by Nick Thacker
He had no idea how he was going to search for the intruders now. He could scour the remainder of the pyramid, but by now the rest of his team had likely checked all of the known chambers and passages, including the small ventilation shafts leading outward from the pyramid’s center. Since he had not yet heard otherwise, he assumed they had found nothing out of the ordinary.
They had to search the well if Madu was going to declare the mission complete. But without proper climbing equipment — or even just a good rope long enough to get even one of them down the shaft — there was no way to know for sure if anyone had escaped that way.
“Hafsa, Gahiji, remain here,” Madu ordered. “Guard the shaft; the rest of you––come with me.”
There must be another way down. Desperate, he strode toward the passage on the South wall. He knew that at the end of this hallway would be a —
It couldn’t be. Five feet from the end of the South hallway, he noticed something different. There was a square hole in the wall about 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide. It was easily large enough to fit a man, though they would have to crawl. Still, it was much larger than the numerous ventilation shafts throughout the rest of the pyramid. This was something different. Until today, this hole simply hadn’t been here.
But because this shaft was horizontal, they didn’t need extra gear to explore it. Jabari sent two of his men into the shaft, then he and the remaining six men followed. The small passage almost immediately turned at a right angle straight down. Unlike the well-shaped circular shaft of the well, this section had hand and foot holds carved out of the rock, allowing the team to get down with little trouble.
They descended with a purpose, quickening their pace. Madu felt much more comfortable descending this new passage, as it was meant for human use. The rungs were spaced about every foot and a half, and were carved about four inches into the stone, providing a solid hold at each step.
Madu estimated that they had climbed straight down for about 30 feet when heard the first man in the line reach the floor. Madu could see that the man was standing on a large, flat rock; but he also saw that the shaft continued through another hole in the wall at a shallow angle. It seemed that it was doubling back in the direction of the Lower Room. From here, they would have to crawl again on their hands and knees. The first man in line hesitated for a moment, caught his breath, and disappeared into the new tunnel. Madu’s mind was racing, trying to analyze potential threats as he came to grips with the immensity of their discovery.
A new passageway in the Great Pyramid of Giza; one that had lay undisturbed and unknown for centuries. How had it simply “appeared” in the Lower Room? And the well shaft — how had it miraculously been excavated, within what seemed like the span of only a few hours?
24
9:13 pm - Giza, Egypt
They had been running for almost an hour. The sheer size of the tunnel system they were in was daunting. Vilocek himself was getting tired, something he was not used to.
He had been trained by the most elite martial artists around the world — not for fighting, but for forming his body into the best shape possible. He had studied with Tibetan monks to gain control of his mind and consciousness, which had helped him develop an extremely keen sense of awareness, attitude, and edge.
A certified genius, he had excelled as a child, spending most of his grade school years traveling the world with his father. Dr. Enko Vilocek had stressed to his son the value of not being tied to one place, and consequently young Tanning had few friends or girlfriends growing up, choosing instead to spend his time studying chemistry and physics with his father. He was fluent in English, Spanish, Russian, German, French, and Japanese, but understood most spoken languages without trouble. Vilocek was an exceptional example of what the human mind was capable of, and his most coveted goal in life and business was to find a missing link between the mind and the body.
For Tanning, most of the people he had met who’d had impressive IQs — his father included — were seriously lacking in the “brawn” department. Not just a cliché, Tanning had found that for some reason, most of his subjects who displayed high test results had a harder time becoming more physically fit than their lower-IQ counterparts.
This dilemma troubled him. He had spent countless years of his life developing the habits, tactics, and regimens that would keep his body operating most efficiently, but he had never had trouble doing geometric proofs or understanding complex chemical conversions. Why were the intelligent people more prone to weakness — and why did the bodybuilders of the world typically get the proverbial short end of the stick?
Vilocek thought that the crystal had the answer. The rock his father had shown him so many years ago pulled at Tanning; it seemed to beg him to understand its powers. Father and son had experimented with the rock — first on small mammals and then humans — and most of the test results had been nothing short of miraculous. From aiding in the adoption of new languages to somehow providing extra motivation to weightlifters during workouts, the crystal seemed to invoke magical properties that no one understood.
Upon his father’s death, Tanning Vilocek dedicated his life to understanding the crystal; he built one of the most impressive research firms in America and hired the most intelligent — and discreet — minds the world had to offer. It wasn’t long before the results poured out — first strides in mental and physical aptitude, then results that proved to be a bit more… abnormal.
His firm had already begun weaponizing the crystal — using it to cause paralysis and other effects, and because of those results, his firm had a promising future as the world’s foremost provider of advanced weapons technology.
But for Vilocek, it wasn’t enough. The same problem that had nagged at him since childhood antagonized him now. He knew the answer lay in the crystal. He knew there was a way to jolt the brain’s receptors into action — creating neural connections that would enhance the human body’s ability to grow, heal, and understand the world around it.
He just needed more of the crystal.
He was close now; he could feel it. The rock in his pocket — a mere synthetic copy of the original — hadn’t stopped glowing since they’d entered the tunnel. Every fifty feet or so, he would hold the stone up to the walls around him, and the hieroglyphic-like symbols would appear before his eyes, each one reminiscent of invisible ink, only seen near the presence of the stone. He had no idea what they meant, but the fact that they were only visible when the crystal was near was enough for Tanning. No one but the original builders had ever seen this passage, and no one since then had ever spoken of blue lights in the Pyramid of Giza. Vilocek knew he had found the answer to his problem.
25
9:27 pm - Giza, Egypt
Karn knew Vilocek was lost in his own thoughts. He’d worked for the man for fourteen years, the past seven of which he’d spent as Vilocorp’s head of security and Tanning’s right-hand man. He was tasked with protecting the man, so he traveled wherever and whenever his boss did. As a result, he had come to know Tanning pretty well, and understood his nuances and quirks better than anyone.
Even now, when Karn himself was beginning to get excited, he knew Vilocek was only getting angrier. Although they were just steps away from discovering secrets the Pyramid of Giza had concealed for countless centuries, the novelty was lost on Vilocek.
Karn knew Vilocek’s initial reactions to the discovery of the passageway were like anyone else’s — joy, excitement, amazement. But those feelings would have been replaced almost immediately by resentment, anger, and impatience. Karn had worked with the man long enough to know that he would resent the fact that the answers he sought, though closer than ever, were still just out of reach. Vilocek would be angry and impatient at the need to spend more of his precious time to end the search once and for all. Karn didn’t get it — he liked his boss, but his impatience and lack of appreciation for the simple things in life still were beyond belief.
And since Vilocek was more intereste
d in finishing this race than paying attention to where they were going, Karn had to maintain situational awareness for him, to prevent them all from running headlong off a cliff.
Karn had a small field notebook, where he had been scribbling hasty notes and sketches of their progress. So far, they had been running through a curved passageway. He knew they were constantly curving to the left and getting deeper with each footfall, but without a GPS device or a depth-tracking device, he had no precise idea how far or how deep they had gone.
His best guess was that they were spiraling downwards — every few hundred feet the curve of the passage tightened — toward some sort of exit. Eventually they reached a section of the tunnel where the wall bowed inward slightly — Karn assumed that the tunnel at that point had intersected the outer wall of the well shaft they’d seen in the Lower Room. They squeezed past the choke point before picking up their pace again.
Karn and Beka were in pretty solid shape; they each ran five to ten miles most mornings, but they couldn’t measure up to Vilocek. The man was an anomaly — a purely pristine specimen of the human form, and both men were amazed at how their boss pushed forward, even though he was clearly getting tired.
Corinne and professor Andrews were having a hard time. Andrews was a pitiful mess; a man who’d clearly spent most of his adult life avoiding any physical exertion. His niece was a little better off — she was much younger — and healthier. Karn didn’t miss any opportunity to steal a look at the pretty redhead, in spite of the pace Vilocek was pushing.
Corinne’s hair, pulled back in a bouncing ponytail, was a deep crimson that contradicted her light complexion. She had the body of a gymnast; broad shoulders for a woman, and the rest of her body was thin and tight, curved yet not too full. Karn had more of a taste for women with a bit more meat on their bones and women who had more “experience” in their lives; but Corinne’s youthful nervousness, combined with her defiant and indignant attitude toward Vilocek and his team got Karn’s attention.
Maybe after their mission was completed, Karn would have a chance at the young lady. He smiled at the idea.
Finally, the curved passageway ended at a solid wall. Vilocek held the stone up to the wall and another marking appeared in the center. It was the same symbol they’d found on the stone at the entrance to this tunnel. Vilocek placed his hand in front of the symbol, the bluish symbol lit up, and the block slid out of the way, leaving another hole exactly like the one they’d entered before.
Karn followed Vilocek through the hole and into the space beyond, and both men stood and stared in amazement.
26
9:32 pm - Giza, Egypt
The hole was no more than 30 feet square and seemed to have been cut from basalt, a stone not common to the area.
To Vladimir Beka it seemed like a cave — a cave that had been formed into a perfect square. There were no lines showing the edges of individual blocks — the walls were perfectly smooth. The only breaks in the solid interior were two holes, each about four feet in diameter; the first in the ceiling and the second exactly below it in the floor, directly in the middle of the room. Beka peered down the hole in the floor. He knew they had no gear for climbing, so they would not be able to discover where the shaft led.
Beka scanned the rest of the room for clues. What he was looking for he didn’t know — they were breaking new ground and had nothing to go on.
The room was bare, completely devoid of visible markings. Vilocek took out the piece of crystal and held it down the well. Immediately the shaft’s sides lit up with the same blue glow as the tunnel, with lines and markings dancing throughout the well’s interior. Likewise, any section of the room’s walls he held the stone in front of displayed the same symbols, arranged in different rows and columns. The strange hieroglyphics were indecipherable, yet they had a certain order to them — they seemed to be thoughtfully and delicately placed. The script had the look of long, careful planning and patient implementation over a very long period of time.
Vilocek was becoming visibly agitated, his impatience with the search rapidly wearing him thin. “Look around for anything out of the ordinary — there’s got to be something here related to the crystal.”
As he spoke, he placed the crystal back in his coat pocket. Expecting the symbols on the wall to fade, he fumbled with his flashlight.
Before he could flick it on, the rest of the room got a bit brighter, bathed in the blue light. “Everybody, turn your lights off,” he ordered. To their amazement, the visibility in the room actually improved. Whatever had activated the blue writing in the chamber had a much more lasting effect than Vilocek’s small crystal.
“How is this happening? Did someone touch something?” Beka asked from a corner. Heads around the room shook in denial. They gazed around the room, circling around each other, trying to make sense of the odd symbols and figures.
Now every section of the room was lit up. It was as if they’d stepped into a giant planetarium, and cast on every wall, floor, and ceiling were the strange blue symbols. They were getting brighter and brighter, slowly increasing in intensity until the light was not just a dim glow casting deep shadows but a luminescence that filled the entire room. As the light grew there was a sudden jarring noise, accompanied by a grinding and rumbling shake. As if there had been a distant earthquake, the room shook slightly but steadily. Eyes wide, they all searched for the cause of the shaking.
Karn was the first to spot it.
“Over there!” he shouted, pointing to the corner across the room. A section of wall the same size as the entrance corridor was sliding away, sinking into the wall around it. It gaped wide, looking exactly like the way they’d entered.
“It must be the way out,” Vilocek said. “Somehow we activated the chamber — that’s why the symbols lit up, and why this door opened.
“I’ll bet the builders wanted to make sure they’d have another exit, in case of an emergency,” he continued. He walked toward the new opening, but stopped short of the threshold. “What — “ he blurted out to no one in particular, and at the same moment a head poked out from the opening.
Beka watched as Vilocek unholstered his pistol and bent down, putting himself face-to-face with the young man who had just emerged.
“Ah, Mr. Reed; how good to see you again! I thought we’d lost you back in D.C., but I see now that you just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Why don’t you and your crew step out of there and give us a hand?”
27
9:34 pm - Giza, Egypt
Bryce stepped out of the tunnel, arms up, with his gun in his right hand. He could see Cole in the opposite corner of the room, weaponless and held at gunpoint by one of Vilocek’s goons. Both Thompson brothers recognized the men with Vilocek immediately from the break-in at Whittenfield Research, and Bryce had to grab Jeff’s wrist as he stepped into the room to prevent the younger man from doing something that might put them all in a more dire situation.
“Well, well. Seems Whittenfield wasn’t up for the trip himself — old age gets to him, I guess,” Vilocek said, snickering as the group came into the chamber.
“You know, it seems like only yesterday his father and mine would stay up late at night, discussing the possibilities of their latest research. It is a shame they could not be here today, to see the culmination of what they’d sought for so many years.”
“You’re a thief and a liar,” Bryce interjected. “You stole the crystal from Whittenfield Research to further your personal cause.”
“Ha — is that what he told you? James is quite the storyteller! Yes, I was given the crystal by my father, who indeed had taken it from Whittenfield Sr. But you must understand, Captain Reynolds,” he continued, “Mr. Whittenfield’s father needed my father — and now me — to continue his research.”
“What do you mean?” Cole asked.
“My father and the senior Whittenfield found that by combining the crystal’s components with different elements, strange effects can be achieved. We’
ve been able to duplicate many of these effects in our own laboratories, and some of the results have been truly miraculous.
“However, they also found that the duplications they tried to make had minor flaws — none were materially ‘perfect’ in their makeup. Any experiments they produced in the lab with the original, unaltered crystal, were effective — however weak. But any experiments using the ‘synthetic’ crystal substances were more powerful, but the effects didn’t stay.”
Bryce pondered this for a second. “So the tests they ran with the real crystal weren’t strong, but they were effective — and the ones run with the fake material were much more powerful, but not lasting? Like after a certain amount of time, the effects wore off?”
“Yes. After 48 hours, the effects of the tests had completely disappeared. However, it was the after-effects that concerned our fathers: About 72 hours after the testing, the subjects seemed to enter a state of confusion — they lost their peripheral vision, experienced short-term memory deficiencies, and general degradations of their minds.
“They discovered that the tests caused symptoms similar to Alzheimer's and in rare occurrences, even mild autism. But it didn’t stop there — after a certain amount of time, sometimes months, sometimes years — all of the patients succumbed to the ailments eventually.”
“Meaning?” asked Wayne.
“Meaning that all of the tests were a complete failure. Every one of the test subjects was deceased within five years.”
The weight of the statement hit everyone. Whatever they were all after down here — if it was even here — was dangerously powerful. In the back of Bryce’s mind, he began to hope they wouldn’t find anything here.