by Rick Jones
The model rose, becoming the ceiling of a platform beneath it. The sound of stone grating against stone was loud and constant.
And something began to reveal itself.
The model rested on three columns of black silica, the columns rising from the floor to greater heights with the model now serving as the cap piece. When it stopped rotating Mintaka became still, the subsequent silence almost as terrifying as the tremors.
“Is everyone all right?” asked Demir. He got to his feet and brushed at his uniform as if it had attracted dust and filth, which it hadn’t.
Others got to their feet as well and looked around trying to get a fix of their surroundings, on whether or not the walls and ceiling would hold.
Alyssa slowly made her way to the three pillars that rose from underneath with an outstretched hand, her eyes focusing on the shared symbols adorning each pillar.
₱
It was the symbol for Anu, the Creator of Mankind.
A breath escaped her as she traced her fingers endearingly over the image.
In the center of the platform was a staircase leading downward.
“This is it,” she said. “This is the gateway that leads to the Chamber of the One.”
“Are you positive about that?” asked Hillary.
She nodded. “This image is the symbol of Anu, the Creator of Mankind . . . It’s the Chamber of God.”
They all looked down into the stairway’s depths, into brewing darkness that seemed to swirl with a life of its own, a maelstrom of intertwining shadows.
“It doesn’t look too inviting,” John commented, leaning forward as far as he could.
“But it’s down there. And it’s very, very close. I can feel it.”
Demir took a quick head count. There were twelve people left out of twenty-two. They had lost nearly half their group in less than six hours. And then he considered something further: If they find this chamber, then what? They still had to get out of here, which would be no easy task.
Demir stood at the stairway’s threshold. “I’ll take point,” he said. Forcefully, he barked off orders to his troops in Turkish, something John and Alyssa didn’t understand but quickly got the gist of what he said when they checked and racked their weapons.
The commando then adjusted his shoulder lamp, the beam penetrating deeply as the crystal staircase reflected like diamonds with spangles of iridescent light.
He took the first step cautiously as if testing it for its capability to hold his weight. When he deemed it passable, he began to descend slowly to the level below with the others following his lead. When they descended deep enough, when the opening was well behind them, they could hear the pillars descend downward into their original position, locking them in with a sound that was final.
There was no way back.
The stairs winded in a spiral formation with the steps and walls glittering like multi-faceted jewels, always sparkling with star-point glitters.
“It’s beautiful,” commented Alyssa.
But nobody made a remark or provided a statement. They simply remained quiet.
The steps were sturdy, the walls solid despite the recent tremors. And when they finally reached the bottom landing their breaths were stolen away by Mintaka’s sheer elegance.
They stood at the mouth of a long hallway with a grand arched doorway at its end. The hallway itself was long and flanked by walls that glittered like diamonds, the same as the walls in the staircase, with faceted sparkles of a high-quality gem. The sparkles simply going off like bursts of light, which in turn generated bursts of energy behind the clear crystal.
“It’s magnificent,” said Alyssa. The popping of the lights reflected off neighboring walls like lights cast from a disco ball, the iridescent hues reflecting as wondrous colors, some so beautiful that they were indescribable.
They were all caught up in the moment.
Above the archway at the opposite end of the hallway was the symbol ₱, for Anu. Below that, script.
грэцкай эліністычнаথেকে й паэзіі і йооду пথেকে তালিকার সমসাময়িক
Πθεύς
рырыцы.∑ыбар তাসভ্যতার
йооду пথেকে эліністычнаথেпаэসাম
Here lies the Tomb of the God
Anu
The Creator of Mankind
Behold the Emperor of Eden
Alyssa took a step forward, her eyes lighting up. To look upon the face of God, she thought.
John grabbed her and held her back.
She turned to him. “What?”
He gestured to the surrounding area with his hand. “You said this place was built strictly for the high priests who knew every nuance of these pyramids.”
“That’s right.”
“And we’re the trespassers, yes?”
She nodded.
“So do you think for one minute that this place has been engineered for trespassers to walk right into the Chamber of the One?”
It suddenly clicked. Alyssa took second note of the walls, floor and ceiling, pushing aside its beauty to locate deadly triggers. The stretch of the hallway was inviting, perhaps too inviting and an obvious lure. Mintaka was designed to protect the secrets within.
“You’re right,” she said.
Hillary sounded nervous. “You’re right? What do you mean, you’re right?”
“He’s right,” she told him. “We’re at the final stretch and so far Mintaka has fought us all the way. Why would it surrender now? And the answer is: it wouldn’t.”
“So what do we do? We can’t go back.”
“If we can’t go back, then we have no choice but to move forward.”
“Are you insane?”
“If we’re ever to get out of here, then we have to go through Hell to get to Heaven, right? We get to the Chamber of the One, to the chamber of Anu.”
Hillary scanned the floor, the ceilings and walls, sighting nothing, which brought a measure of minimal confidence to his psyche. “Perhaps we broke all the barriers,” he told her. “Perhaps we conquered all the tests that Mintaka had to offer, which is now rewarding us by allowing us to look upon the face of God.”
Yeah. Sure. You keep believing that, Cowboy.
But he was right, at least to a degree, she considered. She could see or spot nothing of harmful intent. But then again, Mintaka hid its secrets very well.
So what do we do?
Demir seemed to answer for her.
He stood along the edge where the mouth of the stairwell met with the entry of the hallway floor, the stretch seemingly longer than it should be, at least in his eyes, and ordered two of his men to the line. Maroon Berets or not, they hesitated. But Demir was about to lead by example. He, too, stood at the line.
“What are you doing?” asked Alyssa.
Demir pointed to the opposite end of the hallway. “I’m going to the chamber.”
“Just like that?”
“Do you prefer that we stand here for the rest of our lives wondering if there’re triggers or not. And in the meantime starve to death as we consider our options?”
No, I guess not.
Demir called out orders to his team. The men responded by forming a second line. Then he looked at Alyssa with a steady gaze. This is, after all, why we came.
Lining his team up, Demir raised his hand then let it fall, the action galvanizing his unit to move forward down the corridor.
Behind the line, John reached for Alyssa’s hand and held it tight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Coils of black smoke worked their way through cracks and crevices, breaching open spaces where there were none before. Laced with noxious fumes that were overwhelmingly lethal, the remaining scarabs lost their battles of flight, the smoke blanketing them, killing them, the beetles dying with their legs and antennae twitching as their systems shut down.
The smoke ventured on, attracted by
the lure of oxygen filtering down from above, which fueled it and gave it breath, gave it life.
It was amorphous, its shape always changing, always shifting—giving it the ability to infringe on territories incapable of stopping it.
It had moved up the levels with ease, conquering them, and strove for more.
Then it neared the height of central prominence as it nearly reached the most significant level in all of Mintaka.
It was closing in on the Chamber of the One.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Demir was cautious as the hairs on the back of his neck rose.
All around them pinprick sparks continued to go off in a dazzling display behind the crystal walls that were becoming incredible canvases of living light.
Their steps were even and measured with Demir a few paces ahead, the soldiers a few steps behind. The points of their weapon were faced forward, their shoulder lamps drawing wide, circular beams against the far wall, spotlighting the archaic script.
They were a quarter of the way down the hallway when one of Demir’s teammates stepped on a crystal tile, the tile sinking about an inch, not too deeply, but enough to engage a response from Mintaka. The passageway leading to the staircase closed off as a partition of black silica slid into place. What used to be a passageway behind them was now completely sealed off, the wall becoming a solid mass that offered no chance of retreat.
And then it began to move forward along the floor like the side of a vise closing in for the pinch. At first its momentum was slow, but it picked up speed by the inches and then by the feet. Eventually it would force everyone onto the hallway floor and into the dangers it offered.
Savage immediately bracketed his hands around his mouth. “Demir!”
“I know! I see it!”
Demir and his team picked up the pace, fully aware that triggers lay in wait.
The commando to Demir’s right and a few paces behind stepped on another tile.
And the walls flanking them came alive.
A black silica javelin shot out of the wall through a hole no larger than a silver dollar. With the shaft of the lance being so straight and the point so keen, it went right through the soldier as if his flesh had the density of tissue paper. The pike then traveled to the opposite wall without slowing down until it impacted and smashed into minute chips of black silica.
The injured commando looked stunned; his hand coming away from his abdomen coated with blood as he looked at Demir wondering if his mortality had finally come to a quick and brutal end, asking himself if this is what death felt like, as a sweeping chill that eclipsed body and mind.
The soldier’s eyes rolled upward into his head, showing nothing but slivers of white, and then he fell to the floor as a boneless heap.
Demir cried out. It was futile, he knew. But it was simply a reaction to losing another soldier under his command.
The wall was coming closer.
Now there were only two left on the line. Demir and one other.
They moved ahead, slowly, their heads on a swivel, looking.
John cried out. “The wall!” he yelled. “It’s almost here!”
Demir turned.
The wall was moving faster and would soon run at them with the force of a train.
Demir ordered his second unit to advance, and quickly. Time was becoming critical.
They stepped onto the magnificent flooring and maintained a line.
Savage looked behind him, as did Alyssa and Hillary and the two ministers, their hearts rising to their throats as the floor advanced with all the promise to force them upon the tiles to initiate triggers.
Javelins would fly.
Lives would be lost.
But Mintaka left them with no other choice.
The rush of the wall was building and getting closer, the energy behind it advancing with malicious intent.
“We have to move,” said Savage.
Hillary whined and whimpered, the man becoming the fulcrum between reaction and indecision, vacillating between taking the leap or not.
John reached for Alyssa’s hand, grabbed it.
The wall was now racing.
Demir had no choice. And neither did anyone else.
The closing wall had forced their hand. All caution now had to be cast to the wind.
“Run!”
Everyone advanced with legs striving, then running, their footfalls falling upon loose tiles and initiated triggers.
A volley of javelins shot from the left and from the right, the spring mechanisms powerful enough to launch weapons so quickly that they were nothing but blurs in space.
Most of the lances missed their marks, caroming off the opposite wall and shattering into pieces that skated across the floor. Others, however, performed the task they were meant to do by tearing through body and tissue with the ease of going through something soft and gelatinous.
One javelin struck a minister and tore through him about six steps before his brain finally registered the fact that he was dead, the man eventually falling to the floor with his eyes at half mast.
Two of Demir’s soldiers in the second line took fatal wounds as well, one through the neck and the other through the temple, both men dying the moment of penetration as they fell to the floor with their bodies skating a few feet until they finally came to rest.
Projectiles continued to fly.
. . . whip . . .
. . . whip . . .
. . . whip . . .
And people continued to run.
. . . whip . . .
. . . whip . . .
. . . whip . . .
John and Alyssa held their palms up as if they would shield them against harm, a natural response of self-preservation as they ran for the foreground.
. . . whip . . .
. . . whip . . .
. . . whip . . .
Lances grazed their clothing, tearing and ripping at the fabric.
But Demir made it to the other side as did the soldier, both diving onto a floor that had no tiles or triggers, but to a floor that was solid and cool and secure.
. . . whip . . .
. . . whip . . .
. . . whip . . .
The remaining minister, as well as John, Alyssa and Hillary and the remaining soldiers made it across, all diving for the security of the floor beneath the archway.
Everyone looked back and felt for the bodies that lay in the path of the moving wall.
But the wall pressed on with incredible speed, striking the corpses like the blade of the plow and pushed them towards the archway.
“Move!” cried Savage. “MOVE!”
The wall was almost upon them, the dead bodies now congregating and rolling at its base, lifeless forms that appeared flimsy and jellylike—forms that were simply pushed along.
Everyone quickly got to their feet, some slipping against the floor until they found traction, each running for the sanction of the doorway. Then the wall slammed hard against the wall of the archway, the dead bodies becoming a pasty mortar between them.
But those who made it now stood inside the Chamber of the One.
They had made it.
Now to look upon the face of God.
CHAPTER FORTY
Smoke drifted lazily through cracks and crevasses, wending its way through every tunnel, through every chamber, filling Mintaka with a haze that was thickening by the seconds.
The tendrils had reached the Hall of Anu, the smoke building, the hallway becoming black and gray with the imbued scent of oil.
It had reached the wall pressing against the archway, a solid closure where not even a hairline crack or micro-fissure existed. But as smoke does it blindly seeks new avenues of exploration, finding them at the seams surrounding the tiles of the hallway, the smoke then drifting between the joints and filtering down beneath the floor that extended underneath the Chamber of the One.
The space between the ceiling of the lower chamber and the floor of the upper chamber was slim. But i
t was large enough to harbor something deadly and wicked within, something that had laid in slumber with the smoke now awakening this sleeping giant.
The haze was thin and minimal, but it was enough to galvanize this mass into motion. Coils and strands of life shifted in the darkness, the bodies undulating and, as life does, quickly recognized the hazard of smoke and began to meander away from a threat far greater than itself.
In Mintaka, they sought for salvation by seeking the Chamber of Anu.
PART II
BEHOLD THE EMPEROR OF EDEN
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
It appeared as a giant seal on the wall, a magnificent circle of polished gold that was approximately thirty feet in diameter, or ten meters across, that bore the explicit details of what appeared to be prognostication through pictographs, ancient script and archaic characters in Sumerian lettering.
Lights from numerous shoulder lamps spotlighted the many patterns as everyone got to their feet, the gold seal casting a dazzling sheen that reflected back at them as amber light, the area brightening.
Alyssa took a few steps forward. Her eyes were wide and studious. “It’s wonderful,” she managed.
Hillary cocked his head. Then to Savage, he asked, “Do you recognize it, John?”
Savage did recognize it. It was the same emblem that opened up on the floor in the chamber beneath them, the floor coming alive, which allowed Savage and a few others to slide through to a tunnel hidden beneath the hall. “Yeah, I recognize it,” he said dryly. “It’s the same calendar we found below.”
“Yes,” said Hillary, sustaining the ‘s’ long enough so that the word sounded like a hiss.
Alyssa took closer examination as her eyes shifted from side to side. “You’re right,” she said. “It is a calendar.” Her eyes narrowed as they studied the images carefully. “It begins where the Mayan calendar ended,” she finally said. “On December 21, 2012.”
“Precisely. Where this new calendar ended, however, neither John nor I could determine that.”
She took a step forward until she could almost reach out and touch the seal. Her eyes appeared to dance over the descriptions and over the characters. Savage could see the wheels of her mind working.