by Sean Ellis
As if observing an unseen barrier, the photographers held back at the top step, turning away as Mira and Aimes pushed through the revolving doors. Despite the elite caliber of the guests that would be attending the exhibit, all visitors were required to file through the revolving doors of the museum at the Central Park West entrance, beyond which each had to present their official invitation. Mira waited for Aimes on the other side, and when he stepped out of the slowly turning door, he flashed twin pieces of parchment, stamped with a hologram of the museum’s logo. The uniformed guard nodded perfunctorily and ushered them through.
The after-hours party began in the grand foyer of the museum, the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial. Men wearing immaculate tuxedoes and women in extravagant evening gowns were scattered throughout the lobby, sipping from bottomless glasses of champagne and engaging in meaningless gossip. Most of them were present only because they perceived that they were supposed to be there, that it would somehow advance their social standing. Mira found it appalling that she and the treasures of the Atlantean king’s tomb were now the latest episode in the great social drama of American culture. Exerting a gentle tug on Aimes’ accompanying arm, she rushed through the lobby toward the elevators, just outside the Hall of North American Mammals.
One of the spacious exhibition halls on the third floor had been painstakingly turned into an enormous diorama of the Tomb of the Unknown King, as they had taken to calling it. As she entered, Mira found the similarities a little too familiar. The designers had done their job well. Thankfully, they had rendered the mural as it had been when she first saw it, and not as it had looked after Atlas incinerated Curtis Lancet.
The artistry, both of the architects of the exhibit and their source material, seemed lost on the crowd of spectators. They were too self-involved to appreciate the significance of the Atlantean king’s place in history, which was, in fact, a prologue to all known history.
A cluster of people, who perhaps were not totally immune to the spectacle of what the exhibit represented, gathered around an upraised dais in the center of the hall. Mira knew without looking what was kept there: the Trinity of Atlantis. It was displayed on an enclosed altar that was, but for security measures, an exact replica of the one in the king’s tomb. Unlike the tableau she had found, the Trinity had been placed on the altar in an adjoining room, under the constant glare of an overhead high-intensity light bulb and, more importantly, under a thick pane of glass and dozens of other protective mechanisms. Usually she felt a faint tremor in its presence, the ghost of a memory, but tonight, not even that.
Mira guided Aimes forward, past the Trinity, and through a doorway into a replica of the tomb. Passing through the doorway, she felt a tingle of apprehension—Just bad memories, she told herself—as she entered the mock vault where the very real mummy was on display.
The vault was empty of visitors, but Mira could feel a presence nevertheless. A perfect replica of the mural, its written narrative only partially decoded, decorated the circular walls. She stepped closer to the half-opened sarcophagus.
“Hello again, old friend,” she whispered softly.
The restoration team had succeeded in repairing the damage Atlas had caused, but the ancient king looked incomplete without the circlet.
“A great man,” Aimes offered, standing respectfully near the doorway. “Almost lost forever to history. You see there, Mira? He had the Trinity, yet it availed him naught. He could not save Atlantis from the cataclysm that wiped it away and, in the end, died like any other man.”
Another figure moved into the crypt, and though the churning sensation in her gut only deepened, Mira did not look away as she responded. “It was the attempted theft of the Trinity that caused the cataclysm that destroyed Atlantis and wiped away nearly every vestige of the pre-historic world. Marquand Atlas might have created a second catastrophe with the same power.”
“Power is a tricky thing.”
“Power corrupts . . .”
“And absolute power corrupts absolutely. But the Trinity does not represent absolute power. It was merely a tool. And it wasn’t enough for him, or for Marquand Atlas—”
A sudden concussion, deafening in the tiny enclosure, caused Mira to jump. It was a noise all too familiar. Whirling around, she dropped into a low, defensive crouch.
Aimes leaned against one wall of the vault, slowly sliding down. The rough sandstone behind him was stained dark red, and a brighter shade of the same color was creeping across the white fabric of his dress shirt.
Mira sprang across the short distance, catching him in her arms as he fell. He was impossibly light, like a frail skeleton ready to turn to dust in her hands. He opened his mouth, as if to finish the sentence that had died on his lips, but no sound issued. Instead, a stream of crimson flowed from between his teeth, followed by a rattling exhalation. His sightless eyes seemed to lose focus, and Mira knew without feeling for a pulse or listening for a breath that Aimes was gone.
The impossible symmetry of the experience stunned her. Curtis, the first man she had ever dared to love, had died in the real tomb. And now Aimes, the only man she had ever thought of as a father, lay lifeless in a replica of the same.
A shadow fell over her as a half-glimpsed figure moved between her and the source of ambient light. She looked up and saw one of the uniformed security guards, his gun drawn, standing in the doorway as if in response to the shooting.
Her eyes settled on his bland features; a young man with a wispy goatee and tufts of bleached-blonde hair escaping the confines of his patrol cap. His face bore the signs of multiple flesh-piercings, but he had evidently removed the silver studs and hoops for the sake of his job. Her gaze dropped down, past the indigo tattoos on his forearm to the drawn weapon in his fist.
Tendrils of blue smoke drifted from the barrel. The sting of sulfur burned in Mira’s nose as realization dawned. Staring into her eyes, the guard saw it too.
As if in slow motion, the gun arm started to rise, coming level with the place where Mira knelt beside the fallen Aimes. But even as the man’s cool blue eyes tried to focus on the living target, Mira launched into action.
She crossed the distance to the guard in a single leap. In the split second before springing at the shooter, she had slipped out of her high-heeled shoes, leaving the left one behind and gripping the other in her right hand. With almost the same motion, she hiked the confining evening gown up to her thighs, allowing her greater freedom of movement. Both actions were instinctive, decisions reached and executed in an instant that was stretched out of proportion by the adrenaline coursing through her veins.
As the guard started to exert pressure on the trigger of the snub-nose .38 revolver, Mira struck. The metal tipped heel of her shoe slashed across his forearm like the sting of a scorpion, knocking the gun hand aside as the weapon discharged, the bullet striking the solid stone of the sarcophagus, chipping away a divot of rock the size of a quarter. Mira’s attack drew blood, and the guard let out a surprised yelp of pain.
Though he outweighed her by a good fifty pounds, the momentum of her follow-through charge was concentrated in the leading corner of her shoulder, and she slammed into him like a sledgehammer, driving the breath from his lungs in a whoosh.
It ended with both of them sprawling forward into the Trinity room, where a stunned audience was only beginning to comprehend that an act of violence had occurred in their midst. The human sea parted as both Mira and the assassin crashed onto the floor and slid toward the dais where the relic was displayed.
The guard thrashed on the ground, ineffectually grabbing at his chest. Mira did not relent in her attack; the man was a killer, and she was not about to let him regain the advantage. She chopped down across his throat with the edge of her hand.
A collective gasp passed through the spectators, followed by pandemonium. Mira could pick out one or two of the more strident observers and instantly divined their importance. The assassin was not working alone.
She looked up thro
ugh the tumult of frantically fleeing aristocracy to see the second gunman. He stood at the entrance to the exhibit, wearing a tuxedo and was, but for one small detail, indistinguishable from the high society guests. That detail, however, was significant. Cradled in his hands was an Ingram MAC-10 light machine pistol. As the business end of the firearm swung toward Mira it began to spit flame, and chaos ensued.
Ducking low, Mira pulled the prone form of the ersatz guard over her as a shield. Right away she felt the impact of rounds punching into his flesh.
Thrusting the fatally wounded assassin forward, she rolled away, behind the cover of the Trinity altar. Something hard struck her in the small of the back, followed by a blast of cold. Fearing the worst, she flipped around to confront this new threat.
She found herself facing a young man crouched on the ground with his face against his knees and his hands covering his head. His white jacket and gloves identified him as one of the waiters, and only then did Mira realize that the cold spreading across her back was from the champagne that had spilled when the hapless young man had dropped his tray. The silver platter lay upside down beside him, along with the fragments of several shattered champagne flutes. Mira’s eyes fixed on the tray and inspiration dawned.
In a fluid motion she snatched up the serving disc and rolled back into the open. The tuxedoed assassin was firing the machine pistol in short bursts at the ceiling, frightening the crowd and fanning the flames of confusion. When he saw her move out from cover, he brought the gun down, ready to finish her off.
Like an ancient Greek discus thrower, Mira hurled the tray. The platter spun through the air like a flying saucer as it flashed across the room, a streak of light reflecting from its polished surface, and struck home. The edge of the tray smacked into the tuxedoed gunman, catching him at the bridge of the nose. He flew backward, arms windmilling, and the gun slipped from his fingers. Mira was already sprinting after him, intent on seizing the weapon before he could recover.
The man fell back against the wall, but quickly recovered his equilibrium and crouched into a fighting stance to meet her second charge. Blood gushed from the wound on his face, yet neither the pain nor the hemorrhaging seemed to sap his ferocity. Mira feinted with her right hand, but as the man raised his fist to block, she dropped to one knee and knocked the man’s legs out from under him with a sweep of her right foot. As he crashed heavily to the floor, her fist, followed by her elbow, hammered across his jaw. The double-strike repeated twice more, throwing up a spray of blood that stained the carpet and the wall of the exhibit. She was prepared to continue raining blows on the defeated man, but his head lolled off to the side, indicating that further punishment would serve only as a vent for her rage.
She leaned back on her haunches, faintly aware of how gruesomely ridiculous she probably looked: streaked with the blood of three men, her dress hiked up around her thighs and barefoot. It was doubtless something the Manhattan elite would discuss over cocktails for many months to come. She grinned triumphantly for the benefit of the many shocked onlookers and brushed a stray wisp of hair away from her face.
A sudden explosion of gunfire brought her to her feet. Although the source was not readily visible, the spectators were again scattering. Mira snatched the fallen MAC-10 off the floor. Smoke still curled from its muzzle as she ejected the ammo clip into her hand. It felt light; she reckoned less than a third of the load remained. With a grimace, she shoved the magazine back into the pistol. A quick search of the man’s jacket produced two full magazines of nine-millimeter ammunition for the weapon.
“That’s more like it,” she murmured. With nowhere on her person to stow the magazines, she would have to hold them in her hands while firing the gun; an awkward arrangement, but preferable to running out of ammo after a short volley.
The gunfire seemed to originate from the direction of the Reptile and Amphibians exhibit, part of the museum’s standing collection. She had once thought it an odd segue from dioramas of stuffed lizards and frogs to the tomb of an Atlantean king; now she thought of it only as a battlefield.
She inserted herself into the flow of fleeing spectators. A few steps beyond the mock-up of the tomb she found the shooters. Two men, dressed in the uniforms of a hired security service, wielded machine pistols identical to the one she had liberated from the tuxedoed assassin. They fired short bursts into the air, shattering light fixtures and ripping apart the acoustic tiles to create a rain of debris and pandemonium that scattered the guests. Though the objective of their rampage was lost on Mira, her response to their actions was unequivocal.
“Everybody down!”
Somehow, her shout pierced even the decibel level of gunfire. The high-society guests, already in a frenzy, did not question her authority. Mira’s field of view cleared immediately. The two bogus security guards lowered their weapons in momentary confusion, then their eyes locked on Mira.
About sixty feet separated Mira from the two shooters. It was too great a distance for conversation or negotiation. Mira did not even attempt to shout for the men to surrender. Yet, from where they stood, suddenly confronted by the blood streaked warrior goddess opposing them, both men could see her left eyebrow arch ever so slightly, a harbinger of their fate if they elected to fight her. They slowly turned to each other and, in a silent melding of minds, reached their decision together.
They ran.
Cursing under her breath, Mira sprinted across the Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians. She winced visibly when a shard of broken glass slashed her bare foot, but did not slow her pace.
The two guards cut left and dashed for the marble stairs outside the gallery. Mira exited the hall in time to see their retreating backs on the descending flight. She fired a blind burst over the balustrade, then took off after them.
Their lead was too great. They would be able to muscle through the frightened guests and gain the exit before she could catch them. As her feet hit the mid-point landing, she gripped the railing with her left hand and swung her hips onto it.
The fabric of her dress created almost no friction as she slid down the banister at a speed approaching free fall. She hit the second floor and somersaulted out of what would otherwise have been a headlong crash, coming up with the gun ready. The sound of footsteps on the stairs below was audible in the sudden quiet. Mira again flung herself onto the descending rail and slid after them.
The fleeing shooters reached the first floor in that instant. Mira saw them darting toward the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall and brought her MAC-10 to bear. Two quick, three-round bursts splashed in the path of the fleeing guards. Hot brass blasted from the sliding mechanism and flew back at her, burning the exposed skin of her shoulders, but the pain barely registered on her battle-heightened senses.
The two men stumbled over each other, then quickly reversed and headed back into the museum. Mira chased them with bullets as she completed her slide, hearing the clank as the pistol’s open bolt mechanism slammed shut on an empty firing chamber. She rolled off the railing, ejecting the spent clip as she stood, and slammed one of the spare magazines into the butt of the weapon.
Gunfire erupted from the Hall of North American Mammals. Bright muzzle-flashes scorched the air from within the dimly lit exhibit, forcing Mira to dive behind the wall near the entrance. She worked the slide action, chambering a round, then stuck the MAC-10 around the edge and squeezed the trigger. The gun jumped in her hand, unleashing three rounds at random. She fired again, but her foes did not answer with a return volley.
Nine-millimeter Parabellum slugs from three different machine pistols had savaged the display of North American wildlife. Animals felled by hunters’ rifles decades before were wounded afresh, their hides torn with broken glass and stray bullets. The display windows were scattered in fragments across the floor.
They know I’m barefoot. They did this on purpose.
Mira moved with quick caution through the ruined exhibit, placing her feet down carefully, but still at a pace that could easily
be considered a sprint. She reached the far end, a display corridor lined with dioramas of small mammals, just in time to see the blue shirt of one of the guards flash around a corner. When she reached that bend, she almost died.
The guards had split up. One of them had turned left, heading down an empty gallery toward the main entrance facing 77th Street, where an enormous, authentic Native American boat dominated the lobby. The other guard had continued straight, toward the IMAX theatre. After taking only a few steps toward those destinations however, both men turned, waiting to catch her in the crossfire.
Mira had no time to think and barely even a moment to react. She threw herself flat, diving into the gallery where the first shooter stood. Though she was removed from the line of fire of his companion, she was completely visible to this man. Thinking that he had the advantage, the guard walked a constant stream of automatic fire toward the place where Mira lay prone.
Bullets stitched the carpeted floor and ricocheted harmlessly back into the corridor. Mira rolled away from the barrage, trying in vain to bring her own weapon up against the shooter. All of a sudden, the incoming gunfire ceased. She did not hesitate.
A three-round burst took the guard in the chest, knocking him backward. Mira was up in an instant and crossed the distance to where the fallen guard lay, his smoking, empty weapon still clutched in his out-flung right hand. Spent brass cartridges were strewn all around him, an epitaph to his poor shooting skills. She added the man’s remaining magazine to her own supply, then darted back toward the corridor.
There was no sign of the other shooter. She ran past the doors to the IMAX auditorium, toward the site of the closed Eskimo exhibit, expecting at any moment to be fired upon, but found nothing. He had somehow evaded her.
Not satisfied with that conclusion, she backtracked. The assassin could not have slipped past her. That meant he had either ducked into the Northwest Coast Indians exhibit or into the IMAX Theater.