Under the glass arch they went, dappled by its green glow, and in through the sliding doors. It reminded Josh more of a mall than it did of an agency headquarters, despite the enormous CIA seal emblazoned on the lobby floor. Statues honoring the service of members gone by decorated the hall, stars and stripes adding color to the otherwise monotone marble décor. On the wall, a row of stars signified the sacrifices made for the agency. There were too many to count.
Twin reception desks bridged by a turnstile barred the way ahead. Edwards approached the receptionist.
'I have a guest pass waiting registered for a Mr. Josh Reed.'
The receptionist tapped at the computer. 'Is Mr. Reed here?'
'Yes—this is him.'
'Mr. Reed,' the receptionist said, 'do you have any identification?'
'Uh, I have my driver's license?' he said, retrieving it from his pocket and showing her.
'That's fine. Please—' the receptionist directed Josh to an area marked on the floor—'stand here.'
Josh did as he was told, realizing he was having his picture taken while Edwards and the other agents stood watch. It was incredibly surreal; after the noise and speed of the helicopter, waiting in line to have his picture taken gave Josh the feeling of being in a waking dream.
'And if you can place your hand on here,' the receptionist asked, handing Josh a touch pad with a hand outline on it. He did so, waiting while the scanner did its job.
'I'm sorry, Mr. Reed,' the receptionist said, tapping at the computer, 'I'll need to do that again. The machine's a little temperamental.'
'Oh, okay. Do I just keep my hand on the screen?'
'Yes please.'
The second scan worked, and the receptionist printed a pass out for Josh. It expired in twenty-four hours, and was clearly marked in bright red letters that Josh was a guest of the facility under the invitation of Edwards.
They all trundled through the turnstile, then through a row of metal detectors. Josh had nothing metal on him beside his keys, and he passed through without problem, picking them up on the other side. Where he was and what he was doing there was only just starting to hit him, and it made his throat dry.
'When can I see my family?' he asked hoarsely.
'They are arriving shortly,' Edwards said. 'You'll see them very soon.'
Their escort followed as they meandered through corridors of more black and white marble, and soon Edwards ushered them into a small room, where they waited in silence until Georgie and Joseph arrived. Edwards must have understood that Josh was going to be of no use until he'd got what he wanted.
'I'll give you all a few minutes,' Edwards said, getting up to leave. 'Then we must get to it.' He shut the door behind him, leaving Josh alone with his family. Georgie looked scared.
'Daddy!' Joseph squealed.
Josh hugged them both. 'It's okay . . .' he said into Georgie's hair. 'I'm here.'
Georgie looked up at him, eyes bright with fear. 'What's going on, Josh?'
'I don't know yet,' Josh said. 'And I don't know how much I'm allowed to say. All I know is that I found something in the tunnels, Georgie, something big, and the CIA want to talk to me about it.'
'What did you find?' Georgie whispered.
Josh looked around the room. Cameras, each corner. He noticed the table by the wall, bolted to the floor, thick metal eyelets on one side. This was an interrogation room. Secure. Definitely not private. 'I don't know if I can tell you. I probably shouldn't, not now at least. The main thing is you're safe. Did they treat you well?'
Georgie nodded.
'What did they tell you?'
'Just that they needed us to come with them right away, and that you were coming too, and that no one was in trouble—'
'No one is. We're safe.'
'Safe from what?' Georgie said, voice cracking. 'Safe from what, Josh?'
Joseph looked sad. 'What's the matter, Mommy?'
'Mommy's okay, Joseph, don't worry,' Georgie told him.
Josh said nothing. Her eyes searched his, and she knew he was holding back.
'If we're in danger, Josh, I need you to tell me . . .' she whispered. She clung to him with one hand, fingers digging in, and to Joseph with the other.
'We're not in any danger. We're safe. Please believe me.'
Georgie's breathing was fast and shallow. She nodded. 'Okay,' she said.
'I promise,' Josh added. She didn't trust him; he could feel it. He tried to catch her eye. 'I found—I found a time portal,' he whispered. 'In a weird room deep below ground. That's what they want. That's why we're here.'
Georgie sniffed, looking at Josh. Her expression was neutral, weighing up what Josh had said versus her ability to believe it.
'I swear to you.'
Chewing her lip, Georgie nodded. 'Okay, whatever you say.'
'Please believe me. I'm here—we're here—so I can protect you.' He tried to take her hand, and she pulled away.
'If you don't respect me enough to tell me the truth, then don't bother talking to me at all,' she said.
Josh glanced at the cameras—he'd told Georgie more than he should have, he knew it, but he needed her to believe him. 'Please, Georgie, I am telling you the truth . . .'
'How can I possibly believe you?' Georgie said, voice raised. 'This is—this is bullshit, and you know it.'
'Shhh!' Josh pleaded, looking anxiously to the door, but it was too late. The handle clicked down and the door swung open, and in breezed Edwards. He didn't look happy.
'I had to tell her,' Josh said, stepping away from Georgie, hands held high. Edwards approached him, and Josh resolutely held his ground, albeit swaying backward slightly. Edwards stopped, then turned to Georgie.
'Mr. Reed is correct. He has found a time portal.'
Georgie looked between them both, speechless, pale.
'Also, he specifically requested you be here for your own safety.'
'It's true?' Georgie asked Josh. Josh nodded. Georgie looked down, blinking, struggling to take it all on board.
'I can assure you,' Edwards continued, 'that what Mr. Reed says is entirely true. And now we must go. We have matters to attend to.'
'I have to go,' Josh told Georgie. She nodded slowly. 'I'll see you very soon, okay? Bye-bye, Joseph.'
Joseph waved goodbye. Georgie said nothing.
Edwards and Josh left the room, while two agents remained behind to guard it.
'Is that necessary?' Josh asked, watching them standing either side of the door as he and Edwards headed deeper into the building.
'Now they know,' Edwards said simply.
Josh stopped. 'What else was I supposed to do, huh? They get dragged from their home to the CIA headquarters and I can't tell them why? How do you think that feels for them, for me?'
Edwards, who'd also stopped, turned to Josh, standing nose to nose with him. 'My family thinks I'm a quality assurance manager for a chain of shoe factories, Mr. Reed, have done for nineteen years. They think I fly around the country inspecting shoe-making machines, doing health and safety drills. Do you know why?'
Josh kept quiet.
'I do it—we all do it—for their safety. The less they know, the better. You think about what you've discovered for a moment. Now imagine what would happen if word got out about this place. It would be chaos. People would be slitting each other's throats to find it. And that's just the normal people, our next-door neighbors who ask us how we are and tell us that the weather's going to be great this weekend. You want your family tied up in all of that? You want some stranger hacking down the front door to get to your family because they want what she knows?' Edwards backed away, wiping the spittle building at the corners of his mouth. Hands on hips, he continued. 'The CIA exists to keep the people of America safe, and that means keeping secrets. If the people of the US knew about half the stuff we've kept under wraps—well, I dread to think.'
Josh allowed himself a breath—he'd been holding it all this time. What Edwards said made sense, but he still cou
ldn't help but feel angry about being put in that situation with Georgie. 'So now what?' he asked.
'Now we have to keep you both under protection until we neutralize the situation.'
'So my family will be kept safe?'
'Haven't you been listening?'
It was all getting too much for Josh. 'Yes, sorry, I was. It's just—I'm tired, okay? It's been a long day.'
'I understand,' Edwards said, almost sympathetically. 'But there's still more to come. Can you keep going for just a little longer?'
Josh nodded. 'I suppose.' Seeing Georgie and Joseph had really taken it out of him. Since discovering the room and the portal, he'd had an underlying feeling of helplessness, watching the same things happen over and over, memories of his repeated failures haunting his mind, but it nowhere near compared to the helplessness he had felt back there with Georgie. He knew she wouldn't believe him, but seeing her scared and angry and lonely and it all being his fault—he couldn't bear it. 'How do you do it?' he asked Edwards.
'Do what?'
'Keep the secret? Keep them safe?'
'Years of practice,' Edwards said solemnly. 'It took a few marriages to get it right. Come on.'
They resumed their walk through the halls of lies and secrets. The cold marble, the black and white, it was oppressive, disheartening. It was the perfect palette for a place that dealt solely in misery. Josh wanted out, but he knew he'd have to go deeper first.
The corridor opened up into a secondary atrium with elevators lining either side. Edwards swiped his card on the button panel and pressed down. Wherever they were going, it required even more clearance than where they were now. When the elevator arrived, they stood back to let two agents off.
'Sir,' they said in unison, and Edwards nodded. He and Josh boarded, and Edwards pressed the lowest button.
'Just how high a rank are you?' Josh asked.
'Deputy Executive Director,' Edwards said.
Jesus, Josh thought.
The elevator plunged downward, lights for the belowground levels flashing past in green on the display above the door. Then they changed to red, sinking two more floors before stopping. The doors did not immediately open, and Edwards had to scan his card once more and perform a retinal scan to get the elevator doors to part.
'Come on,' he said, when the doors finally opened.
What was revealed on the other side was surprising to Josh; he'd expected tunnels of concrete and steel, steam squirting in jets from tubes running along the walls, but it was nothing like that. The walls were painted beige, the carpet was cheap, and the air was musty. There was no one to be seen. Edwards stepped off and Josh followed.
'Where are we going?' Josh asked, trying to keep up with Edwards's long strides.
'Somewhere no non-CIA operative has ever been before,' Edwards said. 'The archives.'
They walked the rest of the corridor, until finally they reached a door at the end. After another keycard and retinal scan, it became immediately apparent why they needed to be so deep underground. The room on the other side was cavernous, stretching high above and far across. On the opposite side was a freight elevator, presumably where the stuff that filled the rows and rows of shelves had entered by. The shelves themselves towered overhead, laden with crates, nothing out on show.
'This way,' Edwards said. Josh followed him through the maze of shelving, winding deeper into the shadows cast by these skinny metal valleys. 'I said I wanted to show you something,' Edwards continued, his pace slowing. 'Now I can.'
Chapter 22
In among the crates were two larger units, possibly the largest serviceable by the freight elevator. They were over twice the height of a person, and one had been lifted down from a shelf by a forklift truck already, as had a few other smaller crates. The crates themselves were metal, fastened with secure catches locked down by a card reader. The larger crates had ladders on one side, presumably to climb to the top with.
'I don't need to tell you that this goes no further than the walls of this room,' Edwards said, swiping his card. 'Although I can guarantee that no one will ever believe you.'
The card reader beeped, flashed green, and the catches unlocked. A small puff of gas condensed in the air, swirling around the rim of the crate. What Josh had expected to see when he'd exited the elevator, he saw now.
'We found the first room,' Edwards said as he began to release each catch one at a time, 'during a mission to Cairo about twenty years ago. The local people had some crazy superstition about the spirits of dead kings guarding the pyramids, which of course we knew to be nonsense, however when an expedition team—who were using ground-penetrating radar to scan the hidden tunnels below the great pyramids—discovered an unrecognizable energy source that was distorting their readings, it was brought to our attention.
'We've seen this sort of thing before: superstitious populace kept away from an area with tales of otherworldly nightmares coupled with strange energy readings. Of course, we believed that the site was being used to covertly develop nuclear weaponry.'
'In the pyramids?' Josh asked, bemused.
'Believe me, I've heard crazier. Seen crazier. In the interests of nationwide security, we investigated, and I was heading up the team. I was a field agent back then, on the brink of landing a desk job, and it was going to be my last covert operation. I had a marriage to save, right? But guess what we found.'
'A room, like in Manhattan?'
'Exactly. Our technology was far superior to the ground-penetrating radar used by the expedition responsible for the discovery, and we quickly learned that there was some kind of latent power, a dying light if you will, emanating from the scene. We tunneled from miles back to reach the room. We had to maintain secrecy. We still didn’t know what we were dealing with.
'When we found it, it was partially collapsed. Forensic study showed that the room had decayed over an extremely long time. The energy readings, as faint as they were, gave us a date on its creation: the Cretaceous-Paleogene period. Do you know how long ago that is?'
Josh shook his head. He was oblivious. Edwards had paused on releasing the catches—there were a lot of catches—and smiled.
'That's two hundred and fifty million years ago. So we then discovered that this room—or what was left of it—was made of an unknown material, and had been a container for some kind of energy source—one so powerful that we could still detect residual radiation, a kind we hadn't ever detected on Earth before. In fact, it was an energy we'd never detected at all, only in theory. Any ideas what that energy was?'
Again, Josh shook his head. All he wanted to know was what was in the crate.
'Hawking radiation. A theoretical type of energy released by black holes, formed from the quantum effects near an event horizon, where time is distorted to the point where it appears to stop, even theoretically reverse. We detected that energy, here, on Earth, a hundred feet below the pyramids. Can you believe that?'
Josh could not. Edwards continued, his face alive with excitement, talking at an increasing rate.
'So now we had not only an unknown material, we also had a reading of a previously theoretical energy from an event that occurred millions of years before humans even existed. We even detected an almost imperceptible level of time dilation—a shift in time like you experienced—around the source. But the main thing was—we had a lead.
'Searching for more traces of Hawking radiation led us to another site, this time in Albania. A similar story: local people afraid of an area, curious tales passed down through generations about disappearing people, etcetera, and best of all—readings of Hawking radiation. These readings were fainter, and the room we found there we placed back even further to the Permian-Triassic era.'
Edwards paused, watching Josh. It seemed he was expecting Josh to say something. When he didn't, Edwards continued, with the story and with the unclipping of the crate.
'That room too was decrepit and lifeless,' Edwards said, finishing the bottom row and working his way up the si
de, mounting the ladder to reach the higher ones. 'Nothing left except for fragments of wall and a lingering radiation. We found five of those rooms in total, and then the trail went cold. The others we dated to the Triassic-Jurassic period, the Late Devonian period, and the Ordovician-Silurian period.' With a distant expression he said, 'We thought we'd hit a dead end.'
'Until now?' Josh asked.
Edwards looped his arm around a rung and shook his head. 'Not quite. We continued our research using the data we had. After all, we still had five fascinating discoveries to study. What could possibly have been so powerful that its ghost lingered on millions of years later in the form of Hawking radiation? There's only one thing it could have been: a rip so deep in space-time that it had the power to burrow into the past.' Edwards climbed down from the ladder so he could approach Josh, his excitement elevating to almost madman levels of white-eyed fanaticism. 'Those rooms were time portals too, Mr. Reed. Once.'
'But how did they all get there?' Josh asked. 'How did they form?'
'That was the big one,' Edwards whispered solemnly. 'There's no way these rooms could have been a natural occurrence, or even built by an extinct civilization. The materials, the energy—they must have been created by something else.'
Josh swallowed, his stomach dropping. 'But what . . .?'
'Hold that thought,' Edwards said, returning to the crate to release the last row of catches, 'until you've seen this.' In silence he popped the catches along the top edge, then climbed down to pull the great door at the front. It swung open with a heave, and he walked it back to reveal what was inside.
At first, Josh wasn't sure what he was looking at. He recognized the crystalline material, but not the shape. A quadrupedal sculpture almost the height of the crate, layered with facets that shimmered in the light. He blinked. Could it be . . .? No, surely not . . .
'It's the creature that built the room, Mr. Reed,' Edwards said, reading Josh's baffled expression.
Josh opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. The creature—if it really was a creature—looked almost like a crudely hewn elephant, minus the head and tail. It was like it had taken the rudimentary shape only temporarily.
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