Unless there had been an accident.
Mulder approached the young woman’s frozen alcove again, straining to see if she had moved—blinked her eyes, drawn a breath…but nothing had changed.
Through the “amber,” Cassandra did not look lifeless, though. The flush of blood still colored her face, a sparkle of tiny injuries on one cheek as if she had been sprayed with splinters. Her hair seemed sweat-dampened, her skin dusty as if she had worked her way through the partially crumbled catacombs in the pyramid above. She looked exhausted, overheated…frightened.
But not dead. Mulder had seen enough corpses to know.
Assuming that this place was indeed a buried spaceship, he wondered if this could perhaps be some sort of suspended animation chamber, a stasis booth where time would stop for extraterrestrial explorers making an incomparably long journey across the void of space. He had seen the same idea in plenty of science fiction movies…maybe the aliens had thought of it for themselves.
He searched the walls beside Cassandra’s glowing doorway, but found no controls, no status indicator, no colored buttons that might show him how to thaw the frozen substance.
So, instead, he reached out to touch the cold, dim gel himself, imagining that perhaps he could just take Cassandra Rubicon’s hand and raise her up out of her glass coffin, like the prince awakening Sleeping Beauty in the forest.
He hesitated before he let his fingertips brush the tangible substance, afraid that it might somehow suck him in as well, like alien quicksand—two specimens for the price of one. But he had to know. He had to risk everything. Mulder pushed his hand through before his doubts could grow stronger.
When he touched the cold gelatinous wall, it…burst, popping like a soap bubble. Puddles of slick, volatile liquid splashed across the floorplates.
Coughing and gasping for breath, Cassandra Rubicon lurched at him, already running, as if she had paused in the middle of a panicked flight. Dripping wet and horrified, she crashed into Mulder and screamed. He reached out to defend himself as she drove him to the floor, pounding him weakly with her fists.
“No!” she croaked. “Leave us alone!” She grabbed the heavy flashlight that hung from her waist and swung it at Mulder as if it were a large metal club.
He reached up to defend himself. Using his best hand-to-hand combat training, he grabbed her wrist, used his other arm to snatch the flashlight away, and pinned her hands in the air. “Easy! I’m with the FBI, Federal Agent. I’m here to save you.”
She trembled and held herself motionless, but coiled, vibrating like a tightly wound spring. “There was someone shooting…and a bright light.” She looked around, her muddy green eyes unfocused. She smeared thin slime away from her face, shuddering and dazed. She seemed to drift in and out of coherence, as if her brain had not yet entirely unfrozen.
Mulder sat up guardedly, still keeping his eye on her. He knew he must look a frightful mess—battered, muddied from the climb down the slippery walls of the cenote, sweaty from days of trekking through the jungle. But coated with the volatile ooze, the young woman looked far worse.
He brushed at his shirt. “I take it you’re Cassandra Rubicon?” he said. When she nodded, he continued. “You and your team have been missing for over two weeks.”
“Impossible,” she said, then coughed again, wiping her hands on her pants in disgust. “We just got here a few days ago.” She sniffed her wet shirt. “What is this stuff?”
Mulder shook his head. “Your father contacted us a week ago Tuesday. My partner and I came with him to search for you here at Xitaclan.” He hesitated, but she needed to know. Better to give her all the shock at once—though he couldn’t bring himself to tell her about her father just yet. “I’m afraid we found the other four members of your team dead—shot, and then sunk in the cenote.”
Cassandra blinked and looked around, clearing her throat. Her voice was rich and resonant, filled with more anger than fear. “Those men, men with guns,” she said. “Bastards. What did they want? Who were they?”
“I think they’re part of a violent revolutionary group. They’ve been keeping us company outside tonight.”
Cassandra looked down at her fingers, blinking but seemingly not seeing. These events had happened for her only moments before. “So how…how did I get away?” She clamped her teeth together and hissed, “Bastards.”
“We found the other four, but you were still missing,” Mulder continued. “I’ve just discovered you here by accident. You were trapped in…and I set you free from…whatever it was you had gotten yourself into.”
Cassandra wiped at her eyes and stared at the metal walls around her. But her vision did not seem to focus. “This stuff burns my eyes…can’t see very well.”
Mulder used his sleeve to dry her face. She continued talking. “I ran into the pyramid to get away…got lost…stumbled in here. Then I don’t know what happened. Light gushed all around me, drowning me, burning and cold.” She sat down on the floor next to him, deeply puzzled. “Did I hurt you?”
Mulder shook his head. “Good thing you don’t know karate,” he said, rubbing his bruised arm.
Then he suddenly realized that the throbbing SOS signal had ceased as soon as he had released her from the alcove. The diaphanous light throughout the main chamber began to fade. The signal had stopped, and now the derelict ship seemed to be…waiting, settling back to sleep.
Tears streamed out of Cassandra’s reddened, irritated eyes.
Mulder wiped her face again and decided it would be too much to tell Cassandra he believed they were inside a derelict ship, an extraterrestrial spacecraft buried beneath the pyramid of Xitaclan. Or that he thought she had stumbled upon a lifeboat. She must have activated its automatic system which placed her in suspended animation.
Mulder stood up and helped her to her feet. Cassandra stretched, flexing her arms experimentally. The cold, wet gel began to dry into a thin coating on her clothes and skin. She swayed dizzily for a moment, then drew a deep breath.
Mulder looked around, but the pulsing signal had not resumed. He wondered again if her actions had triggered a distress call, a homing beacon. Perhaps the original inhabitant had tried the same thing, but hadn’t succeeded because his lifeboat had been damaged somehow.
Mulder decided it was time to get moving. “Thanks to your explorations, we know there’s a passage through to the pyramid level. Good thing, too,” he said. “I don’t look forward to climbing the cenote wall again.”
“I still can’t see very well.” Cassandra followed close beside him as they picked their way away from the main chamber, then she asked in a hesitant voice, “My father…did he come with you?”
Mulder swallowed, his heart leaden. The passages around them grew darker. “Yes, he came with us. We tried to have him wait for us back in the States, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted to help you himself,” he said. “But Dr. Rubicon…he was another casualty of the people who tried to kill you. I’m sorry.”
Cassandra stopped in midstep and swayed, leaning into the rough wall where metal plates had loosened and fallen to the floor. She looked as if Mulder had just punched her in the stomach.
She said nothing but slid down to sit, shuddering, where the wall met the floor. She drew her knees against her chest. She stared at her dirty hands.
Mulder looked down at her, understanding. He quickly ran a hand through his hair, then touched her lightly on the shoulder. She needed to be alone.
“I’ll go on ahead and find the way out,” he said. “You take the time you need.”
Cassandra nodded, intensely weary. With a last glance back at her, Mulder set out, trudging up the slope. His heart pounded, heavy with grief for her, filled with amazement for the things he had already seen, yet with an equivalent amount of dread for what he might encounter up above—the battleground, the snipers, the explosions. He hoped Scully had managed to keep herself alive and safe.
The passageway became dimmer, the walls made of vitrified sto
ne. The deck plates transformed into a limestone path under his shoes. He realized he had emerged into the pyramid levels again. Up ahead, he recognized the same area he had seen when he went looking for Vladimir Rubicon, though now he stood on the opposite side of the fallen barrier. Elation surged through him—home free!
Then he turned the corner and came face to face with Carlos Barreio. The police chief’s flashlight beam shone through the dimness, pinning Mulder like a moth in a specimen box. Barreio held out a nickel-plated revolver, pointing it at Mulder.
“Agent Mulder,” he said. His lips formed a humorless smile. “I thought I might find you inside the pyramid. Unfortunately, I cannot allow you to leave here alive.”
31
Xitaclan ruins, Pyramid of Kukulkan
Wednesday, 3:27 A.M.
Reflexively, Mulder took a step backward, but found no escape.
Barreio’s police revolver pointed directly at him, unwavering. Mulder could not see the man’s finger on the trigger. He would never know when it began to squeeze, when the gunshot would ring out.
Once again, Mulder wished fervently that Major Jakes had left him with his own weapon.
“Let me make a wild leap of logic,” Mulder said, taking another gradual step back, “and guess that you were the one responsible for killing the archaeology team members.” He carefully began backing down the corridor.
Barreio, with the gleam of the hunt in his shadowed eyes, stalked after him, gun forward. He answered only with an enigmatic smile, his large mustache folded in the cleft of his cheeks.
Mulder pressed, “So you let the archaeologists uncover new treasures for you—priceless pre-Colombian relics that brought fabulous prices on the black market.”
Barreio shrugged his broad shoulders. “Liberación Quintana Roo needed the money.”
Mulder took another step backward, the flashlight beam dazzling his eyes. Barreio seemed amused at his attempt to escape.
“And I suppose Fernando Victorio Aguilar would find customers for you?” Mulder said. “He’s in this too, isn’t he?”
“He only made himself rich.” Barreio growled. “It is distressing to see a man with no drive or purpose other than his own greed.”
“Yeah, I can see how you’re much more admirable,” Mulder said.
The slope was steep. He continued backing down, kept talking. Barreio followed, confident, watching his victim proceed deeper and deeper into the trap. “But why kill the archaeologists?” Mulder continued. “You just called attention to yourself. They were Americans on a visit sanctioned by the central Mexican government.”
Barreio shrugged again. “The government knows nothing of the problems of Quintana Roo. We have our own land, our own history. We should be our own country like Honduras, like El Salvador, like Belize.”
“Don’t you have a brochure or something I could read?” Mulder said. “Instead of giving me the whole speech?”
“We had intended to take the Americans as hostages. That is all. Political hostages.”
Mulder raised an eyebrow. “I suppose they were shot trying to escape? And then you had no choice but to throw them into the cenote?”
“Some of our revolutionaries still believe in sacrifices to the old gods,” Barreio said, shoving the revolver closer. He shone the flashlight directly into Mulder’s eyes. Mulder blinked and held up his hands to ward off the bright beam, stepping back toward a corner. “We all have to make sacrifices,” Barreio observed.
Mulder backed around the corner, unable to believe that Barreio kept stringing him along, kept playing him.
The police chief followed him, closing the distance for the last time. Barreio grinned, flashing white teeth in the dimness. Mulder knew his time had run out.
As the burly man rounded the corner, Cassandra Rubicon stepped out of the shadows, holding one of the metallic plates that had fallen off of the walls. She hefted it over her head and brought it crashing down against the side of Barreio’s skull. His policeman’s cap toppled to one side; his body toppled to the other.
Still barely able to see, Cassandra dropped the plate with a loud clang, amazed at what she had done. Carlos Barreio grunted in pain and shock, reeling, stumbling into the wall. He was not dead—not even unconscious, just stunned for a moment.
Mulder did not want to risk grabbing for Barreio’s revolver. He snatched Cassandra’s arm as she blinked her eyes. He yanked her after him. “Come on, we’ve got to run!” he said. “That was one of the men who shot at you.” She jogged after him, hustling back down toward the control bridge.
“That man killed Cait and John, Christopher and Kelly?” she said, her voice icy.
“Yes, I’m afraid he did,” Mulder said.
“Then I should have hit him harder,” Cassandra answered.
Mulder helped her as they both ran down the slippery slope. Moments later, with a bellow of rage, Carlos Barreio came charging after them. He fired his revolver twice, and the bullets plowed gouges along the walls, ricocheting into the darkness.
Gasping for breath, Cassandra said, “Men shooting guns. This was what led me down here in the first place. I still can’t see…my eyes—they burn!”
They ran back into the tunnel, whose walls still sizzled with a faint light that grew dimmer by the minute. The corroded, half-collapsed metal-and-crystal outcroppings gave a drastically anachronistic counterpoint to the Maya glyphs carved on the exposed limestone in the walls: symbols that ancient priests had added in hopes of restoring the damaged or pilfered artifacts removed from the derelict.
Mulder led her along, guiding her as she tried to clear her vision and find her way. He guided her behind one of the glistening metallic mounds. “Stay down here,” he whispered.
“Do you actually have a plan?” Cassandra said. “Or are we just running?”
“Running seemed like a good idea at the time.” Mulder swallowed and came to a stop in the confusing but awesome control chamber.
Then Carlos Barreio staggered onto the bridge, weaving unsteadily on his feet. His eyes seemed unfocused, and he blinked repeatedly, as if to stop his ears from ringing. Blood poured from a gash in his scalp, wetting his dark hair, dribbling around his ear and down his cheek. He had left his policeman’s cap back in the outer tunnel where it had fallen.
Leaving Cassandra huddled behind the shelter, fighting to regain her vision, Mulder backed away in another direction. Carlos Barreio caught the movement. He swung his revolver and fired spasmodically, but his aim was off. Several bullets ricocheted off the metal wallplates. One struck inside the dark lifeboat chamber holding the mummified remains of what Mulder believed to be Kukulkan.
“Where are you?” Barreio croaked, wiping blood out of his eyes, smearing it on his cheeks. He roared with pain as he inadvertently touched the wound on his head. “What is this place?” The burly man seemed barely able to focus on his amazingly unexpected surroundings. Mulder wondered if Cassandra had given him a concussion.
Barreio staggered forward and swiveled the revolver around, shooting blindly. The bullets struck the central mound of metal shapes and crystals, sending up sparks and blue-green fire that rippled out in icy cold flames.
Hoping to distract the police chief somehow, Mulder grabbed a small, broken lump of crystal from the rough floor and hurled it, hoping to strike Barreio in the head—but he missed. Barreio caught the swift motion past his face and whirled, hearing the chunk strike the wall inside the narrow alcove—the chamber that had held Cassandra suspended. The police chief charged toward the sound like a five-hundred-yard-dash runner, waving his pistol.
Barreio fired once and strode into the lifeboat chamber.
Suddenly a flood of light poured over the police chief like a waterfall of lightning.
Instinctively, Mulder shielded his eyes.
Barreio thrust his hands out, trembling, his jaws clenched, his eyes opened wide. Dazzling, ethereal gel suddenly congealed around him, as if solidifying from the air itself. His nostrils flared—then he
froze exactly in place, pinned by the lifeboat’s automatic stasis systems. The amber hardened.
Barreio hung motionless, like an exhibit in a museum, one breath half indrawn, his eyes still hot, though dazed, the blood petrified along his cheek.
Mulder heard the dull throbbing begin again inside his head as the derelict’s signal thrummed once more from within the wrecked ship—the SOS, the reactivated homing beacon.
But whom it meant to summon, Mulder could not guess.
Cassandra picked herself up from the floor, panting. She brushed herself off, looking satisfied. She shook her head to clear her thoughts. Creeping forward, she stood just in front of the glowing light wall, squinting slightly, trying to focus her eyes.
Mulder took his place beside her, staring in, feeling his heart pound.
The young woman shook her head and directed a cool smile at Barreio. “At least I’m on the right side of the wall this time,” she murmured. “I like it better this way.”
32
Xitaclan ruins, Pyramid of Kukulkan
Wednesday, 3:51 A.M.
When the thunder started from above, Mulder turned up to see the control chamber’s ceiling vibrating, trembling. As a second pounding thump reverberated through the walls, he feared another volcanic quake might be striking Xitaclan—and this time he was trapped inside a crumbling underground derelict that did not look as if it could withstand such severe stresses.
With another loud, discrete boom, he hunched down. Dust pattered from above.
“Those sound like explosions,” Cassandra said, crouched beside him.
“Yes,” Mulder agreed. “It’s bombs exploding. I think Major Jakes’s military tactics have heated up just a little bit—and I don’t know if this old ruin is going to take much more pounding. I’m not too keen on the idea of being buried alive, are you?”
Cassandra’s face turned pale and she shook her head. “My goal in life is not to become a specimen for some future archaeologist.”
“Let’s try this again,” Mulder said, leading her toward the upper exit. “We’ll make our way to the pyramid levels. If Barreio could make his way down here, the passage must be open.”
Ruins Page 21