Ascendant

by Sean Ellis

  All of a sudden, several more bolts sprung out from the doorframe, permanently securing the door in place. Before any man could so much as utter an expletive, an unseen compartment opened beneath the car, exposing pellets of Zyklon B, which immediately reacted with the oxygen in the air to release fumes of hydrogen cyanide gas. The chemical agent swiftly silenced their screams, leaving only bloody claw marks as testimony to the terror of their passing. Though dead for more sixty years in his watery grave, Mann had committed yet another unspeakable act of violence, unknowingly striking down the heirs to his evil ideology.

  As Mira and DiLorenzo neared the next level of the fortress, the sound of rushing water grew loud in their ears. The stairs were now littered with both human remains and animal spoor, showing evidence of rodent infestation but not the presence of the dog packs. Evidently, the dogs had been trapped in the upper levels of the redoubt, sustaining themselves on the smaller vermin that found their way up through cracks too small to permit a larger mammal to pass. The placement of the bodies seemed to indicate that they had been dumped by those who survived them.

  Mira vaguely wondered what means of execution Mann had employed against the laborers that had allowed some to live long enough to dispose of the rest. Probably poison in the food. The soldiers would have willingly carried out the extermination of the slaves, little realizing that their next meal would also be their last.

  The next landing marked the end of the stairwell. The chamber beyond thundered with the echoes of a subterranean waterfall and the air was humid, heavy with warm mist, as Mira and DiLorenzo entered.

  The area beyond the final landing was a vast open cavern cut through the heart of the mountain by the force of endless underground floodwaters. It did not appear that Mann had spent much effort finishing the cavern; nature had done the job well enough for his purposes. The gently sloping curve of the floor, scoured clean of stalagmites and other protrusions, ended abruptly midway across the chamber where it dropped off into nothingness. The plumes of spray rising from beyond that brink revealed the presence of a turbulent underground river.

  “Hot in here,” remarked DiLorenzo.

  “This river is probably part of the same geothermal system as the geyser. Some of it is probably effluent from the steam generator.”

  There was one other feature of the cavern that had initially escaped their notice, one that was unmistakably a construct of the human denizens of the underground fortress. It looked like a city bus, floating above the surging waters of the river. As they drew closer, they saw the cables and pulleys that suspended the trolley car above the water. A wooden staircase rose up to the closed door of the vehicle.

  “A tram car,” said the detective. “Like the one to Roosevelt Island. But going where?”

  Mira’s eyes followed the guide cables. At one end of the cavern, they wrapped around an enormous metal wheel, part of the motivating system for moving the tram from one terminus to the other. The cables ran above the river’s surface, following the tunnel that continued into the darkness beyond the point where the large chamber closed in. There was likely a second, matching car at the opposite end of the line, along with the primary machinery for operation. It was anyone’s guess as to whether it still worked after so many years.

  “I’d guess this leads to the U-boat dock,” she ventured. “The river probably becomes more navigable further on.”

  “So this was to have been the main entrance?”

  She nodded. “Let’s hope there’s another. I’m in no mood for a long swim.”

  Aside from the landing and the river course, there was another tunnel leading away from the chamber, partly concealed behind stacks of wooden shipping crates. A cursory glance showed the cargo containers to be empty, long ago pillaged by human and vermin, and slowly rotting away. The tunnel, however, was pristine, a stainless steel corridor roughly six feet square, leading into the raw stone. There was no gate or door securing the passage, only an incongruous numeric keypad mounted to the metal lintel on the right-hand side. Mira studied this last item carefully, while DiLorenzo peered down the long corridor. The far end was a nondescript square of pale blue illumination. He took a step forward.

  Before his foot could settle on the stainless steel floor, Mira’s hand flashed out, catching him none too gently across the chest. The blow cancelled whatever momentum he had, throwing him off balance with arms flailing. Her hand clamped around his biceps, steadying him, but she did not allow him to advance.

  “Not yet,” was all she said. Chastened, he stood aside, leaning against the smooth stone of the cavern wall, waiting as she continued her assessment of the keypad. Because he was facing outward, he saw the men enter from the landing a moment before they saw him.

  “Company’s coming.” His words were louder than he’d intended, spoken from a burst of sudden panic and adrenaline. He hauled up his gun and ducked behind one of the sodden crates. Mira dropped quietly beside him, her pistol likewise drawn.

  “They caught up to us a lot faster than I expected,” she murmured as six figures spilled from the landing, crouching defensively with weapons at the ready. A moment later, their guns thundered.

  One of the men, wearing a black combat uniform, spun in mid-step as a 9mm round caught his upper torso. He staggered into one of his comrades, momentarily taking both of them out of the fight, but the rest of the troop began a murderous return volley.

  The crates afforded little protection. The concentrated fire from several semi-automatic weapons, along with shotguns and revolvers, blew gaping holes in the moldy wood, alternately bursting through more solid pieces in a shower of splinters. Mira scored a second hit, dropping one of the Bolivian men with a headshot, before return fire drove her flat against the floor of the cave.

  “We’ve got to fall back,” shouted DiLorenzo. “That tunnel is the only way out.”

  “The devil or the deep blue sea?” She rolled toward the metal corridor, rising into a crouch that left her partially exposed. “Go!”

  As DiLorenzo took his first step toward the tunnel, Mira raised her Beretta and took aim at the shiny floor. The pistol thundered in the tight confines, and there was a spark as the hollow-point round ricocheted from the metal surface. What happened next occurred too fast for either one of them to see.

  All down the length of the tunnel, at twenty-foot intervals, solid lines of darkness had appeared to block the way. DiLorenzo stopped just short of the first set of what he now saw were steel blades, one about the height of his knee, another just below the level of his throat. A moment later, the blades began swinging away, receding slowly into the almost invisible slots in the wall where they had been concealed.

  “Go,” repeated Mira, dashing ahead of him. She dived between the first set of knives, though they were nearly out of the way. “Run!”

  DiLorenzo felt a momentary panic, realizing how closely he had come to being decapitated by the antique Nazi booby trap. He had no clue as to how Mira had spotted the device, much less known how to trigger it, nor was he convinced that it would not spring again while they were in the tunnel. But to hesitate was to ensure failure and death, either at the hands of the pursuing force or in the bladed trap. Forcing down his fear, he sprinted into the metal corridor.

  The gunfire behind them ceased almost immediately. Their foes had surely grasped how the pair had eluded them and were almost certainly advancing. The hallway, nearly forty meters long, would give the fleeing couple no room to dodge the storm of bullets that would surely follow. To make matters worse, the spring-loaded knives had nearly completed their retraction cycle. DiLorenzo put his head down and poured on the speed until he was almost stepping on Mira’s heels. When he looked up again, the end of the corridor was in sight.

  “Dive for it,” shouted Mira, taking her own advice. She hurled herself forward, somehow flattening out in mid-air like a swooping falcon, then curled her body into a protective ball in the instant before hitting the ground. DiLorenzo simply made his best attempt
at a slide into home base. Even as his built-up momentum dragged him the last two meters, he heard the click of the trap resetting, followed by the whoosh of the blades slicing through the air once more. He was conspicuously aware of movement scant inches above his head.

  As he came to rest, his left foot still touching the metal surface of the tunnel, he became aware of Mira kneeling in front of him and facing down the length of the corridor with both arms extended, pistol at the ready. She did not fire however.

  A long silent moment passed before DiLorenzo dared to lift his head and look behind. He saw the blades once more returning to their place of concealment, awaiting the next footfalls that would trigger another deadly, snake-like strike. Then he saw the bodies.

  It was difficult to tell from where he and Mira now were, how many of the pursuers had been caught in the second release of the trap. The far end of the corridor looked like a charnel house; the stainless steel walls dripped with dark splatters of blood and there was a jumble of disconnected body parts blocking the far end. If there were any survivors—stragglers bringing up the rear who had not yet entered the kill zone when the first footsteps of their companions activated the pressure-sensitive trigger mechanism—they had retreated from view.

  DiLorenzo looked away from the gory scene, sickeningly aware of how close he had come to sharing the same fate. He knew that Mira’s instincts alone had saved him from certain death. If he was going to survive to see the end of this nightmare, it would only be through putting aside his macho prejudices and trusting her to get them both out alive.

  The chamber in which they now found themselves was once more a joint production of Mother Nature and human hands. The irregular floor had been covered over with diamond-patterned steel decking, as might adorn the walkways of a battleship. The walls were smooth, carved over the course of centuries by the flow of an underground river, but several new alcoves and tunnels had been hewn into the solid rock of the mountain. Some of these were secured with heavy doors, while others stood open but empty beyond. Several large shop tables were arranged in the center of the chamber, but only a thin layer of dust dulled their surfaces. The cavern appeared to be some kind of laboratory, with the side chambers perhaps containing equipment and raw materials. Directly opposite the corridor through which they had entered was another metal passageway, similarly guarded by a numeric keypad.

  Mira strode to the edge of the second corridor, but again made no move to enter. “It’s down there.”

  “Another trap?”

  “Yes, but I’m betting this one won’t be so easy to fool.” She studied the keypad diligently. “This is some kind of mechanical combination lock.”

  “Might as well not even try, then. The number of possible combinations must be astronomical.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Mann designed this in the 1940’s. It must have been revolutionary for its time, but why go to the trouble when a key would have worked just as well?”

  “That’s easy. Keys can be lost or stolen. With a combination lock, you carry the key in your head. And you can give it to other people.”

  “Exactly. But you need to make the combination something that’s easy to remember.”

  “Just like using your birthday as your PIN number.”

  A whining noise abruptly cut him off, the unmistakable sound of a bullet piercing the air nearby, followed almost simultaneously by the crack of the gunpowder charge that had propelled it. Mira and DiLorenzo each dived for cover, but the bullet had already carved a chip of stone off the wall and rebounded along an unknown vector. There was no sign of the shooter, but it seemed logical to conclude that there were at least some of that original group of foes who had escaped death in the tunnel trap. Evidently, they were hanging back, shooting blindly through the tunnel and hoping to get lucky. Because the second passage was almost perfectly aligned with the first, they would be fish in a barrel for the length of time it would take to traverse that distance. Providing, of course, that Mira could somehow work out the numeric lock, or failing that, outwit the trap mechanism as she had the first time.

  Mira rose up from her hiding place and snapped off several shots down the distant tunnel. Their pursuers must have realized that they too were exposed in the arrangement, and retreated from the opening. Satisfied with the moment it bought her, she returned her attention to the keypad and quickly tapped in eight digits.

  There was no visible change, no electronic tones or signal lights to indicate that she had been successful. She threw a glance at DiLorenzo, then drew in a sharp breath. The New York detective realized at that moment that Mira had no idea whether the sequence she had entered was correct.

  She paused abruptly, as if spooked at the last instant, and whirled again to face the keypad. More confidently than the first time, she tapped out eight more digits—it was impossible for DiLorenzo to tell how this attempt differed from the initial entry—after which there was a faint, but distinctive click of an unseen device deep in the tunnel wall falling into place.

  “That’s it.” She sagged in relief for a moment and then sprinted unhesitatingly into the tunnel. Nothing at all happened as she ran.

  DiLorenzo realized that he had been holding his breath, and let it out in a whooshing exhale. “What was it?”

  “Hitler’s birthday,” she shouted, without looking back.

  “Jesus, what did you try the first time?”

  If she heard, she did not answer.

  The second passage seemed as long as the first, the stainless steel walls dully reflecting light from the pale blue luminescent substance that ran like a paint stripe down the length of the ceiling. The chamber at its end, however, showed no such light source. Instead, only a dark nothingness awaited them, but Mira did not need to see their destination to know what lay beyond. The Trinity in her backpack was vibrating furiously in anticipation of being rejoined with one of its counterparts after so many millennia of separation.

  The chamber that lay beyond the steel passage was of indeterminate dimensions, but the room seemed to radiate around a central hub, a stubby cairn of stones that could almost be taken for a ceremonial altar barely illuminated by ambient light spilling from the passage. Mira recognized it right away; it was a Trinity altar.

  She struck a flare, and the pink-orange illumination was reflected by a circle of dull metal adorned with a single, six-sided crystal.

  “I’ll be damned,” DiLorenzo whispered, gazing at the talisman, then laughed. “This is probably business as usual for you.”

  “It never gets to be old hat.”

  “May I?” DiLorenzo reached for the relic, hesitating to see what her response would be.

  For the merest instant, she felt a twinge of panic. It had been in a place very much like this that she had lost Curtis . . . lost him to the very same power that now hovered at DiLorenzo’s fingertips. In her mind’s eye, she saw power lancing from the Trinity to incinerate the detective, just as it had Lancet. It was not a premonition, she knew, just an irrational fear. Pushing the grim memory away, she nodded.

  DiLorenzo treated the artifact like a young man reaching for the chalice at his first communion, eager, but at the same time fearfully reverent. He let his fingers drift along the outer edge, brushing lightly the crystal, and then closed his grip. When he did, the hexagonal gem came alive, blazing with pure white intensity that overwhelmed the flickering illumination of the flare.

  Mira cast the sputtering flame aside and took the matching Trinity from her pack. Its crystal was likewise burning with argent brilliance and the metal vibrated against her fingertips as if charged with an electric current.

  She extended the relic toward DiLorenzo, nodding silently, confident that he would know what to do.

  He returned the nod, his arm lifting almost without his volition, as the newfound Trinity reached out to its long lost complement. Like the opposing poles of a magnet, the pieces leaped into a shared embrace, joining together with crystals diametrically opposed, united again for the f
irst time in over ten thousand years.

  TWELVE

  The time of the Ascendant Ones was at an end.

  That was not their own name for their race; they had no need of names or even of words. It was the name given them by those who watched and jealously waited for an opportunity to usurp the position as foremost species on the planet. An appropriate name indeed, for they had risen as far above their primate origins as the stars were above the earth.

  For uncounted millennia, they had roamed, living in herds and foraging for food. Evolution had appointed them well for survival; the development of their brains was rivaled only by the structure of their bodies. Instead of hooves or claws, they had long dexterous fingers, with opposable thumbs. They walked erect but could climb or crawl as necessity or decision dictated.

  The herds were strong. The alpha male of each herd carried only the best survival traits in his genetic make-up, passing these on to the next generation. Few other males were permitted to procreate, and in some herds, when the alpha male was young and new to his dominant role, all male children might be put to death at birth or exiled forever to a solitary existence upon reaching puberty.

  The Ascendant Ones did not fashion tools, erect buildings or use fire. They had no need of such trivialities. Centuries of natural selection had unlocked mental powers that would, in less primitive society to come, be counted as magic. Game beasts obeyed the command to lie down and bare their necks for slaughter.

  The Ascendant Ones could heal infection and disease with a thought. They could even avert the power of the elements, raising heat from the stones on cold nights, or turning rain aside simply by willing it. Though their physical appearance was unremarkably hominid, they were the pinnacle of evolved intelligence.

  Such ascendancy could only be maintained at a heavy price, however. In the same fashion that the alpha male in each herd cast out all potential rivals, so too did the herd fall upon or banish any weakling in their midst. Children born with physical or mental defects were quickly cast away and left for the scavenger beasts. Though their minds were tremendously powerful, freedom of thought was severely restricted. The imperatives of existence, though not dictated by instinct, per se, were nonetheless absolute: follow the alpha male wherever he leads and bear him many female children.