by Rick Jones
She didn’t answer him. Instead, she traced a fingertip along the ribs, feeling multiple nicks. She did the same to the skull and to the tail—nicks were everywhere.
“Is there something in particular you’re looking for, Ms. Moore?”
Hillary and Savage followed her lead, tracing their fingertips along the bones in a simple act of forensics.
“Do you feel them?” she asked.
Hillary nodded. So did Savage.
“This thing was scoured clean,” offered Hillary. “You can tell by the cuts and notches. They’re everywhere on this skeleton.”
“Rats. Insects,” said Demir, although his tone intimated that he was asking a question rather than making a statement.
“Possibly,” she answered. Then she addressed Hillary directly. “Could this have been the thing you saw last night? Could this have been the shape?”
Demir shook his head. “Impossible,” he said. “It’s picked clean—probably over a period of months after the collapse of the temple.”
“Hardly,” said Savage. “The bones haven’t yellowed or tanned. They’re still white, still fresh. I’d say this happened within the past twenty-four hours . . . maybe less.”
Demir flashed his light toward the cracks and fissures, and to the openings along the floor. There were multiple gaps, sure, but nothing large enough to allow something of comparative size to compete against the Prisca—and then to kill it and pick it clean?
Demir wondered if there was another access, one that was further down the hall. Instinctively, he turned toward the corridor than ran deeper into darkness, his light penetrating no more than fifty feet. There might be something down there, he considered. Something that was far deadlier than the Megalania Prisca, something that might be watching them with an attentive eye. He began to tap his forefinger nervously against the stock of his assault weapon.
“How much further?” asked Savage.
“About a click,” said Demir.
Another kilometer.
Savage stood, wishing that he was in possession of a weapon.
Alyssa continued to kneel by the remains alongside Hillary, both wondering the same thing. What could have broken down matter so quickly and so absolute and not leave a trace other than a series of scratches along the bones from grazing?
Alyssa finally got to her feet with Hillary following her lead.
“Be very careful,” she alerted everyone. “These Priscas are very fast and can move around the dark as easily as we move around in the light. Who knows how many more are out there.”
“You think another Megalania Prisca did this?” asked Demir.
“No. When ecosystems change so does the food chain. And those capable of adapting will rise as a new order. Whatever did this was no Prisca. Priscas always leave something behind like entrails—something. But this—” She pointed to the skeleton.
“Have any ideas, Alyssa?” asked Hillary.
“Something in great numbers,” she guessed. “Beetles, ants, rats—could be any number of things.”
Hillary circled the remains. “Precisely.”
Demir, however, wasn’t so sure, believing that absolute hunger drove its kind to consume it down to its barest design. Somewhere beyond that veil of darkness ahead of him, he could intuit something massive lingering beyond the fringe of light. In any event, they were all in agreement that they were not alone.
“If you’re through with your examination,” Demir said, leveling his weapon toward the veil of darkness, “then I suggest that we move on, yes?”
Demir made a series of hand gestures, with half the unit responding by taking point.
They moved forward.
Alyssa continued to note that the cracks and fissures along the walls were becoming less, the support more stable. Apparently this section was far enough away from the implosion of Eden that it had little, if any, effect to its structure.
At the corridor’s end they came to a wall, the point where the laser measurement ended. There was no bend or outlet. No recess or junction—just a wall.
They had come to a dead end.
Demir, however, felt a pang of disappointment, his sense of intuition not as keen as he believed it to be, thinking something was hiding in the shadows when there was nothing there at all. “Well, Ms. Moore,” he said. “It appears to be a dead end.”
Alyssa stepped forward and pressed her palms against the engravings on the wall. “Hardly,” she said.
Her lips curved into a preamble of a smile.
CHAPTER TEN
Alyssa ran her palms over the images against the black silica wall as if they were Braille.
There was a series of icons set in a squared pattern. Beneath it was a riddle.
найстараবিশ্বকোষ жытнымপৃথীবীর і
তালিকা হয়েছে। ўяўленьнямі бпа২০০৭ ўц তারিখে
чанасьউইকিপিডিয়া, ці дасканалযাতে асьমুক্ত ціцудаў
жанрপ্রকাশিনির্মিত
Fill the void with the correct (numeral).
Should you choose wisely, then to the Chamber of the One shall you pass.
Should you choose poorly, then darkness shall you forever see.
“There’s a way in,” she finally said, tracing her hand over the figures. “It’s a riddle.”
Savage and Hillary fell in beside her.
“The images, do you know what they mean?” asked Hillary.
“I can piece enough together to figure out what it’s looking for . . . I think.”
“What does it say?”
She hesitated, examining the symbols and archaic script. “It basically says: Fill the void with the correct . . . numeral or symbol. Choose wisely . . . then to the Chamber of the One shall you pass or go. Choose poorly, then darkness shall you forever see.”
“That last line doesn’t sound very promising,” said Demir.
“That’s because it’s a warning. If we choose the wrong symbol—trust me, what happens thereafter will not be pretty.”
“How so?”
“People will die,” she simply said.
Hillary stood back with his hands up and patted the air. “It’s all yours,” he told her.
She examined the keypad of symbols first.
“There’s a missing image in the second row, the second one down. The riddle is asking us to fill it in with the proper symbol, the proper numeral. The row beneath the symbols—”
“—is a numerical legend with each symbol having been assigned a number. The ¥ is symbolic of the number one. The double ¥¥ is the number two, and so on. The ɛ represents the number five, at least by Sumerian script. ɛ¥ equals six, ɛ¥¥ is seven, and the symbol ᵿ is the number . . . nine.”
“Are you sure?” asked Hillary. “You don’t sound very confident.”
“I’m sure.” She studied the images further. “So now we can apply the assigned number to a symbol listed in the legend, to a symbol on the keypad.”
Her mind worked, quickly interpreting symbols and assigning them to their numerals.
The symbol equaled ¥, and ¥ equaled the number 1;equaled ¥¥, the number 2; represented ¥¥¥, the number 3; represented ¥¥¥¥, the number 4; represented the symbol ɛ, or the number 5; symbol was ɛ¥, the number 6; was ɛ¥¥, the number 7; and represented the numerical value of ᵿ, the number 9.
When she assigned the archaic value to the corresponding symbol—
—the symbols became:
She then translated these archaic numerals into current ones, using a scratchpad:
“Now we have to find the missing number from the six below, and then insert the correct value into the missing slot inside the numerical keypad.” She examined the listed answers closely before applying the values onto the scratchpad.
The answers were one of the six:
So the only possible answer to fill in the ga
p was 8, 10, 4, 7, 9 or 2.
“Mathematics,” she said, “is the universal language.” She turned to Savage and called to him. “John.”
He stepped forward. Seeing patterns was his forte, even more so than Alyssa’s.
“Do you see a numerical pattern within this table?”
He studied the model.
“Yeah, I do,” he said. “Every vertical and horizontal row adds up to the number fifteen. So in order to maintain the pattern, you have to insert the number eight.”
The number 8 was represented by the archaic number ɛ¥¥¥, which was assigned to the symbol .
Now became:
She pointed to the specific symbol on the wall. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s the one.”
“The one that’ll what?” asked Demir.
“The one that‘ll get us to the next level.”
“Press it, Alyssa.” Savage’s voice was filled with confidence, even though he could only manage a wan smile. “Do it.”
She looked at him, both remembering what happened in the Temple of Eden whenever they came upon such a puzzle, and the mayhem that sometimes followed.
She pressed the icon, the image falling into the wall as stone grated against stone.
Then the world began to tremble beneath their feet.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
There are more than 30,000 species of scarab beetles worldwide. Some were no larger than one-half inch whereas others were as large as a clenched fist. Inside the warrens of Eden, scarabs numbered by the tens of thousands. And by nature’s design they subsisted on the dung of other animals, feeding off the nutrients and creating shelter from fecal matter. But when the temple of Eden imploded and the Megalania Prisca disappeared, the food chain altered, the scarab now forced to adapt in order to survive.
With the major source of their sustenance now gone, with little feces being produced, the beetles were tailoring themselves to become more carnivorous by scavenging on the carcasses of the Priscas.
At first the bounty was plentiful, the beetles propagating uncontrollably until there were too many to feed, their numbers swelling beyond the means to eventually sustain themselves. And cannibalism was impossible, their shells too thick for their curved mandibles to cut through.
But when the earth began to move and the walls shifted, their senses suddenly magnified. Through pores on their antennae they could detect movement and smells with the same heightened ability as a shark when identifying a drop of blood from a half-a-mile away.
They perceived movements and odors, their olfactory senses validating a new source of food that were too few in numbers to defend themselves against such overwhelming predators.
Legs ticked against the floor or against the shells of neighboring scarabs, mandibles clicking in symphony as tens of thousands of scarabs sounded off like cicadas on a warm summer night, loud and cacophonous.
When the earth began to settle, the orchestration succumbed to silence that was complete and absolute, the area becoming sepulchral as the scarabs lay dormant with the stillness of death.
And in darkness they would wait until man drew closer.
And they would wait with overwhelming numbers.
And when the opportunity availed itself . . .
. . . they would feed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Wall of Symbols separated in the middle, the divided halves parting and sliding into the side walls, disappearing until an amphitheater was revealed.
“That seemed relatively harmless,” said Hillary. “Certainly nothing like the drama you expressed in your articles.”
Alyssa wasn’t so sure. And neither was Savage. Like most prey, they could intuit danger on the wind.
Together they took tentative steps forward with their lights reflecting off the surrounding walls of black silica. The ceiling was domed with chips of crystal embedded in the silica to resemble the placement of stars in the universe. When lights flashed against them they sparkled like gemstones, like star-point glitters of light.
In the dome’s center were the three major stars of the Orion Belt: the Alnitak, the Alnilam, and the Mintaka. The large crystals of the constellation were situated directly above the center of the amphitheater’s floor, the precious stones serving as the possible representation points regarding the origin of God—or Gods—as recorded by Sumerian, Egyptian and Peruvian cultures.
The amphitheater was circular and multi-tiered with rings of black silica seats surrounding the area’s central point like concentric circles. The outer rings were higher on the level to allow an unimpeded view as the entire area angled downward like a funnel.
At the center of the amphitheater floor was a sculpture that appeared to hover several feet in the air, an immovable object.
As the team converged, the object shined against their lights. The surface of the sculpture was polished, an ebony beauty of black silica.
The ministers circled the structure in awe, as did Savage, Alyssa and Hillary. The Maroon Berets, however, maintained a perimeter along the top tier and looked down with repressed fascination.
On closer examination they discovered that the figure wasn’t suspended at all. It was situated on top of a crystal-clear plinth which proffered the illusion that it hovered above the floor.
The ministers made notes, took photos, and gathered into council with the American group—with John, Alyssa and Hillary—and attempted to fathom the shape. It was something Alyssa had seen before—something John Savage had seen before.
It was a black silica representation of an upside down Egyptian Ankh, the symbol in this position representing ‘The Key to Life.’ It was approximately ten-feet high with a crossbar that was six feet across. On the vertical and horizontal beams was ancient lettering that resembled the writings on the Ankh they discovered in the Yucatan Peninsula. But the writings discovered on that Ankh were more delicate with hook-like sweeps to their formation. They were alien and familiar to her at the same time, the changes most likely due to time and evolution. But the meaning was the same: ALL LIFE UNDER ONE.
But who’s the One?
Alyssa studied the Ankh closely, tracing her fingertips over the bas-relief carvings of archaic lettering. “John,” she began, “it’s nearly the same as the lettering on the ship in the Yucatan.”
He agreed. “Minor differences maybe. But very close.”
“Evolution of the written word has changed little. But it’s here, John. It’s similar.”
He nodded. “There’s the tie. This Ankh is the connection alluding that the God of the temple may have come from one of the stars in the Orion Belt. But the mystery remains: Who is the One that all these markings make reference to?”
“One ruler. One government. One God.” Hillary speculated. “Perhaps they’re all one and the same. But I do believe that the answer is here . . . somewhere.” He looked around, his light flashing off the walls, the ceiling, the crystal universe sparkling. Then he returned his light back to the upside down Ankh and the lettering upon its posts. “Those markings,” he continued, “I recognize a few to be pre-Sumerian. But most remain unknown to me.”
“Its symbolic meaning is ‘The Key to Life,’” she answered. “And the letters on the vertical beam—” She cut herself short and shined the light against the lettering, deciphering. “It’s another riddle.”
The ministers looked at her, their faces dropping. John Savage’s remained neutral, as did Hillary’s.
Finally, Hillary spoke: “To what?”
“On the wall that led to this amphitheater,” she started. “It said that if we solved the primary riddle, then to the Chamber of the One shall you pass.” She looked at John and then to Hillary, her face suddenly enlightened. “These corridors, this room—I think they lead to something far greater than what we discovered inside the temple of Eden,” she said. She then looked back at the lettering, at the writing, her mind working. “The One,” she whispered, and then she removed her scratchpad and began to copy the symbols and playe
d with the syntax, trying to put together a meaningful message by puzzling the symbols into different arrangements to create an understanding.
She wrote down the symbols on the vertical bar first and reconfigured them until the symbols came to light, the message crystallizing. She nodded in affirmation. “Definitely a riddle,” she said.
“And that would be?” asked Hillary.
She tapped the point of her pencil against the pad. “The turn of the key is the foundation to All Life Under One. Use the key unwisely, then darkness shall you forever see.”
“Well, I see we’re back to the threat of death once again,” commented Hillary.
Then to no one in particular, Alyssa whispered, “The turn of the key is the foundation to All Life Under One. Use the key unwisely, then darkness shall you forever see.” She walked around the Ankh. “The key . . .” Obviously that was the structure itself, the upside-down Ankh. The foundation, she considered. And suddenly it came to her like the bulb of enlightenment going off in her head. Of course! she considered. The Foundation to the Key of Life!
She immediately got to a bended knee and began to examine the crystal-clear plinth, the foundation of the Ankh, the foundation of the Key.
She traced her fingertips against the plinth.
“Alyssa, what are you looking for?” asked John.
“This is the foundation holding the key to life,” she told him. “This plinth holds the answer to the riddle somewhere. Help me find it!”
Hillary and Savage joined in, as did the four ministers, crowding the area until they found themselves in each other’s way. Hands and fingertips grazed the crystal, searching, everyone looking for odd niches or recesses, finding nothing but smoothness.