Temple was about to say something when the interior suddenly got a lot brighter. The walls of the tunnel gave way and their tram hurtled above an enormous open space. They hugged the stalactite-covered roof, racing along a monorail track that circled the mile-wide facility, looking down on a complex of rectangular buildings, pathways and plains. Pipes and wires ran along the sides of the elliptical cavern, with pathways laid out in concentric circular grids. Giant floodlights stood at regular intervals, and the track angled toward one pyramid-shaped glass building that stood fifty feet above the others.
“Central command,” Temple pointed. “Where we’re headed. Where you’ll meet the team.”
“And the diabolical super villain in charge,” Orlando mused.
“That would be me,” Temple said with a grin as they began to slow down. “Now, get ready for some revelations that are really going to blow your mind.”
#
Inside the sparkling glass-walled command center, the tram stopped at a level lit up by major lights diffusing through the windows. Looking up, the walls converged at a point where another huge circular light hung, giving the whole area a feel of being inside the luxurious lobby of an ostentatious hotel. There were three fountains and a waterfall, nestled inside a park-like area with large palm trees and lush flowering bushes. Multicolored birds flew about, chirping and singing. There were rounded picnic tables, benches set alone in shaded areas where people sat and appeared to be meditation, or just sleeping.
“You’ll have time to enjoy the scenery later,” Temple said, urging them along. He headed toward an elevator set in a rectangular, ivy-covered central pillar. “We’re needed down below.”
They followed, Aria and Phoebe first, then Orlando who pushed Aria’s father in a wheelchair. The doors closed and they descended quickly in a sealed car. “I’d have expected glass walls,” Orlando said. “No view?”
Temple shook his head. “These levels are largely private. We have twenty-seven psychics at work down here, along with a staff of sixty to maintain the complex, cook the food, run information searches and gather real-world intelligence. That all happens on levels four and five. The psychics, they’re down on six.”
“In the basement,” Orlando commented. “Where we belong.”
Phoebe jabbed him. “Okay, so what’s the plan? We meet everyone, and then what? We’ve got to help Caleb and Alexander, and stop…”
“The end of the world, yes. All in time.” The doors opened and Temple led them out into a much different setting. Soft lights, mahogany walls, dark carpeting. Leather couches, gold-framed maps on the walls: ancient-looking maps of the world, depictions of the stars and planets from the Middle Ages.
Orlando whistled as he rolled Brian Greenmeyer forward.
“Leave me here,” the man whispered. “Tired, and this looks like a good place to rest.”
“Dad?” Aria turned around. She still held Phoebe’s hand.
“I’m not worried,” he said. “You’re with good people.”
A thin, matronly woman stood up from a desk in the dark corner and took the wheelchair handles from Orlando. “I’ll watch over him now, get him a drink and some food.”
“Thanks, Laurie,” Temple said. He gripped the doorknobs and opened the two large oak doors, and then they were passing through a long hallway lit by what looked like turn-of-the-century gaslights set in bronze gargoyle sconces.
“What’s behind all these doors?” Phoebe wondered, looking ahead and losing count until the distant end of the corridor.
Temple paused at the first one. “Okay, a little off the main tour, but I’ll show you. These are our ‘contemplation chambers.’ Each a little different. Décor suited to the objective.”
“What objective?” Orlando asked.
Temple put a finger to his lips and quietly pushed open the door.
Inside were three people sitting in large bean bags, each a different color. They wore sleeping masks and seemed to be dozing… except for the pads of paper and pencils in their hands. Around the walls were hung photographs—aerial maps of mountain ranges and coastal regions, geological studies that seemed to center around fault lines running across the ocean beds and highlighting volcanic areas.
Temple eased the door shut. “We have them solely focused on natural disasters. Trying to predict the next ones, probing likely hot spots.”
“And if you get a credible hit?” Orlando asked.
“We quietly leak it to the geological community and do what we can do evacuate ahead of the event. But…”
“You haven’t had much luck yet?” Phoebe asked.
“Not as such. Close, but timing’s always a bit off. Sometimes they can’t tell whether it’s weeks or days, or in a couple regrettable instances, only minutes away. We’re working on refining the techniques. And we hope, maybe with your help, to improve our results. But first things first, or there won’t be any need for any of this.”
“What’s in here?” Orlando asked, reaching for the next door.
Temple grasped his wrist just as he turned the knob and the door opened a crack. “Leave that one alone.” He closed it gently, but not before Orlando got a glimpse of two older women, dressed as gypsies, standing before a glowing globe with their hands out and their eyes closed.
“Was that the moon?”
Temple sighed. “Yes, but the less you see of that, the better. We try to keep them alone and what they’re working on secret. We even have a shield permanently blocking that room, since it could cause the most alarm if certain elements determined what they were looking for.”
“Which is?” Orlando clenched his hands into fists. “Let’s get on with it. Get to the good stuff.” He pointed to the door. “I want in there.”
“Soon.” Temple ushered them along, speaking as a tour guide without opening any more doors. “In here we’ve got a rather gifted, if unfocused, talent looking for other candidates across the world who have demonstrated precognitive abilities. In this next room we’ve got four siblings, ages twelve through twenty seven, who together seem to share the same visions. We’ve got them probing certain historical events, trying to piece together what really happened to colonies—or whole cities—that went missing. Roanoke. Mayan centers, Pueblo towns… We have a list.” He slowed near the end of the corridor, passing two more doors. “Here we’ve got our largest room, a testing facility for new members. We put them through a series of blind objectives and gauge what they seem to be best at.”
They kept walking, with Aria and Phoebe glancing at each door, and Orlando itching to get inside and dig in. “This is just the kind of place I told Caleb we needed. More psychics, more objectives. Cool stuff to figure out! Damn, Temple, unless you’re jerking our chains, I love this place! Where do I sign up?”
Temple held up a hand before one more door on their left. “One thing more to show you before we enter the main conference center. In here, you’ll meet—”
“-The Dove,” whispered Aria with an odd smile on her face. They opened the door.
He was, to put it mildly, a little different than Orlando or Phoebe expected. He sat in an enormous leather reclining chair. Enormous because it had to be in order to fit his frame. Easily four hundred pounds, the Dove was in his late fifties. Balding, multiple chins, arms and legs the size of small redwood trunks. He went shoeless, and his big feet were up, presenting a grotesque view. Cheetos crumbs and pizza crusts littered the front of his extra sized Worlds of Warcraft t-shirt—the same kind Orlando had been sporting, until the incident with the eels.
Phoebe gave his arm a squeeze as if to say, look—there’s you in a few years.
“Hey there,” the Dove said, waving a big hand in their direction. “Just taking a break, boss. These the newbies?”
“New to you, maybe,” Phoebe quipped. “I’ve been at this since before I could talk.”
“I stand corrected.” He slapped away the crusts from his shirt. “I’d get up and meet you, but I don’t get up much. Not when the
se good people can bring me anything I want. If I didn’t have to piss and… well, I’d never get up. Too busy anyway.” He spun his chair around slowly, groaning with the effort. And Orlando took a step in, wrinkling his nose at the smell, noting the air fresheners working in the corners, overtime apparently.
Why is he called the Dove? he wanted to ask, and would as soon as they were alone.
The room was small, with maroon-painted walls supporting large bookshelves crammed full like the shelves of a used book store. On the walls were movie posters—specifically ones of a certain genre. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Close Encounters. The Day the Earth Stood Still. War of the Worlds.
Orlando nodded. “So in here, you’re studying film classics?”
The Dove made an un-dovelike sound. “Ha, good one. Nope, in here I do the important stuff, looking in on our ‘friends’. As much as I can, sneaking around their defenses, mostly seeing the footprints rather than the feet—or tentacles—that made them.” He grinned and chuckled, wiping his greasy hands on his dirty pants. “Hey Temple, you show ’em the NASA chick’s highlight reel yet?”
Temple shook his head. “Heading there next.”
“Highlight reel?” Phoebe asked.
“NASA chick?” Orlando followed up with.
The Dove grinned. “Oh, it’ll be a hoot, believe me. I’d join you, but…”
“Right,” Orlando said. “You’d prefer not to get up.”
Making a gun out of his fingers, the Dove pointed and grinned. “You got it, Orlando Natch. And by the way, good work out there in Bamian. I took a little time off the hunt to check you guys out.”
“And thank you,” Temple said, “for your timely intelligence when we needed it.”
The Dove gave a half-hearted bow from his seat. “Now, if that’s all, gentlemen and ladies, I have some more snooping to do. And you have a lot of catching up to do if you’re going to be anything but dead weight, which I have my doubts about.”
“We’ll try not to disappoint”, Phoebe said, leaving quickly, eager to breathe the fresh air out in the hall.
“Toodles!” called the Dove as the door closed behind them.
“There,” Temple said. “That went better than expected. He can be… a little less than charming sometimes.”
“Please,” said Orlando, “tell me he wasn’t a skinny geek like me when you found him.”
“He’s actually on a diet,” Temple said, “and doing quite well at it. We saved him from an extended stint at a rehab center where his chances were not very good. Gave him purpose and now he’s actually trying.” He made a face. “Just not entirely motivated.”
He moved forward to the end of the hall, toward a gold-plated two-door exit. Smiling to his three guests, Temple opened the doors and led them into a room that gave Orlando the immediate impression of stepping into Mission Control at NASA. Two rows of tables with comfortable leather seats before a central conference table and a main wall covered with projection screens of various sizes, including one immense screen currently split into eight smaller rectangles. Different scenes were presented on each one, and Orlando recognized a view of some jungle temples in Belize, while another had a distant view of the Taj Mahal, another the Great Wall of China, one had the Pyramids, and another, Stonehenge, and another–
“The Moon. And that,” Orlando pointed to a center screen where a reddish, rocky desert image stood eerily silent. “First I thought it was the Southwest, a random desert somewhere. But I’ve seen that before, from the rover’s camera. It’s…”
“Mars,” said a new voice. A woman stood up from behind a large-screen computer monitor in the second row. She was thin and shapely, with long auburn hair and blue eyes that were haggard and weak, and yet sparking with a twinge of excitement that only came from discovery after long hours of searching. She wore jeans and a loose white t-shirt with the words: ROCK CLIMBERS DO IT HAND OVER HAND.
Nodding to Temple, she came around the table and extended her hand in greeting to the newcomers. “My name’s Diana Montgomery. And I’m…” she glanced at Temple questioningly. “Well, I’ve only been brought on two months ago, but I guess you can say I’m a consultant.”
Temple stepped inside, shutting the door behind them. “Sure, we’ll keep that title. Diana was a consultant for NASA most recently, until certain illicit behavior was discovered.”
Diana raised her hands. “Caught with my hands in the cookie jar, downloading some evidence they preferred remain classified.”
“Before that,” Temple continued, “she served as assistant to the Director of the Smithsonian.”
Diana smiled at Orlando. “Before being kindly asked to resign after I once again…”
“Got your hand caught in the cookie jar?” Phoebe supplied, pulling Orlando back a little and sending a signal at the same time.
“More like their restricted archives.”
“But not before she first found some rather interesting things,” Temple said.
“Artifacts. Certain relics that didn’t fit with the modern historical consensus. Things that made me question everything about our evolution, our discoveries and technology.” She turned and walked back to the main wall, where she eyed the scenes of Mars. “And that sent me searching for answers in the one logical place where it made the most sense. The one place,” she said, “that terrified the hell out of me.”
“Up there?” Aria asked.
Diana nodded. “I used my connections and a little blackmail, I’m not afraid to admit, to get a job as a consultant to NASA. Then worked my way into a position to gain access to material off limits to most everyone except a few higher-ups. I took what I could, and confirmed in my own mind everything, all my worst fears.”
“And then,” said Temple, trying to hurry her along. “She got caught. Or would have, if the Dove hadn’t glimpsed what she was doing. We acted quickly, scooping her up just before a team was prepared to take her out… permanently.”
Diana looked down. “And I’ve pretty much been here in exile ever since.” Her expression brightened. “But it’s not so bad. Every once in a while I get a break and can go outside and do what I really love.”
“Rock climbing?” suggested Phoebe.
Diana nodded. “Ever since I was a teenager. Me and my dad.” Her face fell. “Until he died investigating something strange at a cave in the Grand Canyon.”
Orlando gasped. “Kinkaid’s cave?”
Diana smiled. “Figured you might have heard about it.”
“I remember that,” Phoebe said. “The news conference. That was you?”
She nodded. “I broke the story. Or tried to. Later, after my resignation, the Smithsonian retracted it all and said there was a huge mistake, that items had been misclassified in the archives. Forgeries, all of them. They said that I had acted rashly without their consent, blah blah blah.”
“But you knew the truth,” Orlando said wistfully. “Egyptian artifacts in a cave, thousands of years old. In the damn Grand Canyon. That must have been an adventure, finding those!”
“Well, I had help.”
Temple grinned, looking from Phoebe back to Orlando.
“Help?” Phoebe asked.
“One of you,” Diana replied. “A remote viewer. He came to me in the desert, saved my life, and then helped me find the hidden chamber. He showed me everything, and he… we…” Her eyes turned glassy and wistful. “Well, I haven’t seen him since, but he had these drawings, and…”
“What was his name?” Phoebe asked, her mouth dry. Fearing she knew the answer already.
“Xavier,” Diana said quietly, her voice cracking with emotion. “Xavier Montross.”
7.
When the first rocks started falling, Alexander had just finished rereading his mother’s file for the second time. His head swam with scanned images, rough drawings made by the other keepers. Ancient maps that looked like the inside of anthills, crude sketches and strange symbols, a timeline with notations in his mother’s hand. He wa
s still putting all the pieces together, trying to decide whether all this was some fanciful early myth or if it could it possibly actual history, when rubble crashed through behind him.
Chunks of stone, fused metal and pieces of glass tumbled free and slammed into a bank of shelves. Alexander jumped up, snatched the laptop and retreated to the far edge of the chamber, shrinking into a corner where a section of the wall had collapsed. He thought momentarily about throwing the laptop on the ground, picking up a sharp hunk of concrete, and bashing it in, rather than let them get its secrets too. But that file… something his mother had been working on, something Dad had never seen… And what could hold the answer to everything. He couldn’t let it go.
He had to save something from down here.
A shaft of light stabbed inside as if a giant had just poked its finger through the top of a cave and let in the sun. In the uncomfortable brilliance, Alexander could see two ropes descending, followed quickly by dark-clad men.
Surprisingly, he discovered he was experiencing relief as much as fright. At least I won’t suffocate to death, alone in the dark.
Two flashlight beams struck out in opposite directions, spraying the walls and the rubble. One hesitated on the face of the dead Rashi, then joined the other, converging, moving as one to the farthest corner. Both of them froze, highlighting their prey.
“We have him,” said a voice.
#
The two lights blazed in his eyes, and Alexander couldn’t make out anything but vague outlines of the men standing over him. He heard a familiar voice, but it came from a speaker, crackling.
“Does he have the keys?”
“Boy,” said the man behind the closer light. “Where are they?”
Raising his hands before his eyes, Alexander said, “What if I told you they were under that pile of wreckage over there, and good luck finding them?”
A moment of quiet, and then the man chuckled. “I’d say you were bluffing. Your brothers seem to think you’ve kept them around your neck.”
The other one coughed. “Care to show us?”
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