Ascendant

by Sean Ellis

  The mountain groaned again, and Rachel Aimes hugged her arms tight across her chest. Despite having left the frigid air of the glacier behind, the subterranean environment through which they now traveled, unlike the humid tunnels of the Bolivian Nazi fortress, remained as chilly as a refrigerator. One of the drawbacks to her adopted father’s straightforward approach to travel was that it afforded little time to shop for the appropriate clothing. For his own part, Tarrant seemed unaffected by the temperature.

  Of course he’s not bothered, she thought with a hint of irony. He’s dead.

  The rest of the group, however, seemed likewise unperturbed by the cool underground air and the breeze that seemed to rise up from the abyss far below. Turner and his mercenaries were too macho to give any outward indication that they felt discomfort, and the New York City detective was oblivious, trailing along like a mindless automaton. Rachel forced herself to relax and continued onward.

  At first, the rumblings of the mountain had heightened her anxiety. But after the first hour of trekking through the ancient city, accompanied by the ticking and creaking of tons of earth, she had come to realize that the mountain was by no means a sleeping lump of rock; it was a living thing. And while the noise of countless fault lines sliding and flexing gave the impression that the whole network of caverns might collapse at any moment, there was absolutely no evidence to suggest that there had ever been a cave-in.

  This time, however, Tarrant stopped in his tracks, and everyone behind him froze in place, fearful that their worst claustrophobic fears were about to be realized. The old grave robber said nothing, but merely turned his head as if listening for whispers on the wind.

  “What is it?” Rachel asked, nervously.

  Tarrant turned slowly, his answer a barely audible question. “Mira?”

  “That’s impossible.” Rachel was surprised by the intensity of her denial, but she heard Turner echo her sentiment.

  “No way,” he said, making a dismissive gesture. “Nobody got out of that place. She’s buried.”

  “No.” Tarrant spoke softly, deliberately. “She did. I wonder why I didn’t feel her presence sooner.”

  “She’s here?” Rachel still couldn’t believe it. “She followed us all the way here?”

  Turner shook his head. “Well, can’t you just . . .” He snapped his fingers and made a noise at the back of his throat.

  “She’s left me no choice.” Tarrant managed a sad smile as he closed his eyes, tightening his grip on the second Trinity. “Good-bye, my dear.”

  FIFTEEN

  As she struggled through the fissure, Mira felt a chill creep over her extremities that had nothing to with the wintry wind that perpetually buffeted the valley. Her heart began involuntarily racing, and beads of perspiration condensed on her forehead as her ability to breathe abruptly vanished. Panic gripped her, and this was doubly unsettling because she rarely experienced trepidation on such a visceral level. She struggled to draw breath, but it was as if the weight of the mountain was squeezing the air from her lungs. Spots began to swim across her vision as her strength fled, and she sagged in the grip of the stony crevice, unable to pull herself through.

  In the descending twilight, a familiar gleam of light materialized before her—one of the Trinity crystals—and she reached out to it with her mind. The image coalesced but remained intangible, like something reflected on a pane of glass, and Mira saw not only the relic she had so briefly possessed, but also the face of her tormentor.

  The man she had once known as Walter Aimes, or rather his astral presence, stood in the darkness before her, with his right hand squeezing the life from her heart. Invisible lines of power snaked into her like the roots of an invasive plant, to draw away her vital force.

  Her reaction was instinctive. She thrashed impotently to free herself, foolishly expending what precious little energy remained. Tarrant had slain Montero and his neo-Nazis in this fashion, and had probably dispatched the Chinese border guards in the same way. He wielded the complete Trinity. How could she hope to defend against that?

  And yet, she did not completely give in to her fear. The Trinity was no longer completely foreign to her. She had felt its power more than once. Was it too much to believe that she could also tap into that ancient power to save herself?

  Two can play that game, Walter.

  She reached out to Tarrant, her hand more a psychic projection now than a physical one, and touched the talisman in his hands. As soon as she made contact, the constriction around her heart abated and her foe’s dismay became palpable.

  They struggled to wrest control of the Trinity from one another in a moment of time that seemed to occupy an eternity. The physical distance that separated them prevented Tarrant from stamping out her life force, but also denied Mira total control of the relic. She knew that while the deadlock endured, Tarrant was moving closer to his ultimate goal. A stalemate was not acceptable.

  She turned her attention to the piece of the Trinity that was not joined physically to the others, the one that had started it all, the relic that had belonged to Atl’an. She could see it clearly now, beating the rhythm of life in the old grave robber’s chest cavity. How he had known that surgically implanting the talisman in his cadaver would revive him, she could not guess, but one fact was glaringly apparent: the Atlantean talisman was the only thing keeping him alive.

  Impulsively, she released her hold on the joined Trinity and made a grab for the pulsing, cracked crystal of its counterpart. Not recognizing his peril, Tarrant redoubled his attack, and as the darkness crashed over her once more, Mira wondered if her gambit had failed. With the last of her awareness, she tightened her grip on the Atlantean Trinity and pulled with all her might.

  Tarrant’s cognizance of the immediate threat arrived with a tortured shriek, and he abruptly severed the astral connection, ceasing the assault in an instant. The tendrils of his attack were wrenched from her soul with the exquisite pain of a sliver removed from a festering wound. She hovered on the verge of collapse, held upright only by the embrace of the rock walls on either side, but she had succeeded in driving back the attack.

  Suddenly, she felt her breath slip away once more. Unable to defeat her head on, her enemy had instead turned his power against the mountain. With a creaking noise, the split halves of the crevice began moving together, filling in the gap caused by the grenade. Tarrant was using the Trinity to seal up the doorway once more.

  Frantic, Mira squirmed in the tightening embrace, grasping the rough stone to propel herself forward ahead of the slow but inexorable collision. Her outstretched fingers abruptly closed on air—she was almost through—but the width of the fissure held her shoulders so that she could barely turn her hands to grip the outer edges. With an unrestrained cry of determination, she heaved herself forward. The yak wool coat was torn from her back, shredded on the ragged surface of the fractured stone, to lay bare the skin underneath to similar punishment. But it was enough. Lubricated by blood and the sweat of her exertion, she slipped free, virtually exploding into the darkness inside the mountain. The stone sealed itself behind her, leaving only a jagged crack to mark the place where she had made her forced entry. The torn remains of the wool over-garment protruded from the cleft, fixed beyond hope of removal.

  “Is that the best you can do, Walter?” She tried to sound defiant, but her trials had left her breathless. The old grave robber had almost won, had almost killed her with a power she barely understood. In a face-to-face confrontation, she might not be so fortunate. And now he knew she was coming.

  A frown creased Tarrant’s undead visage. Rachel knew him well enough to recognize that behind his imperturbable mask, his rage was growing. He faced Turner. “Take your men. Hunt her down and kill her.” Offering no further explanation, he resumed walking. Only DiLorenzo followed immediately, his steps exactly synchronized with his psychic captor’s.

  The mercenary laughed noiselessly, then leaned close to Rachel. “Never send a god to do a man’s w
ork,” he said, winking conspiratorially.

  Before she could reply to his quip, he nodded to his companions, who as one shouldered their rifles and turned back the way they had come. Rachel shook her head, still trying to comprehend exactly what had happened, how Mira had somehow survived what she believed to be an irresistible power, then raced after her father.

  Although she had witnessed the birth of Agartha in a vision, Mira could not help but be amazed at the scope and grandeur of the forgotten city. Unlike the cities built by the three brothers, Agartha had not been laid to waste in the global cataclysm. Rather, its inhabitants had simply deserted their dwellings and sealed up the mountain, preserving its splendor in a timeless stasis.

  The subterranean metropolis was nothing like the Nazi redoubt in Bolivia. Whereas the German architect had utilized existing caverns and exploited countless laborers to hew out connecting tunnels, leaving behind chisel scars and walls scorched by high-explosives, the singular methods employed by Agartha’s builders had left every visible surface smooth and polished, and on a scale to dwarf Mann’s underground fortress. In spite of, or perhaps because of, its abandonment, the terrace upon which Mira found herself and the vaulted roof high above conveyed a gravity to rival the mountain beneath which the ancients had founded their empire.

  The doorway from the Rongbuk monastery opened onto the lowest of a series of terraces—twelve in all—which ascended like a corkscrew to the highest point in the excavation, more than a thousand meters overhead. Each of the tiers was a city in itself. The primary platform was over a mile in diameter and formed the foundation for a myriad of structures whose purpose had long been forgotten. Exquisitely grained metamorphic rock, polished schist and marble established the boundaries on three sides, while the remaining edge overlooked a vast chasm—the axis around which the levels of the city spiraled, culminating at the Trinity temple. It was no coincidence that Hindu and Buddhist philosophies had established thirteen levels of existence in the universe. The abyss—the lowest level—was remembered in the collective human consciousness as unlucky thirteen. Or simply as Hell.

  The apex of the dome was crowned with a sheet of white quartz, likewise refined to glassy smoothness, which radiated a faint illumination. Mira had seen the crystal in vision, shining with near solar brilliance as it amplified the Trinity’s energy to provide light and heat to the city’s inhabitants, but now there was only a hint of that former glory silhouetting the tallest towers, which vanished altogether as she activated a chemical lightstick. Her field of view shrank to the reach of the greenish tube, a sphere of light roughly thirty feet across.

  She took off at a sprint, angling away from the wide promenade that skirted the edge of the chasm and moved into the heart of the city. Her psychic familiarity with the subterranean metropolis allowed her to navigate the labyrinthine streets with a surety that she hoped would give her an advantage over Tarrant. At the very least, she would be less vulnerable to sniper fire here in the narrow footpaths, than on the broad walkway at the edge of the terrace.

  She remembered the city’s genesis as if she had actually lived through the centuries of its development, and its mysteries were second nature to her. The ascending tiers grew progressively smaller as they rose, in keeping with the social order established by the original Trinity kings. Sheer walls nearly two hundred feet high separated each terrace, and the only way to pass from one to the next was a stairway, situated in a temple at the base of each platform. Agarthan citizens endeavoring to reach the next level had to study for years—even an entire lifetime—in order to learn the carefully guarded secret that would unlock the temple gate and permit passage to the next level.

  Because she had touched the Trinity, Mira intuitively knew the solution to each of those puzzles. She also knew that there was no other way to make that transition. The stairways were a natural choke point, and if Tarrant was planning an ambush, she would be most vulnerable there. Because there was nothing she could do to alter that fact, Mira put her faith in her guns and in herself, and entered the first temple.

  Tarrant’s group had attained the fourth level of the city before Mira’s arrival prompted the grave robber to divide his forces. While Tarrant pressed on toward his appointment with destiny, Turner led his party of hired guns back along the esplanade to the head of the stairs leading up from the third stage. He also recognized that the stairs would be the ideal place to catch their prey, but where was the fun in that?

  “Boys, I’m in the mood for a little hunting. What do you say we run this bitch down?” He grabbed one of his subordinates by the arm. “Wait here. If, by some miracle, she makes it past us, take her out.”

  The man nodded and dropped down into a prone firing position, bracing the stock of his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle against his shoulder as he propped himself up on his elbows. He peered through the M-64 holographic close-quarters combat sight, following the progress of Turner and the other gunmen with the targeting dot as they proceeded down the long staircase and out of his view.

  The young mercenary felt a twinge of jealousy as he watched them go; why had he been the unlucky choice to remain behind? Still, he reasoned, Mira Raiden had proven to be a pretty resourceful adversary. Maybe she would make it past them, giving him a chance to make the kill shot. He smiled in eager anticipation and flipped off the safety.

  Even if his attention had not been transfixed upon the stairwell, he still might have failed to notice the figure creeping through the darkness to his rear. So swiftly and silently did it steal upon him, at no time did the hunter realize that he had become the hunted, and when the attack came, there was not even time for him to scream.

  The only sound in the darkness was the crunching of bones.

  The first puzzle was a simple reading test. At the foundation of Agarthan society—as with many civilizations that would follow—there had existed a caste of laborers; some would have called them slaves. Although it was not explicitly forbidden, no effort was made to educate those who dwelt on the lowest level of the city. If any desired to better themselves, to reach the next step, they would first have to learn to read. The key to unlocking the gate that guarded the stairway was the ability to comprehend a question, carved in the hieroglyphic language of Agartha. Surrounding the gate were dozens of tiles marked with similar glyphs. Some were actual words, others nonsensical lines, and only by selecting the tiles that correctly answered the question could an aspirant gain the freedom to move to a better life on the next terrace.

  Mira did not have to study the characters to render an interpretation. Her knowledge of Agarthan evolution included an intrinsic familiarity with its language, both written and spoken. The question roughly translated as: “What is the source of life?” The answer, she knew, was “the Mother.” She quickly located the tiles that spelled out that answer in the tongue of the ancient ones, and pressed each one into the wall. Deep inside the stone, an ancient lock mechanism opened, and a system of counterweights caused the stone gate to rise like a portcullis. Breathing anxiously, Mira ducked under the solid slab as it slid into a recess and charged toward the stairs beyond.

  Her enemies were not lying in wait on the landing above, but she did not take much comfort in this fact. The long climb had left her exhausted and she slowed her running pace down to a tortured walk. She paused on the final step, observing the second level of the city in the green-tinged glow of her chem-light as she struggled to catch her breath. Because she was underground, it was easy to forget that she was more than five thousand meters—roughly three miles—above sea level, much higher than the mountain in South America where Mann had built his stronghold. The altitude thinned the air, making every sort of exertion into an ordeal, and could even cause fatal swelling in the pulmonary system and the brain. Mira drew scarce comfort from the knowledge that her enemies were confronting the same conditions. She very much doubted that Tarrant would feel any sort of distress. Forcing down a copious amount of water from her canteen, she headed for the next gate.r />
  This level of the city, like the first, was given over to rather ordinary and featureless architecture. Literacy represented only a small step in the order of Agartha, elevating those on the second stage more in a physical sense than a social one. The only real difference she noted was that the broad step upon which those unremarkable buildings sat was about one third smaller than the first. It took her only a few minutes to catch a glimpse of the pagoda roof of the gate temple towering over the rest of the blockish edifices. Heartened by her progress, she increased her pace.

  Suddenly, a loud cracking noise began to reverberate across the abyss. Mira recognized it instantly as gunfire—distant, but unmistakable. Reflexively, she dropped into a crouch, flipping her chemical flare away as she drew her Desert Eagle. Because she had no idea where the shots had originated, she turned on her heel, one leg extended for balance, and scanned for a target. A movement, just a shadow suddenly projected in the glow of the discarded chem-light, caught her eye, and she swiveled toward its source, triggering the enormous Magnum.

  The gun barked in the stillness, spitting flame and brass, and bucked wildly in her grip. Mira walked her fire toward the place where she thought the shadow’s caster had stood, and caught a glimpse of something scrambling through the darkness. A tortured squeal reached her ears over the ringing noise of the shots, and she knew her bullets had wounded more than just the slumbering stone.

  Something moved behind her—she felt its presence more as a premonition than anything else—and she twisted around to meet this new threat. Her intuition saved her life, but the warning came a moment too late. A heavy, indistinguishable shape bowled into her and sent her sprawling. The impact jarred loose the grip of her left hand and knocked the breath from her lungs, but she retained her right handed hold on the weapon and brought it to bear. The pistol spoke again as she pumped the trigger.