by Nick Cook
‘Unfortunately, I think you’re probably right,’ I replied. ‘When I was interrogated by Alvarez he already knew about it. Although I didn’t tell them that had anything to do with how we crossed over to E8, they must have put two and two together, particularly as that was how I communicated with Sentinel back at Jodrell Bank. Thankfully, when we were captured they didn’t realise how significant the stone orb I had on me was.’
‘So you’re saying they picked up on the same clues that we did, which led them here?’ Mike asked.
‘That’s not too much of a stretch, especially as they must also be aware of the recent neutrino activity.’
‘So this could be fishing trip for the Overseers,’ Mike said. ‘Follow up a few leads on the off-chance one might lead to a micro mind. Plus throw in the added incentive of a possible pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.’
‘Guys, I really don’t like the look of this,’ Jack said, still peering through his binoculars. ‘Evelyn has just had her people set those charges all around the Solar Observatory. We should get up there and try to stop this before it’s too late.’
He started to climb up on to the terrace but I grabbed his arm. ‘Jack, we can’t and you know it. There are only three of us against all of Villca’s and Fischer’s people. We need to keep cool heads and choose our moment, rather than charge in.’
‘But we could try drawing them off with a diversion or something. Anything to stop them blowing those charges.’ Jack stared at me with pleading eyes.
Something in me twisted as I shook my head. I knew what this meant to Jack. ‘Do that and they’ll know someone else is up here. They’ll come after us and we’ll blow our chance to help Cristina. We’ll probably lose the micro mind – if it’s up here – to them too.’
Mike chewed his lip and nodded. ‘I know it’s difficult to sit by and let this happen, Jack, but you’ve got to listen to Lauren. She’s absolutely right on this.’
Jack tipped his face towards the sky, fingers interlocked round the back of his neck. He finally groaned and looked at us both. ‘OK. I’m so not happy about this, but this is your call, Lauren. You’re the one in charge of this mission.’
‘This is the right move, even though it might not feel like it right now.’
Jack have me a whatever shrug.
There was nothing I could say that would make this any easier for him. And I prayed this was the right move. The out-of-my-depth feeling was only getting worse.
We continued to watch Fischer’s workers hook up the explosives and then trail their wires up to the plateau. Villca waved his arms round at Fischer wildly even as they headed over to a low wall to take cover. Bribery or not, the man obviously wasn’t happy about what she was planning to do. But Fischer carried on walking away to take up position behind sandbags with everyone else.
I glanced across at Jack. His knuckles were white on his binoculars. The poor guy had seen the Overseers wreck Skara Brae, a site that had been his whole life, and was about to relive it all over again.
A distant siren started up and a few llamas around the Solar Observatory scattered.
‘Get down – they’re about to blow it,’ Mike said.
We ducked behind the wall. I focused on a bead of sweat running down the back of Jack’s neck as he hung his head, and resisted the urge to reach out for him. Alice aside, when had things become so tricky between us?
A massive boom shook the ground and a shock wave rattled through the trees around us. Seconds later, small stones rained down like hale, shredding the foliage and showering us with stinging impacts as we hunkered against the wall.
The roar of the explosion rolled away, echoing between the peaks as a tidal wave of dust rolled over us. Choking, I pulled up my T-shirt to cover my mouth as the dust began to swirl away slowly, revealing the destruction. Where the Solar Observatory had stood only a moment before was now a gaping hole in the ground.
Jacked growled. ‘Those fucking bastards, if I get my hands on them…’
‘You’ll forget your Hippocratic oath again, right?’ Mike asked.
‘Damn right I will,’ Jack replied.
Wiping the dust off my binoculars with my T-shirt, I peered through them and saw Fischer striding back towards the blast site. Villca was close behind her, shaking his head.
Around us the leaves began to tremble. For a moment I thought a smaller secondary explosion had gone off. But then the ground shook and the mountain trembled with the song of grinding rock.
‘Earthquake!’ Mike said over the roar. He grabbed the probe spike from his pack and screwed it into the ground as it started bucking beneath us. ‘Get down!’
We threw ourselves flat as the trees whipped around and the ground jerked.
A large boulder tumbled past us and bounced down the slopes, joining an avalanche of scree. In that moment the rock almost felt like liquid as it pulsed beneath my body, a living monster awoken by Fischer’s explosives. I clutched my hands over my head, my heart hammering in my chest as it answered the cry of the quake.
The minutes stretched forward as the mountain continued to tremble. Then slowly, so slowly, the world became still again. We began to hear distant sirens drifting up from Aguas Calientes far below us.
I spat out the bile that had flooded my mouth. ‘Is everyone OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m good,’ Jack said.
Mike nodded as he pulled his spike out of the ground and peered at the display on top. ‘That was four on the Richter scale. More importantly, it was definitely a slow-moving monowave.’
In the middle of all this craziness, a flicker of excitement surged through me. ‘Yet another sign that one of Lucy’s micro minds really is here.’
‘Not necessarily. I can’t be certain the quake originated in this mountain. To be sure, I would need to place a number of sensors around it and triangulate them when another quake hits.’
‘We haven’t got time for that.’ I peered over the terraced wall, but there wasn’t any sign of Evelyn, Villca, Cristina or the others.
Mike gestured down the mountain. ‘Those damned idiots – looks as if they got the hell out of here because of the quake.’ He shook his head. ‘The safest place they could be is up here on the mountain. The real problem will start when all those big rocks begin landing in the valley below.’
I looked down and saw a convoy of trucks and police vehicles speeding along the mountain road towards the town.
‘Then we should grab this opportunity to find out what we can and then look for an opportunity to rescue Cristina later,’ I said.
‘Damned right,’ Jack replied.
Together we scrambled over the edge of the terrace and walked towards the shattered stones of the Solar Observatory and the plume of smoke drifting up from a gaping hole into the bright cobalt-blue sky.
Chapter Twelve
Although the air was now clear of dirt thrown up from the explosion and I’d drunk half of my aqua pack, I still had a dusty tang in my mouth. The jungle soundtrack had stopped dead and there was no sign of the llamas anywhere. Apart from us, Machu Picchu was deserted. It made it easier to imagine this site as a bustling community of the Incas living here five hundred years ago, their elite of the elite.
We were on the eastern side of Machu Picchu, stone paths criss-crossing the network of buildings. Despite the severity of the quake, with the notable exception of the Solar Observatory, I couldn’t see any fresh debris that had fallen from the many sturdy-looking walls. At least Fischer’s wanton act of archaeological vandalism had been limited in that way.
Mike trailed a hand over the smoothed wall beside us as we walked up some steps. ‘The earthquake hasn’t left so much as a scratch on these.’
Striding out ahead of us, Jack nodded. ‘Like I said, Machu Picchu has survived every quake in history. That makes what Fischer just did an even bigger crime.’ He reached the shattered remains of the Solar Observatory and clenched his hands into fists as he took in the damage.
We joined him at
the rim of a sloping basin where the building had stood only few minutes before. Now there was just scree sloping down to the dark hole in the middle. The rising column of smoke had begun to fade away.
Tears beaded Jack’s eyes. ‘I don’t have the fucking words right now.’
I patted his back. ‘I know.’
Together we picked our way carefully down the scree slope and peered into the inky hole of darkness in the centre.
‘Did you know that was down there, Jack? It appears to be some sort of room?’
‘There’s no mention of it in any of the records I’ve seen.’
‘We might not agree with her methods, but it looks as if Fischer really might be on to something,’ Mike said.
‘And if the micro mind is down there she may have just blown it up,’ Jack groaned. ‘I can’t see that sitting well with her bosses.’
A sinking sensation passed through me to my toes. ‘Let’s find out.’ I dug a torch out of my bag and shone its powerful LED beam down into the blackness. Partially buried by rubble, there appeared to be stone steps descending from the small hidden room and a corridor sloping away into the darkness.
‘Do you want to give the Empyrean Key a go to see if you can communicate with the micro mind, Lauren?’
I nodded, taking the stone orb out of my rucksack and the metal tuning fork from its pouch. I gave it a sharp tap on the orb. A deep chiming note rang out but nothing appeared over the Empyrean Key.
‘I’m not seeing anything,’ I said. ‘But I wouldn’t panic just yet – I’m guessing that corridor leads somewhere.’
‘Tombs possibly, or something like that. If so, there may be a significant amount of gold down there too.’
‘Well, there’s only one way to find out – let’s go and explore,’ Mike said.
I shook my head. ‘Not all three of us. Villca and Evelyn could arrive back at any moment – once they decide this mountain is safe from further quakes. We need somebody to remain up here and warn us if they’re returning. And as Jack is the archaeologist and I’m the one who can use the Empyrean Key, that means…’
‘You guys get to have all the fun, in other words.’
‘Those are the breaks,’ Jack said.
‘Yeah, tell me about it. Never mind – I’ll set up more seismic monowave probes and take some readings whilst I’m keeping guard. There are likely to be some milder aftershocks and the more data we can gather the more there’ll be for us to analyse afterwards.’
‘I really wanted to hear that another quake might hit whilst we’re underground,’ I said.
‘Relax, Lauren,’ Jack said. ‘You can see for yourself how Machu Picchu coped with a serious earthquake. We can be reasonably certain that any underground passage will too.’
‘Then let’s get going,’ I said.
With our torches’ light beams illuminating the way, Jack and I slid down a sloping slab of rock that had been split in two by the blast.
We landed on the rubble floor below and found ourselves at the entrance to a sloped tunnel with perfectly smooth stone walls. There was no sign of any weathering, unlike the structures on the surface.
Jack took a deep breath in. ‘As I thought.’
‘What?’
‘Taste the air.’
I drew in a large lungful but got nothing. ‘I’m not picking up on anything unusual.’
‘Exactly. The air isn’t stale. There isn’t even any lichen growing on the walls. My guess is that this was hermetically sealed until Fischer blew a hole through the Solar Observatory. Once again testament to the stone-crafting abilities of the Incas.’
‘If they didn’t have help that is…’ I pointed to the sky as Mike had earlier.
‘If the Angelus built this place, I’m pretty sure they would have been able to melt straight through the rock with some sort of souped-up laser. But the wall is constructed from stone slabs, suggesting human work.’
‘In other words, one made by our species and not alien visitors.’
‘Exactly. Maybe there’s hope of turning you from a UFO fangirl into an archaeologist yet.’
‘Sorry, I’m too far gone for that.’
Jack laughed and my heart lifted at the sound, especially after the sharpness of his earlier tone with me.
Mike’s silhouette against the bright blue sky appeared above us. ‘How’s it going down there?’
‘There’s no obvious sign of whatever triggered Cristina’s visions, so we’ll need to head deeper down this passageway,’ I replied.
‘Don’t go too far. I doubt even Sky Dreamer Corp’s state-of-the-art Sky Wire phones can work through solid rock.’
‘So we’ll need to maintain a line of sight to each other,’ I said. I directed my torch beam along the corridor that sloped away into darkness. We could use the walkie-talkie function on the phones for this. ‘Mike, place your phone near the entrance and we should be able to stay in contact.’
‘And if you go round a bend?’
‘Then we lose contact.’
‘So try not to do that, hey, because you’ll worry me sick. Here, catch.’
Mike lobbed his phone down to us and I caught it one-handed, the muscle memory of my years of playing ball games at school kicking in. I pulled up the walkie-talkie function and toggled it into speaker mode before placing it on the step.
‘Just give us plenty of warning to pull out if there’s even a hint of company on its way,’ I called up to Mike.
‘I will. Good hunting, guys.’
I nodded and turned to Jack. ‘I know what a big deal this is for you, so you’d better take the lead.’
‘It could be the archaeological discovery of the century, so thank you…’
His eyes had a faraway look as he stepped past me into the passageway. A man about to realise his dreams. He so deserved this after what had happened at Skara Brae.
We started down the steps into the corridor of darkness so long it was beyond the reach of even our torch beams.
Jack seemed lost in a world of his own as we headed down into the heart of the mountain. I could only begin to imagine how his excitement was building.
For me, it felt eerie knowing that we were probably the first people to walk down here since this secret passageway had been closed off centuries before. What would be waiting for us at the bottom? I just prayed with every fibre of my being that it would be another crystal facet of Lucy’s artificial consciousness. Certainly whoever had built this had gone to a serious amount of trouble to stop it being discovered.
‘Bloody hell,’ I said after a while. ‘This is even harder work than the climb up to Machu Picchu.’
‘There’s probably even less oxygen down here. I’ve not felt so much as the faintest breeze, which suggests a lack of airflow. If you get too lightheaded, tell me, and we’ll have to head back to the surface.’
‘But we may not get this chance again,’ I replied.
‘I realise that, but as much as I want to know where this leads to, I’m not prepared to put your life on the line.’
I knew Jack was being sensible, but with each step the idea that we might be closing in on another micro mind powered my determination to see this through. ‘I’m good for now, so let’s keep going.’
But as we continued forward I could almost feel the weight of the mountain pushing down on us from above.
‘Guys, are you there?’ Mike’s voice rang out from my Sky Wire phone.
I unclipped it from my belt and pressed the talk button.
‘All good, although I’m half expecting to see Bilbo Baggins and Gollum down here, we’re that deep beneath the mountain.’
‘The Hobbit, right?’ Jack asked.
I nodded. ‘That and The Lord of the Rings are two of the greatest stories ever told.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Oh, I do.’
Jack shrugged. ‘Anyway, Mike, please don’t tell us we need to head back up to the surface already?’
‘Nope, no sign of the bad guys ye
t. You’re good for a while longer. I was just checking in to see you were both doing OK.’
‘Yeah, we’re fine,’ I replied.
‘Good. Over and out.’
We started forward again and soon the stitch in my side became a burning knife of pain. As the air grew even leaner, spots of light started to dance in front of my eyes. I had to put a hand on the wall to steady myself and dragged in a breath, my lungs burning. I couldn’t carry on much longer, but then Jack came to a stop ten metres ahead of me.
‘What’s that?’ he said, not realising the state I was in. His torch beam was no longer disappearing into the darkness but playing over something solid ahead.
‘Thank god.’ I pushed myself off the wall as Jack strode down two steps at a time and I forced myself to hurry after him. By the time I caught up, Jack was standing before a slab of polished stone that completely blocked the passageway.
‘This must be some sort of doorway, but damned if I can see any obvious mechanism to open it.’
‘You think it might be a sealed tomb or something?’ I asked.
‘No way to be sure until we get through it.’
‘If this were an Indiana Jones film, there’d be a special hidden trigger to open it, probably in a nest of creepy crawlies,’ I said.
Jack shook his head at me. ‘You really do watch too many movies.’ He continued to probe the edges with his fingertips. ‘Nope, this looks permanently sealed. As far as I can tell it was never intended to be opened again.’
‘So what do we do now? Head back to the surface and grab some C4 from to explode it open – if there’s time?’
Jack’s eyes narrowed on me. ‘No – it would probably cave the whole corridor in. The proper archaeological approach here would be to excavate round this very carefully with a good old-fashioned chisel.’
‘And you think Fischer will do that when she eventually turns up here?’
‘Of course not. She’ll blast through this and excavate through any resultant rockfalls to help herself to whatever is on the other side.’
I stared at him and felt like slapping myself. ‘I’ve missed the most bloody obvious thing here! If there is a micro mind just the other side of that door, then…’