by Sean Ellis
Mira dashed from her place of concealment and hastened to the gate temple. Even here, in the heart of the Trinity bearers’ residence, there was a security device to limit access to the uppermost levels. The gate was closed. The device had reset itself after Tarrant’s passage. With almost automatic efficiency, she keyed the tiles to unlock the portal, and continued onward.
She raced up the spiral, taking two steps at a time, her head and heart pounding from the exertion at altitude. Dark spots began to float in front of her eyes, but she did not relent. If she lost this race . . .
As she neared the end of the flight, she ducked down to keep her head below the level of the floor for as long as possible. Then, when she could conceal herself no longer, she sprang forward, arched her body into a dive and tucked into a forward roll. Through the rush of blood in her head, she couldn’t tell if anyone was shooting at her. As soon as her feet made contact with the quartz-tiled floor she took off running again, scanning for a target. It took her a moment to realize that the expected assault had not materialized. Still wary, she skidded to a halt and looked again.
This stage of Agartha’s ascension was unlike any that preceded it. No one had ever lived here, and on the rare occasions when the three Trinity bearers visited, it was only in order to progress to the next stairway and the pagoda temple on the ultimate level. The eleventh tier of the city was nothing but a final gateway; the last test before a worthy initiate might enter the abode of an earth-shaking power.
Unlike the other levels, which had been hewn out of solid stone, the eleventh floor was an intricate machine, with numerous working parts. The floor was arranged in a grid of hexagonal spaces, each about three feet across, with the appearance of masonry tiles. At the center were three elephantine statues, which Mira immediately thought of as Sphinxes—bestial shapes poised like reclining lions, but with feminine faces—surrounding the gate controls. As before, one would have to enter the appropriate code in order to continue. Tarrant had evidently done so, for several of the hexagonal segments of the floor had risen in a chain to form the final flight of stairs leading up to the Trinity temple, and the undead grave robber was nearing the top.
Unhesitatingly, Mira charged toward the steps, heedless of any other threat. But even as her foot touched the first six-sided column, it began retreating back into the floor. She bounded to the next, then another, but the mechanically activated stairs were collapsing beneath her faster than she could run. As her boots touched the fifth step, that column began sinking. The next tread was chest high for a moment, but before she could vault up onto it, it also began settling. The step upon which she had halted dropped until it was flush with the rest of the floor and then stopped with a jarring thump. In a matter of seconds, the entire sequence of columns had returned to the original configuration, leaving her once more on the floor of the eleventh level. She caught another glimpse of Tarrant, standing on the final tier high above, gloating over his victory in the race.
She now became aware of DiLorenzo, no longer of any use to Tarrant, standing motionless at the center, as though imprisoned by the trio of sphinxes. Suspicious, Mira moved toward him, her gun aimed at his heart. If Tarrant could speak through the detective’s mouth, what else was he capable of? She didn’t want to have to kill him, but in the larger picture, his life was but one of billions that were now imperiled by her enemy’s imminent victory.
DiLorenzo suddenly crumpled as if, puppet that he was, his strings had been cut. Rachel Aimes was standing directly behind him, her machine pistol aimed at Mira’s heart.
Mira twisted to the left even as flame spat from the barrel of Rachel’s gun. The report of the shot thundered an instant later, but the bullets had already sizzled through the air where Mira had been. Rachel’s aim followed her, but Mira returned fire as she dove sideways, behind one of the massive sphinx statues.
Only when she was crouching defensively did Mira feel a stinging on her right upper arm where one of Rachel’s shots had grazed her. The enemy had drawn first blood in a battle to the death. That was never a good omen.
She knew she had to keep moving, both to keep Rachel off guard, and to maintain her own momentum. Abandoning the solid cover of the statue, she rolled across several of the hexagonal tiles toward a second sphinx, taking pot shots at Tarrant’s daughter. As she did, she caught a flash of gold—Rachel’s hair—and corrected her aim, emptying the pistol as she completed the roll. She reloaded and was up and firing again almost instantly.
Overwhelmed by Mira’s unflagging resistance, Rachel was driven back. Like her foe, she attempted to use the statues for cover, but she was less agile than Mira and less able with her weapon. A constant barrage of slugs kept her moving when she should have been firing, and the few shots she did manage to get off were wildly off-target. When her magazine fed its last shell, she fumbled to reload. Mira seized the advantage, cutting a path away from the ring of statues to flank Rachel and pin her down. Suddenly fearful, for perhaps the first time in her life, Rachel threw the useless H&K pistol at Mira and ran.
Mira ducked reflexively, narrowly avoiding the projectile, and drew a bead on the blonde woman’s retreating back. Rachel had a good head start and was weaving at random intervals, but Mira kept firing. At least one of her shots struck the mark, and Rachel staggered as she approached the edge of the terrace and then pitched forward, disappearing from sight.
Mira did not pause to savor the victory. Wheeling about, she raced past the sphinx guardians to the center of the level. DiLorenzo had not moved, but she could tell by the steady rise and fall of his chest that there was still life in him. His fate was important to her but not the highest of priorities. Reviving him, if that was in fact possible, would have to wait. She moved past him to the upraised dais and scanned the tiles for the sequence to activate the stairway.
The final code, like the others before, was burned in her memory. Through the fog of fluctuating adrenaline surges and altitude-induced fatigue, she could still see the hands of the original Trinity bearers as they tapped out the password that would raise the stair-like columns from the floor, while keeping the final security measure in a dormant state. Nevertheless, she moved with extreme caution, scrutinizing the writing to make sure she was seeing it correctly, before actually pushing the tiles.
There were nine characters in the ancient word, and as soon as she depressed the last one, she turned on her heel and raced for the first step, anxious to end Tarrant’s fiendish scheme once and for all.
But nothing happened. The floor remained unchanged.
Tarrant’s mocking laughter trickled down like gray rain. “Sorry, Mira. Had to change the locks. Hope you don’t mind.”
Mira felt her breath slip away as the old grave robber turned from his vantage high above and disappeared, eager to keep his appointment with destiny. He had beaten her, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. Yet, it was not the fact of Tarrant’s impending triumph that now left her virtually paralyzed with dread, but rather the distinctive sound of stone sliding on stone that signaled the activation of the intruder defense system.
SEVENTEEN
Mira had once tried to explain to DiLorenzo how the antediluvian cultures had been more technologically advanced than even modern society. She had witnessed ample evidence to support this statement, both in the simple mechanisms that regulated the gates at each level—really nothing more than the most basic applications of engineering: wedges and levers, pulleys and counterweights—and in the incomprehensible manifestations of the Trinity—psychic visions and the reanimation of dead corpses.
The latter phenomena were prime examples of the axiom that in a sufficiently advanced culture, science and sorcery would become indistinguishable. Though she could not explain it, Mira knew that everything she had witnessed derived from the advanced science of this forgotten civilization, knowledge that the Wise Father had passed along, and which was embodied in the relics, rather than mercurial whims of the gods and demons and of superstitious m
ythology. This afforded some small comfort; science, no matter how mind-boggling, still had certain incontrovertible rules. One of those rules established that for every agent, there was a reagent, an antidote to every poison.
In the simplest possible terms, the Trinity functioned by reorganizing atoms of carbon and other elements into molecular replicas of itself. In the argot of modern science, it created nano-machines. It communicated with these on an electromagnetic wavelength almost identical to human Beta waves—the nervous impulses generated by the brain during REM sleep, when dreams occur. A side effect of this was the psychic white noise, which interfered with the naturally occurring, but now for the most part, completely dormant psychic abilities of nearly every human being on earth. But sometimes the output was not white noise, and the Trinity could directly interface with a human mind, downloading its memory, as it had done with DiLorenzo and Mira in the Nazi redoubt. In the hands of a sentient user, this conduit for data transfer could be used for mind-control and even astral projection.
The Trinity was not itself sentient, but rather a computer with a default program, simple directives, foremost of which was self-preservation which, in the absence of an intelligent operator, was downloaded into the nano-machines. It was in this way that the Trinity could reanimate organic matter long after electro-chemical activity had ceased and cellular decay begun. While not changing the outward appearance of the transformed material, the molecule-sized computers networked together to take over the functions once controlled by the central nervous system of a living organism. It had done so for Mann, turning him into an undead automaton with a simple instinct to protect his piece of the Trinity, and it had done so for the man once known as Walter Aimes. In the case of the latter, enough of Tarrant’s memories and personality traits had been preserved to give the impression that he had simply come back from the dead. In reality, that was not the case. Though he himself was not aware of the distinction, the old grave robber was in fact a walking mass of microscopic machinery.
The triumvirate, possessing a deeper grasp of the Trinity’s functions, had used the talisman not only to carve out their kingdom, but also to protect it. The Trinity vision had advised Mira of the consequences of failing to unlock the security code to disengage each trap, nothing so mundane as spring-loaded scimitars or electrocution chambers. Despite the forewarning, she still experienced an instinctive incredulity as the last line of defense rumbled into action.
The three figures that guarded the center of the eleventh level of the underground city were not simply inanimate statues, but complex machines programmed to activate if someone attempted to access the pagoda without entering the appropriate keying sequence. Their response would be absolute. No opportunity to explain or apologize would be given.
The trio of sphinxes moved with a swiftness that belied their stony composition, but they remained slaves to their programming, unable to think spontaneously or predict the behavior of their prey. In the instant it took for them to turn and face her, she launched into motion, springing away from their gaze.
In mythology, there were abundant tales of creatures able to strike a person dead with a single glance, but those legendary gorgons and basilisks were in actuality based on ancestral memories of these ancient devices. In her peripheral vision, Mira could see the crystal eyes of the sphinxes, glowing brightly as they released a constant stream of amplified light. Though invisible to the human eye, the streams of focused brilliance could cut through living tissue like a surgeon’s scalpel. If one of those needle-thin beams touched her, death would be instantaneous.
There was a weakness in the program, however, which she was quick to exploit. The sphinxes did not track their targets visually; their eyes served only as emitters for the laser-type weapons. In fact, the three animated statues were not independent at all, but linked to the same operating system that monitored the gate devices and had enabled Tarrant to raise the stairway columns out of the floor. It was no accident that the surface of the eleventh level had been arranged in a grid of perfect hexagonal tiles. Each cell was a pressure sensitive mat which now served to alert the security system to her location. Only by staying in constant motion, running in broad circles, could Mira hope to avoid the deadly stare of the guardians.
The sphinxes did not simply turn their heads to follow her, but also began moving from tile to tile like pieces on a chessboard, trying to trap the opponent’s queen. Their movements were predictable but their pursuit was tireless, and Mira could feel fatigue settling into her limbs after only a few seconds of running. It was time, she decided, for the queen to go on the attack.
She circled wide, drawing the pack into a tight group then cut toward their flank. The abrupt maneuver put two of the guardians momentarily out of the picture, blocked by the third. As it pivoted toward her, she fired at its humanoid visage. The large caliber bullets struck like hammers, chipping at the stony face, but ricocheted away, seemingly without causing anything but cosmetic damage. The sphinxes did not relent.
Mira didn’t either. Correcting her aim, she fired again and again until one of the lights winked out, then the other.
For a moment, the sphinxes seemed to hesitate as their collective programming sought to interpret this unexpected development. The disabled unit broke away from the others and veered toward the center, away from Mira and out of the way of the other two.
Mira shifted her aim toward the nearest of the remaining pair, and without stopping, unloaded into its face. As she hastened to replace the spent magazine, she noted with satisfaction that a second set of deadly eyes had been blinded.
She made another sudden turn and angled toward the now impotent sphinx, keeping it between her and the last fully operational defender. Even as the defanged guardian tried to get out of the way, Mira targeted the head of the last sphinx and opened fire. Round after round slammed into the carved countenance, blasting away chips of stone and shattering the delicate network of crystals that formed the matrix for the laser-like weapon.
As the brilliance vanished, Mira skidded to a halt and fought to catch her breath. The guardian shook its head as though actually feeling the pain of a wound, then swung its deformed face toward the tile where she had come to rest. It was the first time she had actually looked directly at one of the sphinx-like automatons since their waking, and she was mildly surprised by the attention to detail its craftsmen had employed. But for the vacant area, where her bullets had chewed away the eyes to reveal scarred stone, she might easily have believed it to be a living thing. The smooth face undulated like flesh as the lips curled into a fierce grimace. She heard the scrape of stone moving against stone behind her as the rest of the trio fixed her location and began walking toward her. Only then did Mira realize that the battle was far from won.
Tarrant did not linger to watch the results of his tampering with the gate mechanism. Whether Mira somehow succeeded in defeating the ancient booby trap mattered little now. Even if she triumphed, the pagoda on the twelfth level was literally beyond her reach.
He had experienced a strange pang on witnessing the demise of his adopted daughter. It occurred to him that he ought to have felt something more; grief perhaps, or rage at Mira for having been the instrument of her death. It was the total absence of emotion that troubled him more than any sense of loss.
What have I become? He wondered. What will I become?
Turning away from his vantage, he strode toward the massive edifice that solely occupied the ultimate level of the subterranean empire. Although there was an obvious similarity to the architecture of the many Oriental cultures that had followed the abandonment of Agartha, there was an unmistakable element of pyramid design in the high, vaulted roof of the structure. Tarrant was certain that the design had more to do with functionality than aesthetics.
The talisman he carried had been reacting to the proximity of the temple for some time. In fact, from the moment he had used it to unlock the gate near Rongbuk monastery, it had been trembling with anticipatio
n of its return to the temple. He was envious of its absolute sense of purpose. It seemed that with each passing day since his resurrection, he found it harder and harder to tap into the passions which had propelled him through an entire life spent searching for this very place, for this very moment.
There had been times when the thirst for revenge had abated. Although he had ever been grooming Rachel, the only one of his many surrogate daughters that he actually brought into his life, to be his strong right arm in a grand, if ill-defined scheme, to locate Mann’s lost U-boat, he had grown to love the role of father more than he expected. But always the embers of the vow, made the day of Mann’s act of betrayal, smoldered in his heart, and when Mira Raiden called him from the Panamanian jungle, describing her discovery of an Atlantean refuge city and the existence of the Trinity, he knew the time had finally arrived.
But now, at the moment of triumph, his obsession fled him. He still understood the purpose that had brought him here, but could not wake the slumbering rage that gave it meaning.
Don’t question it, he told himself. You know what to do, just let it happen.
Beneath the towering apex, the altar was a featureless hexagon of crystal. He was drawn to it, as iron to a magnet, and without being fully aware of his actions, extended the hand that held the two joined pieces of the Trinity until the relic was directly over its center. The white quartz slab began to shimmer, pulsing in time with the light from the twin gemstones mounted in the talisman. There was a gentle tugging, as though an unseen hand was trying to take it from him, and he relaxed his grip. Immediately, the Trinity flipped horizontal and hovered directly above the altar. He felt a similar tugging in his chest, but it soon relented, and he understood that his mere proximity was enough to satisfy the requirements of the Shrine’s ancient architects. The entire mountain seemed to come to life, as if a missing fuse had been restored to close a long dormant circuit.