueled projects like this one. But just because the mosquito was small, didn’t mean it could be neglected.

  In the depths of the Dragon’s Pit, sheltered by the Dragon’s Teeth mountain range, his safety was all-but assured. Only he and his most trusted deputy knew the abort codes to security measures that would trigger, should any harm come to him. At times like these, where he dared not invite hired bodyguards into the true heart of his empire, he activated the pulse monitor that fed through his wristwatch, a dead man’s switch like no other. If one single employee or prisoner were to assassinate him or cause him sufficient damage to elevate his adrenaline-to-blood ratio above a preset limit, every man, woman, and child in the valley would perish.

  He was both proud of the technological monstrosity and full of regret that it was necessary.

  The section he had swept through at four a.m., after arriving unannounced by helicopter, was all but deserted. Forty feet underground and cooled by massive turbines from the dam built by Chinese contractors and engineers, the vestibule led to a vault like no other: a chamber housed in a cavern large enough for a funfair, with a private-plane-sized construction at the center. It reminded Executive Ryom of an MRI machine surrounded by scaffolding to accommodate the engineers, operatives, and for the person they were headed to New Zealand to retrieve.

  A special someone whose existence had only recently come to their attention.

  The phone in his pocket vibrated. Only two people had this number and Pang Pyong-Ho was only permitted to use it in the event Ah Dae-Sung became incapacitated—through capture, serious injury, or death. Here, it was Ah Dae-Sung with an update.

  “We are in position,” Commander Ah said. “The subjects have arrived. You were correct. There is more happening at that location than we could observe. Is the facility ready once we acquire the individual?”

  “You are questioning me?”

  “Not at all, Executive Ryom
. But we may have to move quickly. And it is likely we will be exposed. I can see no way for subtlety.”

  “Do not worry about speed. Or stealth. Our extraction plan is in place. The shield will be lowered into the machine as soon as it is active. Once we can control the orb, if my calculations are correct, we will secure Korea’s safety for all time.”

  An uncharacteristic pause made Ryom wonder if there was interference on the line, but Ah Dae-Sung asked something even less characteristic than the hesitation: “Must we spread a tsunami of energy? Would an umbrella launched from the top of the mountain not do the same job?”

  The Executive had asked himself the same question. If he hadn’t, he may have gotten angry with his deputy. “The risk is too great. We can demonstrate the defensive capability of our new weapon, but you know how arrogant the Americans are. Always believing they will triumph, regardless. No, unless we show that we can crush them as freely as…” He recalled how he viewed the internal enemies, those jealous at his position. “As easily as swatting a mosquito, they will launch wave after wave of attack. A war like that will lead to more loss of life than our initial launch. Have faith, my friend.”

  “I do not question your decision,” Dae-Sung replied. “I am thankful for your clarity. We are ready to act. I will call you when we have secured the asset.”

  Executive Ryom hung up and once again gazed over the machine he had created. A cavern of two halves: one side for the orb and the engineering marvel, bathed in light and raised as if for an amateur stage show; the other fenced off for safety, currently dark, ready for senior military personnel, for officials he would invite to observe Korea’s crowning glory, once he could be sure it was safe for them.

  And also to witness Executive Ryom’s inauguration as the head of the ruling party.