“But…” Alexander looked around at the shattered walls, the broken alcoves. “All the scrolls…”
“We’ll save what we can,” Caleb said solemnly. “But remember, all of it—the whole collection—was scanned and uploaded to remote servers.”
Alexander had asked his mother about those servers one day, while they were at a café outside the library. He still recalled the glint in her green eyes as she leaned in and whispered: “A lot of places. A cave system in the Himalayas. Another in the Andes. A bunker in Mount Shasta, Washington.”
“It’s all still there,” his father’s voice now. “If only in a different form. The scrolls wouldn’t have lasted forever anyway.”
Alexander knew he was right, but still—the original copies. So priceless. To have averted the doom Sostratus originally foresaw for them, only to be destroyed only a few years after rediscovery…
“I’ve got to go now, they’re coming soon. Remember…”
“Yes, I know. I’m a Keeper now. I’ll do what has to be done.” A little hesitation. “I’ll see you soon?”
“That’s a promise. I’m proud of you, Alexander. Goodbye.”
Alexander stood and raised his head, shining the light into the crevices and nooks, surveying what was left of his domain, the vault that had been built to survive for millennia. He allowed himself a moment to grieve for all this, for Rashi and Hideki. And for his mother.
And then he sat down and got to work.
3.
Xavier Montross waited alone in the limousine and didn’t bother trying the doors. He knew they’d be locked. In the back trunk rested an iron box more than five thousand years old that potentially held the greatest of secrets. And somewhere down there in that monstrous fissure, were the only keys that could open the box.
The keys and my nephew, he thought, imagining the boy’s terror, his sudden thrust into responsibility. We’re not so different. I was even a little younger when it happened to me.
Out the tinted windows he could see the crowd of fire engines, ambulances, vans and relief workers. Three helicopters overhead. People surging around the perimeter, spectators pushed back by armed police, keeping everyone at a distance from ground zero.
Xavier closed his eyes and for a moment, pictured his childhood room as it was for years, up until the accident that killed his mother and his foster father: the bedroom walls covered with drawings, visions that made the transition from mind to paper. He recalled one in particular: a deep hole bored into the earth, with tiny forms clinging to the sides, smoke rising from below.
He had seen this all before. Didn’t know what it was at the time, but now there was no mistaking it.
Just like there was no mistaking what he’d have to do next. He knew it was coming. Dreaded it, but at the same time found himself intensely curious. But first he allowed himself a moment.
A moment to think. About her.
A soaring flight over sandstone towers, deep ravines and striated cliff walls. Her breath on his neck, her arms fiercely encircling his chest. The intensity of adventure, the thrill of discovery…
And then he was back, and her scent left his lungs with the next breath, replaced by the stinging heat and flavor of death.
Mason Calderon slid into the seat facing Xavier, then shut the door. He had on a lavender silk shirt, sleeves rolled up, his white tie slightly loosened around his collar. A slight cough was his only indication of experiencing anything personally from the destruction outside. He brushed off his pant legs, then combed his fingers through his wavy gray hair.
“So, Xavier. We finally get to chat.” Calderon held a thin leather briefcase on his lap, tapping it gently.
Xavier’s head felt lighter suddenly, and the car seemed to spin. “The Tablet.”
Calderon smiled, his palms now flat against the leather case. “I know you can feel it too.” His eyes were large, Xavier thought, the pupils expanded like a focused cat’s. They blinked, then glanced out the window. His smile never wavered as he shook his head. “Such loss. But still, it was a valuable test. And a warning.”
“A warning to whom?”
Calderon’s gaze swept back to Xavier. “Don’t you know?”
“I know a lot of things. Maybe you should be more specific.” If this was how it was going to be, Xavier was going to have to figure a way to just get in position to kick the senator in the face and shut him up. He knew the next minutes were going to be crucial. Everything he believed in was going to be put to the test. Something was coming, some revelation he hadn’t accounted for. This was the grand meeting between dramatic adversaries, and Xavier, believing himself now thrust completely into the hero’s role, wasn’t going to be fooled.
But then again, maybe he needed a radical change in direction, because so far nothing had been altered. All his visions were still of the same thing: complete final destruction. His death, and everyone’s death at the hands of this man sitting before him so calmly.
Calderon leaned in slightly. “Do you know why the Nazis sent elite missions out to remote corners of the earth? Tibet, the North Pole, Antarctica?”
Xavier stared at him.
“These were hardly positions of strategic importance to the war,” Calderon continued. “And Himmler and other select SS members continued to expend vast resources seeking out areas where there were caves and tunnels penetrating deep into the earth. What were they looking for?”
Xavier shrugged, pretending not to care, although a sinking feeling was forming in his gut. “Treasure?”
“Not exactly. Hitler and the other members of what they called The Thule Society were following up on legends—or possibly if one source is to be believed—remote visions of a certain psychic named Trevor Ravenscroft. The belief in a pre-diluvian civilization, an advanced race, possibly coinciding with Atlantis or else even its predecessor. A race of supermen with advanced intelligence, physical strength and especially, mental powers. Powers and abilities that made them godlike.”
Xavier nodded. “Yeah, so Hitler was insane. Easily manipulated by whackos with god-complexes. Aryan master race. Sure. If they could prove they were descendants of these Thulians or whatever, then they’d what—justify genocide and lordship over the Earth?”
Calderon grinned. “Not only that, although certainly that was a big part of the justification for their quest. No, what Hitler intended was to discover where the remnant of this great super race went during the last cataclysm. Where they hid. And, he believed, where they continue to reside, deep in the earth, watching. Waiting…”
“For what?”
Calderon shrugged. “Hitler thought maybe they were waiting for him. Waiting for a ruler to step up and take the mantle of succession. To build an army capable of overwhelming the lesser races. All at the behest of a ruling class with advanced powers.”
Xavier wriggled against his bonds, wishing he could have hidden a knife in his sleeve to give himself a chance at escape. A chance at ending this here and now. Instead, he had to think of another way. “So, forgive me Senator. What the hell does this have to do with anything? Hitler’s gone, and us ‘lesser races’ smashed his superman dreams and dismantled his aspirations.”
“Gone, yes. But the Custodians are not.”
“The who? Oh, the Thule people. The master race. They’re still there, hiding under rocks?”
“Deep in the earth. Deep underground.” Calderon rubbed his hands together slowly, again looking out the window at the devastation. “And now, Xavier, we finally have a way to get to them.” He patted the briefcase, his eyes glowing with excitement.
And then Xavier got it. He understood his visions. Understood why nothing could stop the coming devastation. And at last, he understood what they were doing up in Alaska.
“Oh dear god,” he whispered. “HAARP. I guessed you used it to cause this localized earthquake. Modulating an ELF vibrational wave, using a billion watts of power, all in the same cadence and frequency into this one spot…”
C
alderon waved his hand to move him along. “Yes yes, that was child’s play. Technology we’ve had for decades, but enhanced only recently in the last upgrade to the antenna arrays. All thanks to Tesla’s vision. But still, it wasn’t enough. The Custodians are deep. Deeper than we could ever probe, deeper than we could reach, even with HAARP.”
Xavier motioned with his chin to the briefcase. “But this is the game-changer.”
“It is,” said Calderon. “And I think they’ve been after it for millennia. Two sides, forever at war. It started up there.” He looked up at the roof. “Among the planets. The myths, decoded, tell the story. The gods of the sky and their squabbles, their bloody and earth-shaking battles. Marduk and Tiamat. Thoth and Set, Odin and Loki… So often repeated, so often recalled, if only in fables by our small minds. But there were always those who knew the truth, those who sought for dominance—or if nothing else, at least détente.”
Xavier tried to put the pieces together. “The Emerald Tablet gave the possessor what… a way to tap into greater destructive powers?”
Calderon nodded.
“But the Tablet does more.” Xavier thought quickly. “And now you have the translation. So, what do you need me for?”
Calderon was silent for a moment. “The boys are untested and rash, while you… you have a strength they’ll never attain, at least not in time to be of use. And Nina… well you know her.”
Xavier shrugged. “Does anyone really know her? I thought I did.”
“Regardless, you have an affinity for the power in the Tablet. A power that needs to be wielded by someone who can already do what you can.”
“So it was designed by one of them?”
“If you mean the Custodians, the early race, then yes. I believe so. We have certain evidence, scrolls and traditions that speak of a time when these artifacts were created by the greatest of the ‘gods’, used and coveted by their brethren. But like the hammer of Thor, only one of their own could access its true power.”
“So, fine. You need me. But you already know I’m sworn to stop you. All I’ve seen my whole life is you destroying the world. At first I thought it was to exact some sort of fiery revenge for Marduk’s ancient loss, but now…”
Calderon bent his neck. A moment of doubt crossed his expression. “I am not the destroyer,” he whispered. “They—these Custodians, forever aloof but forever jealous and stewing, dreaming only of their return, like some slumbering Lovecraftian deities—they are the true enemy. As long as they exist, mankind can never be free.” He spread out his arms. “I’m the world’s savior. And you, Xavier Montross, can help me.”
Xavier merely stared at him, dumbfounded. He’d known something was coming, but this?
“Join me,” Calderon said in a voice just above the rumble of the bulldozers, helicopters and rescue equipment. “Stop the Custodians. Together with your remote-viewing, with your ability to spirit-walk or whatever it is you do, and my resources, we can find them. Seek out their hiding places, penetrate their shields, and with this…” He gripped the case in both hands. “With this… we will wipe them out, bury them under a billion tons of earth like the cowardly moles they are. Wipe them out and reclaim this world for ourselves.”
Xavier felt dizzy. Tugged in two directions. “No,” he whispered.
“Xavier, don’t be a fool. They see what’s happening. They’re tracking evolution. We’re changing, transforming… into what they can’t abide.”
“What?”
“Changing into them.” Calderon grit his teeth. “Use your viewing powers later to confirm all this, but trust me. They are the ones that have constantly interfered in humanity’s path. The Flood. The Tower of Babel… Anytime we got too close, started working together, started evolving toward something, unlocking genes they had tried to deactivate. Custodians indeed!” He made an expression of disgust. “Custodians of their own perverse lordship perhaps. If you look, you’ll see their bloody fingerprints stamped across history. Since Babylon and since crushing the last great human civilizations, like those Indus Valley, Peru, Egypt and Cambodia, China—wherever man dared to advance and reach for their true destiny—we believe they’ve opted for the subtle approach. Fostering wars and disunity. Corrupting religion so humanity is always at each other’s throats.”
“Fighting ourselves so we can’t see the real enemy?” Xavier had to smile. “Reagan made the same speech at the UN in 1985. Thought maybe if aliens threatened us, we’d find common ground and unite against them.”
“Yes, you have it! And yes, I’ve had predecessors who have sought to change the status quo. But none with the access to the knowledge or power that I possess. They fear people like you, like my twins. Like the Morpheus Initiative. And they’ve dreaded the rediscovery of The Emerald Tablet.”
“But if it could hurt them, surely they would have found it first. Being as powerful as you claim. They could have done what Caleb did and found it first.”
Calderon shook his head, his eyes twinkling. “For some reason, they couldn’t. Maybe they’ve forgotten how, or else they misjudged and believed it was destroyed or if not, that at least no one would be able to retrieve it.”
Xavier frowned. Something didn’t make sense there. “But…”
“Xavier, stop thinking with your head. Use your heart. Your gut. You know I’m right.”
“But HAARP… if it can do what you believe it can, then these Custodians would have infiltrated it. Sabotaged it, destroyed the potential tool of their own destruction. You can’t sneak something like that past them.” He glanced outside. “Especially after this.”
“We’re well defended,” Calderon insisted.
“I found you, RV’d it quite easily. I just couldn’t physically access the site, not without help.”
Calderon shrugged. “I admit I was worried, but we’re being protected. The legacy of Marduk perhaps. Either way, it’s our fate. Our mission is crucial, and it’s not going to be stopped. We will root them out, and with those keys…” He pointed out the window. “We’ll translate this Tablet fully, and then their worst fears will come true.”
“What do you think that’s going to tell you?”
“Only how to reactivate the genetic material the Custodians blocked in our developing species.” His eyes blazed. “We’re going to do it, wholesale, across the globe. All at once, transforming the world.”
Xavier trembled. He thought of Alexander, and the boy’s love for that Pixar movie, The Incredibles. “And when everyone’s super…”
Calderon got the connection immediately and laughed, then finished the line: “…no one will be.”
After a pause, Xavier shook his head. “But something’s not right. You’re going to make a mistake. Enhancing your technology with the power of the Emerald Tablet will create a level of power beyond your control. You’ll do something wrong. Maybe…” He had a flash of a vision: rocks and magma blasting out of a hole, something with massive force drilling into the depths, layer after layer until cutting through a massive hollow cavity. A gleaming city of marble spires and citadels, suddenly pulverized by an invisible wave of energy which then continues deeper, deeper toward a churning crimson mass.
Xavier’s eyes shot open. “You won’t be able to control the depth. It’ll go too far, causing chain reactions, magnifying the initial vibrations into something unstoppable. It’ll smash into the core, disrupt the earth’s axis…” He felt a rush of heat, heard nine billion souls cry out at once, and then…
“You’ll kill us all,” he said as he collapsed.
#
Treading carefully over the massive fragments of the library’s shattered glass dome, Nina followed the boys toward the smoldering pit. At the precipitous edge, she looked down. Hundreds of feet, past the crumbling masonry, the twisted metal posts, the smoking husks of several taxis that had been unloading passengers, the fused layers of iron and drywall, the sparking wires, the jagged bookshelves thrust like spears into the sides. Huge chunks of the library’s outer w
all—the rounded Aswan Granite carved with scripts from 120 different languages—littered the ledges and were scattered about the pond, the highway, and even lodged in the walls of nearby buildings. Several boats in the harbor had been crushed with exploding debris. In the pit, a host of pages fluttered about, still whirling, descending into the darkness.
In the wreckage, Isaac found a large leather-bound book, its cover sheared in half, spine dented. Smiling, he picked it up, dusted it off and then flung it, Frisbee-style, into the void.
Nina lowered her head. So unlike his father.
Jacob stood farther back, a little wary of heights, still shaken from the last minor aftershock that had rescue crews and spectators running for safety. He edged closer to Nina, started to reach for her hand again, but then saw his brother glaring at him; so he withdrew, shambling over to Isaac.
“Keep back,” Nina ordered. “You had your look. That should be enough.”
Isaac shrugged like he hadn’t a care in the world. “No problem, not for us. Just wanted to see the carnage, we did. See what daddy Calderon can do when he sets his mind to it.”
“And when we help him,” Jacob added, the excitement in his voice faltering as he surveyed the damage once more.
“Come along then.” Nina led them around the barrier, carefully stepping over blocks and gaping fissures. They made their way to the makeshift command center that had been set up inside the planetarium. Rising from a reflecting pool on the outskirts of the main library, the planetarium had been miraculously spared, along with several other ancillary buildings, research centers and administrative offices. The waters of its reflecting pool however, displayed only a pall of lingering smoke, occasionally bisected by roving news helicopters.
Nina and the twins walked around shell-shocked workers, numb-faced police standing beside army members and rescue workers who looked dumbfounded at the totality of the destruction, so much so that they had nothing to do and no one to save. Anyone down in that hole, they reasoned, was beyond hope.
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