Code to Extinction

by Christopher Cartwright

  “Yes. Only, unlike you, I’m interested in saving those worthy of life.” He laughed. “All right. This is far enough. You can turn around now.”

  She turned to face him. He had a strong face, big boned and fierce, with deep-set and somber blue-gray eyes. In the cover of tempestuous clouds that were slowly shrouding Sigiriya in darkness, his eyes appeared silver.

  It was the same ghost who’d tried to kill Sam in the Great Blue Grotto.

  “So, what do you want from me?” she asked.

  “The sacred stone, of course.”

  She paused. A sardonic grin formed on her lips. “Then you’re going to be disappointed. You’re a little early. Sam Reilly has it. My job was to scout out the fourth receptacle for the stone. He’ll be here by tonight if you’d like to wait around.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t take disappointment very well. Never have. Even as a kid I had a nasty habit of erupting into violence when the other kids took a toy off me.” He matched her grin. “How about this instead. I shoot you now. Then I have a look in that backpack to see if you’re lying. Or, you could just hand it over.”

  Elise slowly unshouldered the strap of her backpack. “It was worth a try.”

  “No, it wasn’t. Now hand it over.” Her attacker pointed his handgun straight at her. He was close enough that it was impossible for him to miss.

  Elise stepped closer. Her last chance was to use the metallic casing that stored the vacuum sealed sacred stone to somehow knock the gun out of his hand. It was a massive longshot, but it was all she had and she knew that the instant he received the backpack he would kill her.

  She spotted something behind her attacker, up on the hill above them. It was the monk who’d been following her from before. He was moving at a sprint, silently. He placed a finger to his lips to say, shush.

  Elise stopped. She needed to buy time. “There’s just one last thing before you kill me.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?” he asked, with little curiosity.

  “I thought you might like to know the electronic code for the sacred stone’s casing. It might take you some time to solve it, otherwise.”

  “Okay. What’s the code?”

  “Why would I tell you?” Elise asked. “You’re going to kill me anyway?”

  He aimed the gun at her head. “Because I can kill you quickly. Or I could kill you slowly and trust me, no one willingly chooses the slow option.”

  “All right.” Elise said, handing him the backpack. “The code is… go to hell!”

  His lips curled upward into a cruel grin. “So you want to die slow?”

  He lowered the gun toward her knee.

  She held her breath.

  The gun fired.

  And the monk swung the small tree branch like a club.

  The club connected the back of her attacker’s head with the crippling sound of a crunch. She had flinched and the shot went wide, scraping the side of her knee. She dropped to the ground.

  Her attacker fell, rolling more than fifty feet to the bottom of the steep hill. Elise stood up, ready to run after him, but the monk gripped her shoulder to stop her.

  She swung her arm forcefully, freeing herself.

  The attacker stood up. He looked dazed and Elise thought she might still have a chance of reaching him. But then he took a couple steps back up the hill, retrieved his handgun and started shooting at her.

  The monk threw himself onto her for protection.

  Several shots went over their heads. When they stopped, Elise shuffled forward and spotted her attacker running away, wearing her backpack – taking with him the fourth sacred stone and the last hope for humanity.

  She tried to chase after him, but the monk stopped her. “It is not worth it. He has the gun. All you will do is get yourself killed, and I can’t allow that.”

  She shrugged, realizing he was right. “You have no idea how important the contents of that backpack were.”

  The monk smiled. It was an ascetic face, old and withered, but full of kindness. “You think all is lost without the sacred stone?”

  “All is lost without… hey, what do you know about the sacred stone?”

  “I know that it is meaningless if you die.”

  “What do you know about me?” she asked.

  “We know lots about you. We’ve been expecting you for nearly a thousand years.” He smiled. “And we are so glad you’ve finally arrived, Elise.”

  The monk started to walk toward the north. He moved with the speed and determined purpose of a much younger man. She had to work to keep up with him.

  “Hey, where are you going?”

  The monk didn’t slow down or give her an answer. If anything, he seemed to increase his pace.

  “Hey, where are we going?” she persisted.

  The monk stopped to face her. “To the Pidurangala Rock, of course – to complete the prophecy.”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Lorde Howe Island

  The Gulfstream G650 used every single one of its combined 33,800 pounds of thrust, produced by its two Rolls-Royce BR725 A1-12 engines in order to get off the island’s meager 2,907 feet of runway. Once free of the blacktop, it climbed steadily, before banking to the northeast for a direct route to Sri Lanka. Sam took one last glance at the green and azure waters of its tranquil lagoon and then picked up his satellite phone.

  He pressed the call button.

  It rang twice, before Elise picked up. “Sam?”

  He breathed a long sigh of relief. “Elise! You’re all right. I’ve been trying to reach you for two hours!”

  “Yeah, I’ve had some problems.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was attacked by the same man who tried to kill you at the Great Blue Hole in Belize.”

  Sam expelled his breath silently. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Yeah, but I lost the fourth sacred stone. The man who took it said something about using it to save the human race – only he specified only the worthy few would be saved. Any idea what he meant or where he’s taking the stone?”

  “Yes. The Secretary of Defense said there was a second stolen Göbekli Tepe stone. It was a map to a natural subterranean cavern, or ancient bunker, where a small colony of survivors may keep the human race alive. Apparently, a man named Leo Botkin, who was chosen to lead the colony, decided to turn it into a eugenics experiment, by filling the colony with people who have superior DNA.”

  “So what do they care if we have one of the sacred stones?” Elise asked.

  “The Secretary of Defense said that the material used in the construction of the stones appears to be identical to the asteroid that’s approaching. Her advisers believe that part of the asteroid broke off thirteen thousand years ago, landing as a meteorite somewhere on earth.”

  “Go on?” Elise didn’t try to hide her confusion.

  “There weren’t enough fragments of blackbody to construct the four sacred stones and protect the colony. The idea was if the four stones couldn’t be used to avoid the disaster completely, then one of them would be used to add an additional barrier of protection to the colony.”

  “So we find the colony, we find the fourth stone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does anyone have any ideas?” she asked.

  “No. But the Secretary of Defense must have some ideas.” He sighed, heavily. “Did you find the receptacle in Sigiriya?”

  “Not yet. But a monk is leading me to where he believes the stone belongs.”

  “Really? How would he know?”

  “How, indeed?” Elise’s tone softened with curiosity. “He says that the local Buddhist monks have been expecting me for the past thousand years.”

  Sam thought about what she said. They both knew she descended from one of the Master Builders, but other than that, her genetic past was a mystery. “Okay. You go see if you can locate the receptacle. I’m going to contact the Secretary of Defense and do my best to retrieve the remaining stone.”

  Chapter
Fifty-Eight

  Sam contacted the Secretary of Defense and explained where they were at.

  When he was finished, she asked, “What’s your next plan?”

  “I need to get the stone back. Everything depends on it, which means you’re going to have to help me find the colony.”

  “It will be difficult. The entire system was designed so those who remained couldn’t ever find it.”

  “But?”

  “I have my ways. I’ve been trying to narrow its location down and I’m getting close.”

  “How?”

  “In the past twenty-four hours a number of members of Congress and Defense Staff have taken a sudden leave of absence. Most had innocuous enough excuses. They had a cold, their children were sick. It wouldn’t have even been brought to my attention, except that so many had done so on the same day.”

  “They were escaping to the colony?” Sam asked, incredulous.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We brought them in of course. They were all catching flights, along with their families, to Moscow. Nearly a hundred people in total. All experts in their fields. Perfect citizens for the new world.”

  “Did they reveal the location of the colony?” Sam asked.

  “Not yet. They’re being interrogated right now, but they won’t say.”

  “No one can hold out indefinitely,” Sam persisted.

  “They can if they don’t know anything. They would have told me the truth if they had known it. You have to remember, these people know the world is ending, and right now they’re about to be on the wrong side of an ancient bunker when it does.”

  “So they’ll talk?”

  “If they knew anything they would. Apparently, they were supposed to fly into Moscow where a private jet would take them to the colony.”

  “Had any of them been there before?”

  “Yes.” She sighed, heavily. “But that didn’t help much. They didn’t have maps or anything to tell where they had been flown.”

  Sam persisted. “What did they know?”

  “The colony was four hours away from Moscow by jet. The ground near the colony was always frozen. There was a lake. From the sky, the lake was shaped like a big boot. In the middle of the lake was an island and what looked like the cooling tower of a nuclear power station. But other members of the party have since rejected this statement, saying that the colony was powered by an enormous geothermic generator.”

  “So we’re looking for a Russian lake, shaped like a boot and a geothermic cooling tower?” he asked.

  “Beneath which, an enormous volcanic cavern provides an ancient bunker,” she added.

  “I take it no one’s located such a place by entering those details into the Geographic Information System?”

  “No. We’ve tried. It didn’t work. There’s nothing even close to those descriptions that use geothermic power.”

  Sam said, “It sounds like it might be the opposite end of the Aleutian Portal.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” the Secretary of Defense replied.

  “But it would take at least four days to reach and cross the Aleutian Portal.” Sam glanced out the window. It was almost permanently dark now, despite being the middle of the day. “And we don’t have four days.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “Keep working on it. We’ll head toward Moscow in the meantime. I know someone who might be able to help.”

  Sam hung up and called a second number.

  Demyan Yezhov picked up on the first ring. “Sam Reilly! If this strange darkness that’s shrouding the world is anything to go by, it appears you haven’t found what you were after yet.”

  “We found it, but someone took it from us.”

  “Really? That’s bad luck.”

  Sam didn’t have time for the chat. “Listen. I need your help. It’s going to take some time to explain why I need this, and I don’t have that time, but I need your expertise as a geologist who grew up in Siberia.”

  “Go on.”

  “This is what we know. There’s a colony inside an ancient volcanic cave. It’s roughly four hours by jet from Moscow. The ground near the colony was always frozen. There was a lake. From the sky, the lake was shaped like a big boot. In the middle of the lake was an island and what looked like the cooling tower of a geothermic generator.”

  “Okay, what do you need?” Demyan asked.

  “I need to find the colony. I need a list of known geothermic springs throughout Russia that would be powerful enough to support a population of five thousand people. Also, if you could narrow down any place where large volcanic caves are known to form.”

  There was only silence on the phone and for a moment Sam thought he’d been cut off. “Are you still there, Demyan?”

  Demyan expelled a large breath of air. “I can do better for that. I can tell you where it is and how to get inside.”

  “How?”

  “Because that’s Oymyakon where I was born, where I lost my entire family, and where I’ve spent my life vowing I would never return.”

  “But you’ll guide us where we need to go?” Sam held his breath.

  “To save the human race?” Demyan said. “I’ll go to hell and back.”

  Sam unclipped his seatbelt, walked up to the cockpit and said to the pilots, “Change of plan. We’re going to Big Island, Hawaii to pick up someone and then we’re off to Russia.”

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Elise followed the monk as he negotiated the undulating terrain, heading north toward Pidurangala Rock. Monkeys played in the thick foliage of the jungle overhead. They crossed over a series of aqueducts and then, joining a path of stones, began their climb up to Pidurangala Rock.

  “Do you know much about the history of my people?” the monk asked.

  Elise shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m sure its fascinating, but I hadn’t even heard of Sigiriya until a couple of days ago. I believe you’re Buddhist monks?”

  “Yes.” He nodded politely. “It’s okay. We know a lot about you.”

  “Why is that?” she asked.

  “It is not something we can explain. It does not make sense.”

  “But you must be able to tell me something?”

  “No. Telling will not do. We must show you. Sometimes only our eyes will accept what our heart knows to be true.”

  “You think I need to see the physical proof to accept the spiritual?” she asked.

  “That is exactly what I mean. Come, we are not far, now.”

  Elise found herself working hard to keep up with the old monk. “Tell me about your people. How long have you been here?”

  “The monastery dates back to the arrival of King Kassapa.”

  “Your people followed the migration of the king?”

  He shook his head and smiled. It was warm and ingratiating. “For many centuries, the monks lived at Sigiriya. When the king commenced construction of the citadel of Sigiriya, the monks were relocated to make room for the king’s palace. To make amends, Kassapa constructed new dwellings and a temple here to recompense them.

  “You were kicked out of your own place of worship?”

  “Yes. But that did not matter. Our purpose was not obstructed.”

  Elise waited for him to elaborate, but instead he remained silent. She felt her calves ache and her thighs burn as she climbed more than a thousand stone steps leading up a steep hillside behind the Pidurangala to a terrace just below the summit of the rock. The monk pointed out the Royal Cave Temple itself as they walked by. Despite the name, there was little to see apart from a long reclining Buddha under a large rock overhang. The statue was accompanied by figures, which the monk pointed out, were of Vishnu and Saman and decorated with very faded murals.

  The monk led her down the next terrace and stopped, where an old brick Dagoba – the Sinhalese name for the Buddhist stupa – stood proudly.

  Elise waited for the monk to tell her about it, but instead the man re
mained silent. She ran her eyes across the ancient building. The dark clouds had fully set in on the world and it was getting harder to see much of anything, but she could still make out the shapes of the ancient ruin. She’d read briefly about them previously, but had never been inside one. It was basically a mound-like structure with buried relics, used by Buddhist monks to meditate. This one would be considered quite modest, approximately thirty feet high at most.

  The construction of Dagobas were considered acts of great merit. Their purpose being to enshrine relics of Buddha. The entrances were designed to be laid out so that the center lines pointed directly toward the relic chamber. Although little of the cover still remained, the guidebook she’d read on the flight, said that the outer layer was normally coated with lime plaster, white of egg, coconut water, plant resin, drying oil, glues and saliva of white ants.

  “Well?” the monk asked.

  Elise reciprocated the monk’s monosyllabic response. “Well.”

  The monk smiled. It was old and well-practiced, with large creases gave evidence of years of the muscles of his face holding just such a pose. “Would you like to see where you come from?”

  Elise smiled. It was more patronizing than she meant it to be. “You think I came from in here?”

  The monk wasn’t offended, or if he was, he certainly didn’t show it. His eyes were wide, as though many generations of waiting were finally up. “Let’s go inside and see. Like I said, some things, one must see to accept.”

  “It’s getting dark.”

  “Good. That will help,” the monk replied, mysteriously.

  Elise followed the monk inside. She didn’t believe for a minute that the monk was right and she had come from this region, but then, no one had ever been able to tell her where she had come from. She felt her stomach churn with a strange anticipation. All children, no matter what age they are, want to discover that they came from somewhere and belong to something.

  As an orphan, she had grown up in Washington, D.C. When she was eleven years old she won a cryptic mathematics test. It has been surreptitiously added to all public and private schools standard end of year exams for that year. It had been a test, set by the CIA, in search of child prodigies, mathematically geniuses, people with a certain type of analytical mind who could be groomed into perfect code-breakers for the next generation – where the internet was the front-line of some of the greatest intelligence wars ever fought.