by TM Catron
“Hey! Everybody! Back here,” he managed. No answer. The torch ahead of him went out. Darkness crept in further. He shivered. The next light went out. Was he still awake? Lincoln pinched himself. Then all the lights died. But the torch next to him still burned. He held his hand up to the light but couldn’t see it at all, even as he felt the extreme heat of the fire on his fingertips. The darkness was hiding it—Lincoln laughed inwardly at the thought.
The blackness rose up, smothering him. Lincoln no longer thought of calling for help.
Lincoln awoke lying on his back on the stone floor, parched. The oppressive darkness had disappeared, replaced by completely regular darkness. A cool breeze blew on his face. He sat up and his hand brushed something—smooth stone. He must have passed out somewhere in the chamber. Still, he felt better—his wound hurt less, anyway. He used the wall to climb to his feet. Since he had been walking with the wall to his right, he continued in that direction.
Lincoln couldn’t see anything, but he didn’t care. By following the wall, he would find the door soon. There. His hand reached out into nothing. He turned to follow the tunnel out. The lights here were extinguished, too. Why hadn’t his team waited for him? His temper flared, even as he realized they would never leave him behind on purpose. Something must have happened.
Lincoln tripped on something and fell forward, banging his knee. Stairs. Metal stairs. Wrong tunnel. Preferring not to go back, Lincoln climbed them, his boots clanging loudly. He climbed and climbed until his lungs and legs burned. The wound pulsed with pain again. His shirt clung to the stitches.
Then the stairs twisted around. The mountain walls closed around him. There. The breeze. Before he had time to consider what was happening, he found himself standing in the middle of the woods on the side of a mountain. Stars shone overhead, sparkling in the crisp night air. Lincoln looked back at the gaping hole in the mountainside, small and surrounded by trees. And blacker than the night around him. He tried to get his bearings. A half moon illuminated the valley. No burning campfires to show him the way back. Either he’d surfaced on the wrong side of the mountain, or they were already extinguished for the night. From here, everything looked different. Lincoln didn’t recognize the ridge line because he had never seen it before from this angle.
He started fidgeting. He had thought his stitches were bleeding, but being outside made him feel better. This had to be the wrong side of the mountain. The trees would not allow enough moonlight through for him to see where he was going, even if he knew the camp was below. He had enough experience outdoors to know he should stay put and wait for morning. Loathing the idea, Lincoln fumbled his way back into the hole in the mountain, out of the cool night, and sat facing down the steps. At least he was wearing warm clothing.
Calla walked with eyes down in the dark corridor. Instead of going to the gallery, she turned into the hall and glanced around. Satisfied she was alone, Calla looked up. Like everything on Condar, the hall had been built for a larger race. The ceiling disappeared almost completely in the dim light, and even Calla’s eyes had trouble penetrating the darkness there. Adarria—circular hieroglyphs—covered the walls. But the floor was smooth as calm water all the way to the middle. There, in the very heart of the hall, a stone dais hovered ten feet in the air. Adarria covered it, too, deep etches in the black stone. They were quiet now.
Last time Calla had been here, the hall had teemed with Condarri and their slaves. The Condarri ringed the dais, which glowed from within, the only light source in the circular space. Calla and Dar Ceylin had worn their masks so the Condarri did not have to gaze on their unworthy faces. Upon the dais, they had sparred one last time for all to see. Dar Ceylin had been chosen for command, but Calla challenged him. So they fought for it while the Condarri race looked on.
Dar Ceylin’s ethereal mask covered his entire face with no adorning symbols—only his eyes showed through it. Calla had taken care to let the darkness of her mask reflect the Condarri symbols, and it swirled and changed like the adarria on the dais.
They had faced each other many times in training. Dar Ceylin had no weaknesses. Equal to him in every way, Calla knew his every move and would use that knowledge against him. Calla would win—she was certain. She and Dar Ceylin approached each other in the center and stopped at arm’s length.
“No games today, Calla.”
“I want this.” Calla looked into the dark eyes shining from behind the smoky mask.
“So be it.” He took a step back and motioned for her to make the first move.
The stone dais below them flashed as the adarria shifted and changed. Condarri and hybrids silently watched the skillful dance above them. Calla, the challenger, made the first move and struck at Dar Ceylin’s head. But he blocked her and spun around to strike back. Swiftly, Calla ducked and delivered a kick meant to throw him off his feet. But as well as Calla knew Dar Ceylin, he knew her. The fight continued with neither backing down nor giving up. The watchers stood at attention as Calla pinned Dar Ceylin, locking arms around his neck.
“I will not be the one who kills you,” he whispered. He wrenched her arm back, almost dislocating her shoulder, but Calla had expected this move and used the force of his motion to twist and face him. She kicked his head, sending him sprawling.
Dar Ceylin stood in an instant, attacking, drawing her back in. She met him, anticipating another blow. He kicked. She failed to block in time. Calla sprawled across the dais, stunned. In the second she took to recover, Dar Ceylin was there, pinning her to the ground. He ripped off her mask before the Condarri, the beautiful hieroglyphs dissolving into nothing.
They would not let the fight continue. Calla remained on her hands and knees, her face toward the stone as Dar Ceylin rose. The adarria on the dais glowed again and changed. He would maintain first command.
The shame of Calla’s defeat burned anew in her mind as she gazed at the now empty dais in front of her.
“You were the only one to challenge him,” said a voice behind her.
Calla spun around. “I have not bidden you to speak!” One male stood in front of her. “Where are the others? I am changing your orders.”
“I thought you had already chosen a team.”
“I’m adding to it. Williams went rogue before I reached him. You three will stay with me as we root out the rest.”
The hybrid nodded his head, acknowledging Calla’s command.
“Get the others,” she said as they left the hall. “Meet at my ship.”
The next day, Lincoln stumbled out of the trees, the side of his shirt covered in blood. A corporal leaning on a tree trunk nudged his buddy, who shouted at someone else in the trees. Carter walked out and made a beeline for Lincoln. Others were already gathered around him, supporting him, asking questions.
“What happened?” asked Carter, his eyes wide. “We’ve been looking all over for you. You were right behind us, then the lights went out, and by the time we relit the torches, you were gone. Alvarez and Nelson are in the tunnels looking for you right now.”
“I stumbled upon another way out. Found it in the dark.”
“Didn’t you hear us shouting for you?”
Lincoln shook his head. “I got disoriented. When I walked out, I thought I was heading the right way, until I came to the stairs.”
While Carter helped Lincoln back to the hospital tent, Lincoln recounted how he had made it out.
“Don’t tell the others, but I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to that place, even after I realized I was in the wrong tunnel. It was leading up, and all I could think about was getting out.”
“There is something odd about that room, for sure. But there was only one way in or out. We walked the perimeter extensively. You must have gone out the same door and wandered the wrong direction.”
Lincoln shrugged as they entered the
tent. Carter helped him lie on the cot. “Either that,” Lincoln said as he settled back, “or we found out how Halston got out.” He hadn’t told Carter about the oppressive darkness or the weird tricks of the torchlight. In the light of day, he had convinced himself he had been feverish, maybe delirious.
“I don’t know, Lincoln, probably twenty-five people walked that room. No one found another tunnel. Something else must have happened to Halston.”
“What caused the torches to go out?”
“They ran out of fuel.”
Two other people lay on cots in the hospital tent—a man and a woman—neither of them in uniform. The woman slept, but the man looked at Lincoln curiously. Lincoln opened his mouth to ask who they were when the flap opened and Alvarez and Nelson rushed in.
“We thought we’d lost you for good!” exclaimed Alvarez. Her brown eyes were rimmed with red behind her glasses, and her hair had come out of its ponytail in odd places.
“We’ve been up all night.” said Nelson as he plopped down in a camp chair. “Where did you go? And how’d you get out? We searched all the side tunnels.”
Lincoln retold his story and was just explaining where he’d spent the night when Colonel Nash walked in with the medic.
“You are either the stupidest or luckiest man I’ve ever met,” said the colonel. “I’ll tell you one thing—I’m not putting any more of my men at risk to save your hide again. From now on, what happens, happens. You’ll have to get yourself out of trouble.”
“I thought I just did?” said Lincoln.
Nash’s cheeks puffed out, as if what he was about to say would require a lot of breath.
“Colonel,” interrupted Alvarez, “I think we’ve found out what this place is.”
Nash looked taken aback, deflating slightly. “Since when?”
“Since we were down there just now looking for Lincoln.”
“What’d you find?” asked Lincoln. He sat up eagerly, even as the medic tried to make him lie still so he could change Lincoln’s bandage.
“You’ve opened some of your stitches,” he said. “You’re going to have to stay here.”
Lincoln ignored him and looked at Alvarez, who glanced at the other civilians in the tent and lowered her voice to address the colonel.
“We’ve assumed all along this was some sort of manmade facility,” she said. “That the US government created it for something they were doing in the fifties. But the only parts of the facility that look manmade are the mineshaft, the concrete tunnel leading to the corridors, and the closed-off staircase in Corridor A we told you about.”
Nash looked at Nelson and Alvarez. “So what about the other parts?”
“The workmanship is too precise. The room looks perfectly circular. And smooth.”
“So?” said Nash. “Men have designed circular rooms and objects before.”
“Yes, but a perfect circle is impossible,” interjected Carter.
“Well, according to Euclidean geometry, yes. But that theory has been challenged for centuries. In fact . . .”
Nelson interrupted Alvarez with a light tap on the arm. “We have no way of verifying if it’s a perfect circle. That would just make you happy. But the point is, the silo is carved directly out of the mountain. How did they do it? How did they get the stone out? Where did they put it? The mineshaft is too small for trucks.”
Nash chimed in, “The old-fashioned way—with dynamite and carts. And what about carvings like Rushmore?”
“I don’t think so, Colonel.” Alvarez tone was adamant. “Rushmore is not a circle.”
Carter frowned.
Nash paced the small space at the foot of Lincoln’s cot. “So what are you saying, Alvarez? That a frigging alien made it?” He laughed at his own joke, but no one else joined him.
“Yes, Colonel. That is exactly what I’m saying. We think miners found it, and ARCHIE took over from there. Corporal Schmidt spotted it first. The stone looks identical to the invaders’ ships.”
“Aliens bored out the core of a mountain?” Nash continued to laugh at what he clearly thought was a joke. “If the invaders had built it, I think we would have seen them do it.”
“Not if they did it a long time ago,” mused Lincoln quietly, thinking of the mountain’s conical shape.
“You’re telling me they’ve been on this planet for fifty years? Quietly hollowing out mountains and then leaving them for us to find?”
Alvarez took off her glasses to wipe them on her dirty coat. “It’s possible it’s been there for centuries, maybe even millennia. Although the lack of erosion would suggest otherwise. I would love to speak to a geologist about it.”
“Right. Let’s just get one on the phone, shall we? You need to do better than that!”
“No,” said Lincoln. He was sweating again, but he kept his voice steady. “You need to do better than that, Colonel, because the fact is, a geologist probably has been all over this mountain. A whole team of geologists. But we can’t ask them what they found, can we? Because nobody thought to pass on what they learned. We’ve had to start from scratch, out here in the middle of friggin’ nowhere. Anyone who may have known anything is dead, or we can’t get to them.” Lincoln slid his legs over the edge of the cot. “You won’t speak to my team like that again, Nash, because they are all you have.”
“You were supposed to already know about ARCHIE!”
“All I ever knew about ARCHIE was that it was a program used for communication in the event of an alien invasion. No one told me they already knew aliens were out there somewhere. So you either shut up about what we don’t know and start providing some help, some real good help, or we’re leaving. We’ll go find what’s left of our families and friends or live out the rest of our short lives looking for them.”
Nash was not happy. Lincoln sensed they would have the argument again.
He poured over maps and data sheets by candlelight, tapping a pen against his thigh. While everyone else slept, he remained alone in the hospital tent. The man and woman who had been in the tent when Lincoln arrived had been treated for dehydration and set up their own camp at the edge of the military encampment. And they weren’t the only ones. At least twenty others had come down out of the surrounding mountains, looking for food and protection. Nash set another guard around their food stores and ordered both soldiers to shoot anyone who tried to get in without authorization.
Lincoln stopped tapping and scrubbed a hand over his face. None of this puzzle made sense. Why here in West Virginia? And what was the silo for? Were there more? They had no way of knowing the answers. They would have to work with what they had.
Lincoln needed to open that locked door in Corridor A. Maybe the previous research was sealed inside.
He blew out the candle and lay down. The sky was already lighter. Maybe they could go in another way. As he drifted off to sleep, he remembered he had already found one by accident. His team would start at the second entrance and work their way back down. With light this time.
Lincoln closed his eyes, relieving the burning that he had ignored for the past several hours. His thoughts drifted to Mina and he opened his eyes again. Think of something else. He couldn’t think of his sister dying. Not yet. Not now. Not with the mountain looming over all of them.
The mountain no longer scared Lincoln. He viewed it as just another puzzle. He had always liked puzzles—the rush of frustration followed by the relief of accomplishment. Like a work of art, the individual clues were seldom beautiful by themselves, but eventually they came together to create something magnificent. He had always thought of himself as much an artist as an engineer. But this puzzle presented itself differently. When finished, the pieces and fragments would reveal something hideous, not beautiful. And Lincoln could not stop himself from putting it together.
Mina trudged after Doyle, who moved through the foliage far ahead. Sometimes she lost sight of him for minutes at a time, but she refused to ask him to slow down. So she would hike faster, her pack bounci
ng on her shoulders as she tried to keep up. She hadn’t yet figured out how to keep it from bouncing. Bushes and vines grabbed at her legs as she walked, trying to follow Doyle’s path through the dense undergrowth and keep from tripping on unseen obstacles.
She would need to stop soon. More than once over the last two days, Mina had wished she could pee against a tree like a man instead of ducking for cover behind a rock or in the undergrowth. She chided herself for the thought. It’s not an issue. Don’t make it a big deal.
And then there was the gun. She always sensed it back there. It weighed more than her whole pack. Mina had tried adjusting it so her pack wouldn’t press it into the small of her back, but even when she moved it to the side, it bothered her. She wanted to toss it into the woods and never think of it again.
Doyle seemed undisturbed by her issues. He kept to himself and didn’t ask questions. When he was close enough to talk at all, he spoke only of hiking. Not that Mina typically had much energy left for talking—she always collapsed at the end of their long days.
Mina took a detour to some boulders, carefully checking for snakes before hiding behind them to relieve herself. When she emerged, Doyle was nowhere in sight. Terrified he would leave her behind, she called out to him to slow down while she tried to heft the backpack higher on her shoulders. To Mina’s relief, Doyle turned and walked back to her.
“Give it to me.” He held out his hand for the pack.
“Thanks! I didn’t know how much longer I could carry it.” She bent over to catch her breath. Doyle glanced at her, then adjusted the straps before handing it back. She looked at him, bewildered.